Concertos and Blackmail, part 10
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Part Ten
Milverton’s office is marginally lighter than the waiting room, the faint glow of the city seeping in through the cracks around the curtains. Sherlock and John sweep their torch beams over the room, establishing their bearings and again taking in the rich grandiosity of the wood and leather, muted, now, in the shadows.
“Turn on the computer,” Sherlock orders, striding across the room and setting the violin case on the desk. John complies, rounding the other side of the desk and hunting out the power button with his torch. A moment later, the droning, whirring sound of the computer booting up fills the room, loud as a hurricane to their ears.
Standing before the safe, Sherlock presses his fingertips together and inspects the heavy green metal from a distance. John remains silent, knowing through both instinct and experience that what Sherlock needs now is only the room to do his work in peace. Glancing from the detective, to the computer, to the open door, John decides to put himself to use nonetheless, and pulls his gun out from under his jacket, stepping quietly across the room to stand in the doorway. He keeps one eye on the outer door of the waiting room and the other on Sherlock’s hunched shoulders, alert and more than a little bit tense.
As the whirring of the computer descends to a low hum, Sherlock takes a step back and shrugs out of his tailcoat, draping it carelessly over the desk. “Mind the door, John,” he mumbles, almost unintelligible, as he crouches in front of the safe and runs his gloved fingers over the surface of the metal. John rolls his eyes at the exclusivity of the man’s focus; spectacularly ignorant indeed.
Sherlock tugs up his sleeves and leans his ear against the front of the safe, giving the dial an experimental turn. Then, with a mildly satisfied expression, he shifts on his knees, making himself comfortable and plastering himself against the safe, ear to the metal and long, deft fingers steady on the dial. He gives John a final order - “Don’t interrupt me” - and closes his eyes, setting to work.
It seems, to John, to take an age. Sherlock remains frozen in position before the safe, his only movements the slow, practised turning of the dial and his eyes blinking open every so often to take stock of the numbers before him. Across the room, John barely moves, occasionally adjusting his grip on the gun or shifting his weight a little, and letting his eyes flicker from Sherlock to the door and back again; but compared to the detective’s stillness, he feels like a beacon of movement, attracting invisible eyes to their presence. Every so often, Sherlock’s eyes snap open, unseeing, flickering over some map or image in his head, and he spins the wheel back around; John would almost think he was starting over were it not for the complete lack of frustration in his face. Then the process begins again, Sherlock meticulously counting out the clicks that only he can hear, each turn of the dial bringing them closer to their goal.
Finally, after what feels like endless hours of tension, the safe gives a definite clunk, and Sherlock sits back on his heels, drawing back his arms and staring at the dark green metal as if it might explode. He reaches forward, fingers hesitant but steady, and gives the safe door an experimental tug.
Silently, placidly, it swings open.
Breaking into a grin, Sherlock stands and twirls on his toes, tugging at the ends of his clean, white waistcoat. “John, find Eva’s articles,” he says, his voice low and trembling with excitement as he darts over to the computer. “We’re almost done here… almost done…”
Pacing across the room and tucking his gun away again at the small of his back, John glances over at Sherlock and pulls the safe door wide. “D’you know his password or something?” he asks, scanning the inside of the safe; it’s lined with row upon row of shelves and drawers, each containing neat bundles of papers held together with string and paperclips and great, clawed bulldog clips. John refuses to baulk.
“Don’t need the password,” says Sherlock triumphantly, pulling the violin case closer and unzipping it with a flourish. “Just the virus.” In the corner, John is shuffling through the lines of paper packets, searching for anything big enough to be a magazine. Sherlock keeps talking in his low, restrained voice as he rummages through the compartment under the violin. “It’s been activated on the memory stick,” he says, almost breathless with excitement. “Once it’s plugged in, it goes to work almost automatically. That’s the beauty of it, I barely have to lift a finger for it to -”
Somewhere below them, something large and metal gives a dull, echoing thunk, followed by a roaring, humming, whirring noise - a straining coming ever closer. Both men go still, looking up from their work. John glances over at Sherlock.
“What is that?” he asks sternly, dreading the answer.
