The Blind Banker

"The Blind Banker"

The Blind Banker is the second episode of the television series Sherlock and was first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 1 August 2010.

Synopsis

At the National Antiquities Museum, Chinese pottery expert Soo Lin Yao (Gemma Chan) demonstrates the tea ceremony. Afterward, her co-worker Andy Gilbraith asks her out for a drink, but she turns him down and says that he wouldn't like her very much if he knew her. Soo Lin then tells him to stop asking her out. That night, Soo Lin is working late when she hears someone moving. She goes to investigate and finds a statue covered with a cloth. When she pulls the cloth away, she stares in shock at what's underneath.

John Watson is trying to buy groceries at the supermarket, but the machine gives him problems and refuses to accept whatever form of payment he tries to use. Meanwhile, at home, Sherlock Holmes battles a robed swordsman and finally knocks him out. When John finally comes home, he complains that he had a row with a machine, and that Sherlock hasn't moved all date. Sherlock admits that he turned down a case about a diamond and gave the messenger a refusal. As he does, he shoves a sword beneath the chair. John notices that Holmes is using his computer to check his e-mail. John asks for money, and Sherlock says he has to go to the bank.

There Seb Wilkes (Bertie Carvel), an old university acquaintance of Holmes', asks for help, in return for a large fee. A break-in occurred in which nothing was taken, but an apparently meaningless pair of symbols were spray-painted onto an office wall. Holmes looks at the symbols, and determines that the fact that the symbols were graffitied at 11:34 PM indicates that someone was sending a message to one individual - Edward Van Coon of the Hong Kong desk - who hasn't come to work.

Holmes and Watson go to Van Coon's apartment. To try to get in to the apartment, Sherlock buzzes the apartment directly above Van Coon's and asks the woman who lives there if he can use her balcony. He jumps down to Van Coon's balcony and then enters the apartment that way. Ignoring Watson's attempts to have Holmes buzz him in, Holmes looks around the apartment, and finds that Van Coon has been shot.

The police, under Detective Inspector Dimmock (Paul Chequer), are prepared to regard it as a suicide, though Holmes sees it as murder - among other clues are a paper lotus flower in Van Coon's mouth, and the fact that the bullet hole entered the victim from the right, yet Van Coon was left-handed. He believes that the killer came in through the open window and Van Coon fired a shot at him, and tells Dimmock to check that the bullet is determined to not have come from Van Coon's SIG-Sauer P226 handgun.

Soon, journalist Brian Lukis (Howard Coggins) is also shot and killed inside his locked apartment by a killer who can walk through walls. Holmes and Watson investigate, and in a library where Lukis had been they find the same mysterious symbols painted on a shelf.

Meanwhile, Watson obtains a job as locum at a local surgery with Sarah (Zoe Telford). Holmes and Watson discover a link between the two men; both had just returned from China, and both went to an oriental curio shop "The Lucky Cat". There Watson discovers that the symbols are ancient Chinese suzhou numerals. Holmes breaks into Soo Lin Yao's flat, obviously empty for several days, where someone tries to strangle him. At the museum they discover the same symbols on a statue. Then, with the help of graffiti artist "Raz" (Jack Bence), Holmes and Watson find more symbols painted on railway yard wall, and struggle to decode the message.

Back at Antiquities Museum, Holmes discovers Soo Lin in hiding, who explains that the code is the work of the criminal "Black Lotus Tong", of which she was once a member. Unfortunately before she can decode the message the assassin, who is revealed to be Soo Lin's brother, strikes again. Holmes realises that Van Coon and Lukis were members of the Tong, involved in smuggling valuable antiquities from China to sell in London, and that they were killed for stealing something.

Holmes knows that the message is in the form of a book cipher, and he and Watson spend the night going through the first two victims' books trying to find the solution. Watson's first day at work does not go well, as having stayed up all night, he falls asleep in his consulting room. Sarah covers for him, and Sherlock arranges a date at the Chinese Circus, for the three of them. While Watson and Sarah enjoy the escapology and acrobatics, Holmes snoops around backstage and is attacked, but with Sarah and Watson's help, they escape. While Holmes continues to search for the solution to the book cipher, Watson and Sarah are kidnapped, Sarah is bound and gagged and then set in front of a giant crossbow that will soon shoot her. The villains believe that Watson is Holmes, and that he knows the location of the missing "treasure". Fortunately Holmes finds the solution to the code, reads the message, tracks down the villains to their hideout and effects the rescue of Watson and Sarah. He also realises that the elusive "treasure" has been in plain sight all the time: a jade hairpin being worn by Van Coon's secretary, who had received it as a gift.

Source material

This episode takes the concept of coded messages from The Valley of Fear and The Dancing Men.

Cast

• Benedict Cumberbatch — Sherlock Holmes
• Martin Freeman — Dr. John Watson
• Una Stubbs — Mrs. Hudson
• Zoe Telford — Sarah
• Louise Brealey — Molly Hooper
• Gemma Chan — Soo Lin Yao
• Al Weaver — Andy Galbraith
• Bertie Carvel — Seb Wilkes
• Daniel Percival — Eddie Van Coon
• Paul Chequer — Detective Inspector Dimmock
• Howard Coggins — Brian Lukis
• Janice Acquah — Museum Director
• Jack Bence — Raz
• John MacMillan — Community Police Officer
• Olivia Poulet — Amanda

External links

• Sherlock at BBC Online
• Sherlock at Hartswood Films
• Sherlock - The Blind Banker at IMDb