Author's Note- for some reason, the last paragraphs of Chapter Twenty Three were not on the first posting; I corrected it, but for those of you who read it before the correction, I repeat below the section you may have missed.
Chapter Twenty Four- 2010 Consequences
…At 11pm, he gave up and called Mycroft's number.
The usual female voice answered on the second ring. "Detective Inspector, how may I help?"
"Have you got eyes on Sherlock? He's just gone AWOL from a crime scene and won't or can't answer his phone. That makes me worried."
"Hold on, please."
She came back on less than a minute later. "We have a problem, Detective Inspector. He was tracked seven minutes ago on the CCTV on Cuthbert Place, running north, but not pursued. However, none of the next cameras within a radius of 800 meters has picked him up yet, and one of them should have by now. Suggest you investigate there. I will be informing Mr Holmes, our team and SO6. You're closer, so take action now." The line went dead.
Shit. This was Lestrade's nightmare, and it was happening now for real.
He was the one officer who didn't actually have anything concrete to do in the current investigation, so Lestrade left Sally Donovan in charge of the crime scene and headed for the hole in the fence. Once through, he spotted the CCTC camera that was focused on the intersection of Cuthbert Street and Parsons Crescent. He crossed and carried on up Cuthbert Street. There was another junction up ahead about a quarter of a mile, controlled by traffic lights, so he guessed that was where the next camera might be. Somewhere between here and there, Sherlock had disappeared off the radar.
Why would he come up here? What did he realise when he said that bloody "OH" of his? Lestrade slowed his pace and really looked up and down the street. He could hear that snide comment echoing in his ears. You observe, but you do not see, Lestrade.
"What did you see, Sherlock?" he muttered to himself.
The road looked like any other East London road, lined by two storey terraced houses, built in the early part of the last century, to house London's East End working class cockneys. The only exception was where German bombs in the 1940s destroyed sections; these spaces were now occupied by flats built in the 1960s and 70s to house council tenants. The old blocks were marooned amidst re-furbished and gentrified houses, probably now owned by much better paid City workers. Parked cars lined both sides of the streets; BMWs and luxury cars for the houses, smaller compacts in front of the flats. Nothing out of the ordinary, then. Think, Lestrade! Sherlock realised something important that took him in this direction.
The body on the waste ground had been dumped at least four hours ago, according to the Crime Scene Examiner's best estimate, and the death occurred elsewhere before then. So, Sherlock was not actually chasing some suspect fleeing the scene. It had to be something he knew about the area, or something he had seen some other time that brought him up this road.
Greg kept walking slowly northward, hoping that this something would leap out at him and say "Sherlock is here." For the first two hundred meters, nothing spoke to him. Not a whisper of an idea. He checked his watch and realised that a half hour had passed since the young man bolted from the crime scene. He checked his phone again on the chance that a reply had been texted. Nothing. His worry was reaching an excruciating level. His imagination was beginning to play worst case scenario of a tall lanky figure lying somewhere in a dark alley, bleeding to death.
He took a deep breath and shoved the image away. He needed to keep his focus, try to think his way to Sherlock. He looked across the street at another of the old blocks of flats. This one was unoccupied and being refurbished, with scaffolding up the sides. He carried on a few feet, and then stopped.
Wait a minute. He'd just talked to Sally about whether this murder could be in any way connected to the electrician's murder six weeks before. That body had been found three miles away, again on waste ground behind a building project. What is it about this construction job that is catching my attention? What am I meant to see here, Sherlock?
The name of the construction company was not the same as the one that ran the site where the electrician was found. But Greg knew that didn't necessarily mean anything. A lot of local sub-contractors could be involved in both sites. He wondered if any of their workmen might have been reported as missing.
He got on the phone. "Donovan- have you checked missing persons yet? See if anybody working for a construction company called Asrocap Ltd or involved in any way with a refurb job on Cuthbert Street has been called in as a missing person."
" Guv- they haven't come back yet on this body yet, but I'll tell them the new info and get back to you when they do. Found any sign yet of the Freak?"
He hated it when she called Sherlock that, but he didn't have the time or energy to waste giving her grief now. "Not yet; if he shows up back with you, tell me."
He walked across the street to take a closer look at the site. That's when he saw the torn plastic sheeting on the second storey scaffolding. The sheeting was usually erected to protect the workers from rain, and allow the brickwork repairs to set quicker, but one section was now loose and flapping in the wind. There were no lights on in the flats; clearly unoccupied. But that torn sheet niggled. A good contractor would have fixed it before leaving for the night. He climbed over the waist-height wall into the site. They were obviously re-doing the drains, as there were deep ditches surrounding the block and then one heading back to the street. With only the street light for illumination, he started climbing the ladder, wishing to hell that he had brought a torch, because it was so poorly lit that he could hardly see where he was going.
Looking down the planking on the second level of scaffolding to where the plastic was torn, he saw what he had been dreading- a dark figure lay prone, face down on the wood.
"SHERLOCK!"
Two fingers against a carotid artery told him that Sherlock was alive, but the pulse was weak and thready.
"Sherlock, come on, wake up." He hoped to God that it was just a case of being knocked unconscious, but there was no response. He couldn't see well enough in the dark to see any obvious wounds, but was afraid to turn him over, in case there were broken bones. Neck and spinal injuries could paralyse, if he did something wrong in his panic.
He got on the phone again to Sally. "I've found Sherlock. He's alive, but injured. Radio it in and get an ambulance to the construction site on Cuthbert Street." If she used the police airwave radio to reach the Control Room, the ambulance would be given a priority over a call from a civilian phone. He also knew from past experience that SO6 would be monitoring his team's radio communications by now, and that Mycroft's people would be, too. He had no idea how serious Sherlock's injuries were or what had caused them. All he could do is hope that help got there fast enough.
Greg remembered that unlike him, Sherlock always kept a small torch in his coat, so he patted down the Belstaff until he found what he was looking for in the inside chest pocket. Switching it on, he looked first at Sherlock's face, which was not bloodied or bruised in anyway. There were no obvious injuries, no blood pooling underneath him. The DI stood and looked out through the section of torn plastic, in the hope that he would see the lights of an ambulance soon.
Nothing, the streets were empty and silent. As he turned, something down on the ground below the scaffold- something shiny- caught his eye, so he shone the torch into the ditch directly below where he was standing.
"Oh!"
There, in a crumpled heap, was a large man at the bottom of the ditch, lying very still. From the angle of his head, Greg guessed he might have broken his neck. A meter or so away from the figure was a large shiny metal tool, a plumber's pipe bender. At that moment, he heard the ambulance siren as it came through a red light and turned up the street. As it rolled to a stop and the crew leapt out, Greg flashed his torch and shouted, "Up here!"
