Sherlock very conscientiously waited until the laundry had run through the dryer, taking it out and sorting it away, before he prepared to go back to the crime scene up the street. He jotted this down on a bit of paper, sticking it to the fridge, so John would know where he was if the doctor returned before he did, and so that John would also know how considerate and responsible Sherlock had been. It was important that this be acknowledged.
On the way down the steps from the flat, Lestrade rang him again.
"Yes?" Sherlock answered.
"Can you come up?" Lestrade enquired. "We may need your help."
Sherlock paused on the stairs, one hand on the wooden railing.
"I don't think so," he sniffed. "Too much to do today."
"Sherlock," Lestrade growled. "It's a block away from your flat. You want me to send a car?"
"I think my legs can manage, but I am quite occupied," he said, tapping the banister absently with his index finger. "Really, I don't sit about waiting for you to ring every day, you know. Some of us need not be at your beck and call."
"I thought you'd jump at the chance to be here," Lestrade sighed.
"I did," Sherlock agreed. "Last night. As I told you, it was quite chaotic and disorganized. And now Anderson's there. What should I make of anything I'd find?"
"Well, I'd like to know," Lestrade said. "Just get yourself down here, or I will send a car round to pick you up. And to sweep your flat for drugs."
"You'd waste your time with an investigation like this on your hands?" Sherlock asked.
"Sherlock!" Lestrade shouted. "Just get the bloody hell down here!"
"Very well," Sherlock said coolly, tightening his voice to make himself sound displeased. "I will be there as soon as I can. No need to shout, Lestrade. It's uncivilized."
He hung up as Lestrade cursed wearily at him, and sat down on the stairs, spending a couple of minutes matching the ring tone on the phone Sam had given him to his own phone, so that if it rang, he could always just claim it was his. He wasn't about to leave the passed-off phone in his flat. Although Mycroft had not actually broken in, nor had Sherlock seen him about, he did not need to risk it. And Mrs. Hudson occasionally got it in her head to steal the skull from the mantle, and he didn't need her poking about, finding things she should not.
Then he spent a few minutes sorting through his own text messages, deleting old and extraneous ones, rereading texts from John, some of which were mundane, some touching, some explicit, but all of them heartfelt. He updated his contacts list, ensuring he had no numbers he no longer used, then put his own phone away, pulling Sam's out again.
He sent a reply text to the number from which Sam had sent his message. Sherlock had checked it only to find that it did not, of course, exist. Or, more accurately, was unassigned. He kept the message short and vague, knowing if it were intercepted, it would make little sense and be deemed pointless.
Get out all right last night?
A few moments later, he got a reply, mildly surprising him, but he could tell that Sam was even more surprised to have received anything.
Yes, fine, thank you. No time now, talk tonight.
Sherlock was being dismissed, told not to contact Sam again. He rolled his eyes at the phone – Sam was either being overly cautious or simply obstinate. Without knowing what was afoot, it was difficult to make a decision on that.
He pocketed Sam's phone again and finally left, sauntering up the street, which was still in disarray from the night before. The police barricades started not 100 metres from his flat, blocking off all but one lane of traffic, and there were bobbies everywhere, trying to redirect the vehicles that seemed determined to pass through the cordoned-off areas. There were still a large number of people out, lined up along the barriers, trying to see something, although from this distance, nothing much was visible. Sherlock could just make out where the burnt flat and car were, but only because the crowd of police officers and fire fighters formed a tight knot there.
He walked north along the barricades, as if uninterested, then slipped through the crowds when he judged himself close enough to find an officer who would believe him that Lestrade wanted him there, or at least be able to find the DI in short order to confirm Sherlock's claims.
He was in luck, more or less – it seemed Sally Donovan had been stationed to wait for him. Sherlock wound his way to the barrier several metres from her and made her approach him, her dark eyes glinting.
Around him, some of the people gathered held photographs of missing individuals with names written on them. Sherlock kept his eyes from this, but cast a glance at the building that had been burning in the early hours of the morning. The front ground and second stories were the least affected, but the bricks were blackened with soot and from the heat, and above them, the building was little more than a skeletal structure, the brick façade mostly still intact, but he could see through the windows that there was little to nothing left inside and, indeed, part of the roof had fallen in or burnt away completely.
He was momentarily astonished that anyone had made it out at all, that he and John had managed to get home safely with only heat-reddened skin. They could probably thank the fact that the explosion had detonated in the back of the building, in the cellar, if Sherlock was any judge. He wondered if an accelerant had been used, or if the building's insulation and electrical wiring provided the conduit for the fire to spread rapidly.
"You coming in or not?" Donovan snapped at him.
"Yes, thank you, Sergeant," Sherlock replied coolly, slipping past the barricade that she moved temporarily for him.
