Chapter Five Fourth Dance: Quickstep
A modern ballroom dance in rapid quadruple time, evolved from a blend of foxtrot and Charleston into a fast and powerfully flowing dance, sprinkled with syncopations.
As Irina and Masha whirl around the floor looking like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, Janine leans closer to Sherlock to ask quietly, "Just what do you get up to all night?"
"It's for a case."
"You're a workaholic, Sherlock Holmes. What's a girl to do?"
"Sleep? Isn't that what you are supposed to do at night?"
"Sleep, yes; just not alone."
"Is my bed not to your liking then?"
"It would be all the better for having you in it."
"When I offered it to you, I was not presuming that we would share it."
Yesterday afternoon, Janine telephoned to put off their dance lesson. "Had an allergic reaction to all the new paint smells in my flat. Big mistake; didn't know it was going to happen. I'm dossing down for the night on a friend's sofa, but woke up this morning with a frightful backache. Worse still, she'd got company coming, so I'm on the scrounge for a new place. My landlord says the flat won't be done until next week, and then they start on the hallway and stairs; I'm looking at three weeks of puffy eyes, streaming nose and total inability to sleep."
Then she'd asked Sherlock an unthinkably forward question. "Don't suppose John Watson's old bedroom is available?"
"I'm using John's room for storage. But you can use my bedroom while your flat is being painted."
She'd actually squealed, making him pull the phone away from his ear in alarm. Before he could recover to ask who was torturing her, she'd shrieked "Jesus, Mary and all the saints! You're a saviour, Sherlock Holmes. The best boyfriend I've ever had."
That had made him wonder what sort of boyfriends she's had in the past. On the other hand, the fact that she'd granted him boyfriend status reassured him that he's on more or less the right path. Agreeing to her moving in for a few days could enhance the sense of connection, maybe to the point of her trusting him enough to let him into her boss's office. If that means giving her her own key to 221b, well, it's a sacrifice he'll make for the case.
Sherlock's really got no choice but to agree if he is to get what he needs from her. Lady Smallwood can't wait: the Parliamentary Oversight Committee that she chairs is due to give its report to the Prime Minister next week, and Magnussen wants a white-wash. Sherlock can't waste any more time.
As Irina and Masha reach the corner of the studio, they break the ballroom hold and move side-by-side, erupting into rapid, twisting footwork and synchonised arm movements.
"What the flipping heck is that!" Janine blurts out.
"The Charleston—it's usual practice in dance competitions to put some into a quickstep routine; after all, the dance is just a hybrid of Charleston and foxtrot."
"I'll never be able to do that!" Janine mutters, eyes wide as the couple return to a close hold position and proceed to nearly fly down the length of the floor, footwork so fast that even Sherlock has to take a moment to grasp all the intricacies. The pair end the routine with a flourish of two lock steps and then a fishtail, giving the manoeuvre full sway as the music rises and falls.
"It's beautiful," Janine sighs. "I'd love to do that."
An hour later, Janine missteps, her ankle goes over in the high heel and then she's on her way down to the wooden floor. Sherlock's shoulder twinges as he tries to keep her upright but fails, and he has to take evasive action to avoid crashing into her and falling himself.
Sitting in a heap on the floor, Janine laughs uproariously, and then trails off into the giggles. "Who's the two-legged donkey this time? By God, this quickstep is a hoot."
Irina tuts, shaking her head. "You fall because you are hopping. Put feet together smoooothly," she says, demonstrating the side-step. "Glide across the floor."
As he helps Janine to her feet, Sherlock is relieved that she isn't hurt, and that her reaction has been so positive. The speed of the quickstep made her breathless with laughter at times, but she manages it better than he thought she would. Ballroom dances obviously suit her better than Latin.
Janine's mood tonight is playful and she giggles as he manoeuvres her through the spin turns in and out of the corners. The music is fun, lively and cheerful, which adds to her amusement: Let's Face the Music and Dance, written by Irving Berlin for an Astaire and Rogers dance routine in 1936. Irina had chosen the Nat King Cole version.
