Thank you for following this story thus far, despite the length of time it takes me to update. Welcome to the penultimate chapter!
"Hang on Sherlock – Ellen's got a message coming in." John cut in before his flatmate could explain himself, looking across at the screen of Ellen's phone. They shared a look before he addressed himself once more to Sherlock.
"Right, before you go any further, they've found Julia Steers – she's dead. Let me ring Lestrade and get that taken care of, Dan's going to ring one of the guys I've left with your brother. I'll call you back."
"But John…." But Sherlock found himself talking into a dead line.
xXx
As they ascended the lift in the posh block of flats, Lestrade set the tone of the investigation, much to the surprise of Donovan, Anderson, and the forensics team.
"This needs to be kept as low key as possible." He made eye contact with every person in the lift. "That's why you can't put your coveralls on until we reach the hallway outside the penthouse."
"Why's it hush-hush?" Donovan asked the question that was on everyone's lips. "Didn't this call come through from John Watson? What's the freak done now?"
Greg swallowed down his irritation.
"Sherlock's out of London, recovering from that bullet wound. This is tied up with the shooter from the shopping centre."
"I didn't think he was that badly hurt."
"He was shot in the chest – how much worse would you like it to be Anderson?"
The senior forensic officer opened his mouth, thought better of it and closed it again.
"Right." He continued as the lift slowed to a halt. "I've met the two men who found the body, and they don't suffer fools gladly. I suggest you may wish to keep schtum, or they'll be less restrained than Sherlock."
Lestrade let them mull over the possibility of people who could be more cutting than the consulting detective, hiding his smile at his slight deception.
Stepping out of the lift, the first person they saw was Pat Donoghue, his face, and in particular his still swollen nose, an interesting collection of mottled bruises. He was standing 'at ease' in the doorway of the penthouse, while off to his left, looking out of the window, Danny Morgan was talking quietly on his phone.
On hearing the police team's arrival, he quickly finished his call and stepped forward, offering his hand to the Detective Inspector.
"Greg, John said you'd attend." He glanced at the others. "How much do they know?"
"Only that this needs to be kept as quiet as possible."
"What's it to you?" Anderson asked, pulling on his blue coveralls.
"Shut up Anderson." Lestrade snapped.
"Ah – you're Anderson?" Danny smiled at him. "Pat, this is the one John told us about."
Anderson opened his mouth to speak.
"Enough!" Greg held a hand up, stepping between them. "If it's not too much to ask, this is a serious investigation."
Immediately Pat and Danny sobered up.
"The victim – for victim she certainly is – works for the cabinet office. John and Mr Holmes have evidence that points to it was her that passed Mr Holmes' address to the bomber." Danny gave his report quietly. "We believe the bomber is responsible for this – wanted to keep her quiet. She looks like a victim of Jack the Ripper."
"And you were up here because….?" Sally looked at them both with suspicion.
"She hadn't turned in for work – John wanted us to check on her."
"And since when does John Watson run his own private investigation company?"
"We're not private investigators miss." Pat stared insolently at the Detective Sergeant.
"Give me strength." Greg muttered, stepping in front of the furious woman. "Sally, John is working on this for Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock's absence." His glance over at the two soldiers warned them to say nothing to contradict his statement. "These men are also working for Mr Holmes."
Anderson and his team moved towards the door.
"Can we go in now?" The forensics lead deliberately made eye contact with Lestrade, who glanced at Danny.
"We've not touched the body other than to make sure she wasn't booby trapped. The rest of the flat is clean in that respect too."
"In you go then." Lestrade didn't stop to watch the team go, but pulled Sally Pat and Danny to one side. "Right, Sally and I will take your statements, then you can get back to whatever it is you need to be doing."
"But Sir…"
"Don't bother Sally, if we try to play it any other way you can rest assured some Government agency will step in and take over the investigation."
"And John just wants the lady to get the justice she deserves, no matter what mistakes she made." Danny added soberly. "So Greg, what do you need to know?"
xXx
"John!" Sherlock barely gave the phone a chance to ring before answering it.
"Yeah, okay Sherlock, you have our full attention now."
"Our?"
"Got you on speakerphone mate, Ellen needs to hear this too."
There was the merest hint of a pause before Sherlock launched into his deductions and conclusions.
