Sherlock Fic: Too Much of Water
Title: Too Much of Water
Author: Spycandy
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: PG for grim details
Characters: John, Sherlock, Lestrade
Warnings: Child death - off-stage but central to the story.
Disclaimer: Sherlock is the BBC's, not mine.
Summary: Lestrade arrives at 221b Baker Street from a distressing crime scene
“Ah-ha! We're about to have a visitor.”
“Anyone we should tidy up for?” asked John, with a reluctant glance at the neat piles of NHS paperwork he had sorted across much of the floor. Stacking them now would probably set him right back to square one.
At any rate, whoever was approaching the door would have to put up with the smell of burning coyote hair, from the sample that Sherlock had been holding up to the daylight by the front window of 221b. The detective had been working his way through a large box of animal hair sent over in a box marked ZSL all morning and between smelly home forensics and John's endless form-filling the flat had hummed with quiet industry in between comfortable tea breaks.
“It's Lestrade,” said Sherlock, curtain-twitching with no attempt to conceal that he was watching the policeman's approach. “They've pulled a body out of the boating lake. Ah. Oh dear. A child's body.”
John raised his eyebrows at this reaction. He'd known Sherlock long enough by now to be disabused of the notion that he didn't care at all, but it was also an established point of principle to care no less about justice for a murdered prostitute or a retired bookseller than for an innocent infant.
“Don't misunderstand me John. However, it is regrettable that our police colleagues tend to get rather sentimental when there are children involved, which renders them even less capable of coherent thought than usual.”
“But how do you know the victim's a child?” As John asked the question, there was a loud knock at the front door.
“Not difficult. I should think even you'll be able to work that out when you see the good detective inspector.”
Certainly Lestrade looked ghastly, ashen-faced with a hint of green and a tension around the mouth that suggested he had thrown up recently. He was soaked through - more than could be explained by the light drizzle outside, even if he had been standing in it for ages without shelter -- and there was pond slime on his jacket sleeve as well as his shoes. His eyes looked hollow and the set of his shoulders betrayed acute stress.
The man had, of course, seen more than his share of grisly crime scenes, so it would take something appalling to horrify him this much. John could well believe that something would be the death of a child. He had experienced it himself, dealing with infant casualties from IEDs. Just when you'd think you'd become numb and immune to anything the war could throw at you, a small boy in shorts and t-shirt would be carried in with injuries you didn't have the facilities to treat.
Sherlock gave the damp policeman a considering look and a delicate sniff, then turned to John. “My apologies, it was the wildfowl pond, not the boating lake.” He rounded on Lestrade. “Why are you here so soon? You haven't even spoken to the parents yet - surely they should be your first port of call for this investigation.”
“Oh right, well if you can tell that just by smelling me, you can probably solve this whole thing without even looking at the photos then,” snapped Lestrade. “We've no parents to interview yet. She hasn't been reported as a missper anywhere in London and the PNC isn't turning anything up. But she had to have been in the water since late last night,” Lestrade said, his voice growing gruffer by the word. “She's... she was.. only about seven years old. How the hell could any parent not have noticed she's missing yet?”
It was a horrifying thought. Somewhere out there, perhaps, someone did not yet know that their daughter had been dragged from the water today. Or worse, they did know, because they were responsible for it.
“Anyway,” said Lestrade, then cleared his throat and tried again, sounding a little steadier. “Anyway, I was hoping you might have some ideas to identify her. So we can go and break the news.”
“Give,” said Sherlock, holding out his hand for the photos. “You always have a secret smoke after talking to victims' families for the first time. Don't think no one's noticed.”
Lestrade pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and fumbled with it as he tried to flick open the photo gallery. “The proper SOCO photographer probably got better shots, but these sh-should g-give you something to go on.”
The chattering teeth spurred John into action. For all of Sherlock's observations of Lestrade's appearance, he seemed to have failed to notice several key things. The policeman was not merely miserably soggy with pond water, his lips were tinged slightly blue and now he had started slurring his speech.
