Sherlock (BBC) / Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie) Xover fic: The Women part 2
So in my head this fic is called ‘The sextastic bi-holmesian fivesome porn-o-rama, DESPITE THE FACT that as yet it contains no porn whatsoever. The goal is porn. To be specific, the goal is two Watsons, one Holmes, Irene ‘The Woman’ Adler and Mary Watson all getting it on while Holmes number two raises an eyebrow and takes copious notes.
Part 1...
...is by the matchless tawabids, who personifies awesome and breaks my heart on a regular basis. She's handling the lovely Mary Watson and letting me fill in the gaps as best I can.
Title: The Women
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie films), Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: Currently G, could (hopefully) be R in later parts
Warnings: Some racism (from a 19th C. character) in part 1
Summary: Set post-Game of Shadows and pre-Reichenberg Fall, the Dr Watsons and the Sherlock Holmeses have gone missing; Mary Watson is in the wrong century; Irene Adler may or may not hold a clue.
And I reiterate, you need to read Part 1 first.
Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade of Scotland Yard opened the Tupperware box and surveyed his lunch. A slightly moist and soggy tuna sandwich stared back at him from where it sat alongside a glossy, perfect apple. Both of them radiated an air of smugness. They knew they wouldn’t be eaten today. It was half past eleven and Greg was fairly sure that in another hour he would be entirely too occupied by impossible happenings to consider taking the time for food. Really he should eat now to get some form of sustenance, but the thought of tuna before noon wasn’t appealing.
He could eat the apple, just to wipe the smile off its little face.
‘Sir?’
Too late. Bollocks.
‘What is it, Donovan?’
Donovan stuck her head into the break room, running a hand over her hair in a world-weary little gesture she’d probably picked up from him. ‘I’ve been in with the so-called Mrs Watson. Short answer? She’s a nutter.’
Greg reluctantly returned his lunchbox to the staff fridge. He’d seen this particular revelation coming but it was still a disappointment. It would’ve been nice if the first clue they’d found was a straightforward ransom demand instead of a pretty girl in fancy dress telling them that Sherlock was dead.
That had given him the shivers, the way she assumed he already knew.
He turned back to Donovan. ‘I’d like the long answer, if it’s not too much of a strain for you. Why do you think she’s a nutter?’
‘Only nutters are weirded out by the light switches,’ Donovan said flatly. ‘She keeps flicking them on and off the second you turn your back. Pokes at everything. Looks like she wants to sniff half of it. And she called me a liberated woman and talked about the suffragettes. Whatever we say she still insists that she’s married to John Watson, friend of Sherlock Holmes, deceased. Oh, and the big one? She thinks it’s 1892.’
Greg used her expectant pause to absorb the information. Eventually he managed to get to a point where he didn’t feel he was turning into a nutter himself. ‘Anything else?’ he asked evenly.
‘Well, yeah.’ Donovan’s voice took on an injured edge. ‘When I put her back in with that Adler woman they both looked at me and giggled.’
Her face was a picture. Greg found himself smiling for what felt like the first time since Sherlock vanished. But despite the entertainment value, it was still another piece of the puzzle to consider. ‘So maybe they’re in it together,’ he suggested. ‘She’s an actress or something. That get-up of hers might have come from a theatre.’ He gave Donovan a not-very-hopeful look. ‘We might know more if we can take a look at it. I don’t suppose we’ve got a valid reason to get it off her?’
Donovan shook her head. ‘Sorry sir, but I think one naked woman yesterday was enough of misconduct complaint waiting to happen. And she seems pretty upset, honestly. If you ask me I’d say she really thinks this husband’s been snatched. I mean, it could just be a delusion. Like, she read in the papers that Sherlock’s gone and it sparked something off.’
‘It’s not in the papers.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m just saying it might have fuck all to do with our Sherlock and John. We’ve had lots of people believing weirder things, right? Shall I get the psychiatrist in?’
Our Sherlock and John, Greg thought bitterly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘give me a minute. What did you get when you ran her through the system?’
Donovan handed over a file. ‘Not a lot. Plenty of Mary Watsons in London but none at the address she gave us. Nobody lives there. It’s one of those Clerkenwell townhouses, got turned into offices years ago. Other than that we’ve only got the stuff she keeps telling us about her wedding and her servants, and John Watson. He’s the perfect husband, so she says.’ She curled her lip. ‘Doesn’t sound like anyone we know. John Watson would make the world’s second shittest husband.’
