Chapter Ten.
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After John had left, Billie took an age to settle. She couldn't be distracted by food, and refused to sleep, and had lost interest in most of the toys they'd packed somewhere around about Monaco. Ideally, Mary could've taken her outside for a breath of fresh air and hopefully tired her out, but Mycroft's instructions had been firm on that point. They were in a foreign country with no back up and a bunch of unknown hostiles who were likely to be on the lookout for Sherlock-related activity. On top of that, Greg and Molly were running twenty minutes late for their rendezvous, and Mycroft was God-knew-where doing God-knew-what to God-knew-whom.
And the fact that John had chosen to ignore all this and storm out in a huff, frankly, pissed Mary right off.
Irritably, Mary ground her teeth, thinking evil thoughts about her wailing daughter that would probably be sufficient grounds for committal were she to voice them in public. John's discipline was fine as long as there was someone watching him, but the minute he was left to his own devices he turned into a bloody maverick. The British Army had a lot to answer for.
Finally, in desperation, Mary turned out John's suitcase in search of something her daughter might consider novel. Under usual circumstances she would've had no problem going through John's things, but in the wake of their argument she was left feeling unreasonably guilty. The discovery that John had somehow managed to pack Sherlock's e-reader, a pair of his underpants, and the brand of toothpaste that they used at Baker Street did not improve her mood.
The pickings were less than she might've liked, but eventually she unearthed a chewed-looking board book about a honey bee and an international plug converter that appeared, for some unfathomable reason, to suit Billie's current humour. Mercifully, the provision of these offerings had the effect of lowering the decibel level to a manageable state, and thereafter Billie gnawed on the plug converter in reasonable contentment while Mary delved into the fascinating narrative of Buzzy Bella's Big Day.
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Greg and Molly arrived quarter of an hour later, much to Mary's relief. She kept quiet as she heard them chatting to the concierge outside in the hallway, Molly in a sort of mumbled high school Spanish, and Greg with a surprisingly credible mid-western accent. She heard the jangle of keys as the door was opened, mumbled pleasantries, the heavy thump of bags hitting the floor, and the rhythmic clatter of footsteps down the carpeted hallway as the concierge retreated. Mary flicked back to the beginning of the book and started telling Billie, for the sixth time, that Buzzy Bella lived in a hive. Before she'd counted five minutes, there was a gentle scuffling in the wardrobe, and Greg's tousled head poked out from between the doors.
"Thank God we got the right room!" he said, grinning. "I was terrified we'd fuck it up and have to tell Mycroft we'd lost you."
He stepped out of the wardrobe and made a beeline for the bed, collapsing back onto it with a whump of exhaled breath. He groaned dramatically. "I never want to see another bus in my life."
"It wasn't that bad," Molly said, stepping through the wardrobe behind him. "Though if another dirty old man tries to grope my bum on the street, I'm going to be seriously cross."
Billie, having spotted her favourite person, tossed the plug converter ungratefully into her mother's lap and scrambled rapidly towards the bed. She grasped Greg about the knee and hauled herself halfway into his lap.
"Up!"
Greg groaned. "Not now, sunshine. Uncle Greg's dying. He's run up the curtain and joined the choir invisible."
"Up!"
"Mmff." But he dragged himself into a sitting position and reached down for her, swinging her up onto his belly. Energy exhausted by this endeavour, he collapsed backwards, covering his eyes with a hairy forearm.
"It wasn't that bad," Molly reiterated, settling herself in one of the armchairs. "He's just being a drama queen." Greg gave a pitiful-sounding whine.
"Where's John?" Molly asked, glancing around the room as if she expected him to emerge, cloaked and masked, from the woodwork.
"Out throwing a tanty," Mary said, tartly.
Molly gave her an awkward sort of smile. "He's missing Sherlock."
"I know, I know…"
"Mycroft's not going to be happy if he's gone out though, is he?"
"No. No he's not. But I suppose he'll just have to put up with it. Either John'll come home tonight with his tail between his legs, or he won't. There's not much we can do about it now."
A grunting snore from the direction of the bed informed them that Greg had fallen asleep. He lay where he'd fallen, his legs still dangling off the edge of the bed. Billie lay atop his chest, her face mashed into his shirt and her mouth open in a matching snore.
"I wish I knew how he did it," Mary grumbled. "Six hours I've been trying to get her to sleep, but oh no, I'm just her mother; – then his Sainted Gregness walks in and she's out like a light."
