Lighting Fires
Well, this is a quick update by my standards, eh?! Things are getting a bit hot for John.
You may be wondering whether Sherlock will actually make an appearance in this fic. He will soon, I promise, although this fic has always been very much focused on John, and deliberately so.
I should point out, with regard to this chapter that, although I know London well, I'm much more familiar with central and north London. I really don't know the area I describe below, so I apologise to any readers if it doesn't resemble your reality. The industrial estate and company that I mention are fictional and the street and house that John is led to don't resemble anywhere in particular, although London is full of similar locations.
Also, I'm not much of a techie, and the application that I mention in relation to John's mobile is totally made up, as is the name of the software that the police use! I've no idea if such an application exists, although it's always possible.
Inspired by the song Fires by Ronan Keating
Disclaimer : not mine, no money
John stares at his mobile for a moment before flinging it across the room in fury.
Damn Lestrade! How dare he try to keep John locked up in here? As if he's just some stupid civilian who needs protection, when in fact he's been looking after himself his whole life, no matter what Mycroft might think. And what makes Greg think that sitting around in 221B Baker Street is any safer than being out on the street trying to bring a criminal to justice?
Is Greg trying to distance himself from John now – is he afraid that it'll come out that John has been helping him and that he made a mistake in not acting on John's information sooner? John hopes not – he's pretty sure he knows Greg better than that, and the DI has always been scrupulously honest, but he's not so sure now.
He stops his furious pacing and stands still, breathing hard. He's got just a few minutes before Dimmock arrives for the file…
He flicks through it, looking for the sheets on Ryan Ellis. When he finds them, he grabs his notebook and starts scribbling information down as quickly as he can.
He's only three quarters of the way through the dense pages of facts when he hears Mrs Hudson's voice calling from the bottom of the stairs. "Are you there, John? There's a nice young policeman at the door."
"Damn," he mutters and then, raising his voice, "OK, Mrs Hudson, I'll be right there."
There's nothing for it. He quickly notes down a few more possible locations, stuffs the page back into the file and hurries down the stairs. Sure enough, Dimmock is standing at the door, looking a little uncomfortable. He's probably one of the few Yarders left that can be trusted to pick up evidence about a murder investigation from a member of the public without giving Greg away to the Commissioner.
John passes over the file, giving Dimmock a small smile. The detective nods, reminds them of Lestrade's advice to stay in and hurries off.
"Can I get you a cup of tea, dear?"
"No thanks, Mrs Hudson. Look – I might need to go out, but make sure you stay in, and don't open the door to anyone, just in case." Part of him feels a little guilty about leaving his landlady unprotected but, if he's right, the danger should follow him.
"Out? But John, the policeman just said –."
"I know, Mrs H, but there's something I have to do." He glances back up the stairs. "I'll be in for a bit longer, though."
"Well, you know what you're doing, I'm sure. Do you want a snack before you go?" She gives him her usual fond smile; in Sherlock's absence he's become very much her 'boy', and she's always trying to fatten him up with cakes and biscuits.
He shakes his head, giving her a vague smile, and hurries back up the stairs. He needs to look at what he's got and try to work out where Ellis might be. He knows – he just knows – that the killer is going to strike again tonight, and there's no way he can just sit around and wait for it to happen. This might be the best chance they will get to catch him.
He glares at his scribbled notes. Where the hell can he start? The kid is as slippery as they come – no fixed abode, only vague links to various crime scenes. He was arrested once and charged with possession, gave his mum's address in Tooting for his court appearance, received a warning and disappeared from sight once more. If he'd been found to be actually distributing, it might have been a different story, but nothing would stick. John remembers that the file contained pictures of him in apparently casual meetings with various members of a gang of notorious international drug smugglers that has so far resisted all attempts by New Scotland Yard and MI6 to bring them down.
Mycroft's file had contained a list of dates, times and locations of sightings over a two year period. John powers up his laptop, goes to the Bing Maps website and starts typing the location post codes in, noting various locations around South London. He's been sighted in Lewisham, Camberwell, Brixton, Streatham, Balham… Usually spotted meeting in greasy spoon cafes, once on Clapham Common. He's a skinny bloke, about mid-twenties, with close-shaven blond hair, usually dressed in fairly unremarkable scruffy jeans and leather jackets. Just like any other young man in South London. The only unusual thing about him noted by Mycroft's agent is that he walks with a distinctive limp, courtesy of a bike accident and a broken ankle that didn't heal perfectly.
