Desperate (9/9)
BBC Sherlock
Rating 15 (explicit slash, swearing)
Summary: What does Greg do after Mycroft's revelations?
Many thanks to The Small Hobbit for betaing.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.
Maybe Mycroft was like Lord Voldemort, and if you said his name he could track you down from that alone. Because on Saturday evening, there he was, knocking on the door of Greg's flat. The view through the peephole made his nose look even beakier than normal. Greg had no idea why he was outside, but he could bloody well stay there. He'd had enough of the Holmeses, thank you very much.
A few more knocks, and then it went quiet. Too quiet. Greg somehow wasn't surprised when his phone beeped with a text alert.
I'd prefer to talk in your flat. I have people available who can break down doors, but that would be messy and inconvenient for us both. MGH
Greg didn't answer, but when he checked half an hour later the man was still standing out there, fingering his phone. You called Sherlock's bluff at your own risk. Probably the same with his brother.
"What do you want?" Greg demanded, when he finally opened the door. Mycroft walked in a little stiffly and sat down unerringly on the one comfortable chair in the flat.
"I have a proposal to make," he said. "But first, I have a confession."
"I'm suspended from the Met. I've never been a priest. Go and confess to somebody else." He'd spent more than six years not hitting Mycroft. Tonight might just be the night he cracked, and he suspected Mycroft was aware of that. Mycroft steepled his fingers in front of his face and said very quietly:
"I want to tell you how I inadvertently helped Moriarty attack Sherlock."
"I read about that in John's blog post," Greg said, sitting down opposite him and scowling. "He claims you put Moriarty in a cell, told him all about Sherlock and then let him walk free. That true?"
Mycroft nodded almost imperceptibly.
"For a genius, you're pretty bloody stupid, aren't you, Mycroft?"
"It's more complicated than Dr Watson makes it sound, Lestrade," Mycroft replied, "though my performance was not much more impressive. I believe John also claimed I'd told him why I was interrogating Moriarty?"
Greg sighed. "The key code. The way to break into anything. The Tower of London. The Bank of England. Pentonville."
"It doesn't exist," Mycroft said. "It can't exist. My experts told me that when I first heard the rumours of it last summer."
"Moriarty broke into those places. Simultaneously. I didn't bloody imagine it, did I?" Things that you thought you knew being ripped away, a world turned upside down. How could the Holmeses do it every single time?
"Moriarty didn't hack into any security systems; he bribed his way in everywhere."
"You mean you lied to John about the key code," Greg said. He leaned back on the sofa, shoved his hands in his pockets, so he couldn't deck the bastard.
Mycroft nodded. "It was necessary at that point. I can explain, but I'll need to go back to the swimming pool incident last year."
Only Mycroft could describe his brother nearly blowing himself and several other people up as an incident, Greg thought angrily.
"Yeah," he said. "Read that on John's blog as well. That's why there was no fifth pip in the pips bomber case, because the last bomb-jacket was for John."
"But John's account of what happened never made sense, did it? You must surely have realised that?"
Greg nodded and Mycroft stared at him, in that aggravating way that meant I want you to tell me your deductions so I can trump them. Greg was almost tempted to stay silent, but if he did the bastard might just sit in his room all night.
"There were a whole load of things that didn't fit," Greg said. "Why did Sherlock turn up at the pool? Why didn't Moriarty kill him then and there? Why didn't Sherlock kill Moriarty when he got the chance? God knows, the idiot's never been worried about dying before now."
"You left out the obvious question," Mycroft said, and the way he said "obvious" was so like Sherlock that Greg's hands clenched in his pockets. "Why didn't he pursue the case further, try to track Moriarty down? A criminal mastermind on the loose and yet Sherlock is content to chase after the petty miscreants of London. Hardly seems much of a challenge, does it?"
"He said he was leaving Moriarty to you."
"Does that sound like Sherlock?"
I'm not having this, Greg decided, and pulled his hand out of his pocket to glare ostentatiously at his watch. "I'll give you ten minutes, Mycroft. I'm sick of guessing games and hints. You can tell me what happened, or you can fuck off."
He watched Mycroft blink at the obscenity and he could almost see the subtle mind readjusting its approach.
"There was only one logical reason for Sherlock not to pursue Moriarty further," Mycroft said, at last, sitting up a little straighter."Fear."
"You're telling me Sherlock was scared? He took on an armed hitman with a cleaning spray once. He's the stupidest bloody risk-taker I've ever met."
"But even Sherlock has limits and at the swimming pool he realised them," Mycroft said, and a hint of smugness had crept into his voice. "He would have been prepared to sacrifice himself to finish off Moriarty. But the thought of Dr Watson dying terrified him. The first friend he'd ever had. The first man he'd ever cared about."
Yeah, go and rub it in, Greg said to himself, and then he saw Mycroft's eyes read that thought, and God, didn't that just make it worse?
"You want facts, Inspector," Mycroft said, with that calculating snooty smile of his. "Sherlock's regard for John Watson is one of them. Oh, he mistreats him on occasion, but a serious threat to Dr Watson and Sherlock will crumble. Moriarty knew that; Sherlock knew he knew that. In order to protect his friend, he left Moriarty to me."
Greg stared at the grubby patches on his carpet, wondering exactly what it was that Mycroft had come to 'confess'. A thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Why hadn't you been onto Moriarty before?" he said. "I thought if someone farted in London you knew about it."
"Until last spring, Moriarty wasn't my problem," Mycroft replied calmly. "Crime isn't my division, to put it in terms you'd understand. Not even organised crime. But espionage is. When Sherlock handed the Bruce-Partington plans to Moriarty, he made him a legitimate target for me."
"Ten minutes and no guessing games," Greg said softly, looking up at him. "What plans?"
"The details don't matter," Mycroft said, with a flick of his hand. "Sherlock retrieved some lost MoD secrets and offered them to Moriarty. Via his website, which was I how I became aware of the deal."
