Part One: In Which Sherlock is Asked to Kill a Man.
"Bloody bastard... Light, dammit! C'mon, fuck you!" He thumbed down the clicker on the lighter a bit desperately, cupping his hand around the flame against the chill breeze. His fingers shook violently, but not from the cold. The end of the cigarette finally caught and he inhaled deeply. The shaking in his hands stopped almost instantly. Tilting his head back, he blew a plume of smoke skyward and watched as the breeze tore it to ribbons and whipped it away. Holding the cigarette in his lips he stuffed the lighter back into the pocket of his jeans.
He wore no jacket, seemingly immune to the cold that was starting to fall over London with the onset of autumn. The sleeves of his sweater were rolled up to bare pale, scar-peppered forearms. The man's weight tipped back, his shoulders pressing up against the cold brick behind him.
Lifting one foot, clad in a slightly ratty canvas sneaker, he placed it flat on the wall behind him. The cigarette quickly burnt down to the filter and he dropped it to the sidewalk. The end burned red for half a moment more before he stepped on it and ground it out. This particular part of the street held no more interest for him, since he had puzzled out anything interesting about the street and its inhabitants. Peeling himself off the wall, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and set off toward the mouth of the narrow street. There, he was met by a sleek, mouse-grey car. The door swung open seemingly of its own accord. With a swift look to check for prying eyes, he slipped into the warm interior.
"Hello, Mycroft. I might have expected you to turn up. It seems to be an annoying habit of yours lately." Leaning back against the plush leather seat, he folded his bare forearms across his stomach. "You never turn up unless you want something out of me."
The man sitting across from him was clearly the elder and more mature of the two, right from his neatly combed and parted hair to his perfectly polished shoes. "You know me far too well, Sherlock."
Sherlock gave a noncommittal grunt and rummaged both his cigarettes and his lighter out of his pockets.
"Sherlock, I wish you wouldn't smoke in my car. The smell lingers terribly."
Again, Sherlock grunted, lighting this cigarette more deftly than the first. Lowering the hand with the lighter, he leaned forward very slightly and purposefully blew that first lungful of bitter smoke into Mycroft's face. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Mycroft daintily waved a hand in an effort to clear the hazy cloud away. "Well, what do you want?" Sherlock spoke around the cigarette, the glowing end bobbing lightly in the half-dark of the car's interior.
"There have been some... Things happening in the office lately that seem to link to your neighbourhood." Mycroft's fingers fidgeted on the curved handle of the umbrella he never seemed to go without. Sherlock's eyes dropped to it and he smirked slowly.
"And you brought that into gang territory? What did you expect to do with it, protect yourself from a rain of bullets?" He laughed, hoarse and bitter, and blew another plume of smoke toward the car's roof. "You'd have been better off just staying out of here."
"I was asked to see to it personally."
"And so I'm your lackey." Sherlock looked around for an ashtray and, finding none, simply tapped the cold ashes onto the floor of the car. Mycroft grimaced sourly, but Sherlock only smirked. "Alright, let me have it."
"I will put it bluntly, Sherlock. We need you to kill a man."
Sherlock could only assume that that was how he ended up here, face-down in an alleyway with one of London's riot police kneeling between his shoulder blades with a nightstick pressed across the back of his neck. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except Sherlock's cigarettes had gone missing a long time back and the lack of nicotine was making him irritable. Common sense said he should just lay here, let the riot that he'd stumbled across on his way home run its course, and let Mycroft's people get him out of the nick.
Sherlock wasn't one to listen to common sense.
He might have been thin, underfed, and much lighter than the copper kneeling on his back, but Sherlock was fast and stronger than he looked. In remarkably short order he had the copper down, out cold, and had taken his gun. Pathetic thing, really, but it went into the back of Sherlock's waistband anyway. Wiping blood off his face from where it had been bashed into the asphalt, Sherlock made a valiant effort to simply melt into the crowd. Unfortunately for him, his height made him stand out, and once again he was apprehended, and this time he was stuffed unceremoniously into the back of a police car with several other disgruntled young men.
