Correctly, as it turned out. Sherlock walked Kate to work again in the morning, before leaving to investigate possible tube stations where Jamie Drayton could have disappeared with John.
'How do you know that he's dead?' Kate asked.
'Because if he isn't dead he would have turned up on cctv by now. Its been ten days. Statistically the longer an abducted person remains missing, the less likely he is to be found alive.'
'How do you know that he was abducted? He could have just taken off somewhere, it can't be that difficult to do if you've got the right contacts, surely.'
Sherlock shook his head, 'If he was still in this country he would have shown up on cctv by now, big brother is very much watching these days, and with facial recognition software you can track through hundreds of hours of footage from all over the country in a matter of minutes without leaving your comfortable desk in Pimlico. Controls at airports are even tighter. If he'd tried to leave the country, even on a false passport then he would have been picked up. And yet there have been no reports of a struggle. He must have arranged to meet someone at that tube station, Kate, a fire exit or maintenance door is the only logical escape route, as we've said before, but once there I suspect that events did not go the way that he expected.'
'But why would he arrange to meet somebody in a fire exit?'
'Love or money, equally powerful motivators.'
'Did you know that he was gay?' Kate asked suddenly. 'I'd forgotten in all of the Mycroft drama of last night, but when I was phoning down his contact list it was interesting that none of his work colleagues mentioned it - they all just said that he was a nice enough chap, but quiet and kept himself to himself. He'd apparently never mentioned a relationship to them. But one of his old university friends, one of only two who were on the list, said when I explained that I was friend, that for a moment he'd thought that I was going to tell him that Jamie had gone straight and I was his girlfriend.'
'Of course he was gay,' Sherlock said, 'Its obvious from the clothes in his flat, and from the amount of skin products that he owns. His work colleagues didn't know?'
'Apparently not.'
'But why would he keep it a secret?' Sherlock asked quietly, more to himself than to Kate, as if fascinated by the concept..
'I have no idea,' Kate said, 'The secret service isn't bothered by that sort of thing, surely.'
'They're very - traditional, Kate, on paper there's no discrimination, but in reality I can see why people would prefer to keep their personal life private. Plus all relationships have to be declared to senior officers and the other party security cleared. Which raises the possibility that Jamie Drayton could have been in a relationship with somebody who he knew that his employers would not approve of, hence the need to keep it secret.'
'But why would he be meeting him in the fire exit of a tube station?'
'People will do strange things for love, Kate,' Sherlock said quietly, 'I'm beginning to realise that.'
...
'Tell me again exactly what we're doing here?' John asked Sherlock.
'Inspecting fire exits, of course,' Sherlock said nonchalantly, flashing his 'visiting inspector' ID badge at John as he shone a torch on yet another fire exit door down a deserted tube corridor.
'No, I mean what are we really doing here,' John asked. 'Sherlock, this is our third tube station this morning. What are we looking for exactly?'
'I told you - open doors, scratched paintwork, scuff marks, signs of a struggle.'
'I take it that this is related to Jamie Drayton.'
'Of course.'
'You think that he left the tube station via a fire escape, or maintenance tunnel. Kate said that last night.'
'Of course, its the only thing that makes logical sense,' Sherlock said, then 'hang on,' as he tried a maintenance door with his hip and it swung open. 'We might have found what we're looking for.' He walked into the maintenance tunnel, John following closely behind him, flicking the switch on the wall as he entered, leaving John blinking in the sudden bright light after the gloom of the tunnel.
Sherlock examined the lock carefully from the other side. 'Picked,' he said 'Look, scratch marks around the lock where somebody has picked it with a wire, not very expertly I have to say, interesting.'
...
By the time that they left the tube station, complete with samples to analyse in the labs, Sherlock had fourteen missed calls on his phone, all from a blocked number. The phone rang again within seconds, and he switched it onto silent and rejected the call.
'What are you doing?' John asked, as his own phone began to ring and he went to answer it. 'Ignore it, it'll be Mycroft,' Sherlock said. 'Let him stew for a while longer, he deserves it.'
'Sherlock..' John said warningly, you know that he'll track you down eventually.
'Fine, but not until we've solved the case, and can prove to him that Kate isn't a distraction,' Sherlock said, 'Come on, we can get a cab back to Baker Street, so that you can get changed.
'Why do I have to get changed?' John asked perplexed.
'Well you can't exactly go investigating in gay bars looking like that,' Sherlock said, as if it was obvious.
