Author's Notes:
I'm afraid this is a ridiculously long chapter, but I couldn't stand the thought of leaving you with any more cliffhangers, so I'm posting it all as one. The story isn't quite finished yet, though. Check back next Friday; I'm hoping to have the last chapter up then.
My thanks, as always, to Fang's Fawn, who wasn't able to look over all of this, but gave me invaluable comments on parts of it.
Feedback would be, as always, greatly appreciated.
Chapter 25:
The night pressed against the window, but the light over Martha Hudson's kitchen table burned steadily while Harry talked. Her story came out in bits and pieces. When she tried to talk about the dogs, she began to shake so badly that Mrs. Hudson took the mug of cooling Ovaltine from her and set it on the worktop; then she pressed the younger woman's trembling hands in hers and held them tightly until she was able to go on.
For a long while, Martha thought the horrors would never stop. Detail after detail oozed out, each one stabbing at her chest in a way the old lady had not thought she could still be hurt. She kept her feelings to herself and focused her attention on her guest, offering her tissues from time to time, but never taking more than one hand off Harry's to reach for them. The tightness of the younger woman's grip made it clear how much that steady source of comfort was needed.
Finally, though, Harry had talked herself out. Her head dropped back against her chair; her eyes closed.
"You poor child," Mrs. Hudson said, softly, patting one of the hands she was still holding. "You poor, dear child. Let's get you back to bed."
She shook Harry's shoulder gently until the younger woman woke and groggily allowed herself to be led back to the sofa in the sitting room, where Mrs. Hudson tucked her in for another sleep.
The old lady's eyes were wet as she pulled the blanket into place and straightened up. "That poor child," she whispered again, before she felt her way back to her own bed.
It wasn't really pity she was feeling so much as a deep, heartsick grief—and it wasn't really Harry she was weeping for at all.
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John was making his way down the top flight of stairs when he heard Moran's whistle. It was followed for the first time by the terrifying noise of the dogs baying.
They were out of the tunnels, then, and on John's trail. Well, that was good, really—he wouldn't have to try to keep himself conscious and alert through a long wait.
He didn't have any trouble finding the place—the cave-in he'd almost fallen into when he was crossing the terraced lawn between the two sets of stairs. He wondered if Moran had noticed it on his way up the hill. He and the dogs must have passed as close to it as John had. Would he remember? Would he realize what John was doing?
John thought not. The dogs had tasted blood now. Moran would be as keyed up as they were, immersed in his anticipation of the kill. John remembered only too well the altered state the man could shift into when his taste for cruelty was aroused, a kind of hyper-focus that shut out any input beyond the source of his perverse enjoyment. . . .
John had done some track and field in school, as well as rugby. When he was close enough he forced himself—knee screaming, arm in agony—to what he guessed would be his last run.
As he planted his staff firmly into the ground and launched himself into a long jump over the pit, a vivid memory flashed unexpectedly across his mind: Sherlock's hand reaching out over a three-storey drop, while John hesitated for a moment before hurling himself off the edge of a roof after the crazy idiot he'd only met that morning.
The crazy idiot who'd made up a whole new crazy career for himself, when none of the usual ones would fit. The mad, brilliant git who never seemed to doubt for a moment that he was reaching back, not to the washed-up, fucked-up cripple that ten minutes earlier had been all John could see in himself, but to a strong, brave man who loved adventure and didn't know how to live without it.
Sherlock's hand was still in front of John's eyes when he landed—hard, but on his feet. The pain was dizzying. He could have laughed out loud in spite of it.
Screw you, Moran, he thought, as he looked back with light-headed satisfaction at the trap he'd just set. You haven't beaten us yet.
And for the first time since he'd heard that burst of gunfire from the pillbox, John felt certain that Sherlock was alive and well, and that somehow he, at least, would survive this.
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On the night after Victor Trevor's murder, Mycroft had instructed two of his minions to focus all their attention on reviewing the security videos from The Gables. These had already been gone over quickly that afternoon, but Mycroft wanted them scrutinized with greater care, to make sure no detail that might point to the identity of Trevor's killer would escape notice.
He was particularly concerned about the videos from the garden, as he was well aware that the proximity of the public wood behind the house had always been the weak point in the security arrangements he had overseen when the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media, Sport, and the Olympics had begun getting the threats that Mycroft had for some time been trying to convince Downing Street would be inevitable with London hosting the games.
That public wood was not entirely unprotected. The perimeter of the conservation area and the old estate abutting it was fenced, and the fencing, though old, was high and topped with barbed wire, which was enough to keep most people out after hours. Its main access points were the public entrance to the conservation area, which was supervised during the daytime by a parks employee in a little kiosk, and kept gated and locked at night; a gate off the main road, which was always locked; and three other gates that—in keeping with laws going back to medieval times—gave landowners along the property line access to the wooded common land along the river that made up the bulk of the conservation area.
When old Mrs. Briers had gone hunting for herbs just before dawn, she'd taken her key with her. The same key opened the gate at the bottom of the farmer's field on the other side of The Gables—though there was also a low stone wall inside that, with a stile that she'd had to scramble over to get to her mugwort. That particular stretch of fence was the oldest part of the perimeter, predating by a good sixty years the rest of the fencing around the conservation area. The iron gates in it had been installed when it was put up, and, the neighbours in those days trusting each other, the same keys would open any of them—but since Mycroft's security team had installed modern fencing and a modern gate just inside the old iron gate at The Gables, the old ladies in the cottage next door could only access their own property or the farmer's field with their key. The farmer, who lived several miles down the road, had lost his long ago and never bothered to replace it.
Still, Mycroft had not been happy about the wood. He hadn't had the budget necessary to install security cameras everywhere he wanted to along the perimeter fence, and had had to content himself with warning the new minister that a determined assassin undoubtedly could gain access to the wood, where it would be easy to lie in wait with a sniper's rifle, ready to pick off the minister when he was walking in his garden or even his house. Mycroft had strongly recommended that the house's windows be replaced or covered with bullet-proof glass. But the minister had objected on both aesthetic and financial grounds—and Mycroft's superiors had gladly grasped at the excuse not to have to come up with still more money for Trevor's protection.
