Scotch, the Fifth (1/1)
Title - Scotch, the Fifth (1/1)
Series - 5/10 in the Scotch series
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Lestrade, John, Donovan, Mycroft
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - The conclusion of the Sally problem.
Author's Notes - Many, many thanks to arctacuda for the beta and sensiblecat for the Britpick.
Extra, extra thanks to arctacuda, whose rants over the past 18 months inspired so much of the dialogue in the first two parts of this that she should have co-writing credit.
Don't worry, the Chaosverse hasn't been abandoned, but I am enjoying this little excursion and hope you are, too.
Everything Is Chess - Scotch - Scotch, the Third - Scotch, the Fourth
Scotch, the Fifth
You’ll want it. That was what Sally said to him when she came to his office with the news about the Tower of London break-in. You’ll want it. And he had. In his case, he had wanted it because, well, who broke into the Tower of London? Someone interesting, that was who. That was a case guaranteed not to be dull. But Sally had wanted it because it would be high-profile.
It wasn’t that Lestrade had not known this about Sally, that she was ambitious. He had liked that about her, honestly. It meant she worked hard and without complaint, and he appreciated that. He supposed he should have seen that the problem was that she was more ambitious than he was. He had ambitions but they were secondary ambitions, casual ambitions. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a DCI? Yes, it would. Wouldn’t it also be nice, though, to keep doing this job, day-to-day, so long as it remained interesting to him? Yes, that was also nice and, frankly, enough for him, if it came down to that.
He saw now that that had effectively trapped Sally, and, while she may not have consciously decided the only way up was by pushing him out of the way first, it had ended up being the easiest path available to her.
All along, he had been setting up Sherlock and Sally as two diametrically opposed forces. He supposed he had never imagined Sally would be the one to win that particular fight.
With Mycroft’s warning ringing in his ear, Lestrade set about, as Mycroft had suggested, protecting his king. Since the day he had first entered the force, he had been behind on paperwork. A series of heroic late nights and a concerted effort not to leap on new cases as soon as they came up resulted in an entirely clean desk. He even, after she went home at night, went and took some of their cases off of Sally’s desk, deciding it had been stupid of him to ever trust her to write up the reports.
If Sally knew that he’d taken the cases, she never said anything. But she had to know. Every once in a while, Lestrade would glance up from his computer screen to find Sally watching him with narrowed eyes. Lestrade always smiled brightly at her when that happened.
It took him a week to catch up on his paperwork. He spent another week combing through his past cases, especially cases that had involved Sherlock, searching for weaknesses, for anything that might be attacked as sloppy police work. He finished his trip down memory lane by concluding that, arrogant as it may sound, he was pretty good at his job, and his cases were solid, with or without Sherlock.
He phoned John late one night when he had just finished re-reading the report Sally had filed for “A Study in Pink.”
“Hello,” John picked up.
“It’s Greg,” he said.
“I know. How are things?”
“Fine. Not especially interesting, or I’d have called you before this.” Also, though he didn’t want to say anything, he was holding off on bringing any more civilians into his investigations until after Mycroft’s promised transfer of Sally went through. He doubted Mycroft would consider the presence of John Watson on a case to be protecting his king. “I’m reading the report for ‘A Study in Pink.’”
“Are you? I’ve been telling myself not to re-read the blog.”
Lestrade paused. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to. I just realized there was a question I’d never asked you.”
“No, we can talk about it.”
“You were the one who shot him, right? It’s one of the few unsolved crimes from my tenure with Sherlock. I always thought it was you. Am I right?”
John was silent for a second. “Are you going to come and arrest me if I say yes?”
Lestrade laughed. “I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.”
Lestrade closed the report, put it on his desk, and turned in his chair to look at the darkness beyond his window. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know.” John sounded game, which made Lestrade feel a bit better. “I’ve gone back into practice. Thought I should do something now that ‘full-time blogger’ no longer seems like a viable career choice.”
“Good,” said Lestrade, and tried to think of something else to say, something not about Sherlock, something innocuous that would cheer John up rather than depress him.
“You know what I never understood about ‘A Study in Pink’?” John asked.
“What?”
“Why did she have a white umbrella? Everything was pink, but she had that bloody white umbrella. I always meant to ask Sherlock that and never did.”
“I never even thought about that before,” Lestrade confessed. And then, “Thank God I didn’t put the umbrella in the report-I’d hate to be asked that question.”
John laughed.