Which, in turn, was how he ended up here. He rested his forearms on the table and looked up at the harried-looking, ageing man sitting across the interrogation table from him. His wrists were handcuffed a bit too tightly together, but he affected not to notice as he laced his long fingers together.
Sherlock wasn't a pretty picture by now. The copper that had tackled him to the ground the second times hadn't been at all gentle, and there was a purplish bruise up most of the left side of his face. Scratches covered what wasn't turning purple and there was a nasty nick just above his right eyebrow. He was smeared with dirt and grime and blood, most of it his own, and looked thoroughly disreputable. The only thing that kept him from looking like any other young thug from the riots were his eyes, too large in his thin face and an unnaturally pale grey.
"You have nothing to link me to the riots other than the fact that I happened to be walking down the wrong street at the wrong time. One of your much too overenthusiastic constables tackled me to the ground and I fought back. Self defence, naturally. When being tackled in the middle of a riot it was perfectly reasonable for me to believe that my life was in danger."
The man sitting across the table from him had been growing steadily redder and redder as Sherlock spoke. Finally he stood up, slamming a hand down on the table between them. Sherlock expected him to shout, but what came out instead was a smooth, level, and surprisingly calm voice. "I don't care who you are, Mr Holmes, and I don't care if you're the younger brother of one of the most important men in the British government. You are, as far as I can see, a rabble rouser and a miscreant."
"And you, Inspector, need to see someone about your stress levels. Your nails are terribly ragged. It's not healthy to be so wound up."
The hand that had slapped down on the table just as quickly disappeared from sight. "Don't be smart, Holmes."
"I'll take that as your nice way of calling me a 'bloody great git' and storming off." Sherlock smiled, the expression a rather gruesome one in his battered face. "I could be of some use to you, Inspector, if you would simply take off these handcuffs." He wiggled his long fingers meaningfully, ignoring the tremors starting in the tendons in his palms.
The Inspector sat back down, his hands still out of sight under the table. Sherlock didn't need those, of course, to work his magic.
"You've been working longer hours than you should at your age, chasing criminals. A bit of arthritis starting, I think, mostly in your hands from the swelling in your knuckles. The damp cold isn't helping, either, and it's making the rest of your body stiffer than normal. Can't hide that in the way you move. You've taken up drinking again, and you're trying to hide it from someone, maybe a relative. There's a faint yellowness in your eyes that says your liver's going to go and the veins in your nose are too close to the skin. You'll want to cut back on the number of shots you take from that little bottle hidden in your desk. And be careful not to slop any more on your tie, good vodka ruins good silk just as much as bleach will. Your wife won't be coming back, so you can stop fidgeting with your wedding ring. The wear marks aren't so bad, if you pawn it you can get a pretty penny for it."
The Inspector stared at him across the table, a bit slack-jawed. But Sherlock wasn't finished.
"Might want to go shopping for a suit again, Inspector. That one's looking a little loose on you. But losing some weight will help with the fact that your heart's not happy with the stress. I can see the pulse in your neck from here. Might want to cut back on the salty snacks along with the shots, don't you think?" He stopped there, watching the man's eyes. He smiled again, wider, with a flash of very white teeth. "Does anyone in this place smoke? I could really use one about now."
Sherlock never did get his cigarette. What he got instead was tossed into a holding cell, his hands now free. Sitting down on the edge of the narrow cot, he stared down at his trembling fingers. The fact that he hadn't had a cigarette since before lunch was what caused his hands to shake. The craving wasn't unbearable yet, but it was like a nagging itch just over his shoulder. It would have to be dealt with eventually, and better sooner than later.
Suddenly unable to bear staring at his fingers and the rhythmic flutters of the tendons in the backs of his hands, he sat on them instead. Even sitting on his hands to keep from staring at them, all he could think about was how he really, really wanted a cigarette.
