Got My Eye On You
Chapter Seventy Seven
The Good Man- Part Eight
In the two years since Sherlock's 'departure', Lestrade had conveniently forgotten how inconveniently the man's telephone calls could be. In less than a week, he'd rediscovered this tendency- and the fact that when the calls did come, it was always crucial to pick up.
It was the evening of the day after- twenty four hours after John's stint as a Guy on the bonfire. Lestrade had a busy day sorting through the interview statements, the limited forensic evidence and the CCTV reports. The bonfire had been built by volunteers in the neighbourhood, and wood had come from all sorts of donations. He couldn't guarantee it, but he figured that John might have been delivered in a wooden wardrobe that was shoved into place to serve as one side of the heap. A wardrobe door left open at the crucial moment and an extra shove would have thrown a limp form into the space at the bottom of the heap. CCTV wasn't helpful about the wardrobe, which had come like much of the rest of the salvaged wood in the back of a white van. The licence plates proved it had been stolen from north London that morning. The two who unloaded the van were white males under six foot, wearing black jackets and jeans. A day's worth of CCTV scrutiny by an officer eventually tracked the vehicle from the Baker Street area down to Moreton Street at about 5.15. But it was dark by then and no faces were visible.
The statement John gave to Lestrade and Sherlock at the hospital that night had been a little disjointed, but the bare facts were there. He'd left the practice early at four o'clock, and travelled by tube to the flat, so roughly 4.30 was when he'd been pounced on by two men right in front of Baker Street at dusk. He hadn't noticed anyone following him to the flat, but then "I wasn't particularly expecting anything, was I?" The doctor had eyed Sherlock a little fiercely at that point, and Greg felt the younger man shift a little beside him, as if uncomfortable with the comment.
Mary stood beside the hospital bed on the righ; Lestrade was on the left side of John. Sherlock had hung back a bit, still uncertain about his being there.
"What happened next?" Lestrade wanted John to focus.
"The first one bumped my shoulder walking by to distract me, the second one jabbed me with the hypodermic. I struggled, but the drug was fast acting, and I just couldn't move. I was still conscious on the pavement for a second, but then it was lights out. Next thing I knew I was waking up in the dark, totally paralysed. I could hear people's voices, but not see them, because I couldn't turn my head. Then I smelled smoke, then a minute or so later, petrol, and then felt flames. Eventually, I managed to get some control over my voice and started calling out for help. I heard Sherlock and Mary calling out to me, and then I was pulled free."
"Would you recognise again the two who abducted you?"
"Possibly; they didn't hide their faces."
"I'll send a photofit guy over while their faces are still fresh in your mind."
"Don't bother." This was said in a quiet baritone.
"Why not? It's the only lead we've got!" Lestrade was surprised.
"Because whoever organised this would have used unknowns to do it. They're called clean skins- no record, no prints, no history. He's too professional to be caught by something so simple. Trying to chase down the drug won't work either- it will turn out to be something quite generic and easily sourced."
"You don't know that, Sherlock."
"Balance of probabilities, Lestrade."
John looked tired and worn, his face pale except where the cuts were bandaged and a cheek that looked sunburned. "What's going on, Sherlock? What haven't you told me?"
"I did tell you. There is a terrorist threat against London. I am investigating it. Someone must have figured that out, and decided to leave a warning. I'm sorry, John. Your being a target is why I left London two years ago, and why I didn't tell you I was alive. I did not expect this sort of thing to happen again."
With that statement, Sherlock turned on his heel, pushed the curtain aside and left the other three looking sombre. Before anyone could react, a nurse with a wheelchair arrived and announced that John was being moved upstairs to the respiratory unit for overnight observations, and didn't they all know that visitors' hours ended twenty minutes ago?
Lestrade bristled a bit. "Nurse, this is a police investigation; I need this man's statement." She and Mary helped a shaky John into the chair. Before he was taken away, Lestrade gave John a reassuring smile. "The photofit guy will be quick, I promise. I'll keep you informed of our progress tomorrow, John."
oOo
This time, when his phone went off, he was driving toward John's flat to do just that. The doctor had been released in the morning after a comfortable night. Switching on the hands-free blue tooth receiver, Greg was quick to pick up. But, this time, it was a text from Sherlock.
