Disclaimer: Do not own Sherlock, make no money from him.

Apparently, it's against the law to chin the Chief Superintendent. After the Fall, suspicion falls on those closest to the disgraced Detective…

A/N: I know everyone's writing post-TRF fic at the moment, but I couldn't help myself. This is mine. Spoilers abound.

The Chief Superintendent isn't named in cannon so I called him after a village in the North with a name I liked.

SHSHSHSHSH

Guilty By Association: Part I – Pointing the Finger

The uniformed police officers gathered on the street around the panda cars followed the ancient instinct of coppers and Labradors and gave chase after the fleeing forms of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Most were still shaking their heads after the disabling screech of feedback that had almost deafened them, allowing their quarry to break away. One was also rather shamefacedly unarmed; a fact that would undoubtedly cause some difficult questions later. Only the three plain-clothes officers and those already inside the house remained behind.

"What are you doing, Lestrade?" Chief Superintendent Tom Ackenthwaite managed to shout around the hanky he was holding to his bloody nose. "Get after 'em!"

"There's no point, Sir," the DI told him wretchedly. "Sherlock knows every street, back alley, footpath and rooftop shortcut in London. He's probably got a dozen unnecessarily complicated emergency escape routes from Baker Street saved up in his head; if he doesn't want to be caught, Usain Bolt couldn't run fast enough to keep up with him."

"Oh, well, that's just perfect, isn't it?" His superior responded savagely. "I can see tomorrow's headlines now; 'Fake Detective Escapes Arrest While Holding Coppers at Gunpoint.' I give it 24 hours before that Watson bloke turns up dead in an alley; and then we'll all be even deeper in it than we started."

"Not a chance," Lestrade declared with certainty. "Sherlock would never dream of hurting John; those two are practically joined at the hip, for God's sakes."

"Didn't stop Holmes pointing a gun at his head, did it?" Was Ackenthwaite's response.

"Well, I dunno about the hip, sir," Sally commented, "But they are definitely joined at the wrist for the night. Not even the Freak could get far on foot handcuffed to a corpse, and Watson just nutted a senior police officer in his defence; I don't see them splitting up anytime soon."

The Super's hand withdrew the bloody fabric from his nose in shock. "Are you telling me that I just got chinned by Holmes' personal mollyboy?" He asked, appalled. "Oh, this just keeps getting better; how am I supposed to live down getting my nose broke by some limp-wristed poofter?"

"How dare you talk like that about my boys!" An outraged voice shrieked from the doorway of 221B. Mrs Hudson, in all her righteous glory, bustled down the steps to poke a bony finger into the Superintendent's flabby chest. "I want your name and rank, young man; I'll have you done for discrimination if it's the last thing I do. How dare you march onto my property and arrest my poor Sherlock after everything he's done for the police? And then you try to lock John up too for defending him?"

"Holmes is a suspect in a serious crime, Madam," Ackenthwaite replied, through gritted teeth. "And Watson just committed assault in front of half a dozen police officers. I suggest you back off before I have to have you arrested too."

"You don't frighten me!" She shouted back, with another prod. "My husband was executed in Florida; I've seen things that would make your hair curl, what's left of it. Go on and arrest me; I want it on record what you said about John, you prejudiced bastard!"

"This is your last warning," The Super threatened, clearly nearing the end of his rope. "And you can't prove what I said or didn't say without witnesses. Isn't that right, Detective Inspector Lestrade?" He added meaningfully, with a sideways glance at the DI.

"Actually, sir, I think you'll find that derogatory words like 'poofter' are highly disapproved of by the Independent Police Complaints Commission," he replied wryly. "And I'm not even remotely deaf, thanks." Both looked simultaneously at Sally for the casting vote.

"I'm… going to have to go with Lestrade on this one, Sir," said Donovan reluctantly. "He is technically right; the guidelines are very clear…"

"But I'm sure if you apologise to Mrs Hudson here, there'll be no need to take it further?" The DI said hopefully, shooting the furious landlady a pleading expression.