Sherlock finds the first line of the song is ominously appropriate: There may be trouble ahead…
As he steers Janine through the basic step sequence, the lock step and the natural turn, the idea of her in Baker Street is all he can think about. It's been increasingly hard to fend off her advances. Having moved in last night is going to accelerate her demands for intimacy. Kissing, cuddling, and the touching thing he can fake, and convincingly so; he's an actor who's learned his lines. The "next stage of bedroom", as Irina had called it, is something he's been trying to put off for as long as he can—hopefully, forever. That will be exponentially harder now she's actually sleeping in his bedroom.
As Irina and Masha demonstrate the steps of the tipple chasse into the reverse turn, he's wrestling to find excuses for not being home yet again tonight. Janine brings him back to the here and now, murmuring, "Tipple chasse? I should be a natural at this."
The song's words, as the professionals sweep across the floor — But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance/Let's face the music and dance — force Sherlock to confront the obvious truth. He's been spinning a tale of love and romance long enough, postponing the inevitable. With Janine spending her nights at Baker Street, things will come to a head. Tonight he might get away with one more "appointment with criminals", but she won't buy that excuse forever. Somehow, he is going to have to make Magnussen deal with him.
It's going to take some fancy footwork to manage the next few days… and nights.
oOoOoOoOo
"I'll fix the coffee." Janine is rummaging about in the cupboard for the grinder, the beans and the cafetiere, as Sherlock picks up his violin. Turning his back to her, he closes his eyes and starts playing.
Over the noise of her filling the kettle, he hears her laugh. "You are one talented guy. Do you sing, as well?"
Obligingly, he takes up the refrain singing to accompany his rendition of tonight's dance music. "Before the fiddlers have fled…. Before they ask us to pay the bill and while we still have the chance… Let's face the music and dance."
He completes the third verse and then returns to the first and second as she prepares the coffee. Only the brief blitz of the coffee grinder interrupts his concentration; he's gathering courage for what he needs to do tonight.
After she's poured the coffee and made herself comfortable on the sofa, he finishes the piece with a flourish.
"You have a beautiful singing voice. Bravo, encore!"
He shakes his head, puts the violin back in its case and loosens the bow strings. "Enough for tonight. I like my coffee hot."
As he reaches for his cup, Janine looks up with a coy smile. "Like your women hot, too?" There is enough obvious innuendo in her tone of voice to make him realise that she is giving this a sexual connotation, enough to dispel his initial confusion over why a woman's body temperature would make any difference to their appeal.
He realises that she is fishing for a compliment, so he decides to pay her one. "You were hot tonight with your dancing. The quickstep is clearly your best dance so far."
The answer seems to satisfy her enough to earn a smile. "Thanks to you, teacher."
He takes a large swallow of coffee. It's hot and black, but she hasn't put the right amount of sugar in it. John always made him a perfect cup of coffee, even though he was more a tea drinker himself. It's only been twenty-four hours since Janine moved in, but in that time, she's made him more aware of John's absence. Every time he spots another item she's unpacked from her suitcase —clothes, cosmetics, shoes, books— it screams at him, NOT JOHN'S.
Finishing his coffee, he sets the cup down on the table and says, "You and I need to talk."
"What, instead of kissing?" she says flirtatiously.
"I'm going out again tonight, which is why I needed the caffeine."
Her expression falls. "And there I was, hoping the boost would stimulate your appetite for something else."
"Duty calls. I'll be out until dawn. Make yourself at home."
"This is a case, right? You're not just doing this to avoid me?"
"Of course not," he lies with perfect sincerity. After a lifetime of social scripting, of masking who he is behind a façade of typicality, his skill at lying is a sharply honed coping mechanism.
He pours her another measure of cognac. "I'm spending time amongst the homeless tonight, staking out a criminal who operates a sex trafficking ring in south London. His people work at night, and therefore, so must I."
"Sounds… horrible. Wouldn't you rather be tucked up in bed with me? Sex between two consenting adults is much more fun."
Over my dead body. He drags out of his disguise box the sad smile and puppy-dog eyes. "Whatever I might prefer, this work matters. People are getting hurt. Lives are at stake."
