Concertos and Blackmail, part 14 (END)
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Part Fourteen
Lestrade arrives just as John comes back downstairs, properly dressed this time. They meet on the stairs and file into the living room.
“Sherlock,” says Lestrade in greeting. From his armchair, still clad in pyjamas and dressing gown, Sherlock grunts in acknowledgement. His neck is spotless.
“Have you eaten?” asks John.
“I’d like some tea,” Sherlock replies.
“Well, feel free to make some.” John drops into the chair across from him and looks up as Lestrade comes to stand by him, across from the mantel, watching Sherlock.
“Think you might like this one,” he begins. Sherlock levels him with an unimpressed glare. “You’ve heard of Charles Milverton?”
“The blackmailer,” says Sherlock.
“The magazine editor,” Lestrade replies with a scowl. “We’ve never been able to get enough evidence to warrant an investigation. The bastard’s notorious.”
“And?” Sherlock insists, sounding bored out of his skull.
“And,” says Lestrade, with a curious amount of patience, “he was killed last night. Shot five times in the chest, and four in the face.”
John makes a noise halfway between a contemplative hum and a chuckle. “Sounds like someone held a grudge.”
“He’s a professional blackmailer, John,” says Sherlock, voice dripping with condescension. “He’s got more enemies than you’ve got ex-girlfriends.”
John opens his mouth to argue, but Lestrade cuts him off.
“It’s more than that,” he says. Sherlock looks up at him, intrigue beginning to settle in his eyes.
“More?”
Lestrade nods, a hint of amusement in his face. “He was robbed, too,” he says. “His safe shot open, the contents burned; his computer’s been wiped, and no digital backups have been found. The break-in was good - managed to get all the way into his private office before the alarm was raised, and only then by the gunshots.”
“What was Milverton doing in his office so late at night?” Sherlock asks.
Lestrade’s eyebrows jump just slightly. “How’d you know it was late?”
Sherlock sends his most patronising glance at the DI. “Obviously it happened late last night, or either I would’ve heard about it, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Right, of course.” Lestrade nods, but there’s something in the movement that strikes John as indulgent. “The guards had been told to expect him at midnight, so there was no one watching the top floor.”
“Were they given a reason?” asks Sherlock, all business now.
“Nope,” says Lestrade. “Just instructions to ignore him and anything that happened while he was there. Obviously he was doing something with his little side business.”
“Obviously,” Sherlock repeats. “What do you know about the murderer?”
Lestrade sighs. “That’s the problem,” he says. “By all rights, we should’ve found them by now, or at least have some idea. We have descriptions from seven different guards who were attacked by the intruders.”
“Intruders?” Sherlock looks up. “Plural?”
“Yep,” Lestrade nods. “Two of them. Caucasian males, one about six foot, dark-haired, skinny. The other they got a better look at, did most of the fighting - short, bit stocky, stern kind of face; blonde-ish hair, cut short. Ten to one we find him.”
Sherlock snorts cynically. “Please,” he drawls. “You’ll need more than a vague description to catch them. You could be describing John, for God’s sake!” he adds with a wave of his hand at the chair across from him. Lestrade follows the gesture, looking at John and meeting his innocent smile with impassivity.
“True,” he says flatly. “I could be describing John, couldn’t I?”
With another short huff of laughter, Sherlock dismisses the issue entirely. “Anything else? Clothing, mannerisms, voices, names?”
“Apparently they were all dressed up for the opera or something,” says Lestrade, turning back to Sherlock. “The tall one was in tails, the other in a bloody white jacket, like some kind of James Bond stunt.”
Sherlock presses his fingertips together in front of his mouth, his eyes narrowing. “Interesting…” he breathes. “Anything else?”
“They had some kind of case with them, like an instrument,” Lestrade says with a frown, “and at least one of them was armed. They shot out two security cameras then disabled the rest, somehow managed to make it all the way to Milverton’s office unnoticed, then shot a light, the safe and the man himself. Judging by the time they attacked the guards at the Security Desk, they made it upstairs and waited for Milverton to arrive, had a bit of a chat - then shot him.”
