Fic Post: Structural Integrity, Chapter One
Title: Structural Integrity; or, how Jo Watson met Moriarty after Reichenbach
Summary: In which there are consequences for prior actions, Mycroft Holmes has his manicured fingers in a few too many pies, and Jo Watson negotiates civilian life with mixed success.
Please do note, just for the record, that this isn't a self-contained story; plot threads will be left unresolved for later casefic. It picks up some weeks after Boston Marriage and relies heavily on events in Doyle's canon.
Illustrations: by le_prince_lutin
Thanks to ladyofthelog for all the encouragement and to innie_darling for her beta during the middle of a hurricane, people. Any remaining mistakes, eccentricities, or issues are entirely my own.
“My French is appalling,” Jo says.
“Mine is excellent. We’ll pass without trouble.”
Jo shifts a little, the cross supports of the packing crate digging into her much-abused back. “Of course we will,” she says, smiling a little at the image of a young Sherlock dashing about underfoot, jabbering at Mycroft in French. “Mummy had an au pair, I suppose, and you’ll speak it like a very posh native.”
“If I choose.” She can’t see Sherlock’s face in the dark of the cargo hold. “More usually it’s like a stevedore from a Marseilles dockyard, which is where I learnt.”
Jo laughs at the delightful unexpectedness of this, and the sound of it echoes oddly in that space, which somehow manages to seem cramped and empty at the same time. If she lies very still, she thinks she can almost feel the motion of the waves. Unlikely, on a ship this size, but it is more than eleven hours from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, and she needs something to occupy her mind.
Something aside from wondering what they’ll find on the other side of the Channel, that is.
“Do you think they know where we are?”
“Unlikely.”
“How long will it take them to find out?”
It is not a question of if, but when. This is a truth they’ve acknowledged between them without ever needing to voice it aloud.
They lie there without speaking. Jo listens to the steady sound of air moving through Sherlock’s lungs and imagines it comes in time with the waves.
“Not long,” Sherlock says at last, and Jo nods into the darkness around them.
***
Chapter One: First Report of Dr Watson
Jo heard muffled voices from the corridor and looked up, unable to manage anything like real interest. Odds were good that when the door opened it would only admit another government official in a suit who would sit opposite her and ask the same set of questions she’d already faced a dozen times over. His English would be better than hers, his accent would be just precise enough to put her in her place, and her responses would not have changed in the slightest.
She was right about part of that. When the door did open, the man standing behind it was indeed a suited bureaucrat with an accent calculated for maximum intimidation, but the moment she recognised him she knew he’d come with an entirely different set of questions.
“Good afternoon, Dr Watson,” said Mycroft Holmes.
She said nothing as he exchanged a word with someone outside. He closed the door and came to sit opposite her, the shining expanse of empty table the only buffer between them. Fluorescent lighting didn’t suit him at all, she thought, then reconsidered; it was possible the strain peeking out from under his usual aplomb had another source.
An unhurried silence settled around them. Presumably he expected her to say something, but Jo was not about to start this conversation herself, and at this point she had nothing but time. She crossed her arms and waited, speculating idly on the cost of his elegant and understated wristwatch.
“I see you’ve been treated well,” he said at last.
Jo shrugged. “I could use a bath and a change of clothes.”
“That can be arranged.”
“I’d appreciate it, if you haven’t got bigger fish to fry,” Jo said.
He didn’t so much as blink at having his own words thrown back at him, but clearly he remembered the interview. He’d refused his help on that occasion, even when she’d warned him Sherlock might be in over her head. “Touché, Dr Watson. Not nearly so gauche as ‘I told you so’, but quite as effective.”
“I do what I can.”
“As gratified as I am to find that your rather pawky sense of humour remains undimmed by yesterday’s events, I should remind you that your situation is a serious one. Despite their international reputation for pacifism and philanthropy, the Swiss are disinclined to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. There is no record of your entering the country, and in lieu of a passport you’ve presented them with an unregistered firearm and an unlikely story.”
“It’s the truth.”
“And I’m afraid in this case a lie is far more likely to set you free. I shall see about constructing a suitable one.”
It occurred to her to wonder why he cared enough to spend his no-doubt valuable time and political favours on her. Aloud, she said, “Is that why you flew out here?” He answered that with the silence it deserved, and Jo shook her head, chastened. “I’m sorry. What do you want to know?”
“I have of course read the statement you gave. Was it accurate?”
“Yes.”
“Was it complete?”
“Of course not.”
“Suppose we start with your omissions, then.” He leant back in his chair. “How did you cross the border?”
“In the vault of an armoured van,” Jo said. That had not been an enjoyable few hours, but it had been secure, or so they’d thought. The Swiss no longer required full checks of all vehicles coming from France, but there had always been the risk of a random search-and besides, it wasn’t the authorities they’d been hiding from. “One of Sherlock’s-”
“Her old client, yes, the banker from Interlaken. I should have known. And you crossed the channel in a cargo ship on the Portsmouth-Saint-Malo line. I was at least able to track you that far.”
“You weren’t the only one.”
“Indeed. When did you first become aware that you’d been followed?”
“Two weeks ago, I think, in Geneva. That’s when I started wondering.” Sherlock had known much earlier, but that went without saying. “She’d have managed better without me.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Jo hadn’t meant to say that, but she’d thought it so frequently since leaving London that it had just slipped out. She and Mycroft Holmes stared at one another, and for a moment she wondered if his response had been any less involuntary.
“What happened at Meiringen?” he asked at length.
“You said you read my statement.”
“It provided insufficient detail.”
“How is my sister?”
“Alive.” Jo flinched. “She is recovering. Tell me what happened yesterday at Reichenbach.”
Jo shook her head. “Get me out of here, and then we’ll talk.”
“As always, your assumptions about the extent of my political influence are vastly exaggerated.”
“I doubt it.”
“Dr Watson, is James Ryder dead, or isn’t he?”
“He is,” Jo said.
“And Sebastian Moran?”
A beat. “Not yet.” The deadness in her voice frightened her, and her palm itched for cool metal.
He actually smiled, then stood and bowed with the barest inclination of his head. There was a question missing there, one they both knew he should have asked but hadn’t, and Jo wasn’t sure whether she should be grateful for that.
As he turned, the one question she really wanted answered came spilling past her lips. “Have they found her body?”
He stilled with his hand on the knob. She couldn’t see his face.
“No,” he said, and was gone.
***
When they came to retrieve her several hours later, she was brought to what might have passed as a guest room in a low-budget hotel if the locks hadn’t been on the wrong side of the door. It was small and ruthlessly drab, but it was clean and had its own shower, and folded on the bed were two pairs of trousers and three pullovers Jo had last seen when she’d packed her civilian clothes into Harry’s storage cupboard. Her under-things were hidden delicately underneath. Jo had a sudden image of Mycroft Holmes going through her laundry, and shuddered, then thought with some small relief that it had probably been the assistant.
