Hello there. Sorry for the wait, but I hope you enjoy this.
Chapter 2: Bomb
John kicked another discarded soda can out of the way and tried not to get too annoyed about it. Ordinarily, the ferry dock would be packed at this time of day with tourists getting ready to go on a river cruise of the Thames. It was really a very popular spot, being so close to Big Ben and the London Eye; this was also the reason for most of the mess. Tourists, John thought. No sense of preservation. He and Sherlock had had to go through a crowd of them on the way in, complaining to anyone who would listen about the cruise they would be missing out on.
John personally didn't see the reason for them to be upset. At least they obviously had well-paying jobs, or they wouldn't have the money to be here in the first place. He certainly wouldn't have been able to afford a cruise by now. For the last few months, he and Sherlock had been living mostly off his army pension, with a little help from Mycroft when the rent was due. He sometimes wondered how Sherlock had afforded Mrs. Hudson's flat before they had met; he didn't even get paid for the cases he took, much less have a job. Speaking of jobs…
"So, any details you want to share with me before we get there, or am I going in blind this time?" He practically had to jog to keep up with Sherlock's strides. This must be an interesting one if he was in such a hurry.
Sherlock barely glanced back at him. "He didn't say much. I suppose we'll find out soon enough. Really, though, *something* at least mildly interesting must be going on if he decided to call me in. Lestrade, not matter how much I badger him, isn't a complete idiot."
Sherlock rarely, if ever, went into a case blind like this; he had obviously taken the case to delay the conversation about his dream. He should have seen this before. Any port in a storm, right? He scowled. This dream of Sherlock's really had him worried. His flatmate rarely showed any type of emotion beyond annoyance, and suddenly a random nightmare turns him into a bundle of nerves. John didn't have to be a physiatrist to know a panic attack when he saw one. Something in that dream had upset Sherlock badly, and it hurt that he wouldn't talk about it. He had saved Sherlock's life when they first met, for crying out loud! And he had stayed by his side when everyone warned him it wasn't a good idea. Didn't that make him trustworthy, at least a little? Not to Sherlock bloody Holmes, obviously.
Sgt. Donovan was waiting for them at the taped-off edge of the scene, ready to lift the tape up for the "Freak" and his friend to crawl under. "Over there." She said without any preamble; it was well known that she and Sherlock weren't on the best of terms. "Be careful; the blood hasn't dried yet. Guv!" she shouted in the direction she had been pointing. "Freaks here!"
Sherlock didn't even acknowledge her, instead striding over to Detective Inspector Lestrade. By the time John reached them (actually taking the time to say hello to Sally first), both men were bending over the body in deep thought.
"Uh, boys? Can I get in on…Oh, God!" John recoiled from the corner with his hand pressed to his mouth. Even after all the crime scenes he'd had to investigate with Sherlock, and the military before that, sometimes what people did to other people just threw him for a loop.
The body was a mess. It wasn't so much the four stab wounds caked with still-wet blood on the chest as it was the grey brain matter laying in oozing chunks in the blood circle around what used to be a head. John put his hands behind his head and hoped fervently that the victim had been dead before his assailant had smashed his skull. Though the stab wounds meant otherwise. Taking a deep breath, he turned back to the body and listened to Sherlock bounce deductions off the river water and wooden dock.
"Victim at least 35 years of age. Works at a fast-food restaurant in Greenwich. Insomniac." he carefully pulled up the man's left sleeve," Heroin addict. Right-handed. Divorced, no children, four Persian cats." He looked at Lestrade with a you're an idiot look that was usually reserved for Anderson. "You could have gotten all this without my help; it's all there in black and white. Look for his girlfriend or his dealer and call it a day. Honestly, sometimes I think you do this just to get me out of the house every once in a while."
"Sherlock," Lestrade said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "we did know…well, most of that before you came. That's not why I called you."
"Then why? Spit it out, man, I haven't got all day."
"We called you because of this." Lestrade put on a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and picked up a cardboard box that was sitting next to the victim. "This was found next to the body."
Both Sherlock and John rushed forward to look inside. Both looked back at Lestrade completely confused. "Greg, these are books." John said. "Really old looking books. What's so dangerous about that, other than finding them at the scene of a murder?"
"Half right. They *were* books, until someone decided to hollow out the pages and fill them with something." Lestrade used one finger to carefully flip the top book open to around the middle. He was right; the inside of the book had been hollowed in the shape of a cylinder, about the size of a thermos.
"What do you think was inside" John asked of both men.
Sherlock didn't answer, as was customary at this point in the case; he just reached into his pocket for his phone, fiddled for a moment, then started waving it over the hollow book. It started to emit a continuous beeping noise.
"Radiation detecting app." Sherlock announced, in answer to the question John had been about to ask. "Designed it myself. You can tell by the noise if there is radiation present, and if so, what substance is emitting it."
"And?" Lestrade asked.
"Uranium." Sherlock said in a flat voice. "Someone in this city is apparently building a nuclear bomb." Lestrade's jaw dropped. John put his head in his hands, rubbing his temples. It had always amazed him that Sherlock could present even this kind of life-altering information while still being calm and dethatched. It was almost an art form, except when it was, you know, announcing the possible end of humanity.