He sat quite still, not moving his hands even when his fingers started to go numb. He knew from experience that the moment he took his weight off them the tremors would start again. Sherlock didn't think he could safely handle that. He was still sitting on his hands, staring fixedly at the wall across from him and trying to decide if the sickly yellow-grey colour of the wall was paint or just years of age, when the barred door of his holding cell slid open. The copper that stepped in was young, only a couple years older than Sherlock by the looks of him, andhe was smoking. Sherlock licked his lips a bit, watching a thin line of smoke rise from the end of the cigarette toward the ceiling.
"Holmes, right?" The copper took a couple steps into the cell, letting the guard slide it shut behind him. Sherlock nodded shortly, still watching the smoke lift and curl from the cigarette in the copper's mouth. "You've got a bit of a bad record with the riot police. You do a lot of protesting?" Sherlock wordlessly shook his head and breathed a little deeper, trying to get at least a little taste of the smoke from the man's cigarette. "Any protesting at all, then?" Again, Sherlock shook his head. The copper seemed completely oblivious to the way he was was leaning forward, the covetous way he was eyeing the cigarette. The copper inhaled deeply, the cherry end flaring red, and Sherlock actually let out a little groan. It all seemed to click, then, and the other man smiled thinly. "Need something, Holmes?"
Without waiting for Sherlock's reply the copper fished a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket. Benson & Hedges, in that pretty gold and black packet. Sherlock could almost taste the slightly nutty flavour of that particular brand as the copper slid one out and held it toward Sherlock. He reached for it with shaking fingers, only to have it cruelly snatched out of his reach. "You can have this when you tell me what you were doing on that street when the riot started. A couple people saw you talking to the ones that we know started it. What did you say?"
"Nothing! I didn't say a fucking word! I asked them what was bloody well going on... What the hell is it with you people and thinking I'm a fucking criminal?"
The copper's eyebrows shot toward his hairline at the string of profanity, but he held the cigarette out to Sherlock and was even kind enough to light it for him. Sinking back against the wall, Sherlock watched as the tremors in his left hand subsided into nothing. Letting the hand flop limply into his lap, he cleared his throat.
"I apologize for that. I tend to get a little... Irritable when the cravings get bad. I think the Inspector that interviewed me found that out first hand. I hope I didn't upset him too badly." Sherlock inhaled deeply again, tipping his head back to let the smoke drift toward the ceiling. "Now, I could go to my brother crying police brutality for the way your riot police took me in."
"They had reason to believe you were dangerous. That copper you knocked out is still woozy." The other man sat down on the only other available surface, the second narrow cot bolted to the wall.
"I had reason to believe that my life was in danger. The man had a nightstick across the back of my neck and seemed perfectly willing to break it. My neck, I mean." The two of them shared a thin smile; both knew full well that that wouldn't have happened.
"Are you going to tell me what you were doing in the middle of the riot, Holmes, or are we going to sit here and dance around the subject for the rest of the afternoon?" Sherlock tapped the cold ashes of his cigarette onto the floor between his feet, scraping the sole of one ratty canvas sneaker over them to make sure they were, in fact, cold. He stared down at the smear of ashes on the floor, thinking of how best to answer that question.
"Like I told the constable that took me into custody and your Inspector with the drinking habit, I was on the wrong street at the wrong time. My brother had asked me to take care of something for him, and on the way home I happened to take a different route than usual. I didn't realize it would plant me in the middle of a riot and end with me here."
The copper watched him closely, not saying a word and hardly touching the cigarette now held in his fingers. The paper burned slowly until a clump of cold ash fell onto the floor at his feet. That seemed to jerk him out of his reverie and he snorted lightly. "I'd like to believe that, Sherlock, I really would. But the Yard knows you better than that. What did you do?"
"Nothing."
Sherlock kept his expression carefully blank until the copper snorted again and got up. He ground his cigarette butt out on the bottom of his shoe and closed his fist around it. "I'm sure your brother will have you out of here in no time. You really should try and keep your nose clean, Sherlock, it's starting to reflect badly on your brother."