“Any fingerprints?” asks Sherlock. “DNA? Footprints? Ballistics?”
“That’s where things get interesting,” says Lestrade, with just a hint of a smile. “No traces left anywhere in the building, and the rain from last night got rid of any outside evidence we might have used. But the ballistics - they’re odd.”
“Odd?” Sherlock repeats. “How?”
“The bullets in Milverton don’t match any of the others in the building,” says Lestrade, as if he knows this will hook them.
“So they had two guns,” Sherlock shrugs. “Boring.”
“None of guards were shot, but anyone who got in the intruders’ way was knocked out,” Lestrade continues, unfazed. “And apparently very efficiently.”
“Avoiding collateral damage,” Sherlock concludes. “They were only there for Milverton, indicates a moral objective. And clearly they had some kind of military or martial training, to be able to efficiently dispatch seven trained security guards.”
“The bullets in the safe, though,” says the inspector with a tilt of his head - “they don’t match anything in our records.”
Sherlock remains impassive, but, behind Lestrade, John can’t help but look up, surprised, and frown at the back of the DI’s head.
“But,” Lestrade continues, contemplative - “they did look… familiar.”
“Familiar,” Sherlock parrots, levelling him with another condescending glare. “Really. The ballistics looked familiar. God, you have been on the force too long.”
To John’s surprise, Lestrade’s only reaction is to dismiss the insult with a short shrug. “Guess they’re probably just similar to one of our more memorable cases.”
Silence descends, in which Sherlock stares absently ahead of him, Lestrade watches him for a response, and, behind him, John dearly wishes he had a cup of tea or something with which to busy his hands. He can think of at least half a dozen times he’s used his gun on a case; there’s no way Lestrade’s telling the truth about the unmatched ballistics.
John forces himself not to smile too obviously.
“Well,” Lestrade finally says with a sigh - “I guess you’re not interested then.”
“No, not really,” Sherlock bites. “As you said, Milverton was notorious. Personally, I’d be more than happy for his killers to go free. I won’t help you find them.”
Lestrade just shrugs again. “Oh well,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll get them eventually.”
Sherlock hums non-committally. “I’m sure,” he repeats, sounding unconvinced.
“Well, I’d better get back to work then,” says Lestrade, turning to go. At the last moment, though, he turns back, a faint smile on his face. “Oh, by the way,” he continues - “I was talking to Gregson earlier.”
“You, talking to Gregson?” says Sherlock, amused and disbelieving. “And you didn’t get a black eye for your troubles? This must be good.”
Lestrade throws him a half-hearted glare before continuing. “Yeah, she headed security at some fancy concert last night, for the royal family?”
“You say that as if we should know what you’re talking about,” says Sherlock flatly.
“Well, you should.” Lestrade smirks. “You were snogging over champagne in the lobby.”
John’s horrified gaze whips up to the DI, then lands firmly on Sherlock, morphing into rage. “You -” He tries and fails to control his breathing, leaning forward in his chair and pointing an accusatory finger across the hearth. “You knew, didn’t you? You fucking knew she’d be there!”
“I promise you, John,” Sherlock replies calmly, “I had absolutely no idea anyone from Scotland Yard would be present.”
“How could you not know?!” John yells, appalled and fuming. “You knew everything about the concert, you always know what’s going on at the Yard, how could you not know that one, tiny detail?”
“Well, I’m assuming the news that DI Gregson would be heading a team on such a high-security event would have been a secret of the utmost importance, am I right, Lestrade?”
“Don’t answer that!” John snaps up at the amused inspector. “Sherlock, in case you haven’t noticed, words like secret and security don’t usually mean very much to you! You knew, you must have known!”
“I’ll leave you boys to it, then, shall I?” says Lestrade with a smirk, moving to back out of the room.
“It was for a case,” John blurts at him. Lestrade raises his eyebrows, unbelieving. “Honestly, it was!”
