Acknowledgements:
This is a non-profit homage based upon characterisations developed by Messrs. Moffat, Gatiss and Thompson for the BBC series Sherlock. The character of Mycroft has been brought to life through the acting skills of Mr Gatiss. No transgression of copyright or licence is intended.
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Note:
This narrative is tenth in a series. Your enjoyment of this story will likely be enhanced if you read the sequence in chronological order:
1. The Education of Mycroft Holmes
2. Cate and Mycroft: The Wedding
3. Mycroft Holmes: A Terminal Degree
4. Mycroft Holmes and the Trivium Protocol
5. Mycroft Holmes in Excelsis
6. The Double-First of Mycroft Holmes
7. Mycroft Holmes: Master of Secrets
8. The Sabbatical of Mycroft Holmes
9. Mycroft Holmes: Tabula Rasa
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Ne Plus Ultra, Mycroft Holmes
Chapter One
A Strange Kind of Death – A Difficult Decision – Bloody Meetings – A Gathering in Whitechapel – The Family Holmes – La Juris – Conspirators – Latrodectus Britannia – The Last of Three – The End of a Public Servant.
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The first body was found partially slumped over on a sheltered Regent's Park bench, where it had sat, perfectly unmolested, for more than twenty-four hours, its eventual discovery the result of a badly-kicked football and several inquisitive children.
Detective-Inspector Lestrade watched on as his forensic people did their work. The cordoning of the crime scene; the collection of gross evidence; the photographs, the beginning of a finessed on-scene investigation and analysis.
"No immediate or obvious idea," the new guy, Collins, or Colin-something, shook his head in response to his DI's question. "There's no sign of blood, no obvious physical trauma. There are no entry or exit-wounds that we can see from an initial examination, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. If it were murder, then it doesn't look like he was killed here, is what I'm saying," he added. "No signs of a struggle, nobody called in complaining about an argument or a fight," Collins-something paused. "Unless it was a toxin of some sort, of course, in which case it was slow-acting and he could have absorbed it anyplace."
"Could it have been poison?" Greg stared at the corpse again, a thin man in his mid-years. Though the body was in rigor, it didn't look like a painful death, the opposite, in fact. There was a peaceful, relaxed expression on his face, apart from the eyes, of course. They were wide open in horrified surprise, as if witnessing something terrible beyond the realm of human sight. It was the look of a man who suddenly realised he was about to die. Other than that, death seemed to have taken him almost unawares. Perhaps he had closed his eyes for a brief doze in the park and woken just at the point his heart had stopped.
If it had been slow-acting poison, then the man could surely have called for help – even though the bench was partially hidden by trees, people would have heard a call for help.
And the other problem with the hypothesis of natural causes of course, and where the idea of wrongful death came in, was that this was the wrong kind of corpse for that kind of death to have happened with any sense of credibility. If it had been a homeless person, then Lestrade could have credited the idea with hardly a second thought: he had seen enough heavily-bundled up bodies in doorways after a freezing night to know that it happened. But this man was well-dressed in a very proper suit and shiny shoes, out for a stroll after lunch; immaculately groomed with clean, soft hands; clearly a professional person, probably worked in the City. His wallet had just been found in his pocket, untouched, and he was wearing an expensive watch. But there was no outdoor coat or briefcase; he hadn't intended to be outside for any length of time, nor was he on the way home from the office. If he had been unexpectedly missing for more than a day and a night, someone would have noticed.
But nothing had been said, no missing person alarm raised in the borough. This was either extraordinary bad luck, incredible coincidence, or ... it wasn't an accident. Only an autopsy would be any help now and only then if it provided a clear indication as to why the man died.
Frowning, Lestrade took the wallet Collins held out to him, wondering afresh why a banker maybe, or a lawyer or a ... he opened the wallet and checked ... ah; Whitehall Civil Servant, would end up peacefully dead on a bench in some public gardens. And what a Whitehall pen-pusher was doing all the way up in Regent's Park without a coat was another question. Maybe it was just one of those inexplicable deaths. Such things happened; a strange and unique kind of death.
Unless, of course, it happened again.
###
"Are you ready?" Mycroft's voice was steady and calm as he looked into her eyes.
Cate met his gaze with a mildly exasperated stare. "Yes, now will you please get on with it," she muttered, breathing deep and steeling herself.
