A Cold Case Chapter 4
A mother understands what a child does not say
(Jewish Proverb)
"So - what did that piece of fruit do to upset you?"
John Watson, standing in the doorway, grinning at him across the pavement, laughter bubbling in his voice. Hands on hips, grinning, the child resting in a sling hanging on his chest. Both of them looking at him.
"Death threat."
A distracted mutter; still glaring at the smashed apple in the gutter. He had not meant to reply with such honesty, but both the threat carved into the apple and then the presence of John Watson had taken him unawares.
"Seriously?" Something that sounded like a giggle was stifled. "A bit Monty Python, don't you think?"
"What?"
"Classic comedy. Cult TV show…oh, never mind."
They both shook their heads, one at what he saw, one at what he had seen.
"Death threat?" Watson echoed, prompting a reply.
"Yes." He was terse, unsettled, reluctant to explain. But now he had been stupid enough to be honest with his reaction, a straightforward reply should be less fraught, less open to hostility, scorn, interrogation; possibly. "The letters I.O.U were carved into the apple. Moriarty did that. After the court case….."
He stuttered to a stop, realised John Watson had never seen that apple; that he had never told him about that apple. And that as he had just stamped so viciously on the new, yet identical, apple, he had destroyed his own evidence.
I always get something wrong…..
"An apple? As a threat? As evidence? Evidence of what?" he watched John Watson frown, try to understand and fail. Observe him with a rare intensity, aware he was missing something, uncertain as to what, how seriously to take what to him seemed absurd. Watched him switch from amused to severe, to disillusioned. And ask, with a tired sort of severity:
"What have you taken?"
"Nothing!" The protest sounded, even to his own ears, a pathetic wail of disappointment and regret. "Why do you never believe me?"
"Experience," was the instant reply.
Too which there was no answer. And in any case, Sherlock Holmes now found himself too disappointed at that reaction, too deflated, to respond. After all, what could he say? That would be believed?
John Watson looked again at that suddenly shrunken soul, the stooped and burdened shoulders, took a deep breath, lifted his daughter out of the harness on his chest, and held her out to Mrs Hudson.
"Mrs Hudson, do you mind taking Rosie for a moment or two? I need a word with Sherlock. In private."
His words sounded ominous; his expression was grim.
For once she did not argue, just stripped off the pink rubber gloves and put them in her pocket, took the child from him automatically. Smiling in reassurance, and not only for the little girl.
"Come to Nana, Rosie. We'll go and find something nice for you, shall we?" Two steps along the hall she turned back.
"Bring the bucket and cleaning things inside, please, Sherlock. Thank you." She threw him a smile back over her shoulder, which faded as she faced the doctor, pausing deliberately too close as she passed him to get to her own flat.
"There's nothing wrong with him time and peace won't cure," she said, face close to John Watson's, and it was almost a whisper, almost a hope that Sherlock Holmes could not hear. "And a bit of trust would help."
Not censure in front of the child. Not quite. But she had made her disapproval plain as she took the child into 221A, closed her door behind them.
Sherlock Holmes, mind clearly elsewhere, brought the bucket and cleaning box inside, put them neatly at the bottom of the stairs, closed the front door and went up to his flat without turning back to see if John Watson was following.
Strode into the sitting room, stopped in front of the fireplace, turned on his heel. By the time his friend was in the room he had stripped off his coat and jacket, and had unbuttoned his cuffs, rolling up his left sleeve with harsh impatient movements.
"Before you ask. No new track marks. Want to see the other arm to check if I'm ambidextrous? Shall I take off my socks to prove I haven't injected between my toes? Strip off completely so you can look for more private and inventive injection sites? Would that be fun, John? Or do you just want to be even more boring and check the flat for baggies in the usual hiding places?"
"Sherlock…."
"No, no. Go ahead. A waste if time. But I'll wait." Bland over politeness did not suit him, but did not release the hurt either.
"I don't…." the doctor began, but the sentence was finished for him, two words with a frightening hollowness to them.
"..trust me."
John Watson sucked in air in that suddenly airless room, frowned and shook his head a little.
"I'm sorry you think that. But can you not see yourself? Stomping on an apple out in the street and saying it is a death threat. Does that seem OK – seem sane - to you?"
"Of course not. But that truly is what it is."
"Listen to me. I am your doctor. Remember?" John Watson stepped forward, peered up into a blank self contained face. Eyes that refused to meet his, to be read.
"Not my doctor. Not for a long time."
"No." John Watson bit his lip in frustration. "Perhaps that has been the trouble. You, left to your own devices. Never a good look. Perhaps I need to get back to the task."
"You've been talking to Mycroft again. It never…."
"Shut up, Sherlock. I'm not letting you do this. Not any more."
"Do what?"
"Kill yourself by degrees. All this is getting a bit obvious now, don't you think? And it's all my fault."
Finally that familiar arrogant tilt of the head, that old sneer, came back. It was an odd reassurance to see.
"Oh my, you do think a lot of yourself."
"No. No I don't. But seeing you now – looking like shit and talking it too – it really gets to me that you went back down into drugs. And so deep. For me. Because Mary told you to. You never do what I tell you to, but one word from Mary….. What does that mean, then?"
"It means that your dear dead wife knew what was best for you. Which is more than you do."
He tried to turn away, but John Watson caught an arm and held him in place, somewhere between anger and pity.
