A.N: Hello my dear friends!
Chapter 6 here. A special thank you to Carri007, mythlover20, Ray, DME0414, CloudCuckooLandHasAQueen and Renaissancebooklover108 for reviewing. You really made it worthwhile thank you so much. A big thank t Georgia too who is the best beta
Again I don't own Sherlock or Benedict, I just wish I did.
Don't forget to review and let me know what you think.
Steffy2106
Chapter 6:
Sherlock entered the room where the priest was still hanging. He toured it before going to stand beside Lestrade.
"Can we take the body down?"
Sherlock gave him a sharp nod. "It's a murder."
"It took you all of one minute to deduce that, even though everything is pointing to a suicide?" Asked Lestrade, taken aback.
"Yes, I know. Is it a new record?"
"He even left a letter." Lestrade added, extending a piece of paper in an evidence bag.
Sherlock looked down and read it.
I'm sorry, I know this selfish act will take me to hell but I was condemned anyway as I committed the most unforgivable crime. I have killed someone. I killed Ms. Potter because she was pregnant with my child and threatened to reveal our relationship to the world, which would have destroyed everything I have been working for. I couldn't live with the guilt of having taken a life.
Sherlock looked up from the note, let his eyes narrowed at a sermon he had written on his desk, then looked up to a note the priest had written on his board.
"Would you call a person you loved by their surname? It's his handwriting, but there is a tremor in the lettering that is not anywhere else. I believe he was threatened into writing it."
"Maybe there was a tremor because he was bloody emotional! The man was about to end his life."
Sherlock sighed. "What about the knot?"
"The knot?"
"Yes." Sherlock pointed to the knot on the rope. "This knot was clearly done by the right handed person and our priest was left handed. What do you have to say about that?"
Lestrade looked up and met the eyes of an older man who had appeared in the doorframe.
"What I'm saying is that we'll discuss this tomorrow. I said I'll give you five minutes on the crime scene, not a minute more."
Sherlock nodded, knowing it was not really Lestrade talking but the angry, uniformed man who had just entered the room. "Tomorrow at the morgue?"
Lestrade nodded before concentrating on the policeman.
"What was that about?" asked John as soon as they exited the church grounds and hailed a cab.
"That, John, was the most efficient way to stop him from talking. The priest told me in the confessional that there were ears everywhere; I guess he was proven right." Sherlock smiled. "I have to admit this makes the case all much more intriguing now".
"Are you glad that this man is dead?"
"What? No! Of course not. But he is dead, so why not rejoice and notice that, on the positive side, the priest's death makes this case so much more interesting?"
John sighed and shook his head. "Well, If we're not going to do anything more tonight then I'd better go home to Mary. "
"Yes, I will think it through…See you in the morning, don't be late."
"Please excuse me for being late but some people have a problem with waking up." Sherlock said, storming into the morgue.
"I told you at least five times that there was an accident. What was I supposed to do?"
"Leave early."
John rolled his eyes, turning to Molly and Lestrade. "I'm sorry if being twelve minutes late caused you any inconvenience."
"It's alright," said Molly taking off her gloves and grabbing the chart on the table. "I was just saying to Greg here that there's not much more I think I'll be able to do."
"What do you mean by there is not much you can do?! This man was murdered."
Molly threw a knowing look to Lestrade as if they had been discussing it before Sherlock's arrival.
"That's the thing Sherlock, everything is falling so perfectly into place that unless you can give me hard evidence right now on a murder I can't keep this case open," said Lestrade regretfully.
"But I tell you it's murder, isn't that evidence enough?"
"Yeah for me it's enough but I told you this case would be polemical. The man you saw on the crime scene yesterday is the Deputy Commissioner Murray. That man has been breathing down our necks so hard we might have to close the case."
"So what's the official conclusion?" Sherlock asked, face smooth but anger glinting in his eyes.
"We figured that he knew her from before, he just gave in to temptation, got her pregnant and killed her to keep his secret. The guilt was just too much for him to bear and he killed himself… There were pictures of them in his desk as teenagers."
"How convenient, he was committing the dirtiest sin and yet he had left these pictures for the world to find."
Lestrade shrugged. "You know it's not my call."
Sherlock turned to Molly." I guessed the only thing you did was the tox-screen and the DNA match of the foetus. "
"I didn't, the on call pathologist did, but yes. Nothing unusual was found in his blood, and his DNA matches the foetus's. I was just looking over the file after Lestrade told me about your suspicion, but I can't find anything that will allow me to do an autopsy or more tests."
"Don't you believe me?" Sherlock asked, and she didn't miss the wounded undertone in his voice.
"I do Sherlock, of course I do, but the hospital is already looking at me closely since you…. resurrected. It's my signature at the bottom of your death certificate, you know. I kept my job because my reasons were noble but now they can't help but wonder if I did that for you, then what else I did I do?" She sighed. "Plus St Bart's budget has been reduced. I have nothing at all to justify doing anything more with the body."
Sherlock sighed and threw his hands up in exasperation. "So that's it? We'll just let a double murderer go free because the church decided it was best to close the case?"