***
Two weeks to the day from the night when he had walked in to find Mycroft in his lounge, Sally walked into his office without knocking, threw an envelope on the desk at him, and demanded, “Did you know about this?”
Lestrade looked up from a draft of his latest report, looked at the envelope on his desk, and then looked at Sally. “Shut the door,” he told her.
She leaned over and slammed it and crossed her arms at him.
He took his feet off his desk, put down his report, picked up the envelope, and took the stack of papers out of it, doing all of it as deliberately unhurried as he could, enjoying her growing impatience. Any minute now, she was going to start tapping her toe at him. “Oh, look,” he remarked, conversationally. “You’re being transferred. Huh. How about that.”
“Did you ask for me to be transferred?”
“No,” he answered, putting the papers back into the envelope.
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“I find that difficult to believe, too, honestly. I didn’t request it, but it’s definitely for the best, wouldn’t you agree?”
“No, I don’t agree,” she snapped. “Do you know what it looks like?”
He made a show of considering. “Yeah,” he replied, thoughtfully. “It looks a lot like what you did to me the night we arrested Sherlock. You know, calling into question one’s professionalism, ethics, entire career. I guess it does look a lot like that. Now that you mention it,” he finished, flatly, looking hard at her.
She was practically vibrating with fury; he could see it from behind his desk. “How dare you-”
“Stop right there.” He spoke quietly and evenly because what he wanted to do was shout, and once he started shouting at her he’d never stop. “I think I’ve been an incredibly good sport about having you around all this time after you tried to get me thrown off the force. I think I’ll draw the line at listening to you fling more of your baseless accusations at me. Not here in my office, at least. Take them somewhere else, if you have complaints.”
“I can’t take them anywhere else. You’ve-” She cut herself off.
“I’ve what?” he asked, coldly. “Go ahead. Say one more word. I’m as curious as you are as to what I’ll do.”
For a very long moment they stared across his desk at each other. Lestrade thought of the criminals he’d glared down in interrogations and thought that he’d never suspected he’d use the talent on his own sergeant.
She had changed tack by the time she spoke again. “I didn’t try to get you thrown off the force-”
“No? Then what was that all about?”
“You never listened to me when it came to Sherlock-”
“Because you were wrong when it came to Sherlock! I don’t listen to people who are wrong, Sally.”
“I wasn’t wrong.” She shook her head sharply.
“Think about how ridiculous your theory is, Sally. Really. Divorced from the craziness that was going on at the time, your proposal was that Sherlock Holmes had planned literally dozens of crimes in this city, and, what? Paid people to take the fall for him? Time and again? And not one of them ever came forward, ever accused him of what you say? That’s really what you think was going on?”
“I-”
But he refused to let her speak. “And here he is, this brilliant criminal mastermind who’d been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes all this time, and he slips up because he kidnaps a seven-year-old girl and lets her see who he is?”
“So he got cocky,” she retorted, hotly.
Lestrade stood and at that moment realized he was also shouting. Ah, well, too late to go back on that now. Probably everyone in the office had gathered around for the show, but he didn’t let himself look anywhere but at Sally. “He didn’t get cocky. He was never guilty of anything you accused him of, and you railroaded me into having to arrest him or having to refuse an order from my superiors. We had no evidence-”
“If he wasn’t guilty, if he had nothing to hide, why didn’t he come with you without a warrant?”
“Because it was his reputation, Sally! It was over as soon as he was photographed being taken in for questioning. You destroyed his reputation, single-handedly, and you made it so that the only option he had was what he did.”
“That was the only option of someone who was guilty-”
“Or someone who was trying to protect other people from the real culprit. Who we’ll never get to catch because he eluded suspicion because you were busy starting a witch hunt against a person you had always hated. You may as well have pushed him off that roof.”
“He got off on it-”
“On solving crimes? You realize you’re in a police station? Everybody in here enjoys solving crimes. And we do it for money, which some might say is worse. You solve crimes for a living, just like Sherlock Holmes. High-profile crimes, crimes that will get your photo in the paper. Just like Sherlock Holmes. So.” He walked out from behind his desk and jerked open his office door. He took a deep breath and, instead of shouting, suggested calmly, “Get off your high horse, and get out of my office.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes hot with the press of a lot of things he knew she wanted to say. But something-maybe the fact that he did still outrank her? Or maybe something in his expression, in the loss of his temper-made her decide against it.
She collected her envelope from his desk and walked past him, through the doorway.
“Sally,” he said, taking a shamefully vicious amount of pleasure in doing it.
She looked back at him.