They were in the kitchen where the light was best. The table was laid out with cotton-wool, sterile gauze, antiseptic; tweezers, a fine scalpel in a sterilized packet and ... needles.
Placing his wife's hand palm-up on the table, Mycroft worked a jeweller's loupe into his right eye, leaning forward and lifting her hand into the light.
"This is quite nasty and will probably hurt," he murmured, examining her right forefinger and picking up the scalpel. "What did you say you were doing? Abseiling?"
"For the new book," Cate bit her bottom lip as his deft fingers manipulated the wound into clearer view. For such a small thing, it was indeed on the painful side.
Clamping her jaw shut, she took another deep breath and turned her thoughts to a different issue, something that had been increasingly on her mind the last few months. She had hoped they could have avoided the sort of conversation she now envisaged, but Mycroft appeared blind, deaf and dumb to the problem.
"There," he said, a satisfied note in his voice. "Got the wretched thing. Something of a monster, considering."
Cate relaxed her tensed shoulders and looked at the offending article now firmly grasped by tweezers in her husband's hand. A shard of clear plastic, the width of a human hair, had been driven deeply into her skin when she neglected the use of climbing gloves. As splinters went, it had been vicious.
She felt the sting of an antiseptic-soaked ball of cotton pressed firmly onto the tiny reddened cut. "Ow. Thank you."
"Next time, do remember your gloves," Mycroft replaced the stinging swab with an expertly-applied piece of sticking-plaster, before lifting her finger back into the light for a final critical inspection. His eyes returned to hers and he smiled affectionately. "Abseiling?"
Her heart gave its usual little hop when he sounded like that. She smiled back, her fingers curling around his. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the back of Cate's knuckles. "Are you kissing it better?" her smile got wider.
"I am," he murmured quietly, kissing her palm and lifting it to the side of his face while he looked at her. "I always shall."
As her stomach got in on the hopping act, Cate realised now was a perfect moment to bring up The Problem.
"Darling, while we're here," she paused, curling her fingers around his. "We should talk about the children going to school," she held fast to his hand, pre-empting any dash for freedom.
Mycroft leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes.
Still holding him, Cate brought her other hand into play and held his long fingers between hers. "They need to go to school," she said, stroking along each digit up to the very tip. "If you look at this reasonably, you'll see I'm right."
He met her gaze. "I disagree," he blinked, slowly. "There's still time."
"Mycroft, you know, of all people, that I'm the one who most wanted to put this off for as long as we could, but pretending this problem doesn't exist is unhelpful and potentially damaging."
"Darling," he suddenly bent forward, taking her hands in his, his deep blue gaze measuring her determination. "Why the rush?" he asked, lifting a finger to push a lock of dark hair away from her cheek. "They're barely more than babes-in-arms."
"They're five, Mycroft, and asking more questions than an undergraduate student," Cate shook her head. "They're hurtling through books nearly as fast as they can download them and the Librarians at the university collection have asked me in perfect seriousness if they can both be given library-cards. They're voracious for information and ideas and intellectual stimulation and neither you nor I have the time or the ability to meet all their needs," Cate squeezed his hand in hers. "They require a more constant input than we can give them, she paused. "They need to go to school."
The notion that two of the most precious things in his world might leave his ability to entirely protect and care for them sat like a lump of undigested food in his gut. That the next step the twins would take meant cutting one of the greatest and most rewarding connections he had ever experienced bar none left him profoundly discontented. He did not want his children, the two things he still considered the most incredible product of his life to date, to be estranged from him in even the slightest sense. He did not want to feel supplanted as the key figure of information in their young lives. He did not want to feel he was losing them. He did not want them to leave ... him.
None of which, of course, was in the slightest part logical or relevant, but if he were being honest, it was how he felt.
"We could engage one or more tutors ..." he raised his eyebrows in question. "I know of several, highly-recommended scholastic organisations which ..." he stopped. The look in Cate's eyes suggested his proposal was falling on stony ground.
"Darling, they need more than knowledge and data," she said, curling her fingers more tightly around his. "They need exposure to different ways of thinking, different perspectives of life. They need society and friends."