No prizes for guessing who she thought would be the first.
‘See if you can find anything else,’ Greg said. ‘Get hold of the driver that brought her in, I want to talk to him. Check if any of the theatres reported a break in or recognise her picture.’
‘All this to get the freak back? Good riddance, if you ask me.’
Greg gave her a look. ‘Go and do your job.’
***
It had been a hell of a week.
It started with the dead man in the meat freezer. That wasn’t especially unpleasant, really. These things happened. It was the start, though, because this particular case the meat freezer had a single door in the middle of an abattoir where all of two-dozen workers could see it. And this particular body was one that the foreman who found it swore had not been there thirty minutes previously when the door was last open. It was a body that had Greg frowning, then grimacing, then sighing and reaching for his phone. The whole thing was right up Sherlock’s alley. Greg could practically see his face lighting up with gleeful enthusiasm.
But Sherlock was nowhere to be found.
Back in his office, Greg flipped through the Mary Watson file again. It had to be connected, to Sherlock’s disappearance, it was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. He considered briefly whether her story might actually be true, whether John had a crazy wife locked up in an institution somewhere a la Mrs Rochester. She was certainly John’s type, he thought, examining her mug shot. Anybody’s type, really. Creamy, freckled skin, red-gold hair green eyes. A lovely girl.
Then he told himself to stop being an idiot. It was an insane theory. John Watson didn’t have a secret wife, and Greg Lestrade was clutching at straws. He’d already misused police resources on this thing, checking the CCTV around the flat even before it was officially a case. He hadn’t found much. John had left early for work, and had been sucked into the swarming masses at Baker Street Station. Like every other tube station it was infested with cameras so Greg could follow him easily, until he got on the escalator and was obscured by a tall banker type. Greg lost sight of him about halfway down. He never got off at the bottom. It looked completely impossible.
Sherlock had been in the house that morning, certainly hadn’t come out of the front door, and definitely wasn’t there by the afternoon. That wasn’t quite so impossible. There was a small chance that Mrs Hudson finally lost her rag and minced him down the garbage disposal. More likely he got out somehow out of sight of the cameras, which meant he didn’t want to be found.
Perhaps. But what about John?
Going over it yet again wasn’t helping. Greg went to poke at the papers on his desk, reminding himself that there were other crimes in London and other work he ought to be doing. Lately he’d only been keeping half an eye on the abattoir murder case. It was instinctive to focus on Sherlock. The maladjusted detective was his problem, had been for a while. Greg liked to think it was a testament to his own bloody-mindedness that Sherlock was still alive and out in the world pissing people off. He couldn’t let a mind like that tear itself apart.
Also, there was the matter of his orders from above.
At the end the third day after they disappeared Greg had mustered his well-honed skills of dealing with vicious, heartless scumbags and sent a message to Mycroft. He wasn’t really expecting a response. At that point, he was still half convinced that it was all a fuss over nothing.
Mycroft was apparently treating it as more than a fuss. The short text message Greg got from his assistant had read simply, ‘Possible lead,’ followed by an address where Greg had found an annoyed and extremely unsettling naked woman handcuffed to a bed.
The whole thing was starting to get right up his nose.
So now he had two mysterious women on his hands, the latest with no known place of residence, no real name, potentially delusional, and those clothes…
There, right there. That itch, telling him that he was missing something.
‘Donovan!’ he called.
‘Yes sir?’
‘Get your arse in here.’
As she propped herself against his doorframe looking put-upon he grabbed the file for the abattoir murder and flipped back and forth through the pages. Crime scene photos. He squinted down at them ‘The body in the freezer. Did you notice anything odd about it?’
‘Yeah,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Dead in a locked room, that’s odd for starters.’
Greg considered finally giving in to his urge to fire her, which he got about once an hour. ‘Don’t piss me around. I’m having a bad day and I’d like nothing better than for you to have a worse one.’
She started to say something else and then stopped hastily when she saw his expression. ‘Sorry sir. No, not much special about him. Malnourished and grubby even for a down-and-out, I suppose. Lost more teeth than had. Tox tests peg him as a heroin addict. No needle marks so he must be a chaser. Your basic homeless druggie. Boring, as the freak would say.’
‘What about his clothes?’