"Just stop it. Stop being so bloody gobby all the time, Sherlock. You sound insane. Good job I know you. But we shall have this conversation,"
"Don't be ridiculous. "
"You're the one being ridiculous. Stomping on an apple and apparently destroying your own evidence. Going on and on and on about Moriarty….."
"That's because Moriarty never goes away. Don't you understand anything? He haunts me and he taunts me….." The protest was almost a sob – exasperation and despair – and for a second he struggled to be released from John Watson's strong grasp.
"Stop it! Just stop!"
"I can't. He is near, John. I know he is! Taunting me….you must remember… at the pool…he said he was going to kill me. ..but not yet. What if 'not yet' means now?"
John Watson hissed a protest, shook the arm he was clamped onto.
"Oh, for God's sake! You're like a stuck record; a nutter with an obsession. Moriarty is dead! Has been for years. So stop this. Stop it now, Sherlock. It makes me…worry…about you."
"Well, that has to be an improvement, does it not?"
He was leaning away, subtly resisting the restraining hand, head high to avoid eye contact, face and voice bitter and disillusioned. "Listen to me. Will you listen to me?" A plea to the doctor, and a brief nod in reply.
So he stilled, tried to explain. About finding Carl Powers' trainers in his wardrobe, needing to return them to the family. About his unexpected confrontation with Carl's mother. About the existence of twin siblings, the relevance of the very name Moriarty, about Jamie and Richard. And about Richard's death. About his conviction that when Moriarty had said he had killed Carl Powers he had not been lying or even boasting. Simply telling a chilling truth. Just not how close that was to home.
He talked quickly, fervently, terrified John Watson would interrupt, argue, dismiss and even mock.
Told him about walking to exhaustion, about slumping onto a bench in Regent's Park. About the discovery of the mobile phone. And the voicemail. John Watson listened, without comment or expression.
"Oh, come on, Sherlock. Mrs Lake's attitude is harsh, but makes sense. But the phone? Really?"
In reply Sherlock Holmes took the elderly black mobile from his pocket.
"Listen, then. If you don't believe me."
Tinny from the tiny speaker, but still that distinctive voice: and he knew those words off by heart.
Hello, Sexy. I've set you a little puzzle. Just to say 'hi.' Knew you would get there eventually."
John Watson listened.
"The first bit is the same words he got that poor woman wrapped in a bomb to say from the supermarket car park. The first pip. And it is Moriarty's voice. I'll never forget that voice."
"So? You agree! You see my problem? He challenges me again. After all this time."
John Watson took the phone, turned it in his hands.
"It's an old phone. In excellent condition. Too good for it's age, surely? Unless it has been kept, unused, all this time." He looked up with a frown. "Is that what you have done? Kept this phone all these years? Took it with you to Carl's mother? As a link, of sorts? Proof, somehow? Took it with you, brought it back - and then when you sat down in the park, it just slipped out of your pocket. And because you are still…" he hesitated, then chose honesty: "…off your head… you forgot about taking the phone with you."
Sherlock Holmes went from eager to anguished in a heartbeat.
"No! Of course not! I wouldn't do that! How could I? Keep a phone all these years? Take it out with me? And not know, not remember?" He flung his free hand into the air, "I'm telling you the truth! But you don't believe me. Why don't you believe me?"
John Watson kept a tight hold; it was like restraining a bucking pony.
"Because it doesn't make sense. Who would know you had visited Carl's mother? And would just happen to have kept that phone? Have it to hand? And then act? Put it by you in that weird way? And why do that, anyway? As a message, a warning? A warning of what?"
"John! You know what! Playing with me, tormenting - like a cat with a mouse. Before killing me. Like he always promised."
John Watson shook his head. Saddened, quietly appalled. By the story, by Sherlock Holmes' state of mind. And his clear distress. "Moriarty is dead," he repeated, very gently, as if talking to a frightened child. "How many times need that be repeated before you accept it? Moriarty shot himself on the roof of Bart's, Sherlock You saw him do it."
Sherlock Holmes groaned in frustration.
"And yet his body disappeared off the roof, was never found. Then his brother – his identical twin brother – was found floating in the Thames weeks later. Was the man who shot himself on the roof Moriarty's brother? Not Moriarty at all?"
"Coincidence. Deeply troubled boys with mental problems. Just coincidence. You are letting all this mess with your head."
"No!"
"People don't come back from the dead."
"I did."
The answer was like a douche of cold water; for them both.
"Yeah. Why did you bother? You never explained." A question John Watson had never dared ask before. Even though he had wondered.
"I didn't. Mycroft stepped in and rescued me from what most people would describe as certain death. Not out of brotherly love, you understand; because he needed me to solve the Gunpowder Plot. There have been many times I wish he hadn't bothered."
"Like now?" The question asked itself, and John Watson flinched at his nerve in asking. But it was that sort of conversation.
There was no reply. The consulting detective finally threw off John Watson's hand and turned away, towards the window. His friend followed him, shaking his head, Wanting to break the train of thought and the mood. Unexpectedly, he flung open the top right hand desk drawer.
"Look at this, Sherlock! Just look! " He delved inside, sorted and lifted what was in there.
