Author's Note: I hope readers enjoy this casefic sprinkled with a good helping of Lestrolly romance :) Reviews are always appreciated!
Thank you so much to my lovely betas: TheLeftPill, MoodyBlue42, and TheEmptyQuarto *heart eyes*
Kintsukuroi ("golden repair") is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates the artifact's unique history by emphasizing the fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsukuroi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing the artifact with new life. (Zhang, MyModernMet, 2014)
The alarm went off at six o'clock, as it did every morning, jolting Greg Lestrade out of a sound sleep and leaving him groaning into the dark room before reaching over and hitting the snooze button. God, he hated getting up in the dark. But it was the only bloody way he could get in a run before work.
He'd been doing the same routine for five years now. Get up, drag on a pair of track pants, a t-shirt and zippy, wolf down a banana, lace up his beat up trainers, and force his body to make the twenty minute run around the block to get his blood flowing. Then back to his bachelor flat for a real breakfast of eggs, fruit, toast, and strong coffee, a quick shower, and into his suit for work.
When he had been married, his wife would just be slouching out of bed by the time he finished his shower. He was lucky to get in a quick kiss before running off to his car, hoping to avoid morning traffic. Really, those last few years, he was lucky to get much of anything from her. Not that he was the sort of husband who only wanted sex and a good meal, although either would have been nice from time to time. He wanted a marriage, which was apparently not what she wanted.
Gail got what she wanted, in the end. A house and a fresh start.
He got a flat in Peckham and more silver hair.
Greg wiped at the steam collected on his bathroom mirror, frowning a bit at the face he saw reflected back at him. He ran a hand along the stubble growing on his jaw and decided to leave it for another day.
"C'mon, old man," he said, reaching for his deodorant. "Time to face another day."
The ten-year-old, fuel efficient compact car he had been driving every day for years got him to the Yard in standard time. He pulled into his assigned parking space in the sub-level garage, trying not to add to the minor scrapes along the edge of the car from maneuvering around too many cement pillars. He hated the tight parking spaces and cramped design of the garage, but it beat having to find street parking in London any day.
He had the lift to himself as he rode it to his floor, a few moments of calm and quiet before the noise of the main floor of the Yard hit him. The start of the day could bring any sort of intensity from the minute he walked in. He could find a lot of tired detectives drinking coffee from cardboard cups, while avoiding the tedious task of needed paperwork, or he could find complete chaos if every criminal in London suddenly decided to stretch their legs and have some fun. His department had been dealing with a lot more of that in recent months, the main reason being that Sherlock Holmes had not been taking a great amount of cases.
The main reason for that was the fact that he'd been in a rehab facility for the first four months of the new year after successfully sussing out the criminal network behind the Moriarty video. Turned out to be a small faction of Moriarty's network that had survived, trying to throw Sherlock and the Yard after a red herring while they had their merry way with bank heists. It hadn't lasted long. The moment it was over, Sherlock had been quietly shuffled off to the countryside near Edinburgh. He'd returned to London four months later, subdued and less inclined to take any cases that didn't satisfy his need for intense mental stimulation.
The Yard had been picking up the slack in the month since. They'd all realized what an immense amount of work Sherlock had done during the two years he'd been 'dead,' and they were all starting to realize it again with this latest retreat. It was a bloody hard thing to explain to the chief superintendent when it came to presenting reports. All Greg could hope for was a slowdown in cases and a chance for his sergeants to complete the ones they did get.
He nodded at Sally Donovan as he walked through the main room towards his office. The sergeant was on her phone, jotting some information down on a pad.
There were positives and negatives to starting the day calmly. On the one hand, he liked the fact that he didn't have to hit the ground running without having a coffee and a pastry. On the other, it was easy to get comfortable and then have the day explode right when you thought nothing was going to happen. There was no warning either way. The DI had never been able to find the key to predicting how the day was going to turn.
As long as it wasn't too weird he could handle it. He was getting too old, too tired for weird. Fortunately, in the months since Sherlock's five minutes exile, weird hadn't been very common.
He'd barely sat down at his desk before Donovan was at his door, knocking out of mere politeness as she let herself in.
"Sir, we had a call from the Savoy. A few of their guests are reporting a smell coming from one of the rooms," she told him.
Greg groaned.
"I hate smells coming from hotel rooms," he said. "Why are we being called? Could be a rubbish bin the cleaning staff forgot."
Donovan gave him a pitying smile.
"High profile hotel, and they can't get into the room," she said. "It's blocked by something on the inside. They want a detective on scene."
They pulled up to the pavement of the Savoy not thirty minutes later; Donovan activated the red emergency light and the two of them climbed out of the car. They were met just inside of the main doors by an impeccably dressed woman with chic blonde hair. She looked every bit the confident hotel manager that she clearly was, except for the fact that whatever was behind the smell in one of her rooms had her worried. Very worried.
