Chapter 26

All Fall Down

"He didn't get away, did he?" asked John, looking around as if expecting the man to come back into the room.

Lestrade smiled grimly. "Yes and no. An hour or two later, the news came through that a man had thrown himself over into the nearby quarry."

"Deep Dene", said Sherlock. "We used to climb it together, before everything went wrong. He had all the hallmarks of being a wonderful Uncle, Avery, apart from being a monster. Long way down. Pretty efficient way of doing the job."

He felt John tense again, and had the sudden urge to apologise, but settled on leaning in slightly to the one armed hug instead. He glanced up at Lestrade – the man was hunched forward in his chair, elbows on knees, playing with his fingernails. Sherlock cleared his throat, and he gave a little start, then continued speaking, looking into the distance.

"He'd left a note. Avery Holmes. In his pocket, apologising for what he'd done, saying he knew it was unforgiveable, etc etc. The unexpected thing was, he confessed everything else, but said he hadn't had anything to do with the disappearance. He said he was as frightened for his nephew as anyone else. So Avery's belief was he'd run away, on his own. He begged us to find Will, and keep him safe."

"He cared about me. How touching," spat Sherlock.

"Of course, we then had the issue of all the other photographs in the shed. We'd started out with a missing child, and ended up with a paedophile ring. A lot of the photos in Avery's books were Polaroids, so there had to be some sharing of information. We also had to wonder if one of his friends had had some involvement in Will's disappearance. Either way, it didn't make us less worried.

"Then, of course, we had to keep things quiet. We didn't want to spook any of the other bastards in the ring, so press coverage was completely suppressed. Actually, as things turned out, one of the children in the photographs was recognisable as another missing person, and gave us an in. Bit of a dominoes effect from there - the ring was broken up about seven months later. You'd have heard a bit about it in the news, but the evidence trickled out so slowly, it never made one big splash, as even the gutter press had the decency or self preservation not to mess up the investigations while they were still potentially ongoing, and some of the kids were older and giving evidence – they were protected.

"The long and the short of it was, the publicity surrounding Will Holmes' disappearance petered out. Most of the guys on the case tended to think the poor kid was dead, but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was still alive out there somewhere. I'd talked a lot with Mycroft, see, and he obviously completely believed in him still being alive and in hiding, and when you deal with one Holmes brother, anything seems possible. OK, so a normal ten year old couldn't run away and look after himself for any length of time, but Mycroft was so far removed from normal – I just was sure Will would be the same. And then, there was another issue, that Mycroft was clearly gutted, absolutely beside himself about. Will had written to him some time before; in hindsight, he was clearly asking in a roundabout way if the abuse he was suffering was normal." Lestrade swallowed, clearly wincing at the memory. "The poor little sod thought Will was asking him about puberty; wet dreams, masturbation and so on. He wrote back, reassuring him that it was all totally normal, and nothing to worry about."

"Oh, God. Poor Mycroft", groaned John, glancing towards Sherlock, and taking in the set jaw. He squeezed again, not following out loud with the obvious "Poor Sherlock".

Lestrade nodded. "He could never get it out of his head; felt responsible I suppose. That was one of the things that helped me believe Will could still be alive – he'd trust nobody after that; he'd have extra incentive for staying hidden. The other thing, that I forgot to mention, was that Will's fingerprints showed up on the albums in the shed."

John turned to Sherlock in surprise. The dark head nodded, once.

"I followed him. When I still lived there. He always looked shifty when he talked about his allotment. I broke in one day and found the albums – that's when I realised I had to run for it."

"Jesus."

"Stupid, really. If I'd actually thought about it rationally without getting it all entangled in an emotional mire, I could have stopped it there and then, and spared several other children from ongoing maltreatment."

"Oh, come off it, Sherlock. It started when you were nine. You just didn't have the life experience to know quite how horrendously criminal it all was, and you were nowhere near fully developed emotionally," snorted John. Sherlock just shrugged, thinking that many people would still make that claim about him today, then motioned for Lestrade to keep speaking. The man nodded.