"They have all manner of friends," Mycroft pulled Cate's hand across the table and stared down at it as he thought. "How many turned up for the juvenescent bacchanalia that was their most recent birthday party? There were eighteen of them in the front lounge before I ..." he waggled the fingers of one hand in the air.
"Before you ran away and hid in your office," Cate smiled, remembering. "Yes, my love, I know," she paused. "But those children are developing a little differently than Blythe and Jules and I can already see how Blythe looks at some of them," Cate hunted for the right analogy. "She's starting to look like Sherlock does when he's bored, as if the other children are tadpoles in a jar, and I don't want our children inheriting their uncle's less positive traits when we are in a position to do something about it."
If anything was likely to make Mycroft revise his thinking, it would be the idea that either Jules or Blythe might suffer through a similar adolescence and young adulthood as had Sherlock. Because of his brother's terrifying brilliance and utter precociousness, he had been left much to his own education. It had not been entirely to the good.
He did not want his children to suffer.
He did not want his children to leave.
He would consider the situation.
Lifting Cate's fingers, he pressed them thoughtfully to his lips.
###
The room was still and cold; he preferred it that way. The cooler the environment, the better his mind worked. It was almost like a drug, the cold; the clarity of mind one might expect from anything in the current phenethylamine class. Cold made his thoughts as sharp and as lucid as glass, as ice. Ironic.
He rarely left these rooms anymore. He preferred not to have to meet people, not to talk to any of them. None of that was important, really. He just needed an endless stream of data and a sufficiently cool room, and he could analyse any scenario, resolve any problem.
This was good; it was his job, he'd done it for years. But now something was changing. He'd first observed the odd wrinkle in the line of data several months before. Now he was seeing them nearly every day.
There was something huge working beneath the everyday world. He wondered if he'd been the only one to spot it so far. But then he knew others would have seen, too.
He was one of three, only and always three. Each had their own specialised sphere of influence, although there were many points of confluence.
His was money; money in the broadest of all possible senses. His domain of control was of all things economic; grand-scale vistas of the national and international. He knew the meaning of the smallest fluctuation of the greenback; how the Yuen had been slowly growing in understated power for the last thirty years; the fragile balance between the Euro and the Pound. He quite liked the Euro; it had taken him an entire twelve seconds to come up with a name and a structure that would please everyone, especially the egalitarian French. He hadn't been quite so fortunate with coin, but it was still early days. He could still change it; he could change anything.
But something had been actively working against him for a number of months now, turning the recent international fiscal scene from the anticipated quagmire into something more closely resembling the Western Front after the Somme.
Yet even this had not alarmed him overmuch; it had been known for decades that the appearance of new modern economies would be both bloody and responsible for years of painful growth as the old was succeeded by the new; as superpowers inched along the sine-wave of development.
No, it was none of this which discomforted him now, but rather something smaller, something far more local. This was too dangerous to be actioned in isolation; it would need the three of them.
He ran a hand across his face, the wrinkles of his skin pallid and unloved by sunlight. His pale-blue eyes flickered in time with the pulses of thought that flashed through his mind; he knew what he had to do next.
For the first time in over a decade, he realised he would have to call a meeting. Though it was very late, time meant little in the long game, as his pale fingers reached over to a flat black keyboard and tapped out a curt invitation.
He sighed. Bloody meetings.
###
Anthea put down her new Nokia. It was sleeker and lighter than her old Blackberry, but just as demanding. For the moment all her tasks had been completed and she had a little time to follow up her own projects. There was one, in particular, that had been at the forefront of her mind for several days now ...
Slipping out of the building, she eschewed one of the big cars and instead walked down to the Embankment tube station where she quietly found herself a seat on an east-bound District Line train. She only had to travel eight stops to get where she wanted to be; Whitechapel. Crossing Whitechapel Road she ducked into a shadowed doorway and waited for several minutes to ensure there was no tail, not that she'd expected any, but it never hurt to be secure and old habits died very hard in her line of work. Almost positive that she was alone, Anthea ducked down Cavell Street and took a nice, leisurely stroll south, checking for shadows all the while. Finally satisfied, she headed left into Stepney Way and walked swiftly to a narrow side street and a particular little establishment with blacked-out windows that would have raised certain eyebrows in Whitehall with its exotic and highly specialised line of wares and ... services.