"And?"
"And I was able to authorise an immediate investigation of Moriarty on the back of that. We traced the phone call made to him at the swimming pool. Too late, of course, to take any action, but it gave us another name. Another dabbler in intelligence matters: Irene Adler."
Mycroft's smile was bleak now. "We'd always taken her to be a minor political risk only, but when we investigated her properly, her network was far wider than expected. It seemed possible that one of our own counter-terrorism operations was in danger. We believed that she had passed on information to Moriarty, who in turn was going to sell it on to this country's enemies."
"So that was why you grabbed him?" Maybe he was going to get given the whole picture at last.
"Yes," Mycroft said. "Last summer, while Sherlock was chasing phantom hounds in Devon. A rather trivial case in most ways, but finding out about Dr Frankland's hallucinogen was handy."
"You used that on Moriarty?" Greg demanded, sitting up.
"Physical pressure was having no effect."
"You mean torture."
"An ugly word for an ineffective practice. I don't enjoy using it and the new drug appeared to have no long-term effects. And it often induces an unusual openness."
"You're shit scared and you don't know what you're saying," Greg growled. God, Mycroft would make him feel sorry for Moriarty at this rate.
"Its effects include disinhibition: an inability to disguise emotional responses. The more primitive emotions, in particular, tend to be revealed, the aspects of oneself that are normally concealed. Sherlock's fears about his superior rationality, for example..."
Mycroft's voice tailed off and Greg waited for some snide remark about what he'd done down at Grimpen. The bastard would be bound to know. But Mycroft's eyes slide away from Greg's as he went on:
"Moriarty's deepest fears were obvious, of course. He worried that Sherlock would ultimately prove to be cleverer and more exciting than him. That for all of Moriarty's tricks, he was just a poor shadow, an inadequate copy of Sherlock's genius. I fed those fears. I told Moriarty all about Sherlock, how brilliant and strange he'd been even as a boy, how he'd become a man who could do anything, extraordinary beyond words."
Had it been the one time Mycroft had felt free to talk about Sherlock, Greg suddenly wondered. "So what did you get from him?"
"What I needed. I listened to him rave while his head was full of the drug, grandiose plans for defeating Sherlock and myself. Listened for hours for the one scrap of intelligence that would tell us that Coventry - that was the codeword for our operation - had been compromised. But it didn't come. We'd underestimated Irene Adler. She had the information, but she wasn't selling it to Moriarty until she'd decoded it."
"Moriarty didn't have the information you wanted," Greg said slowly. "So after you'd pumped him full of mind-warping drugs and told him everything he needed to know about Sherlock , you then opened the prison door and said, Thanks for staying with us. What the fuck did you think you were doing?"
"I had no choice," Mycroft said, and he had that glassy stare that Greg remembered from Sherlock, like he was pulling back memories from some deep-buried place. "The Americans insisted he should be released, and since Coventry was intended to protect their assets, I felt forced to acquiesce."
"So why did they want Moriarty free?" It wasn't like the bloody Americans to let anyone go, Greg reckoned.
"They wanted us to track him, in the hope that he might put us on the trail of his terrorist contacts. Meanwhile, they would retrieve the information from Irene."
"But they..." Greg began and then stopped, as the penny finally dropped. "You double-crossed the Americans. You sent Sherlock after Irene."
"Once I became aware of the inadequacy of the CIA plan, it seemed essential. It wasn't technically in breach of our agreement for me to do so."
"But you didn't tell...Oh God, you devious shit. You didn't tell the Americans about Sherlock or Sherlock about the Americans, did you?"
"I couldn't warn my brother," Mycroft replied, his chin going up. "He might have started asking awkward questions about why the CIA were interested in Ms Adler. I was worried he would spot the connection to Moriarty and refuse to help me."
"Irene Adler was working for Moriarty, and so she knew all about Sherlock, and you didn't think to warn him to watch his back? Fuck it, I'm glad I'm not your brother."
"Even so, Sherlock delivered what I needed, eventually. Irene's phone, unlocked."
"This was after Irene had come back from the dead, was it?" Greg asked and then realised it must have been. Sherlock had still been trying to unlock the phone when the Americans had attacked Baker Street, he remembered now.
"Did Sherlock tell you she was still alive?" Mycroft asked.
"I worked it out. I'm not entirely stupid." There was a significant silence from Mycroft.
"OK," Greg went on. "So what happened then? You'd got Irene's phone and all the information on that. Did that give you a lead on Moriarty?"
"That was our hope. Sherlock managed to unlock her phone in May, just after Moriarty's trial. We had reason to know that Irene didn't keep back-ups of her photos, so we presumed she was a spent force." Mycroft paused, staring at the carpet. "That was my real mistake, underestimating Irene. I took away her security and turned her out to fend for herself."
"What did she do?" Greg demanded and then it dawned on him. Irene would still have had one weapon left: her own seductive mind and body. And there was one obvious target for her. "What did she do to Sherlock?"
"Nothing," Mycroft replied, looking slightly affronted. "She never saw him again; she died in Pakistan a few months later. And yes, we did check quite thoroughly this time that it was her. But before she died, she tried to make another bargain with Moriarty. She gave him the only information she had left."
It was like talking to Sherlock all over again. Well, no point in pretending to be clever. "What was that?"
"The names of all her clients."
"And?" Christ, had his brain rotted after a month off work? "If Moriarty didn't have the photos, the names were no good to him."
"A man who's just walked free after breaking into the Tower of London? When he gets in touch with you and tells you he's got Irene's photos, do you think you'd have the nerve to call his bluff?"
It was a fair point. Greg slumped on his uncomfortable sofa and tried to think it through steadily, logically. "So Moriarty had a whole load of extra people to blackmail. But he had a criminal network already and he could threaten people. Had no problem nobbling the jury, did he? Did it really make any difference him getting Irene's contacts as well?"
