Author's Note: Okay folks, sorry to say this is a somewhat shorter section. I plead the following: illness, Christmas, work and family. That pretty much covers all the bases. Anyway, the next section will include Sherlock… actually conscience and everything! Let me know how you like this bit, and hopefully you'll have the next – much longer section – by the weekend.
"Were there any casualties?" Lestrade demanded. "Did they find Dr. Watson?"
"No emergency response on the scene yet, and we've sent word for the LAS and LFB to hold off until an ARV arrives. We don't need any dead paramedics," Chief replied.
"But the delay… " Lestrade grimaced and trailed off. He didn't like it, but it was the right call.
"There's another unit closer than us. They should be there any moment," Williams added reassuringly.
The ARV sped along the A40, heading for the accident as Sergeant Williams helped him into a harness and holster for the Glock 17 – one that fit carefully over the ballistic vest he was already wearing. The harness was followed by a radio pack with an earbud and throat mic. "You're to stay off the com unless you're asked a direct question," Williams instructed, as the van pulled to a halt at the scene of the accident, "and you're to stay with me."
Lestrade waited – like a good little tag-along – for the team to deploy before he got out. Williams was waiting for him. The scene was a mess. Rain was pouring down in sheets now, and the area was but dimly lit by the roadside lamps and the headlights of the vehicles that had backed up behind the crash. Two other police cars, one of them an ARV, were already on the scene along with a fire engine and an ambulance. Lestrade could clearly see the lorry that had plowed into the van that had, presumably, been carrying Dr. Watson away. The van itself, a boxy number with a rear roll-up door emblazoned with a moving company logo, was on its side. The frame was bent, but someone had managed to raise the rear door about two feet before it seemed to have jammed in its runners.
Lestrade watched as Chief rapidly took control of the scene, and he listened in silence as the rest of the team deployed around the site. From the chatter on the com, he picked up that the occupants of the van had fled immediately following the accident, hijacking another car at gunpoint and summarily ejecting the driver. The bloke was lucky not to have been summarily executed in Lestrade's opinion. Only one of the villains remained, and he was unconscious and pinned in the driver's seat, half of the vehicle's partially crumpled engine sitting in his lap. Whether he'd live was in doubt. Whether he'd ever wake up was in even more doubt. The driver of the lorry, also pinned inside the cab of his vehicle, was in somewhat better shape, and as Lestrade watched, paramedics began the laborious process of extracting him from his lorry. Thankfully, there were no dead bodies, certainly none matching the description of a 5'7" blond man of thirty-eight. There was no sign of a hostage anywhere. Not dead was good, but missing was dreadful.
Lestrade knew that the chief's team was already attempting to track the stolen car, that the owner had given them immediate access to the vehicle's GPS tracker.
"How many men got into your car?" the officer who'd questioned him had asked solemnly.
"Three! Those three bastards – "
"Did any of the men seem unwilling or be under duress in any way?"
"No, damn it!" the driver had yelled. "They were all sodding nutters!"
Other witnesses to the crash and the subsequent hijacking were being questioned quickly for any information they could give, some waiting in their cars, others huddled together and watching the extraction of the lorry driver from his vehicle with wide eyes. All that could be done was being done, but that didn't make it any easier for him to stand by and watch, doing nothing while a good man was lost, maybe forever. How had everything gone so bloody pear-shaped so bloody quickly?
Extracting the lorry driver from his vehicle had been relatively simple, but the emergency response team was having a good deal more trouble retrieving the driver of the van. Lestrade looked on in growing frustration as they applied a cutter to the van's frame in an attempt to free the warped passenger-side door, the driver's door being pressed again the pavement and an even less plausible exit. He looked away in startlement, however, when his mobile beeped in his pants pocket. Pulling it out, he saw that he had a text from Sherlock of all people.
GL,
REMEMBER, IT'S MORIARTY
SH
Lestrade contemplated this message for a full ten seconds, then broke into a run, heading straight for the emergency crew and the van. He came up short, however, when Sergeant Williams grabbed him by the arm and spun him to a stop. "What is it?" she demanded.
"Stop them! We have to stop them!"
"Chief," Williams said, pitching her voice for the com to pick up. "We have a problem." She didn't release her grip on his arm, but the Chief was already trotting over to them and Lestrade didn't bother to try and shake her loose.
"What is it, Detective Inspector Lestrade?"
"The emergency crews need to be on the lookout for explosives," Lestrade said. "You said before that this abduction was connected to my case. If you're right, if it is Moriarty, then he's – "
Lestrade never finished his sentence because at that instant, the moving van was abruptly engulfed in flame. There was no blast, no explosion, no sound at all except for the soft whumph of the growing fireball, the yelling of the spectators, and the appalling screams of the rescue workers who'd been caught in the sudden conflagration. Between the rain and the fire suppressant laid down by the firefighters, the thing shouldn't have been able to burn at all, but it going up like dry grass soaked in petrol. For a moment, everyone just stared in shock, then the remaining rescue workers rushed forward en masse to help their fellows, Chief's team right behind them. Lestrade gaped in horror as one of the firefighters collapsed to the carriageway, utterly still except for the flames that danced along his body. Two more firefighter dropped fire blankets over him, but the DI knew it had to be too late. The man simply had to be dead. The driver of the van, their only link to Moriarty, also had to be dead. A paramedic was screaming as another man held him still while a third worked to remove the half-melted clothing from his torso. Dismayed, Lestrade looked away, turning his gaze from the disaster to the crowd that hovered nearby watching the tragedy unfold. All eyes were on the fire and its aftermath… almost all eyes. One woman wasn't watching the flames. Instead, she was looking in the direction of a small copse of trees as she pulled nervously at the ends of her scarf. She was standing with the group of witnesses that hadn't been questioned yet.