“Right,” said John. “While Sherlock takes a look at the pictures, you need to get dry and warm up.”
“No time for tha',” mumbled Lestrade.
Sherlock glanced up from the phone, which he was turning around in his hands and grinned at Lestrade. “Hm? Oh, you've time for a ten minute shower. I'll have a name for you by the time you're dry and dressed.”
In spite of his wretched state, Lestrade snorted a laugh at Sherlock's confidence. “Oh well, in that case... But I haven't anything dry to change into.” And, of course, neither of the two residents of 221b Baker Street was anything close to the same size.
“Sherlock,” prompted John, eliciting a put-upon sigh as the detective was forced to look up from the crime scene photos again. “Surely you have something suitable in that dressing up box you call a wardrobe?”
Sherlock turned his attention back to the images, but waved a hand airily in the direction of his bedroom. “Pale blue hospital scrubs, second drawer down in the chest by the window. They're very vaguely sized large - should fit just about anyone.”
That appeared to be permission as well as suggestion, so John quickly plundered the drawer, with only a brief pause to grimace over the day-glo lycra cycling kit he spotted underneath the required scrubs.
Supplied with dry clothing and the driest bath towel John could muster at short notice, Lestrade was despatched to the bathroom.
“Would you say those are the same shoes?” asked Sherlock as John returned to the living room.
John looked at the laptop screen, which was displaying the wares of an online children's shoe store. The image on the phone that Sherlock was holding up beside it was badly pixelated from excessive zooming in on the young victim's foot, but the shoe - orange leather with a pattern of red leaves across the toe - was distinctive.
“Yes, I'd say so. Could that really narrow it down? Won't there be hundreds of little girls with those shoes?”
“Mmm. Fewer in London though, as they don't ship to the UK. What's the Spanish... no, wait - more likely the Italian - for cardigan?”
John dutifully went to grab the Italian-English dictionary from the bookshelf and chucked it across the room to Sherlock, who caught it and flicked it open. Seconds later he was tapping away at the laptop again, muttering, “No. No. Monstrous. No. How many pink cardigans does the world need? Come on. Aha!
“American shoes, Italian cardigan. Hmm, now we're getting somewhere. None of these photos show her teeth. Lestrade!” Sherlock bounded up the stairs and shouted through the bathroom door, “Was she wearing orthodontic braces?”
“Yes, those cutesy colourful ones,” came the reply.
Sherlock dashed back to the computer.
Moments later, the hiss of the shower stopped and to John's amusement, Sherlock's typing became just a touch more frantic. He really was trying to beat the self-imposed deadline of identifying the mystery child before Lestrade could get dried off and reappear. More words were checked in the Italian dictionary and typed into the search engine.
John shook his head and headed into the kitchen to put the kettle on, now that running the cold tap for a moment wouldn't risk scalding their guest. It was a few more minutes before Lestrade appeared, clad in the blue scrubs, with his soggy clothing draped over one arm. He looked significantly more cheerful than earlier, although a line of worry still creased its way across his forehead.
Sherlock turned the laptop around, glowing with triumph. “Here she is. Charlotte Bassi. You can call Interpol while your tea cools.”
“Bloody hell,” said Lestrade, staring wide-eyed at the photograph of a smiling girl at the top of the foreign news story. “Yes, that's her all right. What does it say? She was kidnapped in Italy?”
“Fortunately my Italian is good for opera and crime reports - there's a helpful amount of shared vocabulary. There's a custody dispute. Her mother's an American, a professor at Padua university. Father grabbed her after school a week ago and disappeared.”
“So the father's the killer.”
“No, the father's the kidnapper. There's no killer unless you count slippery pond banks and trees.”
“What?”
“I'd say she'd run off from her father and was hiding in the pond, then couldn't get out.” Sherlock held out the phone, showing one of the longer shots of the pond scene. “See here on the bank and here where that branch is broken? Unless there were adult footprints near there that you didn't bother photographing?”
