Desperate (1/9)
BBC Sherlock
Rating 15 (explicit slash, swearing)
Summary: There's a simple reason why Lestrade puts up with Sherlock...
Many thanks to The Small Hobbit for betaing.
Note: the timeline of this story reflects an attempt to make some sense of the mess that is Series 2 chronology, and was adapted from suggestions originally made by Mad Maudlin. She produced a timetable in which some of the events of Hounds and Fall took place during the whole year covered by Scandal. I've combined this with another suggestion (whose original source I can unfortunately no longer locate): that Hounds takes place before the Christmas party in Scandal, because Mrs Hudson's 'new dress' in Hounds is the one she's wearing then. In summary, this fic has the events of Hounds taking place in the summer of 2010, before Sherlock meets Irene. The significance of this will eventually be revealed...
Sometimes Greg couldn't help thinking it would have been better if he'd never met Sherlock Holmes. If he could somehow travel back in time and ensure that they avoided one another, that Sherlock found some other police officer to hassle, maybe everything would have worked out differently? He wouldn't be sitting alone in a crummy flat in Deptford with no job and no marriage. And Sherlock wouldn't be dead.
Stupid to think like that, he told himself. He'd always known that Sherlock wouldn't make old bones, that his brilliance would burn itself out in some spectacular way. And as for his own marriage, it hadn't really been Sherlock that had wrecked it. The first cracks had already been there long before he met Sherlock, even though obviously, he'd made things worse. Just as Mr Morgan - Gareth - had only been a lightning conductor for Ruth's discontent. It had never been going to work out the way it was supposed to. Happily ever after didn't really apply to coppers, especially not detectives. The job always wrecked your personal life.
***
As far as Greg could remember, it had started with the Hayes murder. Everyone on the investigation had been sure Geoffrey Hayes had killed his wife and kids, but they hadn't been able to crack his alibi. They'd all been obsessed by the case, but DS Lestrade, angling for a transfer to a Major Incident Pool, had been the most obsessed. Driven Ruth up the wall talking about it. But then how could you deal with a "family annihilator" when you were expecting your first child in a month's time?
That had been when he'd started splitting his life up into compartments. He and Ruth had always been a team, and now suddenly they weren't. He couldn't explain to her why he had to solve this case, had to prove that not all men were like Hayes. And Ruth - maybe it was just because the pregnancy was rough, that she was turning in on herself. In bed, she talked to the bump now more than to him.
Ruth had worked out what to do, of course. She'd told him almost calmly, after a week or so of sleepless nights, that it'd be easier for them both if she stayed with her mother for a few days. It meant Greg didn't need to worry about being out all hours, hunting down the man - somewhere, someone - who had helped Hayes. He also knew, even though Ruth didn't say it, that she wanted someone at hand who had time to take care of her, because she was stressed about the pregnancy. That was the problem with being a nurse - she knew too much about all the things that could go wrong with babies, couldn't switch off a mind alert to subtle symptoms of imminent disaster.
Two hours after Hayes had been charged, Greg went round to Mrs Hall's. He sat in the kitchen with her and Ruth and Ruth's sister, Jenny, as they talked about birth plans and breast pumps, and he tried not to wince. And later that evening, Ruth had smiled at him, in a slightly preoccupied way, and said it had been a nice holiday, but she couldn't wait to be back home. He'd imagined then that everything would go back to how it had been before. Surely having a family wouldn't change things that much?
***
"You have three children: a boy of seven, a girl of five and an unweaned baby," Sherlock announced, three hours after he first met Greg. "And your wife no longer loves you. Probably because the last child was unexpected."
"You're a pick pocketing junkie," Greg retorted, "and if you don't give me back my wallet in the next thirty seconds, with all the cash still in it, I will arrest you."
"You had only to ask," Sherlock said, and produced the wallet with a flourish from inside the long coat he was wearing. Greg was surprised he hadn't sold that yet. God knew the boy must be down on his luck to be living in a dump like this squat in Hackney. Even if he did sound like he came from a posh family.
