Author's note: Once again, I am indebted to Ariane Devere's Live Journal transcripts of the Study in Pink; obviously, the dialogue from the episode is the property of Moffat/Gatiss and Hartwood Films, as well as the BBC. This chapter inevitably relies almost entirely on the script for dialogue, but I hope adds value from the insight into Greg's thinking.
Chapter Thirty - 2010 A Third Party (Part Four)
Greg managed to get back to the crime scene in Brixton before Sherlock. The police car had advantages over a taxi; sirens and lights allowed him to cross intersections. He'd never understood why Sherlock wouldn't accept the offer of a lift in one of the cars. Maybe it was bad associations with previous arrests and his times living homeless on the streets.
He was half way into his Forensic coverall again when the consulting detective strode in, clad in his usual long coat and blue scarf. The young man could scarcely contain the grin on his face. Behind him trailed a man Lestrade recognised – the bloke who had been sitting in the chair at Baker Street. He was slightly taken aback; why would Sherlock bring a potential flatmate with him to a crime scene?
He watched as Sherlock pointed to a pile of blue suits and told the man to put one on.
"Who's this?" Greg asked Sherlock; if he was going to bring the guy along, he could at least introduce him.
Sherlock just replied enigmatically as he stripped off his leather gloves, "He's with me." He reached for the box of sterile latex gloves.
That wasn't good enough for Greg. He would get enough grief from the team having Sherlock there after a three month break; a stranger would be doubly unwelcome. "But, who is he?"
Sherlock snapped back, "I said, he's with me." He glared at the DI. In other words, back off.
As he put on a pair of white cotton overshoes, Lestrade looked at the flatmate properly for the first time. Older than Sherlock, by about five or six years? Ash blonde hair cut short. For a moment, Greg wondered whether Sherlock would have been daft enough to carry through with this threat to find a drug dealer to share. But the man in front of him now just didn't look the part. No prison tats, no macho way of standing. That's when Greg noticed the cane, which threw him a little. Other than that, the guy looked remarkably ordinary. The DI saw him take off his jacket and pick up a blue coverall, stepping into it. The man asked Sherlock mildly, "Aren't you going to put one on?"
The accent wasn't London, but not particularly northern either. Somewhere in the Home Counties, most likely. Lestrade was puzzled, Where the hell would Sherlock have run across someone so… normal? And why on earth would a normal person agree to share a flat with someone like Sherlock? No, re-phrase that, he told himself, why would an ordinary person who just signed up to share a flat be willing to come with his new acquaintance to a crime scene? Just who was this guy?
Sherlock just looked at the shorter man after the question about the forensic coverall. It brought back a memory for Greg, of the time three years ago when at a crime scene he'd looked around for Sherlock, and realised he was missing. When he eventually found him in an empty room away from the crime scene, Sherlock was curled up in a ball, gasping for breath in the early stages of a panic attack, with the torn shreds of his blue forensic coverall lying in the middle of the room. Greg had taken one look and realised that somehow Sherlock had just gone through a melt-down all on his own. When he finally managed to get the consultant detective able to talk again, he was told in no uncertain terms that he would never, ever wear "that thing" again. The smell of the plastic fabric, the feel of it against his skin, the sound it made every time he moved was just "too much to take, no matter how important it is to the work." Lestrade had found a way around it, getting the Forensic officers to take a sample of just about everything Sherlock wore, his hair, skin and DNA so it could be ruled out in future investigations. If it was further evidence that he was willing to bend rules to accommodate that brain, then his team were told just to shut up and take it.
So, when Sherlock did not explain to his flatmate why he wasn't wearing one of the forensic suits, Greg knew he was not ready to reveal so much about himself. The shorter guy just shook his head as if slightly puzzled, and carried on slipping on the white shoe covers that Greg had, and then looked at Sherlock's uncovered shoes, with slight amusement.
Sherlock asked Greg, "So, where are we?"
