"Southwark District?"
Russell raised an eyebrow. "You're that certain?"
"The Southwark District is bigger than you imagine." Charlotte seemed to know exactly what Russell was about to say, so she explained.
"The Southwark District stretches all the way from London Bridge to Deptford, spanning six miles of riverbank.
The Southwark where Hannigan went down is respectable enough—there's a cathedral there, there's Guy's Hospital, and lawyers and merchants sip afternoon tea in their Georgian terraced houses.
But the whole of the Southwark District isn't nearly as tidy and orderly as you might think."
"Uh-huh?" Russell neither agreed nor disagreed, motioning for her to go on.
"The Southwark District is vast. It can be divided into four areas: Southwark, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, and Walworth.
Of these, apart from Southwark being the core area of the district—and also the area with the best public order—the other three places... none of them are much good at all."
As she spoke, she rose to her feet, walked over to the information wall, and reached out to point at the map of London pinned upon it.
"These three places are a mixed bag of every sort—among the most chaotic and complicated areas in all of London.
There are glamorous, dazzling theaters and galleries, and there are also filthy, squalid slums and black markets. People of every stripe and calling, all kinds of characters.
Bermondsey especially—it's one of London's most notorious slums. Though it's separated from Southwark by no more than a street or two, it's an entirely different world.
The infant mortality rate here is nearly double that of other parts of London; the measles death rate is five times the London average, and the death rate from respiratory disease is triple.
Rotherhithe is joined right onto Bermondsey—it was even the departure point of the Mayflower.
Taking it all together, only Walworth is slightly better, but only slightly."
Charlotte swallowed the last morsel of chestnut and wiped her fingers with a napkin.
"For a cornered fugitive, there's no more fitting place to hide than there.
Crowded, full of prying eyes, information flows fast—yet everyone remains isolated from one another.
The residential density in Bermondsey is astonishingly high, roughly close to a hundred people per acre.
As long as he's set on hiding, even if Lestrade sent every man in Scotland Yard over there, they might still fail to find him.
The rich of London never look eastward. They don't even know how many districts there are over here."
"So, what you mean is," Russell tossed aside the chestnut shell in his hand, "Pilsen right now is very likely hiding in some corner of these three districts?"
"Most probably, yes." Charlotte nodded, picking up the file on Pilsen's social network that had just been sent over from Lestrade, and leafed through it idly.
"In the material Lestrade sent, more than half of it has some connection to the Southwark District.
Either business dealings, or simply fellow townsmen or old acquaintances.
This whole area is, to Pilsen, like his own back garden.
Familiar, safe, and possessing more than enough resources to exploit."
"Sounds like the workload just got bigger again," Russell sighed.
"At least you're not being made to decipher five digits out of a heap of unrelated names and background stories. Count your blessings."
Charlotte said.
"Anyway, right now there are only these two paths to choose from: go look through that long, dreary stack of files at Lloyds Bank, or go screen those shady characters in the Southwark District with prior records?"
"If it were up to me, I actually wouldn't want to choose either."
Russell shrugged. "They both sound exhausting. How about we go catch that fellow who's been selling fake information to the newspapers first?"
"On what charge?" Charlotte asked without even lifting her head.
"Seditious libel, criminal libel, fraud... surely one of those hats will fit?"
"Seditious libel requires that the speech have a tendency to incite the public against the government, the monarch, or the law."
Charlotte looked up and gave Russell a helpless glance.
"Criminal libel requires false damage to the reputation of a specific individual, especially a nobleman or an official.
And quite obviously, Moriarty is, firstly, no nobleman, and secondly, would never go and sue that woman.
Of course, perhaps that little newspaper could prosecute her on a charge of fraud, but that would have nothing to do with us."
Hearing this, Russell mused for a moment, as though pondering something.
Then he sighed, and, as if resigning himself to his fate, casually picked up one of the lists and began screening through it.
Compared with Lloyds Bank's list of a mere twenty-seven people in total, finding a hooligan with a record in the Southwark District didn't seem like much of a difficult task.
If anything, finding one upstanding, virtuous Good Citizen among them—now that would be the truly difficult thing.
"I'm suddenly beginning to understand," Russell said.
"Understand what?" Charlotte looked over at him.
"Understand God."
"Hmm?" The girl frowned.
Had this fellow finally lost his mind?
"God once promised Abraham that so long as there were even ten righteous men in the city of Sodom, He would not destroy that city."
Russell explained.
"And so Sodom was destroyed."
Russell yawned, leaned back against the sofa, and flipped through the pages in listless boredom, his gaze sweeping across those densely packed names and crime records. Before long, a wave of drowsiness came over him.
Name after name, crime after crime, flitted past his eyes like figures on a revolving lantern.
Theft, robbery, brawling, smuggling... a dazzling array, enough to make one exclaim in wonder:
Truly, London is a land that breeds outstanding talent.
Looking at these largely identical résumés, Russell began to suspect that Lestrade had bundled up every unclosed case file under his command and shipped the whole lot over.
After patiently screening through one list, Russell finally couldn't hold out any longer. He stood up and stretched.
"I can't do this anymore. I need a break," he said with a yawn.
At this, Charlotte lifted her head and shot him a glance, but in the end she said nothing—only tossed off a couple of sarcastic remarks before letting Russell leave.
Before he went, he seemed to fuss about with something, but Charlotte didn't look closely.
Now only she remained in the room.
She didn't know how much time had passed before a wave of weariness gradually crept up over the girl's mind as well.
Charlotte yawned and, somewhat tired, pinched the bridge of her nose.
Just as she rose, intending to brew herself a cup of coffee, she suddenly noticed a cup of hot milk already sitting on the desktop.
The milk cup had been steeped in warm water, several droplets still clinging to its walls, and a faint wisp of steam curled up from the surface.
Quite obviously, this was something that fellow who had just left had prepared especially for her before he went.
Charlotte looked at the cup of milk, then glanced at the tin of coffee beans on the desk, and couldn't help sighing.
She grumbled something under her breath, but still she picked up that cup of warm milk and sipped it in small mouthfuls.
The milk was rich and fragrant, silky on the tongue, and the moment it slid down her throat it dispelled the fatigue born of overtaxing her mind.
"Meddlesome fellow..."
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