He was bored.
Sherlock sat in his chair by the fireplace, violin in hand. It had been two weeks since 'the blind banker' case, as John had coined it in his drafts. He'd solved a smattering of other cases but they had been all exceedingly dull, their solutions so straight forward even the police department would have gotten there eventually.
His latest experiment had come to an end and he was waiting on the eyeballs to dry out before he began his next. He estimated it would take at least three more days, provided Mrs Hudson would desist from opening the bathroom window to 'let some air in.'
In short, there was nothing to do.
He was absentmindedly plucking at the strings of his violin when a large van pulled up outside. It was carrying a heavy load by the sound the tires made as it stopped. A woman got out and walked up to the door of 221 Baker Street. Mrs Hudson walked quickly to the door. She was expecting whoever it was.
She'd managed to get a tenant into 221 C.
Sherlock frowned. He'd seen the state of the place, he had had a quick look when he first looked at his flat. It was dingy with very little light coming in from the small windows. It smelt of mildew and had various moldy spots growing on the ceiling. The wallpaper needed repapering, the floor lacked carpet and he had occasionally heard the scuffle of rats down there.
It was practically inhospitable.
Sherlock cast his mind back to see when the woman outside had come to look at the place. It must have happened when he was out but he hadn't noticed the scent of perfume or feminine shampoo, other than Mrs Hudson's, in the hall. The lock on the door was out of sight when coming and going from 221 B, so no chance to notice that the rooms had been unlocked recently.
The front door was opened.
"Oh, hello dear." Mrs Hudson's slight surprise told him she hadn't really expected the woman to show.
"Mrs Hudson." Greeted the woman.
She was from London, born and raised. South East by the sound of it. He thought this was probably the first time she had moved out of the immediate area.
"I'll get the key. Would you like me to put on the kettle?" Mrs Hudson's voice sounded up the stairs as she wittered on.
"No thank you." They'd moved further into the house but left the door open.
Mrs Hudson opened the door to her flat but the woman didn't follow her in. Extra respectful of boundaries. A stern upbringing. She was alone so no close family or friends to help her move. The sound of her tread told him she was wearing heavy boots, not military but from the size of them they were probably men's shoes. She walked lightly though, she was lightweight, skinny and possibly a dancer or trained in some form of martial arts. Martial arts were more likely.
"Are you all alone, Dear?" Mrs Hudson asked coming back out of her flat.
"Yes but I'm perfectly capable, Mrs Hudson." There was a pause. "I got it all in there on my own, I can get it out."
She was very independent. Long term isolation.
"I can go get Sherlock. Sherlock! Sherlock!" She called up the stairs not waiting for a reply.
"That's not necessary."
He sighed as Mrs Hudson made her way up the stairs. The woman on the other hand was still for a second before she turned and made her way back outside to her truck.
"Sherlock. Come and help this nice girl out. She's-"
He interrupted her, finally opening his eyes.
"Moving in downstairs, yes, obviously. She also said she didn't need help." He jumped out of his chair, putting his violin down in the vacancy.
She followed him into the kitchen as he opened the breadbin and pulled out his revolver.
"Oh Sherlock. " She implored taking almost no notice of the firearm.
He thought it over again. He could give her and her stuff a once over, learn everything there was to know about her and find out how long it would be before she left. There was just no possible way she was going to stay for any significant amount of time. Mrs Hudson barely put up with him.
It might even stop him being bored for a second or two.
"I know you're not doing anything. It wouldn't hurt, you know." She carried on.
Sherlock sighed heavily.
"Fine. Fine." He dropped the revolver on the kitchen table.
He stomped down the stairs, while Mrs Hudson thanked him, to show his displeasure even though he was mildly curious. He supposed he should check she wasn't a reporter or some crazed fan. He had those now thanks to John and that idiotic blog of his.
The woman had opened the back of the van and had climbed in, he saw the truck bob as she moved. He put his coat and his scarf on as he got to the bottom of the stairs.
Striding out of 221 Baker Street, Sherlock pulled the lapels of his coat upright and stood at the back of the truck. And was presented with a rather perky bottom. The new tenant was leaning over an armchair rummaging through a box behind it.
Sherlock frowned and cleared his throat to get her attention. She sighed without turning around.
"Sorry. You don't have to help." She apologised but something about the way she said it made him think she didn't care either way.
She pulled the box up and turned to him. She had curly dark auburn hair and strikingly blue eyes. Her bottom lip was slightly swollen from where she had been worrying it. She showed no sign of being nervous about the move so he assumed it was something she did when she concentrated. Her hair had been pulled up into a loose bun, so it would be out of her way no doubt.
