Chapter Thirty Three- 2010 A Third Party (Part Seven)
All eyes on Sherlock, the people in the room waited for the explosion.
The tall brunet was still standing with his back to the people in the room, muttering to himself, trying to cling to the threads of deduction as if they were his very lifeline. "Come on, think! Quick!"
Mrs Hudson at that stage did the one thing Greg was dreading- she interrupted to ask, "what about your taxi?"
He whirled around and shouted furiously, "MRS HUDSON!"
Shocked by his fury, she put her hand to her mouth and ran from the room. Greg started to move toward Sherlock to try to calm him down, but then stopped as he saw Sherlock stop.
"Oh!"
Greg watched the smile blossom on Sherlock's face. He relaxed a tiny bit; maybe melt-down had been pushed aside by revelation?
"Oh, she was clever, clever, yes!" He could hardly contain his excitement as he walked away from them and then suddenly spun back to face them. "She's cleverer than you lot, and she's dead. Do you see, do you get it? She didn't lose her phone. She never lost it. She planted it on him!" Unable to hold still, he started pacing again.
"When she got out of the car, she knew that she was going to her death. She left the phone in order to lead us to her killer."
Greg voiced what he suspected everyone in the room was asking, "But, how?"
Sherlock stopped and stared at him in surprise. "Wha…? What do you mean, how?"
Lestrade was confused.
"Rachel!" Sherlock looked expectantly at the others, who looked back blankly.
As if they hadn't heard him the first time, he repeated himself. "Don't you see? Rachel!"
Greg wondered if this was some strange form of break down- Sherlock wasn't making any sense, and he started to worry.
Sherlock didn't help. In an odd tone and with a strange sort of look on his face, he said"Oh, look at you lot. You're all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing." This obscure comment was delivered half sarcastically, half bewildered. Greg couldn't keep his mind from leaping to an awful conclusion- oh, shit, I think he's cracking up.
Sherlock just scowled at him. "Rachel is not a name."
It was John who decided to try to make sense of what his flatmate was saying. "Then what is it?"
Sherlock focused on the doctor. "John, on the luggage, there's a label- e mail address." Then he turned away and sat down at the table, and woke his laptop up. "Oh, I've been too slow. She didn't have a laptop, which means she did all her business on her phone, so it's a smartphone. It's e-mail enabled."
John read out the e mail address. Sherlock typed it into the laptop, talking to himself, "So, there was a website for her account…the username is her e-mail address…. All together now, the password is?"
John walked over to stand behind him "…Rachel."
Anderson was not impressed. "So, we can read her e-mails. So what?"
Sherlock sneered. "Anderson, don't talk out loud. You lower the IQ of the whole street. We can do much more than read her e-mails. It's a smartphone, it's got GPS, which means if you lose it, you can locate it online. She's leading us directly to the man who killed her."
Lestrade had moved closer to John and Sherlock. He voiced his concern…"Unless he got rid of it."
The flatmate answered before Sherlock could. "We know he didn't."
Sherlock was looking at the screen impatiently. He'd typed in the password and clicked on the location function, but it was taking it's time. "Come on, come on, quickly!"
Mrs Hudson came back up the stairs, and tentatively entered the room again. "Sherlock, dear, this taxi driver…"
Sherlock got up from the table and walked toward her. "Mrs Hudson, isn't it time for your evening soother?" He was trying to get rid of her, but at least he wasn't shouting, for which Greg was thankful. The young man then turned to Greg and said dramatically, "We need to get vehicles, get a helicopter….we're going to have to move fast. This phone battery won't last forever."
Greg wondered about that. "We'll just have a map reference, not a name."
Sherlock dismissed his caution. "It's a start!"
The doctor had kept his eye on the laptop as it churned away. "Sherlock…"
That drew the tall brunet over in a flash, where he leaned closely over the shorter man's shoulder to see the screen. "What is it? Quickly, where?"
The doctor's surprise was clear. "It's here. It's in 221b Baker Street."
Sherlock straightened up, startled. "How can it be here? HOW?"
Greg sighed. "Well, maybe it was in the case when you brought it back and it fell out somewhere."
Sherlock snorted. "What, and I didn't notice it? ME? I didn't notice?"