"No sidekick today?" she enquired.
Sherlock stopped, feeling a sharp flash of anger, but kept his expression as close to neutral as he could, allowing a hint of irritation to slip in.
"John is not my sidekick. John is my husband. He also happens to be at work. And may I point out that he spent all night here assisting the rescue and providing emergency medical care?"
"We were here all night, too," Donovan shot back.
"And this is your job," Sherlock said simply. "He came to help because he was able to, not because he was required to." He shook his head, moving away, scanning for Lestrade, then stopped, turning back.
"On the outs with Anderson then, are you?" he enquired, unable to resist the temptation.
Donovan fairly growled at him. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, impressed at the deep tone which her voice could take on.
"Are you going to tell me you deduced that from the smell of my deodorant, or shampoo, or the state of my clothing, or the length of my nails?" she demanded and Sherlock knew he'd hit the nail on the head – although he'd known that anyway.
"No," he replied. "You let me in without question. You never do that, unless you're having a row with him. What happened, did he promise to leave his wife again and not follow through?"
"You don't even know he's here!" Donovan shot back.
"Of course I do. I talked to Lestrade, and where else would Anderson be, if there were an important case to muck up? Also, I can see him, which I understand you can't, because I do have an advantage in height."
"Go to hell," Donovan muttered, but her voice lacked her usual animosity.
"You're a better woman than that, Sergeant," Sherlock said plainly. "And you're far more intelligent than he is. You should consider why you let him get away with being a total git. Can you point me to Lestrade?"
Donovan stared at him a moment, then narrowed her eyes again.
"In front of the building. Talking with the Fire Commissioner."
"Cheers," Sherlock told her and walked away, feeling her eyes boring a hole into the back of his skull, but ignoring it. Donovan needed to get a handle on her life, he thought, not let Anderson play her the way he did.
As if on cue, Anderson peeled away from a crowd of forensics drones and stalked toward him. Sherlock wondered why, if the country had formerly sanctioned badger culls, he was still around.
"Come to contaminate my scene?" he growled.
"Come back," Sherlock corrected.
"What?" Anderson demanded.
"Come back," Sherlock repeated. "I was here from ten-thirty last night until three-fifteen this morning, assisting with medical care and rescue. Where were you? Home with your wife? Or perhaps one of your other mistresses? Excuse me, Lestrade is waiting."
He made his way past the knots of police officers to the front of the building, noting that the building on the left had sustained a great deal of damage as well, and that none of the windows in either building had glass in them anymore. The street was glinting with small shards among the ashes, crunching under his shoes, reflecting the weak sunlight that broke through the clouds, so that it almost looked like a snowfall in midsummer.
Lestrade was talking to some high placed fire officials, inspectors and the Fire Commissioner himself, as well as some higher ranking police officials, all of them looking very prim and proper in their formal uniforms.
He hesitated a single step, his pace slowing, but not noticeably so. Not because he was faced with these men and women who commanded London's emergency services, no. Because Lestrade was standing almost next to the scarf Sam had been wearing, that he'd dispensed of before leaving the scene, when the police had arrived. In the daylight, Sherlock could clearly tell it wasn't Sam's – it was a woman's accent scarf, threaded with pale pink and violet, as well as silver accents. Sam had probably lifted it from someone he'd been assisting, to mask his face and to keep the worst of the smoke out of his mouth and nose. It was singed around the edges and scored by small burn marks were embers had billowed down onto it. It was the rain, Sherlock thought, that weighted it down enough to keep it in one place, rather than having it drift off in the breeze.
It was utterly incongruous and he felt the night before and the current day overlapping, and Lestrade had absolutely no idea.
Sherlock then made himself ignore this and turned his attention to the crowd of self-important officials and Lestrade. If John were here, he'd tell Sherlock to play nice, so as to gain access to the building, or what was left of it, and to offer his opinion, which would be far more valuable than those already accumulated.
The car – rather, what remained of the car – was a blackened, burnt, hollowed-out husk, still smoking gently in some parts. The frame was mostly intact, although the roof was partially collapsed, but none of the original paint remained, so no telling what colour it had been. Same with what was left of the interior. Plastic components were melted, fused to one another, misshapen, retaining their liquefied look as they cooled. The back seat was completely burnt away, and the front two seats had been partially eaten by the flames, and most of the fabric covering the seats had been burnt off, leaving only the frames remaining, the metal twisted and still making faint plinking sounds as it cooled.