“Checkmate,” he said, and closed the door on her.
***
Lestrade closed the blinds on the window-walls of his office, sat down, and drummed his fingers on his desk. Then he stood and took a restless turn around his office. Then he leaned against his window for a second, looking at the busy city outside. Then he walked around his office again.
Sod this. He had to get out of here, clearly.
He pulled his coat on and opened his door.
The police station went abruptly silent and then abruptly loud again. Lestrade sighed and rolled his eyes, adjusted his collar, and stepped out of the building.
Once outside, he walked four blocks before he decided this was ridiculous and aimless. He took out his mobile and scrolled through his contacts, trying to find someone to phone. He found his finger hovering over MH.
He had, he thought, completely lost his mind. He was going to get put on administrative leave for having utterly gone off the rails.
He pressed send anyway.
It rang four times before Mycroft answered, sounding curious, “Inspector?”
“We should have a drink together,” he said.
“A drink? Why? Is something wrong?”
“No.”
Mycroft was silent for a moment. “Fine. When?”
“Now.”
“Now?” Mycroft did not even bother to disguise the surprise in his voice.
“Yes. Are you busy?”
“Well, yes. Apart from that, it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”
“So?”
“You’ve just phoned me at a number I expressly gave you for emergencies only and requested we meet for a drink, immediately, at ten o’clock in the morning.”
“I know it sounds mad,” said Lestrade, “but wasn’t it mad that I phoned you at all? Did it really make a difference what I said once you answered?”
“You make a fair point. Where are you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I could find out, but I really am in the middle of something, and it would be easier if you would just tell me.”
“This is somewhat disappointing.”
“I’m shattered to have gone down in your esteem. Tell me where you are, and I’ll send a car for you.”
“I could just meet you at your club.”
“No, you can’t. I’m not at the club. And I can’t give you the address of where I am, before you ask for it. Never mind, I’ve just been handed a report on where you are. The car will be there shortly.”
“That’s more like it. Now I’m impressed again.”
“Excellent. I’m delighted to hear it,” remarked Mycroft, languidly, and hung up the phone.
***
Mycroft had a four-party negotiation set up in various war rooms of the wing of the building he’d commandeered, with fidgety fingers on nuclear buttons and the worldwide economy at stake.
He ended his call with Lestrade, turned to his PA, and said, “Fetch me a good bottle of Scotch and let me know when Detective Inspector Lestrade arrives.”
His PA did not seem surprised by this directive at all. Which made her less surprised than he was himself, Mycroft thought.
He slid the mobile back into his pocket. His Sherlock-emergency-only mobile. And Sherlock never phoned, only texted, so for it to have rung was an astonishing occurrence. He had been startled enough to slip out and answer it, and he hadn’t stopped being startled yet.
He checked his tie, walked back into the room, and went back to thinking in Arabic, at least until Lestrade arrived.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed until his PA knocked on the door, stuck her head in, looked at him, and said, “Sir.”
Tempers had risen in the room, and she could barely be heard over the shouting around him. He decided everyone would benefit from a break, but didn’t bother to tell them that as he left the room. Eventually, they would shout themselves out and exhaust themselves. By the time they realized he was no longer in the room, maybe they would be ready to have a productive discussion.
Mycroft walked down the hallway to the office he was using. Lestrade was lounging against the room’s fireplace, and he said, as soon as Mycroft walked in, “A blindfold?”
“Good morning, Inspector,” Mycroft said, briskly, walking past him and over to the desk.
Lestrade straightened from the fireplace, following him over to the desk. “No, seriously, you had me blindfolded?”
Mycroft frowned at the label of the Scotch the PA had procured. He’d have to have a talk with that one. “Precautions had to be taken.” Mycroft opened the Scotch and poured. “You pay too much attention.” He handed a glass to Lestrade. “Consider it a compliment.”
Lestrade was staring at him. “You’re really in the middle of something.”
“I’m really in the middle of something,” Mycroft confirmed.
“I…I’m not sure I thought you actually…worked.” He suddenly realized what he’d said and hurried out, “Not to be insulting.”
“No, no,” Mycroft assured him, mildly. “I feel much the same way about your…job.” He said the word especially dubiously and took a sip of his Scotch. “Not bad. Scotch must be improved by being imbibed earlier in the day. Thank you for introducing me to this phenomenon, Inspector. Now what can I do for you?”
Lestrade looked a bit stricken. “I really didn’t think I was actually interrupting something. I can come back-”
“No, you can’t come back,” Mycroft reminded him, calmly, moving around the desk to lean against the front of it, “because you don’t know where you are.”