“The lift,” Sherlock replies, staring, unseeing, at the bookshelves opposite. Realisation dawns on his face, mingled with a terrifying brand of horror and resignation. “He’s meeting someone.” His gaze tears itself away and latches onto John’s. “That’s why there are no guards up here, he’s expecting company!”
“Oh, shit.”
With a few deft clicks, Sherlock shuts down the computer, tucking away the keyboard tray and scanning the desk for anything left askew. John glances at him and all but leaps across the room, zipping shut the violin and muttering expletives under his breath as Sherlock turns in a circle to take in the room, nudging the red leather chair into position as the sound of the lift comes ever closer. At the same moment as John switches off his torch and shoves it into his pocket, the whirr of the computer dies away in sync with the slowing of the lift as it grinds to a halt at the thirtieth floor. Silence descends, an awful, condemning silence which presses at their skin and leaves their ears ringing.
“Torch,” John hisses, catching the one Sherlock tosses over and extinguishing it, letting the darkness swallow them. He grabs the violin and Sherlock’s jacket off the desk as Sherlock slams the safe shut and spins around, casting about for a place to hide and lighting on the curtain and the little balcony beyond.
“Get the door,” he mutters, crossing the room behind John and leaving him to ease the door into place, latching out the sound of approaching footsteps. “Onto the balcony, quick!”
Sherlock whips aside the velvet curtain, flooding the room with the dull grey light of the street, and finds the door behind it mercifully unlocked. He ducks through, holding the door for John before tugging the curtain back into place and snapping it shut behind them. With a final click, they are left with only the freezing wind, a few metres of concrete and steel-and-glass railing, and an excellent view across Euston Road and over the city. With his back to the door, John grips Sherlock’s torch hard enough to feel the metal creaking under his fingers, hugging the violin to his chest and itching to pull out his gun. Beside him, Sherlock is staring at the door, a sort of blank horror falling over his expression. He starts to shiver in only his shirtsleeves, the wind whipping at his hair and tugging insistently at the edges of John’s jacket.
Without daring to even whisper, John juggles the torch and violin into one hand and holds out Sherlock’s jacket with the other, silently imploring him to cover up against the harsh weather. Sherlock accepts in similar silence, not meeting John’s eye as he tugs at his cuffs and slides into the jacket, bundling his arms against his chest and hunching against the cold. John is too wired on adrenaline to feel it, tucking Sherlock’s torch into his pocket and resisting the nagging urge to pull out his gun.
Then suddenly there is yellow light creeping out around the edges of the curtain, trimming the balcony with gold and trapping them between the glow of the room and the dark emptiness beyond the railing. Far below, the traffic has dwindled down to the occasional swish of a single, late-night commuter, and on the other side of the door, barely audible above the bubbling rush of the wind, the computer hums into life. John glances up at Sherlock and catches his eye, in equal measure fearful and determined. He leans back slightly and turns his head to glance into the room behind him, finding a gap between the red curtain and the polished steel bordering the glass of the door. Sherlock joins him, stepping close and craning his neck to peer through the same gap.
Milverton is sitting at his computer, awash in the yellow light of the ceiling lamp and looking as smug and slimy as ever, despite the late hour. He seems to be scrolling through some document, his eyes darting across the screen behind his glasses. It’s well past midnight, and there’s no doubt about the morality of what he has planned - yet his manner hardly brings to mind clandestine meetings and the transaction of blackmail materials. He lounges in his chair as if taking a short break at work, entirely at ease and with an air of the kind of businesslike efficiency that allows for time to spare. John feels only disgust and repulsion at the memory of his smooth, oily voice and permanent, condescending smile.
It’s then that he sees it. Just as he begins to pull back from the window, ducking out from under Sherlock’s chin, John lets his eyes fall aimlessly over the rest of the room, and his stomach plunges.
The safe door is only half-latched.
From the front, it must look innocuous enough, but from this angle, the door seems to jut out like an irregularity in a cliff face, angular and obvious and dooming. John glances at Sherlock, wondering if he’s seen it but wary of actually asking. Though the detective’s face, fixed on the room, reveals nothing, his hand fumbles blindly for John’s, and the harsh, reassuring squeeze tells John all he needs to know. I can see it, Sherlock seems to be saying. It’ll be all right.