That made little difference to Mycroft, who was ultimately responsible for the security arrangements and so for whatever lapse in security had led to Victor Trevor's murder. Caring for other people might be no advantage, but the Ice Man cared a great deal about his own performance on the job—and not just because of its effect on his reputation. He was Mycroft Holmes. He had impossibly high standards, and he expected himself to meet them. To fail was unthinkable, but there was no question that he had just failed—quite spectacularly—to ensure the safety of the minister in charge of the Olympics. No terrorist group had claimed responsibility yet, but the likelihood that other acts of foreign or domestic terrorism would follow in the days or weeks to come was, frankly, terrifying.
And then there was the Sherlock complication. Mycroft was all too aware that he had only himself to blame for his little brother now being involved in investigating the murder of the man who, before John Watson, had been the only real friend he'd ever had. Mycroft had found it convenient to send Sherlock to Astor Mews when the problem had been only a supposed break-in that Mycroft himself had already deduced was, in all probability, nothing more than a clumsy attempt at insurance fraud. Urging Lestrade to call Sherlock in had had the combined advantages of 1) delegating to his little brother the time-consuming business of explaining to the Met what had happened, thus leaving Mycroft himself free to pursue one of the many other pressing projects that were always competing for his attention, and 2) getting Sherlock, whose continual stream of texts was becoming tedious, off his brother's back.
Mycroft had allowed himself to take a degree of malicious pleasure in the fact that Sherlock would undoubtedly be discomfited to find himself in Victor's house, surrounded by Victor's paintings. Sherlock's all-but-omniscient older brother had heard about the portrait and the trouble it had stirred up at the new minister's party; he'd found the idea of Sherlock's coming face to face with it and having to explain its existence to Lestrade quite amusing.
So it had been pleasing, in the moment, to push the buttons that had resulted in Lestrade's asking for Sherlock's help at Astor Mews. Busy as he was with other things, Mycroft had momentarily forgotten his mother and her longstanding conviction that Sherlock's last, most-nearly-disastrous descent into drug use had been a direct result of the loss of his friendship with Victor.
Mycroft had been annoyed by the idea at the time. It was always annoying that Sherlock was (by Mycroft's standards) so much more openly vulnerable than his brother had ever allowed himself to be, and rather more than annoying that their parents never seemed to have appreciated the effort it took their oldest son to maintain his own protective façade and be the steady, reliable man they—and, though very few people knew it, just about everyone who mattered in Britain, including the prime minister and the Queen herself—leaned on and took for granted.
Mycroft had no desire that anyone, least of all his parents or his little brother, should penetrate his deepest self and expose his secret vulnerabilities and pains, but it had not been easy to be a young Mycroft Holmes, and there was a part of the older man that could not help feeling aggrieved at times that everyone around him seemed to assume it had been, and that it was only his little brother who ever needed special attention and consideration. Not that Mycroft needed those things now—he prided himself on needing nothing and nobody, although he unquestionably enjoyed his physical comforts and privileges very much—but he would rather have liked a certain amount of concern to be offered occasionally.
Nevertheless, Mycroft was now wishing that he had given rather more thought to the possible effects of stirring up that particular set of memories in his always-too-sensitive younger brother's mind. He would never have put Sherlock on the Astor Mews case if he had known it would result in Sherlock's investigating Victor Trevor's murder. He could only hope that the presence of John Watson would be enough to mitigate any unpleasant effects the former friend's death might have on his little brother.
Mycroft had tried to teach a younger Sherlock how to protect himself from his emotions, but he knew his lessons had been imperfectly learned. In his bleaker moments, when his own isolation was weighing on him more heavily than usual, Mycroft had sometimes wondered if that wasn't actually a good thing. He was genuinely grateful for John's presence in Sherlock's life—it took some of the responsibility for looking after his little brother off his own shoulders, and he knew Sherlock was happier with a companion like John to share his adventures with than he'd ever been on his own. The problem was, what would happen to Sherlock when John got tired of sharing a flat and a job with an antisocial, egocentric genius—or when something happened to John?
All lives end; all hearts are broken. Mycroft had his own reasons for putting that thought at the core of his daily life. He envied Sherlock at times, but not enough to risk for himself the devastation he knew would inevitably follow, if he became in any way dependent on the friendship or even existence of another human being.
Except Sherlock's existence, of course; Mycroft couldn't help caring about that. And so he was more than usually fretful as he pursued his own work while his minions combed through the security tapes from The Gables. The assassin must be far away by now; the threat must be over, at least in that particular corner of England. Sherlock must be perfectly safe—and John Watson, too.
But Mycroft found it hard to feel any deep confidence in that idea. He felt jumpy and irritable—even more irritable than he would have been anyway, and, given how little sleep he'd had recently, that was saying a good deal.
And so, when another knock on his door disturbed him and the head that appeared around it proved to be that of young Bates again, he snapped, "I hope the only reason you're interrupting me like this is to tell me you've found out who the assassin is?" And when Bates, fresh out of Cambridge with a double first and eager to make a good impression, stammered, "N-no sir. Not exactly that, sir," Mycroft didn't even try to stop himself from letting the young man know exactly how little he appreciated having his concentration broken at 3:30 in the morning when he was hard at work trying to prevent another terrorist attack.
Abashed, Bates slunk back to his cubicle.
"Bit my head off," he admitted to Williams, at the next desk.
"Told you," Williams pointed out.
And Bates—who had been using a split screen to look for the umpteenth time through the security feed from the garden of The Gables the night before and, since that was becoming very dull, also the footage currently coming from the garden, all while keeping an eye (though not an ear) on the feed from Mrs. Hudson's kitchen (which seemed harmless enough; she was entertaining a rather battered-looking young woman, and had just seen her off to bed)—sank back in his chair, uncertain how to proceed.