Sherlock was let go with a minimum of fuss and frustration, and when he collected the few things that had been taken from him and stepped out of the Yard, Mycroft's mouse-grey car was pulled up to the curb outside waiting for him. Once again, the door opened seemingly of its own accord and Sherlock slipped into the heated interior. Mycroft let the door slam shut behind him and the car pulled away from the curb as Sherlock dug out his cigarettes and his lighter. Much to his surprise, they were slapped out of his hands by the handle of Mycroft's umbrella.
"You didn't do what I asked you."
"Well, no. I was arrested." He went to pick up his fallen belongings, only to find the suspiciously sharp ferrule of Mycroft's umbrella under his chin.
"So he's not dead."
"No. But I think one of us might be if you don't take that thing out from under my chin." Sherlock stared flatly up at his older brother until the umbrella was withdrawn and he could pick up his cigarettes and lighter. Rather than risk having Mycroft actually hurt him this time, he tucked them away into the pockets of his jeans.
"Sherlock, that man is an enemy of the government and a threat to national security."
"That 'man' is a nineteen year old boy who spends more time thinking with the head below the belt than the one on his shoulders. Just because he's got the potential capability to hack into Britain's government computers doesn't mean he's going to do it." The hand holding Mycroft's umbrella twitched like he'd very much like to hit Sherlock. Sherlock simply smiled, long and thin and ignoring the way it made the bruise up the side of his face throb. "Besides. If he's a risk to the government then the government should take care of him, not me."
"And you are in no position to argue. I could have you out on your ear faster than you could blink!"
"But you won't, Mycroft. Because you know if you do, you'll never know where to find me when you want something." Mycroft's hands twitched on the handle of his umbrella again, but he carefully restrained himself. "Let me out. I can walk from here, and there's someone I want to stop in and see."
The car slid slowly up to the curb and Sherlock opened the door to let himself out. As he straightened up, Mycroft called, "Sherlock!" He turned back, leaning down to look into the car. "You don't want to get in any more trouble, Sherlock. I can't keep bailing you out of the nick every time you do."
Making no reply, Sherlock simply slammed the door of the car shut and danced back as it pealed away.
"Did you get anything, Greg?"
"Not a scrap." Lestrade dropped the butt from the cigarette that he hadn't really been smoking in the holding cell in the ashtray on Dimmock's desk. "He's stubborn, and look who his brother is."
"And we don't have anything solid on him?"
"Not a scrap. All we have is that he was on the street, and considering the way you tackled him back there..."
"Don't pin this on me!" Dimmock had a fair bit of bruising of his own, though nothing like what Holmes had sported. It was a half-hearted protest, appropriate considering what Dimmock had done.
"Look, we're lucky he didn't go in for police brutality and have us all under question." Lestrade sat down heavily in a chair, staring at the black glass ashtray and the residue of past cigarettes in the bottom of it. Dimmock gladly took back the pack of Benson & Hedges back, along with the lighter, and tucked them into the pockets of his pants. "We'll get him on something else eventually. He's got a petty record as long as my arm in the system."
"Petty's not going to be good enough one of these days. Eventually we're all going to be standing around somewhere with a dead body and that Holmes kid is going to be right in the middle of it all."
"And just what makes you say that?"
"Just a gut feeling, Greg."
"We all learned not to trust your gut feelings a long time ago."
But, deep down, Lestrade wondered if maybe, just maybe, Dimmock didn't have a point.
Sherlock's apartment was unsurprisingly spartan. One couch, with a tartan blanket thrown over it. Two bookcases along the far wall, stuffed to bursting with every sort of book imaginable. One TV stand with a small TV, now displaying static since the cable had been cut off a while back. The couch doubled as a bed, since the only door leading off the small sitting room was the tiny bathroom. There was no door between the kitchen and the living room, and the kitchen was hardly more than a cubby with a stove, a refrigerator, and a few cupboards with the bare essentials tucked away in them.