He sent for her again the next day, and the day after, each time looking just a little older and more polished. Each time he managed to wring a little more out of her. “Why do you care?” she asked, tired beyond belief for all she’d spent the time in a quiet room with a comfortable cot. “It’s done. They’re dead, Ryder and Sherlock both.”
“But the organisation remains, however loosely connected it may be,” he said. “Ryder was only Moriarty’s most obstreperous member. Sherlock gave me no fewer than five names at the highest levels of the group, but she was unable to provide hard proof for all of them, and she had reason to believe there were others.”
She had no real interest in feeding Mycroft Holmes’ curiosity, but she’d had time to think of questions of her own, and some of them took precedence over stony and resentful silence. “Was Sonia Ginzberg one of them?” The name stuck in Jo’s throat.
“Your psychiatrist?” Evidently this came as a surprise. “Sherlock never mentioned her.”
“I don’t think she knew,” Jo said. “Not until the end.”
Mycroft nodded. “Her car was pulled from the Thames with bullet-holes through the rear window and windscreen, and her body was found several hours later. The timing of her death was too closely tied to your disappearance to be merely coincidental, but I assumed she was collateral damage. I take it that was an error. Do you have proof?”
“Ryder was a patient of hers. She told me. And Moran, too, according to Sherlock. I’m not certain about the others.”
“Circumstantial,” Mycroft said, “though it certainly provides an avenue of inquiry. I’ll look into her patient files.”
Jo shook her head. “But she’s dead, too.”
“Yes, that seems to be en vogue.” His gaze narrowed. “Was it at your hand?”
Ginzberg was a dead weight under her arm, and the cold water pulled at them with relentless fingers. “More or less,” Jo said. “Was that all you wanted?”
He gave her the same look he’d worn when she’d refused to let him examine her hand on their first meeting, the infuriating Mycroft-knows-best expression laced with such unquestioned and unquestioning privilege that the only possible responses were acquiescence or physical violence. So far she’d tended toward the former, but it struck Jo that eventually he was going to misjudge his audience, and at that point things might well change. “I am not your enemy, Dr Watson.”
“I know,” she said. “Pretty sad state of affairs, that.”
He offered her a smile that was mostly grimace, and she did not see him again for three whole days. She dreamt of falling water and woke longing for her gun.
A week after she’d been taken into custody, her solitary breakfast was interrupted by a knock at the door. They had not yet invaded the privacy of her room, so usually this meant a summons to further interrogation elsewhere, but when she opened the door on this occasion it was not to find an escort waiting outside. Instead, Mycroft Holmes stood in the hall.
“What are you doing here?” Jo asked automatically, but even as she said it she was absorbing the change in him. He was no less polished, carried no less of an air of cool subtlety, and so it was difficult to put her finger on what precisely she saw that morning that she had not seen before, but there was something alive in him that had not been on their last meeting.
“I’ve made arrangements for your release,” he said. The alteration was even present in his voice, a sort of vibrance under tight control.
“What’s happened?”
“What has happened, Dr Watson, is that the Swiss authorities have agreed to release you.” He handed her a bulky manila packet. She opened it warily and peered inside. There were several glossy slips of paper beneath the dark red of a passport-her own, going by the stamps on the back-but the bulk and the weight came from the handgun nestled inside. “Your flight leaves in two hours. There is a car waiting downstairs, and you’ll find all the necessary documents authorising the carriage of a firearm on board an international aircraft. Those were not easy to obtain. Do try to be discreet about it.”
“Why?”
“Because I would prefer to avoid another international incident.”
“You know what I meant. Why now? What’s changed?”
“Nothing at all. The wheels of bureaucracy turn in their own time.”
“Bullshit,” Jo said. He raised one delicate eyebrow. “What’ve you done?”
“I have done very little. The body of James Ryder was dredged up late last night, however, and it seems that has lent credence to your otherwise unconvincing narrative.”
“Just Ryder?”
“Oh, I have every expectation of finding my sister,” he said, and she found she still had it in her to be surprised by his callousness. “We won’t be needing you for that. You may thank me for the return of your weapon and for all the paperwork. Run along home, Dr Watson. Your work here is done.”
Jo was still so very tired, and the prospect of flinging herself at his polished facade in the hope that it might crack seemed far more trouble than it was worth. She reached into the envelope to fish out the passport and boarding pass. A glossy new Oyster card was trapped in the bottom corner, and she took that as well. She looked down at the remainder: a fat stack of ten-pound notes and her gun.
It would be so very easy to take it. She could walk with purpose into a world that dared to hold Sebastian Moran and not Sherlock Holmes.
Moral liabilities, whispered the ghost of Sonia Ginzberg. Jo handed the envelope back to Mycroft.
He hadn’t expected that. She could read it in the sudden, careful blankness of his eyes. “Don’t be foolish.”
“You said it yourself,” Jo said. “My work’s done.”
“Think about what it is you’re doing.”
She had; she’d done very little in the last week but think about meeting Moran with a loaded pistol. It had been time enough to realise she couldn’t trust herself. “Correction. I’m done. Goodbye, Mr Holmes.”
She strode past him, pausing despite herself when he called after her. “I must admit I’ve begun to appreciate my sister’s uncharacteristic fixation. Leaving aside your rather hypocritical clinging to antiquated morality, there are moments when I could almost respect you.”
Jo could feel his eyes boring into her spine. “I’ll take the morals and leave the respect, thanks.”
“A pity,” he said. “You could have been so very useful.”
She left without looking back, but his words rang in her ears until her plane had landed at Heathrow.
***
Jo should probably have thought at least once about what she would do after she got back to London, but somehow the question didn’t occur to her until she was standing at the tube station, listening for the familiar rattle of the cars along the rails. It was actually quite like being discharged, except then she’d had cash in her pocket, however little, and a place to go, however bare and empty of comfort.
The doors opened and she stepped inside, leaning against one wall. She considered her options as the motion of the train hummed through her, the empty vibrations of home or something like it.
There was always Harry’s, where she had been staying just before things had gone completely mad. Except Harry would be at home by now, and neither of them was prepared for that conversation. Coward, Jo thought tiredly. Scott’s and Sarah’s she discarded also. She’d burnt those bridges too thoroughly to impose at a moment’s notice.
She thought with a pang of Sherlock’s hideaway in Leamouth, where she’d left her wallet over a month and a half ago. Supposing she could find it again, supposing she could work out how to get inside, supposing it hadn’t been torn apart by Moriarty or Mycroft. She wondered whether the half-empty bottle of shampoo still sat on the edge of the sink. She wondered whether the narrow bed was still unmade, and then she stopped wondering, because she couldn’t breathe.
That was right out, then. She gave up rationalising and let her feet take her where they would, which, perhaps inevitably, turned out to be Baker Street.
Pushing aside the very reasonable thought that no-one might answer, Jo stepped up to the door and rang.
A long moment, and she shoved her fists deep in the pockets of her jacket so she could ignore the tremor in her left hand. Another moment, and then the door opened, and there was Mrs Hudson.