"Oh, no; don't you look at me like that, Greg Lestrade!" She declared, visibly swelling with rage. "All the times you've turned up asking those boys to help you out of the goodness of their hearts and the minute some idiot accuses Sherlock you just arrest him, no questions asked? There'd be a hundred more murderers on the street if it wasn't for them!"

"I tried to do this without having to arrest him, you know I did; Sherlock wouldn't even talk to me. He didn't leave me any choice…"

"Choice? I'll give you a choice; if you dare turn up in my café again after this I'll have you kicked out onto the street, and you'll never see another one of my chocolate macaroons again! And if you think I'm going to lay on a Drugs Bust spread like I usually do you have another thing coming!"

"Mrs Hudson, I understand you're upset…" Sally attempted to defuse the situation.

"Upset?" The elderly landlady interrupted shrilly. "This isn't upset; this is bloody furious!"

"Right; that's enough!" Ackenthwaite barked. "Donovan, arrest the old biddy and for God's sakes, shut her up."

"On what charge, Sir?"

"Wasting police time, making an affray, public disorder, and giving the Chief Superintendent a headache are all arrestable offences in my book," he said grimly. "And that's before we start talking about accessory after the fact. Take your pick."

"Sir, please," Lestrade tried in desperation. "Look, Mrs Hudson, if you get arrested too, who's going to look after the flat for Sherlock and John until this whole mess is sorted out? Come on, now; I'll make you some tea, and you can make sure forensics don't damage anything upstairs, yeah?"

"They'd better not," she bristled. "I'll be sending a bill for repairs to the Yard, and see how you like it."

"I'll pay it out of my own pocket," he promised earnestly.

"Assuming you still work there by then," Ackenthwaite added menacingly. "Regardless, Mrs… Hudson, was it? Needs to be questioned; get one of the DCs to do it. Housekeepers always make handy witnesses…" Donovan and Lestrade both winced in anticipation of her outraged shout.

"I am not anyone's housekeeper!"

By the time she'd calmed down enough to be lead away by a Detective Constable for her interview, one of the uniforms who had been pursuing her fugitive tennants had appeared, jogging back to the little group with an evidence bag in hand. "Found something, sir."

"Is that the gun he nicked?" Questioned Ackenthwaite. "Why would Holmes throw that away?"

"Because he doesn't need it," Lestrade answered miserably. "John Watson would follow that man to the ends of the Earth, cuffs or no cuffs."

"Well, if you know them so bloody well, Lestrade, you can tell me where they'll go," the Super growled, dabbing again at his nose.

Greg's brow furrowed. "Where they'll go? How would I know that?"

"Your Consultant is a criminal, remember? Like all other criminals on the run, he'll go to someone he trusts to hide him. Friends, family, accomplices; who?"

"Everyone Sherlock considers a friend is handcuffed to him at the moment, sir. He'll… pursue the case, like he always does."

"And if it's true that this 'case' is all Holmes' own work?"

"Then clearly, I don't know Sherlock Holmes nearly as well as I thought I did," he replied quietly.

"Yes; I think you and I need to have a little chat about exactly how friendly you and Holmes are back at the Yard, don't you?" Ackenthwaite suggested meaningfully. "Donovan, take over here."

"Yes, sir," the pair chanted; Lestrade resignedly, Sally with a definite hint of 'I told you so' in her expression.

SHSHSHSHSH

"Right then, Lestrade," Chief Superintendent Ackenthwaite squawked darkly, removing a bloody cotton ball from one swollen nostril with a wince to drop it into the wastepaper basket under his desk. He leaned forwards across it, glaring through his thick-lensed spectacles and the beginnings of some really spectacular bruising. "How long has it been going on, your little arrangement with Holmes?"

The beleaguered DI raised his head from where it rested in his hands. "About… six, maybe seven years, sir," he answered honestly. Greg Lestrade had been a copper long enough to know that his career was already in tatters; he didn't have it in him to lie at this point.

"Years? Just how many cases are we talking about here?"