Greg started checking carefully through the contents of his wallet.
"You didn't ask how I knew about your family," Sherlock remarked. He talked to Greg as if he'd known him for years. In actual fact, he'd charged into Scotland Yard for the first time ever earlier that afternoon and somehow charmed Greg into helping him prevent a murder.
"There are photos in the wallet," Greg replied. "You're observant, I'll give you that. If you got cleaned up, you might make something of yourself yet."
"Boring," Sherlock announced, and Greg told himself that he should just walk away from this skinny kid. No reason he should be staying talking to him, finding out more. There was paperwork to be done, and he needed to get home on time. He'd promised Ruth he wouldn't be late. He slid a glance at his watch. He could maybe manage ten minutes more here.
"Are there any friends you could go to, help you out?" he asked. "Maybe even give you a square meal?"
Sherlock shook his head. "And if your wife no longer loves you, you hardly want to take me home and feed me up," he added.
"Stop saying that," Greg grumbled, and couldn't understand why he still felt sorry for the kid, when he was such a prick. "You don't know anything about me."
"You have traces of dried vomit down the back of your left shoulder," Sherlock announced. "Unless you have some very unusual friends, that means you've recently been holding a baby and the mother didn't think it worthwhile cleaning you up properly afterwards. Five-year gap from the last child, and there are photos of your two older children in your wallet, but none of your wife or the new baby. Implies the child was unexpected and you're ambivalent about it. Another baby after five years and your wife doesn't care if you go to work with vomit stains on you; she obviously no longer loves you."
"Wait till you're married," Greg said savagely. "Wait till you have kids. You'll realise it's not as simple as that." It wasn't that he didn't care about Emily, it was just they hadn't got round to having any decent pictures taken. And Ruth hadn't wanted her photo taken for years, claimed she looked old and tired and fat. Yes, Ruth and him were having a rough patch, but it was only to be expected. If things would only just settle down, it would all be fine. It was just hard to manage with his job.
***
Greg hadn't expected to see Sherlock again, but the boy had picked up a lot of information on the streets and he seemed to have decided to become Greg's personal informant. Well, he was already more than an informant, but he could be explained away to Greg's superiors as one. So Greg could justify buying him a few square meals out of petty cash. Keeping him going for a few more months before the inevitable disaster. An addict who poked his nose into other people's criminal business wasn't going to survive for long. Even one as clever as Sherlock. Nothing Greg could do though: it was already clear that Sherlock didn't listen to anyone. Particularly not him.
***
It all went pear-shaped six months later, when Greg went off to Manchester on a three-day course. When he switched his phone back on in the evening he had forty-three texts waiting, forty-one of them from Sherlock. Well, he could just wait his turn for once, he decided, and dialled Ruth. As the phone rang, he tried to get his head in the right place to make helpful comments about costumes for Rob for Red Nose Day, and Emily's attempts at standing, and Ruth and Katy's little problem. But when Ruth answered, she announced:
"There's a strange man been coming round asking for you."
"What does he look like?" Greg demanded, on instant alert.
"Young, tall and thin with black hair, and wearing a long black coat."
"Did he sound posh?" He was sure that he'd never told Sherlock his home address, but Sherlock had pick-pocketed him enough that he'd probably worked it out.
"Yes," Ruth replied. "He said he had to talk to you, and it was urgent, but you weren't answering your phone."
"Oh god, I'm sorry. Did he scare you?"
"No, of course not." Ruth's voice was brisk. "It takes more than some weedy junkie to scare me. I told him to find someone else at Scotland Yard, but he said no-one else there would listen to him. And when I went out later, he was hanging around on the street. Maybe he didn't believe me when I told him you were away. But you need to do something about it."
"Of course," he said, and wished fervently that it was something that could involve strangling Sherlock.
***
A read through of Greg's text messages revealed that Sherlock had found a corpse and wanted to show it to Lestrade personally. It was like having a bloody cat, Greg thought, slightly hysterically trying to calculate which would be more disastrous: leaving Sherlock playing with a body for two more days or racing home from Manchester, which would just encourage him. In the end, half against his better judgement, he sent Donovan, his new sergeant, round to talk to Sherlock.