"Yes, it did," Mycroft said, and his head went down in his hands. "Moriarty's network is a criminal one, as you so rightly say. Irene's contacts were at the heart of government and the media. I knew in outline what Moriarty's plan was; I gathered that when we drugged him. His dream was to plant stories in the newspapers discrediting Sherlock."
"And you didn't try to stop him?"
"I didn't think I needed to. His plan couldn't possibly work. The British libel laws are strict: not even the tabloids would be prepared to print a story that couldn't hold up to scrutiny."
"The Sun did though, didn't it? Or don't you count the Sun as a newspaper?"
"They were prepared to let Kitty Riley's story through." Mycroft raised his head. "Probably because at least six senior figures in News International had their details on Irene Adler's phone. I suppose you must expect anyone involved with the Sun to be susceptible to a glamorous dominatrix."
He gave an unconvincing smile at Greg and then went on. "Irene's names also helped Moriarty in another way. He'd already planned to set up the fake Rich Brook identity, but it was by blackmailing Irene's clients that he found people who could vouch for Brook's credibility. Who were prepared to say that they'd been his producer or his co-presenter."
"So you told Moriarty all Sherlock's secrets, and he helped Irene play Sherlock for a sucker," Greg said. "And then, thanks to her, Moriarty was able to get his story published and so Sherlock killed himself. God, you screwed up this time, Mycroft." Just because it made more sense now, it didn't make it any better. So many lies told, so much vital information concealed. And at the end of all that clever planning by the Holmeses, one of them lying smashed on a pavement, and Mycroft here still trying to justify his mistakes.
"But you don't see the real mystery even now, do you?" Mycroft said, and Greg was on his feet and heading for the bastard. Then common sense kicked in, and his hand drew back from Mycroft's throat. He watched relief sweep over Mycroft's paled face.
"I would be grateful if you could sit down again, DI Lestrade," Mycroft said in a voice that almost sounded calm. "I'm sorry, I should have remembered that you're under considerable stress. What I meant was that it is surely unlike Sherlock to kill himself simply because others believed he was a fraud. Don't you agree?"
Fuck, he hadn't thought of that, but the moment Mycroft said it, it made sense. Sherlock had an ego the size of a planet; no way would he have taken Kitty Riley's article as anything more than a challenge.
"You're right," he muttered. "Should have seen that. Sherlock always fights back."
"Not always," Mycroft said, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing at his brow, and at last Greg had got on his wavelength.
"Sherlock jumped to protect John," he said, as that bit fell into place. Sherlock hadn't been able to manage a good life, but he had maybe managed a good death. Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. He probably ought to say something more to Mycroft, he supposed, but he didn't know what.
"It was what I assumed had happened," Mycroft said eventually. "I've been keeping watch over John ever since, to check that there was no continuing threat to him, but there's no sign of it." He paused. "But further evidence has now appeared, suggesting another possibility."
Greg sat back. "What evidence?" he said wearily. Always another layer, another complication.
"I told you Sherlock had got hold of Irene's phone and given it to me. We'd concentrated on identifying her most exalted clients, along with anyone who might have overseas connections. And after Irene's death, the identification of the other photos was no longer regarded as a priority. Until we realised that those people might now be being blackmailed by Moriarty." Mycroft reached into an inside pocket of his suit and produced a photo, which he handed to Greg. "Do you recognise this man?"
The photo showed a white man in his early thirties; short brown hair dishevelled, mouth distended with some kind of gag. Without that the face would be moderately handsome, Greg thought, with its deep-set eyes and strong features. And yes, the man was somehow familiar. Not from mug-shots though...a witness in a recent case? And then it suddenly clicked.
"Andrew Chater," he said. "He's a civilian working for the Met. One of the crime analysts in the Homicide Task Force."
"And a regular client of Irene Adler."
"He must be the leak," Greg said. "Sherlock said there was someone in the Met passing on information to Irene."
"Sherlock didn't tell me that," Mycroft said indignantly.
"Yeah, well," Greg said, "he wasn't big on information-sharing either." He had done what Sherlock suggested and had the Murder Investigation Teams told about Irene faking her death, and no-one had behaved oddly. But he might have missed Chater's reaction; HTF always seemed to be off in a huddle on their own.
"A couple of my men went to see him yesterday," Mycroft said. "And what they found out was sufficiently odd for him to be brought to me. On the night of the 28th July, Chater had received orders from Moriarty. At lunchtime the next day he was to tell you that he had a contact with vital information about the Bruhl case, and then take you to a pub in Bow. A pub which I have reason to know is run by a man in Moriarty's pay."
"They were planning to trap me?"
"They were planning to kill you," Mycroft replied. "Chater was told to make sure he wasn't seen leaving Scotland Yard with you. Once he had delivered you to the pub he should immediately make himself scarce and establish an alibi for the next hour."
"He was the bait," Greg said. He shook his head. "It doesn't make sense."
"Why not?"
"Moriarty's style is more bombs and snipers, isn't it?"
"Your patterns of movement are particularly irregular," Mycroft replied. "Notoriously, you don't go home when you're supposed to, and you've even been known to sleep in your office. Even a team of snipers couldn't be sure of being able to get a clean shot at you at the right time. Moriarty had to make sure you ended up where he wanted you and on schedule."
"But that was insanely risky for Chater," Greg protested. "He must have known he was putting himself in line to be an accessory to murder. Keeping those pictures hidden wouldn't have been worth it. Liking kinky sex isn't a crime."
"He was leaking information to Irene," Mycroft replied. "I suspect if we dig deeper we'll find he's already been forced to commit other offences. Moriarty's an expert at turning the screws. If Chater's personal life and his career were on the line, are you sure he wouldn't sell you out?"
Chater wouldn't be the first bloke at the Met to have got in far too deep and ending up committing a really serious crime. And yes, he'd have gone with Chater, of course he would. Walked into a trap, like the gullible fool he was. Greg could feel the sweat gathering on his palms.