"Of mine? Maybe… forty or fifty, in total. You'd have to ask the other DI's how much they used him."

"Other DI's?"

"Gregson, Hopkins, Youghal, Marshall, Singh, Clarke, Dimmock; those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Probably others at other nicks; Sherlock was more than willing to travel in the name of the Work. He took private cases, as well; and I know for a fact he did the odd government job…"

"Government?" Ackenthwaite repeated incredulously. "Who in the Government was stupid enough to employ an amateur like Holmes?"

"He had connections, Sir…"

"I don't care what kind of connections he had; there is no excuse whatsoever for a senior DI to give a half baked private eye access to active crime scenes! How did it start? Did he conveniently turn up at the tape and shout the murderer's name and address?"

"No, Sir. I got drafted in to help on a big raid on a crack house in Hoxton; Sherlock sort of got caught up in it all, so I arrested him."

"And what was a PI doing in a crack house?"

"He… Sherlock…" Lestrade took a deep breath. "Had a… bad time, when he was younger…"

"If the next sentence out of your mouth contains the words 'drug dealer,' Lestrade…"

"Sherlock was never a dealer," he correced sharply. "He was just an addict, all right?"

"And that is so much better! Now you're telling me Holmes isn't just a criminal and a fake but a junkie too?"

"He was a junkie. He's cleaned himself up; I wouldn'tve given him the time of day if he hadn't…"

"Oh really? Excuse me if I find that hard to believe."

"That night, sir, Sherlock Holmes was so off his face he could barely stand, let alone run away from the police. Inside five minutes, he still managed to deduce that my wife was making me sleep on the sofa that week, I'd spent the morning investigating a murder in Islington near a French bakery, and that the killer couldn't possibly have been the husband because the flour on my shoes was the wrong colour. Oh, and while he was at it, he announced that one of the two PCs who'd just been snogging in the back of a panda car was pregnant and hadn't told anyone yet because she wasn't sure if the father was Nigerian or Welsh! Tell me you would have overlooked an insight like that, especially after other evidence in the Islington case proved him right!"

A knock on the door caused both of them to look up; Anderson poked his head into the Super's office, Sally close behind.

"Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I have the analysis of those footprints back; and I don't think you're going to like the results."

"I don't like anything about this disaster. Spit it out, Anderson."

"Well, they don't belong to Sherlock Holmes, for a start," the Forensics officer admitted reluctantly.

"I knew it," Lestrade stated, letting out a long, relieved breath. "I knew Sherlock wouldn't hurt anyone…"

"How could you tell?" Ackenthwaite interrupted demandingly. "Is it definite?"

"I'm afraid so, sir. The computer model that analyses the footprints confirmed that the kidnapper was almost certainly male, but from the spacing between prints he couldn'tve been more than about five foot eight, maybe as little as five six."

"Holmes didn't look that short to me…"

"Because he isn't," Sally interjected. "The Freak's a lanky streak of piss, taller than the DI; must be at least six-foot."

"I wouldn't put it past him to be able to alter his stride to make himself seem shorter," Anderson continued, "So I did a bit more checking. The prints left at the school were a size nine; genius or not, I seriously doubt even Sherlock Holmes could squeeze his size twelve feet into them."

"All right; so he hired someone to grab the kids for him."

Lestrade couldn't help but interject. "Hang on, sir; the whole reason these two started to suspect Sherlock in the first place was because the girl screamed when she saw him! Why would she do that if he wasn't the one who kidnapped her?"

"He must've been there as well," Sally hypothesised grimly. "To watch; and he probably wouldn't trust anyone else to plant the evidence he needed to let him magically solve the case."

"But then why would he want to talk to the girl afterwards? It'd only give her the chance to recognise him."

Anderson cut in, "And who is going to believe a traumatised poisoned seven year old over an adult," he made air quotes with his fingers, "genius detective?"

"Well, me, for starters," Ackenthwaite remarked. "I wouldn't trust that nutter as far as I could throw him. Did you get anything else from the footprints?"