She sighs. "You're a good man, Sherlock. I suppose I shouldn't be selfish. I do like spending time with you but I understand. Okay, a pass for tonight."
If this is what being in a relationship with a woman is like, Sherlock wonders how on earth John could want to get married. In his experience guilt and a tight leash on one's freedom of movement are not proper ingredients of friendship let alone a lifetime commitment such as matrimony. It's a warning sign that if he doesn't get her onside soon, he will lose his chance to get into Magnussen's office.
It's now or never, he tells himself. "There is something I need you to do for me, relating to a different case I am working on during the daytime. Can you take a message from me to your employer? I'd like to meet him face-to-face."
Her eyes widen in surprise. "Why?"
"I need a news story to run that will flush out my suspect from hiding."
She's shaking her head a bit. "He'll just tell me to pass it onto the editor of one of his papers."
"It's a bona fide story, one that should appeal to him."
"What's it about?"
He shakes his head. "I can't go into specifics; client confidentiality and all that. Tell him it's related to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee report. You organise his diary, so you can slot something in? It won't take long. Sometime tomorrow would be really helpful."
She seems to be a bit uncomfortable about the suggestion, making Sherlock worry that she's going to say no. "It's what people in a relationship do, isn't it? Help each other out, use their connections to benefit one another. We're good dance partners, why not this too?"
"You considering me as an alternative to John Watson? Someone who could help you in your case work? I'm a working girl, Sherlock. Bills to pay, savings to make. I can't afford to quit my job."
"My line of work can be quite profitable. I haven't bothered because I don't need the income. That could change."
She leans back onto the sofa cushions. "That's a serious proposition?"
"We've been dancing around this for weeks now. You are sitting in my flat, about to sleep in my bed, and you still need reassurance that I am serious?"
"Well, putting it that way, I suppose you've got a point."
"So, you'll ask him?"
"Yeah, why not? Maybe it will help him see that I can do more than just manage his diary, type his dictation and get his travel sorted."
He breathes a sigh of relief. "Good, that's good." Can it really be this easy? He hopes so.
oOoOoOoOo
Sherlock's third night in the doss house near Herne Hill is uneventful. A new lookout on the door, who keeps his head down, features hidden in the depths of his hoodie, but nothing else is different, which suits him admirably. He slips another twenty-pound note into the grubby hand, asking him to keep an eye on him during the night, making sure he's still breathing.
"What do I do if you ain't?" is the snarky reply.
"Call this number." He makes the tall skinny guy tap John's number into his phone. "He's a doctor; lives locally, won't cause a fuss or tip off the police to a bust if you call him."
"You planning a long session then?"
"Mind your own business."
He's got a frightful headache. The stimulants and cocaine he'd consumed today may have helped him to the brink of a breakthrough, but it's been at a cost. Stretched out on the sofa, ignoring Mrs Hudson's tuts and grumbles about the "state of this place", he'd spent the afternoon topping up the cocaine with Purple Wave.
The doubling up had given him enough of a boost to work out the timeline. Mycroft's trips to Tbilisi started in the summer when he was eighteen. Sherlock was under house arrest, waiting to go up to Cambridge University. Then there'd been a long trip through the Caucasus region during his second year at Trinity College, while he'd been busy with Victor.
A year later, Sherlock's bingeing behaviour after his release from rehab had been interrupted by Mycroft's sudden promotion to run the S&ILS, provoking more than the usual complaints about his "not having time to sort you out, brother mine." That had ended up with him in another rehab stay, this time at the Priory clinic near Bethlem and Maudsley hospitals, where he had first met Mycroft's PA who he now knows is the daughter of the man who had once run the Georgian intelligence service*.
He'd found the other threads of the Georgian connection hidden in the past years, enough to know for certain that Mycroft is being blackmailed by the Mystery Man. Sherlock is still not sure what the connection is to Lady Smallwood and Magnussen, but he knows it's not coincidence; the universe is rarely so lazy. One more big push tonight and the truth may be within his grasp.