The proprietor watched her walk in as he had several times before, he grinned. Some people really went in for this sort of thing, he knew. They got off on it. He grinned again as the stunning brunette brushed passed him without a word, pulling open a thick curtain that led to one of the back rooms where others were waiting.
She was already unbuttoning her blouse before the curtain swished closed behind her.
###
Cate checked her desk-diary. It was an old-fashioned ship's ledger, one of which she bought every year from Beales the Chandlers in Shaftesbury Avenue. Bound with leather and dated by the day, it was sufficiently massive for her to keep track of all her University appointments, things for the children and all the other minutia of dental appointments and shopping lists. It held photos and post-it notes, scraps of paper, business-cards and pressed flowers. It was a lovely thing and at times Cate had wrote in it with a quill because it seemed like she should. Of course, Mycroft decided to try it and February 14th was now home to some beautifully inscribed Shakespeare that made her smile every time she read it.
More recently, there had been an increasing number of book and authory-related commitments. She had tried to keep everything on her phone, really she had but the notes in her diary were a combination of alpha, numeric and visual. Quite often, Cate drew her notes; visual cues being some of the easiest for her to recall. Unfortunately, her Samsung did not yet have the facility to mind-read and until it did, she'd be happier doing things the old way. It didn't matter that Mycroft smiled whenever he saw her heave it open: she'd seen his office and knew that he hung onto traditional things too.
She checked the week ahead; it was busy.
Tomorrow she was writing most of the day until six, when she'd arranged to attend a public lecture on the history of London, hoping to be able to use several historical landmarks in her fifth novel. She also hoped to persuade Mycroft to meet her after for supper when she'd continue her advocacy of the twins schooling.
Her novels one and two were still selling away nicely, especially The English Spy. Her third narrativic child, The Apprentice, had made her something of a name in writerly-circles and the sales were still keeping her publishers happy, both here and in the States. Novel number four, a slightly darker story, had not flourished so well, except in Eastern Europe where she seemed to have attracted something of a following. There was even a small fan-club and she smiled every time she thought about having groupies.
And now she was working on her fifth and, thus far, her most ambitious project yet. It was to be a collection of ten shorter stories, all set in different countries and times and all connected to the one central theme. Cate was still toying with various ideas for the core linkages, but she knew it was going to be based in London and she had already decided it was to be historical in nature. The problem with that was there was so much choice; London being what it was, she could probably find enough ideas for half-a-dozen novels. Hence the lecture. She hoped it might provide a brainwave or at least, clarify her thinking.
On top of that, she was due at a photographer's studio the next morning for some marketing pictures her British publisher wanted. The studio was in Gosfield Street, not far from the old BBC building and she was due there at eleven-thirty. The photographer had sworn it would take no more than an hour, which was perfect as she wanted to take her husband to lunch and show him some brochures of schools in the London area she felt he might consider suitable for the twins. There was one particular place that sounded amazing.
Wandering into their bedroom as she was laying out a selection of clothes the photographer had asked her to bring along, Mycroft raised an eyebrow at a particularly sheer white blouse.
"Hardly the sort of thing to go on a book jacket," he looked mildly inquiring.
"I have no idea what the photographer wants me to look like," Cate added a dark scarlet silk blouse to the pile and dug out a pair of black stilettoes – the only pair of high-heels she actually owned. They made her feet ache when she wore them, but, God; they looked really good.
Mycroft's other eyebrow lifted. "What precisely is the nature of your next novel," he peered at Cate's clothing as she went to find a dark suit. "I begin to wonder."
"Dominic said he wanted to find the inner writer," her voice was slightly muffled from inside the dressing-room. "He said I need to let the creativity shine out," she added, laying down the suit and a lacy set of lingerie.
His eyes narrowing, Mycroft held up the bra between his finger and thumb. "It will not only be your creativity that shines out if you wear this," his mouth flattened. "This Dominic; not the regular photographer?"
"A nice young man the publishers are trialling," Cate brought out a long hanging bag and began arranging her chosen garments, ready ahead of time as she didn't want her writing interrupted tomorrow and she wouldn't have time after that. She turned to him and smiled. "They say he's really very good and I'm sure you'd want me to look my best," she slid both her hands into his, still smiling.