The car was still identifiable as a Mercedes, but only barely so – the make and model and the company's insignia had been melted off. The registration plates were useless – almost completely incinerated, except for a tiny piece off of the front plate, which Sherlock held his gloved hands. A portion of the EU motif remained, the ring of twelve stars, although only five were visible. And a small chunk of white next to the blue background. Not a British plate, then, but it didn't really narrow it down much more. Well, not Dutch either, Sherlock supposed.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked round to the driver's side, which was on the correct side, indicating the car had been purchased in the UK or made for sale there at least even if it was not registered in England, leaning in to sniff again. The odour of petrol still clung to everything. Not at all a surprising accelerant, especially for a vehicle. He wondered if he'd find the same in the basement of the building or not.
There had obviously been no body in there – even with the heat and intensity of the fire, something would have remained. Unless, of course, it had been removed by Anderson or his lackeys, but the car appeared untouched altogether. This was sensible; if no one had been inside, then the real forensics challenge lay in the building, where people had been and died. Sherlock wondered if they had an accurate count yet. He had not been able to gauge the amount of people that had been treated the night before. John had worked on twelve people – Sherlock had kept count of that – not including the people he'd helped get away from the flames and the smoke. If Sherlock put them altogether, it added up to seventeen people. But there had been at least seven ambulances at one time or another – in this, he was less certain, because he'd been focusing more on assisting John and ensuring the doctor didn't get it in his head to plunge into the burning building in an attempt to save anyone else. Sherlock knew, from the heat of the fire, that those trapped inside were no longer in need of saving. But he kept himself from saying so out loud, because he knew John also knew this, and that his husband would snap at him for being cold and unfeeling when he was really only being practical.
"Not from here," Sherlock said as Lestrade approached him again, having paused to converse with some deputies and some fire officials. Sherlock cast an eye about the crowds, looking for anyone who stood out, anyone who did not seem to belong there, or who was paying the wrong sort of attention to the goings-on, but he could not immediately spot anyone.
"What do you mean?" Lestrade asked.
Sherlock handed him the bit of plate that was still intact.
"White registration plate. Not British. Even though the car was made for the British road system."
"Great, that narrows it down to not Dutch," Lestrade sighed.
"Probably not Belgian, either," Sherlock commented. "As there is no 'B' visible in the ring of stars. Or what's left of it."
"Still," Lestrade sighed. "That leaves us with a lot of possibilities. The car's German make though."
"Which does not mean it came from Germany," Sherlock pointed out. "As I said, made for our road systems. It could easily have been purchased here and licensed somewhere else, or purchased somewhere else with an eye on being brought to the UK. Do we know yet to whom it belongs?"
"We're still working on getting good enough CCTV footage to get the whole plate and run it down," Lestrade replied.
They were interrupted by one of the arson specialists coming for Sherlock.
"You'd best suit up," he said, gesturing for the consulting detective to follow him. "You don't want anything getting on your skin or clothes."
The request actually seemed logical for once, and it was given in a tone that suggested this man had no issue with Sherlock's appearance on the scene, nor questions about why a consultant worked for the police. It was strangely uplifting to join forces with another emergency services unit. No one was grumbling at him about his unusual presence, or making snide remarks, or complaining because he could spot details that they could not. It was almost, Sherlock considered, as though the fire department appreciated any help they could get.
He made a note to mention this to Lestrade. More gratitude for his invaluable contributions should be given by the police.
He suited up then, ignoring Lestrade's stunned expression as he did so. Second time in a suit for Sherlock, but the first time Lestrade had ever seen him in one. Sherlock put the first time out of his mind – he was still determined not to think about Edinburgh as much as possible. And this was quite a bit different.
He followed the arson specialist – Morrison – into what remained of the building, taking care to listen to the man's instructions about where to step and what to avoid. Sherlock had no desires of being crushed under a pile of debris, and this would probably also make John unhappy. He had even less desire to make John unhappy. John had had enough unhappiness for the year, if not more.
He was glad for the mask they'd given him – the air was still full of ash and soot. He could feel it settling onto his skin, making him itch vaguely. His hair was covered by the suit, as was most of his body, really, except his forehead and the tops of his cheeks. His breath was warm inside the mask, unpleasant, but a preferable alternative to breathing in the ash. The entry way and the beginning of the corridor into the building were still relatively intact, the wood and plaster charred but not completely gone, so that even the colours remained. Dark wood, standard and dirty off-white pain on the plaster. Sooty hand- or fingerprints here and there where people fleeing the building had touched the walls. A cracked mirror with a smoke-blackened bronze frame still hung on one wall, several jagged shards of glass missing, resting in smaller fragments on the burnt wood floor below.
Sherlock cast his eyes up the staircase leading to the second storey. Everything had been shored up so that the investigators could work in relative safety, but it was evident that the front of the building had suffered much less than the back, although, judging from the way it looked outside, the upper fourth storey was completely gone.