She shrugged. ‘Rags, pretty much. Once upon a time they were must have been a shirt, jacket, trousers, boots. Don’t look like he ever took them off, I’d say they hadn’t been washed since they were bought.’
‘And where were they bought?’
She paused. ‘What?’
‘His clothes. Where did they come from?’
‘I don’t know. We didn’t investigate his shopping habits. Got them from a shelter, I suppose.’
‘Labels, Donovan. Did you look at the bloody labels?’
She gave him a blank look. That would be a no, then.
‘Go and do it now.’
She went, without any more back-talk or complaints, which was a miracle all on its own. This was his life, he thought glumly. Donovan. Anderson. Sherlock. All of them spend most of their time acting like five-year-olds. And now he felt like he’d lost a five-year-old.
There was a knock on the open office door. Greg looked up. ‘Oh bloody hell,’ he moaned under his breath.
‘Hello Detective Inspector,’ Mycroft said smoothly, gliding into the room and hooking the handle of his umbrella neatly onto the edge of Greg’s desk.
Greg closed his eyes, waited three seconds, and opened them again. Mycroft was still there. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘My brother, naturally.’ A pair of eyebrows raised in mock surprise, looking like two plump and sleekly furry caterpillars arching their rounded backs. ‘But in the meantime, an interview with your latest guest at her Majesty’s pleasure.’
Greg sat back wearily. ‘Mrs Watson, I presume. Go on then, how did you know? She only got here half an hour ago.’
The eyebrows subsided. Holmes the elder directed a thin smile at a point somewhere inside Greg’s skull. ‘On the contrary, she got here-’ he looked briefly down at his watch, ‘ninety-four minutes ago. And I don’t feel the need to tell you how I know. I’m happy to say I do not share my brother’s notable exhibitionist streak. What is of interest now is how she got here.’
‘In a cab,’ Greg said, just to see Mycroft’s twitch of exasperation. After a beat their eyes met and they exchanged entirely humourless glances of amusement. ‘Alright, I’ll bite. What does it matter how she got here, and what happened ninety-four minutes ago?’
‘She arrived in London,’ Mycroft said, drumming his fingers lightly on the edge of Greg’s desk, setting the umbrella handle quivering.
‘Yeah?’ Greg shrugged. ‘That makes sense, the bloke who brought her in said he found her near Moorgate station. We haven’t had much luck finding out where she’s from.’
‘She didn’t come by train. We don’t know what her method of transport was. She seems, quite simply, to have appeared out of thin air.’
Just like John disappeared, Greg’s brain supplied unhelpfully. ‘You’re kidding,’ he said, as though the assertion could make it true. Mycroft didn’t kid. He probably told one lie a minute just to keep himself in practice, but he wasn’t a comedian. ‘So you’re saying there’s something weird about her, above and beyond the fact that she’s probably a delusional fan of your brother’s?’
‘On the contrary, I doubt that she’d recognise him in the street,’ Mycroft said.
Greg frowned. ‘You know he’s a celebrity these day? John’s blog? Internet sensation.’
Mycroft’s bizarrely mobile eyebrows crawled up his face again, this time expressing sorrowful condescension. ‘I think I can guarantee that this woman doesn’t follow blogs.’
Greg sighed, giving up hope of discovering anything useful. ‘All right, look, you want so see the prisoner, that’s fine by me. You want to see the Adler woman too, while you’re here?’
‘No, I’m sure you’re entirely capable of managing her.’
Greg highly doubted that. He’d looked her up online.
A small, mousy-looking constable who was passing looked nervous as Greg called her in - he took a moment to wonder if he’d really been in that foul a mood lately - and nodded in mute obedience as he ordered her to escort the British government down to the cells. As Mycroft smiled, repossessed himself of his umbrella and turned to follow her, Greg waved in Donovan, who’d been hovering by the door. She watched Mycroft leave and gave a theatrical shudder. ‘Freak Senior.’
‘What did you find?’
She frowned. ‘No labels. Well, one in the coat, but not a high street shop. Some kind of tailor. Everything else is just… I dunno. Homemade, or something. Looks kind of… old fashioned.’
He could see the moment the pieces fell into place.
‘Wait, he was wearing weird clothes too? So he’s got something to do with her… and they’ve both got something to do with the freak?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘What has a dead druggie in a freezer got to do with Sherlock Holmes?’
‘I don’t know, Donovan. It’s high on my list of things to find out.’
They looked at each other, trying to work out where to start.