"OK," he said, trying to sound tough, "so why am I still alive?"
"Chater was told one more thing. That if he heard before 1 p.m. that Sherlock Holmes was dead, he would no longer have to carry out the task. You can draw the obvious conclusion."
"The threat to me was being used as a weapon against Sherlock-"
"-To make him jump," Mycroft finished off his sentence.
"So why am I still alive?" Greg asked again, and it was easy to sound tough this time. "A choice between Sherlock and me dying. Not much of a choice for Sherlock, is it?" The next words came out without thinking. "It's not as if I'm John."
"I don't know why he made that decision," Mycroft replied, and for a moment he actually did look puzzled. "But he clearly did; there's no other possible explanation. And whatever his exact motive, the consequences remain the same."
"Sherlock's dead," Greg growled. Beneath all the tangled mess, one simple fact.
"And you are not." Mycroft's face had resumed its haughty expression. "You owe him your life, Inspector."
And now you've come to collect, Greg realised.
"No," he said, and knew he didn't sound convincing.
"If someone, anyone else you knew had been forced to kill himself, you'd have been after the person responsible," Mycroft said. "You'd have been desperate to 'nail the bastard', wouldn't you? And this is Sherlock. Your colleague...your friend. And you plan to do nothing to avenge him?"
"I can't handle Moriarty." The truth he'd been trying to hide even from himself for a week slipped from his mouth and he glared at Mycroft. The bastard smirked back.
"You don't need to," Mycroft announced. "He's dead."
Just over a week since Sherlock jumped and Mycroft had finished Moriarty off already, Greg thought. Not bad going for a man who didn't much like leaving his own office.
"I didn't kill him," Mycroft added, as if he could read Greg's mind.
"What?" God, none of this made sense.
"Three days ago, the Service received an e-mail containing a set of co-ordinates for a location in Epping Forest. When we got there we found a grave with a body in it. A man in his early thirties, killed by a single shot."
"Do you think Moriarty can't fake deaths?" Greg growled.
"We'd taken DNA samples from him when we held him last year, and sent them to fifteen different police forces across the world. There was other information we collected as well, secured in a number of different locations. All of it matches with the body and with that of the man who was arrested this spring in the Tower of London."
Jim Moriarty was dead. Greg ought to be feeling more pleased than he was, but it all seemed too late now.
"Who killed him?"
"We don't know. He was probably killed on or about Friday 29th, the day that Sherlock died. I suspect Sherlock had his own booby-trap planned. Someone whose sole job, once Sherlock was dead, was to finish off Moriarty."
"John?" Greg asked, trying not to panic. They'd been no-one around to stop John doing something stupid, had there?
"No. Possibly someone from Sherlock's homeless network. Or one of the many criminals with whom Sherlock was friendly. Angelo Portinari, for example," Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "There are also other names that suggest themselves."
"I didn't kill him," Greg replied automatically, and then wished he hadn't sounded so defensive.
"Of course not," Mycroft said. "You're a policeman through and through. You would have tried to arrest Moriarty, not kill him. And it's because you're a policeman, that you're adrift at the moment. Take away your team and you're lost."
It was so tempting just to take a swipe at Mycroft. Wipe that smile off his face the way some coppers Greg had known would have done, with fists and boots. But no, he mustn't react physically, whatever the provocation.
"You've had your ten minutes," he said instead. "Sherlock's dead and so is Moriarty. If you don't want to join them, I suggest you leave now."
Mycroft smiled and didn't budge an inch.
"You haven't heard my proposal yet," he said.
"Whatever it is, I'm not interested."
"I'm offering you another role as an investigator."
"The Met won't take me back," Greg said.
Mycroft reached into his pocket again, and drew out some pieces of paper. "Your resignation letter from the Metropolitan Police Service," he said. "And your new Civil Service contract. You'll officially be employed by the Home Office, but seconded to work with the Serious Organised Crime Agency."
Clever, Greg thought. If he wasn't officially a copper any more, the Met could simply shelve their investigation of him. On the other hand, would SOCA really take him?
"Won't I have to be vetted?"
"They've already agreed to take you," Mycroft replied. "Your security clearance won't be a problem. SOCA want to make sure that Moriarty's criminal networks don't re-emerge without him, and you are going to be their team's point of liaison with the security service."
"You mean I'm to be your inside man in SOCA," Greg said slowly.
"I need someone I can trust," Mycroft said. "You're incorruptible and you can see this through."
"And if I tell you what you can do with your job?" Just for once, Greg thought, just for once I could tell a Holmes where to get off. It was so bloody tempting.
The problem, of course, is that it would leave him where he was. Hung out to dry by the Met and then on the scrapheap. No, it was more than that. If he turned Mycroft down he'd be turning his back on everything he'd stood for. People had suffered from Moriarty's tricks, and someone had to make sure he didn't have any successors.
"We'd want you to start on August 16th," Mycroft said. "I believe you're occupied until then." His voice became even blander. "And if you need any time off in November, that can be arranged."
He knew all about Ruth, then. And Alec. Listening in on his calls, no doubte.
"Anything you don't know about me?" Greg asked grumpily.
"How you put up with Sherlock for so long," Mycroft replied promptly. "I'm aware of your personal life, but I'm not worried about it and nor will SOCA be. What matters is that the work comes first. But you know that already."
"If I accept."
"If you accept. I can leave the contract here and you can inspect it at your leisure if you prefer. My offer will remain open for a couple of days, at least."
Tempting to make Mycroft wait for an answer, but it wasn't justified. It wasn't how he'd expected to end up, Greg thought. Or even what he'd hoped for. But then, you worked with the insufferable genius you had, not the one you wanted. At least you did if, like him, you were desperate to bring criminals to justice.
"Where do you need me to sign?" he asked, as he reached out for the papers.