Sherlock let himself in and pulled his sweater off over his head. Throwing it carelessly onto the back of the couch, he fell onto it with a quiet grunt, irritably rubbing at the inside of his right forearm. A few pale scars were peppered there, from everything from everyday nicks and cuts to a couple of pale, deliberate-looking lines up the length of his forearm. Not deep lines, and the pale scars were fairly fresh, but obviously done with intent and consequences in mind. Sherlock's fingers ran over those in particular, following the veins and tendons up to the inside of his elbow. His hand clenched into a fist, making the tendons and veins stand out in stark relief under his pale skin. That made the tiny, round scars peppering the inside of his elbow stand out further, and Sherlock smiled bitterly. Some of those marks were very fresh, only a few days old. He had been smart enough not to pump anything else into his system before going anywhere, knowing that they would have asked uncomfortable questions if he'd been taken into custody with dilated pupils and an elevated heart rate.
Leaving his fist clenched, Sherlock reached down into the narrow space between the cushion on the end and the arm of the couch and pulled out a small plastic bag. If Mycroft was good for nothing else, he understood that breaking Sherlock's drug habit was going to be difficult and provided Sherlock with clean needles on a regular basis. A handful of these, and a vial of something clear that had also been dropped off by Mycroft, made up the contents of the plastic bag.
He needed both hands to draw a small measure of the drug in the vial into one of the clean syringes, but that took only a moment. Sherlock clenched his hand into a fist again and angled his wrist to make the veins stand out against the white skin of his forearm.
The prick of the needle breaking the skin was a sharp, bright point before Sherlock pushed down on the plunger. The effect was almost instantaneous; languid warmth spread out from the pinprick, seeping through his muscles. He melted into the couch as the world seemed to slow down around him. The syringe rolled harmlessly out of his hand and onto the floor, and Sherlock watched it with idle fascination as it rolled to a stop near his right foot. Despite the almost liquid feel of his muscles his mind was still running a mile a minute.
Sherlock closed his eyes and his world narrowed to the dark inner surfaces of his eyelids. A thousand bright points filled his consciousness; he knew them to be ideas, thoughts, memories, but he couldn't bring himself to care about any but one. That one bright point, a hundred times brighter than any other for the moment, was of course the request Mycroft had made of him that afternoon. "I will put it bluntly, Sherlock. We need you to kill a man."
There had been a twist of distaste around Mycroft's mouth when he said it. Ruthless the elder Holmes brother might be, a killer he was not. And he was a good brother; Sherlock's ignored closet full of fine clothes and designer shoes attested to that. Mycroft didn't really want the boy, the nineteen-year-old hacking prodigy, to wind up dead. But it was something that he thought was necessary, something that had to be done for the Greater Good. Sherlock could always hear the capitals when Mycroft talked about the Greater Good. Mycroft had always claimed that everything he did was for the Greater Good, even the people he told Sherlock to 'take care of'.
Sherlock almost never did unless he had no way out of it. He had been arrested once on a murder charge, and despite being proved innocent and having it expunged from his record he didn't want to go through that process again.
Mycroft knew that, Mycroft had been the one that had given the order to have it expunged. And he knew that Sherlock would rarely, if ever, actually do what Mycroft asked.
So why did he keep coming back? Simple, really. Mycroft didn't want to get his own hands dirty and he would rather see his little brother take the blame. He would bail Sherlock out eventually, anyway, so it was no skin off his nose if his little brother occasionally got arrested or tackled by the riot police.
Sherlock opened his eyes, banishing the bright points of data from his mind. The sun had barely moved since he closed his eyes, a matter of the sunbeam on his floor creeping a few millimetres towards his shoe and the syringe lying on the floor. The sun was gleaming off the very tip of the needle, now, a bright point of light like the ones that littered his consciousness.
Lestrade didn't like the morgue; it was a cold, miserable, odd-smelling place and Lestrade thought it was no place for the living to spend any time. Despite that, he let the coroner turn back the white sheet covering the prone body on the slab.