He had wanted to tell Mycroft that something seemed to have gone wrong with the cameras at The Gables, since the current footage was eerily identical to that from the previous night—right down to nightingale's song at 1.14.23, and the owl's cry at 2.26.32.
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John crawled the last few yards to the tree line—not so much to take the weight off his knee, although the jump hadn't done it any good at all, as to keep his profile down. The clouds had mostly blown away now, and the moon, though lower in the sky than it had been, was almost full; he didn't want to be seen if Moran got to the upper staircase before he'd been able to put the rest of his plan in place.
The bracken, dotted here and there with slim young saplings—mostly maple and birch—provided some additional cover. John was out of breath, his chest heaving with the effort of pulling himself along the ground with an injured arm and leg, but the clamouring of the dogs in the distance reminded him that he couldn't afford to rest for even a moment, no matter how much the moving hurt.
He was done with any exhausted notion of simply climbing a tree and waiting for Moran to come and shoot his knees out. He had a mission, and he was going to do his bloody best to carry it out. It was the same one he'd given himself down by the river, when he'd heard old Mrs. Briers approaching and thought it was Moran and the dogs—but now he had a minute or two to get ready, and that could make all the difference.
The bigger trees lay mostly behind a screen of younger ones that had sprung up on the edge of the old lawn. John got to his feet again and, leaning heavily on the staff he'd dragged along with him, made for the first big tree that looked climbable—a medium-sized maple. He would have to scramble over several fallen logs and branches to get to it. That was just fine with him; he couldn't have asked for anything better.
In a spot between one of the saplings and one of the fallen logs, about fifteen feet from the tree he'd selected, John finally let himself pause.
His sides still heaving, he bent over and untied his shoelaces, then pulled them out of their eyelets and tied them together. He already knew they weren't going to be long enough.
The only things he had left to sacrifice were his pants, or the bandages from his leg or arm. He was damned if he was going to go naked if he didn't absolutely have to, and the gauze around his arm was too flimsy and sodden to be much use even if he could have got it off without fainting, so he unwrapped the bandage from his knee. It was wet and filthy, but that didn't matter; it might even provide a little camouflage. He tied one end of it to the laces and wrapped the other around the fallen log. That was all he had for a weight; he didn't know if it would be enough.
He didn't know if his improvised string would be enough, either: he would have liked more length, but even if he'd been willing to cut his boxers up, he was running out of time. The baying of the dogs was getting louder every second.
He tied the free end of the shoelaces to his staff and threw it as far as he could away from the path, downwind. Then, grunting with the effort of moving with his knee unwrapped and nothing to lean on, he stumbled towards the tree.
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The wind was cold. The moon was bright. The dogs were in full throat, clamouring and baying like foxhounds on a county hunt. And Jack Moran was riding behind them on the biggest, most headstrong high in his long and quite frequently toked-up and pleasured life.
He'd had an invigorating chase through the tunnels, followed by the most terrific charge of endorphin-releasing adrenalin when he'd thought the dogs had caught their prey. His discovery that there was no person inside the jacket and other clothing the dogs were tearing apart had been a letdown at first, but had actually proved to be a boon. The game wasn't over yet. There was more to come. Jack could have that pleasure-rush all over again, when the dogs really did track John down.
He told himself it was the victory he was savouring, not John's fate. Winning was always a delight, but to win at such a game—the game, the greatest, the most dangerous game—well, there could be nothing to top it. No Olympian could feel more bathed in glory than John Sebastian Moran would on accomplishing this longed-for goal. It would be the crowning achievement of his life.
It was, of course, a pity that it had to cost Johnny his life. Jack couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret about that. His boy, he'd been; such a fine boy. It was true that he'd never put on the height Jack considered essential for a man, that he'd become a doctor instead of a sniper, that—worst of all—he seemed to have chosen another man as a lover. (Though Jack was not quite so sure of that as he'd been before talking to Sherlock, and was not unaware that, in his most secret self, he found the idea as titillating as he claimed to find it repulsive.)
But whatever his shortcomings, John had shown real courage tonight. Courage, and endurance, and considerably more strategic thinking than Moran had expected.
That was his boy. Such a fine boy. It really was a pity. . . .
The pit caught Moran completely by surprise. The first dog went down with a terrified shriek; the two behind it were so close on its heels that they followed, yelping and yowling all the way down. Moran grabbed the last two and pulled them back just in time.
Breathing heavily from the effort, he pulled his torch out of his pocket and shone it down into the pit to survey the damage.
The cavity in the ground was relatively small on the surface—about eight feet across—but deep, with surprisingly steep sides. It was clear that the dogs wouldn't be able to get out by themselves. They were writhing at the bottom. One appeared to have broken its leg; it was lying on its side, struggling to get up but not succeeding. The other two were scrambling on and off each other's backs, snarling and growling and snapping at each other furiously.
Some men might have put the dogs out of their misery, but not Moran. They were valuable beasts—he had had them specially bred to his specifications and smuggled across the Channel, which had cost a small fortune; he didn't want to lose them if he didn't have to.
Another kind of man might have let himself down into the pit to lift them out. But not Moran. He decided to leave them to it for now and come back to retrieve them later—when he'd finished with John, and when he'd had time to go back to his car for some tranquilizer darts. The animals were wild with pain and confusion; he had no intention of exposing himself to their teeth while they were in such a state.
Jack whistled to his remaining dogs and cast around with the torch, looking for John's trail. The dogs picked it up on the other side of the pit. He'd jumped, then. Clever boy. It was a pity he was going to have to be killed, but there really wasn't any way around it. He and his friend had found his mother's body, and that was a secret Moran was determined to keep quiet. It wasn't only the prison sentence he was so eager to avoid, though naturally that was a significant consideration; his greatest source of anxiety was his employer. No prison in the world could keep Jack safe from Moriarty if the man wanted to get at him, and from what he'd learned during his stint in Moriarty's "firm," death truly might be a better alternative than letting Jim Moriarty think you'd messed with him.
