The Exhibition Part Two:


When DI Lestrade came up Dorset Street, he wondered if Ara Herbert had chosen this gallery because it was only two streets east of Baker Street and only four blocks from 221b. It would be just her style. Irrepressibly clever, if a bit too direct.

If the invitation had come last year, he might have been tempted to say no. Facing the visual record of those few weeks when she had done a work placement with his Murder Investigation Team raked up too many old memories, ones that he'd buried along with Sherlock. The fact that she had talked her way into the role that spring, and been so highly professional in her approach, also stood in her favour. He'd never got to see the photos she actually took. Once the two weeks were over, she'd disappeared back to uni and he'd not heard of her again. She'd promised to show the team the portfolio once it had been graded, but Sherlock's death intervened and, well, no one was in the mood at the Met to even think of tracking her down.

More than a year and a half later, it was a different climate. The police's own internal investigation had cleared the Consulting Detective- all of his cases had been checked and re-checked. The public disclosure of the facts set off a firestorm of recriminations. The Chief Superintendent of Detectives was forced to resign in disgrace. The Press Complaints Council took months to consider what, if anything should be done to address the issues the case raised.

And now, the Public Inquiry had been announced. Greg knew that Ara's exhibition would catch the interest of the press, if no one else. The girl's timing was impeccable.

The March evening was cold, and the streets were not busy. This area of Marylebone had a lot of smart low-rise residential buildings, most of the ground floors were retail shops or offices. He could see the Atlas Gallery ahead, lights blazing and a crowd of people visible through the large glass windows. He might once have been tempted to turn away by the thought of having to deal with people's inevitable questions, but saw a sprinkling of police uniforms, so decided to press on. He was still working on his rehabilitation. While the union had seen to it that he wasn't demoted in rank, it had taken a long time to work his way off the Homicide Assessment Team and back into his old MIT.

Time to network. If other Met officers was willing to attend an event that actually celebrated a certain Consulting Detective's involvement, then Greg was certainly going to play his part. Which is probably why Ara invited me in the first place. The thought raised a wry smile.

He was greeted at the door by a young man dressed in black, who showed him where to hang his coat. When he emerged into the brightly lit room, he was seen by Ara, who quickly ended a conversation she was having with what he guessed was an academic by the clothes he was wearing.

She came up to him and stood on tiptoe to give him a social kiss on the cheek. "I am so glad you could come. I never did get a chance to show you the results, nor thank you properly for agreeing to me elbowing my way onto your crime scenes." She snagged a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter and handed it to him.

He was looking at the young woman with some astonishment. The last time he'd seen her, she was wearing a baggy blue forensic suit over a pair of torn jeans and dirty sweatshirt, her long blonde hair pulled back in a rather fierce ponytail. She was wet, tired and had been with them half the night, working on the scene where the murder suspect had been arrested- a public park in West London. The contrast between that memory of her and the vision in front of him was stark. Her little black dress was a perfect fit, showing off an attractive figure without flaunting a thing except an exquisite taste in clothes. The high heels set off a very nice pair of legs that he vaguely remembered being permanently hidden in wellies when she was with the team. And the hair was now down, straight and shining a honey colour that enhanced her blue eyes.

"Um, I'm not sure this is the right way to say this, but you're, ah…. You scrub up well, Ara."

She laughed and her cheeks turned a slight shade of pink. "Well, I wouldn't have worn this to a crime scene, would I?"

She put her own glass down on the table and picked up a catalogue from the pile, thrusting it into his left hand. "Right, here's the drill. Ground floor is New York- new stuff, nothing to do with you, but hopefully still worth a look. First floor is the Met, that's stuff you will recognise. The top floor is…well, I'll leave that to your imagination. That floor is by special invitation only- tell them who you are and you'll get in."

He was about to ask her what was so special about the top floor, but she didn't let him draw breath. "The catalogue shows the prices, but forget that. Anything you want, it's yours. Just mark this with your choices, put your name on the front cover and leave it behind, in that tray. It's going to get crazy; I think I invited too many people and I may not have time to talk later." She looked at him now, carefully. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't said yes. There is no way to say thank you, except to say it. So, thank you."

He looked a little embarrassed. "I agreed to the placement because…"

She cut him off. "I know why you agreed. It had to be because of whatever Sherlock told you. Well, I'd thank him if I could. But I can't." Her voice cracked a bit on that last word, so she stopped. "Now get out of here before I start crying and wreck my make-up."

