Thank you for all your comments after the last chapter. You all seemed to feel that I was getting the balance right for their relationship so I will endeavour to maintain it. Oh and for info the church mentioned in this chapter really does exist, I did my research :).

Chapter 14

The phone call came through in the early hours and Molly was vaguely aware of Sherlock moving around the bedroom before kissing her on the forehead and leaving.

When she got up a couple of hours later she had a text message from him asking her to go into work to carry out the autopsy. He'd even said please, which made a change.

She looked around the messy apartment as she got ready for work and wondered whether there was even a remote chance that Sherlock would do any tidying up before she got back from work. She seriously doubted it, especially as there was now a new murder to add to the case, but it didn't make the cleaning of the flat any less urgent.

By the time she got to Bart's the body was just being brought in. Donovan was there and explained that the victim was a defence barrister, he'd last been seen setting off to pray at the local church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, opposite the Old Bailey, apparently it was something he always did before a trial, but as far as they could tell he'd never arrived.

The body had been found by a couple of drunken kids in the early hours of the morning, he'd been strangled, just like the others, and the body had been dumped behind the church.

Molly carried out the autopsy but bar the fact that he'd been in the verge of heart failure anyway there wasn't a lot she could add. The markings on his neck were similar to those on the other victims and although he was a large man his general health had probably made him easy to overcome.

Sherlock and John arrived in the morgue soon after midday so that Sherlock could pick apart the results of the autopsy. He barked a few questions at Molly before making his way up to the labs to run some tests of his own.

Molly and John exchanged eye rolls at his brusqueness but Molly didn't take any offence. She knew he was just caught up in the latest death and she wanted him to solve it as much as he did. She felt just as much frustration at having to autopsy victims of a serial killer; it always seemed such a sad waste of life.

She was fairly busy the rest of the day with other autopsies and paper work so she didn't venture up to the lab until her shift was over. It was all silent so obviously John and Sherlock had left sometime in the afternoon.

She made her way back to Baker St. trying to muster up some enthusiasm for the cleaning that would need doing when she got there, but when she arrived there was a surprise.

She opened the door to the front room and stood for a moment, in shock, just looking around. The room was clean, not just clean but spotless. The carpet had been vacuumed, the surfaces polished and all the dirty pots had disappeared.

She walked around to the kitchen area and got the shock of her life. Billy Wiggins, one of Sherlock's homeless helpers, was leaning against the sink checking his mobile phone. Molly vaguely remembered him from that day that John had brought Sherlock into Bart's for a blood test. He looked a up, as she appeared, and smiled.

' 'Ello Miss 'Ooper. Shezza said you'd probably turn up at some point. He asked me to find someone to clean for ya. They're just finishin' the bathroom now so we'll be out of yer hair soon.' He dropped his voice to a whisper, 'I'm 'ere to supervise, make sure nuffin gets nicked, you know.'

Molly could only nod her head, 'oh, OK. Erm...is Sherlock paying you?'

'Yeah, yeah no worries, it's all in 'and. He asked me to make sure the place is kept clean and tidy for the duration. Only restrictions were 'is lab equipment and table in the front room an' your bedroom. We ain't touched that. Yer cat's in there at the moment, cute one isn't he. He didn't like the vacuum cleaner though.'

It was at that point that another lad came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of marigold gloves and carrying a bucket of water and some cleaning materials.

'All done, Bill. You wanna check it then I can take this stuff back to the old lady downstairs.'

'Alright Jay, give us a minute.'

Billy disappeared into the bathroom momentarily leaving an embarrassed Molly smiling politely at her new cleaner.

'Thanks very much for doing all this,' Molly said, sweeping her hand around, 'you've done a really good job.'

The lad smiled happily, and was surprisingly well spoken when he replied, 'that's alright, Miss, it's nice to be given the chance to earn some legit money and Mister Holmes is paying us well. I always had to clean up at home so I'm well practised. By the way, I hope you don't mind me sayin' but I had to scrub that table good and proper.' He indicated in the direction of the kitchen table. 'You should use a chopping board if you're cutting up raw meat otherwise it can contaminate other food. Covered in blood it was.'

Molly grimaced, suspecting it hadn't been animal blood on the table, maybe she should see about buying a replacement, though it hardly seemed worth it given the reintroduction downstairs of most of Sherlock's experiments. Billy came out at the same time and nodded to Jay, 'good work, right we'll be back same time next week, leave a note out if there's anything in particular you want doing, bye.'

'OK bye, and thanks again, you've no idea how grateful I am.' Molly closed the door behind them hearing them making their way downstairs. She leant back on the door and looked around her now sparkling flat. OK so Sherlock hadn't exactly done it himself but he'd thought about what she'd said and come up with a solution to make them both happy.

She gave a contented sigh of relief before making her way back into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It made a change not having to hunt around for a clean mug. Jay had even wiped down the shelves in the kitchen cupboard and tidied up the crockery which was all a bit mis-matched and eclectic.

Molly sat on the settee with her cuppa and texted Sherlock.

Flat looks amazing, thank you. Will you be back for dinner? Mx

The reply came through ten minutes later.

Back in 20 minutes, not hungry. SH

Molly raised an eyebrow at the reply and decided to set about making something for both of them. She was still determined to make Sherlock eat more when he was on a case.

She was just serving up when he arrived back. She smiled to herself as she heard his footsteps on the stairs, she could always tell when it was him. He seemed to have a buzz of nervous energy which poured off him when he was in the middle of a case.

He swept into the front room throwing down some folders into the coffee table and hanging up his coat and scarf. He quickly spotted Molly in the kitchen and strode over to give her a bruising kiss before making his way back to the settee. He sat down opening up the files before him.

Molly set a plate down in front of him and sat next to him looking over his shoulder as she ate, 'so, my mad genius, how's it going?'

Sherlock looked over his shoulder as though just noticing she had joined him, he frowned and sighed, 'not well. It looks like another random victim. John and I spent all afternoon at Scotland Yard trying to find a connection between this victim and any of the others, but other than him being religious there's nothing. I keep coming back to the first murder, that's the one that's important, something about that victim is the key to this whole case. I've asked Lestrade to go back over his history and send me everything so I can see if anything sheds light on it.'

'What about the case the lawyer was working on? Could that be connected?' Molly asked trying not to react as she noticed Sherlock absent-mindedly eating a forkful of food.

'He was part of a defence team, the trial if a local teacher accused of child abuse. I took a quick look at the case, obviously guilty, I could tell just from his photograph, but it doesn't seem to be connected.'

He put his head in his hands for a minute before running his hands through his hair in frustration. Molly bit her lip at the sight knowing for a fact he had no idea how sexy it made him look.

'I feel as though I'm missing something obvious Molly, it's driving me mad.' He turned to face her before hesitating, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her, 'what are you doing?'

Molly blushed, knowing he'd caught her out daydreaming about him, 'me, what, nothing, why?'

'You're... aroused, I did something, what?'

'Oh, nothing, you just ruffled your hair that's all...it was sexy, cute, you know.'

'No Molly, I didn't know. You mean like this.' He brought his hands slowly up to his hair, smirking as he threw his head back and ruffled his hair as though he were in a slow-mo shampoo commercial.

Molly laughed, enjoying seeing a lighter side of Sherlock. 'You great idiot! Come on, tell me more about this case and when it is all over you can show me that move again but next time it should be naked in the shower. Deal!'

He laughed along with her before turning back to his files, 'deal!'

Hope you're still enjoying. Next update will be posted on Sunday.