A/N: As a treat for the ones with time to spare, I hope you can see the 27 symbols in this piece. If not visible then I picked a useless unicode and wasted my sweet time. Rest assured, they're not essential to the story.
Keep safe, keep strong. -csf
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'John, this is moronic! There are no good cases! Who needs a good case when a mutated virus is going round offing people for them? Murderers can sit tight and wait! As for those remaining entrepreneurial criminals, you insist we aren't to come into close contact with the criminals, so that precludes any successful chase of that cryptocurrency thieve anyway!'
I drop my forehead into the palm of my hand whilst counting up to ten. We've been through this ten times already. Sherlock even agrees with our decisions – in principle.
'You've sent the relevant deductions to the Metropolitan Police, Sherlock, and I don't quite feel like tackling down potentially infected suspects in between my hospital shifts! It works both ways, you know? I can potentially infect patients I see at the emergency if I catch the virus!'
Sherlock blinks, presses his lips and gulps drily only to grimace at the taste of that particular silenced thought. 'Nonsense, John. You're a doctor, you know better than to get contaminated.'
I hiccup a dry laugh, more like a spasm than a fit of joy.
'Sherlock, we'll just have to adjust. I have one work I need to continue fulfilling, and you, the greatest detective in the history of London, will have to work from home.'
'Flattery will get you nowhere with me, John.'
I raise an eyebrow in a silent dare. He breaks not long after, briskly getting up to fetch a laptop. My laptop, in fact, just to have the last word. His was far closer to begin with.
'Want me to tell you my latest password, mate?
'Nah, I'll study the oily deposits from your greasy fingertips. Really, John, you shouldn't read the news while having...' he actually sniffs the keyboard '...a near full English breakfast. No black pudding, not a favourite, I'm guessing.'
I shrug, nonplussed for anyone to see, but as I turn to the kitchen I'm hiding my admiration smile. Sherlock's still got it. However, I can't let his ego get any bigger than it already is. It would no longer fit inside 221B.
'John!'
'What?'
'John!'
'What!'
'There are no good cases, John! There's a missing train station cat, a man who swears he didn't know he had his wife's body in the boot of his car, and a church steeple got graffitied with unknown hieroglyphs!'
I blink. Plenty to go on there, mate.
'I'm off to the hospital in a couple of hours. Surprise me', I quip back.
A good way to goad Sherlock into compliance is to issue him a challenge. He's a textbook overachiever.
'How am I supposed to locate a missing cat if you don't let me leave 221B?'
Licking the spoon I used to swirl my tea I return in slow steps to the living room and dive on my armchair, right in front of Sherlock in his own armchair.
I'll miss this homely feeling all day.
'Spyware on the traffic cameras?' I'm sure Mycroft Holmes can give a hand with that...
One silly suggestion is all that is required to trigger Sherlock into proving he has the greater mind, so I wait with baited breath.
'Actually, that's not a bad idea, John...' He gets up from his chair, dumping my laptop in my lap, absent-minded. 'Also delivery drivers. They crisscross the city all the time. Bin collectors. They go into the dead end alleys. And mains power line electricians. They go up poles and gain better view over the rooftops of low constructions and— I could dress up as a—'
'No leaving the house, Sherlock', I remind him sternly of the rules.
'Then what do I do when I find the missing cat?'
'Lure him home. You'll find a way, you always do.'
He grumps slightly – the rules are wrong! – but I can see his engagement.
A bit more relieved, I go take that hot shower and ready myself for the day ahead.
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One of the unspoken rules between Sherlock and I is that he no longer asks me about my day at work. Not that he quite ever did more than a very skewed version of "how's your day been, honey", it's just not fair game to bring up my new daily work at a new kind of battlefield.
As an amendment to the rule, Sherlock is, as always, allowed to perform his sideshow mind reading act on me; deducing my day, my aches, my load. But he won't breach the subject until I do, and for now I never do. It's not so much about repressing events as is about diving eagerly straight into the distracting, escapist world of Sherlock's work.