"We can't always win, Sherlock," said John soothingly when he noticed his friend's level of agitation.
"I never lose, John. I. ." Sherlock growled, jaw locked.
"I'll tell you what; I'll make you a copy of the file with everything in it, and if you bring me hard evidence then I'll take them to the Deputy Commissioner myself. Is that alright?"
"I suppose" Sherlock trailed off, turning to Molly and looking at her with the full force of his puppy eyes.
She pursed her lips, wanting to slap him and kiss him at the same time. He didn't need to talk for her to know what he wanted. She could hear him clearly in her head his eyes seemed to say 'I always trusted you; I trusted you with my life, now you need to trust me'. She sighed. "I'll see what I can do."
Sherlock grinned. "That's all I'm asking for. So let's go get this file now. John and I need to see all the things that you forgot or considered irrelevant. We'll we need to correct all your mistakes."
Lestrade sighed and checked his phone. "I often forget why I put up with you."
"Because I'm brilliant and you know it."
"That must be it. You two will be waiting for me in the car, they don't need to know I'm giving you the file. If anybody found out I gave you that file, my ass will feel it."
"You have my words, nothing will be said," Said John reassuringly when Sherlock left the room without another word.
Lestrade turned to Molly. "You let me know if you find anything doing what you're not supposed to, yeah?"
"Yes let us know too please." John added.
Molly chuckled and nodded. "We're always doing thing we're not supposed to when Sherlock is involved."
Both John and Lestrade snorted in agreement before following Sherlock out.
Molly spent the day doing post mortem of the bodies that were actually scheduled but she couldn't get that priest's body out of her mind, she was trying to enumerate all the tests she could do on the body to bring out any evidence.
When Molly was done with her last autopsy, it was just after 5pm and she was dead on her feet. She dragged herself to her office and decided to give herself a 15 minutes break after clocking out to make sure everybody would be gone to start working on the priest body.
She reached for her cellphone and winced as she pressed speed dial for Tom.
Hey, you on your way? Why don't you get some Chinese food on the way home? We can have a Netflix movie night what do you think? The new Star Trek movie is available now and I know much you loved it.
Molly smiled. She was not a Star Trek fan but she wanted to see it for the guy who played Khan. She would never admit it to anyone but he was the only reason she went to see it 4 times at the theater. Sherlock had still been gone then and this man reminded her so much of him… How stupid as it was when she saw him on the big screen it had eased her pain ever so slightly.
"Yeah, about that, I was about to go home but they brought us two bodies and the on-called pathologist is sick." She said trying to sound as casual as possible. "Hello?" She tried when there was only silence on the other side of the line.
"Yeah… I'm here. Can't this wait until tomorrow?"
Molly shook her head before realising he couldn't see her. "No I'm sorry."
Tom sighed. "Well it's work right?"
"But it seems like a fun night! Let's set it up for tomorrow." She added cheerily, maybe even too cheerily, come to think of it. Nobody should get so excited about take-out and Star Trek.
"Sure, let's do that. I'll see you later."
"I love you."
"Yeah."
Molly hung up and looked at her phone with tears in her eyes. It was the first time since she had been with Tom that she'd bluntly and willingly lied to him, and it was also the first time that he didn't answer with "I love you too".
Molly put her phone in her lab coat before going back into the morgue.
Her phone beeped for a text message and she reached for it eagerly, hoping it was a "I love you too" from Tom.
So, find anything interesting? SH
She rolled her eyes as the disappointment sunk in. Leave it to Sherlock Holmes to be only interested in a corpse.
Yes I do. MH
What is it? SH
I find Greek Mythology interesting… positively fascinating. MH
This is no time for games! SH
Molly shook her head. She could almost feel Sherlock's frustration; she decided to stop playing with him. Just finished my official shift, I'm about to start. MH
Your shift ended 30 minutes ago… What took you so long? SH
"Go screw yourself." She whispered to the screen but decided to ignore the last text and put the phone back in her pocket.
Molly did all the tests? she could think of without actually opening up the body, which was the only thing she couldn't do. No fibres on his body, no epithelial cells under his nails, no evident sign of struggle or injection anywhere.
"If they killed you, how did they manage to hang you without you fighting back?" She murmured, looking down at the rope mark on his neck. She frowned. Her only hypothesis was that they had put him to sleep using chloroform, but she wouldn't be able to prove that without fibres in his nose and he had nothing.
After more than two hours on the body Molly had found nothing at all. She sighed, deciding to use the UV light on the body. She knew it was a long shot and probably a complete waste of time, but at least she would be able to lookSherlock in the eyes and tell him she'd tried everything.
She put the glasses on, turning off the light. She started from the toes going up the body centimeters by centimeters. She frowned, reaching the inside of his left thigh. She moved his leg a bit and brought the lamp closer. It was a strange pattern, an invisible tattoo, maybe with fluorescent ink. Why would a priest have this kind of tattoo?
Molly reached back to grab her special camera, knowing that Sherlock would know what this symbol was but instead of grabbing a Camera she grabbed a hand. She gasped swirling around.
"You shouldn't have done that," she heard a voice say before she felt a sharp pain and everything went black.