“True. I just meant-”
“Having piqued my curiosity by insisting on an immediate drink, you’re now not going to tell me what it is you wished to say? Not at all. Have a seat, won’t you? I’ve time for a chat.”
Lestrade sat slowly. Mycroft thought it was the first time he’d seen him look uncomfortable since he had started having these oddly regular Scotches with him.
“I must say,” Mycroft commented, “I did think you’d be in a better mood today.”
Lestrade shook his head and stood back up, placing his drink on the desk, and Mycroft thought he was going to insist on leaving, but what he said was, “You know how I told you it wasn’t fair to blame her? That it wasn’t her fault?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to hell with that. It was her fault, and you should blame her.” He moved restlessly toward the center of the office, hands in his pockets, pacing. Mycroft watched and sipped his Scotch. “There was a lot that went wrong that night. She was the source of all of it. And that was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Mycroft inserted, evenly.
Lestrade didn’t even look at him, pacing swiftly now. “Yes, it was. I knew she hated him. Not just hated him, I mean, hated him. I have seldom seen anyone despise another human being that much. It was completely unprofessional, and I should have reprimanded her.”
“Possibly,” agreed Mycroft.
Lestrade kept going. “But I couldn’t reprimand her, or I didn’t feel comfortable reprimanding her, because she was right about one thing, and that was that I was giving Sherlock too much access, too much access for a civilian, and I had painted myself into an impossible corner there, because if I was too hard on her, she could take me down.”
“Quite so,” said Mycroft.
“And the irony was that she was obsessed with all the high-profile cases, all the publicity we were getting, and that was only because we were working with Sherlock. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.”
“She isn’t very clever,” commented Mycroft.
“And I am not in a good mood today-I am bloody furious. I’m furious with her because if she’d just…not…done what she did, none of it would have happened. And I’m furious with myself, because if I hadn’t let it get to that point, or if I’d taken a stand that night, none of it would have happened. And I’m furious with Sherlock, because no matter what was going on, he should have known that he could have asked me for help. He never asked for help; he was the most bloody infuriating person I have ever known, ever.”
Silence fell.
Lestrade stopped pacing and looked at Mycroft. “Sorry,” he said.
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows at him. “Feel better now?”
“No, I don’t feel better.” Lestrade sighed and slumped back into the chair in front of the desk. “It’s all such a ridiculous waste.”
Mycroft picked up Lestrade’s abandoned Scotch and handed it to him. “I shall tell you a secret,” he said.
“A state secret?” asked Lestrade.
“Almost.” He knew Lestrade had been half-heartedly joking, but he answered seriously and watched the already-feeble amusement fade off Lestrade’s face. “It was always going to happen. If it hadn’t been Donovan, if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. I’m sorry it was you. I say that sincerely. But you shouldn’t blame yourself. There was never anything anyone could have done.”
Lestrade regarded him. “What do you mean?”
“Moriarty was after Sherlock. There was nothing any of us could have done to protect him. He was obsessed with Sherlock; it was only a matter of time.”
There was a knock on the office door, and his PA stuck her head back in. “Sir.”
“I’ll be right there,” Mycroft told her, but, after she closed the door, he went back and sat behind the desk. “Do you remember when you first heard the name Moriarty?”
“Yeah.”
“Shortly after that, Sherlock did something abominably stupid, as he sometimes did, and arranged to meet Moriarty at a deserted swimming pool.”
“A deserted swimming pool?” echoed Lestrade.
“Sherlock should have died then. He didn’t. The rest of it was borrowed time. Moriarty was never going to rest until he destroyed him. You can be furious if you like, because it was all a terrible waste. And, by all means, please be furious with Donovan. But don’t be furious with yourself. Or with Sherlock. Now I really must go.”
Lestrade seemed to shake himself out of deep reflection. “Yeah. Of course.”
Mycroft stood. “You may stay as long as you like, you just can’t leave this room. Whenever you’re ready to go, just open the door and a car will be brought around to take you anywhere you request.” He walked to the door, saying, “I’m sorry, but the blindfold is a necessity.”
“Right,” said Lestrade, dazedly, and then, more firmly, “Mycroft.”
Mycroft, his hand on the doorknob, glanced back at him.
“Thank you.” He said it sincerely, meeting his eyes.
This was the sort of thing that made Mycroft intensely uncomfortable. He didn’t mind the act itself, he minded the thanking for it. But he found himself managing a smile. “Any time.”