5.18pm Bomb plot Parliament tonight. Tube car involved. Arrest Lord Moran. Get to Westmin Sta NOW
For a split second, as he digested the significance of this text, Lestrade lost all concentration on the road. Fortunately, there were no cars in his immediate vicinity and no unwise pedestrian chose that moment to step out in front of his car. Then training kicked in. Greg switched on the car's blue lights behind the radiator grill and hit the siren, whilst doing a handbrake turn. Then he called the control room with the alert- and sent the text straight to SO15, the Met's Counter-Terrorism command.
It took him eleven minutes to make it to Westminster. As Lestrade showed his badge at the barrier erected half way up Whitehall, he could see that people were being escorted from the Cabinet Office, Downing Street, The Foreign Office and the Treasury buildings, moving up the road towards Trafalgar Square. When he reached Parliament Square, he could see passengers being evacuated from the tube station, led back over the Westminster Bridge towards Waterloo station by Transport Police. There was also a steady stream of MPs and Peers leaving from the Houses of Parliament's St Stephen's Gate entrance, marshalled by uniformed officers onto Parliament Green and from there into the streets south of the building. Lestrade knew that the evacuation of the seat of Government was practiced regularly and that the assembly areas would be in Smith's Square- conveniently close to MI5's Thames House on the Embankment, where any ministers would be swiftly relocated, away from danger.
He gave up trying to get Sherlock to return his call or text. As soon as he hit Whitehall, the phone service dropped out. Standard operating procedure. Mobile networks were shut down to stop any terrorist using a phone call to set off a bomb.
Two thoughts warred in Lestrade's mind. He hoped to God this wasn't a hoax, because otherwise a lot of important people would be seriously annoyed at one consulting detective. And at exactly that same time, he hoped to God that it was a hoax, because the idea of a real bomb going off in such a sensitive place would be just…too horrible to imagine.
Lestrade moved against the human tide slowly, but eventually made it to the station entrance, guarded by a machine-gun carrying SO15 officer. He showed him his warrant card and told the man that he had to go down into the station and find out what was going on.
"Sorry, sir, no one is allowed down there until the Special Ops boys get done. Too dangerous."
"Officer…" Greg looked in vain for a badge that identified the man's name, and then remembered that SO15 never identified its people, for fear of reprisals. "…I'm the one who got the original tip-off about this whole thing, so your team down there needs to know what I know."
That made the uniformed man reach for his airwave and mutter a few sentences into it. There was a pause and then the radio crackled into life. The DI heard a tinny voice give the order- "Let him through. We're down on the concourse between the northbound jubilee line platform and the circle and district lines."
Greg shouldered his way past the officer before he could speak and started across the deserted ticket hall area towards the down escalators. He vaulted over the ticket barriers, idly wondering if his jacket pocket with his oyster card was in close enough proximity to the sensor for it to debit for the journey. Let's hope I'm not on a one-way ticket. Lestrade was no coward, but facing down a criminal was rather different from being a bomb victim.
He knew that without a phone signal, he was unable to locate or contact Sherlock. But he knew with utter certainty that the consulting detective would be on the hunt for the bomb- and the best chance of defusing the situation lay in Greg giving him whatever backup he needed.
"Please evacuate the station. All train services have been suspended. Remain calm and make your way to the nearest exit. London Underground wishes to apologise for the inconvenience." The public address system echoed down the empty escalator as the automated message repeated again and again.
When he got to the lower concourse, he saw the knot of black flak jacketed officers- a sort of mobile command centre. A Transport for London officer had a large roll of maps spread out on the floor. One of the helmeted figures looked up and spotted him. "You Lestrade?" He beckoned him over. Next to the officers were a party of five figures in bomb protection gear, but their face visors were up; the men were awaiting instructions.
The officer in command was a veteran, with just as much grey hair as Lestrade. The DI wondered if he had been involved in the 7/7 tube bombings. The man snapped, "I need your opinion and I need it fast. Which tunnel?"