Sweeping her hands behind her back as he held them, he pulled her close to his chest. "Not sure I should leave you alone with any nice young men," he muttered, leaning down and brushing her mouth with his lips. "You have a habit of getting into the most awful scrapes with nice young men."
Cate grinned suddenly. "You cannot possibly be jealous," she laughed as his kiss caught her mid-breath and her knees suddenly wanted to bend the other way. She sighed into Mycroft's embrace as the kiss deepened and lingered.
A small but hardly discreet little cough came from the open doorway followed by some mumbled conversation.
Mycroft met her eyes. "We have an audience," he sounded resigned, holding her in his arms as they both looked towards the door.
"When you have finished kissing Mummy again, can we go and get one of these, please?" Blythe walked in holding up her Kindle reader and pointing a small finger at a large book.
Exhaling softly, Cate took the tablet from her daughter's hand, turning it to the light. Without a word, she handed it to Mycroft.
"The compact Oxford English Dictionary in two volumes?" Mycroft looked down at Blythe's expectant little face. She nodded. "You want a very large dictionary? There are several of them in my office, you know, and Mummy has quite a few as well," he paused, waiting.
Raising her own eyebrows in an unmistakable reflection of his own mannerism, Blythe looked around and waited until Jules stood beside her.
"We wanted one for ourselves and in our own room," she said. "And this version has a magnifying glass just like Uncle Sherlock has," the twins shared a look.
"Can we have it, please?" Julius asked. "We know it costs a lot of money, but we'll save up our pocket-money and pay for it as soon as we can," he added, confidently.
"Of course you can have it, darling," Cate handed the Kindle back. "We shall all go out to Foyles and get a set for you when I come back from having my picture taken.
"Was that why daddy was kissing you?" Jules looked interested. "To make sure you come back?"
Unable to avoid the smile that crossed her face, Cate affected an openly puzzled look. "I don't know the answer to that question," she said, turning to grin at Mycroft. "Perhaps you should ask Daddy instead."
Hearing her faint laugh as she walked back into the dressing room, Mycroft looked down to see two very attentive faces. He sighed.
###
She sipped slowly from her glass of Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac, relishing the velvet sensation of it in her mouth. Was this the '94 or the '96, she wondered momentarily, until the deeper hint of blackcurrant brushed her palate and she smiled. 1996. One of the better years.
It was late and it was dark, but she did her best thinking after midnight. Some quirk of her diurnal clock wired her brain for peak activity in the hours of the night rather than the day. Though the hour was inconceivable for most people, she was working in her office and would still be there the when the greys of dawn filtered between the drapes of heavy brocade at the several large windows.
She disliked the minimalism of the new century, preferring her environment to reflect an earlier and in many ways a more gracious, time. She appreciated the fine things that life had brought her; the lushly rich office decor, the latest and most discreet of technological assistance; the atmosphere of steady and powerful thought. Resting the fingers of her empty hand on the arm of the chair in which she sat, she registered the smooth luxury of soft leather and the satin touch of polished walnut. She smiled and sipped her wine.
She was one of three, only and always three. Each had their own specialised sphere of influence, although there were many points of confluence.
Hers was law; that sovereign body of all democratic social structures which entwined every unit of a society with every other unit; that brought down great houses and elevated the humble. Her landscape was that of national and international voices raised in the commonality of humankind, so that those who sought justice might have a forum; that all forms of legal inequity could be comprehended in the full light of day. She was the Châtelaine Juris, with keys to unlock all manner of judgement, be it criminal, civil, constitutional and even, though she rarely felt any desire for involvement, the ecclesiastical. No State, national or international legislature was mooted that she did not already know; no plebiscite, ordinance or cannon of the Western world was enacted that she did not hold it in her over-arching awareness.
She had noticed, of recent, an increase of activity in the corporate arena, especially in the City and in New York, Beijing and Brussels. Interesting that it would be these four places, the location of several of the world's most complex business hubs. She had been watching, evaluating. Waiting.
The unusual bias of activity had not been overly alarming; she had seen many similar waves develop and wane, but this time there was a difference, some underlying motivation that, as yet, she had been unable to clearly perceive. She disliked the sensation and had been mulling the various factors around in her mind as she sipped the dark red wine and pictured the illustrious vineyards of its conception.