Jo would have expected shock, had she thought enough to expect anything. She did get a flicker of real surprise, and she waited silently as Mrs Hudson visibly pulled herself together, surprise giving way to warmth and a deep, knowing sadness.
“Oh, love-” She opened her arms.
Jo could count on one shaking hand the people with whom she’d exchanged more than passing physical contact in the last six months, and even then the ratio of life-or-death situations to comfort or affection was depressingly high. It felt like a luxury, almost, like something she shouldn’t be allowed-and then it felt like the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Some hours later, they sat at Mrs Hudson’s kitchen table. Safer there; there were fewer associations, and it smelled of tea and bacon but not at all of sulphur or embalming fluid. Jo’s mug of tea was still almost full, and neither of them had touched the biscuits.
“When was it?” Mrs Hudson asked. Jo noted her face was tanned several shades darker than usual, souvenir of her month-long cruise gratis Mycroft, and wondered what she’d thought on coming home to find one of her tenants moved out and the other missing.
Jo had to swallow before she spoke. Her throat was sore, and she knew without looking that her eyes had gone red and puffy. “About a week ago.”
“You could have phoned, dear.” That should have sounded reproachful, but somehow it didn’t.
Jo sniffed wetly into a napkin, then wiped her nose. “Things were complicated.”
“Sherlock did have that way about her.” Past tense. At least one of them was accepting this gracefully. “I’ve been talking with that detective, the good-looking one Sherlock was always dragging about. He’s been worried, you know.”
“He’s had reason to be.”
“He thought you were in Afghanistan. Did you tell him that?”
“Like I said. It got complicated.” She took a sip of the tea and grimaced at finding it stone-cold. Mrs Hudson tsked and took it away, getting up to flick the kettle back on and rinse out the mug.
That was at least familiar. She was unused to this Mrs Hudson, a muted version without the bright smile and the gossipy asides, but then anyone who’d rented a flat to the woman who’d ensured her husband’s execution had to be good at compartmentalising, Jo supposed. “How was it you said you met Sherlock, Mrs Hudson?”
That earned her a quick look of amusement. “Never did say, did I? That’s not a story for tonight. I’ll make you a cuppa if you’ll drink this one, and then I’ll see about making up your bed.”
“I’m not a child.” There was an ache in every bone she had.
“More’s the pity.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, they don’t expect children to give explanations, now, do they?” She set the mug back on the table, the teabag swimming in dim and milky liquid. “You rest up tonight. That detective will want to know you’re back. You’ll have quite a day of it tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Jo said, staring down into her tea. “Yes, I suppose I will.”
***
The next morning there were, as predicted, explanations to be made and statements to be signed. Someone had to explain about Moriarty and why a respected psychiatrist’s body had been found on the riverbank with a crack in her skull and the Thames in her lungs, and someone had to tell Lestrade why Sherlock hadn’t come back on that flight from Bern, and in some ways it was exactly as though she’d never left that interrogation room in Switzerland.
“I don’t believe it,” Donovan said flatly.
Jo shrugged. “Not my problem, is it?”
Donovan’s jaw tightened, and Lestrade stepped in. He’d brightened at first to see her walk in that morning, alive and whole, but that hadn’t lasted long. “You’re certain, Dr Watson.”
“She left me a note.”
“Do you have it?”
“I-no, it was typed into her phone.” She’d had it with her, but Sherlock hadn’t texted, hadn’t called. But there hadn’t been reception, she remembered that, because Jo had tried phoning the hotel with the cheap, disposable mobile they’d bought in Interlaken. “Her brother must have it. Or the Swiss authorities.”
“And Moriarty?”
“You got Sherlock’s email. You got that weeks ago. Haven’t you been looking?”
“There were a lot of names and not much in the way of proof. We’re working on it.”
“Work harder,” Jo said, and at that Donovan got up and stalked out of the room. Lestrade brought up a hand to scrub at his face.
“You need to understand,” he said. “You just up and disappeared. Both of you, without a word, and then weeks later and completely by accident we worked out the coat and shoes left in that car they pulled out of the Thames were yours. We brought your landlady in to confirm.”
Mrs Hudson hadn’t even mentioned it.
Lestrade was still talking. “We pieced it together as best we could, and what seemed likeliest was that you’d wash up on shore, too, before very long, and Sherlock knew what happened and had gone off the map to deal with it. Bloody cryptic, that email of hers, all ‘If you’re reading this, I’m not in a position to contact you directly,’ and what were we meant to do with that?
“So we looked into it, and Moriarty turned out to be a massive underground operation with money flying in all directions, but it didn’t get us any closer to working out what had happened to you and Sherlock. And, here’s the thing, Joanna-” He leant over the table, watchful and intent. “We can’t confirm, what with all the damage from water pressure, but Anderson’s got this theory the bullet-holes in that car’s windows were made from the inside.”
“They were,” she said. “My psychiatrist tried to shoot me.”
He sat back, the legs of his chair meeting the floor with a dull thud, and they just looked at one another. “Do you know the sort of pressure we’ve had in that case? She had clout, that woman, and we’ve had people from King’s College and Maudsley Hospital demanding an arrest and generally screaming bloody murder. Which we knew it was, of course, but we were assuming she’d been killed by someone trying to get at you. Are you saying she was involved?”
“Yes. Check her patient histories against that list of names Sherlock gave you. Might have to go back a few decades.”
“Damn it,” Lestrade said, and that summed it up pretty well so far as Jo was concerned. “You can’t prove anything, I suppose?”
“You can take my word for it, or not,” Jo said. “I’ll swear to it in court if you like.”
“Not as though we can prosecute her. The others, now-but we’ll come to that when we have to. It won’t go over well, though. Like I said, she had friends. At least there’s no need to bring it up before the memorial.”
“The what?”
“King’s College is honouring her tomorrow afternoon. Contributions to the field, and all that. I got an icy call from the faculty office a few days ago, saying out of respect for her memory we really ought to produce a responsible party.”
And Jo was the closest he could get, this side of the grave, but so far he’d made no move to arrest her on suspicion of murder, manslaughter, obstructing the investigation, or anything else for which she might possibly be charged. Which was good, of course, but Jo couldn’t quite manage to feel relieved. “I suppose you’ll want a statement on Ginzberg, too.”
“If you would.”
“Not as though I’ve got anything else on,” Jo said, and if his eyes lingered worriedly on her as he got up to fetch a transcriptionist, at least he refrained from further comment.
***
No doubt it was confirmation of the masochistic streak Harry’d always accused her of having, but the next afternoon she showed up at King’s College dressed in the most tasteful, memorial-appropriate outfit she owned. Somewhat to her irritation, this had meant resorting to the clothing Mycroft had provided for her the day she’d turned up in hospital with her sister’s blood all down her front, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Jo floated through the eulogies, listening to people in suits and the very particular sort of eyeglasses medical men of a certain age seemed to favour talk about Ginzberg’s contributions to her field. Representatives from King’s, representatives from Maudsley, and then a quietly well-spoken man who turned out to be her widower.
