Saturday the 19th of September
Seventeen weeks pregnant
Sherlock sat in his armchair in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal in his lap and some programme about God knows what on in front of him, resolutely ignoring the loud hum of reporters gathered around his door on the street below. He picked up his spoon and fed himself methodically, chewing each bite without tasting it.
When Sherlock finished eating he turned off the TV and was about to head back to bed to wait out the Press when his phone started to vibrate in his dressing gown pocket. He picked it up and read the time as nine thirty in the morning, and that John was calling him.
The Detective pressed accept and shut his bedroom door behind him. "Hello?"
John's voice answered back, "Hi Sherlock. I was wondering if you'd like it if I stopped round Baker Street?"
"Don't you have work today?" he replied.
"I never have a shift on Saturdays Sherlock. So, would you like it if I came by or would you rather be left alone?"
Sherlock didn't hesitate before answering. "I would like it if you came by. I take it you're about a five minute walk from Baker Street?"
"How did you... oh never mind. I'll be there then."
Before John hanged up Sherlock said, "There are a lot of reporters outside, so be quick getting in. I'll have Mrs Hudson stand near the door so you won't be waiting long to be let in."
"Okay, thanks for the warning. See you soon, goodbye."
Sherlock put the phone back into his pocket, left his room and went to the top of the stairs. He called down to Mrs Hudson to tell her to stand near the door for the next couple of minutes so John would face as little harassment as possible from the paparazzi, and then proceeded to get out a few large bowls from a cupboard in the kitchen. Next he got out all the food colouring he had and poured it into the bowls, along with some water.
The detective heard footsteps on the stairs, and then John stepped into the kitchen. "I didn't hear you opening the door," he said to his friend.
"The paparazzi would have covered the noise. God they can make a racket."
"Yes, indeed they can. Have you looked at social media?"
John sat down at the table. "Yes, yes I have. Have you?"
"Not yet." He'd managed to resist the temptation as of yet, both fearing and longing to know how the public had taken his announcement. "Is it bad?"
John sighed. "I won't lie to you, some of it is bad. Downright terrible, in fact. But you also have a lot of support, and people have praised you online for coming out in the way you did. A lot of people are now calling you a queer role model."
"A role model? Me?" Sherlock laughed. "I'm not sure how I feel about that. Rather contrasts with my reputation as a cold and unfeeling sociopath, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does. But I think it's a good thing. When you were young and trying to figure yourself out, wouldn't you have liked to know of a celebrity that was the same as you, or if not the same at least similar? Think of all the teenagers now who will now feel less alone when they are questioning their sexuality or gender identity. You are seen by the world as an incredibly intelligent person, which will not change now. Your reputation as a genius means that people will take you and your views seriously, which means you will have probably helped some people to become more accepting and less bigoted."
"Wow John, I never knew that you were such an orator." Sherlock quipped.
"Don't joke, I really mean it."
Sherlock didn't know whether to feel proud of helping people or overwhelmed at everyone now seeing him as a 'Queer Role Model' as John put it. "What sort of hate mail am I getting?"
John's expression fell slightly. "You've got the usual, like the anonymous trolls and the people just looking to get a reaction, but we knew we'd get them. I've disabled comments on my blog indefinitely for now, so I won't have to spend ages sifting through them. On places like twitter there have been some really nasty people spurting out all sorts of slurs and hate, but I've reported them so they should get taken down soon, or so I hope. Have you received any death threats?"
Sherlock supposed questions like that were not normal to most other people. "Not yet, but I assume I'll get one soon. The thing I'm most annoyed about is this bloody press who have been outside since six this morning. I think I'm going to stay in for the next few days until they leave."
"Won't you get bored?"
Sherlock sighed. "Probably. I'll just have to find something to entertain myself with, and I bought a lot of food before we went on the news so I won't have to go out for any necessities any time soon."
John smiled sadly. "Is there any way you can get them to leave?"
Sherlock gestured to the giant tubs of food dye and water sitting on his table. "I'm going to pour this on their heads in a moment. Would you like to join me?"
John looked like he was going to warn Sherlock off his plan for a minute, but then decided against it. "No thanks, I'm good. I look forward to watching it on YouTube though."
"Suit yourself." He replied.
"I'm afraid I've told Mary that I'll meet her at the new cafe on George street, so I can't stay. Will you be alright?" John asked.
"I'm always alright, John. You should know this by now." he stirred in another tablespoon of bright red dye into one of the bowls.
"Bye!" Sherlock called after him. He turned back to his microscope and tried desperately to ignore the jealousy that clouded his mind when he thought of his best friend and his wife.
Monday the 21st of September
17 weeks pregnant
Sherlock walked past a sergeant standing sentry outside the door of the first crime scene he'd been to in a week. It was in a showy upper-class house in the suburbs of London, not far from where John and Mary had moved to. The house was painted a rich blue, unlike the surrounding houses that had been left a plain white, stained in places by the unending barrage of rain that London receives for most of the year.
