I'm so sorry for the lateness. But here I am...
I've only had the time to read this through once, so apologies for any spelling/punctuation mistakes I have probably made and failed to correct.
I don't own. Only Emily.
With the door of 221B firmly shut behind them, the three made their way into the hallway, all of them breathing heavily. John and Emily both hung their coats up on the available hooks as Sherlock draped his over the bottom of the bannisters.
"Okay, that was ridiculous." John panted as he and Emily walked closer to Sherlock before leaning against the wall, still attempting to catch their breath. "That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever done." He continued.
"And you invaded Afghanistan." At this, John giggled. His giggles caused Emily to laugh, and it wasn't long before Sherlock joined in.
"That wasn't just me." John said. After a few seconds, the laughter died down. Emily needed a drink. Her throat was dry from the running and the laughter had not helped. "Why aren't we back at the restaurant?" John questioned now.
"Oh, they can keep an eye out." Sherlock waved a hand dismissively, as he became more serious. "It was a long shot anyway."
"So what were we doing there?" Sherlock cleared his throat and Emily looked up at him, her brows raised in confusion. If they could have kept an eye out in the first place, surely there had been no need for them to go?
"Oh, just passing the time." He looked at John. "Proving a point." Now he looked down at the woman in between them. "And feeding Emily." She smiled a little as she wondered how Sherlock had known she had been hungry, when even she hadn't. It wasn't until her treat had arrived that she even felt peckish.
"What point?"
"You." Sherlock answered mysteriously. He turned his head in the direction of the landlady's flat. "Mrs Hudson! Doctor Watson and Miss Cooper will take the flat upstairs."
"Says who?" John asked, not only for himself, but the for woman next to him.
He motioned to the front door slightly. "Says the man at the door." As if on cue, three knocks sounded from the other side of the door. John turned back from looking at the door, to plant his sight on Sherlock who smiled. Emily decided then and there, that a smile on Sherlock's face, was something that suited him. She ignored the small voice in the back of her mind that whispered to her that it made him look even more attractive.
As John moved back to the door, Sherlock leaned his head back against the wall, blowing out a breath before he looked back down at Emily.
"I always knew Emily would be staying." He informed her.
"How?" She wasn't surprised. Quite the contrary, she felt a calmness that she hadn't felt in a long time. But when Sherlock only smiled down at her again, she found that she didn't mind not knowing that answer. She smiled back then turned her gaze to the door in an attempt to see who John was now talking to.
"Ah." She caught John mutter. He turned and looked down the hall at the pair of them. Emily noticed the walking aid that he had left at the restaurant was now safely back in his grasp. It could only be Angelo standing on the other side of the door. She smiled at the older man and had a sneaky suspicion that Sherlock was doing the same next to her.
"Er, thank you. Thank you." John pushed the door back to let him in, and Emily took a chance.
"Good night Angelo." She shouted to the man she could not see.
"Goodnight beautiful lady." She heard from the other side of the door, causing her smile to brighten.
"Sherlock, what have you done?" Mrs Hudson asked as she appeared from her flat, hurrying over to the man in question. Emily moved forward to take her hands when she noticed the woman sounded upset and tearful.
"Mrs Hudson?" Sherlock queried, sounding genuinely confused.
"Upstairs." She answered as she tightened her grip on Emily's hands. The two watched as Sherlock and John hurried up the stairs.
"Are you alright?" She asked giving the older woman's hands a gentle squeeze.
"I'm fine dear. I was just a bit startled."
"Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?"
"Oh no, thank you dear. But you go on up, make sure Sherlock doesn't cause any more trouble. I'll go and make one myself."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Go on dear." Mrs Hudson gave her hands one last squeeze before she let them go.
Emily spun to head up the stairs as the older woman watched her. "If you want to, don't hesitate to come up." She called over her shoulder.
Mrs Hudson nodded slightly, but she didn't think the blonde noticed. She smiled to herself, she would at last have some female company.
"It's a drugs bust." Were the first words Emily was greeted with as she entered the once almost tidy room. Now, however, there were cops dotted around the room, searching for, apparently drugs, the pink suitcase was once again, open on the chair and the grey haired police man from earlier was casually sitting in the leather armchair as if he owned the place. Emily moved forwards slightly to get a better look in the kitchen. From the slight gap in the doorway she could tell the room was almost filled with officers. One of them looked to be having a field day.