Jo had known from the first that he’d existed, had heard Sherlock’s assertion that Ginzberg had married a former patient and her speculation on which category of her psychiatric interests he’d represented, but she’d never given any thought to the reality of the man. She wondered if he’d known what his wife did when she wasn’t treating patients-what she did, occasionally, while she was treating patients. Jo should never have come.
Afterward there were drinks and the sort of finger foods familiar from the better-funded variety of faculty events at any university. Jo got herself some coffee but didn’t drink it, and the thought of food made her gut do unpleasant things.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” Jo turned to see a woman at her shoulder. Her face had a hazy sort of familiarity about it. “My daughter says she knows you.”
Jo was about to say that seemed unlikely, but then her eyes fell to the girl at the woman’s side, and a quiet chill closed around her heart. “Maddy Parsons,” she said. The girl shrank back against her mother. “What are you doing here?”
Terribly rude of her, but the words fell out of their own volition, and the mother didn’t seem to notice. “We’re so terribly sorry about Dr Ginzberg.”
“You knew her?”
“Maddy was seeing her. After the kidnapping, you know, but she’s doing much better now,” Elizabeth Parsons said all in a rush, as though Jo had been about to say otherwise. “She’s doing very well. You’re Joanna Watson, the one who found her?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Jo said, because it hadn’t been. And now, like then, Maddy said nothing at all.
Parsons appeared not to notice this, either. “Were you a friend?”
“A friend?”
“Of Sonia Ginzberg’s.”
Who had treated Maddy Parsons after using the child to orchestrate her uncle’s suicide. “How did you find her?” Jo asked hoarsely.
“She approached us through the police. Offered her services for free, you know. She was wonderful with trauma victims, and she helped Maddy more than you can imagine,” she said. She clutched her daughter’s hand with desperate determination. “Really she did, even in that short time. It’s been such a shock.”
The girl stared up at Jo, her wide eyes impenetrable.
“Trauma victims,” Jo repeated. “Excuse me.”
She shoved the coffee onto the nearest level surface and fled. She’d seen the women’s toilets on her way in, thank God, and made it there without any false starts; as she hunched over a porcelain bowl and heaved, some cold and removed part of her observed that at least she now had reason to be grateful for her poor appetite.
It was over quickly. She leant unsteadily against the tiled wall and breathed.
Someone knocked at the door of the stall. “Are you all right?”
She knew that voice, but just now she couldn’t place it. “Fine,” Jo called, pushing one hand across her sweat-slicked face.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait to see for myself.” The woman sounded calm and reasonable, and Jo wanted to scream.
Instead she pulled a length of tissue from the toilet roll, wiped her mouth until it hurt, and flushed. Then she unlocked the door.
“Joanna,” said the woman outside, vaguely surprised.
“Ella,” Jo replied. “But you’re meant to be in Edinburgh.”
“And I came back for a colleague’s memorial,” said her first therapist. She was still calm and reasonable, but now with a thin layer of caution over it all. “How have you been, Joanna?”
Vomiting in a public loo, how do you think? Jo almost said, but she caught it in time, because Ella Thompson was not an idiot. “Busy,” she did say, because surely being kidnapped and shot at, fleeing for her life across international borders, and being interrogated by Swiss authorities constituted an active lifestyle.
“And how is Sherlock?”
“Oh, you know,” Jo said. Her voice sounded brittle and too bright, and surely Ella would notice. “Busy.”
“I see.” A dubious pause. “Did you get on well with Sonia?”
A bubble of hysteria threatened to rise up in Jo’s throat, but she tamped it down ruthlessly. “She certainly knew what she was doing.” Jo wouldn’t, couldn’t do this just now. “Good to see you.”
“Joanna-”
“Got to leave, sorry. Keeping Sherlock waiting, and you know that’s never a good idea.”
“Are you-” But Jo was already in the hall, and she pushed blindly through the quiet clots of mourners between her and the door.
It was cool and damp outside, and she just stood for a long moment, feeling the light mist against her face as she waited for her stomach and her hand to settle. It was several minutes before she noticed that not only had that sleek black car been parked there the whole time, but the suited driver was standing patiently, holding the rear door open for her.
Bloody fantastic.
She considered walking away, but that would only prolong the inevitable. Jo slid into the seat beside Mycroft Holmes, her stiff back relaxing the moment it hit the expensive and ergonomically-sound cushions.
“Hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” she said.
“When you try my patience, Dr Watson, I’ll be sure to let you know. I hope you won’t consider it forward if I observe that grey cashmere suits you.” The car pulled out into traffic. “I must say I hadn’t expected you to come here.”
“You know how it is,” Jo said. “When you kill your psychiatrist, it’s just good manners to show up at the memorial.”
He gave her the careful chuckle he’d probably developed in secret meetings with cabinet members and foreign heads of state. “You are a remarkable woman.”
Jo laughed. It hurt her throat. “The last few times we’ve met, I’ve been at rock bottom.”
“My point exactly. Though to be accurate, I’d say rock bottom in this case was approximately…ten minutes ago?”
Perversely, she found herself wishing he had been there. Being sick all over Mycroft Holmes’ very expensive shoes would have been horrifying, but she thought the attendant satisfaction might be enough to make up for it.
“It was good of you to come collect me yourself,” she said. “That assistant of yours have better things to do?”
“Why do you resent me?”
He seemed genuinely curious. She shrugged. “You’re an arrogant arsehole who gets off on meddling in other people’s lives. You’re a bureaucrat who can send soldiers off to die without scuffing the shine on your shoes. Your hands are too soft, and I don’t like your tie. Take your pick, really.”
He smiled, lips pulling back against twin rows of tidy, narrow teeth, and she turned away to stare out the window. It had started to drizzle, validating the bone-deep ache in her shoulder. She watched for a few long moments as heavy drops crept haltingly down the glass.
“They’ve found a body,” he said into her silence.
She’d known, somehow, she realised distantly. Sherlock would have scoffed if she’d called it intuition, so Jo settled on a leap of logic, and she turned to look back at Mycroft Holmes with what she thought was admirable composure under the circumstances. “Will she be repatriated?”
“It’s already done.”
Of course. He wouldn’t be back in the country if he hadn’t finished the business that had kept him in Switzerland, and he certainly wouldn’t have come by for a chat with Joanna Watson if he’d anything more important at hand. “Will there be a funeral?”
“Saturday afternoon, in Golders Green. She requested cremation. I’ll send my assistant with a car, if I may.”
“No need.”
“As you like.” The car pulled smoothly up to the kerb outside the flat, and Jo reached for the handle. “My condolences, Dr Watson.”
She gave him a brusque nod and left. It didn’t occur to her until she was halfway up the seventeen steps to the sitting room that sympathy should probably have been offered the other way around. Odd, but then that was hardly the oddest thing about Mycroft Holmes, and she didn’t waste time speculating on what it meant.