"We'll start with those three names that you gave me." He said a catch of excitement in his voice. "One was already known to me, and I was fairly sure he wasn't Banks."
"Fairly sure?" Ellen asked.
"Very sure, once I'd finished running a check on him." Sherlock's reply was scathing.
John looked apologetically at his friend, but she shrugged it off.
"He has several bank accounts in this country that feed money to offshore accounts, his main business seems to be 'gun for hire', and after a few well-placed requests and some shady promises made on Mycroft's behalf, I have tracked him to…."
"Whoa! Wait a minute! You can't make promises on your brother's behalf." John's voice was almost a squeak of indignation. "He'll be apoplectic – and if he gets hold of you, you'll disappear – we'll never find your remains, not if we look for the rest of our lives."
Ellen choked on a laugh, and at the other end of the phone the consulting detective scoffed loudly.
"Don't be an ass John."
"And your brother? You may think him an ass too, but he's a powerful ass with ways of getting things done."
"But he still needed us….you…to sort this particular mess out."
"It's not sorted yet Sherlock," John sighed. "Okay, so you've tracked him to….?
"A prison cell in Somalia, awaiting trial for backing the wrong General in a planned military coup."
"Great. And we can assume he's been there a while." It was more a statement than a question.
"Too long, Ellen, to have been a part of this game." Sherlock answered.
"So, what about the others?" John brought the conversation back to matters at hand.
Again there was a brief silence before Sherlock continued.
"The second one was harder to run to ground, and although his luck seems to have held a little better it'll be a long time before he can return home to his mother country."
"But you're sure it's not him?"
"It can't be John; he's currently living the life of Riley on a beach in Cameroon, waiting to see if the authorities there will extradite him to the US on a charge of first degree murder. It's unlikely, there's no treaty in place." The excitement was back in Sherlock's voice. "It does mean that he can't possibly be the man who has been trying to kill Mycroft…"
"And you."
"…because Marc Banks…" He spat the name out. "…would want to pull the trigger, would want to see us die."
The door creaked open and John looked up.
"Okay," he said, "two more members of my team have joined us. Now the third buyer – Marc Banks – what's his pseudonym?"
"Your team?"
"Sherlock! Yes, my team. Stop being a dick and get on with it." John rolled his eyes, shaking his head at the grins plastered on the faces of his companions.
"How long have you had a team?"
"How long have you got?" John replied grumpily. "Seriously Sherlock – army friends, okay? Putting their arses on the line for you and your brother, so stop fucking about and tell us who we're looking for."
"Really John, there's no need for belligerence. Actually, the clue's in the name – Broder Jaeger." Sherlock paused, but when no comment was forthcoming sighed, and added "Broder Jaeger is Danish – Broder means brother, and Jaeger translates as hunter – brother hunter."
Jamie whistled through his teeth.
"Neat."
"You think so?"
"Well he obviously wants you to know – he obviously thinks you're clever enough to get through the dross to find his identity." Flicking a glance at John he added. "I suppose the question is though, has he underestimated just how good your support team is?"
"And are you?" came the deceptively quiet response.
"I assume you trust the Captain? Then trust him only to use the best."
John blushed so hard his ears turned red, and he hid his face in his hands as Sherlock replied softly
"I expect nothing less."
"Alright, that's enough. Sherlock, have you passed this information to Mycroft?" John tried to pull the conversation back to the realities.
"No, I'm still waiting for some background on this Broder Jaeger."
"Can you e-mail everything across to us as soon as you get it. We need to get a plan together, and we'll need agreement from you and your brother." Ellen was busy making notes. "John and I can start working on the bare bones of it, then flesh it out once we have your intel."
Sherlock hummed in assent, as if his mind had turned to other things. John waited.
"What about the rogue officer?"
John picked up the phone and switch off the speaker.
"The lads found her," he spoke quietly, his voice neutral. "Apparently she resembled something out of Victorian Whitechapel."
"She should have stayed out of it. Thanks to her…."
"Shut up Sherlock, now is not the time."
"But she was a traitor."
"She…." John shouted, pushed beyond the limit, then seeing the startled looks on the faces around him lowered his voice and continued through gritted teeth "was a human being, Sherlock, no matter what mistakes she made."
Taking a deep breath, John continued
"I need to make a couple of calls, and then Ellen and I should sit down and work out some possible scenarios to finish this game once and for all. Let me do that, I'll get back to you - hopefully your information about Jaeger will give us the edge we need."