Rating 15 (explicit slash, swearing)
Summary: What does Greg do after Mycroft's revelations?
Many thanks to The Small Hobbit for betaing.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.
Maybe Mycroft was like Lord Voldemort, and if you said his name he could track you down from that alone. Because on Saturday evening, there he was, knocking on the door of Greg's flat. The view through the peephole made his nose look even beakier than normal. Greg had no idea why he was outside, but he could bloody well stay there. He'd had enough of the Holmeses, thank you very much.
A few more knocks, and then it went quiet. Too quiet. Greg somehow wasn't surprised when his phone beeped with a text alert.
I'd prefer to talk in your flat. I have people available who can break down doors, but that would be messy and inconvenient for us both. MGH
Greg didn't answer, but when he checked half an hour later the man was still standing out there, fingering his phone. You called Sherlock's bluff at your own risk. Probably the same with his brother.
"What do you want?" Greg demanded, when he finally opened the door. Mycroft walked in a little stiffly and sat down unerringly on the one comfortable chair in the flat.
"I have a proposal to make," he said. "But first, I have a confession."
"I'm suspended from the Met. I've never been a priest. Go and confess to somebody else." He'd spent more than six years not hitting Mycroft. Tonight might just be the night he cracked, and he suspected Mycroft was aware of that. Mycroft steepled his fingers in front of his face and said very quietly:
"I want to tell you how I inadvertently helped Moriarty attack Sherlock."
"I read about that in John's blog post," Greg said, sitting down opposite him and scowling. "He claims you put Moriarty in a cell, told him all about Sherlock and then let him walk free. That true?"
Mycroft nodded almost imperceptibly.
"For a genius, you're pretty bloody stupid, aren't you, Mycroft?"
"It's more complicated than Dr Watson makes it sound, Lestrade," Mycroft replied, "though my performance was not much more impressive. I believe John also claimed I'd told him why I was interrogating Moriarty?"
Greg sighed. "The key code. The way to break into anything. The Tower of London. The Bank of England. Pentonville."
"It doesn't exist," Mycroft said. "It can't exist. My experts told me that when I first heard the rumours of it last summer."
"Moriarty broke into those places. Simultaneously. I didn't bloody imagine it, did I?" Things that you thought you knew being ripped away, a world turned upside down. How could the Holmeses do it every single time?
"Moriarty didn't hack into any security systems; he bribed his way in everywhere."
"You mean you lied to John about the key code," Greg said. He leaned back on the sofa, shoved his hands in his pockets, so he couldn't deck the bastard.
Mycroft nodded. "It was necessary at that point. I can explain, but I'll need to go back to the swimming pool incident last year."
Only Mycroft could describe his brother nearly blowing himself and several other people up as an incident, Greg thought angrily.
"Yeah," he said. "Read that on John's blog as well. That's why there was no fifth pip in the pips bomber case, because the last bomb-jacket was for John."
"But John's account of what happened never made sense, did it? You must surely have realised that?"
Greg nodded and Mycroft stared at him, in that aggravating way that meant I want you to tell me your deductions so I can trump them. Greg was almost tempted to stay silent, but if he did the bastard might just sit in his room all night.
"There were a whole load of things that didn't fit," Greg said. "Why did Sherlock turn up at the pool? Why didn't Moriarty kill him then and there? Why didn't Sherlock kill Moriarty when he got the chance? God knows, the idiot's never been worried about dying before now."
"You left out the obvious question," Mycroft said, and the way he said "obvious" was so like Sherlock that Greg's hands clenched in his pockets. "Why didn't he pursue the case further, try to track Moriarty down? A criminal mastermind on the loose and yet Sherlock is content to chase after the petty miscreants of London. Hardly seems much of a challenge, does it?"
"He said he was leaving Moriarty to you."
"Does that sound like Sherlock?"
I'm not having this, Greg decided, and pulled his hand out of his pocket to glare ostentatiously at his watch. "I'll give you ten minutes, Mycroft. I'm sick of guessing games and hints. You can tell me what happened, or you can fuck off."
He watched Mycroft blink at the obscenity and he could almost see the subtle mind readjusting its approach.
"There was only one logical reason for Sherlock not to pursue Moriarty further," Mycroft said, at last, sitting up a little straighter."Fear."
"You're telling me Sherlock was scared? He took on an armed hitman with a cleaning spray once. He's the stupidest bloody risk-taker I've ever met."
"But even Sherlock has limits and at the swimming pool he realised them," Mycroft said, and a hint of smugness had crept into his voice. "He would have been prepared to sacrifice himself to finish off Moriarty. But the thought of Dr Watson dying terrified him. The first friend he'd ever had. The first man he'd ever cared about."
Yeah, go and rub it in, Greg said to himself, and then he saw Mycroft's eyes read that thought, and God, didn't that just make it worse?
"You want facts, Inspector," Mycroft said, with that calculating snooty smile of his. "Sherlock's regard for John Watson is one of them. Oh, he mistreats him on occasion, but a serious threat to Dr Watson and Sherlock will crumble. Moriarty knew that; Sherlock knew he knew that. In order to protect his friend, he left Moriarty to me."
Greg stared at the grubby patches on his carpet, wondering exactly what it was that Mycroft had come to 'confess'. A thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Why hadn't you been onto Moriarty before?" he said. "I thought if someone farted in London you knew about it."
"Until last spring, Moriarty wasn't my problem," Mycroft replied calmly. "Crime isn't my division, to put it in terms you'd understand. Not even organised crime. But espionage is. When Sherlock handed the Bruce-Partington plans to Moriarty, he made him a legitimate target for me."
"Ten minutes and no guessing games," Greg said softly, looking up at him. "What plans?"
"The details don't matter," Mycroft said, with a flick of his hand. "Sherlock retrieved some lost MoD secrets and offered them to Moriarty. Via his website, which was I how I became aware of the deal."
