The Devonshire Squires

Chapter Three:

"Damn."

The woman whose name was not Anthea turned to the young man at the desk. Ashley Lewis had been assigned surveillance duty on the hardest man in England to watch without being caught. She watched as the dark skinned agent muttered another oath under his breath.

"We've been rumbled. HOW?"

She came around to look over his shoulder and saw on the screen an empty room. That it happened to be one familiar to her was not a surprise. She'd been watching footage from 221b Baker Street for ages, even if there had been the two year break recently.

"Rewind." Her order was quiet, and the young man obeyed. "I don't know how he figured it out. That is the latest technology, I placed it myself. There is just no way in hell he could have found it. It's utterly fool-proof."

She smirked. "Well, you're new. The one thing I can guarantee you is that Sherlock Holmes is no fool, so the only fool is you if you thought that he wouldn't find any surveillance device."

The timer on the screen reached 13.05. The screen readjusted and began forward play at normal speed. She watched as Sherlock came into the living room. He was dressed in the new suit she had picked out herself- a smart Spencer Hart from Brook Street. The bespoke versions would have to wait until he could be bothered to go to the Saville Row shop. He'd come back slimmer than before in the waist, but broader in the shoulders. No tie, of course. The younger brother was about as different sartorially as it was possible to be from his elder brother. Still, he cut an attractive figure. And the fact that his gait seemed comfortable as he walked into the room also pleased her. Almost a month ago that had only been possible with a hefty dose of pain relief.

Sherlock had come to a halt in the middle of the room, and was now looking around warily. As soon as he turned, she saw the shadows on his face. Still not sleeping properly. He looked tired and drawn, his eyes a little sunken, the cheekbones a bit more prominent than the last time she'd seen him in person, at the Diogenes Club. That worried her.

Mycroft Holmes had been curious about his brother's activities from the moment he got back into Baker Street, but had not pressed for a full scale surveillance exercise, at least not at first. As ever, she was able to sense when the two Holmes brothers had struck some sort of private, unspoken deal. She guessed it was something along the lines of "I'll find your underground terrorist as long as you back off your watchdogs." The fact that the deal had been honoured was a testament to how frustrated the elder Holmes had been in not being able to solve the problem himself.

It worked. Sherlock found the plotters in time, Moran was arrested, the Houses of Parliament saved. There was a brief hurrah as the papers celebrated the return of their consulting detective.

But then things went pear-shaped and all deals were off. She wasn't sure what had happened, but her boss had gone to Baker Street for what was supposed to be a brief conversation and had ended up spending the whole night there*. Sleepless, too, by the look of it when he arrived back at the Diogenes Club the next morning.

Over the past three weeks, the team had been slowly building up their capacity to keep an eye on their boss's brother. As the relative of a person automatically accorded close protection, Sherlock would always be considered a potential target. But now, especially given his recent tour of duty, he would have warranted his own bodyguard, if he could have been persuaded to accept one. Without his agreement, surveillance was the only option left.

It had been awkward during Sherlock's Tilbury case. To start with, he was in a difficult place to use CCTV, without tipping off the London Port Authority Police about it, and even then, it was pretty much useless at being able to track his movements inside the port area. The events that led to his capture, his near drowning in the Thames and the mayhem that followed – well, most of that was reported by DI Lestrade, well after the fact.

That was the last straw for her boss, who ordered a much higher level of surveillance. Hence the decision to put cameras back into Baker Street. She asked the agent, "When did you put the new device in?"

"Yesterday, while he was at St Barts. Didn't take more than a couple of minutes."

It had been installed in the mirror over the fireplace. Invisible to the naked eye, hidden from both the front and the back of the mirror, it should have been undetectable. And yet, Sherlock's eyes were moving around the room, as if he knew there was something new, something different.

"You didn't touch anything on the mantelpiece, did you?"

"Well, of course I did. I had to move the skull to get the mirror down."

She sighed. "He has a photographic memory. There is no way you'd get it back perfectly."

"I took a photo on my phone and re-positioned it exactly. No way could he tell from that."

"Did you think to replace the dust? He makes sure the place is left dusty for a reason." She leaned a little closer to the agent and picked up the scent of Paco Rabanne Invictus cologne. "Were you wearing that yesterday?"

He looked confused. "Yeah- but that was yesterday."

She sighed. "Sherlock Holmes is hypersensitive. He's probably smelled that and realised that someone's been in the flat."

The young man laughed incredulously. "That's impossible- it was thirty hours ago. But even so, even if he knows someone's been in the flat- that doesn't mean he could find the camera. But, somehow, he does; just watch."

Holmes came up to the mantelpiece, his eyes sweeping right and left across it. She watched his nostrils flare a little. Then he turned his head, and the watchers were treated to the sight of first his right profile, and then his left.

"Oh, he's listening for it."

Lewis turned from the screen and looked at her askance. "Listening? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Not even an electronic sweeper is supposed to be able to pick that model up. It's silent."

She shrugged. "To you and me maybe, but he's able to hear high frequency noises- a fluorescent bulb, a phone charger, a sensor beam."

She smirked, as Sherlock looked straight into the mirror, brought his mouth up closer, directly into line with the camera before mouthing the words, "Piss off, Mycroft." Then he turned on his heel, pulled his scarf and Belstaff off the peg and clattered down the stairs at speed.

She laughed. "Well, it least he left it in place. How many more are there?"

"Three. And the two men stationed across the road in 216."

"He will have sussed them out within hours of their setting up shop."

Lewis grimaced. "No wonder they said this was a hardship posting."

"Shush. Watch and learn. He's as good at fieldwork as his brother is at strategy."

"You got a soft spot for him?"

"Well, I've known him for a long time." Her initial smirk faded a little. "I'm glad he's back. It's one less worry for his brother, even if it is one more worry for you and me. He's driven us all half mad over the years. It will be interesting to see whether he's learned enough new tricks over the past two years to drive us right over the cliff into stark, staring bonkers."

Author's Note: * Exhort, in Ex Files explains what the two brothers got up to that night. Even if you've read it before a while ago, it might be useful to re-read (and review;) so what happens next makes sense.