It was well known to everyone that Greg Lestrade's team was full of the Yard's most abrasive officers. Sally Donovan was no exception. From what the Detective Inspector knew, life hadn't been easy on Sergeant Donovan. He also knew that when life had swallowed her proverbial tough cookie, she had crawled back up its throat and broke its teeth to get out.
"Freak's here. Bringing him in." That particular nickname had been earned about four years previous when Sherlock had rather spectacularly rejected Sally's advances. Lestrade walked towards the door of the building to wait for Sherlock. God knows what he'd get up to if he entered the building unescorted. The good DI rolled his eyes as he saw his forensics officer walking into the path of the consulting detective.
"Ah Anderson, here we are again." Sherlock's grin was visible from the doorway. He enjoyed abusing the man. Nobody could exactly blame him though. Marvin Anderson was a bit of an arse.
"It's a crime scene. I don't want it contaminated. Are we clear on that?" Anderson sneered. He had adopted Sally's nickname two summers ago, when Sherlock may have implied that Anderson has a fascination with dinosaurs that went beyond a childish obsession. It might not have been a big deal if Sherlock hadn't screamed it at a crime scene during a fight over apparently-missing fingernail clippings.
"Quite clear. And is your wife away for long?"
"Oh, don't pretend you worked that out. Somebody told you that."
"Your deodorant told me that."
"My deodorant?"
"It's for men."
"Well, of course it's for men. I'm wearing it!"
"So is Sergeant Donovan. Ooh, I think it just vaporized. May I go in?" Life really hadn't been easy on Donovan. Anderson, unfortunately for her, was her determined. Completely one-sided. He didn't know how it happened, but Anderson must have been the wrong person at the right time at some point. The man tended to exploit her emotional connection to him as a means to cheat on his wife. Mrs. Lestrade wasn't the most faithful of women, and it was bloody awful feeling. He couldn't even imagine what it would be like if she were actually his determined.
"Now, look, whatever you're trying to imply..."
"I'm not implying anything. I'm sure Sally came round for a nice little chat and just happened to stay over. And I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees." Suppressing a chuckle, Lestrade made his way to the bottom of the staircase. The foldable table held special gloves and plastic...they kind of looked like footie-pajamas, actually.
"You should wear one of these." Lestrade instructed the detective and the man who walked in with him. "Who's this?"
"He's with me." Despite what Sherlock seemed to think, he was not an unobservant buffoon. The fact that they came out of the same cab was enough indication that they were there together.
"But who is he?" Sherlock all but growled in reply.
"I said he's with me." He, whoever He was, chose then to speak to Sherlock.
"Aren't you going to put one on?" Lestrade snorted quietly. Obviously the man hadn't been around for very long. The suit would interfere with one of Sherlock's main rules: the more theatrical, the better. He couldn't bloody well twirl that ridiculous coat of his while observing proper crime scene procedure, could he? Sherlock gave the man a look and turned back to Lestrade.
"So where are we?"
"Upstairs. I can give you two minutes." The consulting detective and his...colleague, he supposed, followed him up the winding staircase. The floorboards creaked with every step.
"May need longer." He had never seen Sherlock need longer than two minutes on a crime scene, and didn't expect it to start happening now.
"Her name's Jennifer Wilson, according to her credit cards. We're running them now for contact details. Hasn't been here long. Some kids found her."
00000
In the room at the very top of the stairs, Jennifer Wilson lay on her stomach dead and clad in pink. To her left, 'Rache' was carved into the floor. Sherlock, being very much in character, yelled at Lestrade for thinking too loudly before Anderson came in and interrupted his deductions.
"She's German. Rache. German for 'revenge'. She could be trying to tell us something." Sherlock, being very much in character, thanked him for his input and, without looking up from his phone, promptly slammed the door in his face. Sherlock then denied the woman's German citizenship. She was from Cardiff, apparently, and only intending on staying in London for the night.
"Doctor Watson, what do you think?" Sherlock addressed the man with the cane.
"Of the message?"
"Of the body. You're a medical man."
"You know, we do have a team outside." Greg reminded the men.
"Doctor Watson!" Sherlock called his attention to the body. The doctor turned to the DI with an apologetic look. With a long-suffering sigh, Lestrade gave the doctor his blessing.
"Oh, do as he says, help yourself. Anderson, keep everyone out for a couple of minutes!" The Detective Inspector left, but continued listening in on their conversation.
"What am I doing here?"
"Helping me make a point."
"I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent."
"Well, this is more fun." Lestrade snorted quietly. Crimes and cocaine may not be a typical person's idea of a good time, but Sherlock wasn't really typical by most definitions of the word. A puzzled look spread across his face. If this was what Sherlock considered fun, what does he do on dates? The idea was immediately dismissed because it creeped Lestrade out too much to ponder. Besides, the man would never do something as human as dating. His libido (which, due to some poor timing, Lestrade knew existed) was probably kept under control with the help of some mythical being, like the Leprechaun of Sexual Satisfaction, or the Tooth Fairy.
"Fun? There's a woman lying dead."
"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper." The DI heard a quiet sigh that wasn't Sherlock's, and a shuffling of plastic against dirt and wooden floors. Now seemed as good of a time as any to reenter the room. As he did, he heard a soft inhale, and the other man gave Sherlock an answer.
"Yeah. Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. Could have been a seizure, possibly drugs."
"You know what it was, you've read the papers."
"Well, she's one of the suicides. The fourth." Lestrade cleared his throat and turned to Sherlock.
"Sherlock, two minutes I said. I need anything you got." With an inhale, Sherlock began sharing the information gathered from the body.
"Victim is in her late 30s. No markings on the wrists, ankles, or back of the neck, so likely undetermined. Professional person, going by her clothes. I'm guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Travelled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. That's obvious from the size of her suitcase."