"Cheer up. At least she is out."
Mary gave her a tight smile in answer. She tried not to resent it, she really did, but it frustrated her at times that both her daughter and her husband were so obviously partisan. There was no doubting where Billie got her loyalty.
The night air was warm and balmy, and John breathed deeply, rounding his shoulders back and feeling the pull of muscles in his chest. A breeze was blowing up the hill towards him from the dock, each warm billow filling his lungs with the tang of salt. A skinny dog lay at full stretch in a gutter, heavy paws crossed in front of it, surrounded by polystyrene shreds of old takeaway cartons. The dog watched, unblinking, as he passed, its eyes almost vulpine in their cunning.
Once the angry adrenaline that had spurred him out of the hotel had faded, John had been discrete. He'd slipped in and out of the few shabby stores, sometimes without buying, sometimes with a few innocuous purchases. A second-hand backpack with sturdy straps; a handful of snack bars; a pre-packed first aid kit from which, to John's eye, approximately 20% of the original contents had been carefully skimmed by the proprietor. He'd been seriously tempted by a sawn-off shotgun – openly available from a dingy workshop that went by the name of a mechanic's – but had settled instead for a solid and well-hinged flick-knife. At an all-night café he picked up half a dozen sandwiches and, from a stand-up bar in the middle of the main street – the only business conducting anything that could remotely be called brisk trade – a bottle of cheap bourbon.
It took him half an hour to find what he was looking for. His wandering might have appeared aimless to the casual observer, hands pocketed and hood pulled low over his forehead. He'd tried for the docks at first, then worked systematically backwards, paying particular attention to the lees of doorways and the shadows beneath bridges. He'd encountered the usual jumble of tramps and beggars: prostitutes of every stripe; hard, muscled youths who challenged him with jutted chins and squinted eyes, high on testosterone and anything else that was readily obtainable; scrawny old winos who peered at him through cataract-bleared eyes.
Finally, in a narrow back-street a couple of blocks from the hotel, he found them. Four boys and a girl of varying ages, squatting openly on the pavement around a brazen and smoky campfire, the chief component of which appeared to be old tyres. He met the eye of one – a slim, brown, bright-eyed boy with shaggy curls. The boy, sensing a tourist, held out cupped hands, abject expression sliding quickly into place.
Slowly, careful not to alarm them, John swung the backpack off one shoulder and retrieved the parcel of sandwiches. Five small bodies straightened, five pairs of dark eyes widening comically. Unhurriedly, John held the parcel aloft.
"Anyone speak English?" He asked pointedly.
The children relaxed immediately, expressions rearranging themselves into ones of shrewd expectation. It was clear that this was a business transaction.
"English, yes." It was the girl who spoke, her voice heavily accented but intelligible. "You have money, guero?"
"Some," John admitted, lowering himself to the edge of the kerb. He opened the parcel of sandwiches and passed them around, the children accepting them promptly and without platitudes.
"First off, are any of you hurt?" he pulled the first aid kit from the backpack, displaying the peeling red cross. "I'm a doctor, ok? Doctor – Medico."
The children shook their heads, looking vaguely alarmed – all except the smallest boy, who nodded emphatically, eyes gleaming, and rolled up the hem of his baggy shorts to indicate a skinned knee. It was scabbed over and half-healed already, but John good-naturedly produced a band-aid from his kit and stuck it solemnly into place. The little boy grinned, holding his knee aloft and twisting it left and right in order to assess John's handiwork. John grinned back. He only wished he'd thought to buy the sort decorated with cartoon characters.
"I'm looking for a friend of mine," John said, addressing himself to the girl. "Maybe you've seen him."
John drew his phone from his pocket and paged through until he found the photograph of Sherlock on the couch. He passed it round the circle, watching the children's eyes carefully for any sign. Unexpectedly, the girl giggled.
"Pretty," she told him. The tip of her tongue poked playfully from between two rows of perfect pearly teeth. "Pretty friend."
John gave a huff of laugher. "So you noticed too, huh? Too pretty for his own good, some might say."
The kids grinned conspiratorially, though it was patently obvious that none of them understood a word.
"Can you help me?" John asked. He indicated the photo again. "Lost. My friend is lost."
There was a flood of rapid Spanish of which the only word John recognised was 'amigo'. He assumed that the girl was translating for him.