Sherlock is still the best distraction I could ask for.
In exchange for blatantly using my friend as a survival device, I will offer him all my support in his chosen profession, in his love for his work, under threat of existence right now.
This is only the beginning.
Sherlock has been busy all day, and has succeeded in tracing the hieroglyph markings left on a church steeple overnight, miles away from London. He's also spent some time interviewing locals on that rural community through the web cam – for which he tells me he suffered greatly, as this is usually a job best left to his faithful blogger.
'Were they nice? Those people you tracked down to talk about the graffiti?'
Sherlock's utmost outraged expression is priceless. 'They – were – boring', he nearly crushes every syllable, over-pronouncing boring. 'Utterly, mind blowing boring. Dull, short witted, below average, slow. John, your absence from our work pains me exceedingly.'
'Ta.' I smirk. Sherlock does love to go a long way about to deliver me an appreciative compliment. Up until now, the detective was probably unaware of how boring my assistant work can be. But, of course, everyone is boring according to Sherlock, which will have made his work the more difficult. I kind of enjoy talking to various personalities, extracting clues, and motives, and trying to solve the case just as much as Sherlock.
'Those are runes, by the way', Sherlock comments, offhand. 'They could have been different pasta shapes for all that matters. They were brought together as a transposition cypher. One symbol per alphabet letter, English being the probable language given the location and that it was a crude message to someone within the vicinity of the church. At a time where bigger travels are very much halted, and news reports have only one consistent main topic, it could hardly have been designed as a message to travel beyond the village core, John. You can see no spacing between words, but one word would not be this long. So we'll have to part the message as we transpose it. For that we will need the code breaker.'
'You're sure this is an actual message to an actual person?' I frown, desperately gulping down my soup. I'm starving after a 12 hours shift with minimal breaks.
Sherlock politely ignores that I'm talking with my mouth full now.
'Absolutely, John. It's far too much effort for a prank.'
'You know phone lines are still working. Calling the person who it was meant for would have been easier than climbing a church wall, just saying.'
Sherlock stops abruptly and looks up, blatantly shocked.
'John!'
'What!'
He breaks into a triumphant smirk. 'My genius is starting to rub off on you, come along!'
I get up at once. 'What? To the living room?'
These days are odd.
'Bring your nourishment, John', he snaps after a quick glance.
I obey that directive without qualms.
Setting myself over Sherlock's shoulder as he's taken my armchair – of all places he just sits there as normal as he gets, he really must be out if whack, is this dome new habit when I'm out of the flat? – I study the laptop screen. A bunch of apparently unrelated symbols pop out of the darkened stone of a church's steeple.
ᛒ
'No, you've got me stumped', I admit easily. 'Maybe you should start with the missing feline, Sherlock. You know, something to ease you in...'
The detective death glares at me. I shrug and carry my soup bowl back to the kitchen.
'Will you have solved a case before I leave for work tomorrow?' I ask over my shoulder.
'Naturally, John', is the reflexive answer I get.
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Water droplets dribble down the ashy features, reflected back by the bathroom mirror. I almost don't recognise the squared jaw line, the upturned nose, the frequent wrinkles embedded on the skin, the dark blue eyes looking back a bit haunted yet.
'John?'
I startle at the presence materialised behind me. Sherlock. All soft gestures and smoothing tone of voice, yet I recoil slightly, leaning away, over the sink. Sherlock tries to appease me with unspoken words, bland smiles and keeping his hands out in a peaceful stance. I force myself to gulp drily, to master my own creaky voice, to lie, lie until lies become the truth – 'I'm alright, Sherlock. Just a bad dream.'
He nods, scanning me, nonetheless.
Casually as he can perform it, he grabs a fluffier bath sheet towel from the cupboard and wraps it over my shoulders. I shiver at the cotton's contact with my damp pyjama top. Sherlock won't relent the comforting pressure of the towel's weight.
Sherlock's learnt a trick or two about this caring malarkey.
