Chapter Fifty Six Bomber (Plus One, of a five + 1)


When Lestrade finished for the night, he was well and truly knackered. Exhausted, shattered, brain dead- not to put too fine a point on it, he could think of nothing he wanted more than bed. He'd spent the whole day clearing up the mess of Sherlock's latest bomber puzzle. After contacting Interpol to issue the European Arrest Warrant for Oskar Dzundza, otherwise known as the Golem, he'd then spent two hours with the Art & Antiques team who went on to formally charge Miss Wenceslas, the owner of the Hickman Gallery for fraud and criminal conspiracy involving a fake Vermeer painting. Based on her subsequent confession, he'd also assisted in the issuance of an Interpol warrant for a little known artist living in Buenos Aries, Argentina, for art forgery.

Then there was the follow up work for the murders of Anthony Woodbridge and Professor Cairns; that took a couple of hours. Neither case could move forward until Dzundza was apprehended, but their relatives needed to know what progress had been made. Sergeant Donovan returned from rescuing the hostage, and debriefed him on that. Fortunately, Timothy Gordon was fine. The boy's ordeal had not felt like it to him. On the contrary, he'd thought it terribly exciting to be involved in the filming of a new video game, and he'd hoped he played his part correctly. The men had said he needed to count down slowly and then sound frightened.

He'd had enough of this London taxi being used to kidnap hostages; it had been implicated now in at least two incidents. He had no idea whether the old blind woman, Dorothy Elton, had been abducted that way. She certainly wasn't registered as living in that block of flats; she'd been plucked from her bungalow on the other side of Rotherham. And given her death, he couldn't interview her to see if the cab and the three masked men were involved. But, he briefed a team to do a thorough exercise with the Taxi and Private Hire office. When it had been called the London Carriage Office, it had actually been part of the Met Police, but like a lot of things, had transferred to London Transport. He wanted a full list of every black cab on the road that was NOT a licensed vehicle. If the same license plate showed up on any Rotherham traffic footage, he wanted to know about it. Despite best efforts the company that manufactured the unique taxis did sell some privately, so it was possible that this was not a licensed cab, but if so, they could try to track down ownership.

Then there was the afternoon press conference called by the Art & Antiques Unit, fronted by the Assistant Commissioner for SC&O, Anthony Hemming. He wanted Lestrade there as "the DI who tracked down the murdered security guard that led to the discovery of the most important art crime of the past decade." He'd raided his desk for a fresh shirt; Greg kept a supply in the bottom drawer for those times when he wouldn't get home. Fortunately, he didn't have much of a speaking role; others were content to take the limelight. By agreement with the Assistant Commissioner, he'd argued against making Sherlock Holmes' role public. "We don't want to give this bomber the oxygen of publicity, so let's keep him out of it, please."

Throughout the day, Lestrade kept waiting for a phone call from Sherlock to say that another one had started. Failing that, he expected a call from Mycroft. Damn it- he'd been expecting that call for days. Where is the man when you actually need him?

Maybe to get a step ahead, he started a team digging on the name "Moriarty". It was a fairly common Irish name, but he wanted every possible criminal connection identified. You take on Sherlock, you take on me, Mr Moriarty, whoever you are.

By five o'clock, he'd had enough. More than enough. He texted Sherlock

5.02pm Any new activity? If not, I'm going home to bed. I'm knackered. GL

5. 05pm Nothng. Go. SH

Well, that's succinct. He was too tired to care.

When Louise got home after work at 6.45pm, she found the curtains drawn, the lights off and a sleeping Greg in his bed. After contemplating the scene in the bedroom, she changed her clothes and called a friend: "Fancy going for a meal and a film?"

By the time she got back, and crawled into bed herself, it was just past midnight. Greg was deep asleep, and at first she found his snores annoying. Then it seemed as if she'd just managed to drift off when the sound of a phone ringing woke her up. Flipping on the light, she saw that it was Greg's phone, on his bedside table, but, of course, as ever, he was sleeping straight through it. She shoved his shoulder with a little more animosity than usual, and he suddenly thrashed awake.

"What, what's …are you a'right?"

"It's your bloody phone; you answer it- and take it out into the living room, will you?"