"Seriously?! This guy, a junkie?! Have you met him?!" John spoke with laughter. Emily had to admit, the idea did strike her as rather odd. She let a giggle escape her lips causing Lestrade to look at her in slight disbelief.
"John..." Sherlock muttered to him as he turned to face him.
"I'm pretty sure you could search this flat all day, you wouldn't find anything you could call recreational."
"John, you probably want to shut up now."
"Yeah, but come on..." John looked up at Sherlock who held the mans gaze for a long moment. It only took that moment for John to realise how serious the detective was being.
"No." Emily spoke up now. She had come to stand beside John.
"What?" Uttered Sherlock.
"You've done drugs?"
Sherlock noted the disappointed gleam in her eye and couldn't help but sound angry as he spoke. "Shut up!" He turned back to Lestrade. "I'm not your sniffer dog."
"No, Anderson's my sniffer dog." He sounded somewhat pleased with himself as he nodded towards the kitchen.
"What, An..." The door that lead to the kitchen now slid open to reveal Anderson, who raised a gloved hand in sarcastic greeting. "Anderson, what are you doing here on a drugs bust?" Sherlock sounded even more angry now.
"Oh, I volunteered." Emily wondered if that sentence could have been spoken with any more venom.
"They all did. They're not strictly speaking on the drugs squad, but they're very keen." Emily had to bite her lip to stop the smile from breaking out. How could one man, annoy so many people. Was that even possible. Apparently, in the case of Sherlock Holmes, yes. Yes it was possible.
Lestrade caught her smile and sent her a wink.
"Are these human eyes?" She heard a female voice ask. Emily twisted to face the kitchen and found Donovan standing in the doorway holding a glass jar.
"Put those back!"
"They were in the microwave!"
"It's an experiment."
"Keep looking, guys." Lestrade shouted as Sherlock started pacing. Emily, whose curiosity had been raised, paced along side the detective and muttered to him.
"What happens when you microwave eyeballs?" Sherlock stopped midstride and searched her face for any traces of disgust. All he found was genuine interest.
"I'll explain later." He responded in a voice loud enough so only she would hear. He begun his pacing once again as Emily let a satisfied smile take over.
"Or you could help us properly and I'll stand them down." Lestrade continued getting up from the chair.
"This is childish."
"Well, I'm dealing with a child. Sherlock, this is our case. I'm letting you in, but you do not go off on your own. Clear?"
"Oh, what, so-so-so you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?"
"It stops being pretend if they find anything."
"I am clean!" Sherlock stated loudly.
"Is your flat? All of it?" Emily could tell the Consulting Detective was slowly losing his patience. That was of course, if he had had any to begin with.
"I don't even smoke." He unbuttoned the cuff of his left shirt and pulled it up to reveal a single nicotine patch.
"Neither do I." Lestrade did the same with his right arm. "So let's work together. We've found Rachel."
"Who is she?" Sherlock questioned straight away. Emily perched herself on the arm of the armchair that John had been sitting in earlier.
"Jennifer Wilson's only daughter."
"Her daughter? Why would she write her daughter's name? Why?" He asked frowning.
"Never mind that. We found the case. According to someone, the murderer has the case, and we found it in the hands of our favourite psychopath."
"I'm not a psychopath, Anderson. I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research." Sherlock informed the man who was pointing to the suitcase from the kitchen in his deep voice. Emily barely managed to supress a shudder at the sound of it. "You need to bring Rachel in. You need to question her. I need to question her." The consulting detective had turned back to Lestrade.
"She's dead."
"Excellent!" Although Emily had no idea how someone else being dead could be considered 'Excellent.'
"How, when and why? Is there a connection? There has to be." He spoke with a sort of urgency as if he had to know all the details as quickly as possible.
"Well, I doubt it, since she's been dead for fourteen years. Technically she was never alive. Rachel was Jennifer Wilson's stillborn daughter, fourteen years ago."
Emily looked down at the floor sadly. But looked up again when she realised Sherlock began to sound confused.
"No, that's ... that's not right. How ... Why would she do that? Why?"
"Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments? Yup – sociopath; I'm seeing it now." Anderson spoke up again from his spot. Emily rolled her eyes. She had already had enough of this man.
