Vertigo

Chapter ten

Sam wasted no time in stumbling into the room, apparently unaware of the frosty reception that was awaiting him. He only tensed when he noticed Molly staring daggers at him, and Sherlock eyeing him haughtily from the corner of the room.

"Where's Laurie?" was Molly's first question; wanting to get straight to the point, she was cold and direct.

"At the hospice-" Sam said uneasily, but was cut short by Paul.

"You're lying. Her aunt died years ago."

Sam's expression flickered from uneasiness to fear and back again,

"Where did you...?" he trailed off, looking at Paul. Molly saw his hands twisting nervously behind his back, and it reminded her of when he was seven, and she nine, and he had stolen cookies and blamed it on her. The realisation that he had never stopped giving into that sneaky streak in his personality saddened her.

"Sam, I," she said, and her voice was small, "Why didn't you tell me the truth? What are you hiding? Sherlock's here, and he could he-"

Sam's face darkened;

"Exactly. He's here. The one person I didn't want to see," he faced Sherlock now, "And you knew, didn't you?"

Sherlock said nothing but clenched his jaw impassively.

"What?" Both Molly and John said, Molly's voice rising several octaves. She pulled herself out of the bed, and wincing, strode up to Sherlock.

"Tell me, what's going on," she hissed, and he nodded without any concern. Paul looked very confused, as did John.

"Can you give us a moment?" Sherlock said, and the other three left the room, Molly barely noticing so absorbed was she in asking questions of Sherlock.

"I had my suspicions of Sam from the outset," Sherlock said, too airily for Molly's liking, "There was the way in which he carried himself around me - hesitant, on tiptoe, and every time I talked to you he was hovering nearby like an agitated wasp."

Molly shook her head, "I don't want to hear about Sam's weird behaviour, only what your suspicions of him were - are."

Sherlock blinked, and for once in his life, didn't look pleased to be telling Molly about what he thought of her brother and his questionable behaviour.

He produced a Blackberry phone from his shirt pocket, which Molly had failed to notice, and handed it to her.

"Laurie's phone," he answered her confused stare, "Found earlier this morning in the cupboard of the spare room."

"Why-" Molly said but Sherlock cut her off and continued,

"There are seventeen unread messages and voicemails, mostly from a concerned Paul." He tapped the screen and sure enough, someone hadn't checked their phone in a very long time.

Molly could feel a long coil of dread unraveling itself down through her stomach. This was too common a feeling these days than she liked. One of her hands curled reflexively around Sherlock's arm as she steadied herself, and he provided for her the strength to understand the situation.

"So where's Laurie?" She no longer sounded confused.

Sherlock twitched and cleared his throat, "You may not like my... theory," he proceeded delicately, knowing that this was no ordinary case, at least, since it concerned people so close to home.

"Has Sam got something to do with her disappearance?" Molly ploughed on.

"Yes."

Molly swallowed, "H-how?"

Sherlock guided her back to the bed, and perched next to her, uncomfortable with his legs bowed.

He began quietly, but his voice quickly rose and seemed to shoot through Molly like arrows with every word.

"Sam was made redundant three months ago. He kept it from Laurie as well as he could, and told her stepbrother Paul. He offered Sam work with him as a chemical engineer, just doing some odd physical labour, to which your brother readily agreed."

"Why didn't he just come to me?" Molly groaned, and pushed back her hair when Sherlock glared at the interruption.

"However, then a client of Paul's approached your brother with a far more tempting offer: give him the codeword for the important project Paul was working on, and he would receive far more money than he could ever think of."

"Oh I bet he would," Molly growled under her breath, resolving to murder her brother. He just would never learn, she reflected, and neither would he recognise the stress and conflict his actions brought upon his poor older sister.

Sherlock watched Molly's flashing eyes with curiosity, and added it to his growing list of quirks about her personality: Conflicting emotions between morals and actions of brother. Often linked with frustration and veiled threats.

"And did he?" Molly said plainly, trying to detach herself from the image of her brother's carefree face, imagining him tossing aside years of friendship with Paul and the trust of his wife for uncountable amounts of money. She put forward the same mentality that she did with the bodies she encountered in the morgue, everyday the same: Distance is key.

Sherlock answered her question with one of his own,

"Are you ashamed?"