The flatmate told Greg that he had texted him at Jennifer Wilson's number and that he had called back, earlier in the evening, but that the number had been blocked. Lestrade took this in, but called out to the Yard team, "Guys, we're also looking for a mobile somewhere, belonging to the victim…"
Sherlock just stood absolutely still in the room as the others went about frantically searching. Greg kept an eye on him as he went about the search. From time to time, the younger man moved his head, as if visualising something. Greg had seen him do it countless times before. Is he working something out? Or, was this the aftereffects of the near melt-down? He didn't look too good. Then the brunet's attention was taken by the sound of a text alert, which he scanned briefly. But, Greg saw that he was still at a loss, and showing clear signs of confusion.
That made Greg worried. He stopped his search and was trying to find the words to say that wouldn't embarrass the young man in front of the others. But, before Greg could do it, the flatmate got there first. "Sherlock, you okay?"
Sherlock didn't look at him, just vaguely mumbled, "What? Yeah, yeah, I…I'm fine."
Greg watched the doctor sizing up Sherlock's confused state. "So, how can the phone be here?" That's exactly what Greg would have done, try to ground the young man and get his attention focused back on the case. Sherlock's reply worried the DI; the vague "dunno" was just so…unlike Sherlock. Greg's level of alarm rose.
The flatmate didn't give up. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he said, "I'll try it again." That stopped the DI, who suddenly realised that if the doctor rang the number again, the sound of the ringing would tell them where the phone was in the flat. Surely, Sherlock would have figured that out already? But Sherlock, just muttered, "Good idea," as if he wasn't particularly interested anymore, and headed toward the living room door. As he started to key re-dial, the doctor noticed, stopped what he was doing and asked "Where are you going?"
Greg heard the reply "Fresh air…just popping outside for a moment; won't be long." The casual tone sounded horribly false. He watched in disbelief, as Sherlock headed down the stairs. Walking out in the middle of an on-going investigation, just as the key piece of evidence is about to be revealed? That is not good. Whatever the stresses of the night had wrought, clearly Sherlock was now in need of an escape, an opportunity to shut down for a few minutes. Greg wondered if he was going to go outside to smoke a cigarette and try to calm his nerves. He decided to give Sherlock a bit of peace. From bitter experience, he knew that if he pressed too hard when Sherlock was wrestling with his sensory issues, it could lead to a pretty bruising exchange, with the young man resenting being reminded of his disability. Not in front of the new flatmate.
But the doctor wouldn't let it go, so he asked again, "You sure you're all right?" As Sherlock hurried down the stairs, Lestrade heard the reply, "I'm fine."
Greg would give him five minutes to pull himself together and then go down and see if he could help. The officers continued their search. The doctor just stood there for a moment, then walked to the window and looked down. Probably keeping an eye on Sherlock; he's clearly twitched that something is not right. Greg hoped that this wouldn't end in the potential flatmate realising that Sherlock's behaviour wasn't just some form of eccentricity. He had no idea what kind of doctor the guy was, and whether he'd recognise a neuro-atypical condition. Well, he wasn't going to be the one to tell him, lest Sherlock blame him for chasing the man off.
A few moments later, the doctor said, "He just got in a cab." He turned away from the window, looked at Lestrade and said in a worried tone, "It's Sherlock. He just drove off in a cab."
Donovan was standing next to Lestrade as this was said, and she just tutted in irritation. "I told you, he does that. " She looked pointedly at the DI. "He bloody left again." She stalked off to the kitchen and shouted in annoyance. "We're wasting our time!"
John realised he was still holding his phone in his hand. He hit the re-call key; "I'm calling the phone. It's ringing out."
The flat was silent.
Lestrade frowned. "If it's ringing, it's not here."
John pulled the phone away from his ear, and turned back to the table with the laptop on it. "I'll try the search again."
Donovan came back from the kitchen to confront Lestrade. "Does it matter? Does any of it? You know, he's just a lunatic, and he'll always let you down. You're wasting your time. All of our time."
Greg was trying to make sense of it. Having just had the whole drugs bust orchestrated to make the point that Sherlock needed to work together with the Yard, would he really have gone off on to pursue a lead? For once, his behaviour wasn't defiant or cocky. Sherlock's departure wasn't the result of his usual "Oh!" realisation. There was no indication that he'd come to understand something suddenly and gone haring off in pursuit. His distracted manner, his peculiar behaviour worried the detective. Maybe the cab had been taken to get away from the flat, the intrusion, the people, before he had a proper melt-down?
As he went through these possibilities, he knew that it was too late- in either case. He sighed and then said loudly so everyone on the team could hear, "Okay, everybody. Done here."
