A/N—AHHHH! My first BBC Sherlock (or any Sherlock for that matter) fic ever!
Please leave me comments/reviews! They are so incredibly helpful to me!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the main characters of this story, a few of them have been "created" and they are kind of mine…BUT! I do not own BBC Sherlock or any of the characters therein.
-the story-
Dr. John Watson had long ago given up asking his flat mate why various body parts always seemed to find their way from the morgue and into their kitchen appliances. He stared mournfully into the fridge…empty—except for the hand. He closed the door with a sigh, he needed to do the shopping, and Sherlock Holmes needed a case; or at least a less gruesome hobby. A sit-down hobby; maybe they could learn to knit… No, Sherlock was one of those people who was always dashing about. He needed some kind of constant stimulation (mobiles, Wi-Fi, murders). Maybe Lestrade would call soon…
bvvvv-beep-bvvvv-bvvvv…beep-bvvvv…beep-bvvvv-beep…
Speak of the devil; John heard Sherlock's mobile start the custom morse code ringtone (Y-A-R-D) signifying that Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade was calling. John slipped into the living room and sat down in his chair, as Sherlock answered the phone from the sofa.
"Yes?...Where?...Shortly." Sherlock ended the call and just continued to lie there, staring at the ceiling, in his dressing gown, t-shirt, and pyjama bottoms.
"Well?" John assumed that they had a case. It must have been somewhat urgent and complicated, or Lestrade wouldn't have called.
"Well, what?" Sherlock continued to look at the ceiling.
"That was Lestrade. I imagine he wanted our help on a case?"
"Yes."
"And we aren't in a hurry because?"
"Thinking"
John rolled his eyes, and went back in to the kitchen to busy himself with a cuppa.
Moments later Sherlock entered the kitchen, dressed in his normal garb, took the full mug out of John's hands, and drained it.
John, grumbling, asked "Are we going out then?"
"Obviously." Sherlock rolled his eyes and headed to the foyer to shrug on his coat.
"Where, then?"
"White Chapel, dear Doctor! A man seems to have gotten himself very badly cut." The smallest trace of a smile moved across Sherlock's face.
John shuddered as he grabbed his coat and followed Sherlock out of the door, yes, knitting would be a much nicer hobby.
"Sherlock! This man's head had been nearly cut off!" John looked down at the body. The throat had been slit several times. How many, John couldn't say.
"Yes, I did say that he was badly cut, John." Sherlock was crouched down with his magnifier looking at the ground around the body.
John let out an exasperated sigh and continued to examine the body. The man was in his late forties, moderately overweight, and balding—apart from his insanely large blonde wig which was lying about two feet away. He was wearing a green sequined dress paired with matching green pumps. His face was made up extravagantly— shades of blue coated his eyelids, and his lips were smeared with a ghastly shade of pink. John could make out that he had been strangled prior to the partial decapitation, due to the dark blue and purple blotches beyond the reddish brown of the blood on his neck.
"Who was this man? Do we know?" He looked up to Lestrade.
"John Chapman, 48. A resident of the area, he lived in that block there. Must have been heading home after a night out." Lestrade shook his head, possibly to understand why the man was dead…more likely to understand why someone would dress up in such a way.
Sherlock suddenly stood up and walked farther into the alleyway, and started rummaging around the skips and bins.
John shook his head and stood to face Lestrade. "Why are we here? You don't usually call unless something about a case is off. What's strange about this one?"
"Well, this is the second body we have found like this."
"Decapitated? Or a transvestite?" Sherlock called from behind one of the skips.
"Erm… Well… Both."
John raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
Lestrade went on to tell the doctor about Bill Nichols, how he also had neck wounds, was also a noted transvestite, and also found in a similar alley about a month ago. "We believe they are linked."
"Of course they are linked!" Sherlock returned from the skips holding what appeared to be a doctor's bag, with what looked to be a St. Bartholomew's Hospital insignia on it. "John, what do you think of all of this?"
"The bag?"
"Don't worry about the bag for now…Think about this whole thing. Any of it seem familiar to you?" The detective opened the case and began taking out its contents.
"I'm not sure what I am supposed to be noticing here, Sherlock"
"Oh, come on! Really think! Nichols, Chapman… lacerations… White Chapel?"
"Good God! The Ripper! D'you really think that someone is trying to replicate those murders?"
"Quite. Gentlemen… what seems to be missing?"
Sherlock had placed the contents of the bag out onto the pavement: stethoscope, syringes of varying sizes, a few bottles of medicines, and various scalpels and forceps.
John looked a little closer at the items on the ground. Then he noticed, "The number twenty scalpel… It's a pretty standard blade, used for general surgery."
"Ok, so?" Lestrade shook his head; he didn't understand what any of this meant. Neither medical science nor transgender-ism were his division.
"The murder weapon is the missing scalpel, Inspector Lestrade. The murderer is either a doctor or a med student from Bart's." Sherlock put the items back inside and handed it to Lestrade. "There isn't much more we can do for you until we have more to go on. If these murders are going to turn out like the original murders that they are replicating, then we won't ever have much more than this. Take this bag to Evidence. Tell Anderson, straight from me… if he so much as breathes on it I'll know, and I'll make his life quite considerably more unbearable than it already is."
Lestrade just nodded and took the bag, gesturing to his team to start removing the body and combing for more evidence.
"Home, John." With that Sherlock stalked out of the alley and towards the main road, hailing a cab, and John followed shaking his head at gruesome nature of the events that were bound to occur within the next several months.
End.
A/N- Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think! This story had been buzzing around my head… and was keeping me from working on any of my other stories. :) Hope you liked it!
-K M Rose