"Just for the record, I agree with John. Anyway, the case stayed officially open of course, and I asked to stay assigned to it. Reminders still went out periodically to local forces and social services. Mycroft thought his brother would try to hide in the country rather than the town, if anywhere, and that it was unlikely he'd have headed too far North, as he'd know how cold it could get. Areas that were too touristy seemed out too, so we had narrowed the possibilities down quite a bit, and had contacted the local forces in person where we thought a location looked likely. Mycroft spent every weekend visiting rural districts that he thought seemed a good bet. We never gave up, but we never got anywhere either. Will had just vanished, and I really was finally starting to question whether we'd ever find him."

"You wouldn't have, if I'd stayed healthy," muttered Sherlock.

"Probably," agreed Lestrade. "But there was always a high chance that a small child faring for himself in the open countryside was going to get ill. Will stayed inconspicuous for thirteen months…"

"Thirteen months?" John cut in in astonishment. "You were gone for thirteen months when you were ten? God, no wonder Mycroft's so overprotective. How did you manage it? You had to have had help, surely?"

"I was hardly going to trust anyone enough to go running to them for help after Avery's little performance, was I?" snapped Sherlock caustically. "I couldn't even convince myself that I wouldn't be handed straight back to him. Mycroft's blunder with that letter had me convinced it was unwise to trust anybody. I looked after myself."

"But you were ten!"

"Eleven, by the end of it, John."

"How did you survive on your own?"

"He set up camp," said Lestrade, with a strange look on his face; sad, but with awe clearly discernible. "Took just enough survival kit, chose a godforsaken isolated farm and an abandoned shed that he deduced nobody ever bothered to go into, set up a tent, table, food storage, even a bloody homemade shower. Just over four miles from the nearest town, he survived mostly on leftovers from the supermarket bins. And, get this, he continued educating himself – joined the local library, took out books on everything he'd expect to do in school and beyond, and by all accounts, had himself up beyond GCSE level by the time we found him, not to mention the martial arts books."

There was no mistaking the raw admiration on Lestrade's face now, and Sherlock was suddenly embarrassed.

"I didn't want to be at a disadvantage as an adult, that's all. Perfectly logical," he muttered, blushing slightly, then noisily blowing his nose to conceal it.

"You are extraordinary. Completely extraordinary", stated John, shaking his head. The detective was just well enough to visibly preen at the praise, although he attempted to conceal his pleasure.

"Staying alive is hardly extraordinary, John. It's just maintaining the status quo."

"Nope, sorry mate. Got to agree. Extraordinary it is," asserted Lestrade. "And, as you said, we only found you because you got ill." He turned to John. "He used to chat to the librarian. She assumed at first he was just a bit… not exactly neglected, just a bit overlooked and lonely. He spun his stories very carefully, see. Most of the time. But she liked him, and when he started coming in looking thin and ill, she started worrying. He made a few little mistakes too; guess he's only human, and he was young. Once, he told her it was his birthday, and he'd forgotten he'd given a false date of birth. She wouldn't have worried normally, but he'd not been looking well, and she'd noticed he only seemed to have two sets of clothes.

"She worried about it for a while, then she bit the bullet, and asked social services to check out little David, as he called himself. That's when they realised that he'd given a false address too.

"Pretty poor social services department up there – they should have been all over this straight away, but they seemed to believe that maybe the kid's parents just didn't want him using the library, as there were a lot of farming families up there who thought education was a bit of a waste of time, and they put it as a low priority."

"What?" interjected John, appalled. "Social services are twitchy nowadays if I find a single small bruise on an under-one. What did they think they were doing?"

"God knows", answered Lestrade. "The social worker in question got pretty slammed afterwards. I mean, it was the normal story of over-work and under-resourcing, but this one took a special level of incompetent laziness. You can see how cases like Baby P and Victoria Climbie can happen when the system breaks down. Just as well that Mrs Elis was an ingenious woman. She had enough common sense to realise this kid didn't have the local accent, so wouldn't fit in with the farmer's kid theory, and started to wonder if he could be a runaway. So she decided not to wait for social services to get around to doing something, looked at when he'd joined the library, and started to go through microfiches of the Daily Mail from that time back, thinking that they'd be the sort of paper most likely to lap up the missing kid stories. And, of course, she found him."