Johnny had crawled through the bracken towards a line of trees. It was quite easy to follow his trail, even without the dogs. Now, what would he have done when he got there? Climbed a tree? Or kept going? He couldn't have been sure of eliminating all the dogs with the pit, and he must be exhausted at this point—that bullet wound really had been bleeding quite a bit, even before this started. He must know his end was very near. Climbing would be his best option, then, if he could manage it one-handed. If he found a way to strap himself in he wouldn't fall when Moran shot him, and would avoid the fate he surely feared most, being torn apart by the dogs.
Moran proceeded carefully, his torch and gun at the ready. His heart was racing with excitement as he neared the tree line. The dogs in the lead, he made his way between the smaller saplings towards the first of the larger, climbable-looking trees.
His attention was on the tree, his torch searching it for his prey. The dogs were coursing side by side just ahead of him. They were scrambling over one of the fallen branches that lay across the trail when a log off to the side shifted slightly and the branch sprang up like the elastic young sapling it was, knocking both dogs flying.
Moran started back in surprise. John rose up out of the bracken and was on him in a flash. One well-aimed slash with his knife and Moran's gun fell from his hand. John kicked it away. Moran brought his torch down hard on John's knife hand, sending the knife flying, and followed up with a blow to John's injured arm, right across the wound. John gasped and fell backwards, somehow still managing a hook with his good leg that brought Moran down with him.
But only one of the dogs had been stunned by the tree when it sprang upright. The other gathered its legs under itself and got to its feet. Head down, a hair-raising growl rumbling in the back of its throat, it stalked towards the two men as they struggled together on the ground.
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Sherlock had reached the bridge when he heard Moran's whistle, followed by the frenzied baying of his dogs. A remote corner of Sherlock's mind registered the oddness of such enormous dogs making such a sound, and wondered if foxhound had played a part in their breeding, as well as Fila Brasileiro, but everything else in the man focused instantly on calculating how to get to John before the dogs did.
The sounds were obviously coming from the top of the hill, on the other side of the fence. Sherlock ran towards it. The gates across the road were locked. He should have been able to pick them open in a minute, but his hands were shaking and there were no minutes. He flung himself at the fence and clambered up it, unbuttoning his coat as he climbed, slipping out of it, throwing the beloved garment across the rusty barbed wire at the top and himself over that. The thick wool protected him from the worst of the barbs, though he took a few deep scratches anyway. He dropped the eight feet from the top and started running again as soon as his feet hit the ground, leaving the coat behind without a second thought.
He could see his way clearly in the moonlight. He was halfway across the meadow when he heard a wild barking and howling.
He'd always thought there was no connection between the emotions that sentimental people referred to when they spoke of their "hearts stopping" and any genuine action, or stoppage of action, of the physical organ actually beating in their chests. It seemed that was something else he'd been wrong about.
There was another whistle. The sounds lessened. Everything went very still.
So. John was dead, then.
I will kill Moran, Sherlock thought, numbly. I'll find him and kill him and every one of those dogs, if it's the last thing I'm able to do.
The thought did absolutely nothing to stop the tsunami-wave of emotion that was sweeping over him. He couldn't see. He couldn't think. He had no idea how he was going to keep going, but somehow his feet kept moving anyway.
He was at the steps. He was up them. Then the barking and snarling started up again. He moved stiffly towards it.
The moonlight showed him a deep pit, and three dogs trying to get out of it. There was no sign of Moran or John. Something began to unfold in Sherlock's chest. His heart seemed to start beating again.
Then he looked up and saw John and Moran fighting at the edge of a line of trees, while a huge, brindle-striped dog stalked slowly towards them.
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While Mycroft was forcing himself to stay awake and Mrs. Hudson was putting Harry to bed, another old lady was fumbling with the tangle of sheets and blankets around her, trying to get out of bed and reach the phone.
She had stumbled back from the woods with her herb-friendly lantern darkened and only the moon to guide her, so terrified that, when she finally found herself inside her own house, she had forgotten what it was she had meant to do once she got there. Shivering, she got into bed and pulled the blankets up around her. After a while, warmed and numbed by forgetfulness, she fell asleep.
After another while—she had no idea how long—she woke. Her room was still dark, but moonlight was shining through the window beside her bed. Peering nervously out, she saw that the moon was low in the sky, just brushing the tops of the trees.
That wasn't right. It should be higher than that. It had been much higher just a few minutes ago, when she was rushing home from the woods with something she urgently needed to do. What was it? Had she done it? She wasn't sure. She had been so frightened. She was frightened now. Why?
Her window was wide open—she always kept it open at night, fresh air was good for you. Her hearing had not yet abandoned her; she was only a little deaf. Far, far away in the distance, she thought she heard a sound like hounds baying.
Dogs. Moonlight. That nice boy from next door, John Watson. That was it! He was in the woods. She had seen him. He had sent her home, telling her to hurry so his stepfather wouldn't catch her. But his stepfather would catch him, if he wasn't careful, with the dogs. It had happened before; she could still remember it. She mustn't let it happen again.
And so she fumbled with her sheets, trying to get out of bed and to the telephone, wondering how on earth she could manage to convince the police that she wasn't just the crazy old lady she knew everybody thought her, and they really did need to come to the wood behind her house right away.
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Sherlock ran. Cutting across the old lawn in the most direct line, he found himself dodging between the slim trunks of young trees and beating his way through dead bracken, trying to scan the ground for something—anything—he could use as a weapon, without actually taking his eyes off John. . . .
Who seemed to be losing the fight. He was on his back. Moran was kneeling on top of him, pinning him down. He'd stopped struggling. Sherlock could hear him groaning.