Next
Series - 5/10 in the Scotch series
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Lestrade, John, Donovan, Mycroft
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - The conclusion of the Sally problem.
Author's Notes - Many, many thanks to arctacuda for the beta and sensiblecat for the Britpick.
Extra, extra thanks to arctacuda, whose rants over the past 18 months inspired so much of the dialogue in the first two parts of this that she should have co-writing credit.
Don't worry, the Chaosverse hasn't been abandoned, but I am enjoying this little excursion and hope you are, too.
Everything Is Chess - Scotch - Scotch, the Third - Scotch, the Fourth
Scotch, the Fifth
You’ll want it. That was what Sally said to him when she came to his office with the news about the Tower of London break-in. You’ll want it. And he had. In his case, he had wanted it because, well, who broke into the Tower of London? Someone interesting, that was who. That was a case guaranteed not to be dull. But Sally had wanted it because it would be high-profile.
It wasn’t that Lestrade had not known this about Sally, that she was ambitious. He had liked that about her, honestly. It meant she worked hard and without complaint, and he appreciated that. He supposed he should have seen that the problem was that she was more ambitious than he was. He had ambitions but they were secondary ambitions, casual ambitions. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a DCI? Yes, it would. Wouldn’t it also be nice, though, to keep doing this job, day-to-day, so long as it remained interesting to him? Yes, that was also nice and, frankly, enough for him, if it came down to that.
He saw now that that had effectively trapped Sally, and, while she may not have consciously decided the only way up was by pushing him out of the way first, it had ended up being the easiest path available to her.
All along, he had been setting up Sherlock and Sally as two diametrically opposed forces. He supposed he had never imagined Sally would be the one to win that particular fight.
With Mycroft’s warning ringing in his ear, Lestrade set about, as Mycroft had suggested, protecting his king. Since the day he had first entered the force, he had been behind on paperwork. A series of heroic late nights and a concerted effort not to leap on new cases as soon as they came up resulted in an entirely clean desk. He even, after she went home at night, went and took some of their cases off of Sally’s desk, deciding it had been stupid of him to ever trust her to write up the reports.
If Sally knew that he’d taken the cases, she never said anything. But she had to know. Every once in a while, Lestrade would glance up from his computer screen to find Sally watching him with narrowed eyes. Lestrade always smiled brightly at her when that happened.
It took him a week to catch up on his paperwork. He spent another week combing through his past cases, especially cases that had involved Sherlock, searching for weaknesses, for anything that might be attacked as sloppy police work. He finished his trip down memory lane by concluding that, arrogant as it may sound, he was pretty good at his job, and his cases were solid, with or without Sherlock.
He phoned John late one night when he had just finished re-reading the report Sally had filed for “A Study in Pink.”
“Hello,” John picked up.
“It’s Greg,” he said.
“I know. How are things?”
“Fine. Not especially interesting, or I’d have called you before this.” Also, though he didn’t want to say anything, he was holding off on bringing any more civilians into his investigations until after Mycroft’s promised transfer of Sally went through. He doubted Mycroft would consider the presence of John Watson on a case to be protecting his king. “I’m reading the report for ‘A Study in Pink.’”
“Are you? I’ve been telling myself not to re-read the blog.”
Lestrade paused. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to. I just realized there was a question I’d never asked you.”
“No, we can talk about it.”
“You were the one who shot him, right? It’s one of the few unsolved crimes from my tenure with Sherlock. I always thought it was you. Am I right?”
John was silent for a second. “Are you going to come and arrest me if I say yes?”
Lestrade laughed. “I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.”
Lestrade closed the report, put it on his desk, and turned in his chair to look at the darkness beyond his window. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know.” John sounded game, which made Lestrade feel a bit better. “I’ve gone back into practice. Thought I should do something now that ‘full-time blogger’ no longer seems like a viable career choice.”
“Good,” said Lestrade, and tried to think of something else to say, something not about Sherlock, something innocuous that would cheer John up rather than depress him.
“You know what I never understood about ‘A Study in Pink’?” John asked.
“What?”
“Why did she have a white umbrella? Everything was pink, but she had that bloody white umbrella. I always meant to ask Sherlock that and never did.”
“I never even thought about that before,” Lestrade confessed. And then, “Thank God I didn’t put the umbrella in the report-I’d hate to be asked that question.”
John laughed.
***
Two weeks to the day from the night when he had walked in to find Mycroft in his lounge, Sally walked into his office without knocking, threw an envelope on the desk at him, and demanded, “Did you know about this?”