"Might be more helpful if they'd included a film illustrating his limp," John mutters, scratching his head.
He keeps on going patiently through the postcodes. The two last ones that he'd managed to scribble down were in locations in Battersea, the first at a newsagents at the river end of Queenstown Road, close to the old Power Station; the second at an industrial estate near Battersea Park Station.
John frowns at these last two addresses on the map. They're the closest together by far, and Ellis was seen at the second address two days after the first, which suggests a bit of a pattern.
He checks out the times. Ellis must be doing something else during the day, or perhaps he dosses down somewhere out of sight, because almost all the sightings are at night, usually between 9PM and 3AM. And he was spotted alone at the last location at 10.30PM exactly one week ago.
Well, it's somewhere to start.
He powers down the laptop, rips the relevant page out of his London A-Z and pulls on his jacket – after a humid day, the temperature has dropped and it's clouded over, so he suspects it may rain later. He picks up his mobile and is about to shove it in his pocket when, after a moment's hesitation, he dials Greg's mobile number.
It rings for a while and then goes to answerphone.
"Greg? John here. Look, I know you don't want me involved, but I think I might have a lead. It's Southend Industrial Estate, right by Battersea Park Station. I'm heading there now. If you get this, you might want to send a team, just in case. I've got a feeling he may show up around 10ish. Don't worry, I won't try to contact him. I'm only going to take a look. Anyway, I – hopefully, you'll get this and I'll see you there? OK, then."
He rings off and is about to put his phone away when he has a sudden inspiration and opens up his laptop again.
There's an application on his phone that he hasn't used for a while – a tracking device that will allow emergency services to locate his phone almost instantly using web-based mapping software. Sherlock had put it on there once as an experiment, not long after their encounter with Moriarty at the pool. John, who was on a date that evening, hadn't been told it was there and wasn't massively amused after they returned to the flat and were engaged in an enthusiastic snogging session when the detective had suddenly burst in and enthusiastically informed his date exactly where she'd been and at what time for the entirety of their evening. As it was a first date, she'd instantly formed the impression that he was living with a stalker and had left shortly after, having politely turned down his suggestion of a second date.
As he recalls, John had shouted at Sherlock and thrown his phone down, ordering him to remove the software application, before storming off to bed in a deeply annoying state of unrelieved arousal. As it happened, Sherlock had somehow forgotten to do so or had become distracted by something else, and John hadn't known how to remove it properly. Sally had shown him how to disable it at the mapping website, so he'd had to content himself with doing that – and he'd had to keep logging back into the site to do so again as, for some reason, Sherlock had kept reactivating it. John had appreciated the thought, recognising it as his flatmate's rather ham-fisted attempt to protect him in the event of future kidnappings, but he really didn't want his every move monitored. Mycroft's cameras were bad enough.
Anyway, it might be useful, especially as he knows the police now automatically check the mapping software when calls come in from registered mobiles. He logs in, locates his number and activates it. Then he stashes his phone in his jacket pocket, having first ensured that the tone is set to vibrate only, just in case Greg happens to ring back. He finally leaves the flat, hesitating briefly by Mrs Hudson's door. Reassured by the sound of a game show on her television, he goes out.
It takes longer than he expected to get to Battersea, and it's already nearly 9PM when he hurries out of the station. He glances automatically at the hulk of the power station to his left, standing out against the greying sky by the dark river. He can almost smell the rain in the air – there's going to be a downpour soon. He turns up the collar of his rather inadequate jacket, glances at his watch again and sprints towards the industrial estate.
He doesn't know this area all that well, so he has to consult his ripped out A-Z page, but eventually he finds what he's looking for. He searches his memory of the file to recall the name of the warehouse that Ellis was seen near, and spends some time cautiously walking around the estate, looking for a name that might ring a bell. The site is deserted – clearly the workers left some hours ago, and there's only empty lorries and vans on the streets outside the locked buildings.
John stops for a moment, straining his ears for the sound of footsteps. He's reminded of his night time walk back from Bart's – was that really only five nights ago? But this time, there's nothing. If he is being followed by that tall, lithe shadow, he (or she) is being extremely careful not to be noticed this time.