"Oh, Johnny." Moran's voice came clearly through the night. "This has been fun. I'm really sorry it's over. But you know I'm going to have to—"
Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw what he'd been looking for—a good, stout stick. The part of his mind that never, ever turned off even when he wanted it to noted that it was almost certainly the stick John had been using as a cane. There were signs that John had lain in the bracken here, a string (his shoelaces tied together) and a length of dirty fabric (cut from his trousers; the bandage he'd applied to his leg by the river) tied to a log; he must have set some sort of trap—oh, yes, that sapling there, bent back till it was almost flush with the ground and kept down by the log; after setting that up he'd have laid a trail to that big tree with the low-hanging branches, wanting Moran to think he'd climbed it; then he'd have circled back through the trees and bracken to this place, chosen because it was downwind from his earlier trail and just far enough away from it that the dogs wouldn't catch his scent. . . .
Sherlock processed all that in a split-second. Later he would despise himself for having given even that much thought to anything except John's urgent need, but he couldn't help it, it was how his mind worked. And it was only a very small portion of his mind that was thinking about what John had done and why he'd done it; the rest was entirely focused on getting to his friend before Moran could kill him or do anything more to cause him pain.
Sherlock scooped the stick up as he ran. It was a sturdy one, ironwood, two inches in diameter, strong enough to have taken John's weight and then some. The dog was between Sherlock and John, waiting for its master's command, so intent in its focus on the bloodied man it had been chasing all night that it either didn't hear Sherlock coming or saw no reason to pay attention if it did.
Wielding the stick like a sword, Sherlock dealt the animal a curving blow to the skull, felling it with a single stroke. The stick shattered. Sherlock threw himself bodily on Moran—who was just looking up to see what was happening—and knocked him off John. He had his knee in Moran's back and his arm around his neck in a chokehold before Moran could do more than grunt in response. The sharp tip of the broken staff was pressed into the man's side like a knife.
Moran made a strangled sound. Sherlock tightened his grip around the man's throat and dug his makeshift knife in harder.
"This is going to hurt," he hissed in Moran's ear. "A lot."
"Sherlock." John's voice was weak. Sherlock flicked his eyes in his friend's direction. He was still lying on his back, his chest heaving, but his head was turned towards them and his eyes were open, watching.
"You all right, John?" Sherlock asked, tightening his grip a little more.
"Will be."
"Need anything?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't sound fine."
"Just winded."
"Your arm's bleeding."
"Been doing that all night. It's okay."
Sherlock dug his stick into Moran's side so sharply that the older man gasped.
"As I was saying," Sherlock remarked, turning back to his prisoner, "you can expect considerable pain. And it's going to last a long time. I'm going to do this slowly. Very slowly."
"Sherlock," John said again. "What are you doing?"
"I have an excellent memory," Sherlock said, leaning close to Moran to make sure he could hear every word. "I've made an extensive study of human anatomy, including the nervous system; I know exactly how to produce excruciating pain any time I want to. And believe me when I tell you that you have made me want to very much indeed."
"Sherlock!" John was struggling to sit up now. "What are you doing? Stop it. This isn't you."
"It's most definitely me," Sherlock said, tightening his grip on Moran's throat and digging his improvised knife in a little more. Moran made a strange, squeaking sound. His face was turning purple. Sherlock gave him a little shake.
"Not so much fun when it's happening to you, is it?" he hissed.
"Sherlock!" Sherlock flicked his eyes towards his friend again. John was half-sitting, propped on his elbow; he didn't look as if he could get any farther. His face was deathly white behind the cuts and bruises. "Sherlock, stop it. Now!"
"Why?"
"You're killing him."
"He deserves it."
"But not from you. Not"—John seemed to be suddenly short of breath himself—"you."
"Absolutely me." Sherlock's eyes glittered like a wildcat's in the moonlight. He tightened his hold a little more.
"Sherlock!" John snapped. "Now!"
Slowly, reluctantly, Sherlock loosened his grip. Moran gasped for air and started to cough. Sherlock released a little of the pressure on his back and side, but only a little.
"What did you do with them?" he demanded suddenly, turning away from John and back to Moran. "What—did—you—do—with—them?" And he ground the tip of the stick into Moran's side again, underscoring the cold fury in his voice.
"Don't know—what—you're talking about," Moran gasped between coughs.
"John's medals, of course," Sherlock snapped. "The ones you stole from our flat. And—"
But Moran seemed to be choking again. It took Sherlock several moments to realize that the sounds had nothing to do with the now-somewhat-lighter pressure of Sherlock's arm against the man's throat. He was laughing.
"Johnny's medals?" he gasped. "Oh, that's rich, my dear chap. Quite droll!"
"Where—are—they?"
"Nowhere," Moran said, sweetly. "They never existed."
"Liar!"
"Oh, you poor dear boy! Have you really been imagining all this time that Johnny's a decorated hero? I do hate disillusioning you."
"I know you took them from John's drawer. What did you do with them afterwards?"
"Nothing, old chap. Nothing at all. As I said, they never existed. Not that they shouldn't have, you understand: I brought that boy up to be a first-rate soldier—but he had to go off and make himself over into a snivelling, snot-wiping little doctor, and you won't find too many of them bringing home the Queen's honours from the battlefield. I admit I had the same idea you did. I thought he'd earned himself something nice—I'd heard a rumour or two, here and there—and I won't deny I went through his room pretty thoroughly, looking for them. He's so famous now, thanks to your exploits and that blog of his, that they'd fetch a king's ransom, especially—well."
"Don't lie to me!"
Moran squealed as the makeshift knife dug into his skin. Sherlock cut him off by tightening his arm around Moran's neck again, producing a terrible string of gagging, spluttering sounds.
"Stop it, Sherlock!" John ordered, pushing himself with difficulty up to a sitting position and glaring at his friend. "Listen to me—he isn't worth this; I don't want you doing this to yourself; this isn't who you are. And anyway, he isn't lying. There weren't any medals in my drawer. I never had any."