After a minute the silence was broken. The mousy constable knocked and stumbled in, somewhat out of breath. ‘Um… sir,’ she said, looking as though she wanted to retract into her uniform like a tortoise, ‘you’re not going to believe this…’
Part 1...
...is by the matchless tawabids, who personifies awesome and breaks my heart on a regular basis. She's handling the lovely Mary Watson and letting me fill in the gaps as best I can.
Title: The Women
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie films), Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: Currently G, could (hopefully) be R in later parts
Warnings: Some racism (from a 19th C. character) in part 1
Summary: Set post-Game of Shadows and pre-Reichenberg Fall, the Dr Watsons and the Sherlock Holmeses have gone missing; Mary Watson is in the wrong century; Irene Adler may or may not hold a clue.
And I reiterate, you need to read Part 1 first.
Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade of Scotland Yard opened the Tupperware box and surveyed his lunch. A slightly moist and soggy tuna sandwich stared back at him from where it sat alongside a glossy, perfect apple. Both of them radiated an air of smugness. They knew they wouldn’t be eaten today. It was half past eleven and Greg was fairly sure that in another hour he would be entirely too occupied by impossible happenings to consider taking the time for food. Really he should eat now to get some form of sustenance, but the thought of tuna before noon wasn’t appealing.
He could eat the apple, just to wipe the smile off its little face.
‘Sir?’
Too late. Bollocks.
‘What is it, Donovan?’
Donovan stuck her head into the break room, running a hand over her hair in a world-weary little gesture she’d probably picked up from him. ‘I’ve been in with the so-called Mrs Watson. Short answer? She’s a nutter.’
Greg reluctantly returned his lunchbox to the staff fridge. He’d seen this particular revelation coming but it was still a disappointment. It would’ve been nice if the first clue they’d found was a straightforward ransom demand instead of a pretty girl in fancy dress telling them that Sherlock was dead.
That had given him the shivers, the way she assumed he already knew.
He turned back to Donovan. ‘I’d like the long answer, if it’s not too much of a strain for you. Why do you think she’s a nutter?’
‘Only nutters are weirded out by the light switches,’ Donovan said flatly. ‘She keeps flicking them on and off the second you turn your back. Pokes at everything. Looks like she wants to sniff half of it. And she called me a liberated woman and talked about the suffragettes. Whatever we say she still insists that she’s married to John Watson, friend of Sherlock Holmes, deceased. Oh, and the big one? She thinks it’s 1892.’
Greg used her expectant pause to absorb the information. Eventually he managed to get to a point where he didn’t feel he was turning into a nutter himself. ‘Anything else?’ he asked evenly.
‘Well, yeah.’ Donovan’s voice took on an injured edge. ‘When I put her back in with that Adler woman they both looked at me and giggled.’
Her face was a picture. Greg found himself smiling for what felt like the first time since Sherlock vanished. But despite the entertainment value, it was still another piece of the puzzle to consider. ‘So maybe they’re in it together,’ he suggested. ‘She’s an actress or something. That get-up of hers might have come from a theatre.’ He gave Donovan a not-very-hopeful look. ‘We might know more if we can take a look at it. I don’t suppose we’ve got a valid reason to get it off her?’
Donovan shook her head. ‘Sorry sir, but I think one naked woman yesterday was enough of misconduct complaint waiting to happen. And she seems pretty upset, honestly. If you ask me I’d say she really thinks this husband’s been snatched. I mean, it could just be a delusion. Like, she read in the papers that Sherlock’s gone and it sparked something off.’
‘It’s not in the papers.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m just saying it might have fuck all to do with our Sherlock and John. We’ve had lots of people believing weirder things, right? Shall I get the psychiatrist in?’
Our Sherlock and John, Greg thought bitterly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘give me a minute. What did you get when you ran her through the system?’
Donovan handed over a file. ‘Not a lot. Plenty of Mary Watsons in London but none at the address she gave us. Nobody lives there. It’s one of those Clerkenwell townhouses, got turned into offices years ago. Other than that we’ve only got the stuff she keeps telling us about her wedding and her servants, and John Watson. He’s the perfect husband, so she says.’ She curled her lip. ‘Doesn’t sound like anyone we know. John Watson would make the world’s second shittest husband.’
No prizes for guessing who she thought would be the first.
‘See if you can find anything else,’ Greg said. ‘Get hold of the driver that brought her in, I want to talk to him. Check if any of the theatres reported a break in or recognise her picture.’