Continue to Chapter Two
Summary: In which there are consequences for prior actions, Mycroft Holmes has his manicured fingers in a few too many pies, and Jo Watson negotiates civilian life with mixed success.
Please do note, just for the record, that this isn't a self-contained story; plot threads will be left unresolved for later casefic. It picks up some weeks after Boston Marriage and relies heavily on events in Doyle's canon.
Illustrations: by le_prince_lutin
Thanks to ladyofthelog for all the encouragement and to innie_darling for her beta during the middle of a hurricane, people. Any remaining mistakes, eccentricities, or issues are entirely my own.
“My French is appalling,” Jo says.
“Mine is excellent. We’ll pass without trouble.”
Jo shifts a little, the cross supports of the packing crate digging into her much-abused back. “Of course we will,” she says, smiling a little at the image of a young Sherlock dashing about underfoot, jabbering at Mycroft in French. “Mummy had an au pair, I suppose, and you’ll speak it like a very posh native.”
“If I choose.” She can’t see Sherlock’s face in the dark of the cargo hold. “More usually it’s like a stevedore from a Marseilles dockyard, which is where I learnt.”
Jo laughs at the delightful unexpectedness of this, and the sound of it echoes oddly in that space, which somehow manages to seem cramped and empty at the same time. If she lies very still, she thinks she can almost feel the motion of the waves. Unlikely, on a ship this size, but it is more than eleven hours from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, and she needs something to occupy her mind.
Something aside from wondering what they’ll find on the other side of the Channel, that is.
“Do you think they know where we are?”
“Unlikely.”
“How long will it take them to find out?”
It is not a question of if, but when. This is a truth they’ve acknowledged between them without ever needing to voice it aloud.
They lie there without speaking. Jo listens to the steady sound of air moving through Sherlock’s lungs and imagines it comes in time with the waves.
“Not long,” Sherlock says at last, and Jo nods into the darkness around them.
***
Chapter One: First Report of Dr Watson
Jo heard muffled voices from the corridor and looked up, unable to manage anything like real interest. Odds were good that when the door opened it would only admit another government official in a suit who would sit opposite her and ask the same set of questions she’d already faced a dozen times over. His English would be better than hers, his accent would be just precise enough to put her in her place, and her responses would not have changed in the slightest.
She was right about part of that. When the door did open, the man standing behind it was indeed a suited bureaucrat with an accent calculated for maximum intimidation, but the moment she recognised him she knew he’d come with an entirely different set of questions.
“Good afternoon, Dr Watson,” said Mycroft Holmes.
She said nothing as he exchanged a word with someone outside. He closed the door and came to sit opposite her, the shining expanse of empty table the only buffer between them. Fluorescent lighting didn’t suit him at all, she thought, then reconsidered; it was possible the strain peeking out from under his usual aplomb had another source.
An unhurried silence settled around them. Presumably he expected her to say something, but Jo was not about to start this conversation herself, and at this point she had nothing but time. She crossed her arms and waited, speculating idly on the cost of his elegant and understated wristwatch.
“I see you’ve been treated well,” he said at last.
Jo shrugged. “I could use a bath and a change of clothes.”
“That can be arranged.”
“I’d appreciate it, if you haven’t got bigger fish to fry,” Jo said.
He didn’t so much as blink at having his own words thrown back at him, but clearly he remembered the interview. He’d refused his help on that occasion, even when she’d warned him Sherlock might be in over her head. “Touché, Dr Watson. Not nearly so gauche as ‘I told you so’, but quite as effective.”
“I do what I can.”
“As gratified as I am to find that your rather pawky sense of humour remains undimmed by yesterday’s events, I should remind you that your situation is a serious one. Despite their international reputation for pacifism and philanthropy, the Swiss are disinclined to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. There is no record of your entering the country, and in lieu of a passport you’ve presented them with an unregistered firearm and an unlikely story.”
“It’s the truth.”
“And I’m afraid in this case a lie is far more likely to set you free. I shall see about constructing a suitable one.”
It occurred to her to wonder why he cared enough to spend his no-doubt valuable time and political favours on her. Aloud, she said, “Is that why you flew out here?” He answered that with the silence it deserved, and Jo shook her head, chastened. “I’m sorry. What do you want to know?”
“I have of course read the statement you gave. Was it accurate?”
“Yes.”
“Was it complete?”
“Of course not.”
“Suppose we start with your omissions, then.” He leant back in his chair. “How did you cross the border?”
“In the vault of an armoured van,” Jo said. That had not been an enjoyable few hours, but it had been secure, or so they’d thought. The Swiss no longer required full checks of all vehicles coming from France, but there had always been the risk of a random search-and besides, it wasn’t the authorities they’d been hiding from. “One of Sherlock’s-”
“Her old client, yes, the banker from Interlaken. I should have known. And you crossed the channel in a cargo ship on the Portsmouth-Saint-Malo line. I was at least able to track you that far.”
“You weren’t the only one.”
“Indeed. When did you first become aware that you’d been followed?”
“Two weeks ago, I think, in Geneva. That’s when I started wondering.” Sherlock had known much earlier, but that went without saying. “She’d have managed better without me.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Jo hadn’t meant to say that, but she’d thought it so frequently since leaving London that it had just slipped out. She and Mycroft Holmes stared at one another, and for a moment she wondered if his response had been any less involuntary.
“What happened at Meiringen?” he asked at length.
“You said you read my statement.”
“It provided insufficient detail.”
“How is my sister?”
“Alive.” Jo flinched. “She is recovering. Tell me what happened yesterday at Reichenbach.”
Jo shook her head. “Get me out of here, and then we’ll talk.”
“As always, your assumptions about the extent of my political influence are vastly exaggerated.”
“I doubt it.”
“Dr Watson, is James Ryder dead, or isn’t he?”
“He is,” Jo said.
“And Sebastian Moran?”
A beat. “Not yet.” The deadness in her voice frightened her, and her palm itched for cool metal.
He actually smiled, then stood and bowed with the barest inclination of his head. There was a question missing there, one they both knew he should have asked but hadn’t, and Jo wasn’t sure whether she should be grateful for that.
As he turned, the one question she really wanted answered came spilling past her lips. “Have they found her body?”
He stilled with his hand on the knob. She couldn’t see his face.
“No,” he said, and was gone.
***
When they came to retrieve her several hours later, she was brought to what might have passed as a guest room in a low-budget hotel if the locks hadn’t been on the wrong side of the door. It was small and ruthlessly drab, but it was clean and had its own shower, and folded on the bed were two pairs of trousers and three pullovers Jo had last seen when she’d packed her civilian clothes into Harry’s storage cupboard. Her under-things were hidden delicately underneath. Jo had a sudden image of Mycroft Holmes going through her laundry, and shuddered, then thought with some small relief that it had probably been the assistant.