Sherlock's grip on Moran slackened. He turned his face to his friend, his mouth a little open, eyebrows raised incredulously.
It was all the opening Moran needed. He drove his elbow hard into Sherlock's stomach and twisted his body, slipping out from the loosened chokehold and throwing Sherlock off his back in a single fluid motion that left the consulting detective on his backside looking up into Moran's face—and down the barrel of the very familiar gun the sniper had just pulled out of his pocket. John's gun.
"Well, well," Moran said softly. "How quickly the tide does turn. You really thought you'd hurt me there, didn't you, Holmes? And dear Johnny, trying to talk you out of it. It was quite amusing, really. That's why he never brought home any honours, you know, Holmes—he can't bring himself to do everything that has to be done, on the battlefield or off it. You needn't have bothered stopping your friend, though, Johnny—he wasn't serious about it. He barely touched me. I've suffered worse things from a sweetly smiling little woman than anything he did tonight, or would have done; your famous Sherlock Holmes is as soft as you are. Not that you didn't do well tonight, Johnny—you did. You surprised me. I'm proud of you, boy. But you don't like to kill; you lack the instinct for it. And there's no way to be a true soldier without that."
He had been backing up as he spoke, John's gun still trained on Sherlock. The man's hand was bleeding from the slash John had given it earlier, but the gun was perfectly steady.
"I don't lack it, though. So it's time to say goodbye. I'll take Holmes first, then you, Johnny. Say goodbye to each other, boys, and then to me."
John looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked at John.
"Vatican cameos," both men mouthed at the same time.
Sherlock dropped and rolled sideways, hurling the rock his fingers had found in the dirt behind him at Moran's gun hand. It was barely more than a pebble, but it hit Moran hard on the cut across his knuckles and, for a moment, his aim wavered. The shot went wild.
John had already launched himself into a flying tackle. He put every ounce of his remaining strength into the leap and took Moran just above the knees.
Sherlock pulled himself out of his roll and onto his feet, not even pausing before starting to stride forward to help John pin Moran down and tie him up. He found himself watching in shock as John and Moran both disappeared from sight.
There was a shout, and another shot ringing out—and then a muffled sound that could only be bodies hitting the ground.
He'd had no idea they were so close to the ha-ha.
000000
Sherlock felt as if he were trying to run through black treacle. His legs were working as hard as they had all night, or harder, but everything was happening in slow motion and he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. It could have been an hour before he reached the top of the hidden wall, and another before his eyes took in what they were seeing—John's body lying entangled with Moran's at the bottom of a fifteen-foot drop.
Hour after hour seemed to pass, and Sherlock's eyes kept seeing it. He turned away from the wall and engaged in movement that felt less like running and more like wading through a gelatinous substance—moonlight, congealed, surprisingly viscous—for what seemed like more hours and hours as he ran towards the stairs, and still his eyes kept seeing it. He didn't think he'd ever really see anything else again.
He got to the stairs at last and took them three at a time, slipping and sliding the last part of the way when the edge of a step disappeared in a scree of crumbled mortar and pulverized stone. There one minute and gone the next. Like John.
He couldn't be dead. Not John. Not John. Somebody else—anybody else, really—and it wouldn't matter so much. Oh, he'd be sorry if it were Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson or Greg Lestrade or even Molly Hooper; he'd be more than sorry, he'd grieve for them, he'd miss them terribly, he'd do anything to protect them—but John was different. They were friends.
Friends in a way he could never be with his overbearing older brother; or with a motherly old lady who could have been his grandmother; or with a law-abiding policeman whose intelligence and sense of adventure, though better than most in his profession, were nowhere near what Sherlock needed in a companion; or with a lonely, love-struck young woman who was always struggling and usually failing to hide the embarrassing crush she still had on him.
Sherlock had one real friend, just one. He didn't have any others. Except for Victor, he never had.
I don't have friends.
Wonder why?
Twelve, fifteen feet, the policewoman had said. John would have to choose the highest place to go over.
A person could survive a fifteen-foot drop. It depended on what you landed on—rock, and you'd be done. Bushes or grass, you could survive. But would you walk away? What would survival mean to a man like John if he broke his spine and never walked again? Or if he stove his head in and ended up with brain damage? John, like Sherlock, would think death the kinder alternative.
But he couldn't die. He couldn't be dead. Not John. Not John.
He could see the bodies now, lying in the bracken just ahead of him. One of the men was stirring, starting to sit up. Hope surged through Sherlock's whole being, mind and body.
But it wasn't John.
Moran got to his feet and took off in a stumbling, lurching walk, heading slowly down the meadow towards the drive. Sherlock ignored him. Nothing mattered except John.
He could hear sounds in the background but, for once, his ever-rational, ever-working CPU wasn't processing them. Everything had been reduced to images, a series of snapshots: John still lying motionless in the bracken, one arm flung out. Blood on his legs. Blood on his chest. On his outstretched hand and arm. On his face. In his hair. . . .
The background sounds were getting louder. Someone was shouting. Sherlock tried to brush his consciousness of these distractions impatiently away and couldn't, especially the shouting. Then he realized the voice was his own.
"John," he was yelling. "John! Are you all right? Wake up. Wake up, John. You've got to be all right."
John's hand moved a little. His eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes.
"Sherlock?" he said, groggily. "What happened?"
Sherlock couldn't seem to say anything. He couldn't find the words.
"We fell, didn't we?"
Sherlock couldn't get anything out. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and an unfamiliar wetness was blurring his eyes. It was the strangest feeling he'd ever known.
And then John lifted his head and looked around, and with much more force and clarity asked, "Where's Moran?"—and Sherlock found his voice again.
"Not important," he said. "How badly are you hurt?"
The blood, he was beginning to realize, was mostly from cuts and scratches, and the sodden, dripping bandage around John's arm. But John had fallen fifteen feet. Onto what Sherlock now realized was a thick, springy layer of dead bracken—but still, fifteen feet. And there'd been that shot. . . .