Leaning up against the wall of the first-floor room in the ruins of the Turkish bath, Sherlock contemplates the packet of powder in his left hand. By the dim street light getting into the room he can't distinguish between the heroin and the cocaine powder he'd mixed this afternoon. He'd analysed the heroin, identified the strength of the fentanyl used to cut it, and done the same for the cocaine's fillers. This is a clinically clean dose, potent enough to take his focus to the outer limits of his capacity.
Taking a speedball tonight is a measure of just how desperate he is to solve this case. In theory, injecting the two drugs together should accentuate the positives and cancel out the negatives, boosting the high and cutting back the side-effects. Sherlock is a chemist and he has experience with this combination. Get it wrong, and the dosage kills. Enough Hollywood celebrities have learned that the hard way.
It's a fine balance. Too much stimulant drives him into a state of hyperexcitement; he can't sit still. Over the past week, he's had to work off some of his physical energy, so he'd agreed to work with Masha at the studio for an hour before Irina and Janine arrive; the Russian is choreographing a dance sequence for a new West End musical and he needs someone to partner the star. It gives him an excuse to stop thinking for a moment, and the exercise is a welcome release. Janine isn't a good enough dancer yet for their sessions to be anything like the workout he needs.
Tonight had been a bit better. The frenetic pace of the quick step and Janine's good humour had sustained him though the early part of the evening. He'd taken a detour into the loo at the end of the lesson for a quick top-up of cocaine, to give him the Dutch courage needed to ask Janine to set up a meeting with Magnussen. If he's to make progress on the case, he has to confront the Dane and ask whether he will accept Sherlock as an intermediary. Lady Smallwood refuses to plead; Magnussen has not deigned to communicate with her. The impasse is heading for disaster on Monday when the Committee report is published. Only Sherlock can break through the mess and steal the letters back. To do that, he has to meet Magnussen. Long distance deduction can only take him so far; face-to-face scrutiny is needed. Before that, he needs to work out the connection between Magnussen and Mycroft, because it's there, he's sure of it.
oOoOoOo
He's at the tail end of the huge rush when things start to fall into place. Whatever dirty deed Mycroft had done in Georgia has come back to haunt him. The Mystery Man is certainly blackmailing him about it. Could it be Magnussen? The man has form for it; Lady Smallwood is only the latest in a long line of suspected cases tied to his name. The head of an international media empire is able to extract all sorts of things from people who are leery of seeing something appear in a newspaper. Not mere money; Magnussen gets off on the power of it and as a way of influencing decisions beneficial to his business interests.
But the timeline doesn't work properly, given that the Mystery Man had been involved in the attempt to murder Sherlock when he was at the Priory Clinic before he went up to Cambridge. From his research for the Smallwood case, Sherlock knows that Magnussen was in Australia for most of 1997, sniffing around the Fairfax media empire that was also being stalked by Kerry Packer and Conrad Black.
The euphoric rush is spinning his mind off in a dozen different directions. Why would Mycroft would ever tolerate something like blackmail, let alone put up with it for decades? Sherlock has no illusions about his brother. The man is perfectly capable of ruthlessness, and has been deploying it on behalf of Queen and Country for decades. So, what could be stopping him from taking whatever action is needed to end this crime?
He knows, knows with a certainty born of months of patient Mind Palace work that Mycroft had done something wrong when he was just starting out in the intelligence service, when Sherlock was only a child. By the time he was fifteen, Sherlock had known that his brother was in the business; Mycroft's behaviour at their father's funeral had confirmed it*.
Whatever it is, his brother has been carrying this weight for decades. Maybe the blackmail is more recent? Could it be that the recent theft of Sherlock's medical files from his solicitor's office—and the most peculiar finger bone tied with a turquoise thread** —had been a message to Mycroft? Pay up or your brother gets it. He stifles a laugh. If so, the blackmailer doesn't know Mycroft very well. He's more likely to throw Sherlock to the wolves than to bend to any pressure on his account. A lifetime of lectures starts rolling through his head— Sentiment? Caring is not an advantage. Don't be stupid. I'm the clever one. Friends? Of course, you go in for that sort of thing now—delivered with that sneering tone that conveys Mycroft's derision.
