Thoughts appreciated as ever.
14.
"Precisely as I thought," Sherlock crows, slamming both palms onto his desk, and grinning. He spares his dozing flatmate a glance, and flips Lestrade's folder shut with a deft little chop from the side of his hand.
Then, he then folds both hands under his chin, and glares pointedly at John Watson until he wakes up properly and comes over.
"What've you got?" John asks, shifting himself behind the detective so that he can peer comfortably over Sherlock's shoulder.
The laptop is open on the detective's website, but both men focus upon the folder that Sherlock flips open with pale fingers, pausing to indicate specific details and to occasionally elaborate on his own scrawled post-it notes as he goes through.
When he's done, Sherlock flicks his pale eyes up to meet John's. John looks at the enquiring expression and the raised eyebrows, and shifts his weight onto his right foot, trying to stare back with similar curiosity, and not just concern.
"Notice anything?" Sherlock asks. He leans back in his chair, and smirks, eyes still fixed on his flatmate.
John swallows, mentally flicking through everything he's just seen, trying to observe, and not just blindly stare.
Stains on plush carpets, blood spattered walls, a burned out room...and Mary, broken on the ground. That last one makes his breath hitch in his throat, but John tries very hard to ignore it, to think, to at least be of some use to Sherlock.
He can see Anderson's handwriting – and how the hell he's learned to recognise that he's not quite sure – but it's of little use to him, just notes about distance and vague thoughts on the specific brand of weapon.
"Er…" he begins, scratching his chin. His fingernails graze against yesterday's stubble, and John frowns absently, making a mental note to shave. He glances at Sherlock, feeling slightly stupid, and tries to keep his mind on the task at hand. "Erm…there were no bodies, I suppose…"
"Good."
John looks at Sherlock again, frowning.
"So the police didn't move them?" he asks, relaxing at Sherlock's slight inclination of the head. "If the police didn't move the bodies, then…the murderer's got them. The murderer took the bodies."
Sherlock scrapes his chair round, so he's actually facing John, and leans forward.
"Perhaps. Or?"
John's brow furrows.
"Or…or he didn't. After all, Mary's body wasn't taken. So maybe he's trying not to leave a pattern? Trying to be unpredictable…"
He glances down at Sherlock, sighing. His brain seems to have met a dead end.
"Yep, that's it. Go on. How did I do?"
"Good, John. Really good."
John snorts and steps back, moving across the room to sit on the arm of the sofa. He still faces Sherlock, though, eager to see what the younger man's managed to glean from the folder.
"Right. 'Good' as in 'wrong', yeah?"
Sherlock smiles softly, eyes sparkling a bit.
"Not entirely."
John leans back so that he flops down into the sofa, and Sherlock's little smug grin in no longer in sight. Instead, he inspects the ceiling with his own wry smile, legs still hanging over the arm.
"Go on then."
He hears Sherlock get up, hears the change in his footsteps as he walks from the lounge into the kitchen. When he speaks, his voice has the slightest of echoes from the different environment.
"You were right about the bodies."
"Oh?" John says, interested. He sits up, looking in the direction of the tall silhouette in the kitchen.
"Yes – with the exception of Mary – and that was a genuine suicide, by the way – there were no bodies found at the scene."
"Which means?"
"Which means either the bodies were taken by the murderer as you suggested… or the reason there are no bodies is because the women are not dead."
John stares, gets up, and joins Sherlock in the kitchen.
"Okay," he says, leaning on one of the kitchen chairs, and meeting Sherlock's eyes evenly. "Why?"
"Because – " Sherlock splutters, running to snatch the folder from his desk and shoving it under John's nose. "Look at the way the blood is spattered on the wall, how it's smeared on the carpet…look at the teeth, in the burned out room."
He flips over the page, jabbing at the photos accordingly.
"Isn't it obvious?"
The comment draws a blank look from the doctor, and Sherlock closes his eyes in pure exasperation.
"If our flat was on fire, where would you go?"
"Out."
Sherlock glares, apparently not appreciative of the sarcasm.
"You'd go out the front door. If the door was blocked, you'd try and escape through a window: you would not, under any circumstances, stand in the middle of the room and do nothing. Which leaves us with the question, John, of why the only remains left of Linda Whittingstall were found in the very centre of the burning room."
John nods slowly, flipping back a few pages to look at the blood spattered on the wall of Jane's cottage.
"What about this one?"
"Too little blood. The pattern achieved is accurate, but the volume is simply not sufficient. If your head's been blown off you're going to bleed – you're a military man, you've seen cases similar to Jane's – it also seems strangely convenient that it looks like approximately a pint…"
"Not so much of the 'approximately'?" John asks.
"Quite. Same with the stabbings. Deduction: the women aren't dead, this isn't murder, and we've got ourselves an altogether more interesting case."
Sherlock smiles widely, and glances at his watch.
"Come on, doctor. We've got a WI meeting to go to!"