"James Weatherby, nineteen. Found dead just a little while ago, actually, still warm when they brought him in." The coroner, an older man with fatherly eyes and a gentle disposition, turned the youth's head to one side. "Cause of death was sharp force trauma to the skull. As you can see, something was driven through his temple and into his brain. He would have died almost instantly."
There was a perfectly around hole in the boy's temple with only a little blood left. It had looked like a bullet wound, at first, but there was no bullet in his skull and no exit wound.
"Suicide," Lestrade asked out of habit, even though he very much doubted it.
The coroner shook his head. "No. If it were suicide, the wound would be on an upward angle. The wound track slopes downward, toward his nose. Whoever delivered the blow was standing above him, like this." The coroner mimed out the action on Lestrade, much to the man's upset. "Either he was sitting down or the killer was much taller."
"Any trace in the track?"
"Not a stitch except bone fragments and some of his hair. It's like whatever was there... Was never there."
"Greg!" Both Lestrade and the coroner whirled around as Dimmock burst into the morgue. The chill and the odd smell in the air didn't seem to affect him as he waved a sheaf of papers around.
"What, what is it?"
"We've got something on that Holmes bastard!" The coroner cleared his throat, arching an eyebrow. Dimmock lowered his voice a bit, made it less likely to echo around the empty room. "Sorry. You know who I mean, Greg. His DNA was found at the scene."
"Anything that would indicate him in the murder?"
"Not really, but-."
"So why are you telling me, then? It could be circumstantial."
"Circumstantial or not it gives us a reason to pull him in for questioning!" His voice was rising again, starting to echo, and he quickly dropped it back to a more normal range. "I say we go pick him up and see if he knows anything. The guy in DNA said that the sample was fairly fresh."
Lestrade finally sighed and followed Dimmock out. The younger man was practically vibrating with anticipation and he reminded Lestrade very strongly of a hunting terrier. "I have to ask, Dimmock, since you're so excited. What exactly did they find at the scene?"
Obviously the younger detective hadn't expected that question. "Well... Er..."
"Go on, spit it out. You're a copper. You shouldn't be embarrassed."
"It uh... It was a semen sample, Greg. In a used condom."
"Ah..." Lestrade didn't seem phased, but Dimmock's quivering anticipation was dampened. "Well, go on, send a car. Maybe we'll get something on him even if he didn't kill this kid."
Spirits instantly restored, Dimmock dashed off to do what he usually did. Lestrade shook his head and plodded along after him, not really looking forward to hauling Holmes in for questioning.
Sherlock, still riding out the effects of the drug he'd pushed into his system, was more than a little surprised when two street cops showed up at his door, broke it down, threw him into handcuffs, and flung him into the backseat of a police car. He was even more surprised when, instead of being thrown into a cell to come off his high, he was sat down in an interview room across from the man with the cigarettes from before. Sherlock smiled, though it looked a little vacant on his thin face.
"Well hello again. If you wanted to sit down and have a chat you really didn't need to throw me into the back of a police car. A simple phone call and some flowers would have sufficed."
Lestrade had watched impassively as Sherlock was led in, the tall man swaying slightly even as he sat down. His words were slurred, his pupils mere pinpricks in his unnervingly light grey eyes. Other than that, he seemed lucid enough; he could focus on Lestrade's face, form sentences and words, and he wasn't rolling about on the floor.
"Do you know a boy named James Weatherby?"
"I do!" Sherlock brightened a bit at that, sitting a little straighter. "Brilliant boy. He has a real future in the computer industry if he starts thinking with the head above the belt rather than below it." Sherlock wet his lips, eyes still locked on Lestrade's face. "You're not getting enough sleep."
"When was the last time you saw James?"