Greg smirked, "Sentiment. That's what he'd say. Well, I miss him, too." He raised the glass of champagne, in a silent toast. "To absent friends."

She recovered her glass to clink it softly against his. "Yeah."

"Speaking of which, I don't suppose John Watson's here?"

"I invited him, of course. Got an email declining. I didn't really expect him to come, but I wanted him to know."

"Yeah, well, I'll raise a glass to him, as well."

She pointed up the stairs. "Sally's already up there looking at the Met photos, so why not join her?"

Greg decided that the new 'stuff', as she called it, could wait. He wanted to see what she had made of her two weeks with the team. He climbed the first flight of stairs, but slowly, enjoying the framed black and white prints that were hung in the stairwell. They were of New York, he thought, not recognising any of the images. Not travel photos; these all had people in them. Not traditional portraits either, more like street scenes of different groups of people. A few were well-dressed, walking down wide pavements laden down with what he guessed were designer labelled shopping bags. But the ones that caught his eye were of ordinary people- talking, gesticulating, living a life that was far from glamourous. One that caught his eye was in what looked like a restaurant kitchen- a whirl of steam, heat and food, with the people working with concentration and yet camaraderie. Another one was of two blokes on skates with kneepads and helmets chasing a hockey ball right through a crowd of pedestrians in business suits, oblivious to the presence of human obstacles. There was a taut energy to her work; he felt himself drawn into the photos.

Lestrade found Sally on the first floor- an elegant square room, well lit, with photographs artfully displayed on white walls. She was standing with a group of other officers in front of a large print- this one was shot close up and cropped to show just a serried rank of shoulders, all wearing black Met dress uniforms, with the silver embroidery on the shoulder boards taking centre stage. He remembered it from Ara's first day. He'd tried to contact her to tell her to come the day after- the whole of the Division was at a funeral for one of their colleagues, who had been caught by a suspect carrying a knife, and killed. She talked the widow into letting her attend, and stood in the background taking pictures.

Greg greeted the others and shook a few hands, smiled at the faces of colleagues who had once shunned him as 'the guy who worked with the fraud'; he would never again fully trust the people at the top- so quick to judge, and on such flimsy evidence. He heard a baritone voice in his head-"What did you expect, Lestrade? They're all idiots."

Sally turned, noticing him behind her. "I like the title." He peered in at the small white card beside the photo, and started to fumble in his jacket for his reading glasses. Sally rolled her eyes. "It's in the catalogue, too, in larger print. It says Respect for the Fallen. I hope Janson's widow got a copy."

They moved on to the next photo, which was at a crime scene. At night, in an alleyway lit by portable lamps, the shot showed an anonymous figure in a forensic blue suit, rummaging through a tool box of equipment. Both he and Sally recognised the figure that no one else would- it was Philip Anderson. Greg felt a pang of regret. Anderson had been a casualty of the internal investigation. He'd actually been accused of planting some of the evidence that was used by the Chief Superintendent to justify the attack on Holmes. The accusation had been disproved, but he'd been sacked in the meantime. After he was cleared, they had offered him a back office job that he wasn't prepared to take.

From being a critic Anderson had become a convert- and was now part of the public campaign to reinstate the reputation of Sherlock. Lestrade had, for old times' sake, met up with him occasionally, but it was rarely a happy occasion. The thought made him uncomfortable now, and he glanced away, noticing another person, an elderly man in a rather shabby suit, standing in front of a large image, this one taken on a panoramic, horizontal line. He walked over to examine it more closely. Again a night scene, in black and white mostly; the sheet covering the dead body was the only element of colour. It was blue, and drew the eye to it. The swirl of activity around the body had been captured in blurred multiple exposures. Only the body was still. The effect was startling, and Lestrade leaned in to look at it more closely. The title was Rest in Peace.

He remembered that night. It was wet, and the reflections of water drops on the lens added even more to the impact. The body beneath its sheet was the only still thing in the picture.

"It's beautiful." The old man commented quietly in heavily accented English.

An odd word to describe such a macbre scene, but Greg could only nod his agreement. It was beautiful. This was more than photo-journalism; it had become art.

"She's given him the respect his killer didn't give him."

Again, Lestrade nodded. "Yes. The victim takes centre stage. Always."

The old man gave a heavy sigh, and rubbed his face. "That's my son under the sheet. I needed to see this. She was right to invite me. I know now the police treated him with respect. That's important."

Lestrade searched his memory for the name, and eventually found it. "Mister Kazemi?"