"Phones. So many of them! Three here you are currently using. Hmn, let's see what else….. several old ones. Five? Six? Why keep them? Oh. Here's Irene Adler's ' Sherlocked' smart phone you claimed back from Mycroft's file. As some sort of trophy, was that the idea? Or a fond memorial? Top of the range in it's day. And - oh God! Two pink phones! "
He held them up, shocked into stillness. "Is this the pink lady's phone? You mean you lifted it from Jeff Hope's cab? And just kept it all this time?" There was no answer. But he had not expected one. "And this other pink phone… the copy Moriarty used as bait to draw you in? All those puzzle messages he sent playing you at that stupid great game of his."
He shuffled the mobile phones through his fingers and they clattered together. He tidied them so he would be able to close the drawer again. Looked up to see Sherlock Holmes watching him, expressionless. "There must be about twenty mobile phones here. Going back years. So I suppose this is where the phone with Moriarty's message came from?"
"No! How many times…"
"Stop it, Sherlock. For me." John Watson carefully placed the old black phone with the Moriarty voicemail, onto the desk top. Closed the drawer and very gently put his hands to Sherlock Holmes' elbows and guided him backwards and down into the grey leather armchair.
Sherlock Holmes moved and sat like an automaton, but resisted the soothing hands.
"You don't believe me," he declared. "Fine. Well it's not actually fine, but still; I'm getting used to that."
He looked up at the man standing in front of him, and his eyes changed from dull and defeated to cold and angry; and John Watson watched it happen. And waited.
"If you don't believe me, get out. You're no use to me if you don't believe me."
There was a sudden flurry of movement, one man determined to stand, the other determined to make him remain sitting. Until the taller of the two used his height advantage to push the other away.
"Get out!" The voice rose to an angry shout.
"Calm down, Sherlock! Mrs Hudson will hear you! And Rosie." He put out a placatory hand that was dashed away. "Calm down. You're still ill. Still drug ravaged…."
"I'm not, I'm not! And even if I was….I don't care! Because it wouldn't make any difference. Get out, John. If you won't believe me – can't see the threat in front of me, then you are no use to me. I'll do this on my own."
"You said….before…you couldn't do it on your own any more." It was a weak protest and they both heard it as such.
"That was the drugs talking. And, of course, my need to involve you in the Culverton Smith affair. Because without you, what was the point? But don't you worry about that, John. I am used to being alone. Told you before. Alone protects me. So get out."
He turned away, sat at the desk, lifted some paperwork from a pile, put his head down and was to all intent instantly absorbed. The only way to conceal the hurt and the sense of betrayal that suddenly overwhelmed him. How naked and vulnerable – and utterly lost – everything about that awful day made him feel.
"OK. If it calms you right now, I will leave." John Watson said eventually, when he realised the conversation had been ended.
"You mean you're still here?" The edge of bitterness was bleeding out…
John Watson could not reply. He had no idea of what to say. Went to the door. Opened it. Hesitated and looked back. Sherlock Holmes was not looking at him. He had been dismissed.
"I will be back tomorrow," he finally promised.
Eyes swivelled his way.
"Big of you." Toneless. A beat. "Don't bother."
The harshness and the hurt in those words made John Watson take a step back into the room.
"No - I will. I do. Bother, I mean. The other day, when you supported me, comforted me, it changed something for me. For the better." He paused, waited for a reaction that did not come. "You got into this state because of me," he ventured again. "Don't think I don't know. I get that now. And I owe you…."
"You owe me absolutely nothing! And you know nothing! Piss off!"
John Watson ducked as the nearest object to hand – the heavy ash tray stolen from Buckingham Palace - crashed into the wall above his head, bounced twice on the floor and came to rest against the skirting board.
"I don't know what you intend breaking, acting like this. Unless it is yourself. But you haven't broken the ashtray. And you haven't broken me."
Not even a look, this time. No more words. A fleeting venomous look.
So John Watson did the only thing he could. He left.
o0o0o
Sherlock Holmes gathered all his logic and determination, his courage and self image, to convince himself to return to that house in Highgate. A deliberate, crafted courage. Not that he had any other choice, not really. And everything felt worse because he knew it.
This time he was leaning into an investigation that made him feel more isolated, less well equipped, less capable, than he had ever been. He had been alone, acted alone, all of his life, from childhood onwards. But in recent years there had been friendship and companionship and empathy. He should not have accepted, even welcomed, any of those things. They were too human, too complicated. And those things – unexpected, unsought - had weakened him. He knew they had weakened him. And had robbed him of more than his aloofness. Robbed him of his ignorance of his human failings, his ironclad objectivity.
It had – even worse - robbed him of the certainty and the comfort of knowing that what you never had, you never missed. And now, in a little unacknowledged corner of what anyone else would call their heart, he craved to return to that state of isolation and emotional safety, that ignorance of common humanity.
That place that had once protected him from a pain and hollowness that assailed him now. Weakened him in ways he had no practise in overcoming. A sense of desertion, Of not being worth anything useful. Not to anyone, not least himself.
Molly had lost her trust in him; he had bullied her – even if it had been for her own good, her very survival – and forced her to confront her own emotions towards him; and which had found him cruel and deeply lacking. Mrs Hudson had turned his own gun on him and called him a smackhead. And he was many things that were not good….but not a smackhead, he was not! And she, of all people, should know the difference between a corruption and a case. He knew she did. But her words had still stung, and lingered in his head with guilt and a sort of shame. Despite everything..
So now, at last, Moriarty had finally raised his head above the parapet; as he had always known would happen. And had he not also always known Moriarty would only do that when he was at his lowest ebb?
Mycroft did not believe in him now. John Watson did not believe in him either, despite the evidence of the voicemail. Oh, how Moriarty would laugh!