He didn't blame her; things like this were typically messy and caused bad press. The reporters alone would be horrendous to deal with; asking questions, calling every day wanting to know what had happened. Depending on what they would find, if it was bad enough, there would be clean-up to deal with. As much as he had grown tired of the ins and outs of murders and death, at least he was used to it. This poor woman was about to be launched into the intense unknown.
"Detective Inspector Lestrade," he said, extending his hand to shake hers. "This is Sergeant Donovan."
"Rose Emerson," the woman said, firmly shaking his hand.
He raised his eyebrows slightly at the strong grip, waiting for Rose and Donovan to exchange hellos before following the manager towards the lift.
"We cater to a very important clientele, Detective," Rose told them as they walked, her high heels clicking along on the tiled floor.
Donovan looked at him with a slight eye roll and mouthed, 'Rich.' He tipped his head to acknowledge that she was probably right.
"This particular room was rented out to one of our regular clients, Mrs. Linda Davi," Rose went on, typing rapidly on her mobile while they waited for the lift doors to open. "She and her husband would stay here when they would attend conferences in London or if they were traveling out of country. Her room has been booked for the last three days. She was supposed to vacate early this morning, but never came to the front desk. That's about when we started to receive the complaints."
The lift bell sounded and the doors slid open onto the fifth floor. There was a small group of hotel employees gathered at the end of the hall, and every one of them looked towards the DI and Sergeant as they made their way towards the room with Ms. Emerson in the lead.
"The door won't budge," she explained, reiterating what Donovan had already told him.
Greg looked at the door, pushed open just the slightest bit and with the "Do Not Disturb" sign still hanging from the doorknob. He took hold of the doorknob and tested it, finding a good amount of resistance. Even without trying, he could smell the unmistakable, cloyingly rotten-sweet scent of decomposition. One look at Donovan told him she smelled it, too.
"Have you tried removing the hinges?" he asked, trying not to sound like it was the most obvious solution in the world.
The maintenance man was called and in a few short minutes he had his tools out, wedging them through the small crack at the corner and knocking the brass hinges clean off. The wood splintered and the door would need to be replaced, but it was a small price to pay, in the end.
Once the door was gone, they came face to face with an armoire that had been placed in the doorway, the clear culprit for being unable to get in. Greg and Donovan picked a side and started pushing, grunting a little as the weight of the object was more than they expected. It didn't help that the smell had become much stronger, driving off the few employees that had been lingering.
The armoire groaned and thunked against the wall, finally opening up the space. The room was fairly pristine, hardly used, although the bed was unmade and a tray of room service sat half-eaten on the desk.
Greg immediately saw the pair of stocking feet poking out from behind the bottom of the bed. He took a deep breath and prepared for the worst. This part of the job never got easier, no many how many times he did it.
Donovan was at his elbow as they crossed the room, finding the body of a woman lying face down on the floor, a pool of blood staining the cream colored carpet under her torso.
"I'll call in SOCO," Donovan said in a matter-of-fact tone, turning back towards the door to usher Ms. Emerson out and to put up a border around the room.
Greg took a breath in the quiet of the room, made even more soundless by the presence of death, and set to work making his initial observations. The body wouldn't be moved until SOCO arrived, but he could start with the basics: female, forties to fifties, about five foot eight, in the range of one hundred and forty pounds. Not much of a struggle, by the looks of the room, so she either knew her attacker or it was complete surprise. Either way, the armoire had been moved after the fact. There was no possible way to move that piece of furniture without the notice of another person in the room – or the downstairs neighbor, for that matter.
With that thought, he jotted down a note to question the other guests in surrounding rooms about unusual noise.
The windows and door to the private balcony were still locked from the inside, but it looked as though the door connecting the adjoining room had been pried open, the lock panel under the handle practically ripped off. Still closed, but not secured.
He would need to check on the occupancy of that room. It would be easy enough to leave without suspicion from the next room over, but he doubted that the suspect would be the registered occupant. Why would they need to break into the room if they had come from it in the first place?
Once SOCO arrived, it was easily determined that cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the abdomen. A very quick identification of the victim as Mrs. Linda Davi was made through a mobile database, though the morgue would verify. Within twenty minutes, Greg and Donovan were knocking on hotel room doors and asking the usual questions – did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?
The answer was no with the exception of two guests who had been staying for over four days at the hotel. They reported hearing a shout followed by a dragging noise three nights prior, but attributed the noise to the telly and luggage being moved and thought nothing of it.
Before leaving the Savoy, Greg requested that security send over the footage from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning. If their system was any good, he would have a visual on exactly how and when the suspect and victim had moved through the rooms.
It was early afternoon by the time he and Donovan returned to the Yard with everything they had at the moment in hand. It would be hours before they heard from Barts about the post-mortem report and the time would be easily filled with looking into Mrs. Davi's activity of the past week. More importantly, he would be looking into the activity of her husband, who had as of yet been entirely missing from the situation. The man had basically disappeared into thin air.
