Disclaimer – I don't own the characters. They belong to ACD, MG and SM and the BBC. No one pays me to do this, I do it for love.
Chapter Twenty Five
Sherlock was up early the next morning, showered, shaved and dressed, after a night of little sleep. Even if he could have found respite in the arms of Morpheus, Molly's restlessness would have roused him repeatedly. As it was, he lay awake most of the night, holding her in his arms, soothing her when she became agitated, trying to calm her fears. But her dreams where full of nightmare visions of slamming doors and panicked running – never reaching a destination – so she tossed and turned, muttered and cried out, frequently, despite his best efforts.
The rosy fingers of dawn found them both wide awake, she with sore red eyes and he with dark shadows under his. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand and trying to find the words that would ease her terror and alarm at the prospect of what the next few hours could bring. The sound of his phone ringing out startled them both. He slipped his hand into his inside pocket and took it out.
'Mycroft,' he said, simply, then pressed 'Answer'.
'Good morning, brother,' he opened.
'Yes, I believe it is, Sherlock,' Mycroft replied. 'I've spoken to my counterpart in the Brazilian Government and the news is good. He has all the documentation regarding the purpose of your previous visit and the various sanctions for your activities. Copies have been delivered to the British Consulate.'
The idea of Mycroft having a counterpart in any government was a disconcerting thought and one Sherlock had never really considered before. It called up an image of an army of Mycrofts, scattered around the world, carrying out their clandestine duties, running absolutely everything, everywhere. He snapped his attention back to the conversation.
'So, what does that mean, in practical terms?'
'It means that you can go there today, speak with whomever and tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Give full and frank answers to their questions, don't volunteer any information unsolicited and if there are any questions for which you do not have an answer, just say 'I don't know.' Do not speculate or deduce or surmise, brother dear, do you understand?'
Sherlock gritted his teeth. This resurgence of the 'father figure' Mycroft – he knew – was only because his big brother was concerned for him but it still made him feel like he was back in Remove and had just been summoned to the House Master's study.
'No, Mycroft, I won't. And thank you for reminding me.'
There was a slight pause on the other end of the line and then he heard,
'I apologise, Sherlock. Old habits die hard. Keep your phone on and please call me as soon as you have finished speaking to them – so that I know you are safe,' he added, his voice softening.
'I will. And please, don't worry. I'll be fine.'
Mycroft gave a wry laugh.
'That, dear brother, is what you always say.'
Sherlock ended the call and turned to Molly with a reassuring smile.
'Mycroft has fixed everything!' he said, brightly.
'Then why did you tell him not to worry?' Molly retorted.
Sherlock pursed his lips and leant forward to gather her into his arms.
'He's a born worrier. If he had nothing to worry about, he'd be worried. So don't you worry, OK?'
'You might as well tell me not to breathe,' she replied, getting teary again.
'Are you sure you're not pregnant already?' he asked, pulling back to look into her eyes.
She wrinkled her brow and replied,
'I don't think so….'
He smiled and kissed her forehead.
'I'm going to get some breakfast,' he announced, standing up and straightening his jacket.
'Come and say goodbye, before you leave,' she insisted and he nodded, as he left the room.
Caro and Henrique were in the dining room, tucking into pancakes, bacon and Maple syrup. Sherlock greeted them, as he helped himself to a cup of strong, black coffee, adding two sugars and taking a large slurp.
'Good morning, Sherlock,' Henrique responded. 'This is a very bad business. I hope you can put it to bed, today, yes?'
Sherlock agreed, then told him and his wife about Mycroft's phone call. Caro looked somewhat relieved.
'Well, they can have no grounds to arrest you. You were here on official business and you acted in self-defence. Case closed!' she declared, emphatically, causing both men to laugh.
'My wife has spoken, that is the end of it!' joked Henrique, with obvious affection.
'I'd like to believe it's that straight forward but if Mycroft asked you to ring him as soon as the police have done with you, that leads me to believe that perhaps it's not all cut and dried,' Caro added, as a note of caution.
'Well, we shall see.' Sherlock replied.
He was thinking more about the puzzle of who was behind all this than he was about his impending police interview. He needed to speak to all the suspects, individually, so that he could get a feel for who they really were and what their motivations might be. That was his principle goal.
Before he left, as promised, he returned to the bedrooms, to look in on the boys – who were both still sleeping – and to kiss Molly goodbye. She had been crying again, he could see.
'Please, Molly, try not to worry. I will be fine, trust me,' he pleaded.
'I do trust you but I know what you're like when you have your detective head on. Everything else goes out of the window. You must concentrate on the police interview, first. Get that over with. Then you can switch the blood hound back on. Promise me you will do that?'
He crossed his heart and then kissed her, pressing his lips to hers and tasting the dried salt tears.
'I love you,' he whispered, 'and we have a baby to make in two days' time and we can't do that if I'm in gaol. So I will concentrate, believe me.'