It was, an insistent little voice in his head nagged, all his own fault. He had never been able to accept the fact of Moriarty's death, despite having stood next to him as he shot himself. His analytical mind needed to know there was a corpse, to see the indisputable truth of that death. See the evil genius reduced to corrupting flesh and coagulated blood in Molly Hooper's post mortem, see the bureaucratic reassurance of a death certificate.
Unless he could confirm the alternative that had been suddenly offered. That the man he had seen shoot himself on the roof at Bart's was not |Moriarty at all, but his identical twin.
Only Moriarty could present an alternative no-one else could have even thought of – or, if they had, would have dismissed as too obvious, too ludicrous a theory. A crack in the lens to distort judgement, grit in the oyster to irritate.
But Sherlock also knew he was, in all their eyes, the boy who cried wolf as far as Moriarty was concerned. And had now cried wolf one time too many. Because they thought he was weak and enfeebled, and suffering from drug addled delusion. Idee fixe, Obsession. Paranoia. Even if they did not say that much, he read it in their eyes, their body language, their impatience.
Which was itself an obscene joke. Because it was not him obsessed with Moriarty, but Moriarty obsessed with him. It was Moriarty Jeff Hope had described as 'a fan.' Moriarty, who had set up the great game, and at great cost, in lives and money, to taunt and test him. Moriarty who had said they were alike and were meant to be together.
Moriarty who had admitted killing Carl Powers. And who must have had the annoying boy who had not believed Carl's death to be an accident as his target even then. Never forgotten or forgiven for seeking truth and justice, not accepting such a carefully staged death. Moriarty had waited, and bided his time for closure and revenge….and was trying to do the same again now.
So, Back to that unwelcoming doorstep. Another conversation that would be a confrontation. But it was anticipated this time, and he was braced for it.
And so he stood before that solid Edwardian red front door with it's stained glass panels. Hundreds of houses like that in London, nothing special, he told himself.
Except this one…was red for danger. Blood red. Ox blood red. A traditional colour. A solid and conservative door. Yet what lay behind that front door was anything but.
He squared his shoulders and knocked. Stepped back and waited. There was the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. He drew in a deep breath, pulled back his shoulders.
Not the woman, this time. Immediate sense of anti climax.
This must be the husband. Tall and self possessed, lean. A young-old face, hazel eyes peering through bifocals. Slightly asthmatic, a desk bound pen pusher. Decisive within his own sphere. Who could not be bothered with lesser mortals who knocked at his door.
"We don't buy at the door," came the unhelpful and categorical statement as soon as the door opened. Tenor voice, slight west London accent. "Not double glazing, or religion or encyclopaedias. Not anything."
Whatever he might have expected in greeting, it was not that.
"I'm not selling anything." He said the words quietly and calmly, trying not to roll his eyes and sound scathing. Tried a polite smile. That usually worked.
"So? What do you want?"
Petty officialdom radiated from the man on the doorstep. Big man, small pond syndrome.
"I found this phone. I thought it might belong to someone who lives here; your wife? Sons?"
He brandished the elderly black phone like a shield. A gift. A passport to acceptance, even.
The man peered but without moving forward.
"Why would you think that? My wife and I both have decent smart phones. Not an old thing like that. And my sons are dead."
"I am so sorry for your loss," he said, the polite cliche. Striving for sincerity. "All your sons?"
"What's it to you?"
"Sympathy? Fellow feeling?"
"Why? Who are you?"
"My name is Sherlock Holmes….."
"Sherlock Holmes? Really?" The man peered through the doorway, but did not open the door wider., did not seem impressed in any way. "So you are. Seen you on the TV news. Load of flim flam and novelty cases. What are you doing here?"
"Returning a phone." He waggled the little black box in his hand. Tried another smile.
"What makes you think it came from here?"
"I called yesterday. Might have picked up the phone by accident? I came to return Carl's old trainers. The ones that went missing when he died."
Attempts at empathy were not working. The man was clearly suspicious by nature, uncommunicative.
"How did you get them after all this time? Why bring them back? To upset us for some reason? Are you the police?"
"No. ... an independent chemist, you might say. In this case."
"Well, it upset my wife. You, turning up out of the blue like that."
"I'm sorry. That was not my intention. She didn't seem upset…..when she was talking to me."
Which was indeed the truth. Her parting words – "Go away. You sad effort of a man." – still echoed in his head.
"She's strong. Doesn't show emotion to strangers. But you upset her, turning up out of the blue like that. Why do that? Thought it would be fun or something?"
"I don't do fun."
"Well neither do we. Go away."
"The phone….."
"Not ours."
"Could you ask Mrs Lake? Just to make sure….?"
"No. Go away. Or I'll ring the police to remove you."
"Please do. Ring Scotland Yard and ask for Detective Inspector Lestrade. Extension 395."
"Oh, a clever bugger, aren't you? Go away!"
His voice had been steadily rising before the patient, calm, impassive man on his doorstep. An imperturbability that usually disturbed his subjects enough to produce information and honesty.
"Ian? What's going on? What's the fuss about?"
She came into the hall from the back of the house. Wearing a dress, this time. Plain, expensive, navy blue. Classic and tasteful. But her hands were clenched into fists, and she was leaning forward aggressively as she walked towards them
"Oh. It's you. What do you want now?"
"I thought I should return your phone. Or your son's phone, is it? I assume it came from here?"