He sent for her again the next day, and the day after, each time looking just a little older and more polished. Each time he managed to wring a little more out of her. “Why do you care?” she asked, tired beyond belief for all she’d spent the time in a quiet room with a comfortable cot. “It’s done. They’re dead, Ryder and Sherlock both.”
“But the organisation remains, however loosely connected it may be,” he said. “Ryder was only Moriarty’s most obstreperous member. Sherlock gave me no fewer than five names at the highest levels of the group, but she was unable to provide hard proof for all of them, and she had reason to believe there were others.”
She had no real interest in feeding Mycroft Holmes’ curiosity, but she’d had time to think of questions of her own, and some of them took precedence over stony and resentful silence. “Was Sonia Ginzberg one of them?” The name stuck in Jo’s throat.
“Your psychiatrist?” Evidently this came as a surprise. “Sherlock never mentioned her.”
“I don’t think she knew,” Jo said. “Not until the end.”
Mycroft nodded. “Her car was pulled from the Thames with bullet-holes through the rear window and windscreen, and her body was found several hours later. The timing of her death was too closely tied to your disappearance to be merely coincidental, but I assumed she was collateral damage. I take it that was an error. Do you have proof?”
“Ryder was a patient of hers. She told me. And Moran, too, according to Sherlock. I’m not certain about the others.”
“Circumstantial,” Mycroft said, “though it certainly provides an avenue of inquiry. I’ll look into her patient files.”
Jo shook her head. “But she’s dead, too.”
“Yes, that seems to be en vogue.” His gaze narrowed. “Was it at your hand?”
Ginzberg was a dead weight under her arm, and the cold water pulled at them with relentless fingers. “More or less,” Jo said. “Was that all you wanted?”
He gave her the same look he’d worn when she’d refused to let him examine her hand on their first meeting, the infuriating Mycroft-knows-best expression laced with such unquestioned and unquestioning privilege that the only possible responses were acquiescence or physical violence. So far she’d tended toward the former, but it struck Jo that eventually he was going to misjudge his audience, and at that point things might well change. “I am not your enemy, Dr Watson.”
“I know,” she said. “Pretty sad state of affairs, that.”
He offered her a smile that was mostly grimace, and she did not see him again for three whole days. She dreamt of falling water and woke longing for her gun.
A week after she’d been taken into custody, her solitary breakfast was interrupted by a knock at the door. They had not yet invaded the privacy of her room, so usually this meant a summons to further interrogation elsewhere, but when she opened the door on this occasion it was not to find an escort waiting outside. Instead, Mycroft Holmes stood in the hall.
“What are you doing here?” Jo asked automatically, but even as she said it she was absorbing the change in him. He was no less polished, carried no less of an air of cool subtlety, and so it was difficult to put her finger on what precisely she saw that morning that she had not seen before, but there was something alive in him that had not been on their last meeting.
“I’ve made arrangements for your release,” he said. The alteration was even present in his voice, a sort of vibrance under tight control.
“What’s happened?”
“What has happened, Dr Watson, is that the Swiss authorities have agreed to release you.” He handed her a bulky manila packet. She opened it warily and peered inside. There were several glossy slips of paper beneath the dark red of a passport-her own, going by the stamps on the back-but the bulk and the weight came from the handgun nestled inside. “Your flight leaves in two hours. There is a car waiting downstairs, and you’ll find all the necessary documents authorising the carriage of a firearm on board an international aircraft. Those were not easy to obtain. Do try to be discreet about it.”
“Why?”
“Because I would prefer to avoid another international incident.”
“You know what I meant. Why now? What’s changed?”
“Nothing at all. The wheels of bureaucracy turn in their own time.”
“Bullshit,” Jo said. He raised one delicate eyebrow. “What’ve you done?”
“I have done very little. The body of James Ryder was dredged up late last night, however, and it seems that has lent credence to your otherwise unconvincing narrative.”
“Just Ryder?”
“Oh, I have every expectation of finding my sister,” he said, and she found she still had it in her to be surprised by his callousness. “We won’t be needing you for that. You may thank me for the return of your weapon and for all the paperwork. Run along home, Dr Watson. Your work here is done.”
Jo was still so very tired, and the prospect of flinging herself at his polished facade in the hope that it might crack seemed far more trouble than it was worth. She reached into the envelope to fish out the passport and boarding pass. A glossy new Oyster card was trapped in the bottom corner, and she took that as well. She looked down at the remainder: a fat stack of ten-pound notes and her gun.
It would be so very easy to take it. She could walk with purpose into a world that dared to hold Sebastian Moran and not Sherlock Holmes.
Moral liabilities, whispered the ghost of Sonia Ginzberg. Jo handed the envelope back to Mycroft.
He hadn’t expected that. She could read it in the sudden, careful blankness of his eyes. “Don’t be foolish.”
“You said it yourself,” Jo said. “My work’s done.”
“Think about what it is you’re doing.”
She had; she’d done very little in the last week but think about meeting Moran with a loaded pistol. It had been time enough to realise she couldn’t trust herself. “Correction. I’m done. Goodbye, Mr Holmes.”
She strode past him, pausing despite herself when he called after her. “I must admit I’ve begun to appreciate my sister’s uncharacteristic fixation. Leaving aside your rather hypocritical clinging to antiquated morality, there are moments when I could almost respect you.”
Jo could feel his eyes boring into her spine. “I’ll take the morals and leave the respect, thanks.”
“A pity,” he said. “You could have been so very useful.”
She left without looking back, but his words rang in her ears until her plane had landed at Heathrow.
***
Jo should probably have thought at least once about what she would do after she got back to London, but somehow the question didn’t occur to her until she was standing at the tube station, listening for the familiar rattle of the cars along the rails. It was actually quite like being discharged, except then she’d had cash in her pocket, however little, and a place to go, however bare and empty of comfort.
The doors opened and she stepped inside, leaning against one wall. She considered her options as the motion of the train hummed through her, the empty vibrations of home or something like it.
There was always Harry’s, where she had been staying just before things had gone completely mad. Except Harry would be at home by now, and neither of them was prepared for that conversation. Coward, Jo thought tiredly. Scott’s and Sarah’s she discarded also. She’d burnt those bridges too thoroughly to impose at a moment’s notice.
She thought with a pang of Sherlock’s hideaway in Leamouth, where she’d left her wallet over a month and a half ago. Supposing she could find it again, supposing she could work out how to get inside, supposing it hadn’t been torn apart by Moriarty or Mycroft. She wondered whether the half-empty bottle of shampoo still sat on the edge of the sink. She wondered whether the narrow bed was still unmade, and then she stopped wondering, because she couldn’t breathe.
That was right out, then. She gave up rationalising and let her feet take her where they would, which, perhaps inevitably, turned out to be Baker Street.
Pushing aside the very reasonable thought that no-one might answer, Jo stepped up to the door and rang.
A long moment, and she shoved her fists deep in the pockets of her jacket so she could ignore the tremor in her left hand. Another moment, and then the door opened, and there was Mrs Hudson.
