Doubting
When Lestrade woke up that morning he did not expect that in the space of a week he would doubt everything he ever knew and believed.
And it started with Donovan poking her head into his office, disturbing his breakfast. "Sir, there's been a break-in!"
"Not our division!"
Moriarty sat regally on the throne, mantle draped over his shoulders, scepter in one hand, crown on his brow, orb nestled between his thighs. He sat in the display case with the ease of a man who belonged, a work of art in himself.
He opened his dark brown, nearly colourless eyes and watched as police officers spilled into the room.
"No rush." Moriarty droned idly. We've got all day. I've been waiting for you.
And the worst part about it? Lestrade knew he was. He knew the odds, the police's reponse time. Moriarty could've taken the Crown Jewels and ran. He could've gotten away, easy. Lestrade knew that unholstering his gun and pointing it at Moriarty would be a useless gesture seeing as they were surrounded by officers with guns already primed and aimed. Didn't mean that he didn't want to. He shook his head. "Mister Moriarty, get out of the case, you are under arrest-..." And so forth.
Moriarty complied easily, almost docily obeying every order the police gave him with that condescending smirk that Sherlock often wore. It conveyed amusement at the expense of a lesser intellectual, the exasperated fondness of a cat watching a mouse attempt to chomp on a lion for dinner.
It set Lestrade on edge.
Moriarty caught Lestrade's eye and obnoxiously twiddled the fingers of his handcuffed hand in a subtle wave. 'Hi, remember me? I'm the boogeyman who haunts your nightmares!'
Lestrade narrowed his eyes and stared back bullheadedly until Donovan tapped his shoulder, forcing him to look away. "Sir, we've got Pentonville requesting all the backup it can get."
Lestrade nodded. "Get a few uniforms to bring Moriarty down to the Yard." Donovan gave a clipped, professional response of assent. Lestrade turned to the other officers charged with Moriarty's custody. "Keep him under tight surveilance at all times. He does not escape, understand? I don't want him to scratch his nose without you knowing it." He got nods and grunts from all his collegues. "Donovan, you're with me." And they mounted their car again.
They could hear the commotion at Pentonville all the way down the road. Donovan was prematurely leaping out of the car before it rolled to a complete halt. He was right on her heels.
Riot police was already lined up behind their wall of plexiglas shields, barricading the prisoners inside Pentonville, preventing anybody from going in or coming out.
"Who's in charge here?" Lestrade had to bellow over the noise. A passing officer decked out in body armour pointed him in the direction of a plain clothes detective poring over a blueprint spread on the bonnet of a car. A few other officers decked out in full riot gear were scattered around him.
Lestrade marched over. "Pardon, DI Lestrade, you said you wanted backup?"
The detective angled his large body slightly to accommodate their arrival but his eyes remained glued to the blueprints. "DI Bradstreet, you have any experience with riot control?" he asked, getting right down to business before he even spared them a look.
"No." Lestrade replied honestly. "But I do know a thing or two about tackling criminals."
DI Bradstreet grinned at him. "I can work with that."
Lestrade had just gotten off the phone with Mycroft when DI Bradstreet finally peeled himself away from his large group and approached him. "We're retaking the prison in just a minute." he said, then he looked at the phone in Lestrade's hand in slight distaste. "Couldn't it wait?"
Lestrade followed his gaze and pocketed his phone. "Not really." He shrugged helplessly. "No more distractions now." he promised.
DI Bradstreet nodded grimly. "Let's go, then."
The two of them stood back to let a few of their officers shoot tear gas and pepper spray into the prison as they pulled on gas masks. They exchanged glances and nodded firmly.
Then the police infiltrated the facility.
The first living civilian Lestrade came by was a female visitor who had hidden herself in the kitchens. She was terrified, half-crazed, and the thunder of the police's combat boots, gas masks, and armed guns did little to calm her.
Lestrade motioned for DI Bradstreet to continue on without him and he holstered his handgun and pulled his mask away from his face. He knelt at the woman's side. "Ma'am, are you alright? Are you unharmed?" he asked slowly to the woman, she seemed to be in shock.
When the woman did not look at him, he placed his palm on the side of her face, cupping her cheek, and gently but firmly turned her face toward his, forcing her to look into his eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked again, gentler this time.
A brief flash of uncertainty, then the woman nodded. "U-uh, huh. I think so."
He smiled as unthreateningly as possible. "That's great, that's good. Can you stand?" He held her steady as he pulled her to her feet.
"Sir!" Donovan called when her wave of officers reached them.