Angrily, Sherlock shuffles that emotional drivel out of his way. It's a sign that his control of the stimulation is way past its peak; it's all downhill from now on. He wonders about a second dose.
Gritting his teeth, Sherlock is suddenly engulfed in a snowstorm of newspaper cuttings, whirling around him in a blizzard of information, spinning too quickly for him to read the text or catch the headlines. Then someone switches on the sound, and a cacophony of newsreaders start shouting in time to television images; the scandals of the past decade unleash a tsunami of noise and visual images, a maelstrom of media about Wikileaks, The Panama Papers, Weinstein, Sackler and Perdue, Volkswagen on diesel, Snowden, Salomon Brothers, Lance Armstrong, Epstein, a whole parade of political leaders brought down on charges of bribery and corruption. Rape, sexual harassment, adultery—the voices all trying to out-shout each other, to feed the frenzy that keeps them in their jobs.
Sherlock opens his eyes briefly, confused. Is the cacophony of loud voices in the room? As his bleary eyes focus on the recumbent form of the heroin user on the mattress next to his, he shoves himself up on one elbow to survey the other occupants. The light is dim; a few candles, the occasional flick of a lighter as someone starts to cook up his next dose. The sounds of ragged breathing, the occasional groan (or is it a moan of bliss? Hard to tell the difference). No, the voices are in his head, not in the room.
The light sources are haloed, a ring of refraction around them that warns him of impending synaesthesia; already the taste in his mouth is purple, the sound of his hand stimming against the rough blanket is amplified enough to drown out the media voices. Somewhat alarmingly, the sensation tastes of a roast dinner, complete with gravy. His stomach growls in anticipation.
Sherlock sits up, back to the wall, trying to regain control before he loses it completely. The shouting newscasters make him wish he had a mute button, because it's making him nauseous. He checks his breathing; tries a few deeper breaths, making the noise retreat a bit. Tentatively, he closes his eyes again, trying to control the assault on his senses.
The tempest of newspapers is still there. Snatching one headline—FAKE DETECTIVE— out of the maelstrom, he latches onto his own ordeal by media, the one big lie wrapped up in lots of little truths about him. Sherlock concedes that Moriarty had been adept at manipulating Kitty O'Riley, giving her enough of his drug habit, his time on the streets, his stints at rehab, all information handed to him by Mycroft. It made the final lie sound trustworthy. Sherlock wracks his increasingly addled brain trying to remember whether the paper that printed it all was part of the CAM empire.
Another dose? Is that what is needed to clear his head? He fumbles in his pockets, trying to remember where he'd put the packet with the rest of the mixture.
Before he can do so, a black hole in his head opens up and sucks him right out of that line of enquiry; the gravitational pull of his evidence board is pulling him closer to the edge of oblivion. Right in the middle, where the Mystery Man's silhouette is, the hole is growing bigger. The event horizon looms in front of him. Can he avoid being dragged in?
FOCUS.
His ears pick up the fact that he's just shouted this.
A moment passes —or is it longer? He can't tell. But something is tapping his cheek and it's getting more insistent. He manages to prise open one eye, to see another bloodshot eye looking at him with concern.
"You okay in there?"
"Piss off." It's all he can manage.
"Well; you're breathing and that's all you paid me to do. So, don't take anything more. You've had enough."
For some reason that makes Sherlock laugh. As the watchman pushes him back down on the mattress, he feels his pockets being picked. And then the black hole widens and swallows him.
End notes.
The story of the Mystery Man, the Georgian connection and who is behind all of the pressure being heaped on Sherlock is a central theme through many of my stories. The reader looking for more backstory should read "Magpies: Two for Joy", "Three for a Girl" and "Four for a Boy", as well as a couple of stories in Periodic Tales series, notably polonium, plutonium and potassium, for a villain named Fitzroy Sherrin Ford who is so much more than Mofftiss' Eurus. If, you are in a hurry, then there is a shorter version of the timeline to which Sherlock is referring in "Watching Brief" in the Got My Eye On You series. **The turquoise thread around the finger bone and the theft of Sherlock's medical file is covered in Krypton, in The Periodic Tale Series.