"Why would you think that? I didn't give it to you."
"Didn't you? I can't think how else I might have received it. And it has a message on it. I am sure you recognise the voice."
He pressed the button. The message played.
"Hi, Sexy….."
He knew it by heart. Did not listen, concentrated on the two faces in front of him. Ian Lake – intent and perplexed. His wife expressionless with repressed anger.
There was a brief silence. Then the message ended.
"It's OK, Ian. You can leave me to deal with this," she said with unsettling calm.
"You sure, Anna? I can see this bloke off…."
"No, it's fine. Go back to your emails."
Ian Lake looked carefully at his wife, but did not argue. Turned and returned to the sitting room. And she waited until he closed the door behind him before speaking:
"You have a nerve. Coming back here."
"No. I have a mobile phone that is not mine, and a mystery. "
"Well, it's not my phone either."
"But your son's, surely? It is his voice, isn't it?"
"It might be. But my son is dead. All my sons."
"You didn't say that the other day."
"No? Well, you took me by surprise. I was upset, and…wrong footed."
"Indeed so."
He waited for her response. Hands in Belstaff pockets, head high, eyes bright. The picture of assured arrogance. But this was unsettling. This did not feel like a conversation. This felt like some sort of skirmish. Lunge, riposte, parry…..
"But that phone you are holding is an old one. Old phone, old message. Both out of date. Not relevant any more, now are they?" Her eyes narrowed, looking at him closely. "Unless you are digging up old grievances. Obsessing on things long gone. Need that fix, do you?"
"Of course not. They were not my trainers. This is not my phone. I did not generate that message."
"And neither did I." She looked at him, nodded, presented a smile. It was not a good smile.
"Make a habit of harassing innocent bereaved old people, do you? Does that make you feel better about yourself?"
"You are being ridiculous."
"That's you. Not me." She took hold of the edge of the door, as if ready to close it. "Your mother must be very proud of you, persecuting innocent people."
"My…mother? What does my mother have to do with it?"
"I don't know. I presume she is still alive? She must feel very lucky. To have her sons still alive. Even though they are fools. Not mathematical geniuses, in our family tradition."
"What do you think you know about me? Her?"
"Oh, not a lot. And I don't care either way. But my son was a mathematical genius, you know. Chip off the old block."
"Don't you mean 'Is?' Is a chip off the old block?"
"Oh, no. My son is dead. All my sons."
"Then I am sorry if their deaths has unhinged you."
Lunge, riposte, parry….
"Oh, you think so? Would a similar fate for her boys have the same effect on your mother? Perhaps not. I am sure you must be like her; heartless, entitled, too clever for your own good."
"Thank you."
"I didn't mean it as a compliment."
"Yes you did."
"I really didn't."
He grinned at her then; the large expressive startling smile that meant nothing at all. For her very words, spoken years ago by Jim-from-the-hospital at the pool, flashed back into his mind with a cold and utter certainty. And he watched her frown.
"So you don't want his phone?" he pressed.
"And what would I do with it?" She shrugged, as if without a care.
"Use it to contact him, perhaps. That's what phones are for, after all. Words into the ether. To reach him in heaven. Or, most probably, in hell."
"You are…."
"Accepting his challenge. You might do me a favour and tell him that."
"He is dead."
"Yes. You keep saying. But I am sure he knows your number. So I'll take this old thing away with me. Just in case he needs it again, wants to leave a message to someone, he will know where to find it."
"You are a fool. Nuts. A freak."
"Not the first time I have been told any of that. It doesn't bother me.
"Which just goes to prove it should." She stepped back, closing the door slowly. "Go away and don't come back…."
"Or else?"
"Or else you will regret it. And your mummy will be far from happy. Ciao, Sherlock Holmes."
And she closed the door, looking him in the eye as she did so. Leaving him standing on the doorstep, face frozen, a shard of ice lodged in his heart.
Life's a joke and all things show it…..he thought to himself. Which was all he allowed himself to think in that moment. After too long a pause – which only looked consummate and measured – he slipped the old black phone back into his coat pocket and walked away.
o0o0o
This was a different front door. Ancient grey oak, warm and familiar, that yielded quietly to his touch, and he followed the sounds and smells of life (Thirties dance bands CD, the heady aroma of fresh fruit) down the dark hallway and into the comfortable kitchen.
"You may not be an angel, 'cos angels are so few…"
An empty jam kettle was on the Aga hob, empty jam jars on a tray alongside. And she was standing at the draining board peeling and chopping apples and dates into a holding pan of salt water.
Silvered ash blonde hair pushed into a sloppy bun, head bent in concentration, the paring knife in her hand stilled as she heard his footsteps, and she turned to him; astute violet eyes read him in a glance.
"Pass me that bag of onions," she said by way of greeting, unperturbed that he was there with her, despite his visits being rare occasions and, in this case, unannounced.
He put them on the worktop beside her, and as he did so she reached out with her free hand and touched his arm briefly by way of greeting. Preparing to pause in her task.
"Make us coffee," she added as if an afterthought.
He turned to do so, a mechanical task of boiling the kettle, spooning coffee into a cafetiere, gathering together mugs, sugar and milk.
"Pa?" he asked, questioning whether he would need a third mug.
"At the village hall helping set up for a church fundraiser tomorrow." She looked sideways at him. "Which is why I'm making chutney. But I assume you knew that?"