The first rain drops start to fall and he shivers involuntarily, thinking longingly of cosy 221B. He's just beginning to reflect on how crazy this whole expedition is and wondering whether he shouldn't just head back home when he hears some quiet footsteps somewhere ahead of him.
He keeps absolutely still and tries to map the sound, straining to hear through the patter of rain drops. Somewhere up ahead, around the left hand corner, he thinks – and coming this way. He starts to move very slowly, pressing himself against a brick wall, his eyes darting around looking for potential hiding places.
There! Just ahead there's a slightly recessed doorway. He darts into the safety of its darkness just as a man appears from around the corner, just a few metres away.
John keeps absolutely still as the man looks automatically down the road. It's not much of a hiding place, and he'll be in trouble if the guy turns down his road. However, he just passes over John's road and continues along the crossing road.
John lets out a shaky breath. When he's sure the man won't look back, he darts out of the doorway and runs as quietly as possible across the road to the opposite corner. He peers cautiously around the corner and sees the man again, some twenty yards ahead and walking away from him.
He pulls out his phone and snaps a quick photo of the man from the back. It won't be much good without a flash in the dim light and falling rain, though. The man is slim, seems young and is wearing a black leather jacket and jeans. His head is covered with a dark green knitted hat, but there's something else that gets John's attention. The man walks with a distinct limp – he drags his right leg slightly. Looks like a muscle injury from his bike accident that didn't receive sufficient physio.
The man glances behind him, and John whips his head back around the corner and waits, counting to ten. When he looks around again, the man has walked on and is almost out of sight – the road bends around to the right.
John takes another deep breath and steps out onto the other road. He's pretty sure who it is, but he needs to make certain before calling Greg out on a fool's errand that might get the DI into even more trouble.
He moves slowly, silently along the road, wondering what he'll do if the man looks around again. He's lucky though, and manages to keep the man just in sight all the way along the curving road.
At the next cross junction, the man goes straight across the road towards a poorly lit warehouse. There's a large bay door and an ordinary door in the wall to the right of it. The man makes for this smaller door, opens it and disappears inside, leaving the door open behind him.
John makes a dash for it, running towards the warehouse. He spots an alleyway to the right of the open door and sprints into it. Once in the safely of darkness, he leans over, bracing his hands on his thighs and gasping with the sudden exertion. As his lungs start to recover, he makes yet another mental note to haul himself down to the gym at the earliest opportunity.
Once his breath is under control, he peers out of his hiding place. The door is just around the corner and he sidles along the wall, his heart beating wildly. He reaches the open door and peers through the crack between the door and the wall, straining to make out any movement within. It's a scruffy wooden door with a glass panel in the upper section that has been smashed in, leaving jagged pieces of glass sticking up in the wood.
Once more, he gets lucky. The man is quite close to the open doorway, leaning against the wall nearest to John and smoking a rollup. John can see him in profile – he can just make out a pale neck above the turned-up leather collar and, more importantly, the hat has ridden up a little and he can see the gleam of short blond hairs at the back of his neck.
John backs away quickly, back into the alleyway, glancing at the sign at the front of the building as he does so. He backs some way back along the alley too, feeling his way along the rough brick with his hands until he's sure that he can't be seen in the dim street lights.
He digs out his mobile and scrolls to Greg's mobile number. Once more the phone rings and rings and finally goes to answerphone. He frowns. This is not typical behaviour for the DI – he's far more inclined to leap on his mobile like a Rottweiler on a bone the very moment it rings.
He hangs up, not leaving a message. There's another option. He thumbs through his entries to find Greg's office number.
This time, it's picked up.
"Hello, DI Lestrade's office." It's a female voice.
"Is Greg there?" he whispers, as quietly and clearly as he can.
"John? Is that you?" It's Sally Donovan.
"Sally, where's Greg? Got some important information for him."
"John, where are you?"
"Look, I'm in Battersea. Look up my number on MobTracker; it's activated there. Sally, this is really important – I've got to talk to Greg immediately."
"You can't, it's impossible."
"Come on, Sally, don't fuck me around," he whispers as loudly as he dares. "It's vital I speak to him."
"You really can't John, you don't understand." Her voice rises, and he realises, belatedly, that she sounds a bit frantic. "Greg was knocked down earlier this evening. He was just leaving a scene at Finsbury Park. It was a hit-and-run driver."