He staggered up, threw on his dressing gown and picked up the phone. By the time he was out of the bedroom door, she'd switched off the light.

"Yeah? What's …happened"

Sherlock's voice sounded a little higher pitched, and a bit less fluent than usual. Or was that Greg's sleep-addled brain? He couldn't be sure.

"The fifth and final pip" He must have heard Greg's intake of breath. " Relax... solved it. Freed the hostage myself. John…. it was John, by the way."

Oh shit! Whatever Greg had been expecting, this was not it. That meant the bomber was not only familiar with Sherlock, but knew that, of all the people to wrap in semtex, John was the one that would distress the consulting detective the most.

"Why the hell didn't you call me when all this started? What was the puzzle?"

"Irrelevant. And classified. The only reason why I'm calling is that you need to organise a clean-up. We're just outside the swimming pool in Camberwell, you know- the Victorian one that's about to be restored. Moriarty and the snipers are long gone. On the side of the pool is the bomber's jacket, and tell the bomb squad to treat the anorak carefully; I don't think that Moriarty would detonate it just for effect at this stage, but it would be wise to take proper precautions."

"Sherlock, slow down. Is John all right? Are you alright? And just who the hell is this Moriarty and why is he doing this to you?"

There was no reply. He could just hear the man's slightly ragged breathing on the other end of the phone, and the usual street noises of a Saturday night in London. Then the sound of someone walking up to Sherlock, then the call was ended.

Shit, shit, shit….Greg's brain had gone from sleep-fuddled zero to full adrenaline pumped panic over the course of the call. Classified? What the hell did that mean?

Enough. He didn't care if it was nearly one in the morning, Mycroft Holmes needed to be informed. He scrolled through his phone's contact list, found the one he was looking for and hit the call button.

To his credit, Mycroft Holmes was obviously a light sleeper. He picked up on the second ring.

"Detective Inspector, what's happened?" It was a question mildly put, but Greg could read the tinge of stress lying under the polite tone.

"Your brother…" and here Greg ground to a halt. How to sum up the last week's mayhem? "…has been playing games with a bomber. And you seem to be sitting on the side-lines watching it all play out. Care to tell me why?"

"Not until you explain the timing of this call, Detective Inspector, and why you are wanting to know now."

"I'll assume then that you haven't heard about your brother ending up at a pool in South London, with John strapped into a jacket of semtex?"

There was the briefest moment of silence, then "No, can't say that I have." It was calmly stated. Greg realised that Mycroft would know that if Sherlock had been injured, the call would have started differently. Not for the first time in his history of knowing the Holmes brothers, Greg was glad that his contact was more with Sherlock. As limited as the man was at expressing emotion, Sherlock at least had reasons to be reticent. Mycroft just kept his so tightly leashed that it was positively scary at times.

Greg decided to plough on. "Well, he just called me in to do the clean-up routine. Says the game is over; I get the feeling this was a score draw. And my guess is that when John ended up as the hostage, Sherlock wasn't quite so happy to play along." Greg realised that the six hours of sleep he'd managed since getting home was probably all he was going to get tonight. "Frankly, I'm sick of coming along behind him with a broom, so I really, really do hope that this is over. I can't keep my eye on him tonight. I suggest that you do that right now, because in my book, whatever happened at the pool sounds like it wiped the grin off of Sherlock's face."

"Thank you for that advice. Leave it with me."

"Keep me informed, will you? Sherlock's told me bugger all about what's really going on here. And quite frankly, I'm getting tired of being taken for granted. Got that, Mycroft?"

"Loud and clear, Lestrade." The call ended, leaving Greg to glower at his phone. He went back into the bedroom and dug out some clothes in the dark.

A long suffering sigh erupted from the bed. "I suppose you're off again?"

"Yeah, sorry to wake you."

There was no reply. As Lestrade prepared for another night's work in service to the Holmes brothers, he wondered where it was all going to end.


Author's note: And that brings this story arc up to the time of my other fic series which starts with Collateral Damage. I appear to have collected a large number of followers and reviewers to this story line (for which I am humbly grateful). I am happy to be guided by you, so do tell me requests for other stories from Lestrade's point of view. I have at least one more "Sam" plot in mind, but any particular scenarios or plot bunnies that you'd like me to tackle, do tell.