Molly blinked. It was such an oddly phrased question, like something a five year old would ask. She understood, though, that Sherlock wouldn't ask something to deliberately hurt a person. He was just blunt.

"Yes, I am,"she said hesitantly, "But not of myself. I'm ashamed at the thought that someone like my brother could willingly throw everything away like this. It's not like him."

Her eyes, glittering with conviction, surfaced a memory in Sherlock's mind.

He was fourteen, studious and intent, and hardly ever talked to his classmates. He'd been moved up two classes, but the teacher was not someone used to being challenged on some issues and ignored completely on others, by someone who stood just five-foot three and looked as skinny as a twig. So down he went to the class above his original, where the teacher unfortunately had taught his brother, and afraid the younger Holmes would be as impudent as his brother, refused to have him in her class.

So he remained in the normal year group, but because of his astonishing ability at some subjects, and total disregard for others, the teachers piled any old work they could find on him.

Sherlock remembered how he never bothered to immerse himself in the quite frankly shallow world of his classmates, and even once told the 'princess' of the class, Lucy Wheatson, her legs were too skinny and stuck out at odd angles. This earned him a slap.

A girl called Lola was the only one who willingly talked to him, and that was only because the teacher had asked her to tutor Sherlock in English literature. He found Lola bearable, although her voice had the tendency to become whiny and doting at times, especially when she talked about celebrities. But she wasn't apprehensive of him, and that was enough.

Fast forward a year, and Lola was still struggling to invest in Sherlock any sort of enthusiasm for English Literature. She had called him out of class one day, and he assumed it was to reprimand him for his ignorance.

To his surprise, she had taken him by the shoulders, and with a deep breath, started to say something. He blocked her out insistently - not rudely, but from force of habit, and studied her face. The nervous glancing, sweating forehead and rushed speech gave it away.

"No," he said suddenly, feeling an unusual twisting sensation in the pit of his stomach. It was akin to a time a few months ago when his dog, Redbeard had brought him a dead sparrow and looked at him adoringly. It made Sherlock feel strange.

"What?" Lola replied, "Aren't you listening to me?"

Sherlock wanted to get out of the unwelcome situation fast, since of course he knew what was coming.

"I'm not interested. Your feelings are shallow and based on little worth."

Lola's face crumpled, but Sherlock stood by his words impassively, willing it to all be over quickly so he could return to his chemistry.

Then she surprised him with a fierce glare.

"Are you ashamed?" He had asked her (the same question he now posed to Molly), simply out of curiosity for the change of facial expression, not knowing why he had chosen a quite peculiar word.

"Yes," Lola said, leaning forward, "Of you. Oh, you're certainly intelligent Sherlock, a genius, but that's all you'll ever be."

And she turned, left, and had never spoken to him again.

Her words hadn't bothered him then. They did now.

All this while, Molly had watched Sherlock, fascinated at the depth at which he was immersed in his reverie. The bold, stoic, yet comforting outline of his profile was mesmerising, as of course were his cheekbones. The hair, uncombed, was puffed out into little curls that ran down his forehead, and his eyes glittered under their knotted eyebrows.

Molly felt the feelings she had tried to push down over the last few days surfacing, and she inwardly groaned.

"Sherlock!" she yelped, sounding slightly panicked. He blinked and gave her the weirdest look he had ever bestowed. It was like he was caught in a dream; his eyes had some emotion she'd never seen before, and it all felt incredibly private - like she was interrupting.

She coughed. He returned to normal.

"As I was saying," he continued, but his voice was a little off, "Of course your brother agreed, from a background of both concern for his family's financial asserts but also his obvious greed. Then he found it was harder than he thought to betray Paul, the one friend who had been there for a long time, to retrieve the codeword, and the Russians decided to take a little payment of their own in the form of Laurie."

Towards the end Sherlock's voice had begun to speed up and now he stood up like a frisky lamb and made his way to the door.

"Eh?" Molly said, wondering why he was so eager to abandon the explanation he must have been dying to tell her.

"Work," was all he said, with that weird half-dream expression in his eyes again, and he slipped out the door.

Molly shook her head in confusion, both at her brother's and Sherlock's actions. Why were men so strange?

She resolved to probe Sam more about this whole business, and demand he do his best to solve it all.

Sorry for the very long chapter delay, but I had heaps of studying for final exams. It's my birthday now, so please review and comment for me :D