He reels against the wall, feeling the nausea in the pit of his stomach. Dear Christ, not Greg…
"Oh, god, Sally, is he – is he going to be OK?"
"I don't know. It wasn't – it looked pretty bad. He wasn't conscious, they thought there might be a head injury." He can hear by the rawness in her voice that she's been crying. "John, I've got your location, what're you doing there?"
He closes his eyes, thinking hard. Right now, he has no other option but to trust her.
"Sally, look, it's about the serial killer. I've tracked down the guy who might be his next victim. It's at a furniture warehouse called Housemans on the Southend Industrial Estate. I'm not sure, but I think that the killer might strike tonight."
To his everlasting relief, she reacts to this without asking for further instructions. Sometimes, with all the trouble over Sherlock, he forgets that she's a bloody good officer in her own right.
"OK, we'll get a team to you. John, don't do anything and try to keep out of sight. Don't try to interfere if he turns up."
"OK, I'll try to –."
"Don't move, sunshine."
John freezes in place. There's something cold nicking the side of his throat and a hand forces his left hand behind his back.
"Drop that. And let's have the other hand." The voice is harsh, unyielding.
John drops his phone to the ground – it's still connected and he can hear Sally's disembodied voice: "John, are you still there? John? Can you hear me?" Then her voice is cut off abruptly and he hears the crunch of a boot stamping on his phone. He feels a stab of loss like a pain through his body – Sherlock's last texts were stored on that phone. A vision of Sherlock sprawled over the sofa borrowing his phone to send a text flashes before him. It's another mini-bereavement.
"Move."
He puts his other hand behind his back, as instructed, and a cold hand grabs it, holding both wrists together. A knee in the small of his back nudges him back up the alleyway; he trips slightly on rubble and feels the wrench in his shoulders as the hand pulls his wrists up behind him sharply to stop him from falling or getting loose. And all the time, he is conscious of the cold metal pressing into the side of his neck. No way to tell if it's an actual knife, but it has a definite edge that could cut, and it's closer to a major artery than he'd like.
The man pushes him around the corner and then swivels him around and tugs him backwards towards the door. John risks speaking.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Shut up, pig."
"You've got it wrong - I'm not the police –."
"Yeah, right, like I'm gonna believe that."
The metal is removed for a moment but, before John can react, his hands are separated and pulled back together again, and then roughly bound together with something hard and sharp-edged. It feels like the thin but hard plastic strapping usually bound around boxes and furniture. He realises that his arms have been bound either side of the thin wooden upper frame of the door, with his hands in the space made by the broken glass panel.
That's the man's first mistake.
The man walks around to the front, and John sees his assailant for the first time. He's an undernourished young man, thin and pale, with staring eyes. Almost certainly a druggie, though not as raddled as most, possibly because he can't afford the really hard stuff. He lights another rollup and stands, grinning at John with malice glittering in his pale eyes.
"Well, what am I gonna do with you… pig?"
He pronounces the words slowly, with an air of deliberate, soft menace. Oh, he's enjoying this moment, quite clearly. The kid doesn't have much power – was probably bullied and abused himself as a small, hungry boy - and he's loving this. He's no hardened criminal, but not a particularly nice individual either; there's a mean streak in this kid.
He doesn't take his eyes off John as he pulls his knife out of his pocket. John can see now that it's a Stanley knife, a little rusty but still effective.
"I've already told you," he begins, looking back at the boy as he carefully feels around with his fingers, trying to find a jagged piece of glass sticking out of the frame. "I'm not a copper. You've got it wrong."
"I know you are. I saw you. You was talking to 'em. You been following me, like that other bloke what tried to talk to me at the club. Hah, he though he fooled me, but I knew he was a pig, just like you."
"I don't know who that was. Look, Ryan – your name is Ryan, isn't it?"
The pale eyes regard him with suspicion. "You think I'm stupid enough to tell you my name?"
Feeling carefully around the edge – ah! There it is. His finger slips as he runs it up the edge, trying to judge the contours of the sharp piece of glass, and he winces slightly at the sting of the cut.
"Ryan, I – I'm not with the police, but I know them. My name is Doctor John Watson, and I'm here to help you. You've got to believe me. I'm not interested in what you're up to here – it's not my concern. But there's – I believe there's someone who wants you dead – and he may be on his way here now."
