For the first time ever, Sherlock consented to suit up for a crime scene. John gave him a look suggesting he thought Sherlock had lost his mind – it was the most eye contact John had made with him since they'd left their flat, but Sherlock ignored it. A three-day-old crime scene was going to be difficult to interpret at best and he needed all the advantages he could get. John suited up as well, zipping up the suit and snapping on his gloves with practiced efficiency. Sherlock wondered why John consented to these suits at all – his own was hot and itchy and uncomfortable. Really, there had to be a better way to make a sterile suit. Something to research when he got home.
"Stay outside," Sherlock told Mycroft, whose grey eyes flashed at that, but his brother nodded. Sherlock wasn't about to work with Mycroft around, watching over his shoulder, being pompous. He had promised Sherlock he'd get whatever he needed, so Sherlock was going to start with this. "And no cameras nor audio recording equipment. If I suspect you – or anyone else – is watching or listening, I'm leaving."
Another dark look, but Mycroft nodded curtly.
"Very well," he agreed. He took a pair of latex gloves from the agent who had been stationed just outside the flat, who had provided them with their gear. It seemed the man had been sent there specifically, but perhaps someone was keeping a constant eye on the flat, in order to ensure no one came or went from it. Although a penthouse suite, one of the lifts opened into a small lobby that could be used for guests, so that they did not arrive inside the suite proper. There was another lift, private, that discharged inside the suite, although the one in the tiny lobby, with its polished wooden surfaces, was restricted and could only reach this upper floor with a key code. Decipherable, of course, but there were also other ways. There was an emergency staircase that opened up next to the lobby lift, although this, too, was guarded by key code and alarmed. Sherlock made a mental note to check on the building's alarm systems and look for any disruptions to the power supply that may have granted access.
Mycroft unlocked and opened the door for them, pushing it inward and moving himself back at the same time, so that Sherlock and John could move past him. He gave his brother a warning glare that was filled with instructions to do something, find something, then pulled the door closed behind him.
Sherlock was not particularly impressed by the flat, but apparently John was. The doctor stopped and stared, hands hanging by his side, eyes widening. Sherlock glanced around – certainly it was large for a city the size of Edinburgh, but he'd grown up in a manor house, so this was small by comparison. Much larger than their flat, of course, but not an alarming size.
At least, not to him.
"Good God," John said, shaking his head. "Must be nice."
"Don't be daft, think of all the cleaning you'd have to do," Sherlock replied, waving a hand dismissively, casting an expert and critical eye about the place. Mycroft was right; it hadn't been cleaned up by any forensics team, which was at least good news.
"I think if I could afford a flat like this, I'd have someone to clean it for me," John commented.
"What are you on about, John?" Sherlock asked. "We could afford this, or something close to."
John turned and stared at him and Sherlock gave him a puzzled look.
"You do know I have money," he said. "This isn't surprising."
John opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, then shook his head.
"Then why do we live in our flat?" he managed.
"Where else would we live?" Sherlock enquired. "I like our flat. It's home. Would you really want to move?"
John stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head as if to free himself from his shock.
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "This is – well, it's amazing."
"It's passable," Sherlock said vaguely. "Now do be quiet and let me work."
John kept staring at him, but Sherlock turned his attention away from his inexplicably overly impressed husband and took stock of his surroundings.
The foyer was tiled with expensive Italian tiles, pale brown, two discreet closets on either side, and an archway that opened into the large livingroom. Sherlock stepped inside, noting the size of the room and the amount of light it let in after he noted the taped outline of a body and the blood soaked into the thick off-white area rug, the stains hardened and brown, because of the time that had passed. He sniffed the air – no smell of cleaners, but also not much smell of blood anymore. He cast an eye over the furniture, some of it was spattered with blood as well.