Lestrade swore softly and peered closer at the photograph. “Huh,” he said. “We'll still need to arrest him.”
“There. I've added the lead Italian officer's number to your address book,” said Sherlock, returning Lestrade's phone.
The policeman was looking a little dazed at the rapid change of circumstances. It was probably a lot to take in for someone who'd been teetering on the edge of shock only ten minutes earlier. He still looked pale and when John chucked one of the snug Afghan blankets adorning the back of the armchair at him, he pulled it around his shoulders gratefully, then sipped the still-too-hot tea.
John tried to fill in another NHS form while Lestrade made the necessary calls to Italy and the Yard, overhearing snippets of requests for photographs of Signor Bassi, still wanted for kidnap even if Sherlock's theory that he was not the killer turned out to be true, and arrangements for the Italian detectives to arrive by an evening flight.
And suddenly there was no more to be done. It was like the lull waiting for a patient to come around after surgery, thought John. For a moment, peaceful tea drinking reigned over 221b Baker Street.
“So, is this stolen property?” asked Lestrade, breaking the silence and indicating the printed lettering on the shoulder revealing that the scrubs he was wearing were the property of 'Ba ts & the Lo on' -- which, as Sherlock had once noted, very much suggested tampering with the laundry stamp rather than normal wear and tear.
“There was an incident with some bodily fluids. I had to borrow something for the journey home.”
“Well, if you will juggle with urine sample containers,” chided John.
“It had the desired effect,” said Sherlock.
“What could possibly have been the desired effect of that?” asked Lestrade.
“Making Molly Hooper laugh.”
John grinned at Sherlock's admission that he had indeed been clowning for the young woman, who had been in desperate need of cheering up that afternoon. Then he glanced at Lestrade, also looking much happier than he had when he crossed the threshold of 221b.
Between them, John considered, he and Sherlock had done a good afternoon's work there. Their ways of looking after the people who mattered in their lives might sometimes be a shade peculiar, but they did work.
The End
Author: Spycandy
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: PG for grim details
Characters: John, Sherlock, Lestrade
Warnings: Child death - off-stage but central to the story.
Disclaimer: Sherlock is the BBC's, not mine.
Summary: Lestrade arrives at 221b Baker Street from a distressing crime scene
“Ah-ha! We're about to have a visitor.”
“Anyone we should tidy up for?” asked John, with a reluctant glance at the neat piles of NHS paperwork he had sorted across much of the floor. Stacking them now would probably set him right back to square one.
At any rate, whoever was approaching the door would have to put up with the smell of burning coyote hair, from the sample that Sherlock had been holding up to the daylight by the front window of 221b. The detective had been working his way through a large box of animal hair sent over in a box marked ZSL all morning and between smelly home forensics and John's endless form-filling the flat had hummed with quiet industry in between comfortable tea breaks.
“It's Lestrade,” said Sherlock, curtain-twitching with no attempt to conceal that he was watching the policeman's approach. “They've pulled a body out of the boating lake. Ah. Oh dear. A child's body.”
John raised his eyebrows at this reaction. He'd known Sherlock long enough by now to be disabused of the notion that he didn't care at all, but it was also an established point of principle to care no less about justice for a murdered prostitute or a retired bookseller than for an innocent infant.
“Don't misunderstand me John. However, it is regrettable that our police colleagues tend to get rather sentimental when there are children involved, which renders them even less capable of coherent thought than usual.”
“But how do you know the victim's a child?” As John asked the question, there was a loud knock at the front door.
“Not difficult. I should think even you'll be able to work that out when you see the good detective inspector.”
Certainly Lestrade looked ghastly, ashen-faced with a hint of green and a tension around the mouth that suggested he had thrown up recently. He was soaked through - more than could be explained by the light drizzle outside, even if he had been standing in it for ages without shelter -- and there was pond slime on his jacket sleeve as well as his shoes. His eyes looked hollow and the set of his shoulders betrayed acute stress.
