April 17: The Medical report on Mycroft’s injuries confirms a right-handed assailant. The wound was clumsily inflicted, without medical or professional training. The knife was a single-bladed kitchen knife, recently in contact with olive oil and used to cut onions, potatoes, orange bell peppers, and parsley (DNA traceable to a Broadland Model GG700 kitchen tree), as well as sausage. The great boon of a complex meat product, produced, not in a home vat, but by a professional kitchen with limited production, indicates that the user of the knife shopped at one of only three hundred and thirty-six shops, all located in Europe.

April 22: I have found the room where Mycroft was stabbed (in Debrecen, which has eight shops supplying the aforementioned sausage). It still contains the chair Mycroft was tied to, and the residue of Mycroft’s blood, with Sniper’s footprints in it, along with the footprints of three others identified as close Sniper followers—they will be interviewed but their arrest delayed until after the Olympics. Dominic left no detectable trace in the room, nor did any other.

April 24: I had Mycroft tied in the same way to the same chair in the same room where they received their injuries, and had a series of people of varied heights and builds approach them from behind and bend as if to stab. Mycroft’s memory of footsteps and the angle of breath and blade verify that the assailant was between 165 and 174 cm in height and weighed between 90 and 105 kg, though a somewhat smaller person might feign this weight with bulky clothes.

ANALYSIS (April 28): My most valuable clue is the fact that the assailant did not say anything to Mycroft, nor pause to “savor the moment.” A killer has no reason to hide their identity from a victim whom death will shortly silence. Many thousands of people want to kill Mycroft Canner out of revenge or hatred, but any of these would want to let the “monster” see the face of the avenger, and watch and lecture as the final moment came. This was, in contrast, a passionless execution, an attacker who wished to delete Mycroft as a [resource/factor], but did not care about the fact that this was the most hated criminal in the world. This rules out Hiveless Mardi Mojave, friends of the Mardi bash’ or of Apollo Mojave, the many persons morally agitated by Mycroft’s crimes, and any members and supporters of O.S. who might begrudge Mycroft’s part in its exposure. It also rules out Dominic, who might have stabbed Mycroft, changed their boots, put on a heavy overcoat, and returned to stab Mycroft again, intending that they survive and pass on a misleading story, but Dominic, who harbors such passionate envy of Mycroft’s privileged access to dominus Jehovah, would certainly have paused to enjoy the second stab as they enjoyed the first. Even a professional killer would, I expect, pause for reflection while executing Earth’s most famous amateur, and the possibility of a hired assassin is more thoroughly eliminated by the knife. A professional might choose such a clumsy and traceable tool in order to seem an amateur, but said professional would never, knowing the handicap presented by a single-bladed weapon, use the knife so clumsily as to inflict the comparatively minor injury which accounts for Mycroft’s survival.