‘All this to get the freak back? Good riddance, if you ask me.’
Greg gave her a look. ‘Go and do your job.’
***
It had been a hell of a week.
It started with the dead man in the meat freezer. That wasn’t especially unpleasant, really. These things happened. It was the start, though, because this particular case the meat freezer had a single door in the middle of an abattoir where all of two-dozen workers could see it. And this particular body was one that the foreman who found it swore had not been there thirty minutes previously when the door was last open. It was a body that had Greg frowning, then grimacing, then sighing and reaching for his phone. The whole thing was right up Sherlock’s alley. Greg could practically see his face lighting up with gleeful enthusiasm.
But Sherlock was nowhere to be found.
Back in his office, Greg flipped through the Mary Watson file again. It had to be connected, to Sherlock’s disappearance, it was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. He considered briefly whether her story might actually be true, whether John had a crazy wife locked up in an institution somewhere a la Mrs Rochester. She was certainly John’s type, he thought, examining her mug shot. Anybody’s type, really. Creamy, freckled skin, red-gold hair green eyes. A lovely girl.
Then he told himself to stop being an idiot. It was an insane theory. John Watson didn’t have a secret wife, and Greg Lestrade was clutching at straws. He’d already misused police resources on this thing, checking the CCTV around the flat even before it was officially a case. He hadn’t found much. John had left early for work, and had been sucked into the swarming masses at Baker Street Station. Like every other tube station it was infested with cameras so Greg could follow him easily, until he got on the escalator and was obscured by a tall banker type. Greg lost sight of him about halfway down. He never got off at the bottom. It looked completely impossible.
Sherlock had been in the house that morning, certainly hadn’t come out of the front door, and definitely wasn’t there by the afternoon. That wasn’t quite so impossible. There was a small chance that Mrs Hudson finally lost her rag and minced him down the garbage disposal. More likely he got out somehow out of sight of the cameras, which meant he didn’t want to be found.
Perhaps. But what about John?
Going over it yet again wasn’t helping. Greg went to poke at the papers on his desk, reminding himself that there were other crimes in London and other work he ought to be doing. Lately he’d only been keeping half an eye on the abattoir murder case. It was instinctive to focus on Sherlock. The maladjusted detective was his problem, had been for a while. Greg liked to think it was a testament to his own bloody-mindedness that Sherlock was still alive and out in the world pissing people off. He couldn’t let a mind like that tear itself apart.
Also, there was the matter of his orders from above.
At the end the third day after they disappeared Greg had mustered his well-honed skills of dealing with vicious, heartless scumbags and sent a message to Mycroft. He wasn’t really expecting a response. At that point, he was still half convinced that it was all a fuss over nothing.
Mycroft was apparently treating it as more than a fuss. The short text message Greg got from his assistant had read simply, ‘Possible lead,’ followed by an address where Greg had found an annoyed and extremely unsettling naked woman handcuffed to a bed.
The whole thing was starting to get right up his nose.
So now he had two mysterious women on his hands, the latest with no known place of residence, no real name, potentially delusional, and those clothes…
There, right there. That itch, telling him that he was missing something.
‘Donovan!’ he called.
‘Yes sir?’
‘Get your arse in here.’
As she propped herself against his doorframe looking put-upon he grabbed the file for the abattoir murder and flipped back and forth through the pages. Crime scene photos. He squinted down at them ‘The body in the freezer. Did you notice anything odd about it?’
‘Yeah,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Dead in a locked room, that’s odd for starters.’
Greg considered finally giving in to his urge to fire her, which he got about once an hour. ‘Don’t piss me around. I’m having a bad day and I’d like nothing better than for you to have a worse one.’
She started to say something else and then stopped hastily when she saw his expression. ‘Sorry sir. No, not much special about him. Malnourished and grubby even for a down-and-out, I suppose. Lost more teeth than had. Tox tests peg him as a heroin addict. No needle marks so he must be a chaser. Your basic homeless druggie. Boring, as the freak would say.’
‘What about his clothes?’
She shrugged. ‘Rags, pretty much. Once upon a time they were must have been a shirt, jacket, trousers, boots. Don’t look like he ever took them off, I’d say they hadn’t been washed since they were bought.’
‘And where were they bought?’
She paused. ‘What?’
‘His clothes. Where did they come from?’