He did not answer – did not need to. She knew. That there were reasons for him being there in her kitchen, to be alone with his mother.
"What do you need?" she asked, calm and direct. Not looking at him, but covering her work with a tea towel and putting it aside, washing her hands and sitting at the scrubbed pine table.
"To pick your brain," he replied plainly. For he knew that here and now to play his usual mind games was irrelevant.
"So pick," she commanded as he pushed her drink towards her and sat down opposite.
For a moment he was silent, not knowing how to start. Yet knowing this conversation was important. That he felt too flayed and alone and emotionally naked to be anything like his normal self. To be too human for his own comfort, frightened and needy. Aware she was looking and assessing him quietly, and that he could hide nothing from her astute objectivity, her forensic gaze. But finally he just said: "Carl Powers."
"Indeed? What do you want me to remember?"
"Tell me what happened. As you saw it. Adult perspective."
"You saw a newspaper article about a boy drowning at a swimming gala, and it caught your imagination. Perhaps because his photograph looked rather like you. A sudden and very public death, a mystery in itself, combined with a secondary mystery of his shoes disappearing from his locker. Your instinct snagged; you deduced several possibilities for his cause of death, none of them accidental. How it tied in with the disappearing shoes."
She looked across at him but did not smile. And neither did he. This was no typical childhood reminiscence between a typical mother and her son.
"Instead of going to classes next day you bunked off school and caught a train into London to harangue the police about it. New Scotland Yard, no less. Like most people, before and since, they didn't know what to do with such a precocious and knowing child. How to deal with your theories and possible solutions. They rang Harrow, and Harrow rang me. To fetch you home." She grinned. "They didn't like it when you went back the next day and tried again. Neither did the police."
She sipped her coffee.
"But why ask me now?"
"I wondered. If you had any extra insight, something I might have missed. Being just a child and a novice detective at the time. Something other to focus on."
"Why?"
"Let's just say… the case has come back to haunt me."
"Haunt? Allowing yourself to be haunted is not like you."
She looked at him levelly. Waited.
"No. I don't understand it. But this is not the first time it has returned to haunt me. A few years ago I was being pursued by a criminal genius. Taunted and haunted. Who had Carl Powers' missing trainers. And gave them to me."
"To taunt you to find their importance, to show that you were wrong – or right all along? Mind games, indeed." She nodded, thinking. "That was the man who shot himself? To make you jump off the hospital roof to save the others? Then play dead for two years, taking down his crime syndicate in revenge?" She blinked very slowly. "He is dead, though. Why resurrect all that now?"
"I have no proof he is dead. His body, if it was a dead body, disappeared at the same time I was also being a dead body. Coincidence? Irony? His very plan? So I have never been certain he is dead. I need to be certain."
For a moment she said nothing, just sat and looked at him.
"Understandably. Without a solid corpse as proof I would also doubt." She paused, thought. "How did he know about Carl Powers? Have those trainers? Know your connection?"
She watched her son indulge in a twisted, humourless smile.
"I am led to believe he was Carl Powers' younger brother. Killed him because Carl laughed at him; as brothers do, apparently. Perfectly placed to steal the trainers. Which of course carried damning evidence against him. I found damning incriminating botulism on the trainers that killed Carl.
"And then I found that the brother had been ….following my progress for years. Biding his time to pounce."
"But how did he know about you? You were just a boy. Still William, even though you had become Sherlock. In your head, at least."
She grimaced a little at him, as if in apology for what she was about to say next. "Because of what had happened. In Sri Lanka. The Carl Powers case was not long after Sri Lanka."
"Yes."
"I should have stopped you pursuing Carl Powers' death. But that distraction was a way of coping. After what happened to you; to us all." She paused, to see his reaction. But he did not walk away from her words, complain about her train of thought, or stop her talking. So she continued. "Your father was still in hospital at the time, and I was trying to be in several places at once. At the hospital with him; caring for you and Mycroft; keeping a grip on my career."
"Yes."
"So we had little chance to talk about Carl Powers. Though we never talk about that – other thing – either, do we?"
"No. Thank you."
She bent her head in acknowledgement, did not look directly at him.
"And now you are frightened."
There was no judgment in her voice or in her face. Just a conclusion expressed. And in the same impassive tone he said: "Yes" with utter simplicity.
"And you have never been so frightened since Sri Lanka."
He did not reply, but she had not expected him to.
"You know how to control your fear, use it as a spur to succeed. But this is different."
The tiniest of nods. She pushed on.
"He has had you in his sights for twenty years. Without solid proof to the contrary, you believe – you fear - he is alive. Or that even if he is dead, someone else has picked up his baton. Running at you with it. Sheer logic."
"Yes."
She sipped her coffee, again, elbows on the table, hands wrapped around the Cath Kidston cowboy mug, deep in thought. And he left her to think in silence. Reluctant to think or breathe and disturb her. Watched her, his beautiful and brilliant mother.
Being in her eighth decade did not dim her intellect, nor did increased weight and decreased mobility dim her beauty. He was still in awe of her, and always had been. And nothing at all to do with her being his parent.
"Something is not right," she declared. Both their heads lifted then, and their eyes met, violet to sea storm grey in that light.
"How could he know who you are now? That the boy William Holmes and the adult Sherlock Holmes are one and the same person? No outsider should know… you changed your name."
"Mother, please….."
"You changed your name, you changed schools. No-one outside the family should have known…."
She frowned, deep in thought, eyes distant.