A soft beep from her computer lifted her awareness from the Médoc. Turning the laptop so that she could read the incoming text, she frowned slightly, looking more closely at the point of origin. Her fair eyebrows lifted as she rested back against the masculine upholstery of dark leather.
A meeting? There hadn't been a meeting of the three of them for years. They never met unless there was a problem of huge and overwhelming proportions. But there had been no sign of anything ... no great divergence or revolutionary opinions or acts. What did it mean?
Her fingers typing and sending a swift confirming response, she sat back and sipped her wine, wondering what it was that she had missed.
###
"So, what's next?" Blythe climbed into one of the big armchairs in their room and linked her fingers across her tummy. "They know we will look after the dictionary properly, but I think we need to do more to make them see."
Jules threw himself on his bed, resting with his hands behind his head. "They still think we're children," he said. "They don't understand."
"We are children," Blythe was all logic. "And I think Mummy understands."
"Daddy doesn't want to understand, in that case," Jules frowned. "I don't think he sees how grown up we are."
"Jules, we're five," Blythe sighed theatrically. "Nobody sees how grown up we are if our feet can't touch the floor when we sit at the dining table."
"It's not fair," Jules scowled ferociously. "They should know this stuff. It's what grown-up are supposed to do," he bounced his heels on the bed crossly.
"I know one grown-up who would understand," Blythe's eyes went wide.
Suddenly becoming still, Jules looked across at his sister and grinned.
###
"It was what?" Greg Lestrade put his mug of tea down on his desk before he spilled it. "What exactly?" his face looked like his voice sounded. Sheer disbelief.
Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan shrugged, her hands in her pockets. "I know," she said. "Mad, isn't it?"
"Give us the report," Lestrade held out his hand. "This is something new," he muttered, flicking over the few pages of the autopsy report to find the toxicology data. "Hybridised neurotoxic venom; latrotoxin of the species Latrodectus?" he looked up from the Latin. "What's a Latrodectus when it's at home?" he asked.
Sally was ready with her phone, turning its screen towards the DI. There was a brilliantly colourful photograph, a close-up image of one of the most poisonous things on earth. He shuddered, leaning away from the picture.
He had never really gotten on with spiders.
"Our victim was stung by a Black Widow spider?" Greg couldn't believe it. "Here? In London?"
"Bitten, not stung," Sally put the phone away. "Yeah. Seems there was a small bite on the back of the man's wrist, right beside his watch, which is why everyone missed it at the scene," she said. "But according to the lab people, it's unmistakable," she shrugged again. "Our man was done in by a deadly spider."
"But they're not even from Britain, are they?" Greg Lestrade wracked his memory. "Thought they came from somewhere exotic-like; South America or somewhere like that?"
"Apparently they live anywhere that can get warm," Donovan lifted her eyebrows. "Anywhere around the Med, for instance."
"The Med? Really?" Lestrade felt a small tickle of discomfort. He'd gone on honeymoon in the Med. Spiders. He shuddered delicately.
"Yeah, but that's not all that's weird," Sally dropped into one of the seats in front of his desk and leaned in, her voice dropping. "This is not a straightforward spider-bite," she said. "That's why they put in that bit about it being hybridised," she added. "And there's no way anyone could bring these kind of creepy-crawlies into the country without a pile of permits and government authorisations, which means someone's been breeding deadly spiders in Britain," she paused thinking. "And not only breeding deadly spiders, but they've been breeding them more deadly than usual."
"That's insane," Lestrade shook his head, a look of extreme distaste across his features. He didn't like the eight-legged things at the best of times, but now someone had gone and monkeyed about with one in order to commit murder ...
"And there was no way it could have been accidental?" he asked, just to be sure. "He couldn't have had a pet spider and taken it with him to the park, maybe to ..." it was his turn to shrug.
"What?" Donovan scoffed. "Take it for a walk?" she laughed. "Nah," she shook her head again, flicking back through the autopsy report. "The lab people say paralysis would have occurred pretty rapidly after the bite, with death following shortly thereafter," she said. "His lungs would have stopped working, you see," Sally grimaced. It would have been a terrifying way to die, especially if you knew it was happening and couldn't even shout for help.
Lestrade's desk phone rang. He picked it up and listened.
