Author's Note: I have had a review complaining that "they are reading the show"- ok- ...I get what you are saying...but bear with me. The point of this is to establish Greg's POV on the arrival of John. The next two chapters finish SiP and establish relationships with Sherlock, John and Mycroft that will be needed for the next set of stories- the sequel to Collateral Damage and Sidelines, which is called Level Up. After that, there will also be case fic with Greg and Sherlock set somewhere in the post series one period. And there will be a Sam-centered story too, due to popular request. So hang in there. If you don't want to bother with the iconic canon pieces with added insight and links to back story, then skip ahead a couple of chapters.


Chapter Thirty One- 2010 A Third Party (Part Five)


Watching Sherlock come to grips with the body at Lauriston Gardens, Detective Inspector Lestrade was enjoying every moment. But, as ever, he was struggling to keep up with the consulting detective's train of thought. If Greg was going to control Sherlock, he needed to slow him down long enough to keep the others of the team on side. After three months without Sherlock, the team would be resentful if he ignored them as he used to do. Worse still, in the back of Greg's mind was the worry that Mycroft Holmes had not officially signed off on Sherlock getting back to work, so it was crucial for the DI to keep Sherlock's natural enthusiasm under tight control. The worst case scenario would see Sherlock haring off on his own again, and coming to grief. If that happened on his first hot case for months, Lestrade just knew that Mycroft would pull the plug.

So, he tried to slow the pace down. Leaning over the bannister, he called down to Sherlock, "Why are you saying that?"

That made Sherlock turn and snap at him. "Her case! Come on, where is her case? Did she eat it?" He was exasperated. "Someone else was here, and they took her case." He turned away and muttered to himself, "So the killer must have driven her here; forgot the case was in the car."

The Doctor standing beside Lestrade called down to Sherlock. "She could have checked into a hotel; left her case there."

Sherlock frowned, rejecting the idea outright. "No, she never got to the hotel. Look at her hair. She colour-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. She'd never have left a hotel with her hair still looking…" He stopped in mid-flow, coming to a realisation. Greg heard the inevitable "Oh" with a smile.

Even from where he was standing, he could see Sherlock's eyes widen and his face light up. An even bigger "OH!" escaped, and then as if he could not contain himself, he even clapped his hands together in delight.

The flatmate was startled by the behaviour. "Sherlock?"

Greg knew more about what the process meant, so he leaned over the railing and called out "What is it, what?"

Sherlock was still in the afterglow of discovery. "Serial killers are always hard. You have to wait for them to make a mistake."

Greg grimaced. If he thought that his superiors were applying pressure after three, what would happen when news of the fourth became known? He shuddered to think. There was no way they could wait for a Fifth. "We can't just wait!"

Sherlock's answer was aimed at reassuring Greg. "Oh, we're done waiting." He started down the stairs at speed, calling back over his shoulder. "Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake. Get onto Cardiff; find out who Jennifer Wilson's family and friends were. Find Rachel!"

Greg had already planned all of that. "Of course, yeah, but what mistake?" He was confused by what Sherlock obviously thought he had gotten, but he didn't have a clue, and now Sherlock was half way out of the front door when he heard Greg's query. The DI heard him rush back in, come up a couple of stairs so he could see Greg and just shout "PINK!" before rushing out at speed again.

Greg stood back, baffled by the word, and then without looking at the doctor standing beside him, he turned back into the room to really look at the body again, to see if he could figure out what on earth Sherlock meant. Behind him, he could hear Anderson hurrying up the stairs with the team, saying "Let's get on with it."

As Sherlock bolted out of the front door, he was already running by the time he ducked under the police tape. Sally Donovan watched him go. Before he'd even turned up, Lestrade had asked her to do the usual "Sherlock watch", keeping up with him if he bolted the crime scene to provide back up. "It's even more important this time, Donovan; it's his first case back and I don't want anything to go wrong, so I'm asking you personally to take it on, rather than delegate it to a PC." This time, Freak, I'm not going to do it. After what you said to me and Don, you've just pushed me too far. What I do in my private life is nothing to do with you, and embarrassing me in public like that is just way out of line. If Lestrade gave her grief about it, she'd just say Sherlock was too quick for her, and she'd lost him.

A couple of minutes later, the guy that Sherlock had introduced to her as his "colleague" came out, obviously looking for Sherlock. She smirked. He had a lot to learn, and she was happy to dish the dirt. She walked up to him and started talking.

She'd just finished explaining that Holmes was a psychopath and that psychopaths get bored, when Lestrade came out of the front door, saw her and shouted for her to come over. She warned the bloke to stay away from Sherlock, and then headed back for what she knew would be a serious ear bashing from her DI. Tough. I'd rather that than be that nutter's babysitter.