The kid laughs incredulously. "Someone wants to kill me? Oh, yeah, I believe you alright, copper. I s'pose you want me to let you go? And you'll just forget about me, yeah? Sorry, mate, I don't buy it."
"Please, Ryan, you have to believe me." John moves his wrists up very slowly, trying to run the plastic along the edge of the glass. "I swear to you, it's true. That's why I'm here – we think he's trying to kill gang members. He's already killed 13 others –."
"Shut up!" The knife is in his face suddenly, very close to his eye. "Just keep your mouth shut. Or you'll be sorry. Wanna keep your sight? Then shut up while I phone my boss and decide what to do about you."
The man withdraws a little, turning away slightly as he pulls out his mobile, dialling a number. John takes advantage of this momentary lack of full attention to move his wrists a little faster, sawing at the bindings.
"Mo? Yeah, it's me. I'm at the drop-off, but there's a problem. Gotta a pig here. Yeah, I got 'im tied up. Wha' you want me to do?" Ellis listens intently, turning even further away and moving back towards the dark alleyway.
John can feel the binding starting to give. His wrists are killing him – he can feel the raw skin around the sharp edges of the straps being scraped - but he keeps at it, even faster now. Almost there…
"Right, do you want me to –."
Ellis's voice is cut off abruptly as a large dark figure flies out at him from the alleyway. The man drops his phone and knife, and his hands go up to his neck, scrabbling frantically at the cord that has been looped and tightened around his neck. His attacker pulls harder, and Ellis's booted kicking feet leave the ground briefly.
John twists his hands out of the loosened plastic, ignoring the burn of his scraped wrists, and flings himself at the figure, using his momentum and full weight to try to knock him off balance so he lets go of Ellis. The guy is a giant, even in comparison to Sherlock. John's pretty sure he's the same man who attacked Bex by the canal – and he's about as successful in fighting him this time as he was then.
The man loses his grip on his target, at least. Ellis slumps to the ground, choking and trying to crawl away. The man brings his elbow back and hits John across the face. He's thrown by the impact against the wall, his head whipping around so that his forehead smacks hard against the brick. Before he can react, gloved hands are around his neck; steel fingers crushing his windpipe.
He knows there's no way of this, even as he struggles and tries to pull those hard hands away. His sight begins to blur as his oxygen is cut off. This isn't survivable, he knows it for a fact - and suddenly, he's back there, back in Afghanistan, lying in the hot dirt and staring up at the blue sky in mute astonishment as his life blood flows out of him.
Please god, let me live… I can't die now, not now, not here… not without seeing him again, not without telling him… Please, god, please, I can't do this…
His body is jerking instinctively; his heels kicking at the implacable shins, his hands scrabbling hopelessly, trying to get a purchase on those steel wrists. The mist is descending…
Suddenly, like a miracle, the hands loosen and then disappear altogether. John feels the air flowing back into his body and then he is pushed hard against the wall as his attacker falls onto him before slumping sideways onto the ground.
John slithers down the wall onto his shaking knees; his legs unable to support him. Blood is tricking down his head and into his eyes, impeding his vision, and God, his chest is agony as the freezing, burning air bursts into his starved lungs. He tries to wipe the blood out of his eyes, to see through the reddish blur.
"You alright, mate?"
John vomits copiously, heaving his lunch up onto the concrete. He gasps and keeps on heaving, bringing up bitter bile, tears coming into his eyes that clear the blood away to some extent. Having finally emptied his stomach, he turns his head away from the wall and sees Ryan Ellis standing front of him and the unconscious man, a blood-soaked Stanley knife in his hand.
The man slowly looks down at his would-be killer. "Fuckin' 'ell. You was right after all."
He stiffens, looking over his shoulder, and now John can hear it too – sirens and the reflection of flashing blue lights on the rain-soaked street.
Ellis stares at him again and smirks, very slowly. "Well, so long – pig." He flicks the knife towards John, turns away and sprints off down the alleyway, just as the first patrol car skids around the corner.
John sits at the back of the ambulance, propping himself up on the ramp, enduring the sting of antiseptic as the paramedic cleans the wound on his forehead and straps on a temporary dressing. It's the nearest she's been able to get him to the ambulance. He has an irrational fear that if he gets in the back, she'll put an end to their argument about his need for a hospital by simply driving him there. Deep inside, he knows she's right - it's a nasty gash, and he probably needs stitches. His neck is badly bruised, but he doesn't need her to tell him that – he knows he was mere seconds away from serious damage to his windpipe, and he should probably be x-rayed for fractures. Lights are flashed into each eye and the paramedic mutters something about concussion. His wrists look pretty messed up, but he can see that the cuts are fairly superficial.