Jo would have expected shock, had she thought enough to expect anything. She did get a flicker of real surprise, and she waited silently as Mrs Hudson visibly pulled herself together, surprise giving way to warmth and a deep, knowing sadness.
“Oh, love-” She opened her arms.
Jo could count on one shaking hand the people with whom she’d exchanged more than passing physical contact in the last six months, and even then the ratio of life-or-death situations to comfort or affection was depressingly high. It felt like a luxury, almost, like something she shouldn’t be allowed-and then it felt like the only thing keeping her on her feet.
Some hours later, they sat at Mrs Hudson’s kitchen table. Safer there; there were fewer associations, and it smelled of tea and bacon but not at all of sulphur or embalming fluid. Jo’s mug of tea was still almost full, and neither of them had touched the biscuits.
“When was it?” Mrs Hudson asked. Jo noted her face was tanned several shades darker than usual, souvenir of her month-long cruise gratis Mycroft, and wondered what she’d thought on coming home to find one of her tenants moved out and the other missing.
Jo had to swallow before she spoke. Her throat was sore, and she knew without looking that her eyes had gone red and puffy. “About a week ago.”
“You could have phoned, dear.” That should have sounded reproachful, but somehow it didn’t.
Jo sniffed wetly into a napkin, then wiped her nose. “Things were complicated.”
“Sherlock did have that way about her.” Past tense. At least one of them was accepting this gracefully. “I’ve been talking with that detective, the good-looking one Sherlock was always dragging about. He’s been worried, you know.”
“He’s had reason to be.”
“He thought you were in Afghanistan. Did you tell him that?”
“Like I said. It got complicated.” She took a sip of the tea and grimaced at finding it stone-cold. Mrs Hudson tsked and took it away, getting up to flick the kettle back on and rinse out the mug.
That was at least familiar. She was unused to this Mrs Hudson, a muted version without the bright smile and the gossipy asides, but then anyone who’d rented a flat to the woman who’d ensured her husband’s execution had to be good at compartmentalising, Jo supposed. “How was it you said you met Sherlock, Mrs Hudson?”
That earned her a quick look of amusement. “Never did say, did I? That’s not a story for tonight. I’ll make you a cuppa if you’ll drink this one, and then I’ll see about making up your bed.”
“I’m not a child.” There was an ache in every bone she had.
“More’s the pity.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, they don’t expect children to give explanations, now, do they?” She set the mug back on the table, the teabag swimming in dim and milky liquid. “You rest up tonight. That detective will want to know you’re back. You’ll have quite a day of it tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Jo said, staring down into her tea. “Yes, I suppose I will.”
***
The next morning there were, as predicted, explanations to be made and statements to be signed. Someone had to explain about Moriarty and why a respected psychiatrist’s body had been found on the riverbank with a crack in her skull and the Thames in her lungs, and someone had to tell Lestrade why Sherlock hadn’t come back on that flight from Bern, and in some ways it was exactly as though she’d never left that interrogation room in Switzerland.
“I don’t believe it,” Donovan said flatly.
Jo shrugged. “Not my problem, is it?”
Donovan’s jaw tightened, and Lestrade stepped in. He’d brightened at first to see her walk in that morning, alive and whole, but that hadn’t lasted long. “You’re certain, Dr Watson.”
“She left me a note.”
“Do you have it?”
“I-no, it was typed into her phone.” She’d had it with her, but Sherlock hadn’t texted, hadn’t called. But there hadn’t been reception, she remembered that, because Jo had tried phoning the hotel with the cheap, disposable mobile they’d bought in Interlaken. “Her brother must have it. Or the Swiss authorities.”
“And Moriarty?”
“You got Sherlock’s email. You got that weeks ago. Haven’t you been looking?”
“There were a lot of names and not much in the way of proof. We’re working on it.”
“Work harder,” Jo said, and at that Donovan got up and stalked out of the room. Lestrade brought up a hand to scrub at his face.
“You need to understand,” he said. “You just up and disappeared. Both of you, without a word, and then weeks later and completely by accident we worked out the coat and shoes left in that car they pulled out of the Thames were yours. We brought your landlady in to confirm.”
Mrs Hudson hadn’t even mentioned it.
Lestrade was still talking. “We pieced it together as best we could, and what seemed likeliest was that you’d wash up on shore, too, before very long, and Sherlock knew what happened and had gone off the map to deal with it. Bloody cryptic, that email of hers, all ‘If you’re reading this, I’m not in a position to contact you directly,’ and what were we meant to do with that?
“So we looked into it, and Moriarty turned out to be a massive underground operation with money flying in all directions, but it didn’t get us any closer to working out what had happened to you and Sherlock. And, here’s the thing, Joanna-” He leant over the table, watchful and intent. “We can’t confirm, what with all the damage from water pressure, but Anderson’s got this theory the bullet-holes in that car’s windows were made from the inside.”
“They were,” she said. “My psychiatrist tried to shoot me.”
He sat back, the legs of his chair meeting the floor with a dull thud, and they just looked at one another. “Do you know the sort of pressure we’ve had in that case? She had clout, that woman, and we’ve had people from King’s College and Maudsley Hospital demanding an arrest and generally screaming bloody murder. Which we knew it was, of course, but we were assuming she’d been killed by someone trying to get at you. Are you saying she was involved?”
“Yes. Check her patient histories against that list of names Sherlock gave you. Might have to go back a few decades.”
“Damn it,” Lestrade said, and that summed it up pretty well so far as Jo was concerned. “You can’t prove anything, I suppose?”
“You can take my word for it, or not,” Jo said. “I’ll swear to it in court if you like.”
“Not as though we can prosecute her. The others, now-but we’ll come to that when we have to. It won’t go over well, though. Like I said, she had friends. At least there’s no need to bring it up before the memorial.”
“The what?”
“King’s College is honouring her tomorrow afternoon. Contributions to the field, and all that. I got an icy call from the faculty office a few days ago, saying out of respect for her memory we really ought to produce a responsible party.”
And Jo was the closest he could get, this side of the grave, but so far he’d made no move to arrest her on suspicion of murder, manslaughter, obstructing the investigation, or anything else for which she might possibly be charged. Which was good, of course, but Jo couldn’t quite manage to feel relieved. “I suppose you’ll want a statement on Ginzberg, too.”
“If you would.”
“Not as though I’ve got anything else on,” Jo said, and if his eyes lingered worriedly on her as he got up to fetch a transcriptionist, at least he refrained from further comment.
***
No doubt it was confirmation of the masochistic streak Harry’d always accused her of having, but the next afternoon she showed up at King’s College dressed in the most tasteful, memorial-appropriate outfit she owned. Somewhat to her irritation, this had meant resorting to the clothing Mycroft had provided for her the day she’d turned up in hospital with her sister’s blood all down her front, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Jo floated through the eulogies, listening to people in suits and the very particular sort of eyeglasses medical men of a certain age seemed to favour talk about Ginzberg’s contributions to her field. Representatives from King’s, representatives from Maudsley, and then a quietly well-spoken man who turned out to be her widower.