...
Kate was having an even worse day than John if that was possible. She had walked into a department full of patients, still on trolleys in cubicles from the night before. 'No beds?' she asked her friend, Alice, who also happened to be the Sister in charge of the department for the day, as she looked at the computerised white board, which showed that there wasn't a spare cubicle in the department.
'Good guess,' Alice said. We've got a two hour wait to offload ambulances, and its only eight o'clock in the morning. Plus there's an overdose with a GCS of nine and a potentially thrombolysable stroke coming in within the next ten minutes - both pre-alerts from the crew, and only one resus bed.
'Managers?' Kate asked, shrugging her coat off and throwing it on a chair behind the nurses station. 'At a bed meeting, discussing how dreadful it is and not actually doing anything about it,' replied Alice sarcastically. 'You go and bang a few heads together, and I'll get your coat and bag put in your office where they're less likely to walk.'
Half an hour later, Kate had banged a few heads, expressed her displeasure, and had persuaded no less than three managers and two matrons that elective surgery patients really weren't a priority today, and miraculously got six beds on day surgery opened up for A&E patients to be transferred into within the hour.
'Good work,' Alice said when she told her. 'Now are you ready to do battle with the rest? Oh and the nine o'clock SHO has phoned in sick.'
'Excellent,' Kate muttered, as she walked into resus, with no expectation of emerging for the next few hours. Five and a half hours as it turned out, then finally walking to her office after being relieved by the two o'clock shift to multi-task by finally checking her email while eating the sandwich she had hastily grabbed from the hospital cafe, she was intercepted by her secretary. 'There's a policeman here to see you, Kate,' she said, 'A Detective Inspector I think he said, something about needing information about a patient.'
Kate recognised Greg Lestrade as soon as she walked into her office. 'Greg,' she said in surprise, 'what are you doing here?' and then, 'Oh,' as she recognised Mycroft Holmes, sitting in her chair, long limbs stretched out into the room as if it was his desk that he was sitting at, not hers.
'Dr Watson,' he said, reaching out to shake her hand, without getting up. 'Detective Inspector Lestrade suggested that some medical records might aid out current investigation, and given recent events I thought I would come along and see you in person.'
Kate nodded, not trusting herself to speak. 'How can I help?' she asked.
'We think that Jamie Drayton may have come here as a patient, three or four months back,' Greg Lestrade explained, possibly under a false name. He'd been assaulted. Can you check the records?'
'If Mycroft will let me get to my computer, certainly,' Kate said, trying not to glare. Didn't he know that he was the height of rudeness to sit at somebody else's desk? Or did he know and was he doing it to prove a point. She suspected the latter. For once she was grateful for the impersonal austerity of her office. No personal photos, no books other than textbooks, nothing that gave away clues about who or what she was. Admittedly the desk could have been tidier, but there was little to betray her to Mycroft Holmes, although given that he'd already read her medical records, her occupational health records, and in all likelihood her school reports and emails too, that was little comfort.
Logging on to the computer system she searched under Jamie Drayton's name - nothing, that wasn't in itself surprising. 'Any more clues?' she asked. 'Another name he could have used, date of injury, type of injury?'
'It was a sexual assault,' Lestrade explained, 'but he had facial injuries too, we think'.
'Oh,' Kate frowned, 'but then we wouldn't have dealt with that here. He would have gone to the rape suit, or whatever the politically correct name for it is, and been seen by the forensic medical officer.'
'He didn't report it,' Mycroft said calmly.
Kate searched under sexual assault in men, for the last four months, but came up with nothing.
'I can try under facial injuries,' she said, 'and look for men, what 25-35?' Greg Lestrade nodded, and Kate came up with a list of maybe twenty possibilities.
'Can I have the notes for all of those?' Greg Lestrade asked?'
'No,' Kate said, frowning, 'You can't. If we find a single possibility then sure, but I can't breach the other patients confidentiality like that.'
'I could come back with a warrant,' Mycroft said from the corner of the room, 'it is after all a matter of national security.'
'Give me ten minutes, Mycroft, and I'll narrow it down for you. Half of these patients are frequent flyers, with multiple A&E attendances over the last few years. If Jamie Drayton came here under a pseudonym, I suspect it would have been a single attendance. She clicked through the possibilities rapidly, and then after four and a half minutes, said, 'Here. 28 year old male, John Townsend, alleged assault, fractured zygoma, subconjunctival haemorrhage, rib fracture. What happened to him?'