By the time Greg got back, the Met had a murderer in custody, and he had an extremely pissed-off DS. He took one look at Sally Donovan's scowl and recognised a bomb that needed defusing urgently.
"Come and have a drink," he said. "You've earned it." Ruth wasn't going to be pleased about him being home late again, but at least she wouldn't try and apply for a transfer away from him.
***
"I'm sorry, Sally," he said, when they were sitting in the pub. "I should have warned you about Sherlock." He had told her "user" and "abrasive", and she was doubtless used to what addiction could do to someone's personality. But more and more he got the feeling that Sherlock wasn't a jerk because he was on drugs; he was on drugs because he was a jerk.
"I'd heard you had a pet junkie, sir," Sally said, starting on her pint. "I didn't imagine anything like him. What the hell does he think he's playing at?"
"I have no idea," Greg replied. "I've known him for six months and I still don't understand him. Why does he have to keep on winding people up?"
"Because he knows he can get away with it," Sally said, a fierce look coming over her tough, beautiful face. "Don't worry. I'm....I'm used to arseholes who think they're so bloody superior to me."
Sally didn't need protecting, Greg reminded himself, or at least she wouldn't accept him trying to protect her. He drank his beer silently, watching her, and eventually she sighed and said:
"The problem is he's an arsehole who is bloody superior."
"What do you mean?"
"That's why you put up with all his bloody crap, isn't it? Because he's cleverer than us, as well as rich and posh and good-looking-"
"You think he's good-looking?" It had never occurred to him that Sherlock looked anything but strange.
"He's bloody gorgeous," Sally said, and there was an anger there that Greg didn't understand. "And he's throwing away everything, just for kicks."
"You reckon he's going to end up overdosing, do you?" he said, because maybe he wasn't just getting paranoid.
"No," she said with absolute conviction. "He's gonna end up killing someone else. When the drugs don't give him a buzz any more, he'll try violence."
A sudden thought struck Greg.
"Did you take a constable with you, when you went with Sherlock to find that body?"
"He said it had to be just me, there wasn't room in the drain for anyone else. What would you have done?" Sally's chin went up and there was nothing to say. Because if it had just been him and Sherlock, it wouldn't have been any safer. Sherlock could doubtless polish him off, if he really wanted to.
"I reckoned you'd have noticed if he was a pervert," Sally went on. "Or a vampire." Black humour: the refuge when someone had come close to really, really fouling things up.
He'd been putting his faith - and other people's lives - in the hands of an unstable addict, working with Sherlock. It needed to stop, he decided abruptly, before someone got hurt.
***
He told Ruth when he finally got home that Sherlock wouldn't bother her again.
"I thought he was helping you solve crimes?" she said sceptically. "That's what matters to you, isn't it?"
"He's no use to me when he's off his face half the time," Greg replied. "And it's not my job to straighten him out. Some other idiot can try that."
***
Greg knew as soon as he saw the tall, smartly-dressed man standing in his office a fortnight later that he was connected to Sherlock. Not just the air of entitlement, but the way the man's eyes scanned the room. Logging every detail, deducing and filing away for future reference every one of Greg's secrets.
"Good morning, DI Lestrade," the man said, extending a well-manicured hand. "I'm Mycroft Holmes, from the Home Office. Well, attached to it, at least. I understand you've been employing my brother as an informant."
"I did for a bit," he growled, waiting to be told that Holmeses weren't supposed to be grasses, it wasn't cricket.
"What would it require for you to take him back on? Employ him as a consultant this time?"
"What the...hell are you talking about?" He stayed where he was by the door and stared suspiciously at Mycroft, hoping the man would take the hint and leave.
"My meaning is surely clear enough. My brother's skills at detection are far superior to those of the Metropolitan Police. Yet you are the only man on the force who has the sense to realise that basic fact." Mycroft paused and then added: "You need Sherlock and I can supply him; the rest is open to negotiation."