"The lab are still working on the chemical trace, sir; could be a couple of days before we get a full report. Oh, but there is one bit of good news; it looks like one of the kids managed to plant a good kick on the bastard, he was limping slightly on one leg. Not much help now, but as soon as we turn up a suspect we should check for any signs of bruising…"

Sally's eyes went wide; a hand rose to cover her mouth in shock. "Oh, God… Keith," She almost whispered. "Why didn't you say that before?"

He stared at her in confusion. "I didn't think it was that urgent; it's not like we can go around pulling up the trousers of every short bloke in London to look for bruises…"

"But don't you remember? A Study in Pink? When Watson first turned up…"

Horrified comprehension dawned on Anderson's face as he completed her sentence. "…With a walking stick."

"No!" Lestrade exploded, outraged. "No way; would you two listen to yourselves? Yes, all right, Sherlock Holmes is an arsehole ninety nine percent of the time, but John? John Watson is a good man; you know he is. He manages to live with Sherlock without strangling him, for a start…"

"And that's never seemed odd to you?" Sally asked sharply. "When the Freak keeps spare body parts in their fridge with the food and a skull on his mantelpiece and jars of eyeballs in the microwave?"

"Eyeballs?" Clearly, Ackenthwaite hadn't spent long enough inside 221B to understand its unique charms.

"He said it was 'for an experiment'," Anderson explained, sceptically. "I've never worked out how anyone even remotely sane could stand to share a flat with the man."

"You said it yourself, Inspector," Sally continued, not without sympathy for her harried boss. "John Watson would do anything for Sherlock Holmes. He can't be more than a couple of inches taller than I am, so he's the right build, and when the girl screamed, he was standing right behind Sherlock, like he always does."

"Where no one ever notices him," Anderson added sagely, "Because he's short and bland and forgettable. Hiding in plain sight; perfect for a murderer…"

"Don't you start, Anderson!" Lestrade protested angrily. "I know for a fact that even you like John, and you loathe Sherlock. The man is a doctor, for God's sakes! D'you honestly think he'd abduct a couple of primary school kids at gunpoint and force feed them poisoned sweets for fun?"

"Because everyone knows that doctors never go bad and become serial killers," Ackenthwaite intervened, sarcasm laid on with a trowel. "We've already got evidence that Watson's more than capable of violating his Hippocratic Oath on my face."

"Well of course he's capable; John used to be in the army." Lestrade answered. "But he's a decent man; believe me, Sir, if he'd wanted to, he could have done a lot worse than bloody your nose."

"Knows his way around a gun, too, then?" The Superintendent commented, arching an eyebrow. "If you're right, Donovan, and Watson is our kidnapper, then this could be our chance to salvage some kind of result out of this colossal cock up."

Lestrade's jaw dropped. "You're not seriously going to arrest John…"

"I already have, for assault on a police officer, remember?" Sally reminded him. "Look, I know he's your friend, and I don't really want to believe it either… but we're coppers, Sir! We have to stick with the facts. We can't write off the possibility that John could be involved just because he comes across as a nice bloke."

"Well done, Sergeant," Ackenthwaite praised. "That's the first objective thing any of you have managed to say today. Those two can't hide forever; and when they turn up, we'll see how loyal Holmes can be. I bet he'll try and leave his boyfriend to take the rap for him; and then we can play one off against the other until we have all the evidence we need to take down both of 'em."

"Sherlock wouldn't do that! You're making a mistake, sir," Lestrade warned. "John Watson is no more a criminal than I am."

"Oh, yeah?" Ackenthwaite responded, unimpressed. "I'll tack fifty counts of tampering with a crime scene on top of the assault, conspiracy and kidnapping charges, then, shall I?" He leaned even closer, voice soft but still managing to be menacing despite the squeak. "Don't think you're out of the shit, Lestrade; I haven't even broken out the big shovel yet."

SHSHSHSHSH

I think this is going to be a three-parter; apologies to those of you waiting on an update on 'But Who IS He?'; it's been on the back burner a bit lately.

Let me know what you thought.