"Donovan, get this woman out of here!" Lestrade told her, easily moving the disorientated and pliable woman into Donovan's capable hands. He could hear his sergeant murmuring comforting things to her charge all they way until they were gone.
Lestrade joined the second wave of officers in Donovan's place as they caught up to DI Bradstreet's unit. They were busy shoving inmates back into cells, a few shots went off somewhere in the chaos.
A large, grizzly inmate lunged at Lestrade with a crudely formed knife and Lestrade swung his gun into a tight arc, pulling it up between him and the inmate. "Stand down and drop the weapon!" he shouted.
But the man didn't. Lestrade tightened his jaw, blew out a steadying breath, and squeezed the trigger.
Lestrade let out a heavy sigh as he stared a clock on the wall opposite himself. He was sitting on a hard plastic chair in the hospital. DI Bradstreet sat beside him a few empty chairs down, looking equally as exhausted, legs splayed out like the limbs of an inanimate puppet.
It was four in the morning and neither of the two DIs felt the urge to move a muscle.
The prison riot at Pentonville was under control, the whole thing lasted only about a day and a half. But emergency repairs and damage control had eaten up the last few days. People were still turning up dead or injured.
As if to demonstrate, a flurry of hospital staff flew by them with a stretcher in tow. Lestrade caught DI Bradstreet's deadened gaze for a second before looking away. They were tired, they lost much of both men and morale, DI Bradstreet looked half-asleep.
Then his phone buzzed with a text from Mycroft and DI Bradstreet opened his eyes a crack. "Do you never put that down?" he asked, voice gravelly from shouting and smoke inhalation.
Lestrade sighed, shaking his head. "'The jury found the defendant 'not guilty'." he read aloud as he texted back to Mycroft to ask how that had happened.
"Which defendant?" DI Bradstreet asked curiously.
"Jim Moriarty." Lestrade rolled his eyes. "The man who is responsible for-..." He splayed his hands open to gesture to their grim situation. "... this."
DI Bradstreet blinked. "Pentonville?" With all that had been going on, nobody could find time to sit down and read the newspapers anymore. It was the first time DI Bradstreet heard of the trial.
"And the Bank of England... and the Tower of London. Simultaneous assault to the security systems." Lestrade sighed and explained about Moriarty and his code.
DI Bradstreet took a moment to let his words sink in. He looked in shock. Lestrade knew the feeling. "Holy fuck. Is that even possible?"
Lestrade rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Apparently it is. People are calling it the 'crime of the century'."
"So..." DI Bradstreet frowned to himself. "We can lock those inmates up... but we can't necessarily keep them there? Theoretically speaking."
Lestrade didn't answer him, he had already considered that. What if Moriarty or one of his men used the code to open up Pentonville a second time? What about a different prison? The police were a force to be reckoned with but they wern't invincible. They had already lost two officers and three others were in hospital beds, the rest of them were on their last legs, surviving on bad coffee and energy bars.
For once, Lestrade was forced to doubt the strength and authority of the police force in the face of threats like Moriarty.
"Is there a way to fix this?" DI Bradstreet asked finally, face pale.
Lestrade waved his phone aloft. "That's what my friend is working on."
DI Bradstreet snorted. "Then, by all means, keep the phone."
Then, somebody called from across the room. "Detective Inspector, we need you over here!"
Both DIs sighed heavily out of habit, then glanced hopefully at each other, not wanting to get up. "They calling you, or me, mate?"
It was good to be back in his office, behind his desk, in a clean suit, and properly shaven. The moment he had returned from Pentonville, he had been thrust into the British Ambassador case with Sherlock and his paperwork was beginning to stack up again.
He sighed, cracked his knuckles, and braced himself for a long night.
"Sir." Lestrade froze, his pen inches from the first report he needed to write. He looked up to see Donovan and Anderson standing in his office doorway. "Can we talk to you for a moment?" Donovan was frowning and Anderson shifted nervously.
This did not bode well. Lestrade put his pen down and motioned them to enter. "What is it?"
Donovan coughed uncomfortably. "Well, Sir, we wanted to talk to you about the Freak-..."
Dimmock was struggling into his jacket when he decided to pop in and check up on Lestrade. He had heard about what happened in Pentonville and wanted to see Lestrade himself, make sure the man wasn't dozing and drooling on his paperwork. God knows he'd be exhausted after an ordeal like that.
Then he heard voices in Lestrade's office and could barely make out Donovan and Anderson's silhouettes. He paused.