"And suppose Sherlock doesn't want to be supplied?" Greg replied, with a suddenly vivid awareness of why Sherlock might have turned to drugs.
"He wants this," Mycroft answered, staring patronisingly down his nose. "And you need him. What's the problem? I can arrange things with your superiors, if that's your worry."
"I don't need you pulling strings." He didn't want to have this conversation. There was something about the passive-aggressive smoothness of Mycroft that made him long to have Sherlock back in his place; at least he felt entitled to yell at him. He forced his jaw to unclench, and said, as patiently as he could: "Sherlock has personal problems. I decided he wasn't in a fit state to help us."
"Ah, it is the drugs that are the problem," Mycroft replied, smirking. "I thought given your own experiences - nicotine addiction, I mean, nothing illegal - you might be more sympathetic. Suppose I deliver Sherlock cocaine free to you in the New Year. Could you make use of him?" The smirk broadened. "In any way that occurs to you."
"We don't do work placements," Greg snarled, and decided that maybe if he ignored Mycroft Holmes, he'd go away. He went over to his desk, digging out a file from the heap. He immediately couldn't help thinking: If Sherlock was here he could help with this. Hugh Boone had vanished from his pitch begging in Upper Swandam Lane in the East End, and his tattered, blood-stained clothes had been found shoved inside a bin-bag next to a nice respectable semi in Lee Green. No trace of Boone himself, though, and Greg's superiors were already dropping hints that the mysterious disappearance of a homeless man was not a policing priority.
"Oh, you hardly need Sherlock's help for a case as simple as that," Mycroft said, and Greg realised he stupidly hadn't kept the file name hidden. "Look for the journalist on Burnt Ash Hill and you've found your man."
"What do you mean?" Neville St Clair, next to whose house the clothes had been found, was the founder of some half-arsed independent media company. But what did that have to do with anything?
"The man who lived as a beggar for a year in order to get a best-selling book out of it," Mycroft said, his eyebrows quirking. "Or just possibly a controversial Channel 4 documentary. You do need Sherlock, Inspector; I hope you can be persuaded to make use of his talents." He walked out of the office, and Greg decided that now wasn't the day to try giving up smoking.
How did you know that the beggar with the twisted lip was Neville St Clair in disguise?" Greg texted that evening to the phone number he'd found left as his screensaver.
The reply came back promptly: Surely it was obvious? MGH. For one minute, he seriously considered asking Mycroft if the Home Office could spare him for a few months. Then he reminded himself that he'd probably strangle the man within a fortnight. Sherlock was going to be a difficult enough proposition.
***
He ought to warn Ruth, he supposed, but he wasn't sure what to tell her. Still, when she dutifully asked him about his day that evening, he muttered something about possibly working with Sherlock Holmes again.
"Oh," Ruth replied, and Greg couldn't fathom the expression that came over her strong, sensible face.
"If he cleans himself up," he said hastily. "Could be a big help for my team then, if I can handle him right."
"I see," she said, and added, with an effort at enthusiasm: "That'd be good, if he makes things easier for you."
"You won't have to have anything to do with him. I'll make sure he understands my house is off limits."
"Do you know what he said, that time I met him?"
Greg shook his head. He hadn't asked; he hadn't wanted to know the details, in case he'd been tempted to carry out an act of police brutality.
"He told me," Ruth announced, glaring at Greg, "that medicated shampoo wouldn't clear the nits, and that wet-combing would be far more effective if I cut my hair short."
Her long tawny hair was Ruth's one vanity; he knew how much the head lice episode had pained her in every way.
"Sherlock will be a different man when he's off drugs," he lied, and Ruth sighed and shrugged and hurried off to stop Emily picking at the spot on the lounge wall where he had mucked up the wall-papering.
Had Sherlock sat down and planned how best to upset Ruth, Greg wondered, heading to the fridge for a beer, and then realised that it was worse than that. He'd come round that time wanting something from Greg, hadn't he? God help him, Sherlock had probably been trying to be helpful. Now that was a truly terrifying thought.
