Got My Eye on You
Chapter Seventy Four
The Good Man- Part Five
Author's Note: (as ever in the case of dialogue from broadcast episodes, I am indebted to Ariane Devere for her excellent transcripts)
10.18am BORED. Save me from more private client idiots and Mycroft being a nag. Got anything over a six? Even a five will do. SH
Greg smiled. The Game is on, Sherlock.
10.24am Need your help on the Whitechapel Skeleton case. No. 6 Myrdle Street. Will you come?
Now standing on the steps of the ramshackle house, Lestrade gave the consulting detective a look, searching for any signs that he was in obvious pain or still under the influence of morphine. Then he saw who was with him.
"Um…it's a skeleton, not a body." Lestrade eyed with some surprise the pathologist standing behind Sherlock.
"Miss Hooper is enjoying a day of field work, assisting me. She's perfectly capable of commenting on a skeleton as much as a recently dead corpse." The consulting detective swept in past Greg with Molly in tow.
Lestrade shrugged and took them through the ground floor hall toward the back of the tumbled down terrace house in Whitechapel. When he reached a door under the stairs, he tore down the police tape sealing a door to the basement. "This one's got us all baffled."
"Mmmm. I don't doubt it."
Just like old times; next thing is that he will call me an idiot. Greg grinned at the thought and opened the door, then led the way down the stairs into the basement. He was delighted to have the opportunity to get Sherlock back to police work, and this case should be right up his alley. Even better than a 'locked room' case, this one was a 'bricked up body'. The skeleton had been found when builders were about to take the whole terrace apart. At the foot of the stairs, a large hole had been knocked through the brickwork of one wall. Lestrade went through and switched on the mobile lighting left over from the first forensic team examination.
A white-painted wooden table stood at the far end of the room and seated on a chair behind it was a skeleton dressed in an old-fashioned suit. The skeleton was holding an old fashioned glass syringe in one bony hand. Greg watched a frown form on Sherlock's face as he drew out a pouch of tools from his coat pocket and laid them on the table. He pulled out a pocket magnifier and approached the skeleton, bending over it and putting his face up close to use the magnifier. He sniffed.
Greg was struck by how differently Sherlock approached the scene from anyone else who had been there. Most Crime Scene Examiners arriving would first stand back and take in the whole crime area, looking at the positioning of the body in the space, trying to visualise a crime, and where a possible perpetrator would be standing in relation to the victim. Sherlock's acuity of vision meant he did all that in the few seconds it took to cross the threshold and approach a body. And he always got up close and personal- zooming in on the minutiae of detail that most forensic examiners left until later.
The two year absence meant that Greg watched the man's extraordinary skills with a fresh eye. At a crime scene, Sherlock used every one of his senses. He watched now as the younger man kept sniffing. The DI remembered one early crime scene where Sherlock had actually licked the handle of a briefcase in order to deduce who had been carrying it onto the crime scene. Anderson had gone ballistic; Donovon pulled a face and muttered "how gross." Sherlock snapped at the CSE, saying his DNA was on file and could be eliminated easily, but in the meantime, being able to detect the bitter traces of a scentless chemical would save hours of lab time, and would lead to the killer before he could strike again. When he proved to be right, Sally Donovan called him Freak for it, and the label had stuck.
God, I've missed the lunatic. Unlike Sally, he meant the term with affection. After a year or so, the harrowing events surrounding Sherlock's leap off the roof faded into a dull ache of loss. Greg had lost count of the number of times he'd arrived at a crime scene since and thought Sherlock would have loved this one. He'd come to realise how much he actually enjoyed working with Sherlock over the years. Despite the younger man's appalling lack of social skills, despite his habit of infuriating the rest of Lestrade's Murder Investigation Team, the DI could not resist the sheer pleasure of watching that extraordinary mind at work. And here he is, doing it again for me. His smile widened into a grin as he watched.
Molly was standing back a bit, also mesmerised by Sherlock's examination. She had a notebook open and a pen poised, as if she was about to take dictation. Lestrade found it…disconcerting. She's not John.
Sherlock suddenly straightened up and snapped his magnifier shut.
"What is it?" Molly asked, as Sherlock pulled out his phone and held it toward the ceiling in the hopes of getting a signal. "You're on to something, aren't you?"
"Mm, maybe" was all Sherlock would offer, but there was a tinge of triumph that he couldn't suppress entirely. A split second later, he whispered "Shut up, John."
Greg was taken aback by the comment. Molly was equally confused and asked "what?"