He feels dizzy and slightly drowsy. The sensible thing would be to comply with her recommendation to go straight to hospital. He can give his statement once he's been patched up.
Somehow sense and John Watson don't seem to go together any more. He can blame Sherlock for that. After all, he reasons, someone had to inherit the detective's general obstinacy and ability to ignore the dangers to his own body in pursuit of a case. Otherwise, Greg Lestrade won't know what to do with himself.
Talking of Greg…
Sally Donovan is talking to the paramedics by the other ambulance, into which the unconscious killer has been taken. As they close the door and start to move away, blue lights flashing, she moves back to John.
"He might survive; they're not sure. That bloke knew what he was doing – slipped the knife right between his ribs. Nicked his lung. You know more about lung punctures than me, but he could die on the way to the hospital, couldn't he?"
"He might. Depends on how stable he is now." That would explain why the man had collapsed so suddenly. The point about sucking lung injuries is that, as soon as Ellis had pulled the knife back out, his victim would find himself unable to breathe properly. He wonders whether the kid had known that it would be such a debilitating wound.
Anyway, it would be a fitting way to go, since the bloke had obviously specialised in choking the air out of his victims. John runs a finger gently over his agonisingly sore neck and finds himself unable to care. Although, of course, it would be useful to get some information out of him before he actually dies. Like who's been paying him.
"By the way, it is Ratko Jovanovic," she comments. "So Interpol was right about him."
It hurts to talk, but he makes an effort. "Sally, what about Greg? Any news?"
She gives him a wry look. "We've been kind of busy trying to get to you as quickly as possible, but we did get an update on the way here. He's in theatre at the moment. Broken leg, cracked ribs, concussion, and some internal bleeding that they're dealing with right now. I've told Control to keep me informed as soon as there's anything new."
"OK." It's an incredible relief to know that Greg has made it this far. He blinks, feeling his sight beginning to blur again. The sounds and sights around him recede; he shakes his head a little, trying to bring the world back into focus. He's conscious suddenly of extreme fatigue soaking into his body. It's the come-down from the adrenaline; the relief… or possibly he is concussed.
"You alright?" Sally puts a hand on his shoulder, her eyes concerned. "You looked… just for a minute there, you seemed to go somewhere else."
"Yeah, I'm OK. And, um, Sally… thanks."
She looks intently at him, but doesn't smile. "You're welcome, John."
He feels the dressing on his forehead and winces. "The other day, what I said… I shouldn't have – I mean, I know you would never betray Greg."
"Wouldn't I?" She's still looking at him, her dark eyes very serious. Rather surprisingly, he finds himself shuffling along a little, and she pulls herself up onto the ramp next to him. They sit quietly for a moment.
"Wouldn't I?" she repeats, staring at the busy forensic team. "I – I don't know, John. I don't know what I've become. I used to be an OK cop. I was excited to be working with Greg in the early days – he was a DS and I was just some dumb constable. And then he made DI and I got promoted and he picked me for his team. I was so proud – I couldn't believe my luck. It was the best moment in my professional career – I felt like I was really something…
"And then there was… him." He doesn't have to ask who she's talking about. "Waltzing in, telling us we're all idiots… and Greg would just let him get away with it. I'll never forget what he said, when he first found out about me and Dave, right there at the scene, in front of everyone…"
John glances at her and sees the hurt shining in her eyes. "Greg didn't say a word, and I was so humiliated. He didn't even try to stop the…freak. And I – I felt as if he was just disappointed in me. As if my personal life made me less of an officer… I knew he was having problems with his wife. That's why I didn't want him to know about Dave. I was worried about upsetting him, losing his respect. But he – Sherlock – didn't even care. Not for my feelings and not even for Greg's."
"You know you can do so much better than Dave Anderson. You do know that, don't you?"
She sighs. "Yeah, I guess you're right. It's just that it's hard enough for a woman to make it in the Met without working twice as hard as the men. And, you know, there never seems to be enough time to meet anyone. If I do meet someone, they soon get fed up with the interrupted dates and the all-nighters at gory crime scenes… and if I want to talk about it, they don't seem to want to listen. Men generally don't – they don't seem to understand why a woman would want to work in that kind of environment. And sometimes, after a really terrible case, it's so lonely going home to a flat where there's no one to talk to, to let it all out to. I started drinking. By myself. You know how dangerous that is?"
