This summer I wrote short story. Then, when time came for this year's National Novel Writing Month, that story's sequel kind of took over. This is the result. And yes, I DID win NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words in one month! God help me.

Chapter 1

"The kid's as high as a kite."

Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade sighed, nodding at the officer who had just reported that they had caught an intruder on their crime scene. As he headed back into the house he could hear the argument before he even entered the room next to the one the body was in.

"Look you..." said one of the officers, clearly angry.

"Are you all completely blank?" demanded an imperious voice, the tone and accent nearly screaming public school and money. "The idea that the brother could possibly be involved is preposterous! Haven't you checked for the documents? They're probably under the victim's mattress. He clearly wasn't the imaginative type. For pity's sake, look how his desk is arranged."

Entering the dining room Greg saw that the young man who had been pressed into a chair with no fewer than three officers around him was indeed little more than a kid. In his early twenties at the most, he was skinny to the point of emaciation with deep circles beneath his eyes. He was jittery with whatever it was he'd taken; hands never still. A mop of black curls hung into nearly colourless eyes which were bloodshot but still startlingly piercing when they turned on Greg.

The kid looked him up and down as though sizing him up before speaking again, with a confidence at odds with his wild appearance.

"Only recently promoted. The fiancée isn't nearly as excited about you being a D.I. as she lets on. Probably worried about the extra hours you'll be working. You're marrying a beta even though you're a fairly dominant alpha because you don't want a whole pack of children at home to distract you from the job. In fact, you're not particularly interested in being a Pack Leader at all despite how hard you worked for this promotion because of the distraction the responsibly for your packmates would be."

Greg blinked. He'd suspected Ann wasn't as thrilled with his promotion as he himself was. It was also true that the fact that he would likely end up serving as Pack Leader to at least a few of those under his command who lacked other ties was, for him, one of the few downsides of his new position. But to hear it all laid out like that in a clipped, matter-of-fact tone from a junkie he'd never met before was...

He glanced at Jones, a long-time Sargent and a solid officer. The guy just shook his head indicating that he was as lost as Greg himself was.

"Piss off."

Greg would be the first to admit that it was somewhat lacking as a comeback. What it might have lacked in originality, however, it made up for in being truly heartfelt.

It took longer than Greg would have liked to deal with the kid. He would have hauled him down to the yard under suspicion of murder if the house's security hadn't clearly been bypassed by someone who knew all the codes. Even then, he debated whether or not the kid could have some complicity in the crime. He simply knew too damn much. Then again, he seemed to know too damn much about everyone and everything.

In less than a half an hour they all learned far more about each other's private lives than any of them wanted to know. And while Greg wasn't about to take some doped-up kid's word for it, he privately decided that he'd look into the possibility that one or two of his officers had something that needed hiding.

When they had finally managed to eject their unwelcome visitor from the crime scene, everyone set about work again with the stiff demeanours of those who knew that everyone around them knew things about them that they didn't want them to know. Greg was just thankful that he hadn't had anything particularly salacious to be revealed at this point in his life.

Everyone was attempting to convince each other that *no one* could possibly know that much about complete strangers.

Still, Greg was incapable of not heading upstairs as soon as he could and checking under the victim's mattress. The envelope of documents he found meant that the case was closed quickly enough for him to get home to Ann on time for once.

The kid had been right, the brother had not been involved.

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

The second time the kid turned up was after the body had been taken away. The forensics team was just packing up and Greg was taking a final walk through of a mid-level solicitor's office. He found the kid studying a bit of frayed carpeting in the corner of one of the partners' offices.

Two weeks wasn't nearly enough time for Greg to have forgotten him.

In the small office, without lots of others to fill up the space with their pheromones Greg got his first real scent of him. It turned his stomach. There wasn't simply the chemical tang that many of the cheaper drugs left about someone. He was also clearly using some kind of low grade suppressant and a kind of cheap synthetic pheromone masker layered on top of it. The result was an unpleasant alpha-ish scent. It reminded him a little of the cheap perfume one of his elderly aunts had worn, smelling of chemical based vanilla. You could tell what it was supposed to be, but what it really was was headache inducing.

"You didn't smell this bad last time," he observed. He was sure if the kid's scent had been this offencive he would have noticed.

The kid shrugged up one shoulder, broadcasting disinterest.

"I was down near the docks earlier where everyone uses those cheap synthetic maskers. I wanted to pass for a new arrival who was down on his luck. Your officers are useless and your forensics team isn't much better."

Greg perched on the edge of the desk with his arms folded, watching the kid as he knelt down in the corner and began tugging at one side of the carpet. He should, of course, either be arresting him or booting him out. The evidence had already been collected, though, and after the last time Greg could admit to a certain amount of curiosity.

"Why would you want to pass for an easy mark down by the docks? It's a good way to get yourself knifed."

The kid half-turned at that and flashed one colourless eye and half a quick grin. "To find out about a smuggling ring down there."

A lecture about allowing the police to do their job, leaving things to the professionals, and personal safety was on the tip of Greg's tongue. He bit it back as he was fairly sure that at best he'd get an eye roll. If this kid was going to listen to the police he wouldn't be inside a posted crime scene illegally. Greg wondered if there was a pack to appeal to but found he doubted it.