Part 2
Rating 15 (explicit slash, swearing)
Summary: There's a simple reason why Lestrade puts up with Sherlock...
Many thanks to The Small Hobbit for betaing.
Note: the timeline of this story reflects an attempt to make some sense of the mess that is Series 2 chronology, and was adapted from suggestions originally made by Mad Maudlin. She produced a timetable in which some of the events of Hounds and Fall took place during the whole year covered by Scandal. I've combined this with another suggestion (whose original source I can unfortunately no longer locate): that Hounds takes place before the Christmas party in Scandal, because Mrs Hudson's 'new dress' in Hounds is the one she's wearing then. In summary, this fic has the events of Hounds taking place in the summer of 2010, before Sherlock meets Irene. The significance of this will eventually be revealed...
Sometimes Greg couldn't help thinking it would have been better if he'd never met Sherlock Holmes. If he could somehow travel back in time and ensure that they avoided one another, that Sherlock found some other police officer to hassle, maybe everything would have worked out differently? He wouldn't be sitting alone in a crummy flat in Deptford with no job and no marriage. And Sherlock wouldn't be dead.
Stupid to think like that, he told himself. He'd always known that Sherlock wouldn't make old bones, that his brilliance would burn itself out in some spectacular way. And as for his own marriage, it hadn't really been Sherlock that had wrecked it. The first cracks had already been there long before he met Sherlock, even though obviously, he'd made things worse. Just as Mr Morgan - Gareth - had only been a lightning conductor for Ruth's discontent. It had never been going to work out the way it was supposed to. Happily ever after didn't really apply to coppers, especially not detectives. The job always wrecked your personal life.
***
As far as Greg could remember, it had started with the Hayes murder. Everyone on the investigation had been sure Geoffrey Hayes had killed his wife and kids, but they hadn't been able to crack his alibi. They'd all been obsessed by the case, but DS Lestrade, angling for a transfer to a Major Incident Pool, had been the most obsessed. Driven Ruth up the wall talking about it. But then how could you deal with a "family annihilator" when you were expecting your first child in a month's time?
That had been when he'd started splitting his life up into compartments. He and Ruth had always been a team, and now suddenly they weren't. He couldn't explain to her why he had to solve this case, had to prove that not all men were like Hayes. And Ruth - maybe it was just because the pregnancy was rough, that she was turning in on herself. In bed, she talked to the bump now more than to him.
Ruth had worked out what to do, of course. She'd told him almost calmly, after a week or so of sleepless nights, that it'd be easier for them both if she stayed with her mother for a few days. It meant Greg didn't need to worry about being out all hours, hunting down the man - somewhere, someone - who had helped Hayes. He also knew, even though Ruth didn't say it, that she wanted someone at hand who had time to take care of her, because she was stressed about the pregnancy. That was the problem with being a nurse - she knew too much about all the things that could go wrong with babies, couldn't switch off a mind alert to subtle symptoms of imminent disaster.
Two hours after Hayes had been charged, Greg went round to Mrs Hall's. He sat in the kitchen with her and Ruth and Ruth's sister, Jenny, as they talked about birth plans and breast pumps, and he tried not to wince. And later that evening, Ruth had smiled at him, in a slightly preoccupied way, and said it had been a nice holiday, but she couldn't wait to be back home. He'd imagined then that everything would go back to how it had been before. Surely having a family wouldn't change things that much?
***
"You have three children: a boy of seven, a girl of five and an unweaned baby," Sherlock announced, three hours after he first met Greg. "And your wife no longer loves you. Probably because the last child was unexpected."
"You're a pick pocketing junkie," Greg retorted, "and if you don't give me back my wallet in the next thirty seconds, with all the cash still in it, I will arrest you."
"You had only to ask," Sherlock said, and produced the wallet with a flourish from inside the long coat he was wearing. Greg was surprised he hadn't sold that yet. God knew the boy must be down on his luck to be living in a dump like this squat in Hackney. Even if he did sound like he came from a posh family.
Greg started checking carefully through the contents of his wallet.