"There was one newspaper story; just a brief thing in the local paper. Apparently the reporter was at our local police station doing what used to be known as 'calls' pre mobile phone and laptop days; visiting to gather news items. You were there, raising hell. He smelt a story.
"Yes. I remember now; he overheard the details and rang me. I was home between hospital visits. I didn't say much, was too distracted…. God knows how he found my number….."
"Good reporters have a nose for news, how to find details," he soothed. "They are also good at reading a desk sergeant's log book upside down. Pre computers, as was."
"But he didn't put that detail in the story, thankfully. So we have to assume Carl Powers' brother saw that story and remembered it. Because if he was his brothers' murderer, he had a vested and particular interest in you. And if he felt you were the only person who had spotted his crime, he would seriously resent you. Fear you. Hold a grudge against you. Want to silence you."
"Fortunately for him no-one took me seriously back then."
"Except him. Because he knew you were right."
They looked at each other with identical cold logic and inevitable conclusion.
"It was the Carl Powers case that made you become a detective," Midge Holmes reflected quietly. "That injustice got under your skin. And stayed there."
"Yes."
"And also made you what you have become."
He ducked his head, nonplussed at the positivity of her logic. Dared to ask a question he had never asked her before.
"What have I become?"
"Yourself. Something unique."
She watched him quirk a little ironic smile, drop his eyes, oddly embarrassed. And her heart went out to her strange and brilliant and socially awkward child.
"Not necessarily a good thing," he demurred.
"It is in your case."
Her voice was firm, assertive, positive for him. But he shook his head.
"You are the only person who thinks so. Everyone else thinks I am a freak, off my head on drugs. Mad to believe a dead bogeyman is after me. And this ….fear I have…that Carl Powers' murderer is stalking me….with his evil presence… is nothing but the product of my fevered imagination."
"But it isn't." Another firm, terse conclusion.
"How do you know that? Why should you believe me? No-one else does."
She shook her head, and sighed.
"Mother?"
He rarely called her that; rarely called her anything at all.
She sighed again, looked up and waited until he met her eyes across the table. Beautiful all seeing violet eyes. Unique sectoral heterochromia iridosa eyes. Grey and tawny this day, yet always with that dark freckle over the right iris. Her unique boy.
"Because you are you," she declared, words strong and simple. And as he shook his head in surprise and denial, oddly affected, she repeated her affirmation, then continued:
"You are you. No-one knows you like you do. Because no-one sees what you see. Your gift and your curse. But you already know that. And so do I. " She put a hand briefly over his, her hand and his both warmed from the hot tea in the mugs they held and shared. "My poor boy. Listen to me now."
She reached her other hand across the kitchen table and took each of his hands firmly in her own. Laid her little fingers in butterfly touches to stroke, just once, the scars that still showed on his wrists from those Sri Lanka days.
"When we were ambushed in Sri Lanka….when all that horribleness happened….when people were killed….when your father was shot in the head and almost died…when we were under siege in that little guest house….and…when you were taken…I know, and everyone else involved knows, that we would never have survived if it had not been for you."
He turned his head away to hide his eyes; from himself, from her, and started to say something; but she lifted one hand to gently put her fingers to his lips to silence him.
"No. Let me say this. I should have said this years ago…." She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders as if facing a great trial. And perhaps she was.
"We would never have survived if it hadn't been for you," she repeated. "You were just a child, yet you saved us. And you have paid heavily for that….."
"Stop it. I didn't save everyone. I don't need to hear this."
"Yes, you do. You do. Even then, and ever since, you have always known how to be brave and what to do. Thank God."
The hand at his face stroked a curve along his jaw with rare tenderness. "You went against our wishes to learn how to shoot, to fight, to survive. We thought it was childish game playing taken to obsessive extremes. Cowboy or spy or perhaps even still a pirate, thought that was what pirates did."
She grinned at him suddenly, at the memory of a little boy with a wooden sword and a felt tricorne hat, and despite himself, knowing what she was thinking, he grinned back.
"But it wasn't, was it? You weren't playing games, you were serious. Always old before your years. We didn't understand. Not then."
She squeezed his hands very tight. Voice low and unusually emotionally driven.
"If you hadn't gone against our wishes and learnt all those survival skills from George Bradshaw…..there would be a lot of people not alive today. Including your father and me. Don't think any of us ever forget that."
"Mother…" It was a sound of suffering more than a word.
"William, we have never asked what happened to you in those awful weeks you were kidnapped and lost to us. When Bradshaw and Gallagher went into the jungle to find you and bring you back. They didn't tell, and neither did you. I know something awful happened to you then….I have imagined all sorts of horrors….because you have never been the same since. And you changed your name because of it.
"I know you told Mycroft, when he went to bring you home, after the soldiers had rescued you, that William was dead; that you were Sherlock now. So I never dared ask…never asked because if I did I feared you might tell me.
"Me. Not your father, because he has no memory of it all, and it would have upset a deeply changed man. Not Mycroft, because you both feel he failed you then. So there is only me to tell. Even if I asked. But I can't, for fear of what I might learn. Of what you would have to remember. Of how you fear that knowledge would even diminish you in my eyes. And how that would hurt me – us – even more. You silly boy. I'm so sorry. But I thought not asking was for the best."
"Rubbish! I mean…yes. Thank you." He shook his head. Tried a smile to reassure her. "That is in the past. Worrying at it, thinking about it, makes no difference now."