"Earlier today, actually. He and I have a... A standing arrangement." He chuckled, his head bowing lightly. He didn't bother to raise his head as he spoke, more to the table top than to Lestrade. "He lets me read any of the books in his flat, and I do mean any of them, and he has a lot. Of course, that's only if I fuck him into the bed in return." Sherlock raised his head, exhaling slowly. "Lovely boy... Lovely body. Trusts me completely. Really, you need to get more sleep."
Lestrade had seen and heard a lot of things, including the ramblings that some junkies spat out when they were high. Sherlock might have been floating over the moon on whatever it was he'd taken, but he wasn't lying.
"So you don't know that he's dead, then?" Best to get right to the point. Sherlock's eyes widened, white visible all the way around the silver irises.
"Dead?"
"Stone dead. He's lying on a steel slab downstairs if you want to see him. Though, I imagine you wouldn't. Not with him being your... Partner and all."
Sherlock's head bowed again as though he didn't quite know how to deal with that news. After a few agonizingly long moments he raised his head again, pin-point pupils latching onto Lestrade's face. "I want to see him."
Sherlock almost didn't make it down to the morgue without falling on his face. He did, however, even if he had to stop in the doorway and lean against the frame to regain both his balance and his breath. Lestrade had taken off the handcuffs once they were out of sight of the rest of the Yard, and the taller man seemed very grateful for that indeed. Still wobbling a little, Sherlock followed Lestrade into the morgue and stood very quietly as the coroner turned the sheet covering James' face back.
"That's James."
"We didn't need an identification, Sherlock."
The taller male nodded, and then turned to the coroner. "Can I have a glove? Or two, if you can spare both. ... Thank you."
Sherlock pulled the latex gloves on, turned James' head to one side, and bent over to peer at the wound. The coroner looked slightly stricken. "Gregory, what is he-"
"Shut up." Sherlock didn't look up to speak. His thumbs felt the edge of the wound, working outward in small circles. His lips moved as though he was talking to himself but he made no sound. After a long moment, Sherlock straightened up and took off the gloves. "I can tell you who killed him."
Both Lestrade and the coroner stared at him in consternation.
"I can. I recognize the wound, even though the two of you won't have seen anything like it in here before. The man that leaves these wounds doesn't usually kill." Crossing the room on quiet feet, Sherlock threw his gloves into the rubbish bin. "The murder weapon was an umbrella with a sharpened ferrule. No one would notice that it was actually a weapon until it was too late."
"How can you possibly know that just from looking at the hole in his head?"
"Simple. I've seen this sort of wound before."
"Well, go on. Who did it?"
Sherlock laid a finger aside his nose and winked conspiratorially. "That, dear Inspector, is something that I can't reveal without your promise of complete secrecy."
Sherlock sipped gratefully at the coffee that Lestrade had been kind enough to go and fetch for him. It was a bit weak and too sweet, but Sherlock drank it anyway. Namely because there was nothing else, and secondly because the drug was finally starting to wear off and he felt distinctly sleepy.
The Inspector, who had finally gotten around to introducing himself as Gregory Lestrade, sat down across from Sherlock, nursing his own coffee.
"Well, you have your coffee and your have your secrecy. Now are you going to tell me who killed James Weatherby?"
Sherlock licked a drop of coffee from his upper lip and nodded. "His name's Bradley. Bradley Jameson, and he works for my brother."
"Alright, that's a start."
"A start? That's all I can tell you other than the fact that he stole my brother's umbrella to do it."
"How do you know it wasn't Mycroft that did it?"
"The angle of the wound. Bradley is shorter than Mycroft. The angle of the wound track is shallower." He held up a hand to demonstrate his point. "If Mycroft had done this, the angle would have been like this," his hand tilted to a slightly steeper angle above the table, "and there would have been more than one wound."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because Mycroft isn't strong enough to ram the ferrule of an umbrella through someone's skull in one stroke. He would have needed a couple of tries to weaken the bone and drive it through. There was no fracturing beyond a few cracks radiating out from the wound. One clean blow, straight through the bone and into the brain."