"She didn't think about her daughter. She scratched her name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying. It took effort. It would have hurt." He had a point.
"You said that the victims all took the poison themselves, that he makes them take it. Well, maybe he ... I don't know, talks to them? Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow." John said as he and Emily watched Sherlock begin to pace again.
"Yeah, but that was ages ago. Why would she still be upset?" Sherlock asked after his pacing had stopped.
It wasn't just Emily that stared at him now. She was fairly sure that everyone in the flat had stopped what they were doing to look at him.
Sherlock hesitated as he looked around the room before looking awkwardly at John.
"Not good?"
"Bit not good, yeah." John answered as Emily shook her head slightly at him. Sherlock took a step closer to John.
"Yeah, but if you were dying ... if you'd been murdered: in your very last few seconds what would you say?"
"Please, God, let me live."
"Oh, use your imagination!" Sherlock sounded exasperated.
"I don't have to." Recognising the look of pain that crossed John's face, he blinked and turned to look at Emily who was currently scuffing her shoe across the floor as she listened to the two intently.
"Yeah, but if you were clever, really clever ... Jennifer Wilson running all those lovers: she was clever." He started to pace again. "She's trying to tell us something." He stopped moving again and turned to look at the female in the room. "Emily. What about you?"
"What about me?" She was getting confused again. Why did this man have to include her in these types of things? Why couldn't he just leave her be?
"You're being murdered. Your last few seconds, what would you say?" His whole body had turned towards her now, and she had the attention of the two other men in the room. She fidgeted slightly, uncomfortable of that fact.
"Well, in reality I would probably say exactly what John just said." As Sherlock slowly inched towards her, she became nervous. Her hand absentmindedly travelled to
her necklace.
"But in your imagination?" Sherlock asked, his voice deep again. Why did he have to talk like that to her? She finally met his gaze.
She remembered a time, years ago, when she had been watching the news with her brother eating ice cream on a warm summers evening. One headline had particularly caught her interest. A teenage girl had gone missing. The news reader was telling the viewers the girls details and what to do if they sighted her. At that point, Sebastian had turned to look her in the eyes.
"Emily. You must promise me something." He had said as Emily nodded. "If ever you are kidnapped, if ever you get into some kind of trouble where you get severely hurt, try and leave something behind."
"What do you mean Bas?" She had lost all interest in her ice cream now.
"If ever you are kidnapped, if you are in a car, leave some hair behind, hide it away in a hidden corner, or spit if you can. Just leave something so that we have a way of finding you. Leave behind some sort of message." With those words said, he had turned his focus back to the TV, unaware of the confusion he had left his little sister in.
For a long time, Emily had not understood what he had meant by those words. It wasn't until many years later when she was once again eating ice cream on a summers evening much like the one where her sibling had spoken those words, did she understand. The girls murderer had been found. He had only recently been thought of as a suspect, and his whole house had been turned over top to bottom to find some shred of evidence. It wasn't until the police searched his car, his pride and joy, that, even though it no longer worked, he still kept in the garage, that they found what they were looking for.
A single strand of hair had been found in the boot, carefully tucked away where it couldn't be vacuumed out. The girl had known that she wouldn't make it back to her family and friends and had had the brains to hide something of hers to be found to convict the man who had taken her from the world.
From then on, she had always hoped that , if something like that ever happened to her, she would have the nerve, and the memory to do something like that: to leave a message behind.
She returned from her memory, greeted by the bright inquisitive eyes of the consulting detective before her and replied.
"In my imagination, I would like to think I'd be brave enough to leave some sort of message behind so someone could find me. Or my murderer." Her eyes never wavered form Sherlock's as she spoke. John cleared his throat as if to get their attention, but he failed. It wasn't until Mrs Hudson spoke up from the door way that the two looked away from each other. Sherlock begun to pace again.
"Isn't the doorbell working? Your taxi's here, Sherlock."
"I didn't order a taxi. Go away." He made a rude shooing motion with his hand as the landlady looked around the room.
"Oh, dear. They're making such a mess. What are they looking for?"
"It's a drugs bust, Mrs Hudson." John informed her.
"But they're just for my hip. They're herbal soothers." Emily smiled slightly at the anxious tome Mrs Hudson spoke with.