The old man nodded, then took his eyes away from the photo to look at Greg. "How do you know my name?"

"I was there that night we found your son. I might well be one of the blurs," he added a bit lamely.

"Then I must thank you." He seized Greg's arm and shook it warmly, causing the catalogue to slip out of his hand and hit the floor with a slap. The man's face had transformed into one of great happiness. "You found his killers and brought them to justice."

He gently extracted his arm, and picked up the catalogue. "Actually, it wasn't me who solved the case. Sherlock Holmes did that. And he exposed the Iranian extremist group that was responsible for ordering your son's killing."

The old man looked back at the photo. "I know that. But he's not here to hear me thank him."

Greg smiled. "He wouldn't have appreciated the thought; he didn't solve crimes to be thanked."

"A selfless man, then."

Greg had no answer. Then Sally came to his rescue when she called out, "Gov, look at this one!"

"Excuse me, please." He left the old man contemplating the photo, and joined Sally across the room. This one was of the MIT room back in New Scotland Yard. Entitled Cracking the Case, it was an angled shot of the evidence board for the Kazemi murder case. The depth of field had been carefully judged so that the evidence was not quite in focus, unreadable- it had been almost the only condition he had set on her photography: protect the victim's right to confidentiality.

Instead the camera caught an arm and a hand, with long lithe fingers pointing to a particular piece of evidence- a crumpled take-out delivery flyer they had found on the floor of the Jehangir Kazemi's flat. Greg and Sally both knew who the arm in the suit jacket belonged to, and why it was pointing to that item. Sherlock had just explained it all, in one of his amazing streams of deductions.

Ara had captured that moment on their faces when Greg and Sally realised what he was saying was the solution to the case. Sally's showed her staring at the board with incredulity, almost as if a magic trick had just been done in front of her eyes. Disbelief warred with envy on her face, but it was relief at finding a killer that won out. Beside him Sally said quietly, "God, if that is what he saw on my face every time he solved another case, then I am not surprised he hated me."

Greg shook his head. "He didn't hate you, Sally. That would be sentiment and he always tried not to let it get in the way. You need to stop beating yourself up. What happened, happened. A lot of people were wrong about him. You've at least have the heart to admit it now."

She pointed at the photo, "Maybe, but just look at your face there; I know that you never doubted him. That should have been enough for me."

The photo caught Greg looking off camera at the man who had solved the case for them- well, he couldn't define it, but the expression on his face summed up everything he had felt about Sherlock. Amazement, delight, pride and genuine affection – it was all there, neatly caught in black and white, printed and framed in front of him. Looking at it gave him a lump in his throat. He closed his eyes and bit the inside of his lip. "Yeah, but I wasn't able to protect him, was I?"

"As if anyone could. We all knew he'd take one too many risks someday."

He nodded and the two of them walked on to investigate the rest of the photos. The whole process had been caught on camera- from discovery, to doorstep questioning in the neighbourhood, the meticulous forensic work at the scene and back at the lab. The mortuary photos were suggestive more than sensational, avoiding the usual stereotypes of bodies under sheets or with the hideous Y stitches exposed. Instead, Ara had managed to catch Molly Hooper's face as she worked with a bone saw on a body. The angle of the shot was almost as if the victim was holding the camera, and it captured the conflict of her compassion for the dead person warring with the professional distance that she had to maintain to do her job. It reminded him yet again of the pathologist's surprising depth of character that all too often got lost in her shy awkwardness around people. Ara caught the truth of her somehow, and revealed it in the picture.

It rather summed up her remarkable achievement- a gauche young photography student would have gone for Hollywood style gore and drama, making the work look like something out of a cop show or just gutsy photo-journalism to sit alongside some tabloid headline. But, these photographs weren't like that. Each one put a person in the centre, doing their best to solve a crime. It wasn't glamorous, it was hard work- some of it quite tedious. One photo caught Sally at her computer, still typing paperwork reports into the HOLMES2 database when the rest of the room was empty, her desk lamp the only light on in the office.

She was smiling at the title, Due Diligence. "I want one of those. I'll use it to explain to my mum why I never seem able to make it over to her house for dinner. Damn paperwork is enough to drown me."

The room was starting to fill up, and Greg realised he was ready to deal with what was upstairs. He figured it would be about Sherlock. While he knew it would bring up a lot of memories, it was time to lay a few ghosts to rest. "Shall we investigate, Sergeant?" She nodded and they headed up the wooden staircase to the top floor.