It was all antique, carefully restored, and a proper job of it, too, so that if it hadn't been stained with blood, it would have fetched a decent price at any auction. It looked worn, so MacTaggart and her son had used this room, although Sherlock suspected there had been some strict rules about feet on the seats or on the small mahogany table that rested in front of the divan and was bracketed on either end by low-backed armchairs. The floor was hardwood, oak most likely, properly stained a medium brown to highlight the natural hues in the wood, exquisitely cared for, not a scratch or crack that was immediately visible.
Behind the divan was a marble-mantled fireplace that gave the strongest hint to the room's regular use. The mantle surface itself was covered in framed photographs, most of Angela and David throughout various stages of his life, but some of David with friends or other adults, the parents of friends, presumably, some of David in a football jersey, looking almost too young to play, and a couple more recent school portraits.
There two paintings on the walls, one Monet, which Sherlock was willing to bet was not a print, nor stolen, another he didn't recognize, much more recent judging by the sharpness of the colours and their hues, and the scene it depicted. It was a view of the castle from the Royal Mile, and the pedestrians along the street were wearing modern clothing, so a local artist most likely, perhaps someone Angela knew, or supported as a patron.
The wall opposite the fireplace was lined with wide windows, and there were three skylights set in the ceiling above them, looking up onto a cloudy day. Outside the windows on the wall, which could be covered with custom-made, heavy, and expensive drapes, Sherlock could see the city spread out below them, stretching into the distance. A commanding view, as if the inhabitants of this flat could stand and watch the world below them, controlling its movements, understanding its patterns.
In that respect, it reminded him of Mycroft's flat, or at least the one Sherlock had visited the most often, back when he visited Mycroft at all.
John was wandering about, looking at everything, but not in a critical way. Sherlock tried to ignore him – this was actually much more difficult than it appeared. He'd had to train himself quite strictly to ignore John's presence when he didn't need the doctor's opinion, because since they'd gotten together, being in close proximity to John had been utterly distracting. Even now, if Sherlock let his mind go, it would happily traipse through all sorts of fantasies about John and not focus on the task at hand. So he inhaled deeply and slowly and focused on the problem, not on John wandering aimlessly about.
But John could be of some use, at least.
"Take some pictures, will you?" Sherlock asked, walking over to the hand woven woollen rug on which the divan, chairs and table sat. There was a floor lamp resting at one end of the couch, providing the only immediate illumination, although two small lamps were set on the wall over either end of the mantle. It would be dim in here when it was dark, even with these three lights on, but not so dim as to be uncomfortable. Providing a warm, homey feel.
"Of what?" John asked.
"Everything," Sherlock replied vaguely, stopping beside the taped outline of the body that had been removed. The nanny, Hania Babiak, a thirty-one-year-old woman from Poland who had been David's nanny from the time he'd been eight months old. Not a tall woman, judging by the outline, perhaps one hundred and sixty to one hundred and sixty-two centimetres.
Sherlock noted John pulling out his phone and begin snapping photos. He sank to his knees, then pressed his gloved hands to the floor, lowering himself the rest of the way very carefully, eyes tracing the blood spatter patterns from this angle. They really hadn't cleaned – there was still brain matter mixed in there, too. Shot in the back of the head, but from not quite point blank range. Sherlock twisted his head to see over his left shoulder. If the shooter had fired from the archway coming in from the foyer, it would have been far enough.
Had Babiak not even heard anyone come in, or had she been fleeing to find David, to keep him safe?
He'd need to check the body to be certain.
He pushed himself back to his feet and moved back to the archway, surveying the scene, mentally subtracting John from the equation. One person at least, probably two. He looked at the floor, but there were no scuffmarks, not because they'd been cleaned. Whoever had come in had moved lightly, and worn proper footwear. Perhaps with forensics covers, it was difficult to say.
He walked through the livingroom into a short corridor, emerging into the dining room. Nothing of interest in here, nothing was disturbed. Wherever David had been when he'd been taken, it hadn't been in here. He heard John following him but ignored it. The kitchen was impressive – fully modernized, all energy efficient and gleaming appliances, the surfaces spotless, everything put away, except for one small frying pan, lying on the floor.