She wore a coat much like his own, long, ending below the knee. It was black with pockets at the side that zipped up. It hung heavy and from the weight he guess held a hand full of change but their was the distinct square of an oyster card. Interesting. Most women carried all that in a handbag.
The coat hung open revealing a black t-shirt that read "Peoples Front Of Judea" circling a closed fist. He hoped that wasn't some modern rock band. The way it hung off of her adequate if small breasts told him in was a mans t-shirt. Her jeans were made for women though. They were old and although they were supposed to be skinny, they were slightly baggy on her. At least one size too big.
She had tucked them into her hiking boots, which were made for men as he had correctly deduced. They were newish, maybe six months old, the leather still shiny in places but the soles were worn, telling him she did a lot of walking and usually wore the same boots. They weren't overly dirty though. She had defiantly never worn them on a hike. No, urban travel.
She didn't wear any perfume but he could smell shampoo from her freshly washed hair. It was a bland smell, almost chemical. This wasn't a woman who had a thousand and one different products cluttering up her bathroom. She didn't wear any make up either.
Her nails were cut short and had squared off from years at a computer typing. A very pale complexion told him she didn't go outside very often and if she did it was more likely to happen at night. She worked indoors then probably at a computer. The slight darkness under her eyes spoke to late nights and little sleep.
"Vieve." She said.
Sherlock looked at her puzzled. She let out a snigger.
"It's my name." She clung the cardboard box to her chest. "Are you getting out of the way?"
He realised she wanted to step out of the truck and moved to give her room.
"Sherlock." He told her as she stepped down beside him.
She nodded and turned away back to the house. She was as slender as he had predicted but she was tall, of a height with him. She moved rather gracefully and controlled. He was right about her training aswell. The more he deduced the less likely dance was as an option.
He went to grab the closest box so he could follow her.
"Not that one." She called over her shoulder before he could lift it. "To the left."
He frowned again. She hadn't even turned back around. He tried to stubbornly lift it but it was full to the brim with books and he could hardly shift it. Sherlock glanced over her belongings.
The armchair was large and well padded with a black cotton covering that was clearly detachable and machine washable. A lamp stood up right in one dark corner of the van. It was about five feet tall and bent over with a metal spherical shade pointing the light downwards. There was a brown kitchen table hidden among the boxes and a metal single bed frame in pieces leaning to one side.
The single bed was odd. She was at least twenty five. Why would she still be sleeping in a single bed?
He deduced most of the boxes must be books to make up the weight the van was carrying. She was a book lover then. Didn't seem the type to be reading trashy romance novels. She was too practical for that.
Sherlock grabbed the box she had suggested. The clunking noise told him it was pots, pans and her cutlery. He followed her back inside. 221 C was pretty much the same as he remembered but Mrs Hudson had scrubbed the windows in preparation and he detected a faint whiff of bleach coming from the direct of the loo. It was still awfully drab.
Vieve didn't seem to notice. She walked through to the bedroom to put her box down. He put his box on the kitchen counter. She came back out and walked back to the van with only a brief glance in his direction. He opened his box to find one cooking pot, one frying pan, three white dinner plates with yellow swirls around the edge, three side plates of the same design and three sets of knives, forks and spoons.
She didn't often have company and even then probably only one person at a time.
Instead of following her out he went to her bedroom and looked into the already open box sitting in the corner. A stuffed fox sat in one corner looking slightly dirty, old and battered. Childish and sentimental. Next was a striped black and grey metal tin. It was about five inches by nine inches. It wasn't locked so he flicked the catch and looked inside. A few foreign coins although he doubted she'd ever left the country, a party popper with the streamers poked back in, a worn football medal from her primary school years most likely, a few ticket stubs to classical music concerts and a cheap glass block with a bouquet of flowers and the words 'I love you' etched into the middle. It took him a moment to realise what the tin of useless odds and ends were. Keepsakes.
He rolled his eyes abit but continued his snooping. He pulled out the faux leather bound book that was stuffed up one side. There was no title so he opened the book to find her messy script. It was a diary. The dates were marked across the top of the page. He skimmed it.
She was a proof reader. Editors sent her all kinds of things to go through and check for spelling and grammar. She worked from home. Wrote fanfiction. Practised her Krav Maga and read essays on a wide variety of subjects just for fun. Her parents were dead. She was an only child. She had an elderly grandmother who wasn't all there.
It felt a bit like cheating but it ultimately saved time. He didn't have to wait to unpack every box. He stuffed it back in.
