The Devonshire Squires Chapter Nine:

Lestrade was tired. The paperwork on the Font Street case kept him at the office until nearly midnight. Yet another Saturday night ruined. No wonder he'd never had time to date after Louise left him.

Thanks to Sherlock's deductions on scene, they had known where to look. Alexander Robbs was the victim, an accountant at RGL, a consultancy firm based at Devonshire Square. A single man living on his own, but he'd been reported to the police as missing nine days ago by his employers. The police sent his photo to his PA, who identified him. She was in too much of a state to be able to answer many questions- just the basics of when he'd been seen last. Tomorrow, he'd get Sally to dig a bit deeper, and get her to make the formal ID at the mortuary.

John Watson's phone call from Barts had helped. They were chasing up the fingerprint. It wasn't in the criminal records, but he now had the night team at work checking other databases where medical professionals might be registered. Greg had texted the details of John's breakthrough to Sherlock, but there had been no reply. He wasn't holding out much hope that the news would draw Sherlock out of wherever he'd disappeared to, but it was worth a try.

Greg was now worried on so many levels about Sherlock that he didn't know where to begin. The Sherlock who had returned from his one-man war against Moriarty was in pain- both physical and mental. That much Greg could tell from the first week he was back in the land of the living. No matter that he'd saved John from the bonfire and then gone on to save London from the bomb under Parliament; the damage was still evident during the Tilbury case, too.

Lestrade had thought he'd seen Sherlock at his lowest ebb – before John, when his battles against addiction and his own self-destructive impulses put him into rehab twice. But he thought that maybe this Sherlock was somewhere even more lost, because now he was on his own. The post Tilbury crash had been painful to see.

And now this Font Street case just proved the point. He'd watched as Sherlock positively pushed John away from him.

Greg got to his car in the NSY garage and clicked on the key to unlock it from a distance. It didn't work for some reason, despite him re-trying. Damn key fob- battery must be dead. He used the key to unlock the door, climbed in and started the car. With luck, at this hour, he'd be home in twenty minutes. On the way through the dark streets, his eye kept being drawn to the single male pedestrians. The victim had been dead for days before anyone reported him missing. Even though people were already looking for Sherlock, there was no guarantee they'd find him.

By the time he drove into the parking garage under the block of flats, he was both stressed and knackered, moving more on auto-pilot than conscious thought. The key-fob still wasn't working, so he manually locked the car, and took the lift to the third floor.

oOo

Ten minutes later, the automatic lights in the garage went off, because no other car driver had come past the barrier and hit the button that left them on for ten minutes. It was a useful security device that ensured the women who lived in the flat could keep the place lit when they were in the garage.

In the darkness, no one saw Lestrade's car boot pop open and a man get out.

Sherlock stretched his back and neck carefully, using some of his Tai Chi exercises to restore circulation. He'd actually slept a bit while the car was parked at the Yard. He'd thought about getting out there, but decided that Lestrade's garage was a safer bet. In any case, it was ideal for one of his best boltholes- the one he knew his brother would never find, for the simple reason that he wouldn't think to look in Lestrade's own building.

Sherlock had found it eleven years ago, when he was trying to find a place to stash drugs he'd just bought, because the dealer was being rousted out of the territory by a rival gang. He'd run for cover to avoid being caught in the cross fire, and discovered the bolt hole by accident. When Lestrade got booted out of the marital home after his marriage broke up, Sherlock was the one who suggested the place on Portland Rise, just next to Finsbury Park. After all, he knew the area well, and the people who lived in the flats above.

The car park under the flats had a number of lock up storage areas, and that's where he'd built this bolt hole. To get to it, you had to use a key to unlock a grill less than a meter square, then crawl along a very narrow conduit full of electrical cabling for a meter and a half before turning a corner and reaching what looked like a dead end. Slide the metal sideways, however, and you got access to an area just over four meters long and a meter and a half wide. He had deduced that it was probably a space that once housed the block's original heating system, but it was redundant once the flat company switched to gas fired boilers. The original service door had been bricked up. The space wasn't too cold or too hot, and it had power, which he'd tapped into once he decided it would work as a 'home from home' in emergencies. He'd spent a week there once, avoiding his brother while he came down from a rather bad binge.

He hadn't been there in over five years, but he figured that it was probably still there. The lock-pick made quick work of the grill and he managed to slide the metal sheet aside, despite it being a bit rusty. He made a mental note to sneak into Greg's lock up garage where he kept his beloved Norton motorbike and nick some oil. Noise at the wrong time could give him away.

Once he'd slid the metal sheet back into place, he turned on the low energy bulb that gave him enough light to be able to see that the place was exactly as he had left it. Good for a couple of nights at least. The place was a bit dusty and the air rather stale, so he plugged in the fan and opened the louvered grid that gave access to the building's ventilation shaft- a useful left-over from the time when the oil-fired boilers used the space. He surveyed the stack of plastic boxes. The top one had three different sets of clothes, each sealed in a vacuum tight plastic- a suit with a dress shirt, a smart casual package, and then what he used to think of as "street grunge"- the hoodie and track suit, trainers and cap that he would use when working in homeless mode. There was a plastic bucket with a tight top that sealed- a useful makeshift loo.

The second box had a small supply of food; tins and an opener- which he ignored, before pulling out the third plastic box from the bottom. He shook out the contents, extending the inflatable mattress and blowing it up. He stripped off his coat, hanging it neatly on a hook, before wrapping himself in the foil lined blanket from the box that would let him sleep without fear of hypothermia. He lay down to see how comfortable it was, and found himself smirking. The nights he'd spent in the capsule hotel in Tokyo made the space here feel positively palatial. And the sounds and scents of the other sleepers in that hotel had made it almost impossible for him to sleep. This would be different.

The smirk faded as he sat back up and considered his surroundings again. At least Tokyo had served a purpose. The Yakuza he was after there was Moriarty's lead man, someone who had regular dealings with Lars Sigurson, but who was about to be forced into betraying the other people in the network. The discomfort, the deprivation, even the damage done to his body and soul, had all been tolerable then, because Sherlock knew it was necessary. Break the network, and go home – it had been his motto, the thing that would make it all worthwhile.

Now he knew better. He felt the pall of depression lurking in the shadows of the claustrophobic room. There had been no point to any of it. He'd come home to find that somehow, without his noticing, the very heart had been burnt out of him.

Alone. It no longer protected him, but rather tore at him.

Anger kicked in. To hell with self-pity; he could make his own way. There was another important difference between this bolthole and Tokyo- a mod-con missing from the capsule hotel. Sherlock opened the metal box sitting in the opposite corner and lifted out the glass jar inside, shaking it. His mood started to lift, as the dopamine release of anticipation hit his circulation system. The seal was still intact on the bottle of morphine, and the long shelf life of opiates meant it would be as potent as the day he left it here, years ago. So, he reached for the other contents of the box which, when added together and carefully injected, would give him the hours of blissful release that he so desperately needed.

By the time a stressed out Lestrade turned out the light, four floors below him Sherlock was already drifting into dreamless oblivion.