"Perhaps not. But I need you to know…I don't ask because I don't care. I don't ask because I do. Care. About you."
He shook his head a little, but did not reply. So she continued.
"And I know why you don't visit often. Nor stay long when you do."
"I am very busy…."
"You cannot bear to see your father. You think he is diminished by having been shot in the head. But that is not the truth." She talked on, determined to say what she should have said years ago. Encouraged by his quietness, his vulnerability. And the fact that he had come to her, unbidden and unannounced.
"He is no longer the diplomat fixer he was, the Mycroft of his era. He is different now, but not diminished, by the damage to his brain. Kinder, more caring. He could not go back to what he had been before, so he became a teacher of the classics. It suits him. The new Siward was no longer a great brain and a fixer, like Mycroft. But almost dying made him a better, a more human human than he was before. And he has no memory of any of that; he just knows he was shot and recovered. He is wise enough to not let it bother him. He has lived his quieter life, our quieter lives, without rancour. Always the pragmatist.
"But if it had not been for you….he would not be here at all. So never forget that. And make that give you confidence to go forward."
"I…..I…did not know. Thank you."
"So now shut up. Stop overthinking. Have a chocolate digestive biscuit – two if you like. And tell me why you really came."
He smiled then, and she watched his shoulders settle and relax. And she wanted to hug him. Restrained herself, as always.
"The case…Moriarty, that is. Silly really. A longshot. But….mathematics is the only clue I have to finding him. He is supposed to be a professor of mathematics; he must be my age, so was he a child prodigy?
"Mathematics is not my world. So I should ask the most eminent mathematician I know. And here you are."
She pulled a face and stuck her tongue out at him; but was flattered.
"And I just wondered…..does the name Moriarty mean anything to you? Or Powers? Lake, even? As a colleague, perhaps? A student? Any connection will do. The smallest lead might open a door, give me a new direction to look, to find him…."
"That is a big ask."
"I know. But….higher mathematics is a small world. Insular. I saw Moriarty's mother yesterday; Carl Powers' mother. She said something odd; talking about maths, and a snide little remark about how my mother would be so proud of me. And she did not mean it kindly.
"There was something about how she said it. Made me think she had some knowledge of you. Or her mathematically gifted son, Jamie. Could you think back, try to remember? Any insight, any lead….."
"I taught, or mentored, or lectured, thousands of students in my time. And you hope I can remember just one?" She shook her head. "I shall need to go back to my diaries, my notes, see if I find a link. I'm not confident. But I will try."
"I cannot thank you enough."
"No need. Fun, actually. Never helped you with a case before."
She looked up at him and laughed, And the intensity of the mood was broken.
"It might take me a few days. What time frame am I looking in?"
"He is the same age as me, if that's any help."
"Hmn. Not necessarily. But it's a start."
She stood up, and he stood up with her.
"I have chutney to make, and lunch to get ready for your father. While I think. I must get on."
But she did not move away, but stood and looked at him. Saw all his self doubt, the fears he normally hid so well.
"If you don't follow your instinct on this thing, you will never know the truth. Even if everyone in your world doubts and deserts you, you know you need to press on, to find that truth. Not just your life depends on it, but your peace of mind.
"Better to be thought a fool and know the truth than be thought a hero and not know the truth. Because in the final analysis the only person you have to live with is you. And we both know what you have to do. What you can do.
"And even if you find you are wrong, that all those who doubt you are right, you will know the truth. Truth may hurt, but will never corrode your soul like living a lie, never facing down that unknown. No-one can do that like you. And there is no other way you can live. In the world, or within yourself."
He flailed a hand in her direction.
"Thank you," he said finally. "For the pep talk. Everything."
"Shut up. I'm your mother."
He leant forward, almost beyond speech, and in his own particular form of extremis, planted a kiss on the top of her head. She pushed him away.
"Enough. Be off with you. I will be in touch if I come up with anything. But I'll be in touch anyway."
She picked up the now empty coffee mugs, turned back to the onions, the fruit and the jam kettle. The interview was over.
Feeling oddly light headed, unable to find more words, he went silently back into the dark hallway, towards the front door.
"In bocca al lupo!"
Her voice, bright and upbeat in some sort of clarion call, sounded across the house to him, an Italian command and wish and blessing of good luck: 'Into the mouth of the wolf!"
Automatically his voice lifted as he called back the usual response: "Crepi il lupo!"
'Die, wolf!'
He heard his own voice; stronger, energized, and more positive now than it had been in days. Weeks? He allowed himself a small private smile. Climbed back into the driving seat of the old Land Rover that would take him back to Baker Street.
TO BE CONTINUED…..
Author's Notes:
In my Sherlock universe, there are solid reasons for Sherlock's adult behaviour, self containment and his abandonment of the name William. Briefly recapped here, but told in context in my earlier long story, The Magnussen Legacy.
Sherlock's mother: As with Mrs Hudson, the way the general fandom characterises Mrs Holmes as fluffy and ordinary is diminishing to both.
Mrs Holmes is presented by Moffat and Gatiss as a retired eminent mathematician, not a mumsy figure. Plus, in the modern day Sherlock, Mrs Holmes is portrayed by Wanda Ventham, who is far from vapid in real life. So my Mrs Holmes is a combination of fictional gifted mathematician and the real and very special Wanda. And who I hope is very recognisable as Sherlock's mother – just as Wanda is very much Benedict Cumberbatch's.