The last item was a handbag. He knew she had to have one. All women do. He unzipped the top of the no-name, black leather bag expecting to find her phone, her address book or planner, tampons and half a dozen other things a woman never left the house without in his experience. Instead he found two pink vibrators, twelve ribbed condoms, six cherry flavoured, a bottle of what claimed to be 'sensitizing lubricant' and two small boxes of feminine wipes.
Sherlock stood to his full height as if repulsed by the items within the bag. He felt his mind go slightly blank.
Then he heard a giggle from the doorway. Vieve was standing there leaning against the doorframe. He'd missed her coming back and he didn't know how long she had been watching him. That was insufferably foolish of him. Truthfully he hadn't cared if she caught him snooping, maybe it would get her to leave quicker.
But he hadn't been expecting to find something so...
She wasn't embarrassed at all. She just looked at him in amusement. Sherlock looked from her back to the intimate items in the bag.
"Erm..." His frustratingly blank mind gave him nothing.
"Are you done?" She nodded to the box.
He had looked at everything in there. Determined she was athletic, clever, slightly sentimental if not very interested in romance and very... Sensual. No that term denoted interest. Passionate. Better. He had no further need or inclination to look back in the box so he nodded at her.
"Are you going to help me with the rest or do you have everything you need?" She had an expectant expression now that he wasn't sure what to make of.
Why wasn't she kicking him out? Or shouting at him? Or threatening to call the police? Or telling Mrs Hudson that she wouldn't be staying after all? They were all things he expected she might do. Instead she just stood in the doorway waiting to decide if he was done with her.
"I have everything I need." He answered in his usual cool manner.
She wasn't fazed. Vieve just turned around and went back to moving her things into the dingy apartment that was 221 C Baker Street. Sherlock followed and watched her for a brief moment from the hallway before making his way back up the stairs.
Mrs Hudson was back in her own apartment, no doubt making the tea Vieve had declined. He supposed it was short for Genevieve. Unless her parents had liked the shortening better. It was a possibility. He would have to snag some mail or check her ID.
Settling in his chair, he listened to her go back and forth with boxes. She struggled with the armchair and Sherlock heard her grunt as she put it on its corner to fit it through the door. It wasn't very heavy, more air and padding than anything else. It was the size of the thing that was giving her trouble.
With his eyes closed and his head lent back on his chair, he watched her in his minds eye. Followed her journey from truck to flat, trying to identify what was in each box by the sound it made and how heavy it was. He listened to her footsteps and gauged which room she put the boxes down in.
Annoyingly, he couldn't get the bag and the items inside out of his head. It wasn't as though he hadn't seen that kind of thing before. Something of the like had been found at a crime scene once. It wasn't of import but some of the idiot policemen had made some jokes about the female murder suspect. He'd mostly deleted it all. The case hadn't even been that interesting.
Unbidden an image popped into his head of Vieve. She was naked on her strange single bed as he stood at the foot. She had the larger of the two vibrators between he legs and her right hand moved it in and out as the other moved down her stomach.
Sherlock pushed the image from his mind and locked it away.
Women were a distraction. Too easily swayed by the emotional. And he was not an emotional man. Rationality was all he cared about. Cold calculating logic. A moves to B and then C. He didn't have time for such bestial things like... Sex. And it wouldn't be just that of course. All those sticky emotions he didn't quite understand would follow.
Sherlock took his violin off his lap, stood up and began playing loudly in the hopes of washing out the sound of Vieve below his feet. If he kept it up for a few hours maybe she would stop unpacking and go elsewhere.
John arrive home two hours later. He'd been on a date. It didn't go well. Sherlock didn't have to turn round to know this. It was all in his heavy step.
"A tenant moved in downstairs." John said as he put his keys and phone on the desk and shrugged off his jacket, laying it over the sofa.
He was vaguely amazed John had noticed but he knew the van was still parked outside. It was very obvious. Still he said nothing. He didn't want to talk about her.
"You were here. Who is it?" He asked Sherlock's back.
Sherlock sighed almost inperceptively but carried on playing. What did it matter? She would be gone soon. He played the violin at all hours of the night, he shot at the wall, there were often shouting matches and irate clients. He still wasn't completely sure John would stay very long. After John had shot the serial killer and then hung around at the crime scene as though nothing had happened, Sherlock knew he'd be around for a while, but that wasn't forever.
John was a junkie like him really. But he was addicted to the danger. The thrill of the chase. Sherlock's lifestyle gave him what he needed.
"Come on." John insisted. "I know you must know everything there is. Tell me."
What did he want to know? The plain boring stuff? She is a woman, John, of approximately twenty five years of age, Caucasian, five' nine'', maybe seven and a half stone, curly auburn hair, blue eyes. Did he want to know about her job and her lack of a social life?