Without pausing to consider any further, Lestrade ran for her. She jerked back with a start when he broke to a halt beside her, Williams trailing after him like the tail of the dog. "What did you see?" he asked without preamble.
"What? I... I didn't…"
Resisting the urge to grab the woman and shake her, Lestrade took a slow, calming breath. She was young, maybe as much as twenty-two, maybe not. Her long brown hair was soaked, dripping steadily onto her already sodden clothing, and she looked utterly terrified by his sudden armed and armoured appearance before her.
"Have you been questioned by anyone yet?" he asked softly, forcing his adrenalin-filled body to a calm he didn't really feel.
She shook her head nervously, and one of the men in the crowd stepped up beside her, glaring at Lestrade and his shadow. Great, a would-be Galahad, that was all the DI needed.
Still speaking slowly and gently, Lestrade said, "Did you see anything unusual, ma'am? Anything besides the crash?"
She hesitated, but her gaze turned once more toward the copse of trees that stood between the motorway and one of its curving off-ramps. Lestrade followed the drift of her eyes. The area was a dark one, the street lights failed to penetrate the canopy and only a few small accent lights at the base of some of the trees provided any illumination at all. He thought for a second that he saw movement among the foliage, but that could just be his eyes playing trick. Then again, it could be exactly what he was looking for.
"What did you see?" Lestrade asked again, this time without looking back at the young woman. She was panicky, on the verge of hysteria just from being confronted, and an illusion of privacy, of distance would help to calm her. "Just tell me what happened. Don't worry about how it sounds."
"Okay. I…. okay." She gulped audibly, but she sounded somewhat steadier when she continued. Williams, thankfully, said nothing, fading into the background. "I was right behind the accident. I was sitting in my Golf, holding onto the steering wheel and… crying and waiting for someone to rear-end me in the rain and… I saw him get out of the van."
"Saw who?" the Galahad demanded, sounding intrigued. Lestrade cursed him silently and shot a quick glance at his witness, but the girl perked up from the less official attention of her would-be protector.
"A man got out of the back of the van, right after the accident. No one had even gotten out of their cars yet, but this gent came crawling out, only… he was… " She turned back to Lestrade, shaking her head in self-abnegation. "I must have seen wrong."
"Don't worry about how it sounds, honestly, just tell," he smiled and looked up at the looming Galahad, "us what you saw, miss…"
"Gemma. Gemma Whitsock, and he was starkers."
Lestrade's breath caught in his chest, and the DI leaned closer to his witness. "You saw a naked man get out of the back of the van, the part where people don't normally ride."
"Yes."
"Cor!" Galahad put in helpfully.
"Where did he go?" Lestrade demanded. "Did you see exactly where he went?"
"I'm not sure," she said hesitantly, shaking a bit of rain off her face. The downpour was letting up slightly, but the temperature was dropping just as fast and all of them were shivering with the cold. "I was watching him, just sort of gobsmacked, but I looked away when those other men stole that poor bloke's car. It was terrifying. I was sure they were going to start shooting people and we'd have a massacre and I'd get blood all over my sister's shirt."
"Your sister?" Galahad asked. "Is she here too? You shouldn't be alone or anything."
"No, I'm just wearing her – "
"The man?" Sergeant Williams broke in.
"Oh, when I looked back he was gone."
"Did you notice anything else," Lestrade asked anxiously. "Did he look injured? Anything?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't see much. I wasn't even really certain he was stark – naked. I thought I saw something, I don't know, shiny or something, but that's it."
The DI nodded. "Alright, Miss Whitsock, I need you to get back in your car and wait quietly until someone comes to question you in more detail."
"Did I do okay?" she asked nervously.
"You did fine. Now, get in out of the rain and maybe Mr…"
"Allen," Galahad said quickly.
"Mr. Allen will wait with you. Won't you Mr. Allen?"
"Absolutely," he nodded, smiling.
Lestrade turned away and put a hand on William's shoulder. "Make sure someone comes to get her," he said. She was already issuing instructions into her com when he pulled the Glock and headed for the trees. Williams followed after him, still barking out urgent commands as they jogged over to the small greenbelt. Though the rain had lightened up, the darkness was as deep as ever, and Lestrade and his shadow paused at the edge of the trees.
"You think it's one of the kidnappers?" she whispered, with a jerk of her chin at the pistol.
"No, but I also don't want to be ambushed by anyone else who might be hanging about looking for Dr. Watson," he whispered back, and together they eased into the deeper darkness beneath the trees. Flickering flashes of light from the fire burning fatally behind them gave the illusion of movement to the world around them without really piercing the gloom. Lestrade and Williams both pulled their torches, shining the narrow beams across the sodden ground, searching for any sign that someone had passed that way. The rain made everything harder. Any blood from a person fleeing the accident would have been washed away the instant it fell. Muddy ground would certainly hold tracks, but water stood so deep in the hollow of the copse that tracks were impossible to see.
"Bugger this," Lestrade snapped, then he pulled in a deep breath and bellowed, "Dr. Watson! John Watson, are you here? Dr. Watson, can you hear me?" The DI could barely hear himself over the sound of the rain on the leaves overhead and the whistle of the fire and rush of the fire pumps behind them. "John!"