They stand there for what feels like an age, Sherlock watching Milverton and John watching the city spread out beneath them, never quite asleep despite the hour. Sherlock shivers occasionally in the cold, and after a while, John starts to join in, the harsh wind insinuating itself under his collar and the thin material of his trousers, sending a preliminary ache deep into the scar on his shoulder. As Sherlock’s lips turn steadily bluer, though, and John begins to lose feeling in the end of his nose, another sound reaches them, growing louder and more obvious by the second. It’s a sound John associates first with long stretches of sandy grass, then with a muddy field, a creek, and Buckingham Palace; a rapid, rhythmic thudding that separates from the wind and throws itself against John’s eardrums as it approaches.
Frowning, John catches the glance Sherlock sends him, then diverts his gaze to the sky. He locates the source of the sound at the same time as Sherlock turns fully away from the window and raises an arm, pointing out the looming lights of a helicopter headed their way.
Sherlock glances around them, his eyes landing on a length of ladder on the wall a few feet from the balcony. Part of a branching fire escape system, the ladder leads from the balcony staggered below theirs up onto the roof, curling over the short wall above. As the helicopter passes overhead, slowing as it reaches the roof of Appledore Tower, Sherlock plucks at John’s sleeve and nods in the direction of the fire escape. John, resisting the urge to yell at him, just purses his lips and follows Sherlock to the edge of the balcony, gripping his arm and pulling him down to his level. He cups his hand around his mouth and puts it to Sherlock’s ear, trying to find a suitable middle ground between the shout required to be heard over the buffeting of the helicopter, and the whisper he wants to use to avoid Milverton’s notice.
“Are you completely insane?” he growls, squinting against the noise and wind of the helicopter, already descending over the roof.
Sherlock reverses their positions until he can speak into John’s ear. “I need to see who it is,” he mutters, patronising even without the requisite ‘idiot’ tacked on. “Even if I don’t make it, there’s a balcony right there, I’ll be fine.” He tries to pull back, but John’s hand fists in his sleeve, and he conveys just how stupid he thinks the plan is with a particularly tight-mouthed glare. Sherlock rolls his eyes and bends his head again. “If you don’t want to come, you can stay on your safe little balcony - but I’m going.”
John’s fist tightens on Sherlock’s arm, fighting the urge to punch him, but the matter has already been well and truly settled. Sighing roughly through his nose, John pulls away to set down the violin case, leaving Sherlock to smirk and clamber over the railing. John returns to the edge of the balcony just as Sherlock leaps across the gap, falling onto the ladder with a dull, metallic ringing. Both men freeze, staring at one another, John standing on the balcony and Sherlock with his limbs twined in the rungs of the ladder.
Above, the helicopter is falling to its rest as John steps carefully back to glance into Milverton’s office. The man is smirking slightly, glancing up at the ceiling as if watching the helicopter’s descent. He doesn’t seem to have noticed the noise of the ladder, or the subtly jagged edge of the safe.
John glances across at Sherlock and nods his reassurance, leaving the detective to sag slightly in relief before climbing the ladder. Deciding that they threw their caution well and truly to the wind hours ago, John hurries to follow, mounting the railing with a little less finesse than Sherlock and ignoring the reminder of how much shorter his limbs are. As Sherlock’s feet rise above him, he pushes himself off the balcony, throwing himself at the ladder with steely abandon. He latches on with one hand, sending the rest of his body swinging into the metal as he scrabbles for the rungs. Within seconds, he’s established a steady grip and centred his weight, and immediately pulls himself up after Sherlock as the thumping of the helicopter blades begins to slow. Above him, Sherlock keeps his head below the line of the roof as he curls himself around one side of the ladder, clinging to the rungs like a well-dressed monkey and leaving room for John to join him. As the doctor manoeuvres himself into the space beside him, two pairs of arms and legs getting thoroughly tangled, they hear the metallic grinding of the helicopter door.