He nods, gazing at the crime scene. He knows.
"And Dave and his wife were having problems, fighting, and she kept going away to her sister's. So he was alone too. And he understands what it's like because he's there – he sees what I see. It – it was never really a relationship, as such. Just someone to have a drink with, someone to have a laugh with, a warm body – just a no-strings, stupid thing. Let's face it, how many police officers manage to maintain a relationship with someone who's never been there – never seen what we see? Look at Greg." She laughs, bitterly. "Is it any kind of surprise that half of us end up screwing the other half?"
He feels a lump in his throat. Oh, Sally. There's nothing he can say to comfort her.
"If he – if he dies," her voice is husky; he can hear the tears without looking. "If he dies before I can tell him I'm so sorry..." Her voice fades away, and he feels the tremor in her body.
"He won't," he assures her.
"You can't know that. You don't know – you didn't see him -."
"He won't." He's sure of that now. Greg won't – can't die.
The silence between them grows a little tense, and he looks away from her until she jumps up and moves away to talk to the team. There's a small crowd forming beyond the police cordon. Probably locals on their way out to clubs for the evening, attracted to the back streets by the flashing lights and general commotion, standing and staring in the usual ghoulish manner. The paramedic starts wiping antiseptic over the cuts on John's wrists. He lets his eyes run blankly over the curious faces as he hears Sally ordering a couple of officers to move them on. His eyes roam from left to right… then back again towards the left, until his gaze stops on one face.
That face… he knows that face.
And then it comes to him. The man watching the scene with interest is Sebastian Moran. And suddenly John knows who was following him five nights ago.
The onlookers are being moved on by now; there's some drunkenly good-humoured comments being exchanged with the stoical PCs, but slowly the crowd starts to break up.
Moran doesn't move for a moment – he seems fascinated by the small pool of blood and vomit on the ground by the wall. Then, abruptly, he turns his head, looking directly at John and giving him a slight nod. He then turns and walks away and John recognises once more the lithe, light-footed gait of the tall, slim man that he remembers so well from his Camp Bastion days.
Sally comes back to him. "No sign of Ryan Ellis yet, he's probably miles away by now. Well, we'll have to pull him in eventually, whether that bloke dies or not. Anyway, I want you to go to hospital now. You need to get that head looked at."
"Not yet." John's mind is racing. "There's something I need to check out first."
Sally gives him a disbelieving look. "Oh, John, please tell me you're joking. I always credited you with a bit more sense than Freak - Sherlock," she amends, hastily, seeing the glint in his eye. "You might have a head injury. At the very least, you need stitches."
"No, Sally, I'm fine," he says, firmly. "I'm not going to hospital – not just yet. And you can't make me," he adds, seeing the look on her face.
She puts her hands on her hips. "I could arrest you, you know. For withholding information about a murder inquiry."
"You won't."
They stare at each other for a moment, neither prepared to back down. Then Sally sighs, throwing up her hands.
"No, you're right. God forgive me, I must be getting as soft as Greg, but I'm going to bloody well let you walk away. But don't you dare disappear yet," she adds, poking at his chest. "I want a full statement first, and I want you to show me exactly where Jovanovic was when he attached Ellis."
"Sure." He smiles at the paramedic and waves her away as he gets up, wincing a little. She gives him a slightly uncertain look, but backs off at Sally's nod.
As the ambulance drives away slowly, Sally walks over to the wall, her attention distracted by one of the forensic investigators. He notes that Anderson isn't present – he's probably still at the Finsbury Park scene.
John takes his opportunity. He backs up a little, then turns away, strolling casually towards the police cordon and ducking under it. He joins the straggling groups of onlookers being moved on, blending quickly in the small crowd. He moves as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, leaving the industrial estate behind and emerging onto a brighter main road, populated with pubs and nightclubs. People are dashing into buildings, trying to escape the rain.
He can just make out Sebastian some way ahead. The earlier drizzle has now turned into steady rain, making it difficult to see very far ahead, but Colonel Sebastian Moran was always a distinctive figure – unusually tall and thin for a soldier, with that odd, almost feline grace. The perfect sniper actually – he had an ability to blend into his background and could move incredibly swiftly when he needed to.