"Right." Lestrade decided he really didn't want to know how Sherlock knew about that. He took a drink of his coffee, downing most of the cup in one go. "Well, you want to tell me how we can find this Bradley Jameson?"
"You probably won't."
"Why's that?"
"Because if he was the one that killed James, then he's either been sent away or killed. You'll never find the body or any deportation records." Sherlock set his coffee cup down on the table and laid his hand flat on the gleaming surface. "And if it wasn't him, then it was another of Mycroft's aides and you'll never find him either."
"Did Mycroft tell them to kill James?"
"No, he wouldn't have been so obvious. If he wanted someone dead, he would mention them in a roundabout fashion and they'd be dead by the end of the week. Usually, though, it isn't one of Mycroft's lackeys that does the dirty work. Usually it's a paid man, and there are never any names exchanged. They're very careful to cover their tracks. Even I couldn't go and get you proof of any of this."
"So for all I know you're just pulling my leg."
"Hardly, Inspector. I have no reason to lie to the police. I'm not hiding anything." Sherlock smiled, a thin little smile that didn't pull the purple bruise spreading up his cheek. Then, he yawned. "Inspector, it's getting late. I should probably be going."
Lestrade glanced down at his watch; he hadn't realized how late it was. "Oh, yeah, you probably should. You want a cab called?"
"Inspector, do I look like I can afford cab fare?" He gestured down at himself; ragged t-shirt, jeans with holes in the knees, and a pair of sneakers that were barely holding together by the seams. Lestrade sighed, knowing he was going to regret what he was about to say.
"Yeah, alright, fair enough. I'll drive you home."
Lestrade was a little shocked at the state of Sherlock's building. The outside looked like it was going to fall outward into the street at any moment, and he was almost positive that the siding was held on with duct tape at one of the corners. Couldn't be sure, though, unless he got out of the car and went to look. Sherlock had gone up to the outside door of the lowermost flat and was currently fighting with the key, trying to get it into the lock. Lestrade rolled down the door and leaned out.
"You need help, Holmes?"
Sherlock turned to glare at him over his shoulder. "I'm quite alright, thank you."
"You've been standing there a good five minutes. Sure you don't want a hand?"
"I'm fine, thank you."
"Alright." Lestrade sat back in his seat, but didn't roll up the window. When Sherlock still hadn't gotten the door to open several minutes later, he leaned out again. "You sure this is the right apartment?"
"I think I know where my own home is, Inspector!"
"Alright, alright, just asking." Once more he sat back. Sherlock continued to fight with the door. Lestrade, finally fed up, rolled up the window, got out of the car, and came over to see what was going on. "Holmes?"
"Yes?" Sherlock couldn't have sounded anymore frustrated and annoyed if he tried.
"I think they changed your lock."
"Now why would they go and do that?"
"Did you pay this month's rent?"
Sherlock hesitated for a moment before shaking his head slowly. "No."
"That would be why, then." Lestrade watched as Sherlock pocketed his keys and squared his skinny shoulders. "What are you doing, Holmes?"
"I'm going to break down the door."
"That's breaking and entering, you know."
"It's my apartment."
Lestrade sighed. "Did they give you any warning that the rent was late?"
"No."
"Did they tell you when you moved in that the locks would be changed if you didn't pay the rent?"
"No."
"Right. Then as far as I'm concerned, you can break down that door. Because as far as you're concerned, I didn't just tell you the lock had been changed."
Sherlock nodded, smiled thinly, and backed up a step. He wasn't very heavy, but the door wasn't in particularly good condition. It popped open easily when Sherlock threw his shoulder against it, making him stagger a step or two into the sitting room.
"Well, goodnight then." If he had a hat or helmet, Lestrade would have tipped it to Sherlock. Instead, he settled for a slightly mocking two-fingered salute and started back to his car.
"Inspector?"
Lestrade stopped and turned around, much against his better judgement.
"Thank you." The tall, thin, disreputable-looking man gave a two-fingered salute of his own, closed the door of his flat, and disappeared from sight.