'I'm sorry I woke you, Sherlock.'
Finally he feels compelled to talk, maybe that's what I wanted, I needed to hear those familiar baritone tones.
'Just drop it, John.' There's no bite in his words. 'I needed an audience', he further says. 'I've solved it.'
'The missing cat case?'
'All three cases.'
'That's amazing, Sherlock.'
'No, you're amazing, John. I just use my brains better than you. Come, we can talk in the kitchen. You can make us tea.'
'Not taking advantage one bit, are you?'
'Don't be an idiot. Making tea soothes you, and I enjoy your tea. It's a win-win arrangement.'
I chuckle a bit and Sherlock takes heart, guiding me to the kitchen. My latent nightmare's imprints fade a bit more as I let the familiar setting ground me. I tick the kettle and reach for the fragrant tea bags in half a stupor yet, but it's not so scary now I know Sherlock is watching over me.
Daylight begins to break outside the window.
'It wasn't Afghanistan', I blurt out, filling the empty silence. 'I expected Kandahar, I got London. It's not the same, of course not, but in my dream, it felt the same. Oppressing. I was powerless, frightened, tired.' I look straight behind me to Sherlock, still catching that emotional, sympathetic expression in his face – if he'd known he had it on, he'd have run off into the bathroom to scrub it off his face. Instead Sherlock looks me straight on, waiting for me to finish what I have to say.
But I think I'm done for today.
I bring the two tea mugs over.
Sherlock perfunctorily sips a bit of tea, his grey-green eyes stuck on me.
'And your cases?' Please, Sherlock.
'Puerile. The cat is the real hero', he dismisses. Then smiles, knowing he's captured my attention. 'The church steeple case, John. An unknown individual goes through an acrobatic effort of significant neck breaking risk to leave strange markings on a stone wall. A mere decoy, so our attention is efficiently deflected from the graveyard, where a recent grave has been reopened, the ground revolved. The priest has confirmed my suspicions on site. He recalls the burial in question. A woman was laid to rest, the ceremony including a grieving husband and some young adult children.
'As it happens, John, the nosey old hag across from the church is also neighbour of the grieving husband. Living alone she's got the habit of spying his life for her entertainment. Just two days ago she was watching from behind her curtains and saw him sitting on the sofa (he never plumps the cushions like his late wife did) watching a rerun of The Antiques Roadshow on the telly. He suddenly jumped up (spilling tea from a Chinese bone China tea cup set the neighbour's grandmother had given them as a wedding gift, all over the carpet). He rushes to the telly just as the experts were appreciating a gaudy ring much like the one his wife had.'
Sherlock expectantly eggs me on. I frown. No idea. He sighs, rolling his eyes.
'The husband finds out the wife's ring was very valuable. He wants it back. Only there's a problem. She was buried with it. Everyone thought it was a mere trinket. And ugly too. Now he wants it back. The authorities won't exhume a body just like that. He needs to do it himself. Just a quick visit, open the coffin, take the ring, put it all back. The body hasn't been buried long, the soil is not tightly compacted yet, the body won't have decomposed gruesomely. He decides to go that night. Calls a friend to meet him there. They both turn up, armed with a shovel and a bucket of paint. Emboldened, the friend scales the church, leaving the mysterious message as a decoy. The husband takes on the gruesome bit, but he's come so far and his greed motivates him. Luck will have it the burial site, under a laurel tree, is secluded from view from the neighbours, and no one notices the climber either. The husband works fast to acquire the piece. Then everything goes wrong...'
'His wife rises from the coffin like a zombie?'
'John, if you're not being serious—'
'Sorry, Sherlock. Please carry on. Can't see what happened next.'
'Nor could I, for a long while. Then it hit me. Let me go back a bit. Remember the church message?'
'Yeah, gibberish.'
'Not quite. I decoded it.'
'How did you do that?'
'Using a decoder ring.'
'What?'
'From a 1970s cereal box, a children's breakfast treat. Swap your own spy messages with your friends.'