"And?"
"And I was able to authorise an immediate investigation of Moriarty on the back of that. We traced the phone call made to him at the swimming pool. Too late, of course, to take any action, but it gave us another name. Another dabbler in intelligence matters: Irene Adler."
Mycroft's smile was bleak now. "We'd always taken her to be a minor political risk only, but when we investigated her properly, her network was far wider than expected. It seemed possible that one of our own counter-terrorism operations was in danger. We believed that she had passed on information to Moriarty, who in turn was going to sell it on to this country's enemies."
"So that was why you grabbed him?" Maybe he was going to get given the whole picture at last.
"Yes," Mycroft said. "Last summer, while Sherlock was chasing phantom hounds in Devon. A rather trivial case in most ways, but finding out about Dr Frankland's hallucinogen was handy."
"You used that on Moriarty?" Greg demanded, sitting up.
"Physical pressure was having no effect."
"You mean torture."
"An ugly word for an ineffective practice. I don't enjoy using it and the new drug appeared to have no long-term effects. And it often induces an unusual openness."
"You're shit scared and you don't know what you're saying," Greg growled. God, Mycroft would make him feel sorry for Moriarty at this rate.
"Its effects include disinhibition: an inability to disguise emotional responses. The more primitive emotions, in particular, tend to be revealed, the aspects of oneself that are normally concealed. Sherlock's fears about his superior rationality, for example..."
Mycroft's voice tailed off and Greg waited for some snide remark about what he'd done down at Grimpen. The bastard would be bound to know. But Mycroft's eyes slide away from Greg's as he went on:
"Moriarty's deepest fears were obvious, of course. He worried that Sherlock would ultimately prove to be cleverer and more exciting than him. That for all of Moriarty's tricks, he was just a poor shadow, an inadequate copy of Sherlock's genius. I fed those fears. I told Moriarty all about Sherlock, how brilliant and strange he'd been even as a boy, how he'd become a man who could do anything, extraordinary beyond words."
Had it been the one time Mycroft had felt free to talk about Sherlock, Greg suddenly wondered. "So what did you get from him?"
"What I needed. I listened to him rave while his head was full of the drug, grandiose plans for defeating Sherlock and myself. Listened for hours for the one scrap of intelligence that would tell us that Coventry - that was the codeword for our operation - had been compromised. But it didn't come. We'd underestimated Irene Adler. She had the information, but she wasn't selling it to Moriarty until she'd decoded it."
"Moriarty didn't have the information you wanted," Greg said slowly. "So after you'd pumped him full of mind-warping drugs and told him everything he needed to know about Sherlock , you then opened the prison door and said, Thanks for staying with us. What the fuck did you think you were doing?"
"I had no choice," Mycroft said, and he had that glassy stare that Greg remembered from Sherlock, like he was pulling back memories from some deep-buried place. "The Americans insisted he should be released, and since Coventry was intended to protect their assets, I felt forced to acquiesce."
"So why did they want Moriarty free?" It wasn't like the bloody Americans to let anyone go, Greg reckoned.
"They wanted us to track him, in the hope that he might put us on the trail of his terrorist contacts. Meanwhile, they would retrieve the information from Irene."
"But they..." Greg began and then stopped, as the penny finally dropped. "You double-crossed the Americans. You sent Sherlock after Irene."
"Once I became aware of the inadequacy of the CIA plan, it seemed essential. It wasn't technically in breach of our agreement for me to do so."
"But you didn't tell...Oh God, you devious shit. You didn't tell the Americans about Sherlock or Sherlock about the Americans, did you?"
"I couldn't warn my brother," Mycroft replied, his chin going up. "He might have started asking awkward questions about why the CIA were interested in Ms Adler. I was worried he would spot the connection to Moriarty and refuse to help me."
"Irene Adler was working for Moriarty, and so she knew all about Sherlock, and you didn't think to warn him to watch his back? Fuck it, I'm glad I'm not your brother."
"Even so, Sherlock delivered what I needed, eventually. Irene's phone, unlocked."
"This was after Irene had come back from the dead, was it?" Greg asked and then realised it must have been. Sherlock had still been trying to unlock the phone when the Americans had attacked Baker Street, he remembered now.
"Did Sherlock tell you she was still alive?" Mycroft asked.
"I worked it out. I'm not entirely stupid." There was a significant silence from Mycroft.
"OK," Greg went on. "So what happened then? You'd got Irene's phone and all the information on that. Did that give you a lead on Moriarty?"
"That was our hope. Sherlock managed to unlock her phone in May, just after Moriarty's trial. We had reason to know that Irene didn't keep back-ups of her photos, so we presumed she was a spent force." Mycroft paused, staring at the carpet. "That was my real mistake, underestimating Irene. I took away her security and turned her out to fend for herself."
"What did she do?" Greg demanded and then it dawned on him. Irene would still have had one weapon left: her own seductive mind and body. And there was one obvious target for her. "What did she do to Sherlock?"
"Nothing," Mycroft replied, looking slightly affronted. "She never saw him again; she died in Pakistan a few months later. And yes, we did check quite thoroughly this time that it was her. But before she died, she tried to make another bargain with Moriarty. She gave him the only information she had left."
It was like talking to Sherlock all over again. Well, no point in pretending to be clever. "What was that?"
"The names of all her clients."
"And?" Christ, had his brain rotted after a month off work? "If Moriarty didn't have the photos, the names were no good to him."
"A man who's just walked free after breaking into the Tower of London? When he gets in touch with you and tells you he's got Irene's photos, do you think you'd have the nerve to call his bluff?"
It was a fair point. Greg slumped on his uncomfortable sofa and tried to think it through steadily, logically. "So Moriarty had a whole load of extra people to blackmail. But he had a criminal network already and he could threaten people. Had no problem nobbling the jury, did he? Did it really make any difference him getting Irene's contacts as well?"