"Of course it's important," John said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. He sounded a little dazed still. "He's armed and dangerous; we can't let him get away."
"Your gun's here." It was lying beside John. "He must have lost his own earlier, or he wouldn't have been using yours."
"He'll have another. And knives. You don't know him like I do, Sherlock; he's dangerous with just his bare hands. Where is he? And what's that noise?"
The noise was a combination of things: some that Sherlock could recognize now, but under them there was something else, a faint background thrumming he was sure he should be able to identify, but couldn't. His mind still felt fragmented and disordered, nothing in it working the way it was supposed to.
"Sirens," he said. "Someone must have called the police."
And the police must have had the key to the lock on the gate or a pair of cutters in their boot, because a moment later the night was filled with flashing blue and white lights as two cars came tearing up the drive. The beams of their headlamps raked across the meadow. In the sudden illumination Sherlock and John could see a tall figure stumbling down the field.
If anybody had been looking back at the ha-ha, they might have seen a long, grey shape emerge from the gaping hole at the base of the stairs—the hole that had once been covered by a grotesque fountain-head, and was still connected to the tunnel system on the level above by a steeply-sloping culvert. The shape was followed by another, and then—bloody saliva dripping from its jaws, and a damaged leg forcing it into a queer, lopsided gait—a third.
But nobody was watching anything except Moran.
The dogs loped down the slope, crazed with pain and confusion and their attempts to extricate themselves from the only partially blocked-up tunnels leading out of the pit. As the wind blew across the meadow towards them, they caught a bewildering and exhilarating blend of scents: their master's familiar odours, the exciting new tang of his fear and pain, and the mouthwatering smell of the blood of the man they'd been tracking all night.
The dogs knew what that blood tasted like; they'd gone mad for it back in the tunnel, when they'd torn apart John's clothes. Moran had got it all over himself when he was pinning John down. He'd made a particular point of leaning his weight on the dripping bullet wound he'd inflicted earlier, telling himself he was only doing it because inflicting agonizing pain was the quickest way of weakening his opponent and overcoming his resistance.
The police cars' doors were flung open; figures were piling out—Sherlock could pick out Greg Lestrade, Phil Anderson, and Sally Donovan among them.
"Oi, you!" one of them shouted across the field at Moran. "Stop!"
But Moran didn't stop. His hand moved towards his armpit. He was so far from the Yarders that none of them registered the danger.
"No," John breathed, and grabbed his gun.
"John," Sherlock said, urgently, all the pieces he'd been trying to trying to put together all night suddenly slotting into place with a certainty that defied the need for any further analysis. "Not you. It shouldn't be you."
"Just the gun," John said, quietly, lining up the shot and firing. Something flew out of Moran's hand. The man let out a yell and fell to his knees, clutching his arm.
Greg Lestrade was running towards him, Donovan and Anderson just behind. John got to his feet and, gritting his teeth against the pain, began stumbling down the slope towards Moran, too, Sherlock running beside him.
And then the long, grey shapes appeared out of the shadows. Dazed, maddened, and utterly savage to begin with, the huge dogs threw themselves on the man who smelled of their prey's blood, their slobbering jaws clamping down on his limbs.
Moran's screams cut through the night, stopping Phil Anderson and Sally Donovan in their tracks.
Greg kept running. He had his gun out, but he knew he was too far away to risk a shot.
John was farther away than Greg. His gun was still in his hand. He hesitated for just a second, staring down the slope at his old enemy, his face grim.
"John," Sherlock said urgently again. John glanced at him. Something unspoken seemed to pass between the two men. Then John jerked his gaze back to Moran and brought the gun up. He fired once, twice, three times, and pushed himself into a stumbling run again.
When Greg got to Moran, John and Sherlock were kneeling beside him, putting pressure on the worst of the bites as he moaned in pain. They'd had to pull the bodies of the dogs away to reach him.
"I need your scarf, Jack," John was saying to Moran, who had the stunned look of a man going into shock. "I'm going to take it now so I can use it for a bandage."
Sherlock, who still had his around his neck, was already slipping it off. He handed it silently to John.
Greg had put in a call for an ambulance as he was running. He joined Sherlock in putting pressure on Moran's wounds, John barking directions. Sally and Phil caught up with them. Sally had run back to the car for a first-aid kit. They got it open and knelt down to help.
When there didn't seem to be any more need for so many assistants, Greg stood up and pulled Sherlock aside.
"What the hell's been going on?" he demanded. "Who is this man? What's happened to John? What's this all about?"
"His name is John Sebastian Moran." Sherlock spat the syllables out as if he didn't like the taste of them in his mouth. "He's a retired sharp-shooter from the Colchester Parachute Regiment, a gambler and small-scale drug-dealer and big-time exploiter of family connections—a general man-about-town. You can tell Mycroft that Victor wasn't killed by a terrorist. Moran thought he was shooting at me."
The police detective's mouth fell open a little.
"At you?" he said, incredulously. Sherlock ignored this and continued speaking at rapid-fire pace.
"You'll find another body in one of the outbuildings at the bottom of The Gables' garden—Moran's wife, whose disappearance twenty-three years ago your incompetent colleagues in the Essex constabulary failed to treat with the gravitas it deserved, despite knowing that Mrs. Moran's husband had recently been the subject of a serious child-abuse investigation—which they'd also bungled so thoroughly that every policeman, social worker, and judge involved ought to be doing time for it themselves now. Moran recently began to worry that his old crimes might come to light, and was trying to eliminate the evidence—hence his alarm when he came to The Gables before dawn this morning and thought he saw me in one of the bedroom windows. Be careful when you approach the pillbox; its roof is loaded with several hundred pounds of high-quality explosives."