"You didn't ask how I knew about your family," Sherlock remarked. He talked to Greg as if he'd known him for years. In actual fact, he'd charged into Scotland Yard for the first time ever earlier that afternoon and somehow charmed Greg into helping him prevent a murder.
"There are photos in the wallet," Greg replied. "You're observant, I'll give you that. If you got cleaned up, you might make something of yourself yet."
"Boring," Sherlock announced, and Greg told himself that he should just walk away from this skinny kid. No reason he should be staying talking to him, finding out more. There was paperwork to be done, and he needed to get home on time. He'd promised Ruth he wouldn't be late. He slid a glance at his watch. He could maybe manage ten minutes more here.
"Are there any friends you could go to, help you out?" he asked. "Maybe even give you a square meal?"
Sherlock shook his head. "And if your wife no longer loves you, you hardly want to take me home and feed me up," he added.
"Stop saying that," Greg grumbled, and couldn't understand why he still felt sorry for the kid, when he was such a prick. "You don't know anything about me."
"You have traces of dried vomit down the back of your left shoulder," Sherlock announced. "Unless you have some very unusual friends, that means you've recently been holding a baby and the mother didn't think it worthwhile cleaning you up properly afterwards. Five-year gap from the last child, and there are photos of your two older children in your wallet, but none of your wife or the new baby. Implies the child was unexpected and you're ambivalent about it. Another baby after five years and your wife doesn't care if you go to work with vomit stains on you; she obviously no longer loves you."
"Wait till you're married," Greg said savagely. "Wait till you have kids. You'll realise it's not as simple as that." It wasn't that he didn't care about Emily, it was just they hadn't got round to having any decent pictures taken. And Ruth hadn't wanted her photo taken for years, claimed she looked old and tired and fat. Yes, Ruth and him were having a rough patch, but it was only to be expected. If things would only just settle down, it would all be fine. It was just hard to manage with his job.
***
Greg hadn't expected to see Sherlock again, but the boy had picked up a lot of information on the streets and he seemed to have decided to become Greg's personal informant. Well, he was already more than an informant, but he could be explained away to Greg's superiors as one. So Greg could justify buying him a few square meals out of petty cash. Keeping him going for a few more months before the inevitable disaster. An addict who poked his nose into other people's criminal business wasn't going to survive for long. Even one as clever as Sherlock. Nothing Greg could do though: it was already clear that Sherlock didn't listen to anyone. Particularly not him.
***
It all went pear-shaped six months later, when Greg went off to Manchester on a three-day course. When he switched his phone back on in the evening he had forty-three texts waiting, forty-one of them from Sherlock. Well, he could just wait his turn for once, he decided, and dialled Ruth. As the phone rang, he tried to get his head in the right place to make helpful comments about costumes for Rob for Red Nose Day, and Emily's attempts at standing, and Ruth and Katy's little problem. But when Ruth answered, she announced:
"There's a strange man been coming round asking for you."
"What does he look like?" Greg demanded, on instant alert.
"Young, tall and thin with black hair, and wearing a long black coat."
"Did he sound posh?" He was sure that he'd never told Sherlock his home address, but Sherlock had pick-pocketed him enough that he'd probably worked it out.
"Yes," Ruth replied. "He said he had to talk to you, and it was urgent, but you weren't answering your phone."
"Oh god, I'm sorry. Did he scare you?"
"No, of course not." Ruth's voice was brisk. "It takes more than some weedy junkie to scare me. I told him to find someone else at Scotland Yard, but he said no-one else there would listen to him. And when I went out later, he was hanging around on the street. Maybe he didn't believe me when I told him you were away. But you need to do something about it."
"Of course," he said, and wished fervently that it was something that could involve strangling Sherlock.
***
A read through of Greg's text messages revealed that Sherlock had found a corpse and wanted to show it to Lestrade personally. It was like having a bloody cat, Greg thought, slightly hysterically trying to calculate which would be more disastrous: leaving Sherlock playing with a body for two more days or racing home from Manchester, which would just encourage him. In the end, half against his better judgement, he sent Donovan, his new sergeant, round to talk to Sherlock.