"No see him," she said, turning back to John with a shrug. She indicated the boys.
John wasn't overly disappointed. He'd expected that.
"Can you tell me?" he asked. "Tell me if you see him? I will come again tomorrow."
"Ok, guero."
"Thanks," John said, meaning it. He withdrew a handful of snack bars from his pack and handed them out, thankful that the bourbon, on this occasion, was likely to prove unnecessary. "Gracias."
The girl waved him away with an airy hand. "Come tomorrow." And then, slyly, with her chin ducked in the direction of the youngest boy: "Ernesto likes chips."
The youngest boy beamed widely.
John laughed aloud. "Tomorrow," he promised, waving.
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For the next three hours, John traversed the town. He paced the streets, feeling their heartbeat; taking their measure the way he'd often done with Sherlock. In the early days, Sherlock had frequently set him tasks, getting him to memorise the ever-shifting sequence of roadworks or identify every entrance to a building at a glance, to spot a dozen members of the homeless network before they spotted him, or to notice who was missing from their favourite hangout. So far as John could remember he'd never merited full marks, and seldom even Sherlock's taciturn grunt of approval. Still, he hadn't been awful at it. There had been occasions, a very few, when Sherlock had turned and grabbed his shoulder, treating John to the full force of his bright eyes, his brilliant, megawatt smile ('Good, John! Really. Of course, you missed the drycleaner's and the place we went to for dumplings last week, but you remembered almost everything of importance…').
So for three hours, John walked the streets, hunting out the places where the children gathered and noting them down in his mental street map. He slipped in quietly wherever he felt he could do so unobserved, passing around the photo of Sherlock, and watching their eyes. He'd deliberately chosen the children, rather than the adults. Adults were cagier, more inclined to suspicion, and frankly, often too steeped in miscellaneous substances to make a great deal of sense. They took time to win over that John didn't have. Kids, by contrast, had always seemed to love him, and he'd never met one yet who didn't delight in conspiracy.
Most of those he questioned just shook their heads, passing the phone back with shy, disarming smiles, and – in the case of the older girls – a lot of giggling over Sherlock's looks. This last honestly surprised John. Intellectually, he knew that Sherlock's odd features came together in a way that was – surprisingly – attractive. But to John it was a minor detail. Sherlock was Sherlock: phenomenal, brilliant, good at everything – it only made sense that he'd be handsome as well. It didn't make him any better at guessing Agatha Christie plots or washing his own pants.
Perhaps half a dozen of the kids he encountered thought that Sherlock looked familiar. Two said that 'maybe' they'd seen him about. It wasn't much to go on, but John had confidence in his methods. Sherlock was brilliant, but he wasn't omnipotent. Somewhere along the way, he'd have needed help from someone, and John was laying odds that he'd have chosen a child. It wasn't especially ethical, and nor was it the sort of thing that a responsible adult would contemplate – but as an argument, that practically spoke for itself.
The first road sign to Guantanamo came as a shock.
He'd known they were in the vicinity, obviously, but he hadn't realised how close they really were. The name sent a shiver down his spine. John had seen and done some pretty distasteful things in his time, but nothing, nothing he'd seen had been like the stories that came out of that place. Phrases from headlines flitted through his brain. Hunger strikes… ritual humiliation… state-sanctioned torture… And these were the people that Sherlock had chosen to get himself entangled with.
You could say this for his idiot best friend, he never did things by half measures.
John glanced swiftly over his shoulder. Nothing he'd seen tonight had caused him concern, but the last thing he wanted to do was to draw attention to himself. He took the next left turn he found to take him back up the hill, away from the threatening sign. Carefully, quietly, he made his way back towards the commercial streets, navigating via the thrum of traffic. Hidden in the pocket of his jeans, his left hand grasped the flick-knife.
By the time he was a few blocks from the hotel, he had started to breathe more easily. He found himself in a well-lit street full of bars and guesthouses and eateries. A woman was cooking something at a brazier; a child tipped a pail of slops into an overflowing bin; an old man with a cigarette clamped between his teeth tuned a guitar. Outside a run-down nightclub two tall men, one black and one white, sat on stools, with a barrel between them as a table. They were playing cards, taking shots from a bottle of absinthe when they lost a hand. Something about them made the back of John's neck prickle uneasily.