He kissed her again, to seal the promise, then left.
ooOoo
On arrival at the Consulate General, which occupied the entire second floor of an office building on Praia do Flamengo, which looked, from the outside, like any other office building had it not been for the Union Jack flying from a flag pole, beside one of the second floor windows. and the presence of British security personnel, in the foyer, when they stepped from the lift.
Both Caro and Sherlock were required to show their passports, in order to gain entrance to the Inner Sanctum but, once inside, they were treated with the utmost courtesy and shown to a very comfortable sitting room, to wait for the Consul to appear. There, they were served with coffee and left alone.
Sherlock stood by the window, sipping his coffee and watching the traffic on the busy freeway, Avenida Infante de Henrique, that ran parallel to Praia do Flamengo, and gazing at the ocean, beyond. But, in truth, his mind was elsewhere – puzzling, scanning, deducing. Such was his distraction that he did not hear the British Consul General enter the room and was completely unaware of the man's presence until Caro touched his arm. Having not responded to his name being called, twice, she had crossed the room to get his attention.
He looked down at her, initially, through empty eyes, then suddenly re-inhabited them and was back in the room.
'Sherlock, this is Mr Jolyon Marsden, the British Consul General, here in Rio.' Caro introduced them and the two men shook hands and sat down, on opposite sofas, facing one another over a coffee table.
'The interview with the police will take place in this room, Mr Holmes, in the presence of myself and our senior legal advisor, Miss Josephine Mulligan, who will be joining us, shortly. Miss Mulligan is familiar with the circumstances of this interview and she has read all the documentation in relations to your previous activities in Brazil – in fact, she is reading them now, which is why she has not joined us yet. If there are any questions she feels are unrelated or leading, she will advise you appropriately. If there are any questions you don't understand, she will explain them to you. Is this satisfactory?' Jolyon Marsden concluded, with a questioning look.
Sherlock considered for a moment and replied,
'Perfectly, thank you.'
Marsden smiled, ingratiatingly, and turned to Caro, sitting beside Sherlock, and engaged her in polite small talk, whilst Sherlock rested his elbow on the arm of the sofa and rubbed his bottom lip with one finger, his mind wandering back to its former location. When Miss Mulligan arrived, she greeted him with a smile and handshake and sat down beside the Consul.
'You were very busy on your last visit to South America, Mr Holmes. I hope your current sojourn is more restful,' she commented, with a broad smile, which he interpreted as being a little smug and self-satisfied.
'Not really,' he replied and left it at that.
The barrister tried again.
'Have you managed to fit in any sight-seeing, between cracking baby trafficking rings and being accused of murder?'
Sherlock fixed her with a withering stare and did not bother to speak at all. This did not bode well, he thought, and certainly did nothing for his confidence in this meeting being a mere formality. He sincerely hoped this woman was better at her job than she was at social intercourse. He was slightly heartened by this thought, since he was aware that he fitted into that category himself.
'Mr Holmes is here with his family, Miss Mulligan, and has been promoting and fundraising for the Children's Centre, which he founded, using his mother's bequest. So, yes, he has been fully occupied during his visit,' Caro filled in.
'Oh, you have children!' Miss Mulligan gushed. 'I do so love children – but I couldn't eat a whole one!' she brayed, followed by a loud, shrill laugh that grated, sorely, on Sherlock's nerves. 'What make are they?'
Sherlock gave a deep sigh of resignation and replied,
'They are both boys.'
'Oh, boys! And do they take after their daddy?' she chortled.
He was rescued from this excruciating conversation by the arrival of the Federal Police. He thought he had never been more relieved to see anyone in his entire life before – though he knew this was a gross misrepresentation of the truth. Introductions were made and the protagonists moved to the table, at the other end of the room, arranging themselves on opposite sides. The police had brought with them a double cassette recorder, to tape the interview, and a stenographer, to take minutes. Caro stayed on the sofa, to observe proceedings from afar.
ooOoo
Back at Caro and Henrique's home, Molly and the boys were having a late breakfast. After Sherlock left with Caro, Molly had made a real effort to contain her emotions, for the sake of the boys but it was impossible to put to the back of her mind what might be happening at the British Consulate General. Every time her thoughts strayed in that direction, her stomach turned over and her heart leapt into her throat. William, who had been told that his father had gone to an important meeting today, was not slow to spot her discomfiture.
'Mummy, is Daddy alright? What is his meeting about?'
Molly brushed William's cheek with the backs of her fingers.
'He just has to answer some questions about the last time he was here, darling. But I'm sure he is alright.'
She wished she felt the confidence her words implied.
'Is that why we had to come here, to stay at Auntie Caro's?'
The titles of honorary auntie and uncle had been conferred upon Caro and Henrique to make it easier for the boys to relate to them. It made them part of the family and, therefore, safe people to be around. This was important for William – not so much for Freddie.
'Yes, sort of, darling,' Molly replied.
She could not lie to William, even if she could not tell him the whole truth. He was too smart not to know if she wasn't being honest. And he knew she was keeping something from him but lacked the vocabulary to voice his concerns. Instead, he started to recite his Periodic Table, silently, in his mind. He went to his Mind Ship and stood on the quarter deck, in front of the wheelhouse, facing the three masts and rigging the sails with the various groups of elements.