By the time Greg got back, the Met had a murderer in custody, and he had an extremely pissed-off DS. He took one look at Sally Donovan's scowl and recognised a bomb that needed defusing urgently.
"Come and have a drink," he said. "You've earned it." Ruth wasn't going to be pleased about him being home late again, but at least she wouldn't try and apply for a transfer away from him.
***
"I'm sorry, Sally," he said, when they were sitting in the pub. "I should have warned you about Sherlock." He had told her "user" and "abrasive", and she was doubtless used to what addiction could do to someone's personality. But more and more he got the feeling that Sherlock wasn't a jerk because he was on drugs; he was on drugs because he was a jerk.
"I'd heard you had a pet junkie, sir," Sally said, starting on her pint. "I didn't imagine anything like him. What the hell does he think he's playing at?"
"I have no idea," Greg replied. "I've known him for six months and I still don't understand him. Why does he have to keep on winding people up?"
"Because he knows he can get away with it," Sally said, a fierce look coming over her tough, beautiful face. "Don't worry. I'm....I'm used to arseholes who think they're so bloody superior to me."
Sally didn't need protecting, Greg reminded himself, or at least she wouldn't accept him trying to protect her. He drank his beer silently, watching her, and eventually she sighed and said:
"The problem is he's an arsehole who is bloody superior."
"What do you mean?"
"That's why you put up with all his bloody crap, isn't it? Because he's cleverer than us, as well as rich and posh and good-looking-"
"You think he's good-looking?" It had never occurred to him that Sherlock looked anything but strange.
"He's bloody gorgeous," Sally said, and there was an anger there that Greg didn't understand. "And he's throwing away everything, just for kicks."
"You reckon he's going to end up overdosing, do you?" he said, because maybe he wasn't just getting paranoid.
"No," she said with absolute conviction. "He's gonna end up killing someone else. When the drugs don't give him a buzz any more, he'll try violence."
A sudden thought struck Greg.
"Did you take a constable with you, when you went with Sherlock to find that body?"
"He said it had to be just me, there wasn't room in the drain for anyone else. What would you have done?" Sally's chin went up and there was nothing to say. Because if it had just been him and Sherlock, it wouldn't have been any safer. Sherlock could doubtless polish him off, if he really wanted to.
"I reckoned you'd have noticed if he was a pervert," Sally went on. "Or a vampire." Black humour: the refuge when someone had come close to really, really fouling things up.
He'd been putting his faith - and other people's lives - in the hands of an unstable addict, working with Sherlock. It needed to stop, he decided abruptly, before someone got hurt.
***
He told Ruth when he finally got home that Sherlock wouldn't bother her again.
"I thought he was helping you solve crimes?" she said sceptically. "That's what matters to you, isn't it?"
"He's no use to me when he's off his face half the time," Greg replied. "And it's not my job to straighten him out. Some other idiot can try that."
***
Greg knew as soon as he saw the tall, smartly-dressed man standing in his office a fortnight later that he was connected to Sherlock. Not just the air of entitlement, but the way the man's eyes scanned the room. Logging every detail, deducing and filing away for future reference every one of Greg's secrets.
"Good morning, DI Lestrade," the man said, extending a well-manicured hand. "I'm Mycroft Holmes, from the Home Office. Well, attached to it, at least. I understand you've been employing my brother as an informant."
"I did for a bit," he growled, waiting to be told that Holmeses weren't supposed to be grasses, it wasn't cricket.
"What would it require for you to take him back on? Employ him as a consultant this time?"
"What the...hell are you talking about?" He stayed where he was by the door and stared suspiciously at Mycroft, hoping the man would take the hint and leave.
"My meaning is surely clear enough. My brother's skills at detection are far superior to those of the Metropolitan Police. Yet you are the only man on the force who has the sense to realise that basic fact." Mycroft paused and then added: "You need Sherlock and I can supply him; the rest is open to negotiation."