'A blind date wouldn't take no for an answer, we think,' Greg Lestrade said. 'Unfortunately it happens to men as well as to women. Townsend was his mothers maiden name, so it fits. Can you print out the details Kate? The address might give us some clues.'
'So you're investigating too? Kate asked. 'Does Sherlock know?'
'I would tell him if I could get in touch with him,' Mycroft said, irritation evident in his voice. 'He's not answering his phone. Ignoring me does seem a little childish, but no more than I've come to expect.'
'He's been in the tube tunnels all morning,' Kate said, automatically leaping to Sherlock's defense. 'He probably didn't have a signal.'
'Investigating the site of Jamie Drayton's disappearance?'
'Exactly. He thinks that he was taken from the station via a back way, so he's investigating every station along the Northbound Victoria line to see if he can work out where he disappeared,'
'Any other progress?' Mycroft asked her. Kate hesitated, but then realised that if the police were now involved witholding evidence was probably not a sensible idea, and there was something else. 'He's dead, isn't he?' she asked Lestrade. 'Sherlock was right. You've found a body, thats why you're involved.'
'This morning, on the A5, just this side of Llangollen,' Lestrade told her. 'How did Sherlock know?'
'Gone too long, he said. Logically he had to have been abducted, and if he was abducted then the odds of him still being alive weren't in his favor.'
'Well he was correct,' Mycroft said, 'now Greg, I suggest that you take your medical records and go and see if my little brother is any more inclined to talk to you than he is to me, and let me have a few words with Kate.'
Kate managed to refrain from groaning as the door shut behind Greg Lestrade, who was looking distinctly worried about leaving her with Mycroft. She wondered if his conscience would get the better of him, and if he would tell Sherlock that Mycroft had arrived at her place of work to talk to her, despite Sherlock's best efforts to keep them apart.
'What can I do for you Mycroft?' Kate said with a sigh, 'and why don't you sit down, you're making me nervous standing there.'
Mycroft took the proffered seat. 'Dr Watson, I'll come straight to the point. I would like to know if your relationship with my brother goes beyond the professional.'
Kate considered for a moment. 'Why do you want to know?' she asked finally.
'Because I am concerned for my brother's welfare,' Mycroft said with a cold smile.
'Is he not entitled to make his own decisions?' Kate asked, determined not to let him rattle her.
'You're avoiding the question.'
'Yes I am,' Kate agree,' because to be frank I'm not sure that its any of your business.'
'My brother's welfare is always my business,' Mycroft said, with no trace of emotion. What was it with these Holmes boys? Kate knew a little about Sherlock's upbringing but what sort of parents had they really had to bring up two sons who betrayed so little emotion.
'That word again - welfare,' Kate said, 'Sherlock is a grown man, Mycroft. Surely he is entitled to make his own decisions - and his own mistakes.'
'So you term your relationship a mistake?'
'No of course not - I..' Kate hesitated, realising that she had disclosed more information than she had intended.
'Mycroft, you know full well that I am having a relationship with your brother,' she said firmly. 'You have had us followed and photographed for the last four days. You know that I have been staying at his flat. Your spies - is that the right word - operatives I suppose you could call them, they have seen us holding hands, laughing together, kissing and goodness knows what else, so why pretend that you're not aware of what is going on? Is it so hard to believe that your brother might find someone who wanted to be with him for honest reasons? What are you so worried about.'
She should have known that any attempt to appeal to Mycroft Holmes' better nature would fail before she opened her mouth, but it had to be worth a try.
'I am worried that you will destroy him,' Mycroft said quietly. 'My brother is not what you think he is, Dr Watson. Has he told you about his psychiatric history?'
'He told me that he had a spell as an inpatient as a teenager, yes.'
'Has he told you about the rest, about the drugs?'
Kate stared at Mycroft, what was he trying to say?
'I see by your silence that he hasn't.'
Kate was struggling to construct her next sentence when she was saved by a knock on the door - one of the majors nurses. 'Trauma call, five minutes out, Kate,' she said. 'Pedestrian versus bus, sounds messy.'
'I've got to go,' Kate said to Mycroft, picking up her stethoscope from the desk.
'Can we continue this conversation later, perhaps?' he asked.
Kate shook her head, already at the door. 'I don't think so, Mycroft. I know your brother, I know who he is, nothing that you have to say will change that.'
'But it already has,' Mycroft said to himself softly as the door closed behind her.
