The Players
"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay." ~ Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches'
Murder has been a prevalent act in history. From cities built in blood to the thug in a leather mask walking slowly with an axe in his grip, they have fascinated.
He picks up his knife, already wet with gore and he can hear the girl in the corner. Crying. Begging. He doesn't know why. He can't understand why. The con-man sitting at the bar table drinks his drink, fakes care, fascinates the onlookers and pretends he doesn't want to murder every single one in that room. He drinks his drink and dreams of blood. A man picked up a gun. That will teach them. They kill every day, bloodlessly but savagely with words and papers. Is what he does any different? Why should they live normal lives when his had been taken? Lessons must be learned. Mistakes must be corrected. Karma always turns. It is the way of life.
That is the frightening truth: people kill. Because they feel like they must, because they need to, because they want to, because they were born that way. And it is such a depraved, selfish act you cannot help but be drawn to it.
He remembered a time when guns scared him. Blood used to make him throw up or even faint. As he handled the bullets and weapon with gloves, he could only think of how right it felt. How, up until that sweet moment when the life left his victim's eyes, everything felt dull and colourless.
He thought how he'd felt leaden and stiff for his whole life up until the moment he discovered what he could do, as if he had been awakened from a very long sleep. It took an effort just to wiggle his fingers and his worn, old leather gloves crackled.
Slowly and silently, he rose to his feet. He looked out the narrow space of his window in the home beneath the stairs and felt that the time was just right.
There was a dry, dusty click. For a moment, nothing happened. Then with a groan of rusty metal and a rasp of wood, the door jerked partway open.
He had another job to do.
Lestrade wanted to walk beside the Thames again. The ritual of his quiet days seemed too dull for a man accustomed to daily deal with the worst London could throw at him, but it was peaceful and safe. And he liked it.
He would pick up his laundry, always at the same place, and he would smile at the man behind the counter. He would then walk – not drive – home, to the one place he felt safe and solitary and order some food or open a bottle of cheap wine.
That was as rare a possibility as a blue moon. It seemed non-existent when the papers clogged his desk like leaves did a drain pipe on an autumn day.
He wasn't the only one working late (others had come in for the night shift) but he was probably the only one who had no immediate plans of sleeping. Reading the files again and again had only helped at further imprinting them inside of his mind to the point where he neither wanted nor could sleep. Sally had wanted to stay with him but he'd sent her home. After all, there was nothing new to process and having both of them asleep and on a perilous precipice to caffeine overdose was unnecessary.
Sherlock hadn't helped much, either. At the last crime scene he had shouted for data to no one in particular – except perhaps an unforgiving sky – and stormed off, leaving an unforgettable impression on younger members of the forensic team and even more so on the veterans who knew his antics.
The chief superintendent had made it clear that he wanted results and all officers were on alert. And of course he had been the one saddled with it as most weird cases were.
When the phone rang, a childish urge emerged like a tidal wave telling him not to answer. His experience beat it down to a slow trickle of rain. The voice at the other end told of another murder and he was glad he had been sitting down.
Sherlock Holmes was not bored. He was thinking.
It was only coincidence that his thinking resembled violin string plucking to mere humans, and not even particularly energetic one at that, but that was not his fault.
John Watson thought that he was doing that explicitly to piss him off and he pressed the keys of his laptop keyboard with a grudge and force he'd have loved to apply to his flatmate's neck. He'd been previously warned that violin playing was a living hazard, but he'd, rather foolishly, believed that it would actually be playing instead of specifically choosing the chords that annoyed him most and then thwacking them.
The latest case, still unsolved, tainted their living room in forms of photos, forensic reports and odds and ends that the only consulting detective in the world had found important.
Without any more input data for his mind and a mistake from the killer, not even Sherlock Holmes could figure things out though not for lack of trying.
After their meeting and indeed, first case together, John had settled into Sherlock's life and vice versa. Their story – still left unnamed in John's laptop – had brought them together better than sharing rooms had. Indeed, after that first case, it had been fairly quiet. And then this.
What John waited for with the patience of a saint, was the moment Sherlock put down his violin and started pacing.
It was irritating, but not as much as the plucking. Despite being a spontaneous mess of odd actions when bored or during a case, thinking Sherlock was a fairly predictable beast. So the doctor ceased his tapping – answering e-mails, drafts of his writing –and began browsing his internet haunts: some funny comics, some blogs and a forum in which he mainly lurked.
Sherlock occasionally wandered behind his back, stared with soul searing eyes at the screen, scoffed and returned to his pacing. It was less unnerving than when he did it with people. The detective had the sort of gaze that clearly dissected and a permanent expression on his face that said you were found lacking. As if your constant, dull, existence was a disappointment solely for being.
Still, John said nothing, for now, while he was working on a case and not destroying their home bit by bit.
The ringing phone startled them both.
Leaving JFK airport involved facing mouth-breathing overworked TSA agent hordes who found her cleavage too unremarkable to warrant a pass given the contents of her carry-on bag and a lecture on young women travelling alone with a large amount of consumer electronics and no luggage other than a backpack.
The twelve hour flight had been an exercise in patience that not even free drinks and sixty-percent wider shoulder spaces had eased. Businessmen tapped on their laptops or snored, children turned hyper or scared – which happened even in first class – amazed tourists gasping in awe at – apparently – clouds and then, entitled rich people who thought harassing a flight attendant was made possible by virtue of loads and loads of dosh.
The sounds seemed like they'd stopped being filtered through her ears and as a result, she could hear, feel, taste and smell it.
American citizen Catherine Sachs was then pushed along, her certificates scrutinized, half-drunk from scotch and more than half-dizzy from the flight. Keeping her native British accent in check had been a strain.
By the time she was out of the airport, the sun was still technically up. Not that she could tell. The saying that "The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire" was only still true by virtue of the fact that it had never really risen in the first place. It was dark, then it was light and if you were lucky, through the thick patch of clouds, you could see a slightly yellowish spot like a mustard stain on a dirty tablecloth.
She was perversely wide awake despite not sleeping for forty-eight hours and so miserable she wished to be confused for a tourist just to have an excuse to bite the taxi driver's head off.
The universe continued in its perversity by denying her even that amount of relatively righteous anger by not having any black cabs available by the time she exited the building, forcing her to walk.
To add insult to injury, it had started to drizzle.