"Shut up, everybody, shut up!" Emily jumped. "Don't move, don't speak, don't breathe. I'm trying to think. Anderson, face the other way. You're putting me off." Sherlock shouted to the entire flat.
"What? My face is?!" Emily smirked to herself, it was rather off putting.
"Everybody quiet and still. Anderson, turn your back."
"Oh, for God's sake!"
"Your back, now, please!" Lestrade shouted getting angry.
"Come on, think. Quick!" Sherlock spoke to himself as John sat down on the chair Emily was perched on.
"What about your taxi?" Mrs Hudson asked.
"MRS HUDSON!" Sherlock seemed furious now. Emily wasn't exactly happy about him shouting at her like that, especially when the woman quickly fled from the room.
"Was that really necessary?" She asked, breaking the silence. But she was ignored. Again.
"Oh. Ah!" She could practically hear the delighted smile. "She was clever, clever, yes! 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. 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." He explained as he paced the room.
"But how?" Lestrade asked.
"Wha...? What do you mean, how?" Lestrade merely shrugged. "Rachel!" He looked at everyone triumphantly. But it wasn't just Emily that had a blank look upon her face. "Don't you see? Rachel!" Sherlock laughed in disbelief when the blank looks did not vanish from the faces of the people around him. "Oh, look at you lot. You're all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing. Rachel is not a name."
"Then what is it?" John questioned matching the sternness that Sherlock had used in his last sentence.
"John, on the luggage, there's a label. E-mail address." He leaned forward to look at the label on the suitcase and read out the address as Sherlock took a seat at the dining table in front of his laptop.
"Er, jennie dot pink at mephone dot org dot uk."
"Oh, I've been too slow. She didn't have a laptop, which means she did her business on her phone, so it's a smartphone, it's e-mail enabled. So there was a website for her account. The username is her e-mail address ..." Emily got up and moved towards Sherlock to watch what he was doing."... and all together now, the password is?"
"Rachel." John and Emily answered at the same time. John standing behind Sherlock and Emily kneeling down beside his chair.
"So we can read her e-mails. So what?" Anderson challenged sounding completely unimpressed.
"Anderson, don't talk out loud. You lower the I.Q. of the whole street." Emily sniggered but quickly covered it by pretending to cough into her hand. "We can do much more than just 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."
"Unless he got rid of it." Lestrade stated.
"We know he didn't." John informed him.
"Come on, come on. Quickly!"
"Sherlock, dear. This taxi driver ..." Mrs Hudson had returned to the doorway. Sherlock got to his feet and walked over to her.
"Mrs Hudson, isn't it time for your evening soother?" John sat down in the vacated chair and watched the screen along with Emily.
Emily missed the next few words of the conversation as a map finally appeared on the screen.
"Sherlock ..." John attempted to get his attention. Too busy looking at the screen, Emily again missed the conversation.
"Sherlock ..." She tried this time as she studied the map, completely bewildered now. Sherlock hurried over to the pair and looked over John's shoulder.
"What is it? Quickly, where?"
"It's here. It's in two two one Baker Street." John told him. Sherlock straightened up.
"How can it be here? How?" John and Emily began to look around the flat from their positions.
"Well, maybe it was in the case when you brought it back and it fell out somewhere." Lestrade suggested.
"What, and I didn't notice it? Me? I didn't notice?" Emily faintly heard the sound of someone making their way up the stairs.
"Anyway, we texted him and he called back." John enlightened Lestrade.
"Guys, we're also looking for a mobile somewhere here, belonged to the victim ..." Lestrade called out the his colleagues.
Emily turned back to the screen, curious to find out about the mystery of the phone and how it was suddenly in the same building as them.
"Sherlock, you okay?" John asked.
"What? Yeah, yeah, I-I'm fine."
"So, how can the phone be here?" John asked.
"Dunno." Emily snapped her head up to look at the tall man. Even though she hadn't known him for very long, a one word answer, surely wasn't in his nature.
"I'll try it again." John stood from the seat to retrieve his phone.
"Good idea." Sherlock sounded somewhat distracted as he headed to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Fresh air. Just popping outside for a moment. Won't be long."
"Are you sure you're all right?" Emily shouted down to him.
"I'm fine." Emily stood up from the floor and moved ever so slightly towards the window. She didn't believe the man for a second.
Believe In Sherlock
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