The man had, of course, seen more than his share of grisly crime scenes, so it would take something appalling to horrify him this much. John could well believe that something would be the death of a child. He had experienced it himself, dealing with infant casualties from IEDs. Just when you'd think you'd become numb and immune to anything the war could throw at you, a small boy in shorts and t-shirt would be carried in with injuries you didn't have the facilities to treat.
Sherlock gave the damp policeman a considering look and a delicate sniff, then turned to John. “My apologies, it was the wildfowl pond, not the boating lake.” He rounded on Lestrade. “Why are you here so soon? You haven't even spoken to the parents yet - surely they should be your first port of call for this investigation.”
“Oh right, well if you can tell that just by smelling me, you can probably solve this whole thing without even looking at the photos then,” snapped Lestrade. “We've no parents to interview yet. She hasn't been reported as a missper anywhere in London and the PNC isn't turning anything up. But she had to have been in the water since late last night,” Lestrade said, his voice growing gruffer by the word. “She's... she was.. only about seven years old. How the hell could any parent not have noticed she's missing yet?”
It was a horrifying thought. Somewhere out there, perhaps, someone did not yet know that their daughter had been dragged from the water today. Or worse, they did know, because they were responsible for it.
“Anyway,” said Lestrade, then cleared his throat and tried again, sounding a little steadier. “Anyway, I was hoping you might have some ideas to identify her. So we can go and break the news.”
“Give,” said Sherlock, holding out his hand for the photos. “You always have a secret smoke after talking to victims' families for the first time. Don't think no one's noticed.”
Lestrade pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and fumbled with it as he tried to flick open the photo gallery. “The proper SOCO photographer probably got better shots, but these sh-should g-give you something to go on.”
The chattering teeth spurred John into action. For all of Sherlock's observations of Lestrade's appearance, he seemed to have failed to notice several key things. The policeman was not merely miserably soggy with pond water, his lips were tinged slightly blue and now he had started slurring his speech.
“Right,” said John. “While Sherlock takes a look at the pictures, you need to get dry and warm up.”
“No time for tha',” mumbled Lestrade.
Sherlock glanced up from the phone, which he was turning around in his hands and grinned at Lestrade. “Hm? Oh, you've time for a ten minute shower. I'll have a name for you by the time you're dry and dressed.”
In spite of his wretched state, Lestrade snorted a laugh at Sherlock's confidence. “Oh well, in that case... But I haven't anything dry to change into.” And, of course, neither of the two residents of 221b Baker Street was anything close to the same size.
“Sherlock,” prompted John, eliciting a put-upon sigh as the detective was forced to look up from the crime scene photos again. “Surely you have something suitable in that dressing up box you call a wardrobe?”
Sherlock turned his attention back to the images, but waved a hand airily in the direction of his bedroom. “Pale blue hospital scrubs, second drawer down in the chest by the window. They're very vaguely sized large - should fit just about anyone.”
That appeared to be permission as well as suggestion, so John quickly plundered the drawer, with only a brief pause to grimace over the day-glo lycra cycling kit he spotted underneath the required scrubs.
Supplied with dry clothing and the driest bath towel John could muster at short notice, Lestrade was despatched to the bathroom.
“Would you say those are the same shoes?” asked Sherlock as John returned to the living room.
John looked at the laptop screen, which was displaying the wares of an online children's shoe store. The image on the phone that Sherlock was holding up beside it was badly pixelated from excessive zooming in on the young victim's foot, but the shoe - orange leather with a pattern of red leaves across the toe - was distinctive.
“Yes, I'd say so. Could that really narrow it down? Won't there be hundreds of little girls with those shoes?”
“Mmm. Fewer in London though, as they don't ship to the UK. What's the Spanish... no, wait - more likely the Italian - for cardigan?”