"Suitcase?" Lestrade looked around the room again. Was it invisible?
"Suitcase, yes. She's been married for at least ten years, but not happily. She's had a string of lovers, but none of them knew she was married." The consultant seemed to add, distractedly, out of nowhere. His coat swished as he spun about the room looking for the fabled suitcase. Lestrade tried his best to keep a grin off of his face. Well, it was fairly obvious that he wanted to impress Dr. Watson, so he figured that he might as well play along.
"Oh, for God's sake, if you're just making this up..." Sherlock whipped around to face Greg. The air coming off of the ends of his coat caused the dust on the floor to jump.
"Her wedding ring, ten years old at least. The rest of her jewelry has been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage, right there." Sherlock's speech grew more rapid as he went on. "The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside. That means it's regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It's not for work; look at her nails. She doesn't work with her hands, so what, or rather who, does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover, she'd never sustain the fiction of being single over that amount of time, so more likely a string of them. Simple, and entirely unsurprising if you account for the inflated infidelity rate among the undetermined." It was always simple once Sherlock explained it. He'd have to tuck the jewelry thing away for use in later investigations.
"It's brilliant!" Doctor Watson exclaimed. The other two men gave him questioning looks. "Sorry."
"Cardiff?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?"
"It's not obvious to me." The doctor said quietly.
"Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains?" Sherlock asked, more to himself than the others. "It must be so boring. Her coat! It's slightly damp. She's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She's turned it up against the wind. She's got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket, but it's dry and unused. Not just wind, strong wind, too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come from a decent distance, but she can't have traveled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn't dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time? Cardiff" Lestrade held back another smile. He wondered if Sherlock was aware that he dances out pieces of evidence while he explains them. He could be an excellent mime.
"It's fantastic!" Watson exclaimed as loudly as before.
"Do you know you do that out loud?" Sherlock raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, I'll shut up."
"No, it's...fine." Oh? Oh! So much for the Leprechaun of Sexual Satisfaction and the Tooth Fairy's day job.
"Why do you keep saying suitcase?" Lestrade cut in with all the speed he could muster. The last thing he needed was to watch two men snogging over a dead body. Thankfully, the question was sufficiently distracting.
"Yes, where is it? She must have had a phone or an organizer. Find out who Rachel is."
"She was writing 'Rachel'?" Greg asked. Sherlock threw him an irritated look.
"No, she was leaving an angry note in German. Of course she was writing 'Rachel'. No other word it can be. Question is, why did she wait until she was dying to write it?"
"So how do you know she had a suitcase?"
"Back of her right leg, tiny splash marks on the heel and calf not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don't get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious, it could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying one night. Now where is it, what have you done with it?"
"There wasn't a case." Lestrade massaged his forehead. He had the strangest feeling that Sally was going to blame the murder on Sherlock...again. Hopefully she wouldn't make him sit in a cell for the night...again.
"Say that again."
"There wasn't a case. There was never any suitcase."
"Suitcase! Did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?" So apparently it was invisible.
"Sher, there's no case!" Lestrade exclaimed. No need for the shouting and dramatics at this point. Just accept it and move on, Sherlock.
"They take the poison themselves. They chew, swallow the pills themselves. There are clear signs. Even you lot couldn't miss them." Why was Sherlock allowed to blather on about obvious things without a complaint? If any of Lestrade's team even mentioned something like that, they'd get knocked over with verbal abuse.
"Right, yeah, thanks. And...?" Greg prompted.
"It's murder. All of them. I don't know how. They're not suicides, they're killings, serial killings. We've got ourselves a serial killer. Love those. There's always something to look forward to." He looked like a little kid on Christmas morning. Maybe a kid in a candy shop. There was a cliche somewhere that fit.
"Why're you saying that?" If they swallowed the pills themselves, what evidence of murder was there beyond suspicion? Sherlock began his descent down the dilapidated stairs. Gesticulating wildly, he yelled back up to Lestrade and Watson.
"Her case! Come on, where is her case? Did she eat it? Someone else was here and they took her case." His voice dropped to a normal volume. Talking to himself, then. "So the killer must have driven her here, forgot the case was in the car."
"She could have checked into a hotel, left her case there?" Not if Sherlock was that excited about it.
"No, she never got to the hotel. Look at her hair! She color coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. She'd never have left any hotel with her hair still looking...Oh. Oh!" Sherlock clapped his hands together in glee.
"Sherlock?" So the Doctor hadn't been around long enough to hear his epiphany noise?
"What is it, what?"
"Serial killers, always hard. You have to wait for them to make a mistake." Wait!? Sit around, have a few pints, and play cards until a dozen more people were dead?
"We can't just wait!"
"Oh, we're done waiting. Look at her, really look. Houston, we have a mistake. Get onto Cardiff. Find out who Jennifer Wilson's family and friends were. Find Rachel." Obviously that's what they would be doing. What would Sherlock be doing in the mean time? What was he hiding?
"Of course, yeah, but what mistake?" Lestrade narrowed his eyes to glare after the man who had nearly run out of sight. Sherlock's leather shoes dug into the ground, propelling him back into Lestrade's line of sight. His coat billowed out with the turn. With an enigmatic shout, Sherlock bellowed up to them.
"Pink!"
And as soon as the 'k' had fallen from his tongue, he was gone again. Lestrade didn't even bother trying to hide his confusion. Anderson had called him back to the body with all intentions of continuing the investigation. With a sigh and not one more word, Greg Lestrade wearily brushed by Dr. Watson. If Sherlock had bothered to bring him at all, the man must be important to him. There's no doubt he'd be seeing him again. The formalities could wait. Pleasantries would be exchanged at a time when, someday, Greg wasn't so damn tired.