"And suppose Sherlock doesn't want to be supplied?" Greg replied, with a suddenly vivid awareness of why Sherlock might have turned to drugs.
"He wants this," Mycroft answered, staring patronisingly down his nose. "And you need him. What's the problem? I can arrange things with your superiors, if that's your worry."
"I don't need you pulling strings." He didn't want to have this conversation. There was something about the passive-aggressive smoothness of Mycroft that made him long to have Sherlock back in his place; at least he felt entitled to yell at him. He forced his jaw to unclench, and said, as patiently as he could: "Sherlock has personal problems. I decided he wasn't in a fit state to help us."
"Ah, it is the drugs that are the problem," Mycroft replied, smirking. "I thought given your own experiences - nicotine addiction, I mean, nothing illegal - you might be more sympathetic. Suppose I deliver Sherlock cocaine free to you in the New Year. Could you make use of him?" The smirk broadened. "In any way that occurs to you."
"We don't do work placements," Greg snarled, and decided that maybe if he ignored Mycroft Holmes, he'd go away. He went over to his desk, digging out a file from the heap. He immediately couldn't help thinking: If Sherlock was here he could help with this. Hugh Boone had vanished from his pitch begging in Upper Swandam Lane in the East End, and his tattered, blood-stained clothes had been found shoved inside a bin-bag next to a nice respectable semi in Lee Green. No trace of Boone himself, though, and Greg's superiors were already dropping hints that the mysterious disappearance of a homeless man was not a policing priority.
"Oh, you hardly need Sherlock's help for a case as simple as that," Mycroft said, and Greg realised he stupidly hadn't kept the file name hidden. "Look for the journalist on Burnt Ash Hill and you've found your man."
"What do you mean?" Neville St Clair, next to whose house the clothes had been found, was the founder of some half-arsed independent media company. But what did that have to do with anything?
"The man who lived as a beggar for a year in order to get a best-selling book out of it," Mycroft said, his eyebrows quirking. "Or just possibly a controversial Channel 4 documentary. You do need Sherlock, Inspector; I hope you can be persuaded to make use of his talents." He walked out of the office, and Greg decided that now wasn't the day to try giving up smoking.
How did you know that the beggar with the twisted lip was Neville St Clair in disguise?" Greg texted that evening to the phone number he'd found left as his screensaver.
The reply came back promptly: Surely it was obvious? MGH. For one minute, he seriously considered asking Mycroft if the Home Office could spare him for a few months. Then he reminded himself that he'd probably strangle the man within a fortnight. Sherlock was going to be a difficult enough proposition.
***
He ought to warn Ruth, he supposed, but he wasn't sure what to tell her. Still, when she dutifully asked him about his day that evening, he muttered something about possibly working with Sherlock Holmes again.
"Oh," Ruth replied, and Greg couldn't fathom the expression that came over her strong, sensible face.
"If he cleans himself up," he said hastily. "Could be a big help for my team then, if I can handle him right."
"I see," she said, and added, with an effort at enthusiasm: "That'd be good, if he makes things easier for you."
"You won't have to have anything to do with him. I'll make sure he understands my house is off limits."
"Do you know what he said, that time I met him?"
Greg shook his head. He hadn't asked; he hadn't wanted to know the details, in case he'd been tempted to carry out an act of police brutality.
"He told me," Ruth announced, glaring at Greg, "that medicated shampoo wouldn't clear the nits, and that wet-combing would be far more effective if I cut my hair short."
Her long tawny hair was Ruth's one vanity; he knew how much the head lice episode had pained her in every way.
"Sherlock will be a different man when he's off drugs," he lied, and Ruth sighed and shrugged and hurried off to stop Emily picking at the spot on the lounge wall where he had mucked up the wall-papering.
Had Sherlock sat down and planned how best to upset Ruth, Greg wondered, heading to the fridge for a beer, and then realised that it was worse than that. He'd come round that time wanting something from Greg, hadn't he? God help him, Sherlock had probably been trying to be helpful. Now that was a truly terrifying thought.
Part 2