John dutifully went to grab the Italian-English dictionary from the bookshelf and chucked it across the room to Sherlock, who caught it and flicked it open. Seconds later he was tapping away at the laptop again, muttering, “No. No. Monstrous. No. How many pink cardigans does the world need? Come on. Aha!
“American shoes, Italian cardigan. Hmm, now we're getting somewhere. None of these photos show her teeth. Lestrade!” Sherlock bounded up the stairs and shouted through the bathroom door, “Was she wearing orthodontic braces?”
“Yes, those cutesy colourful ones,” came the reply.
Sherlock dashed back to the computer.
Moments later, the hiss of the shower stopped and to John's amusement, Sherlock's typing became just a touch more frantic. He really was trying to beat the self-imposed deadline of identifying the mystery child before Lestrade could get dried off and reappear. More words were checked in the Italian dictionary and typed into the search engine.
John shook his head and headed into the kitchen to put the kettle on, now that running the cold tap for a moment wouldn't risk scalding their guest. It was a few more minutes before Lestrade appeared, clad in the blue scrubs, with his soggy clothing draped over one arm. He looked significantly more cheerful than earlier, although a line of worry still creased its way across his forehead.
Sherlock turned the laptop around, glowing with triumph. “Here she is. Charlotte Bassi. You can call Interpol while your tea cools.”
“Bloody hell,” said Lestrade, staring wide-eyed at the photograph of a smiling girl at the top of the foreign news story. “Yes, that's her all right. What does it say? She was kidnapped in Italy?”
“Fortunately my Italian is good for opera and crime reports - there's a helpful amount of shared vocabulary. There's a custody dispute. Her mother's an American, a professor at Padua university. Father grabbed her after school a week ago and disappeared.”
“So the father's the killer.”
“No, the father's the kidnapper. There's no killer unless you count slippery pond banks and trees.”
“What?”
“I'd say she'd run off from her father and was hiding in the pond, then couldn't get out.” Sherlock held out the phone, showing one of the longer shots of the pond scene. “See here on the bank and here where that branch is broken? Unless there were adult footprints near there that you didn't bother photographing?”
Lestrade swore softly and peered closer at the photograph. “Huh,” he said. “We'll still need to arrest him.”
“There. I've added the lead Italian officer's number to your address book,” said Sherlock, returning Lestrade's phone.
The policeman was looking a little dazed at the rapid change of circumstances. It was probably a lot to take in for someone who'd been teetering on the edge of shock only ten minutes earlier. He still looked pale and when John chucked one of the snug Afghan blankets adorning the back of the armchair at him, he pulled it around his shoulders gratefully, then sipped the still-too-hot tea.
John tried to fill in another NHS form while Lestrade made the necessary calls to Italy and the Yard, overhearing snippets of requests for photographs of Signor Bassi, still wanted for kidnap even if Sherlock's theory that he was not the killer turned out to be true, and arrangements for the Italian detectives to arrive by an evening flight.
And suddenly there was no more to be done. It was like the lull waiting for a patient to come around after surgery, thought John. For a moment, peaceful tea drinking reigned over 221b Baker Street.
“So, is this stolen property?” asked Lestrade, breaking the silence and indicating the printed lettering on the shoulder revealing that the scrubs he was wearing were the property of 'Ba ts & the Lo on' -- which, as Sherlock had once noted, very much suggested tampering with the laundry stamp rather than normal wear and tear.
“There was an incident with some bodily fluids. I had to borrow something for the journey home.”
“Well, if you will juggle with urine sample containers,” chided John.
“It had the desired effect,” said Sherlock.
“What could possibly have been the desired effect of that?” asked Lestrade.
“Making Molly Hooper laugh.”
John grinned at Sherlock's admission that he had indeed been clowning for the young woman, who had been in desperate need of cheering up that afternoon. Then he glanced at Lestrade, also looking much happier than he had when he crossed the threshold of 221b.
Between them, John considered, he and Sherlock had done a good afternoon's work there. Their ways of looking after the people who mattered in their lives might sometimes be a shade peculiar, but they did work.
The End