"Yes, it did," Mycroft said, and his head went down in his hands. "Moriarty's network is a criminal one, as you so rightly say. Irene's contacts were at the heart of government and the media. I knew in outline what Moriarty's plan was; I gathered that when we drugged him. His dream was to plant stories in the newspapers discrediting Sherlock."
"And you didn't try to stop him?"
"I didn't think I needed to. His plan couldn't possibly work. The British libel laws are strict: not even the tabloids would be prepared to print a story that couldn't hold up to scrutiny."
"The Sun did though, didn't it? Or don't you count the Sun as a newspaper?"
"They were prepared to let Kitty Riley's story through." Mycroft raised his head. "Probably because at least six senior figures in News International had their details on Irene Adler's phone. I suppose you must expect anyone involved with the Sun to be susceptible to a glamorous dominatrix."
He gave an unconvincing smile at Greg and then went on. "Irene's names also helped Moriarty in another way. He'd already planned to set up the fake Rich Brook identity, but it was by blackmailing Irene's clients that he found people who could vouch for Brook's credibility. Who were prepared to say that they'd been his producer or his co-presenter."
"So you told Moriarty all Sherlock's secrets, and he helped Irene play Sherlock for a sucker," Greg said. "And then, thanks to her, Moriarty was able to get his story published and so Sherlock killed himself. God, you screwed up this time, Mycroft." Just because it made more sense now, it didn't make it any better. So many lies told, so much vital information concealed. And at the end of all that clever planning by the Holmeses, one of them lying smashed on a pavement, and Mycroft here still trying to justify his mistakes.
"But you don't see the real mystery even now, do you?" Mycroft said, and Greg was on his feet and heading for the bastard. Then common sense kicked in, and his hand drew back from Mycroft's throat. He watched relief sweep over Mycroft's paled face.
"I would be grateful if you could sit down again, DI Lestrade," Mycroft said in a voice that almost sounded calm. "I'm sorry, I should have remembered that you're under considerable stress. What I meant was that it is surely unlike Sherlock to kill himself simply because others believed he was a fraud. Don't you agree?"
Fuck, he hadn't thought of that, but the moment Mycroft said it, it made sense. Sherlock had an ego the size of a planet; no way would he have taken Kitty Riley's article as anything more than a challenge.
"You're right," he muttered. "Should have seen that. Sherlock always fights back."
"Not always," Mycroft said, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing at his brow, and at last Greg had got on his wavelength.
"Sherlock jumped to protect John," he said, as that bit fell into place. Sherlock hadn't been able to manage a good life, but he had maybe managed a good death. Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. He probably ought to say something more to Mycroft, he supposed, but he didn't know what.
"It was what I assumed had happened," Mycroft said eventually. "I've been keeping watch over John ever since, to check that there was no continuing threat to him, but there's no sign of it." He paused. "But further evidence has now appeared, suggesting another possibility."
Greg sat back. "What evidence?" he said wearily. Always another layer, another complication.
"I told you Sherlock had got hold of Irene's phone and given it to me. We'd concentrated on identifying her most exalted clients, along with anyone who might have overseas connections. And after Irene's death, the identification of the other photos was no longer regarded as a priority. Until we realised that those people might now be being blackmailed by Moriarty." Mycroft reached into an inside pocket of his suit and produced a photo, which he handed to Greg. "Do you recognise this man?"
The photo showed a white man in his early thirties; short brown hair dishevelled, mouth distended with some kind of gag. Without that the face would be moderately handsome, Greg thought, with its deep-set eyes and strong features. And yes, the man was somehow familiar. Not from mug-shots though...a witness in a recent case? And then it suddenly clicked.
"Andrew Chater," he said. "He's a civilian working for the Met. One of the crime analysts in the Homicide Task Force."
"And a regular client of Irene Adler."
"He must be the leak," Greg said. "Sherlock said there was someone in the Met passing on information to Irene."
"Sherlock didn't tell me that," Mycroft said indignantly.
"Yeah, well," Greg said, "he wasn't big on information-sharing either." He had done what Sherlock suggested and had the Murder Investigation Teams told about Irene faking her death, and no-one had behaved oddly. But he might have missed Chater's reaction; HTF always seemed to be off in a huddle on their own.
"A couple of my men went to see him yesterday," Mycroft said. "And what they found out was sufficiently odd for him to be brought to me. On the night of the 28th July, Chater had received orders from Moriarty. At lunchtime the next day he was to tell you that he had a contact with vital information about the Bruhl case, and then take you to a pub in Bow. A pub which I have reason to know is run by a man in Moriarty's pay."
"They were planning to trap me?"
"They were planning to kill you," Mycroft replied. "Chater was told to make sure he wasn't seen leaving Scotland Yard with you. Once he had delivered you to the pub he should immediately make himself scarce and establish an alibi for the next hour."
"He was the bait," Greg said. He shook his head. "It doesn't make sense."
"Why not?"
"Moriarty's style is more bombs and snipers, isn't it?"
"Your patterns of movement are particularly irregular," Mycroft replied. "Notoriously, you don't go home when you're supposed to, and you've even been known to sleep in your office. Even a team of snipers couldn't be sure of being able to get a clean shot at you at the right time. Moriarty had to make sure you ended up where he wanted you and on schedule."
"But that was insanely risky for Chater," Greg protested. "He must have known he was putting himself in line to be an accessory to murder. Keeping those pictures hidden wouldn't have been worth it. Liking kinky sex isn't a crime."
"He was leaking information to Irene," Mycroft replied. "I suspect if we dig deeper we'll find he's already been forced to commit other offences. Moriarty's an expert at turning the screws. If Chater's personal life and his career were on the line, are you sure he wouldn't sell you out?"
Chater wouldn't be the first bloke at the Met to have got in far too deep and ending up committing a really serious crime. And yes, he'd have gone with Chater, of course he would. Walked into a trap, like the gullible fool he was. Greg could feel the sweat gathering on his palms.