You're absolutely sure?" he asked. "Right, on our way," he added, dropping the phone back into the receiver and standing. "There's been another one. St. James's Park."
"Another death?"
"And no obvious cause of death although they've found a small bite-mark on the guy's hand. Let's go, and on the way you can start complaining."
"Complaining about what?" Donovan swung into her coat on the run.
Lestrade took a very deep breath raised his brows. "Who do we know who likes weird cases and who's probably an expert on poisonous spiders?"
Donovan's shoulders drooped.
###
His office was dim and shaded; smoky greens and charcoals set the tone of his daily workspace. What natural light sidled into this, his inner sanctum, was uncertain and attenuated; as if it knew it had no right to be here. He often preferred the subdued illumination of lamps; they cast intriguing shadows and his world was all about shadows.
Though the contents of his office were relatively few, each item was a classic of its kind; the Bauhaus desk, the lighting, the phones. He was particularly fond of the lamp; it had been a gift, well, it would have been a gift had the owner remained alive long enough to think of it. The glossy satin of the burnished cherry wood and the clean curve of the Christian Dell desk light spoke of an innate admiration for the clean conceptual line and timeless style.
He leaned back in his effortlessly comfortable Eames chair, his fingers falling naturally into their usual pyramid as his mind rested at an habitual plateau of thought. He was very good at thinking: it was what he did best and he closed his eyes briefly, contemplating the next task.
He was one of three, only and always three. Each had their own specialised sphere of influence, although there were many points of confluence.
His was defence; in its every form, both active and passive, defence of everything and everyone within his domain, which was increasingly without boundary or even on the plane of the physical. Each technological progression made his task simultaneously easier and yet more complex, for while he was able to bend the digital world to his whim, so too could those who sought to attack that which he safeguarded. He watched the world in his mind, watched for the subtle feints and ruses at the gates of his protectorate, appraising the mental image in much the same way as he surveyed the crystal globe on his desk. From where would the next threat appear? From which direction? What form was most likely, most unexpected?
He shielded them all, every individual behind the strategic lines of his defence, each one unknowing that their individual and collective fate might be utterly different without his expert offices. Of course, there had been incursions; there always would be when plans were implemented by those less ... focused than he. The explosions; the attacks, the threats from within. Nothing happened that he did not observe and embrace with a calculation of thought chilling in its precision.
The hour was much later than usual and he was on the point of leaving when the screen of his opened laptop flickered briefly with an incoming message; a rather special message. A faint frown crossed his brow as he recognised the sender and the significance of the communiqué. A meeting. Something unusual was about to happen; how very intriguing. His response took mere seconds before he logged-off with the usual security protocols.
Slipping into his long coat and collecting his umbrella, Mycroft Holmes walked out into darkness.
###
Lestrade was standing on the fringe of another crime-scene, the second one of the day. There was a heavy sense of foreboding in his stomach as he examined the body of the man lying in the goalmouth on the pitch at Vincent Square in Westminster.
A man in his middle years; thin and long-legged; short dark hair and immaculately dressed in the finest that Savile Row had to offer. The expression on the man's face was becoming familiar: Greg had seen it twice before; once, a week ago and a second time earlier that afternoon when he and Donovan had been in St. James's Park.
This was the third death involving smartly dressed, middle-aged males whose daily routine took them to Whitehall, raising the obvious and ominous notion of a serial killer on the loose whose targets were public servants. The circumstances of all three deaths were horrendously similar; no obvious reason for death except a small red bite-mark somewhere on the hand or wrist; Lestrade knew immediately to look for this calling-card on seeing the third victim. Sure enough, just on the heel of the man's left hand ... a small, raised bite. Latrodectus Britannia had struck again.
But that wasn't the truly terrifying detail that linked all these three deaths and the reason of his greatest concern as he waited for Sherlock Holmes, wunderkind and arse extraordinaire, to arrive. Quiet footsteps in the dark made him straighten as the younger Holmes swung into view, grey eyes wide in the police lights.
For a second, there was silence at Sherlock absorbed every physical detail of the corpse before him. His expression was a little distracted as he met Lestrade's eyes.
"Yes, Inspector, you are quite correct," he murmured.
"Correct in what?" Greg wondered what part of the conversation he'd missed.
"You are quite correct in the belief that someone is out to kill my brother."