Part of Sherlock wanted to talk about how she'd barely looked twice at him and how she hadn't wittered on. Usually it was all people did. They talked and talked and it gave him an opening to tell them everything about themselves. She hadn't given him a chance.
He wanted to prod at her poor body image and the eating disorder in her teens that she still sometimes struggles with. She was, what the ordinary people might call, pretty. She had a symmetrical face and a clear complexion. Her body was in proportion. What more could she want?
John would probably frown at this trail of thought and start talking about emotions or some such babble.
Her behaviour was odd though. She'd been quick, too quick. Predicted which box he would go to move. She hadn't turned around. Why would that thought even enter her pathetic little mind? And it had seemed as though she had expected him to be going through her stuff. Had she read his intent?
Sherlock went over her reactions again. She was three milliseconds quicker in reaction time than the average human. What did that mean?
Sherlock stopped playing and turned to his roommate abruptly.
"Give me your phone." He demanded.
"What? Why? Use yours, it's right there." John pointed at Sherlock's phone which was sitting on the table next to him.
"I don't have Mycroft's number." Sherlock held out his hand.
He had deleted it in a fit of childishness, but he wasn't going to give in. He knew the number by heart anyway what was the point in having it on his phone too?
"You want to call Mycroft?" John frowned at him but still made no move to hand over his phone.
"Your phone, John." When he finally made movements to pick it up, Sherlock put his violin down.
He grabbed it from his hand and swiftly exited the house, leaving John calling, asking where he was going. Sherlock wasn't taking the chance of being overheard. He threw on his coat and scarf and after checking Vieve was still in her apartment, proceeded out the door.
He didn't bother with a taxi and just started walking. Sherlock unlocked John's phone and went through the numbers. Clicking Mycroft's name, he held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring. He picked up after the fifth. Like always.
"Dr Watson." His brother's cool voice slid down the line.
That meant he wasn't under surveillance at this moment.
"I want her out of there."
There was a momentary pause that told Sherlock Mycroft was surprised he'd called.
"What ever are you talking about, brother mine?" Mycroft asked.
Sherlock grit his teeth.
"Do not play games. Your agent. I want her out in an hour."
It was the most plausible explanation. She was a plant. Mycroft had told her what to do and what he'd do.
"My agent?" Mycroft sounded amused. "You don't mean the woman who moved into 221 C, do you?"
Sherlock listened as Mycroft opened a file on his desk. He could hear him leafing through. It wasn't a very big file.
"She's an odd one, I'll admit, but not one of mine." His brother continued.
Sherlock frowned. If she wasn't Mycroft's why had he allowed her to move in? Didn't he get a warning at least?
"Whose then?" Had her accent fooled him?
He'd been so sure. Russian? North Korean? One of the many Middle Eastern groups? He knew most of the operatives placed in London, she'd have to be relatively new to field work.
"No ones. There was a plan in place to tap her but then she had a nasty breakdown. Too erratic."
A breakdown. She hadn't seemed unstable. Good hygiene. She'd organised her move. She was, perhaps, overly controlled.
"What kind of breakdown?" Sherlock had to assume the eating disorder wouldn't be enough to constitute mental instability.
"There aren't alot of details in the file. She didn't seek psychological help." Sherlock could tell Mycroft was analysing him.
"Send me the file." Sherlock said deciding to end the conversation.
He turned round and begun walking back to Baker Street. A middle aged business man running late for his 'date' with an escort passed him. He was in town on business and left his wife, three children and a border collie back in Manchester. Sherlock deleted this information.
"Why? Genevieve Charlotte Green is hardly of consequence." Sherlock could imagine his brother's patronizing smirk.
She was a Genevieve then. Sherlock couldn't help as the corners of his mouth twitched. It was good to be right. Still his brother's remark annoyed. If she refused to move out he would be forced to interact with her. That was of consequence.
"Just send me the file Mycroft." Sherlock hung up.
He pushed the door open with a huff. He paused momentarily. She was still in there moving about. She was cleaning by the smell. Chemical lemon and bleach. It was already gone eleven. Didn't ordinary people go to sleep soon? Mrs Hudson was in bed.
She didn't go to bed until half past five in the morning and rose at twelve. Sherlock had spent most of the night in his mind palace before scanning the inbox on his website. Some of it was fan mail which he deleted without reading. Most of the cases were boring and inane. Children kept writing to him about missing pets. John had told him 'your pet is dead, buy a new one' was not an acceptable response so he ignored them aswell.
Around one o clock he found a case that had a possibility of being interesting.