Which he found more than a bit odd. Greg and his wife had had their bad moments before the divorce, but if she had been missing and unresponsive for two days he would have been worried. Hell, he would be worried now, if they still kept in regular contact. But then again, he worried about people. Not everyone did.
His stomach growled as he dropped the file of notes onto his desk and decided that a sandwich and a coffee would be a good idea before launching into an afternoon of research.
"Food run," he told Donovan. "Want anything?"
"I'm fine," she said, holding up a bright orange bottle of Lucozade Energy and a packet of crisps.
Greg shook his head and grimaced.
"That's not a proper meal," he said.
"Then you'd best not come back here with a hot dog and a cola," she said with a teasing smile.
"I'll bring you a turkey sandwich," he offered, meeting her in the middle.
One pastrami and Swiss cheese sandwich, a diet cola (thank you very much, Donovan), and a bag of crisps later and he was poring over the activity of Mr. Donald Davi. Greg made a face when he saw the name. Poor chap had no chance at all, did he? Must've been hell in school.
The activity turned out to be no activity at all. In fact, it appeared that Donald had stopped doing any sort of activity in the last three days - no social media, no underground trips with his oyster card, not even a bank card purchase. He and his wife lived in a country estate just outside of Newmarket, a short drive from Cambridge. Both were graduates of doctoral programs, he in archaeology and she in anthropology. Well known, well respected, and very well-to-do. Mr. Davi taught in the archaeology department of Cambridge University and Mrs. Davi was still an active participant in her field, which took her out of the country frequently, if their plane travel history was any indication.
Greg spent a little time on their respective academic and private websites, equally interested and confused by the material. It was a lot of technical jargon that was clearly meant to entice a more sophisticated crowd. Well, more sophisticated than he was. He liked the pictures and articles directed at the layman on artifacts and buried cultural sites, but when it came to the details of carbon dating and excavation techniques, he was utterly lost. He could probably explain how someone had died if presented with an archaeological crime scene, but the sort of pottery used to bash in the brains of a Roman citizen was best left to the experts.
He found all of that a good deal more interesting than poor Mrs. Davi's area of expertise – linguistic anthropology. He'd had to take a few courses as part of his university education in criminal justice and had barely passed. Not his area at all. He could speak enough French to get by on holiday and that was it.
As for what either of them had been up to over recent days, the only thing he could suss out was that they had been in attendance at a conference for the Society of Antiquaries, at least according to pictures on their social media and the event's website. Mr. Davi even gave a short speech. That had been on Saturday, followed by a gala at Pace London that evening.
No one had seen or heard anything from them in the days since.
A courier arrived with the video footage from the hotel and he and Donovan watched it carefully. At nine o'four in the evening on Saturday, Mr. and Mrs. Davi, dressed in cocktail attire, could be seen on the grainy footage entering their hotel room and placing the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. Nearly an hour later, a bellman came to their door and briefly spoke with Mr. Davi in the hall before being dismissed; ten minutes after that, Mr. Davi left the room alone. Another two hours and a second man came down the hall, a sports cap pulled low over his face. He knocked on the door and was greeted by Mrs. Davi; she let him into the room with no issue whatsoever.
It was only twenty minutes later when the door to the next room opened and the same man left, calmly, as though everything was perfectly normal. Not a single person entered or left the Davis' room or the one next door after that.
"I hate these," Donovan said bitterly. "Right there on film and unless we get some sort of DNA evidence or a reliable witness, we have no way of figuring out who he is."
"Yeah," Greg said in sympathy. "Never easy." He glanced at the time, looked at the tiredness and anger in his sergeant's eyes. "Go home. Get some rest. If we haven't heard from Barts by now, we won't get anything until tomorrow anyway. Start with fresh minds."
Donovan nodded, gathering her things and bidding him goodnight.
He took his time putting the footage away securely, shutting off the lights of the viewing room and closing the door before heading back to his office. The main room still had a few officers and sergeants lingering at their desks, finishing up their paperwork, but the energy had died down from the long day. Lights were dimmer, chatter was quieter.
He pulled his jacket on and picked up his briefcase, locking his office door before making his way to the car. A quick stop at the corner curry place he frequented secured his dinner and he was home with a cold beer, takeaway, and the telly on before nine-thirty. He laughed a bit at the evening talk shows, carefully avoided the news reports (they always muddled everything anyway, weren't the best way to keep up with things), and by the time the takeaway had gone properly cold and his beer was done, he was knackered.
With the lights switched off and the front door locked, Greg shuffled into his bedroom and stripped out of his clothes. He stretched, feeling and hearing a few joints pop as he brushed his teeth and spat into the sink. He dropped into his large bed and pulled the sheets over his body, letting out a tired sigh and trying not to dwell on the murder before falling asleep. He'd long passed the days when what he saw during the day haunted his dreams, but it still wasn't his favorite thing to think about before drifting off.
It would be a long day of dealing with it tomorrow. He could let it go for now.
He stared at the ceiling, listening to the absolute quiet of his flat and the occasional whir of a car as it passed below on the street, and finally fell asleep.