Lestrade looked up from a draft of his latest report, looked at the envelope on his desk, and then looked at Sally. “Shut the door,” he told her.
She leaned over and slammed it and crossed her arms at him.
He took his feet off his desk, put down his report, picked up the envelope, and took the stack of papers out of it, doing all of it as deliberately unhurried as he could, enjoying her growing impatience. Any minute now, she was going to start tapping her toe at him. “Oh, look,” he remarked, conversationally. “You’re being transferred. Huh. How about that.”
“Did you ask for me to be transferred?”
“No,” he answered, putting the papers back into the envelope.
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“I find that difficult to believe, too, honestly. I didn’t request it, but it’s definitely for the best, wouldn’t you agree?”
“No, I don’t agree,” she snapped. “Do you know what it looks like?”
He made a show of considering. “Yeah,” he replied, thoughtfully. “It looks a lot like what you did to me the night we arrested Sherlock. You know, calling into question one’s professionalism, ethics, entire career. I guess it does look a lot like that. Now that you mention it,” he finished, flatly, looking hard at her.
She was practically vibrating with fury; he could see it from behind his desk. “How dare you-”
“Stop right there.” He spoke quietly and evenly because what he wanted to do was shout, and once he started shouting at her he’d never stop. “I think I’ve been an incredibly good sport about having you around all this time after you tried to get me thrown off the force. I think I’ll draw the line at listening to you fling more of your baseless accusations at me. Not here in my office, at least. Take them somewhere else, if you have complaints.”
“I can’t take them anywhere else. You’ve-” She cut herself off.
“I’ve what?” he asked, coldly. “Go ahead. Say one more word. I’m as curious as you are as to what I’ll do.”
For a very long moment they stared across his desk at each other. Lestrade thought of the criminals he’d glared down in interrogations and thought that he’d never suspected he’d use the talent on his own sergeant.
She had changed tack by the time she spoke again. “I didn’t try to get you thrown off the force-”
“No? Then what was that all about?”
“You never listened to me when it came to Sherlock-”
“Because you were wrong when it came to Sherlock! I don’t listen to people who are wrong, Sally.”
“I wasn’t wrong.” She shook her head sharply.
“Think about how ridiculous your theory is, Sally. Really. Divorced from the craziness that was going on at the time, your proposal was that Sherlock Holmes had planned literally dozens of crimes in this city, and, what? Paid people to take the fall for him? Time and again? And not one of them ever came forward, ever accused him of what you say? That’s really what you think was going on?”
“I-”
But he refused to let her speak. “And here he is, this brilliant criminal mastermind who’d been pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes all this time, and he slips up because he kidnaps a seven-year-old girl and lets her see who he is?”
“So he got cocky,” she retorted, hotly.
Lestrade stood and at that moment realized he was also shouting. Ah, well, too late to go back on that now. Probably everyone in the office had gathered around for the show, but he didn’t let himself look anywhere but at Sally. “He didn’t get cocky. He was never guilty of anything you accused him of, and you railroaded me into having to arrest him or having to refuse an order from my superiors. We had no evidence-”
“If he wasn’t guilty, if he had nothing to hide, why didn’t he come with you without a warrant?”
“Because it was his reputation, Sally! It was over as soon as he was photographed being taken in for questioning. You destroyed his reputation, single-handedly, and you made it so that the only option he had was what he did.”
“That was the only option of someone who was guilty-”
“Or someone who was trying to protect other people from the real culprit. Who we’ll never get to catch because he eluded suspicion because you were busy starting a witch hunt against a person you had always hated. You may as well have pushed him off that roof.”
“He got off on it-”
“On solving crimes? You realize you’re in a police station? Everybody in here enjoys solving crimes. And we do it for money, which some might say is worse. You solve crimes for a living, just like Sherlock Holmes. High-profile crimes, crimes that will get your photo in the paper. Just like Sherlock Holmes. So.” He walked out from behind his desk and jerked open his office door. He took a deep breath and, instead of shouting, suggested calmly, “Get off your high horse, and get out of my office.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes hot with the press of a lot of things he knew she wanted to say. But something-maybe the fact that he did still outrank her? Or maybe something in his expression, in the loss of his temper-made her decide against it.
She collected her envelope from his desk and walked past him, through the doorway.
“Sally,” he said, taking a shamefully vicious amount of pleasure in doing it.
She looked back at him.
“Checkmate,” he said, and closed the door on her.