The further back they went, the worse it got, and the building looked skeletal, dead, more black and grey than the browns of the wood and the off-white of the paint. Sherlock was for once grateful he'd been forced to wait, to ensure it was safe enough to bring in someone not used to this sort of scene. He kept a sharp eye on Morrison ahead of him, stepping where he stepped, but also cataloguing everything around him. It still smelled, very strongly, of burning wood and paint, and he tried to identify any other odours beneath that. Unfortunately, he thought he could, but it wasn't accelerant – it was the smell of burnt flesh. He focused on sniffing out some hint of accelerant, but could not, at least not yet.
The fire had burnt hot – of course he knew that from personal experience, having felt the heat on his skin despite the coolness of the rain all night. But it was more evident now, with the building surrounding him, and the suited-up arson specialist picking his way carefully through the rubble.
"Down here," Morrison said, and swung himself onto a ladder they'd extended into the cellar, where the stairs had been, only a day before. He glanced up at Sherlock, visible only as patch of dark skin and eyes beneath the suit and mask. "Mind your step getting onto the ladder – we don't need any spills."
Sherlock only nodded, letting Morrison go down fully first, then climbing down himself with nimble grace. He could feel someone holding the ladder as he descended, even though it had been secured, as much as possible, to the floors above and below.
The only reason anything remained of the cellar was that it was done in stone and concrete, not wood. The cellar's inlet, where the stairs had been, was much wider than it should have been, and the entire place was an absolute disaster. Almost everything had been stripped away by the explosion, and there would have been water pouring in had the pipes not been shut off, since the boiler had been sheered away. Sherlock wondered if fire had been tempered at all down here by the influx of water that must have happened when the pipes were severed. Probably not, he decided. The water pouring from the pipes had probably evaporated instantly.
The back wall was the worst; it appeared the fire had been strongest there, which followed, since that also seemed to be where the explosion had been located. He followed Morrison to it. The fire department had set up temporary spotlights so that their people could actually work. There was only one other person down there with them, a woman with brown eyes, pale skin, and freckles, who was collecting samples around the blast site into small sterile bags and labelling them meticulously. She gave Sherlock a nod when Morrison brought him over, but didn't stop working or speak to him, too focused on the job.
"C4, most likely," Morrison said. "Plastic explosive, definitely, could be semtex, but I don't think so. Not a large amount, but it wouldn't need to be."
Sherlock nodded, sniffing the air. He could smell a sweetish tinge past the odours of smoke and ash.
"They used ethyl ether," he commented.
Morrison nodded and the woman glanced up, looking impressed.
"Right," Morrison agreed.
"Not the same accelerant used on the car, but it would be too much of a coincidence for these to be unrelated, not to be done by the same person. And they could be detonated remotely."
Morrison nodded again. Sherlock stepped up to the wall, examining where the small bomb had gone off, then made his way slowly around the cellar – which was smaller than the whole size of the ground floor of the flat, about one third the dimensions. Morrison assisted by turning one set of lights for him. Sherlock moved along the walls, scanning them floor to what remained of their ceilings, but aside from the smell of the accelerant, there was nothing unusual he could pick up.
More unusual than a bomb in a cellar of a flat, of course.
"We won't know much else until we've swept all the flats as much as we can," Morrison said when Sherlock turned back to him. In case more accelerant had been spread, Sherlock considered. Or they found bodies.
He let Morrison guide him back out, happily pulling down his mask when they emerged back onto the street, pulling in a deep breath of fresh air. Lestrade was waiting for him, looking impatient, the little piece of registration plate now in an evidence bag, held loosely in his right fist.
"I'll need to know to whom that car was registered, and information on all of the people who lived in this flat and the buildings on either side."
"You'll get it," Lestrade said, then sighed. "Nothing down there?"
"Other than the fact that someone blew up part of a building and a car? No. Different accelerant used in the cellar, although I can't speculate as to why. Maybe simply because they could."
Lestrade nodded. He looked displeased, but Sherlock found this fascinating. Someone out there had the means to obtain C4 and ethyl ether and use them to detonate a controlled explosion that had wiped out the back half of the building and the upper storey, which meant either they were dealing with a complete amateur with access to restricted materials or an experienced professional. And he had not re-evaluated his assessment that this was not an amateur. Whoever it was had also detonated a car at the same time, either as a distraction or to further remove evidence.
He felt the familiar feeling of excitement as a case began to unravel in front of him, as someone dangerous and intelligent caught his eye, needing to be caught and contained.
"Any ideas?" Lestrade asked.
"Sorry, didn't see anyone last night laughing madly and wearing a placard that read 'I'm the bomber!'" He ignored Lestrade's eye roll. "Get me that information, Lestrade, and I will find you your killer."