‘I don’t know. We didn’t investigate his shopping habits. Got them from a shelter, I suppose.’
‘Labels, Donovan. Did you look at the bloody labels?’
She gave him a blank look. That would be a no, then.
‘Go and do it now.’
She went, without any more back-talk or complaints, which was a miracle all on its own. This was his life, he thought glumly. Donovan. Anderson. Sherlock. All of them spend most of their time acting like five-year-olds. And now he felt like he’d lost a five-year-old.
There was a knock on the open office door. Greg looked up. ‘Oh bloody hell,’ he moaned under his breath.
‘Hello Detective Inspector,’ Mycroft said smoothly, gliding into the room and hooking the handle of his umbrella neatly onto the edge of Greg’s desk.
Greg closed his eyes, waited three seconds, and opened them again. Mycroft was still there. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘My brother, naturally.’ A pair of eyebrows raised in mock surprise, looking like two plump and sleekly furry caterpillars arching their rounded backs. ‘But in the meantime, an interview with your latest guest at her Majesty’s pleasure.’
Greg sat back wearily. ‘Mrs Watson, I presume. Go on then, how did you know? She only got here half an hour ago.’
The eyebrows subsided. Holmes the elder directed a thin smile at a point somewhere inside Greg’s skull. ‘On the contrary, she got here-’ he looked briefly down at his watch, ‘ninety-four minutes ago. And I don’t feel the need to tell you how I know. I’m happy to say I do not share my brother’s notable exhibitionist streak. What is of interest now is how she got here.’
‘In a cab,’ Greg said, just to see Mycroft’s twitch of exasperation. After a beat their eyes met and they exchanged entirely humourless glances of amusement. ‘Alright, I’ll bite. What does it matter how she got here, and what happened ninety-four minutes ago?’
‘She arrived in London,’ Mycroft said, drumming his fingers lightly on the edge of Greg’s desk, setting the umbrella handle quivering.
‘Yeah?’ Greg shrugged. ‘That makes sense, the bloke who brought her in said he found her near Moorgate station. We haven’t had much luck finding out where she’s from.’
‘She didn’t come by train. We don’t know what her method of transport was. She seems, quite simply, to have appeared out of thin air.’
Just like John disappeared, Greg’s brain supplied unhelpfully. ‘You’re kidding,’ he said, as though the assertion could make it true. Mycroft didn’t kid. He probably told one lie a minute just to keep himself in practice, but he wasn’t a comedian. ‘So you’re saying there’s something weird about her, above and beyond the fact that she’s probably a delusional fan of your brother’s?’
‘On the contrary, I doubt that she’d recognise him in the street,’ Mycroft said.
Greg frowned. ‘You know he’s a celebrity these day? John’s blog? Internet sensation.’
Mycroft’s bizarrely mobile eyebrows crawled up his face again, this time expressing sorrowful condescension. ‘I think I can guarantee that this woman doesn’t follow blogs.’
Greg sighed, giving up hope of discovering anything useful. ‘All right, look, you want so see the prisoner, that’s fine by me. You want to see the Adler woman too, while you’re here?’
‘No, I’m sure you’re entirely capable of managing her.’
Greg highly doubted that. He’d looked her up online.
A small, mousy-looking constable who was passing looked nervous as Greg called her in - he took a moment to wonder if he’d really been in that foul a mood lately - and nodded in mute obedience as he ordered her to escort the British government down to the cells. As Mycroft smiled, repossessed himself of his umbrella and turned to follow her, Greg waved in Donovan, who’d been hovering by the door. She watched Mycroft leave and gave a theatrical shudder. ‘Freak Senior.’
‘What did you find?’
She frowned. ‘No labels. Well, one in the coat, but not a high street shop. Some kind of tailor. Everything else is just… I dunno. Homemade, or something. Looks kind of… old fashioned.’
He could see the moment the pieces fell into place.
‘Wait, he was wearing weird clothes too? So he’s got something to do with her… and they’ve both got something to do with the freak?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘What has a dead druggie in a freezer got to do with Sherlock Holmes?’
‘I don’t know, Donovan. It’s high on my list of things to find out.’
They looked at each other, trying to work out where to start.
After a minute the silence was broken. The mousy constable knocked and stumbled in, somewhat out of breath. ‘Um… sir,’ she said, looking as though she wanted to retract into her uniform like a tortoise, ‘you’re not going to believe this…’