He's not moving fast now. He's strolling along, hands stuffed in the pockets of a short smart waterproof coat. He's a striking figure with his blond hair and Germanic features, and he gets some degree of inebriated attention from the clubbers, which he seems to ignore. He doesn't look behind him or even around – he just keeps walking steadily along the road. The crowd appears to part around him, like a fast-flowing river around a solitary rock.
John is not so lucky. As always, he has to fight his way through milling crowds of people who are just that little bit taller than him, murmuring the occasional automatic apology as he tries to keep Moran in sight. He doesn't like to think what he looks like with his blood and bruises and vomit-spattered jeans; he sees one or two curious glances as he pushes his way through.
It's particularly difficult around Battersea Park Station – a tall man steps back suddenly, catching John's injured head with his raised elbow, and he sees stars. He pushes the man away angrily, and mutters a curse as he realises that he's falling behind and has to hurry to catch up. He feels oddly light-headed. Sweat trickles down his spine and he has to breathe deeply, fighting hard to suppress another bout of nausea. This was a really stupid decision.
About two hundred yards on from the station, Moran turns abruptly down a road to the right. John follows cautiously. It's much quieter down here; it's a cul-de-sac of slightly down-at-heel Victorian terrace houses. Nevertheless, he doesn't make so much of an effort to hide. He can't help feeling that Sebastian knows perfectly well that he's there; there's something about the way he's walking so confidently without looking around once.
John's not afraid of Moran. If he was his shadow on that walk back from Bart's and he had intended any harm, he'd have had the perfect opportunity on that occasion. No, it's far more likely that Sebastian has some information for him – information that he can't pass on in front of anyone else.
It's even possible – hope soars briefly – that Sebastian is collaborating with Sherlock. He's the type of man that Sherlock might be able to tolerate working alongside – phenomenally intelligent, calm under fire, coldly efficient. Not the emotional type at all. Yes, Sherlock would appreciate that icy quicksilver mind, no doubt about that. None of that messy, inconvenient caring between friends – Sherlock wouldn't have to worry about 'disappointing' Sebastian, John thinks, bitterly.
The far end of the road is even more disreputable; half the houses are boarded up. Sebastian pauses by the gate of a house before slowing walking up the path to the front door. John stops and waits. There's the scrape of a door opening and then a quiet click as it closes again.
John doesn't move on again immediately. This is folly, and he knows it. His mobile is lying crushed in an alleyway. The police have no idea where he is. He has nothing to defend himself with, not even his trusty Browning, currently locked away in his bedroom. And he's in no condition for a fight – for all he knows, he might be about to collapse from a head injury. He might be walking into a trap – it's even possible that, if he walks into that house, he'll never walk out again.
What would Sherlock do? Stupid example – the consulting detective wouldn't hesitate to rush into danger without a second thought. But then, of course, he knew he had his loyal ex-army doctor – his pet – watching his back and ready to rush in to save him at the last minute. John isn't that lucky, and for a moment, the loneliness of his situation threatens to choke him.
He takes a deep breath, feeling the cool, damp air burning his sore damaged throat. And then he makes his mind up and steps forward.
The house's windows are boarded up; it looks derelict. The lock on the door has been forced at some time in the past, probably by squatters. But then, maybe Sherlock himself has been squatting for three years. Could it be – could this possibly be – his?
He pushes the door open gently and steps over the doorway. He's in a narrow unlit passageway, but he can see by the faint glow of a light coming under the second door on the left.
He lets the door close quietly behind him and walks up the passageway. The house is silent, and there's no sign of habitation apart from that light.
He knocks on the closed door, but there's no reply. Hands trembling - from fear or weakness or excitement he doesn't really know - he grasps the door handle and turns it, opening the door slowly.
The glow is coming from a bare light bulb – so there's still electricity coming into the house. Perhaps it's not as derelict as it first looked. The room is almost bare, though – the only furniture is a dusty old upholstered dining room chair.
"Sebastian?" His voice comes out as a mere croak, and he's not surprised that there's no reply. He opens the door properly, stepping into the centre of the small room.
The door behind him closes abruptly, and something heavy crashes down on the back of his head. All he can do is reflect on just how stupid he's been … and then the world goes black.
Next time, John finally learns the truth…