"Did you say 'pillbox'?" Greg asked, slowly. He had turned his eyes back to John, who was still bending over Moran and, with Donovan and Anderson handing him things out of the big first-aid kit from the police car, was bandaging up the last of the man's wounds. In the headlamps of the car, the maze of scars across John's body stood out clearly.
"The World War II bunker at the bottom of the garden."
"That's right, they are called pillboxes, aren't they? I should have remembered that."
"Lestrade," Sherlock began, but Greg didn't seem to notice.
"Her husband, you said?" he asked, still looking at John.
"Second husband."
"Ah. I see."
"Greg." Greg looked up, surprised by both the urgency in Sherlock's voice and his use of Greg's name.
"Not one word of this gets out," Sherlock hissed. "Moran might cooperate if you leave the first murder out of it—he has good reasons to try to keep that quiet—but even if he doesn't, not one word in the press, unless her family agrees. Nor to Mycroft, either."
Greg looked at John again and nodded. There was a hardness in his face when he turned back to the group around Moran that neither Sally nor Phil Anderson missed.
"That's enough with the first aid," he said sharply. "You've patched the perp up; he'll make it to the hospital. But he can cool his heels for a bit while one of you helps John get a fresh dressing on that arm before the ambulance gets here. It looks like it needs it."
"That's okay, Sally," John said, as she looked fruitlessly through the kit for another bandage; they'd used them all on Moran. "It can do like this a while longer."
"No, it can't," she said, grimly, taking her own scarf off to wrap snugly over the sodden gauze around John's arm. "What the hell happened tonight, anyway? You look like you've been to the wars."
"Long story," John said, shrugging. "I'll make a statement later, but we'd better get this man to a hospital now. Dog bites aren't something to mess around with."
The look Sally gave him was a mix of wonder and admiration. Phil noticed it, as he'd been noticing every look she gave the doctor as they worked. Why the hell wasn't the man wearing any clothes?
"Shouldn't we be charging Watson, sir?" he demanded, turning to Greg. "He may be playing the doctor now, but he's caused grievous bodily harm—he shot this man in the hand."
Sally stared at him in disbelief.
"Watson saved our skins," she said. "This bloke was about to shoot us."
"He couldn't have touched us at that distance," Anderson said, scornfully.
"Couldn't he?" she snapped. She had been watching John and Moran, and making her own deductions. "This is the guy who shot the Minister, isn't it?"
Greg nodded. Sherlock was watching Sally curiously.
"He must have done it from the edge of the woods. Like the—" she took a deep breath, and corrected herself—"like Sherlock said. I've been thinking, and he's right—that's the only way it could have been done. So this bloke's a crack shot and he was drawing his gun; he could have hit any of us if Watson hadn't stopped him. And if you'd spent any time at the range at all, Phil Anderson,"—turning angrily on her former lover—"you'd know that was the most amazing shot you'll ever see. It must have been twice the distance I've ever seen anyone hit a moving target at, and it was incredibly precise—he shot the gun right out of his hand."
"That was a fluke," Phil grumbled, giving Sally a hangdog look. "Watson just got lucky. He's a civilian; he isn't even supposed to have a gun, let alone fire one. He could have killed someone. For all we know, he was trying to."
A creaking, wheezing sound that could almost have been a laugh drew everyone's eyes to the injured man at their feet.
"Don't be a fool," Moran managed to get out, although his face was dripping with sweat and knotted with pain. "If Johnny'd wanted to kill me, he would have. He doesn't miss."
Then he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and added, "All the same, m'dear boy, you should have gone for the kill shot."
"Not going to make it that easy for you, you son-of-a-bitch," John said flatly, pulling one of the bandages a little tighter and clamping it into place with a jerk. Then he tucked the shock blanket more securely around his patient, got to his feet and limped away, heading towards the cars.
Sherlock's eyes met Greg's again. "Not one word," he said, fiercely. And Greg nodded again, his face grim.
Sherlock turned his attention back to the first-aid kit and pulled something out of it before loping after John.
"Here," he said, handing him the second shock blanket.
"Thanks," John said, surprised, but wrapping it around his shoulders gratefully. "You think they've got a stretcher in the car?"
Sherlock was standing still, looking up at the sky. His mind had finally started to process what he'd been hearing in the background. The low, rumbling sound had been getting steadily louder for some time.
"Come on, everyone," Greg called to his team. "That ambulance is taking its sweet time. We'd better get these men to the hospital ourselves."
"I think," Sherlock said, to no one in particular, "that some of us are going to have a faster means of transport any minute now."
"Oh, Christ," John sighed. "Not another helicopter!"
"Thought you were just making that up."
"Never could stand the things."
"We'll take it. It'll get you to a hospital faster than a car."
"I don't need—"
"Yes, you do. You fell fifteen feet. And you've been shot."
"It's not much more than a scratch. And speaking of scratches, you've got some nasty ones on your hands. If you got them on that rusty barbed wire on the fence, you should have a tetanus shot."
"Your 'scratch' is still bleeding."
"I keep knocking it into things."
"Like the ground, after a fifteen-foot fall?"
"I mostly fell on Moran."
"Looked more like he mostly fell on you."
"Into a lot of dead bracken. Pretty springy stuff; I expect we bounced."
"Or you wouldn't be alive and walking now. We want to make sure you keep doing that. You've heard of internal injuries? Delayed response?"
"Doctor, Sherlock."
"Sometimes," Sherlock said, darkly, "it's hard to tell."
"Sometimes," John said, with a hint of a smile, "it's hard to tell you're a sociopath—or someone who thinks he is, anyway."
"Even sociopaths look after their friends. They don't have so many they can afford to lose one. And in my case—"
But whatever he was going to say was cut off by the deafening roar of the helicopter landing twenty feet away.
"We should put Moran on that," John said. "The sooner he gets to a hospital the better."
"Fuck Moran," Sherlock said, enunciating the syllables with precision. He took John's good arm and, half-supporting him and half dragging him, pulled him across the field to the helicopter door, John protesting all the way.
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TBC. . . .