“Of course,” says Lestrade, sounding entirely unconvinced. “In any case, this is an argument I’d rather not get caught up in, and I’ve got a murder investigation to handle, so - I’ll leave you to it.”
He disappears down the stairs at the same time as John silently raises half-clenched fists to the ceiling, then deflates, leaning over and burying his face in his hands.
“I am never getting a date again,” he mutters. “Ever.”
“Just because Gregson saw us kissing -” Sherlock starts, reaching for his phone on the desk behind him.
“No, Sherlock, it was bad enough before,” says John, looking up from his hands. “And it’s not like Lestrade’s going to keep that a secret.”
“As if Gregson did in the first place.”
“Oh God…” John’s shoulders slump, and he grinds the heels of his palms into his forehead. “Where’s your violin?” he snarls half-heartedly. “I’m not just going to take it - I’m going to destroy it.”
Sherlock smirks, but makes no reply, tapping absently at his phone. A long moment passes, in which John sighs into his hands and gives up on ever finding a girlfriend. He leans one elbow on the arm of his chair and props up his chin, glancing across at the silent detective.
“He knows,” he says quietly. “You realise that, right?”
“Obviously,” Sherlock replies, his voice and face revealing nothing. John sighs again, and pushes himself to his feet, wincing over his ribs.
“It’s probably not a good sign that he can recognise my gun,” he says, shuffling into the kitchen.
“Not for your chances if you ever decide to go on a crime spree,” says Sherlock from the living room, looking up. “But at least now he knows when to give up being suspicious of us and just stop investigating.”
John chuckles as he fills the kettle and Sherlock smiles, tucking his phone into the pocket of his dressing gown and jumping to his feet to stride across the room.
“Let me.” He reaches up for the last clean mug, then casts about the kitchen for a moment before grabbing one of the assortment of dirty cups on the bench and washing it out.
“Oh, and take that makeup off your neck,” says John as he gets out two teabags. “I don’t even want to know how you got that good, but I need to monitor the bruising.”
They’ve just sat down to lunch in the living room when Sherlock suddenly stiffens, his eyes snapping up from his food and widening in euphoric realisation.
“Oh!” he breathes, dropping his chopsticks and shoving his chair backwards, leaping across the room to grab his laptop from the coffee table. Having only managed to pry him from the keys about ten minutes ago, John sighs and takes a mournful bite of leftover Chinese, resigning himself to a lonely lunch. Sherlock plunks the computer down on the table and taps away, ignoring both food and flatmate in his quest for information.
A minute later, Sherlock sits back and looks at the screen with a satisfied grin on his face. Leaning forward again, he turns the laptop around for John to see, and attacks his noodle salad with renewed gusto.
There are half a dozen tabs open on his browser, each containing a different news article from the last four months. They’re full of scandals - affairs and clandestine meetings, and accusations of everything from barrenness to psychopathy - all regarding a certain CEO of successive, lucrative companies, a businesswoman whose name John recognises with a hint of bitterness. The last article, dated two weeks earlier, expresses rumours of an imminent divorce between the woman and her husband, and contains a candid photograph of the two of them getting into a luxurious-looking car.
Even through the blur and pixellation, John immediately recognises the woman. There’s no mistaking the neat black hair, the hard eyes, or the proud curve of her jaw. She wears a figure-hugging skirt suit with casual dignity, and looks as if she were born in stiletto heels. But though her eyes are dark and impassive, there’s something in the expression she throws over the roof of the car that is horrified and concerned. She looks at her husband as if he is getting into some other vehicle that will take him far away, rather than ducking in to settle beside her. The caption says that the photo is one of few ever taken of the woman, and John wonders whether her subtle distraction has something to do with that.
He glances up at Sherlock over the lid of the laptop, a thousand questions lingering on his lips; but the detective just swallows his mouthful of noodles and meets John’s eye, silencing them all. He places one, long finger on his lips, and closes the lid of the laptop, shifting it to one side and turning back to his lunch.
THE END