The inside of the house was painted much the same as the outside, with a mixture of elegant blue and white walls. The floor in the hallway Sherlock had stepped into was made of marble, and its immaculate rippling stonework continued up the stairs.
A crime scene officer, probably a new recruit, directed Sherlock up to the second floor, an instruction which he obeyed with a quick word of gratitude. Once he got to the top he turned left towards the sound of Donovan, Anderson and Lestrade exchanging theories about the case. Sherlock came up to the door of the room he could hear the two of them talking in, and politely knocked on the door and waited to be let in.
Lestrade opened the door to Sherlock, who promptly waltzed in. The room he entered into was undoubtably that of a teenage girl's, judging by the photos on the walls and the textbooks sitting on a white desk in the corner of the room. The body of a teenage girl was lying on the bed. Sherlock would have described her as looking peaceful, if it weren't for the excess of blood staining the sheets around her severed wrists. The girl must have only been about fourteen years old.
"Hello Sherlock." Donovan spoke.
"Hello Donovan." he picked up a pair of latex gloves from a box on the window sill and put them on. Next he walked straight over to the body gently lifted one of her wrists. He could feel the eyes of the detective sergeant and the forensics director burning a hole into the back of his head.
"Oh for the love of God, you both clearly want to say something or ask something about either my intersexuality or my pregnancy, probably both, so either do a better job of hiding your curiosity or go ahead and ask." Sherlock snapped.
Anderson stammered for a moment before saying, "Umm, well, when are you due?"
"February twenty-fifth. I'm currently about seventeen and a half weeks along. Any more?"
Donavon spoke up this time, "What makes you think you are the right person to be carrying the kid?"
"That should be a question for John and Mary, not for me. Who's the girl and who found the body?" he replaced her wrist and then picked up the other one with the same carefulness.
"Her name was Clara Mayborough. As for who found her, that would be a Madeleine Toussaint, the family's au pair girl from France. She came in at seven fifteen this morning when Clara didn't turn up for breakfast, and found her like this. Miss Toussaint checked for a pulse, but found her already stone cold to the touch. Then she immediately called 999 and got the police to come round. Terribly sad business this. Too many teenagers nowadays just can't see a way out." Lestrade answered him.
"Why are you here then, Lestrade? You're a Detective Chief Inspector now; surely a common teenage suicide is beneath your capabilities?"
Greg huffed in response to the sarcasm. "The girl's father is a member of parliament for the Tory party. Honestly, how do you not know this? Her father is in the news all the time."
"I delete most things in the news. Boring." He then lifted up the girl's shirt and briefly looked at her navel, before replacing the shirt again. After that he removed one of her earrings, and then held it up to the light.
"This isn't a suicide. It was the father."
Lestrade, Donovan, and Anderson gawked at him. "What? But her father is the one that requested for you to come! Why would he do that if he was the one that killed her? Not to mention the clearly cut wrists, the amount of blood and the angles of which are consistent with a suicide!"
"You are right in that the angles are consistent with a suicide, but the depths however are not. The cuts are both the same depth on both wrists, which is odd because in nearly all suicides by slitting you wrist the second wrist that is cut is cut more shallowly. This is because it is harder to cut ones wrist when there is blood spurting out of your arm. That is how I know it wasn't a suicide.
"Her earrings can tell you how her father managed to kill her. Oh Sherlock, what could her earrings possibly have to do with it? Well I'll tell you. If you compare the two earrings, you will see that one of them has been sharpened into a fine tip. Not sharp enough to be noticeable to the forensics department, but sharp enough to scratch the hole the earrings are put in and deliver a drug. Not a fatal dose, mind. If he killed her with the earring and then cut her wrists then there wouldn't be enough blood. He just gave her a drug to knock her out, one that will not show up on any tests you would normally run, but I bet it's some sort of exotic paralytic. It wouldn't be hard to get a hold of with all the money this family so clearly has.
"That gives you means, now onto the motive. This is where some personal knowledge is useful. One of my contacts recently told me that there was a group of MPs who had been investing in corporations overseas that deal with the human flesh. Sex traffickers, working on a fairly large scale. I alerted my brother immediately and he told me he's put some MI6 guys on it along with Interpol. If this MPs daughter found out and threatened to expose him, then that would send him to prison and certainly end his career.
"Now finally, the opportunity. That's easy, they live together in the same house. He sharpens the earring when she's out with friends, dips it in the poison, and leaves it there in her jewellery box back where she left it. She puts it on, and then that same evening he comes into her bedroom and cuts her wrists. He would have calculated how long it would take the poison to work and then act accordingly. This means that her cause of death would be blood loss, and the correct amount of blood proves it.
"Calling me, that was just him being too cocky. It's an elaborate plan, and I'll admit, a slightly clever one, so he thought I wouldn't guess. It would also make him seem more innocent if you found out it was murder, if he was the one who asked for me.
"I suggest you arrest the man under suspicion of murder, and then leave my brother's people to charge him with the sex trafficking. Make sure to test all of her jewellery for poison, along with her fingertips, and of course, her blood. Next time you call me, make it interesting."
With that, Sherlock peeled off his gloves and left the room.