"OK," he said, trying to sound tough, "so why am I still alive?"
"Chater was told one more thing. That if he heard before 1 p.m. that Sherlock Holmes was dead, he would no longer have to carry out the task. You can draw the obvious conclusion."
"The threat to me was being used as a weapon against Sherlock-"
"-To make him jump," Mycroft finished off his sentence.
"So why am I still alive?" Greg asked again, and it was easy to sound tough this time. "A choice between Sherlock and me dying. Not much of a choice for Sherlock, is it?" The next words came out without thinking. "It's not as if I'm John."
"I don't know why he made that decision," Mycroft replied, and for a moment he actually did look puzzled. "But he clearly did; there's no other possible explanation. And whatever his exact motive, the consequences remain the same."
"Sherlock's dead," Greg growled. Beneath all the tangled mess, one simple fact.
"And you are not." Mycroft's face had resumed its haughty expression. "You owe him your life, Inspector."
And now you've come to collect, Greg realised.
"No," he said, and knew he didn't sound convincing.
"If someone, anyone else you knew had been forced to kill himself, you'd have been after the person responsible," Mycroft said. "You'd have been desperate to 'nail the bastard', wouldn't you? And this is Sherlock. Your colleague...your friend. And you plan to do nothing to avenge him?"
"I can't handle Moriarty." The truth he'd been trying to hide even from himself for a week slipped from his mouth and he glared at Mycroft. The bastard smirked back.
"You don't need to," Mycroft announced. "He's dead."
Just over a week since Sherlock jumped and Mycroft had finished Moriarty off already, Greg thought. Not bad going for a man who didn't much like leaving his own office.
"I didn't kill him," Mycroft added, as if he could read Greg's mind.
"What?" God, none of this made sense.
"Three days ago, the Service received an e-mail containing a set of co-ordinates for a location in Epping Forest. When we got there we found a grave with a body in it. A man in his early thirties, killed by a single shot."
"Do you think Moriarty can't fake deaths?" Greg growled.
"We'd taken DNA samples from him when we held him last year, and sent them to fifteen different police forces across the world. There was other information we collected as well, secured in a number of different locations. All of it matches with the body and with that of the man who was arrested this spring in the Tower of London."
Jim Moriarty was dead. Greg ought to be feeling more pleased than he was, but it all seemed too late now.
"Who killed him?"
"We don't know. He was probably killed on or about Friday 29th, the day that Sherlock died. I suspect Sherlock had his own booby-trap planned. Someone whose sole job, once Sherlock was dead, was to finish off Moriarty."
"John?" Greg asked, trying not to panic. They'd been no-one around to stop John doing something stupid, had there?
"No. Possibly someone from Sherlock's homeless network. Or one of the many criminals with whom Sherlock was friendly. Angelo Portinari, for example," Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "There are also other names that suggest themselves."
"I didn't kill him," Greg replied automatically, and then wished he hadn't sounded so defensive.
"Of course not," Mycroft said. "You're a policeman through and through. You would have tried to arrest Moriarty, not kill him. And it's because you're a policeman, that you're adrift at the moment. Take away your team and you're lost."
It was so tempting just to take a swipe at Mycroft. Wipe that smile off his face the way some coppers Greg had known would have done, with fists and boots. But no, he mustn't react physically, whatever the provocation.
"You've had your ten minutes," he said instead. "Sherlock's dead and so is Moriarty. If you don't want to join them, I suggest you leave now."
Mycroft smiled and didn't budge an inch.
"You haven't heard my proposal yet," he said.
"Whatever it is, I'm not interested."
"I'm offering you another role as an investigator."
"The Met won't take me back," Greg said.
Mycroft reached into his pocket again, and drew out some pieces of paper. "Your resignation letter from the Metropolitan Police Service," he said. "And your new Civil Service contract. You'll officially be employed by the Home Office, but seconded to work with the Serious Organised Crime Agency."
Clever, Greg thought. If he wasn't officially a copper any more, the Met could simply shelve their investigation of him. On the other hand, would SOCA really take him?
"Won't I have to be vetted?"
"They've already agreed to take you," Mycroft replied. "Your security clearance won't be a problem. SOCA want to make sure that Moriarty's criminal networks don't re-emerge without him, and you are going to be their team's point of liaison with the security service."
"You mean I'm to be your inside man in SOCA," Greg said slowly.
"I need someone I can trust," Mycroft said. "You're incorruptible and you can see this through."
"And if I tell you what you can do with your job?" Just for once, Greg thought, just for once I could tell a Holmes where to get off. It was so bloody tempting.
The problem, of course, is that it would leave him where he was. Hung out to dry by the Met and then on the scrapheap. No, it was more than that. If he turned Mycroft down he'd be turning his back on everything he'd stood for. People had suffered from Moriarty's tricks, and someone had to make sure he didn't have any successors.
"We'd want you to start on August 16th," Mycroft said. "I believe you're occupied until then." His voice became even blander. "And if you need any time off in November, that can be arranged."
He knew all about Ruth, then. And Alec. Listening in on his calls, no doubte.
"Anything you don't know about me?" Greg asked grumpily.
"How you put up with Sherlock for so long," Mycroft replied promptly. "I'm aware of your personal life, but I'm not worried about it and nor will SOCA be. What matters is that the work comes first. But you know that already."
"If I accept."
"If you accept. I can leave the contract here and you can inspect it at your leisure if you prefer. My offer will remain open for a couple of days, at least."
Tempting to make Mycroft wait for an answer, but it wasn't justified. It wasn't how he'd expected to end up, Greg thought. Or even what he'd hoped for. But then, you worked with the insufferable genius you had, not the one you wanted. At least you did if, like him, you were desperate to bring criminals to justice.
"Where do you need me to sign?" he asked, as he reached out for the papers.