He watched a moment too long. The white man looked up and caught John looking at them. John dropped his head quickly, but not before he'd had time to realise what was niggling at his subconscious: straight posture, short-cropped hair, hard eyes. Soldiers. They weren't in uniform, but that was hardly reassuring. A soldier not in uniform, in John's experience, was either a thug, or a spy.
The white man said something to his companion, who dropped his cards and looked up. He half-stood, and John caught the dark shape of a holster at his belt.
A lorry was making its way up the street, and John took his chance. He ducked casually behind it, hoping that the two men would lose interest. From the cover of the lorry, he nipped into a shadowed alcove beneath an awning and chanced a look back.
What he saw was not reassuring. The men had left their table, cards and absinthe lying abandoned. They were making their way steadily in his direction, not hurrying, but moving with the full assurance of men who were not used to asking twice.
Shit, shit, shit. Two men, both trained by the looks of it, both of them armed. Contrary to the view perpetuated by comic books, two against one was not good odds. It was even less good odds when the one in question happened to be a 37-year-old doctor on the wrong side of five-foot-eight. Even if Sherlock had been there, the best they could manage between them was about five people trying to kill them at a time. Any more than that, and they were usually in line for a short, sharp pasting.
Still hopeful that they hadn't spotted him, John slipped out from under the awning and dodged into a side-street. There were fewer people here, which was both good and bad. On the one hand, fewer people meant less chance of intervention, but on the other, it also meant less chance of drawing attention to himself, and drawing attention was just what John didn't want to do. He turned out of the side-street into a public square. It was cold, grey, and deserted.
Any hope that their pursuit of him could have been a coincidence faded when the two men turned into the square after him. They were still walking in that purposeful, unhurried way. John stood his ground, feet planted, hands in the pockets of his jeans.
"Problem, gents?"
The two soldiers exchanged a glance, and the taller guy nodded.
Without warning, they swung for him.
John had been expecting it. He ducked the first blow, the second catching him a glancing strike to the upper arm. He got a fist into the black guy's ribs, but he barely stumbled, and meanwhile the white guy had caught a handful of John's sweatshirt and was tugging him off balance. John swung an elbow into his gut, and the man swore, but didn't release his hold.
"No need to get feisty, little man. We just want a chat."
Oh yeah, because a line like that had never been followed by three weeks of water torture in a darkened room.
Neither of his opponents had drawn a gun yet, and John didn't want to give them the opportunity. He pulled the flick knife from his pocket and, instead of opening it, brought it down on the black guy's head. There was a satisfying crack, and the man snarled, but – much to John's irritation – didn't drop. Why was it only in movies that bad guys had skulls made of crêpe paper?
The white guy had used John's distraction to improve his hold, and now he had an arm beneath each of John's, hauling him backwards. John threshed and writhed, swinging his elbows into the man's stomach and the haft of the knife towards his groin. The man flinched, but didn't let go, and in the meantime, his mate was reaching for his holster.
Oh, no. No, no, no. John was not having that.
Using a trick he'd learnt from Sherlock, he abandoned his attack on the guy behind him and grasped him by the back of the neck instead. Tightening his abdomen, he used his captor for leverage and swung his feet up, catching the other soldier neatly beneath the chin. This time, the black guy went down, his head snapping back and his knees giving way as the weapon in his hand went flying. He wasn't out, not by any means, but he wouldn't be getting his hands on his gun in a hurry, and that was what counted.
Staggering suddenly under John's unexpected weight (all 72 kilos of it), the white guy buckled. John finished it off by stamping hard on the bloke's instep as he came back down. His captor stumbled, tripping over John's foot in a rather painful fashion, and at last loosened his hold. With a neat blow from the knife haft to the man's sensitive bits, John tore himself away.
He didn't stay around long enough to assess the damage; he bolted, taking off down the street back towards the main thoroughfare.
Six blocks away, he stumbled to a halt. His knuckles were bleeding and his instep throbbed where his assailant had tripped over it.
But what disturbed him most of all was that, before they'd followed him into the square, he'd distinctly heard one of the soldiers use the name "Watson."
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A/N: Whew! Pretty long one today, but hopefully it'll make up for the brevity of last week's chapter. Thanks to the lovely Analena, who left me a review for it anyway. :-) Up next: John's just been beaten up, Mary's in a mood, and Greg and Molly are stuck sharing a hotel room...