'Really?'
'Worry not, John, I've acquired a couple for us. Anyhow, the husband used the enigma printed on the cereal box itself, as all he wanted was a satanic looking pronouncement to inflict on the centuries old church.'
'So what does it say?'
'It says, and I quote, a surprise inside the cereal box! Exclamation mark not included due to poor runes grammar.'
I chuckle, and so does Sherlock.
'Below on the graveyard the grave robber wanted the antique ring. As it turns out ring was stuck due to the natural bloating occurring in a decomposing corpse. The husband must have heard noises, or perhaps time was generally running out. He had to leave the scene, but he wouldn't abandon the corpse with the fortune. He heard a loud snap of a twig, perhaps, and he turned with shovel in hand and whacked the intruder. He hit his friend, the climber, that was coming to join him. A bit precocious. Now, you're a doctor, it's not easy to off someone with one haphazard blow of a shovel. That was confusing for me. I have inferred the climber lost balance, tripped over something, and that sent him off in a dangerous dive into the coffin in the grave. Hit his head fatally, perhaps. I think it's safe to admit he died on the spot.
'Now the grieving husband really needs to get out of there. He pulls on the dead finger but only manages to dislodge the phalanges inside, not detach a finger. So much for the aid of decomposition! The wife still hangs on to the ring, the day is breaking, and he has two bodies to dispose off. Cool headed, he shoves the wife's corpse into the boot of his car, planning to dispose of it later after extricating his reward. He hastily closes the coffin on the new occupant, and replaces most soil. Being a secluded location under a laurel tree in a small graveyard, and given the scandal of the secret message on the church stones, no one seemed to have noticed the revolved soil on a recently dug grave.
'The husband could have got away with it. Only he snuck into his car only to be stopped by the police soon after, due to a broken tail light and the police wanting to advise him against unnecessary travelling. The police officer noticed the smell and asked to see the boot of his car. The policeman finds a man with his wife's dead body in the car boot. But she's missing a finger...'
'So the husband did manage to get to the ring?'
'No, not the husband at all.'
'I don't get it.'
'Easy, John. A mile away, at a train station, a missing cat has wandered back home, like lost felines sometimes do. He looked well, unharmed, a bit muddy. The station master was overjoyed by the sight of his beloved cat, coming back on duty, and even bringing him a treat! Usually the grim treats are half eaten birds or mangled field mice, but this time it was none of that. Just one fat, bloated, ringed finger... Remember the climber must have tripped on something by the open coffin? Cats will do that. Particularly cats with their eyes on an easy prize. A nearly detached finger on a corpse inside an open car boot while the husband fills up a grave is an easy target.'
'That's gross.'
Sherlock shrugs. 'The cat wasn't hungry, he didn't eat it. Took it home to share with the humans. I quite like the cat. I will follow his social media page after this... John, can we get a cat? I'm sure we can train the cat to fetch us small autopsy specimens. You have a free desk space upstairs in your room, right? We don't need much space to perform autopsies on smallish corpses brought in by a cat. They can't haul big preys, cat's jaws are—'
'Sherlock!'
'Spoilsports.'
'Sherlock, you've already set up your amateur radio on my desk, remember?'
'Oh, right, that explains the disembodied voices coming from the walls, today.'
'Sherlock?'
'Just kidding, John, I turned off the radio by midday, after a short but thorough investigation of the premises.'
I smirk knowingly. My friend would have half-welcomed an intruder by now.
'Sherlock, that was gruesome, and I'm a bit queasy, but it was amazing work. Seriously amazing.'
'Thanks, John... Will you have to go to work tomorr— today?'
I shake my head. Day off. Sherlock smiles, as if thankful of my luck.
'You have markedly reduced shivering and colour is returning to your cheeks. John, I'll have a go at cooking you breakfast.'
I smile, quietly content for this moment in time, this peaceful existence, this respite.
'I'll keep the fire extinguisher on the ready.'
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