Greg picked up a pair of gloves himself. "Upstairs." He led the way up two flights of the staircase. He said over his shoulder, "I can give you two minutes."
Sherlock replied casually, "May need longer."
Greg explained as they reached the landing, "Her name's Jennifer Wilson, according to her credit cards. We're running them now for contact details. Hasn't been here long. Some kids found her."
Greg led them into the room, and watched as Sherlock saw the body for the first time. The lanky brunet held out a hand in front of himself as he focused on the corpse. Greg had seen him do this before- it was a sort of measuring tool that the consulting detective used to deduce approximate height and a way of fixing the image of the corpse in that photographic mind of his.
Because Greg was keeping his eye on Sherlock, he didn't see the look of pain and sadness cross the flatmate's face as he looked at the woman on the floor. The three men stood silently for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts.
"Shut up." Sherlock sounded impatient.
Lestrade reacted defensively, startled. "I didn't say anything." You would have thought after years of working with Sherlock, he'd know better, but the twelve week gap meant he'd sort of forgotten just how rude Sherlock could be when he was at a scene.
"You were thinking; it's annoying."
Greg looked at the flatmate. While he was routinely used to getting this sort of abuse from Sherlock, he found himself worrying about what the still unnamed man would think. The bloke looked amused.
Sherlock walked forward and examined the scratched letters on the floor and the broken nails. Then he squatted down and ran his gloved fingers along the back of her coat, lifting them to look at what he found. He reached into her pocket and pulled a white folding umbrella out and then ran his finger along its furls before looking at the finger again. He moved up to the collar of her coat and repeated the process. Then the brunet pulled out his small magnifier, clicked it open and examined her jewellery – a bracelet, an earring and necklace, then her rings on her left hand. He pulled off the wedding ring and examined the inside. The whole process took less than a minute.
When he saw Sherlock smile, Lestrade knew it was safe to interrupt. "Got anything?"
A nonchalant "Not much" is uttered as Sherlock stood and took his gloves off. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and began keying something into it.
Anderson was standing in the doorway now, eyeing Sherlock suspiciously. "She's German. 'Rache'- it's German for revenge. She could be trying to tell us something."
Sherlock walked quickly toward the door and began to close it, as he said sarcastically "Yes, thank you for your input" before shutting it in the Crime Scene Examiner's face.
Greg looked puzzled. "So, she's German?"
Sherlock snorted. "Of course, she's not. She's from out of town, though. Intended to stay in London for one night….before returning to Cardiff." He was looking at his phone with a smile. "So far, so obvious."
The man standing beside Lestrade spoke for the first time since coming in the room. "Sorry- obvious?" His incredulity was evident.
Greg ignored him. "What about the message, though?"
The DI was surprised when Sherlock did not respond to his question, but rather looked at the man standing next to him.
"Doctor Watson, what do you think?"
"Of the message?"
"Of the body. You're a medical man."
It was Greg's turn to be puzzled. Was Sherlock actually asking this guy, this stranger, to get involved in the forensic work? That was ridiculous. "Wait, no, we have a whole team outside."
"They won't work with me."
He was used to this sort of prima donna attitude from Sherlock, but this time Greg decided to put his foot down. "I'm breaking every rule letting you in here." The clear implication was that he didn't want this flatmate, this…doctor involved in the crime scene, but there was also the unspoken fact that both men knew- Mycroft Holmes had not yet signed off on Sherlock working on cases again, and Greg was risking a lot breaking that rule.
Sherlock's answer was brutally honest. "Because you need me." Behind that tense statement was the past twelve weeks of frustration at being kept off cases.
Greg locked eyes with the consulting detective for a tense moment, and then lowered his gaze. "Yes, I do. God help me." It was an admission that whatever Sherlock was playing at by having his flatmate with him on the crime scene, Lestrade was going to put up with it.
Sherlock called out to the man, who was looking at the body. "Doctor Watson?"
The man looked up first at Sherlock but then turned his gaze toward Lestrade, seeking permission there.