Jo had known from the first that he’d existed, had heard Sherlock’s assertion that Ginzberg had married a former patient and her speculation on which category of her psychiatric interests he’d represented, but she’d never given any thought to the reality of the man. She wondered if he’d known what his wife did when she wasn’t treating patients-what she did, occasionally, while she was treating patients. Jo should never have come.
Afterward there were drinks and the sort of finger foods familiar from the better-funded variety of faculty events at any university. Jo got herself some coffee but didn’t drink it, and the thought of food made her gut do unpleasant things.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” Jo turned to see a woman at her shoulder. Her face had a hazy sort of familiarity about it. “My daughter says she knows you.”
Jo was about to say that seemed unlikely, but then her eyes fell to the girl at the woman’s side, and a quiet chill closed around her heart. “Maddy Parsons,” she said. The girl shrank back against her mother. “What are you doing here?”
Terribly rude of her, but the words fell out of their own volition, and the mother didn’t seem to notice. “We’re so terribly sorry about Dr Ginzberg.”
“You knew her?”
“Maddy was seeing her. After the kidnapping, you know, but she’s doing much better now,” Elizabeth Parsons said all in a rush, as though Jo had been about to say otherwise. “She’s doing very well. You’re Joanna Watson, the one who found her?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Jo said, because it hadn’t been. And now, like then, Maddy said nothing at all.
Parsons appeared not to notice this, either. “Were you a friend?”
“A friend?”
“Of Sonia Ginzberg’s.”
Who had treated Maddy Parsons after using the child to orchestrate her uncle’s suicide. “How did you find her?” Jo asked hoarsely.
“She approached us through the police. Offered her services for free, you know. She was wonderful with trauma victims, and she helped Maddy more than you can imagine,” she said. She clutched her daughter’s hand with desperate determination. “Really she did, even in that short time. It’s been such a shock.”
The girl stared up at Jo, her wide eyes impenetrable.
“Trauma victims,” Jo repeated. “Excuse me.”
She shoved the coffee onto the nearest level surface and fled. She’d seen the women’s toilets on her way in, thank God, and made it there without any false starts; as she hunched over a porcelain bowl and heaved, some cold and removed part of her observed that at least she now had reason to be grateful for her poor appetite.
It was over quickly. She leant unsteadily against the tiled wall and breathed.
Someone knocked at the door of the stall. “Are you all right?”
She knew that voice, but just now she couldn’t place it. “Fine,” Jo called, pushing one hand across her sweat-slicked face.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait to see for myself.” The woman sounded calm and reasonable, and Jo wanted to scream.
Instead she pulled a length of tissue from the toilet roll, wiped her mouth until it hurt, and flushed. Then she unlocked the door.
“Joanna,” said the woman outside, vaguely surprised.
“Ella,” Jo replied. “But you’re meant to be in Edinburgh.”
“And I came back for a colleague’s memorial,” said her first therapist. She was still calm and reasonable, but now with a thin layer of caution over it all. “How have you been, Joanna?”
Vomiting in a public loo, how do you think? Jo almost said, but she caught it in time, because Ella Thompson was not an idiot. “Busy,” she did say, because surely being kidnapped and shot at, fleeing for her life across international borders, and being interrogated by Swiss authorities constituted an active lifestyle.
“And how is Sherlock?”
“Oh, you know,” Jo said. Her voice sounded brittle and too bright, and surely Ella would notice. “Busy.”
“I see.” A dubious pause. “Did you get on well with Sonia?”
A bubble of hysteria threatened to rise up in Jo’s throat, but she tamped it down ruthlessly. “She certainly knew what she was doing.” Jo wouldn’t, couldn’t do this just now. “Good to see you.”
“Joanna-”
“Got to leave, sorry. Keeping Sherlock waiting, and you know that’s never a good idea.”
“Are you-” But Jo was already in the hall, and she pushed blindly through the quiet clots of mourners between her and the door.
It was cool and damp outside, and she just stood for a long moment, feeling the light mist against her face as she waited for her stomach and her hand to settle. It was several minutes before she noticed that not only had that sleek black car been parked there the whole time, but the suited driver was standing patiently, holding the rear door open for her.
Bloody fantastic.
She considered walking away, but that would only prolong the inevitable. Jo slid into the seat beside Mycroft Holmes, her stiff back relaxing the moment it hit the expensive and ergonomically-sound cushions.
“Hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” she said.
“When you try my patience, Dr Watson, I’ll be sure to let you know. I hope you won’t consider it forward if I observe that grey cashmere suits you.” The car pulled out into traffic. “I must say I hadn’t expected you to come here.”
“You know how it is,” Jo said. “When you kill your psychiatrist, it’s just good manners to show up at the memorial.”
He gave her the careful chuckle he’d probably developed in secret meetings with cabinet members and foreign heads of state. “You are a remarkable woman.”
Jo laughed. It hurt her throat. “The last few times we’ve met, I’ve been at rock bottom.”
“My point exactly. Though to be accurate, I’d say rock bottom in this case was approximately…ten minutes ago?”
Perversely, she found herself wishing he had been there. Being sick all over Mycroft Holmes’ very expensive shoes would have been horrifying, but she thought the attendant satisfaction might be enough to make up for it.
“It was good of you to come collect me yourself,” she said. “That assistant of yours have better things to do?”
“Why do you resent me?”
He seemed genuinely curious. She shrugged. “You’re an arrogant arsehole who gets off on meddling in other people’s lives. You’re a bureaucrat who can send soldiers off to die without scuffing the shine on your shoes. Your hands are too soft, and I don’t like your tie. Take your pick, really.”
He smiled, lips pulling back against twin rows of tidy, narrow teeth, and she turned away to stare out the window. It had started to drizzle, validating the bone-deep ache in her shoulder. She watched for a few long moments as heavy drops crept haltingly down the glass.
“They’ve found a body,” he said into her silence.
She’d known, somehow, she realised distantly. Sherlock would have scoffed if she’d called it intuition, so Jo settled on a leap of logic, and she turned to look back at Mycroft Holmes with what she thought was admirable composure under the circumstances. “Will she be repatriated?”
“It’s already done.”
Of course. He wouldn’t be back in the country if he hadn’t finished the business that had kept him in Switzerland, and he certainly wouldn’t have come by for a chat with Joanna Watson if he’d anything more important at hand. “Will there be a funeral?”
“Saturday afternoon, in Golders Green. She requested cremation. I’ll send my assistant with a car, if I may.”
“No need.”
“As you like.” The car pulled smoothly up to the kerb outside the flat, and Jo reached for the handle. “My condolences, Dr Watson.”
She gave him a brusque nod and left. It didn’t occur to her until she was halfway up the seventeen steps to the sitting room that sympathy should probably have been offered the other way around. Odd, but then that was hardly the oddest thing about Mycroft Holmes, and she didn’t waste time speculating on what it meant.
Continue to Chapter Two