Chapter 1:The Case of L'Enfant Perdu

"…and that, my friend, is why he can't be his real son. No son of a man like that would ever wear polyester. The questions is, who is he? And where is the real son?" stated the worlds first and only consulting detective. His excited green eyes darting every where. A coy smile played upon his lips displaying two dimples at each corner of his mouth proving his ivory complexion to be pale skin and not white porcelain. "Finally a challenge. Grab your coat, John. We need another look at that corpse," he said cheerfully as he slipped a leather glove snugly over his left hand to match the one on his right. He was wearing his usual navy blue scarf tucked neatly into his half buttoned up black trench coat.

Quick as a flash he was down the stairs and out the door shortly followed by a very stunned John Watson who sometimes struggled to keep up with Sherlock on the rare occasion the detective was given a case worthy of curing his seemingly constant boredom.

Not many people knew him as well as John even though he had known him for a shorter time than any of the people in the police force who claimed to have worked with him and "lived to tell the tale". He was a strange, curious man who to any one else seemed to be drain of all emotion. All human emotions seemed to be tucked neatly away in the darkest corner of his simply brilliant mind. But to John it was different. You could see it if you looked hard enough, the excitement in his eyes while he stuck the severed arm into the microwave carrying out another one of his dangerously curious experiments. You could see how he would be slightly upset when a case turned out to be too easy for him and how he was the tiniest bit angry when a victim was lost. You could see the way he would immediately turn into a child when a murder case was deemed to be too difficult for the detectives sat down at the London station. Watching him practically dive into the back of the taxi reminded John of a six year olds first trip to Disneyland. The emotion was there - how did people not see it? Maybe a small fragment of Sherlock's accurate radar had rubbed off onto John, which made it all the more exciting to live with him.

Sherlock and John were heading to the closest café to Baker Street. They both seemed in desperate need of a cup of tea after solving a particularly difficult case. They would have headed straight back to 221b if they hadn't run out of milk. The small copper bell sang as the door of the café opened. Sherlock and John entered, greeted by a wave of heat and the comforting smell of coffee being brewed in the kitchen at the back of the café. The atmosphere inside the café was thankfully unlike the one outside, where the cold autumn wind brushed harshly past their cheeks turning their pale skin shades to a rosy pink. Now inside the only indication of cold weather outside was how the wind whistled and howled ever so softly at the window almost like whispers. Though the whispers were easily drowned out by the extraordinary explanation of how Mr. Holmes had solved the murder case in less than two days.

"It seems so simple now. Obviously a classic drugs-related murderer. The powdery substance on his collar, which they thought to be pollen from the bushes he was found in, had obvious traces of cocaine in. This man just didn't want to be involved with that kind of group anymore. He was a doctor. He thought he deserved better money than blood money. But getting out was the hard part for him. However, being a doctor gave him access to most things - medicine, patient's files, even birth certificates. He used the birth certificate because it was a form of ID that seemed reliable and didn't require a picture. If he was that mans son he would have simply used his own ID - a passport or drivers licence or at least the original birth certificate. Judging by how new the paper was, I'd say the certificate we found in the victims bag was printed two months ago."

"You mean it was a duplicate?" asked John.

"Yes – probably paid for over the internet."

"So what did he do after getting the certificate?"

"He was going to run. Probably abroad – not too far though. Maybe France – definitely western Europe. He wasn't going to leave anything behind, especially not his fiancée who got caught up in all of this as well. He left her a coded message. They obviously found it and…"

"They?"

"Whomever he was running from. They found the message before his wife could and got to him before he could open his mouth."

"But he didn't want to tell anyone. He didn't want anyone to know just as much as the rest of them – he would have lost his job, his wife, everything."

"Unfortunately for him, they didn't know that and they weren't taking any chances. And fortunately for us," Sherlock said his eyes sparkling with uncontrollable excitement, "the whereabouts of his real son is still a complete mystery – an unsolved case."

Luckily for John who was simply wearing a jumper over his thin shirt, it was only a short walk back to 221b Baker Street. He had no scarf or big trench coat with a wide collar to protect his cheeks. He gazed at his friend envious of the fact he was toasty warm under that thick coat.

"You know you can always go out and buy one," said Sherlock casually not even turning his head to look at his cold friend.

"But then we'd match and I'd have to spend all my time telling people I'm not your boyfriend."

"If you want to suffer that's fine but winter is on its way, my dear Watson. Don't die of hypothermia. I'll have to talk Mrs. Hudson about giving me my skull back."

They reached the front door of 221b Baker Street. Sherlock fitted the key into the socket and turned, resulting in a small 'click' indicating that the door was now unlocked. Walking quickly upstairs two steps at a time they reached the second floor in seconds. However, what they saw inside was to John a mystery, but Sherlock deduced the identity from a single glance. It shocked him. How was this possible?