A doctor? What sort of doctor? But Greg saw the impatience on Sherlock's face, so he conceded defeat. With irritation, he just said, "Oh, do as he says. Help yourself." Annoyed he stalked over to the door, opened it and left the room, calling out on the landing, "Anderson, keep everyone out for a couple of minutes."
When Greg returned, the doctor was down, kneeling beside the body. He put his head down close to the woman's head and sniffed, then lifted a hand and looked at her skin. "Yeah, asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. Could have been a seizure; possibly drugs."
Sherlock was watching the doctor, really watching him. Greg realised he was deducing something about the doctor. "You know what it was. You've read the papers." Sherlock prompted.
"What, she's one of the suicides- the fourth?
He's using this crime scene to figure out something about this new flatmate. Greg decided to butt in. Sherlock could play his mind games on his new flatmate on his own time; Lestrade had a crime scene to run. "Sherlock. Two minutes, I said. I need anything you've got."
Sherlock stood up and rattled off the most amazing series of deductions Greg had heard him utter at a crime scene for the past five years. Maybe because he'd been stifled for almost three months, this time the stuff just poured out of him. Not only her occupation, where she was from (Cardiff) and the fact that she had come for London for only one night, but also the state of her married life, her series of lovers and the fact that her roll-on overnight suitcase was missing. At one point Greg just interjected "Oh, for God's sake if you're just making this up…" which sent Sherlock off onto another frenzied bout of deduction delivered at blistering speed. The flatmate just looked astonished, and he said so- "That's brilliant" when Sherlock explained how he deduced her adultery by the dirt on her ring's outer surface combined with a clean inside. Greg questioned how the detective had figured out Cardiff, and got a detailed description of weather conditions in London compared to South Wales and the moisture on Jennifer Wilson's coat, collar and umbrella, combined with wind speeds and time of travel, ending with Sherlock's phone being thrust in his face with the Cardiff weather report.
When the doctor was stunned into an amazed "That's fantastic!" Greg watched Sherlock's reaction. The brunet just turned to look at the shorter man and said quietly, "You know you do that out loud?" That provoked a sheepish "Sorry, I'll shut up" from the doctor. What amazed Greg more was Sherlock's reply," No, its…fine." That's when Greg realised that part of the deduction frenzy had been designed to impress the new flatmate. Sherlock was actually showing off. Wow, I've never seen him care enough about what someone thought to do that- not even me!
All that said, Lestrade couldn't ignore the one glaring problem. "Why do you keep saying 'suitcase'? That led to a heated exchange, where Sherlock showed splash marks on the tights of the murdered woman and asked again what had been done with the case, as he needed a phone or organiser to find out who Rachel was.
When Greg pointed out that no case had been found, Sherlock's reaction was immediate. "Say that again."
Greg frowned. Sherlock never needed things repeated, but he complied. "There wasn't a case. There was never any suitcase."
Sherlock was out the door and shouting to the police officers in the house as he started down the stairs. "Suitcase, did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in the house?"
Greg leaned over the bannister to shout, "Sherlock, there was no case!" The doctor joined him to look down the stairs at Sherlock, who was now almost muttering to himself, "but they take the poison themselves; they chew, swallow the pills themselves, There are clear signs, even you lot couldn't miss them." He had that far-off expression on his face that he had when he was re-visualising all the evidence in his mind.
That muttering drew annoyed glances from the other officers on the scene, who were watching Sherlock. Then he stated in a categorical tone, "It's murder, all of them. I don't know how, but they're not suicides; they're killings- serial killings."
When he stopped on the step, he held his hands up in front of his face and said with delight, "We've got ourselves a serial killer. I love those, there's always something to look forward to!"
Both Lestrade and the Doctor peered over the bannister at Sherlock. The doctor's face betrayed his slight dismay at Sherlock's exuberant delight at the prospect of such a gruesome concept as a serial killer; Greg's reaction was a more knowing affection. He's finally back where he belongs!