***
Lestrade closed the blinds on the window-walls of his office, sat down, and drummed his fingers on his desk. Then he stood and took a restless turn around his office. Then he leaned against his window for a second, looking at the busy city outside. Then he walked around his office again.
Sod this. He had to get out of here, clearly.
He pulled his coat on and opened his door.
The police station went abruptly silent and then abruptly loud again. Lestrade sighed and rolled his eyes, adjusted his collar, and stepped out of the building.
Once outside, he walked four blocks before he decided this was ridiculous and aimless. He took out his mobile and scrolled through his contacts, trying to find someone to phone. He found his finger hovering over MH.
He had, he thought, completely lost his mind. He was going to get put on administrative leave for having utterly gone off the rails.
He pressed send anyway.
It rang four times before Mycroft answered, sounding curious, “Inspector?”
“We should have a drink together,” he said.
“A drink? Why? Is something wrong?”
“No.”
Mycroft was silent for a moment. “Fine. When?”
“Now.”
“Now?” Mycroft did not even bother to disguise the surprise in his voice.
“Yes. Are you busy?”
“Well, yes. Apart from that, it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”
“So?”
“You’ve just phoned me at a number I expressly gave you for emergencies only and requested we meet for a drink, immediately, at ten o’clock in the morning.”
“I know it sounds mad,” said Lestrade, “but wasn’t it mad that I phoned you at all? Did it really make a difference what I said once you answered?”
“You make a fair point. Where are you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I could find out, but I really am in the middle of something, and it would be easier if you would just tell me.”
“This is somewhat disappointing.”
“I’m shattered to have gone down in your esteem. Tell me where you are, and I’ll send a car for you.”
“I could just meet you at your club.”
“No, you can’t. I’m not at the club. And I can’t give you the address of where I am, before you ask for it. Never mind, I’ve just been handed a report on where you are. The car will be there shortly.”
“That’s more like it. Now I’m impressed again.”
“Excellent. I’m delighted to hear it,” remarked Mycroft, languidly, and hung up the phone.
***
Mycroft had a four-party negotiation set up in various war rooms of the wing of the building he’d commandeered, with fidgety fingers on nuclear buttons and the worldwide economy at stake.
He ended his call with Lestrade, turned to his PA, and said, “Fetch me a good bottle of Scotch and let me know when Detective Inspector Lestrade arrives.”
His PA did not seem surprised by this directive at all. Which made her less surprised than he was himself, Mycroft thought.
He slid the mobile back into his pocket. His Sherlock-emergency-only mobile. And Sherlock never phoned, only texted, so for it to have rung was an astonishing occurrence. He had been startled enough to slip out and answer it, and he hadn’t stopped being startled yet.
He checked his tie, walked back into the room, and went back to thinking in Arabic, at least until Lestrade arrived.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed until his PA knocked on the door, stuck her head in, looked at him, and said, “Sir.”
Tempers had risen in the room, and she could barely be heard over the shouting around him. He decided everyone would benefit from a break, but didn’t bother to tell them that as he left the room. Eventually, they would shout themselves out and exhaust themselves. By the time they realized he was no longer in the room, maybe they would be ready to have a productive discussion.
Mycroft walked down the hallway to the office he was using. Lestrade was lounging against the room’s fireplace, and he said, as soon as Mycroft walked in, “A blindfold?”
“Good morning, Inspector,” Mycroft said, briskly, walking past him and over to the desk.
Lestrade straightened from the fireplace, following him over to the desk. “No, seriously, you had me blindfolded?”
Mycroft frowned at the label of the Scotch the PA had procured. He’d have to have a talk with that one. “Precautions had to be taken.” Mycroft opened the Scotch and poured. “You pay too much attention.” He handed a glass to Lestrade. “Consider it a compliment.”
Lestrade was staring at him. “You’re really in the middle of something.”
“I’m really in the middle of something,” Mycroft confirmed.
“I…I’m not sure I thought you actually…worked.” He suddenly realized what he’d said and hurried out, “Not to be insulting.”
“No, no,” Mycroft assured him, mildly. “I feel much the same way about your…job.” He said the word especially dubiously and took a sip of his Scotch. “Not bad. Scotch must be improved by being imbibed earlier in the day. Thank you for introducing me to this phenomenon, Inspector. Now what can I do for you?”
Lestrade looked a bit stricken. “I really didn’t think I was actually interrupting something. I can come back-”
“No, you can’t come back,” Mycroft reminded him, calmly, moving around the desk to lean against the front of it, “because you don’t know where you are.”