Beginning with the Alkali metals – Lithium, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium, Caesium, Francium – he added sails to each mast in turn, then the Alkaline earth metals – Beryllium, Magnesium, Calcium, Strontium, Barium, Radium - and so on, and so on, all the way to the Noble gases – Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon, until all three masts were rigged and the ship was in full sail.
Molly knew he was stress busting. She wished she had a technique to do that, too. She made a mental note to ask Sherlock to devise a system for her to use. Being with him seemed to come with more than its fair share of stress so it was something that she needed him to do.
She glanced across at Freddie, munching away on his toast soldiers. Nothing seemed to faze him. Her boys were so different from each other. She hoped that this would help them to remain friends, as they grew up. She often felt that it was the similarities between Sherlock and Mycroft that came between them, far more than their differences.
Following breakfast, Molly got the boys ready and took them to the pool, where they spent a calm, relaxed morning, enjoying the water and the sunshine. William noted the change in his brother in the pool environment.
'Freddie likes the swimming pool, doesn't he, Mummy,' he declared. 'He goes quiet and just smiles. Do you think he could be a merman?'
Molly had to smile, despite her state of tension.
'Maybe. We'll have to wait and see if his legs turn into a fish tail. Would you like a merman for a brother?'
William put his head on one side and replied, thoughtfully,
'As long as he is happy being a merman, it doesn't really matter what I think. But I would be happy if he was happy. He's my brother and I love him – even though he is really noisy sometimes. He would be much quieter if he was a merman all the time.'
'Mermen and mermaids turn into humans, when they come out of the water. Their fish tails turn into legs,' Molly explained.
'Well, he would be quiet some of the time. That will have to do,' the five year old philosopher concluded.
As the morning wore on with still no word from Sherlock, Molly told herself that no news was good news. If Sherlock was telling them all about his time in Brazil, it probably would take a long time. That was logical.
Lunch time came around and she brought the boys to the dining room, to be served by the lovely staff, who were always so kind to her and her family and encouraged William with his Portuguese. He was getting really good at understanding, now, and his vocabulary was growing every day. Molly was quite convinced that he would probably be fluent by the time they went home – provided that was in six weeks, rather than in the next few days, and with Sherlock, rather than without him. She shut off that train of thought. That was too awful to contemplate.
After lunch, Molly took a blanket and spread it on the ground, next to the Jungle Gym, so that Freddie could have a nap while William played on the climbing frame. She sat on the blanket, next to the sleeping toddler, and kept one eye on her other son but her gaze kept straying back to the house, hoping to see Sherlock striding across the lawn and hoping not to see Caro, advancing alone to give her the bad news.
She kept checking her mobile, to make sure she hadn't missed a call, to make sure she had a signal. The mobile network coverage was strange here. It could go from five bars to 'No Signal' without the phone moving an inch in any direction. It was as though the signal was blown off course by the wind. She tried to read a magazine but kept reading the same passage over and over, without even noticing. The waiting was nerve-shredding and unrelenting. The minutes crawled by.
It was William who was first to notice. From his vantage point, in the crow's nest, he could see everything, as far as the trees, the hill and the house permitted. And he had been watching the French windows of the Afternoon Drawing Room for the best part of an hour – barely even blinking – for a glimpse of his father, returning from his 'questions'. His vigilance was, at last, rewarded when he saw a familiar figure emerge through the open doors.
'Mummy!' he shouted. 'It's Daddy! He's back!'
Molly scrambled to her feet but resisted the urge to run across the grass and throw herself into his arms, mainly because she was shaking so badly she did not trust her ability to move without falling down. William, however, had no such qualms. He slithered down the climbing frame, like a fish down a waterfall, and raced toward the advancing figure of his father, who stopped, dropt on one knee and opened his arms, as the little boy closed the gap between them.
'Daddy!' shrieked the child, and hurled himself into those waiting arms.
Sherlock caught his son, mid-flight, and swung him around, rising to his feet in the process, and laughing in delight.
'Whoa, William! What's the occasion?'
'I've missed you, Daddy,' the child replied, hugging his father's neck.
'I haven't been away that long,' he chided, affectionately.
'Mummy's missed you, too. She's been really sad,' William added.
Sherlock hugged him close, as he turned and looked across the lawn at the figure of Molly, standing next to the climbing frame. She looked so small and fragile, his heart lurched, and he resumed his long-striding progress across the expanse of grass, transferring his son to the crook of his arm, so he could move more freely.
As he approached the edge of the blanket, Molly stepped forward and all but crashed into him, grabbing his jacket with both hands, just needing to hold onto him and not let go. He pulled her against his body, with one arm, and pressed his lips to the top of her head.
'It's fine, Molly, it's fine. I'm fine. It's all fine,' he repeated, over and over, into her hair, as all three clung together and Freddie slept on, blissfully unaware of it all.
ooOoo