In the end, it was the innate curiosity that had made Greg want to be in the CID in the first place that formed a reply.

"And?" Greg asked as the kid went back to tugging at the carpet.

"Early days," he said dismissively. "Ah!" At that a whole portion of the carpet came up smoothly. Greg opened his mouth to object to the destruction of property before he saw that this section of the carpet hadn't actually attached to the wall or floor. Reaching under the kid pulled out a file folder and held it up triumphantly.

"Okay, how?" Greg asked, pulling out a tissue and using it to snatch it from him before the kid could open it and compromise the evidence.

"Simple," he answered, crowding over him as Greg sat down in the squeaky office chair. He pulled on a pair of gloves and opened the folder gingerly, careful not to disturb any finger prints. "The wear on the carpet clearly shows that someone walked over to that corner more often than to the window on the other side of the room and only slightly less often than to the desk. Why would someone walk over to a blank corner so often? If they had been walking to something that had once stood there, there would be indentations in the carpet. There are none. What there is, is a frayed spot at the edge of the carpet, a sign of neglect that nowhere else in this office shows. That something was then hidden beneath that carpet edge was obvious."

No, it wasn't obvious, Greg thought, but it made sense and was decidedly clever. The kid was observant and smart. It was a shame he was frying that excellent brain of his with whatever drugs he was taking.

"Your victim was killed because he discovered the firm's illegal activities," he said, pointing over Greg's shoulder at the first page.

"I'd like to look through all the evidence before jumping to a conclusion, thanks," Greg said, closing the folder and carefully bagging and tagging it.

"And *then* you'll jump to conclusions," came the sour rejoinder. "The question is why would they leave the evidence in so obvious a place when they killed him, knowing that the police would search the premises?"

It was a valid question and the way he'd found the files had been clever. Of course, Greg's men *should* have found it themselves and he'd be having a word with them about that.

He sat back in the office chair and looked up at his crime scene intruder.

"I had to take disciplinary action against one of my officers last week," he said conversationally. The kid shrugged, disinterested and started poking through the filing cabinet behind the desk. "You were right, he does have a methamphetamine problem. Takes one to know one?"

"I wouldn't touch meth if you paid me," the kid stated derisively.

"So what are you on?" Greg asked.

"Cocaine. Sometimes morphine," was the nonchalant answer.

"Jesus." Greg shook his head. "A brain like that and you're frying it with chemicals?" He didn't bother waiting for an answer. He'd known far too many addicts over the years to think that anything he said would make a difference. "What's your name?"

The kid turned to look at him, eyes narrowed. "I don't have a record."

Greg just waited.

"Sherlock," the kid said finally.

"Seriously?" Greg asked, surprised. That was a new one.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "It's a family name," he said, diving back into the filing cabinet.

"And if I try to find your family?"

"I'm over eighteen. I can do as I please."

Which answered that question.

"Where do you live?"

A brief glimpse of a pale, suspicious eye. "Wherever I want."

Streets then. Despite the kid's – *Sherlock's* – clean cut appearance, Greg had suspected as much.

The filing cabinet was slammed shut as though it had somehow offended its searcher.

"Why would they leave those files? Yes, yes... of course!" He began to pace the office as he spoke, waving his hands to punctuate his points. "Not only was this not planned but the person who killed him didn't know that the files were there. Someone who knew enough to realise they had a problem but not so in on it as to know where the files are kept. But someone who *thinks* he's far enough in to make big decisions on his own."

He turned to Greg with triumph in his eyes.

"Your murderer, Detective Inspector, is one of the junior staff. Someone likely of limited intelligence but who believes themselves to have a great deal more mental faculties than they, in fact, do. An all too common failing. Someone with a quick temper who has a history of rash, ill-advised behaviour. He also thinks that his bosses rely on him when, in fact, they merely make use of him. He will likely have already made himself disagreeable by quoting the law at officers and looking down his nose at them. He will have an inflated sense of his own importance and may honestly believe that he is untouchable simply because he is a solicitor. When put under pressure, however, he will roll on his bosses without much provocation. Make him believe you have him wrapped up, that you know he did it and can prove it. He'll crack in less than an hour. Probably within fifty minutes."

It all made perfect sense, Greg realised with more than a bit of surprise. It was a lot to get simply by finding some files under the carpet, but when put that way it all seemed entirely obvious.

Sitting in the office chair watching this bizarre junkie describe their murderer in detail was one of the oddest experiences of Greg's life. It was also, he realised, one of the most exhilarating.

Sherlock stopped pacing and looked around the room again.

"Dull," he declared. "There was no real challenge in this at all."

With that he swept out of the room. Greg let him go, wondering what he was doing even listening to a junkie. Still, he was sure he knew who the murderer was now. Sherlock was right, one of the junior members of the firm had already made himself far more unpleasant than was necessary and there had been something distinctly slimy about him.

It took forty-one minutes and 15 seconds to break the junior associate and won Greg twenty quid from one of his sergeants who hadn't agreed that he could be broken in under an hour.

Once again, Greg got home on time. He used the money to treat Ann to a movie.