"An impressive piece of research. I always thought she was an excellent librarian. She works for the Bodleian now", conceded Sherlock drily.

"He'd changed his appearance quite a lot, but she still recognised him. She contacted the numbers from the papers at the time, and got directed to me. I was up there like a shot to interview her, and I took one of Will's school exercise books with me, to compare with the handwriting on the library card. It was the same. I let my superiors know, and, to be fair, they were pretty on the ball with it this time. Mrs Elis said that Will usually came in on a Saturday. This was Friday, so we thought it was best just to wait for him to show. We didn't want to spook him, so we waited nearby with Mrs Elis ready to phone us when he turned up, rather than have the police waiting right outside.

"Unfortunately, they got a bit excited in the local station, and attended the scene themselves, even though they called us to let us know they were en route. Will, being sharp as a needle, spotted the uniforms, and escaped through the bathroom window.

"By this time, it was over my head, and the bosses were getting together a formal search, but me and Mrs Elis were worried that it was all taking too long. He obviously wasn't well, see, when he came in. Thin, sweaty, breathless, pale – bit like right now really, but worse. And he'd obviously fallen from the first floor bathroom window and hurt himself – there was quite a bit of blood on the floor. I mean, up until now, it seemed that not following procedure had been a recurrent problem, but now, it seemed we'd gone the other way round. We'd hung around for over two hours making phone calls and arrangements, and still nothing was actually being done.

"Then Mrs Elis mentioned an idea that seemed totally barmy at first mention, but might just work. Her cousin looked after the beagles for a posh public school from near the border, and one of the dogs was apparently a bit famous for his tracking. I was a bit dubious, but Mrs Elis suggested we give old Tobi a chance to follow Will's scent. Her cousin came rattling along in an ancient Land Rover within an hour and a half, and this manic dog came leaping up, running in circles and chasing its own tail. We took him out to the courtyard round the back of the library, and he was off like a shot! At first, we could hardly keep up with him, and it was just as well I had Mrs Elis with me, as he only understood instructions in Welsh. Every now and again, he'd slow up, run around howling, then he'd pick up the scent and be off again.

"We were off up the side of a bloody mountain, and I was beginning to think the mutt was on the wrong track, so to speak, when we found a patch of mud with hand and knee prints in it. Small – a kid's. He'd obviously fallen and got back up again.

"From then on, we could quite often just follow the footprints themselves, and almost didn't need Tobi, although he obviously made it quicker. I was getting worried, as the tracks were obviously weaving all over the place, and he kept falling over. At one spot, we found a notebook with his handwriting, a few pens, textbooks, half empty water bottle, other bits and bobs – he must've emptied out his rucksack.

"We were seriously worried about his health by now, but the mobile phone brick-thing they'd given me had no signal, even for a 999 call, so I couldn't contact anyone.

"Eventually, we got to this run down, isolated farm, and I dived in to ask if I could use their phone for back up. The farmer was helpful enough, and mentioned he thought he'd seen a kid hanging about the place now we mentioned it, and a few bits of scrap had gone missing from his old barn, but he hadn't really thought much of it.

"With medical back up on its way, we followed Tobi up to this little shed. The farmer said he hadn't used it in years.

"Behind the shed, out of sight, the brambles and bracken were all trampled down. I pushed open the door, and there was a tent in there, and I could just make out the outline of a child lying down inside. I took a step in, and the smell was suddenly terrible…"

"Yes, thank you for that detail," interrupted Sherlock, sourly.

"Sorry, mate. I don't mean it was dirty – it was remarkably clean in fact. Just that you were obviously ill…"

"Thank you. I don't think that detail is entirely necessary to the narrative, do you?"