"I hope so too John – did I ever tell you how much I hate Hertfordshire?"
"Nope, but I'm sure you will – eventually."
Agreeing to check in with his flatmate regularly, John cut the call and looked around at the team members present.
"Y'know," he said on a sigh, "sometimes I just get fed up with apologising for his deplorable social skills."
H thrust a mug of tea into his hand, and unwrapped a plate of sandwiches that they'd brought back from Jamie's flat.
"Cheers." John bit gratefully into the food. "Now for the older brother." And he picked up his phone and pressed Mycroft's number.
xXx
Mycroft looked up from his papers as Jim knocked and entered.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Take a seat Wainwright." Mycroft indicate the empty chair next to Georgie Dunn. "I've had a call from Dr Watson."
"John."
Mycroft frowned.
"You call him John, we call him John. I don't think we need formalities between the three of us….sir." Jim smiled to take the insolence out of his words.
With a nod Mycroft continued.
"John wants me to set up a teleconference once my brother has the information on Marc Banks."
"He's close then?" Jim asked.
"John seems to think Sherlock's cracked the bloke's cover." Georgie spoke up.
"And he and someone called Ellen are working now on a plan to bring him out in the open."
"Ellen Baker – another army friend."
"So I gathered." Mycroft commented dryly. "There's a great deal more to John than even I realised."
"Still waters." Georgie muttered obscurely.
"Exactly so. Well, John has indicated that he needs us all to be available for this discussion, apparently it would be better than 'dragging you back' to your ops room. I got the impression that once they had the plan he wanted to move quickly."
"That would be as much Ellen's doing as John's," Jim explained. "Her field of intelligence work required speed and stealth – it was never good to hang about if you were infiltrating potential insurgent cells."
"I plan to work away from the office for the rest of the day," Mycroft brought the conversation back to matters at hand. "We have an apartment within this building, usually reserved for when there's a national emergency, or a visiting dignitary. I've moved in, and Anthea will set up the teleconference facility and let both John and my brother have the contact number and code once we're ready."
Clearing papers from his desk, Mycroft slid a few files into his briefcase and rose to his feet.
"There is a second room there – generally visitors like to bring their own secretaries or security staff, so you two will move in there." He looked at both men, his eyebrows raised as if in query.
"Suits us." Georgie spoke up. "We should really go and get our clothes from Jamie's place."
"John's arranging for them to be sent to Anthea's flat, and she'll bring them here. At present she's very kindly volunteered to pick up supplies for me.
"Yeah, it can't be easy with all your clothes smoke damaged." Jim commented, watching a flush of discomfort dust the older man's cheeks.
"In the meantime," Mycroft snapped the case locks shut. "We move upstairs, and then I'll hear any reports you may have regarding staff here."
xXx
Sherlock stared at the computer screen, watching as the threads of information came in. A trail of bank accounts and monetary transactions, movements from country to country across Europe, leading from the multicultural centre Brussels where Broder Jaeger first appeared, to a rented house in Kennington, near the Oval cricket ground.
When the flow of information slowed to stop, he walked absent-mindedly away, retreating to his bed and his mind palace, to put his newfound knowledge into order and find any potential threats hiding within.
X
Meanwhile in the ops centre John and Ellen, having sent everyone else off to get some rest, were sitting quietly in the now locked archway unit trying to build a workable plan, one with the least risk to the targets. They were agreed that whatever else they did, they'd have to draw him to a place where both Holmes brothers, it was more likely he would come out if he felt certain he could get both of them.
X
In the guest apartment, Mycroft had listened carefully to Wainwright's character reading of several of the lower grade staff, but was pleased that in general the men that John Watson put a great deal of faith in to 'know' people thought the grades that really mattered were trustworthy. Now he sat, trying to concentrate on his day to day business, wondering why he felt vaguely out of sorts. In the other room, John's two friends were relaxing, playing cards, taking the waiting in their stride. Mycroft sighed. He wished somehow he could be like that.
X
In a small house in Kennington Marc Banks – Broder Jaeger – sat at the kitchen table, methodically stripping down and cleaning a special, custom designed high powered rifle. His hands moved over the cold metal as a lover's over a beloved body, but his eyes were cold and hard, and filled with hatred and a desire for revenge.