"Shush. Not so loud, the tourists will hear." Lestrade whispered, gesturing toward the sidewalk above them.
"Let them hear!" Sherlock half-shouted, turning toward the crowd. "Their lives are in…"
He stopped dead in the middle of the tirade they all knew was coming, and did something completely uncharacteristic of Sherlock for the second time that day. He just stared blankly into space, his eyes focused on a point in the crowd just behind Lestrade's head. When he didn't move, or even seem to breathe, for almost 30 seconds, John decided to intervene.
"Um, Sherlock? You okay?"
No response.
Seriously concerned now, John elbowed past the confused and gaping Lestrade and shook Sherlock's shoulder. The other man nearly jumped out of his shoes, as if he had forgotten anyone was even watching. His head snapped toward John, his eyes glowing with something…indefinable. John wasn't sure whether to label it pain, sadness or joy, but it's intensity in Sherlock's eyes scared him, and he took a few steps back. He felt like he had just seen Sherlock's soul, or at least the emotions that he kept locked up.
Sherlock blinked, and in an instant the look was gone. He held his head high, and looked at the two men with the same air of superiority he had had on a moment ago.
"Are you okay?" John repeated.
"Oh course." Sherlock said, his word clipped and hard. He glanced around at the rest of the investigation team, who by now had all turned to stare at the pair of them. "Well, what are you stupid puppets sitting around for? We have a possible national emergency on our hands and you're sitting around twittling your thumbs!" He turned him attention back to John and Lestrade. "Honestly, the minds of average people. So easily distracted."
Before either man could say anything about what had just happened, an intern ran down the dock and gave a piece of paper to Lestrade. After reading it, the detective looked up. "Dental records on our friend here just came through. Name of Ethan Kingston. Resident of Greenwich, divorced…"
"Never mind, we've already heard that." Sherlock waves the information away. John decides to put in his two cents. "The important thing here is why he was killed. He might have been picking up the bomb material. In that case, my guess is that someone knew he was coming here and why, decided to kill him, and stole the uranium for themselves, probably to sell. Or, they just didn't feel like dying of fallout anytime soon." He turned to Lestrade. "Of course, he could have just discovered the books by mistake, and the real bomb-maker showed up and killed him. Are there any other clues?"
"Yes." Lestrade went to the forensics table and came back with a piece of ordinary, crumpled looking paper in a plastic bag. "This was found in the victim's pocket."
Sherlock took the bag and stared at it intently; John walked to his side to get a glimpse over his elbow. What he saw really took his breath away. It was a pencil drawing of almost the exact scene in which they were standing, minus the forensics team and the body. It wasn't a normal sketch someone might draw to give you directions, though; in fact, if John hadn't seen the carbon rubbing off at the edges and the slight smudging where it had been crumpled, he would have thought it was a black-and-white photograph. The perspective was from the far right of the dock, showing the waiting area on the left, and the gates separating it from the water on the right. Up against the gate, almost right where they were standing, was a cardboard box.
"Yes," said Lestrade, anticipating their question. "That's exactly where we found the box originally."
"Ok, we can defiantly scratch the second part, then." John glanced up at Sherlock to gauge his reaction. His face was entirely clinical and vacant, but his eyes held a watered-down version of the same emotion as before. He wanted to ask his friend again if he was alright, but decided against it. Sherlock would only snap again, and there was time enough for that later. "What do you think?" he asked instead.
Sherlock blinked, then ran a careful thumb over the bottom right hand corner of the paper. "The artist signed it." He said. John looked. It was true. The actual letters of the signature had been ruined when the paper was crumpled, but something about the signature was intelligible. A long line ran down from the last letter under the words and curved straight down. With a few more lines, it had been turned into the letter F.
"Well, any ideas?" Lestrade said, eyeing the pair of them.
Sherlock handed the drawing back to the Inspector. As he did so, John noticed his partner glance back at the tourist crowd, as if what had distracted him before was still there. "Four, at least; one so far-fetched it burns." He turned and started back toward the sidewalk. "Time is of the essence. I'll keep in touch."
As John turned to follow, Lestrade put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Is he ill or something?" he said, nodding his head at Sherlock. "He seems really…distracted today."
For a moment, John considered telling Greg about the nightmare; as one of Sherlock's oldest acquaintances he might know more about the situation. But he decided against it. If it was truly important, he would find a way to get Sherlock to tell him. "I'm not sure. He's been like that all day."
"Well, see if you can break him out of it." Lestrade let go and headed over toward the rest of the team. "We have a city to save."
Well, what do you think? What distracted Sherlock? How is his dream involved? Did I write Lestrade decently? R and R, if it's not too much trouble.
Also, to my extreme disappointment, I still don't own Sherlock. If anyone can hook me up with him, I would be more than happy to pay. Hope to post again soon (I only allow myself to post when I have two chapters ready before it, sorry). See ya!
Gavi