"Okay, okay. Anyway, I went in, and there was this poor little kid, face covered in blood and…never mind… thin, pale, burning up with fever, and barely conscious. I tried to wake him, but he only moaned and shivered. His breathing was all wrong, too fast, really laboured. I remember when Jenny got that bronchiolitis thing as a baby; it was like that, but much worse. I felt his pulse, and it was racing and thready.

"I panicked a bit, scooped him up, and raced down the hill towards the farm, the farmer running ahead to hurry up the ambulance. He weighed next to nothing - I almost thought we'd got the wrong kid at first, as I knew Will was eleven, and I wouldn't have put this poor little scrap as much older than seven or eight, but he's got a distinctive face. He woke up a bit when he was moved, started whimpering, grabbing onto my shirt with these skinny, hot little hands. I just held onto him until the ambulance arrived. As they were loading him onto the stretcher, I quickly phoned Mycroft, told them we'd found him – as soon as he'd turned eighteen, he'd applied for legal guardianship status in the absence of his Dad, and with his Mum still only just recovering, and it'd just finished going through.

"I sat with him in the ambulance, and as they took him through A&E. He had a really nasty pneumonia with a what-d'ya-call it – pus in the lung - an empyema, that's it, on top of the head injury from the fall, and they had to get antibiotics and fluids into him urgently in A&E, then get him to theatre to drain the pus out of his chest. He was due to go to intensive care, but he settled down a lot, and they just filled him with sedatives and brought him back to the ward. I sat with him afterwards, and would you believe it, the first thing he did when he woke up was start deducing me!"

He beamed at Sherlock, who gave a small smile back in response. Then his face darkened again.

"He obviously wasn't sure if we knew who he was. He told me his name was David - I was going to fill him in with the details when he was properly awake, but it was just bad luck that he asked to go out to the toilet, and he must have heard one of the nurses calling out that Will Holmes' guardian was outside, and he thought it must have been Avery." He paused for a minute. This next memory was obviously upsetting to him. "He ran. The poor little bugger ran, with a chest drain in, blue around the lips and still sick as a dog, onto the fire escape. I ran after him; I was calling out to him, trying to explain, but I think he was too frightened to hear me." He shuddered.

"What happened next was awful. A nurse came out of door on the fire escape below him, and he was trapped. If only they hadn't've been there, we could have caught up with him easily enough, but he was obviously completely petrified. He climbed over the hand rail, and jumped from two floors up."

A silence fell.

"I haven't consciously made a decision to keep jumping off hospital buildings, you know," intoned Sherlock, in a doomed attempt to lighten the mood. John's forehead was deeply furrowed, and Lestrade was obviously caught in a very upsetting memory. After a minute, the policeman began to speak again.

"There was an awful crack, like a gunshot, as he hit the ground – he'd broken his left leg. Thankfully, he managed to avoid killing himself - I mean, thank god really, what with the drain, or possibly bashing his head again. I legged it after him down the stairs. The next moment was one of the worst things I've ever seen in my whole career. He started trying to drag himself away, broken leg and all, and he was screaming in terror. I've never seen anything like it; he was completely beside himself, eyes standing half out of his head, fixed on the staircase, just staring, absolutely out of it, screaming 'no no no' – God, it was awful. I tried to calm him down, held him in my arms, and he still tried to drag himself away, still screaming. I say it again, I've never seen fear like that."

"Not one of my finest moments. In my defence, I was probably hypoxic, and had rather a lot of drugs in my system."

"You don't need a defence, Sherlock", said Lestrade, gently. "You were a little boy who'd undergone horrific experiences, and it must have been like waking up into a nightmare."

"It was," came the quiet confession. For a moment, Sherlock was back there, hunched on the ground, peripherally aware of the points of excruciating pain around his body, yet consumed with the overarching fear that Avery was about to come down those stairs, and he instinctively curled into himself, never more grateful for the anchoring hand of John on his shoulder.

"What happened then?" croaked John, as the silence dragged on. Lestrade seemed to recall himself again, and he continued.

"Mycroft came down the stairs. And Sherlock's Mum."

-oOo-

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