"You're not seriously suggesting he's involved?" Lestrade's incredulous tone cut through the hushed murmurs.
"I think we have to... entertain the possibility." Anderson replied quietly. Lestrade stared at Anderson like he was contemplating punching him, or firing him... and then punching him, or something. Then he seemed to think better of it and rubbed his hand over his face.
Dimmock knocked on the office door and poked his head inside. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"
Donovan and Anderson whipped around like startled rabbits, probably thought he was Sherlock or something. "Um, no, we were just leaving." Donovan cleared her throat. Then she looked at her superior. "Think about what we said, Sir." Then she plucked pointedly at Anderson's sleeve and the two walked out.
"Come in, Dimmock, and close the door behind you." Lestrade sighed tiredly. Dimmock could already see new stress wrinkles growing on his face.
"What happened?" Dimmock asked concernedly. "Is something wrong?"
Lestrade stared at his desk for a long moment in silent, then he sighed and looked up at his long time friend. "Donovan and Anderson think Sherlock's a fraud." he stated bluntly. "It's a bunch of bullshit."
"Is this about the British Ambassador case I heard you closed today?" Dimmock asked. "Little girl had a panic attack when she saw Holmes, right?"
Lestrade nodded. "All Donovan and Anderson are bringing up are biased suspicions and weak circumstantial evidence." he spat.
"So?" Dimmock asked. "Nothing's going to stick for very long, so what's the problem?"
Lestrade raked his fingers through his hair with an angry sigh. "The problem is that Anderson, I can forgive for being an idiot. But Donovan is a good officer, someone who's judgement I can usually trust without a second thought. ...And now she's bringing up biased suspicions and weak circumstantial evidence. I know she's better than that!"
"Donovan and Anderson have it in for Holmes, everybody knows that." Dimmock sighed. "They hate him and they're going to do their best to discredit him in any way they can. They've been waiting for a situation like this like vultures. Did they suggest you talk about this to the people 'upstairs'?"
Lestrade sighed. "Yeah."
"Well, the people 'upstairs' are going to hear about Holmes whether it comes from you, or them. That's not going to change." Dimmock shook his head grimly.
"So you're saying I should be the one who brings the law down on Sherlock's head?" Lestrade drawled sarcastically.
"Would you trust Donovan and Anderson to inform the higher ups without bias?" Dimmock asked pointedly.
"Sherlock's not a criminal, and he's definitely not a killer!" Lestrade pinched the bridge of his nose hard. He would probably trust Donovan on any other day and ask her for her opinion on the matter.
"No, he's not. And we know that. Donovan and Anderson don't know that only because they don't want to. They desperately want him to be the bad guy and they're not going to think twice about making him look like it." Dimmock lowered his voice. "I think you should tell the higher ups yourself. Keep in control. Dictate what they know and what they don't. Buy yourself time to prove Sherlock's innocence and then you can tear Donovan and Anderson a new one when you're done."
Lestrade massaged his head. "I really can't handle this right now." he groaned.
"You're going to have to." Dimmock told him, sighing. "But it doesn't mean you have to handle it alone. Couldn't you ask Holmes's brother to help you? Hell, I'll help you!"
Lestrade stared thoughtfully at the surface of his desk. Then he nodded. "Alright. Dimmock, look for all the cold cases Sherlock's solved for us, will you? He couldn't very well be the mastermind behind those cases if he wasn't even born at the time."
Dimmock gave a mock-salute. "On it, boss." and he left, shrugging his jacket off again.
Lestrade smiled slightly as he watched him leave. It was good to have a friend he could trust in moments like this. He pulled out his phone.
Mycroft, I need help. -Lestrade
Nothing. Lestrade busied himself with his paperwork. Fifteen minutes later...
Mycroft, where are you? I really, really need your help. It's about Sherlock. Text back. -Lestrade
He went upstairs to talk to the Superintendant about Sherlock and walked back out half-an-hour later with Sherlock's arrest warrent in his pocket.
Mycroft, are you even there? Respond, please. It's urgent! -Lestrade
Sorry, Mister Holmes is unavailable right now. Can I take a message? -A
Lestrade tightened his jaw and exhaled through his nose. Nevermind. Tell him to contact me next time he's available. -Lestrade
"Hold on, just let me get my coat." he called to Donovan and Anderson as they marched away, eager to get on with the arrest. He pulled out his phone and selected the only person he knew that would respond to calls and texts like a normal person.
The call connected and Lestrade sucked in a breath. "John-..."