“True. I just meant-”
“Having piqued my curiosity by insisting on an immediate drink, you’re now not going to tell me what it is you wished to say? Not at all. Have a seat, won’t you? I’ve time for a chat.”
Lestrade sat slowly. Mycroft thought it was the first time he’d seen him look uncomfortable since he had started having these oddly regular Scotches with him.
“I must say,” Mycroft commented, “I did think you’d be in a better mood today.”
Lestrade shook his head and stood back up, placing his drink on the desk, and Mycroft thought he was going to insist on leaving, but what he said was, “You know how I told you it wasn’t fair to blame her? That it wasn’t her fault?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to hell with that. It was her fault, and you should blame her.” He moved restlessly toward the center of the office, hands in his pockets, pacing. Mycroft watched and sipped his Scotch. “There was a lot that went wrong that night. She was the source of all of it. And that was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Mycroft inserted, evenly.
Lestrade didn’t even look at him, pacing swiftly now. “Yes, it was. I knew she hated him. Not just hated him, I mean, hated him. I have seldom seen anyone despise another human being that much. It was completely unprofessional, and I should have reprimanded her.”
“Possibly,” agreed Mycroft.
Lestrade kept going. “But I couldn’t reprimand her, or I didn’t feel comfortable reprimanding her, because she was right about one thing, and that was that I was giving Sherlock too much access, too much access for a civilian, and I had painted myself into an impossible corner there, because if I was too hard on her, she could take me down.”
“Quite so,” said Mycroft.
“And the irony was that she was obsessed with all the high-profile cases, all the publicity we were getting, and that was only because we were working with Sherlock. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.”
“She isn’t very clever,” commented Mycroft.
“And I am not in a good mood today-I am bloody furious. I’m furious with her because if she’d just…not…done what she did, none of it would have happened. And I’m furious with myself, because if I hadn’t let it get to that point, or if I’d taken a stand that night, none of it would have happened. And I’m furious with Sherlock, because no matter what was going on, he should have known that he could have asked me for help. He never asked for help; he was the most bloody infuriating person I have ever known, ever.”
Silence fell.
Lestrade stopped pacing and looked at Mycroft. “Sorry,” he said.
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows at him. “Feel better now?”
“No, I don’t feel better.” Lestrade sighed and slumped back into the chair in front of the desk. “It’s all such a ridiculous waste.”
Mycroft picked up Lestrade’s abandoned Scotch and handed it to him. “I shall tell you a secret,” he said.
“A state secret?” asked Lestrade.
“Almost.” He knew Lestrade had been half-heartedly joking, but he answered seriously and watched the already-feeble amusement fade off Lestrade’s face. “It was always going to happen. If it hadn’t been Donovan, if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. I’m sorry it was you. I say that sincerely. But you shouldn’t blame yourself. There was never anything anyone could have done.”
Lestrade regarded him. “What do you mean?”
“Moriarty was after Sherlock. There was nothing any of us could have done to protect him. He was obsessed with Sherlock; it was only a matter of time.”
There was a knock on the office door, and his PA stuck her head back in. “Sir.”
“I’ll be right there,” Mycroft told her, but, after she closed the door, he went back and sat behind the desk. “Do you remember when you first heard the name Moriarty?”
“Yeah.”
“Shortly after that, Sherlock did something abominably stupid, as he sometimes did, and arranged to meet Moriarty at a deserted swimming pool.”
“A deserted swimming pool?” echoed Lestrade.
“Sherlock should have died then. He didn’t. The rest of it was borrowed time. Moriarty was never going to rest until he destroyed him. You can be furious if you like, because it was all a terrible waste. And, by all means, please be furious with Donovan. But don’t be furious with yourself. Or with Sherlock. Now I really must go.”
Lestrade seemed to shake himself out of deep reflection. “Yeah. Of course.”
Mycroft stood. “You may stay as long as you like, you just can’t leave this room. Whenever you’re ready to go, just open the door and a car will be brought around to take you anywhere you request.” He walked to the door, saying, “I’m sorry, but the blindfold is a necessity.”
“Right,” said Lestrade, dazedly, and then, more firmly, “Mycroft.”
Mycroft, his hand on the doorknob, glanced back at him.
“Thank you.” He said it sincerely, meeting his eyes.
This was the sort of thing that made Mycroft intensely uncomfortable. He didn’t mind the act itself, he minded the thanking for it. But he found himself managing a smile. “Any time.”
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