Somewhat distracted, Sherlock replied, "Hmm?...nothing" before walking to the other side of the table and continuing his investigations. He pulled a pair of tweezers from his pouch and used it to lift the lapel of the skeleton's jacket.
Lestrade was curious. He leaned in close to Sherlock where he was bent over the skeleton, gave Molly the quickest of sideways glances and very quietly asked, "this gonna be your new arrangement, is it?"
Sherlock's reply was a nonchalant, "Just giving it a go."
Greg processed that. To be sure, he asked "Right. So, John?"
"Not really in the picture anymore." This was a cool response, devoid of emotion.
Oh, they still haven't managed to sort things out yet, and by the sound of it, that's not likely to change anytime soon. He worried. Sherlock without John was…not something he wanted to contemplate longer term.
Molly and Sherlock both looked up at the sound of a distant rumbling, and then agreed it was trains. The Circle, District and Hammersmith & City underground lines all went through Whitechapel. Crossrail was being blasted through to link up east and west London, all leading to a huge redevelopment of this area. Lestrade figured that if it weren't for that fact, these old houses would have been gentrified and no one would have ever found the skeleton, safe behind its brick wall.
Greg watched as Sherlock stepped away from the table and dropped to a squat. He was looking vaguely at the floor, but not really. Molly took the opportunity to go over to the skeleton to take a closer look herself.
"Male, forty to fifty."
Perhaps the sound of her voice dragged him out of his reverie. Sherlock joined her at the side of the skeleton, provoking her to an embarrassed, "Ooh, sorry did you want to be…?"
In a slightly odd tone, the consulting detective replied "Er, no, please; be my guest." He turned away. But then muttered, as if through clenched teeth, "shut up!" Greg wondered why the hell he was talking to himself. He was used to Sherlock being weird at a crime scene, but arguing with himself was definitely not normal.
Molly exchanged worried glances with Lestrade. They both watched Sherlock pull open his pocket magnifier again to look closely at the bony hand holding the syringe. Molly returned to looking at the skeleton.
"Doesn't make sense." She was confused by what she was seeing in the skeletal remains.
The DI sought clarification. "What doesn't?"
Sherlock ignored them and started to blow dust away from where the hand was on the desk top, and then continued blowing to the edge of the table, watching how the dust lifted in response to his breath.
Molly replied to Greg's question, with a hint of how perplexed she was. "This skeleton- it's …it can't be any more than…"
"…six months old." Sherlock said it in unison with her.
Greg digested that while he watched Sherlock squat down beside the table and push on various places along the side. A compartment popped open, and Sherlock reached in to withdraw a book. He blew dust off the front cover, gave a sarcastic frown and showed it to Molly, whose eyes opened wide and she breathed a "wow!"
Before Greg could react, Sherlock dropped it onto the table with a theatrical thud. The DI read the title out loud: "How I did it, by Jack the Ripper."
Sherlock gave a sceptical snort in reply. Molly's "it's impossible!" provoked the consulting detective into a dismissive, "welcome to my world".
Grinning with surprise, Greg was trying to figure out whether this could even remotely be the real thing or just some elaborate hoax when Sherlock started to pack up his tools. Then the younger man hesitated and his hand flailed a compulsive gesture of annoyance towards his head. "Get out!" escaped through clenched his teeth.
Before either of them could react to the bizarre comment, Sherlock started talking in a louder voice to them. "I won't insult your intelligence by explaining it to you." Picking up his pouch, he started to head out the door.
Greg was having none of it. "No, please- insult away."
The younger man stuttered to a stop, then turned back to face them. "The..th..the corpse i..is six months old; it's dressed in a shoddy Victorian outfit from a museum. It's been displayed on a dummy for many years in a case facing south-east judging from the fading of the fabric. It was sold off in a fire-damage sale ..." He got his phone out and showed the screen to Greg, "... a week ago."
"So the whole thing was a fake?" Greg heard the stutter, and worried. What's going on in there, Sherlock? Not for the first time since they'd arrived at the crime scene, the DI wanted to stop proceedings and take Sherlock aside. But he hesitated, for Sherlock's sake. Calling him out in front of Molly might only exacerbate things.
"Yes." This time, Sherlock turned and headed out the door without hesitation.
Rather disappointed, Lestrade replied, "Looked so promising."
From the other room, a comment drifted back, "Facile."
Molly echoed Greg's tone, "Why would someone go to all that trouble?"
Lestrade was startled to hear Sherlock's comment drifting down the stairs up from the basement, "Why indeed, John?"
Molly looked embarrassed.
Greg could only give her a comforting smile.