Greg rehearsed Sherlock's text in his mind. There'd been no indication of where the bomb was. The commander barked, "I must ask you to hurry, sir. There is no one on any platform according to CCTV images, so where's your man? We tracked him and another person with him down to this level and then he vanished."
He looked around the brightly lit concourse and saw nothing that gave him any idea of where Sherlock might have gone. He heard a sarcastic baritone in his head. "You see, but you do not observe, Lestrade."
He wracked his brain. "His text said a 'tube car' was involved. That's odd- not 'train' but 'car'. Is there anywhere a single carriage could be?"
The TfL officer with the station maps shook his head. "There are no sidings. Nowhere for it to be."
"Oh, it's here alright. We're just not looking the way he does."
"Clarify that or we have to make a choice. We have no time to waste. We should send the bomb disposal team down the tunnel that is closest to the Houses of Parliament. That's the circle and district line. The air vents are in Parliament Green and the underground NCP carpark is another likely place for a bomb. We've got a team in there already searching the cars."
Greg shook his head. "You'd've seen him on that platform's CCTV if you were right, and I'm guessing you didn't."
The commander shook his head.
Greg thought about what seemed half a life-time of chasing behind Sherlock, trying to figure out where he might have gone. Like a bloodhound, once the man was on the scent, nothing stopped him. That's when Greg's eyes focused on the set of grilled doors across the concourse.
"Where do those go?"
The TfL officer looked at the map. "Stairs down to the service corridors between platforms."
Greg had a hunch. "Right, gentlemen, I think I know where he went…"
oOo
Author's note: it is NOT like me to argue with Moftiss canon, but if you, like me, felt a tad annoyed at the "switch" idea on the bomb being how Sherlock stopped the explosion, then here below and in the next chapter is an alternative that is a little more believable.
oOo
The command crew stayed put to manage the aftermath if a bomb did go off. Only the TfL officer and the bomb squad followed Lestrade through the doors and down the stairs. Torches on, they passed the first access point to the westbound circle and district line, and then past a huge air vent towering over their heads. One of the bomb squad pointed up- and Lestrade spotted a number of small packages that were blinking, attached to the walls of the vent. The bomb officer shook his head- "Not the main charges, these are ancillary."
Down another flight of metal stairs and the access door to the northbound jubilee line appeared. The TfL officer started to push the metal bar that would open the doors, when Lestrade's attention was caught by a gleam of light to the left. He stopped the man and asked "What's down there?"
The officer looked confused. "Nothing. There shouldn't be any lights on down there."
Greg pulled him away from the door, now almost sure. Instinctively, he knew Sherlock was drawn by the inexplicable. "He's down there."
The team followed the light source to another short metal ladder down, and then they realised they were standing on a train line. The lit tunnel curved around a bend.
"Watch the live rail! If there are lights on, then somehow someone has powered up a train line that doesn't exist." The TfL man was clearly perplexed.
Greg laughed, with just a hint of hysteria, "with a train car that can't be there, probably carrying the bomb that really shouldn't be here. And that's where Sherlock will be."
They started down the corridor, keeping wide of the live rail.
"Wait!" Greg shouted at the others. "Listen."
The seven men stopped, held their breaths and really listened. A metallic tapping, on one of the rails. The sound was carrying right around the bend.
"What is it?"
A grin emerged on Lestrade's face. "Ooh, you clever bastard… what do you do when you can't use a phone? That's Morse code!" He started counting taps, allocating dots and dashes. "t…u…r…n"- that's 'turn'- …o…f…f"
The taps continued but Lestrade shouted- "turn off the power. He wants us to turn off the live rail."
The TfL man was already on his airwave giving the command. A moment later, the main lighting system went out. The only thing left breaking the darkness were the small battery powered emergency lights strung along the tunnel every fifty feet or so. The tapping stopped immediately.
"Hurry up- that light won't last long. I doubt these have been used in years." The TfL man led the way. When they came around the bend, the torches of the bomb squad picked out the sight of a darkened carriage. The back door was open, and Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were sitting on the first step down. A familiar baritone drifted down the tunnel, echoing.
"Took you long enough, Lestrade."