Sparing a single exhilarated glance for John, Sherlock pulls himself up on the ladder, raising himself just enough to peer over the wall. With a less elegant strain and a bit more fumbling, John follows, jutting his head over the top of the ladder and narrowly avoiding a fatal collision with Sherlock’s cheekbone.
The great black helicopter is slowing to its rest, flooding the roof with harsh, white light and throwing detritus to the walls, dead leaves and the odd crisp packet cowering against the concrete. As the blades slowly wind down, a figure steps out onto the roof - an elegant and intensely feminine figure, skirt suit hugging her waist and a dark scarf wound about her head, covering her hair and most of her face and fluttering wildly in the turbulence of her grand entrance. As she turns away from the helicopter, John thinks he sees her eyes catch on them, but she’s far enough away, and her face well-hidden enough, that he can’t quite be sure. In any case, she makes no indication of having seen anything out of the ordinary, so he decides not to worry.
Raising one hand to hold down the scarf, the woman tugs at the edges of her trim, grey jacket, pressing them into place against the wind as she sets off across the roof, stiletto heels clicking with unwavering precision. The headlights of the helicopter are behind her, throwing her shadow long and dark across the concrete and obscuring her face even further. She strides toward the housing of the emergency stairs in the far corner, her steps seeming to hold an almost murderous intent. With a thunk and a groan of metal, she pulls open the door and disappears, along with the echo of her footsteps and the flutter of her scarf. The moment the door clangs shut, the lights on the helicopter switch off, plunging the roof into sudden darkness as the thumping of the blades finally swings to a halt.
Atop the ladder, the night air still whipping about them, John and Sherlock duck back behind the wall and exchange a worried, curious glance. Sherlock looks away, out over the city, spread out beneath them with only a small, concrete balcony a little way below separating them and the plunge down to street level. He sighs, the sparking circuits of his hard drive practically visible in the tightening of his mouth and his darting eyes.
“You go first,” he says softly, the wind tugging his words away almost before they can be heard.
Blowing out a resolute breath, John carefully extracts each of his limbs from Sherlock’s and the rungs of the ladder, lowering himself carefully until he’s far enough down to be able to swing onto the ladder properly without Sherlock getting in the way. He descends until he’s a little above the level of Milverton’s balcony and glances down, measuring the distance and shaking his head at himself.
“Sure, John, you go first,” he mutters to himself, “see if you don’t break your neck on the way down.” He huffs out a sigh and manoeuvres himself around on the ladder until he’s sure he won’t tangle a foot in the metal and send himself tumbling headfirst to the balcony below. He clenches his fists around the metal rungs, readying himself for the plunge and silently cursing Sherlock for ever dragging him along to stake out 22 Northumberland Street for a murderous cabbie.
With an almighty heave, he throws himself at the balcony ahead, launching off the rungs with as many limbs as he can manage, giving himself a final, extra push with his trailing foot against the side of the ladder. He tucks his feet up to avoid tripping over the railing, and lands heavily on the concrete, trying and failing to stop himself staggering, and falling into a roll to compensate. On his backside, pushing himself up with his hands, his gaze whips around to the gap in the curtain, hoping desperately that he’s gone unheard.
Within, Milverton is clicking placidly away at his computer, languid and oblivious.
John looks up at Sherlock and raises one hand in a thumbs-up, the corner of his mouth lifting in a huff of silent, slightly-hysterical laughter. He pushes himself to his feet as Sherlock readies himself for his own launch, and stands back, hands tense at his sides and weight on the balls of his feet, utterly prepared to jump forward should Sherlock catch one of his absurdly long feet on the edge of the railing.
As it is, though, Sherlock makes the jump with ease, following John’s example and smoothing his landing into a roll, ending up crouched on his toes and fingertips and reminding John just a little too much of some kind of superhero. He pulls himself up as John peers back through the curtain into Milverton’s office, relieved to find him still completely unsuspecting of the intruders on his balcony. Just as he begins the pull back to check on Sherlock, John sees Milverton look up from his computer and sit back in his chair, a gut-churningly pleasant smile lifting the sides of his mouth. John taps at Sherlock’s arm behind him and leans closer to the door; through the glass and velvet, he can just make out Milverton’s curling, coiling, slithering voice.
“You’re late.”
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