Incongruous.
Something had happened here, some disturbance. Had David seen his abductors here and run? Or had he tried to lash out when being taken? Sherlock would need to go over the entire logs from the scene to see if the frying pan had been dusted for prints.
He kept going, looking into a small private library, which was also undisturbed, the wooden bookshelves built into the walls giving the room an old scholarly air that sharply contrasted with the desk at which there had been at least one computer, probably a computer and a laptop, both of which were removed. Sherlock scowled; he thought Mycroft had told him nothing had been taken.
"Take a picture of the desk," he instructed John when John came up behind him, and then continued down the hall, past a spacious bathroom with a single skylight and a tub so big it may as well have been a small pool. Sherlock cast his eyes up again, skylights in the hallway as well. They were easily observable from above, if one could access the roof, but he was also willing to conclude that Angela MacTaggart would have these alarmed and that she herself was accustomed to watching from threats from any direction, not just at her level.
He went into David's bedroom. The files Mycroft had given him suggested the boy had been captured here, and Sherlock could see that immediately. Not much was out of place, but several books had been scattered across the floor in a manner that suggested they'd been kicked at desperately but accidentally, not simply dropped because the boy didn't want to put them away. There was a hand mark still visible in the carpet as well, small, so David's own. There were several overlapping sets of prints, but indistinguishable, as if the makers had deliberately moved about overtop of their original prints to obscure them. Probably had, Sherlock decided.
Everything else seemed quite normal for a young boy's room: an unmade bed, a pile of toys near the pillow that was bunched up against the headboard, an abandoned school bag emblazoned with the George Heriot's crest, the zipper undone, two notebooks visible inside, a desk with another missing computer and a gaming system hooked up to a wall-mounted flat screen television. Sherlock crossed the room, opening the closet, which was walk-in – unnecessary for a ten year old, really – full of clothing, stored toys and games, as well as sports equipment for football and a partially deflated basketball. He switched on the closet light and found nothing more.
Whoever had taken David had done a quick and professional job, leaving nothing behind they didn't want to.
Blast.
Sherlock paused and considered his options. It had been three days since this had happened, so he was already visiting a fairly cold crime scene. There was nothing there to tell him much, since the nanny's body had been removed and enough time had passed that whatever scents may have helped him pin something down had dissipated. He'd need to comb more carefully through the forensics report, but what he really needed was to speak to Angela MacTaggart. If this was directed at her, which he was certain it was, then she held the answers, somewhere. If this had been a simple ransom kidnapping, they would have heard from the kidnappers by now. And it would not be for black market adoption – David was too old, and besides, he was too well protected. Baby snatchers such as those would prey on children much more exposed than David had ever been.
This was professional, both in terms of the kidnappers and their intentions.
He wondered where John was, because his husband had been following him down the hall. Sherlock peered back into the hall and then checked Angela's master bedroom itself, finding John in there, the doctor moving slowly about the room, deep in thought. Sherlock opened his mouth to snap that he needed photos of the boy's room, then reconsidered. John was contemplating something carefully; he didn't often contribute flashes of insights at crime scenes that didn't pertain to corpses, but he had his moments. The man was no slouch intellectually; he'd just never trained himself to make the connections Sherlock did.
There were times, however, when Sherlock saw him working on something that even the consulting detective hadn't contemplated, and the expression on John's face told Sherlock this was one of those times.
He stepped into the room, waiting. John blinked, looking round at him.
"He's lying to us," John said.
Sherlock crossed his arms.
"Mycroft? Of course he is. Just a matter of determining about what. He's always lying about something. It's really the only consistent thing about him."
John nodded absently, and picked up a small, framed photo of Angela and David, when David had been about six or seven.
"Ever seen her before?" John asked, gesturing vaguely with the frame.
"Never," Sherlock replied. "I don't socialize at all with my brother's circles. And it's been quite some time since MacTaggart has worked with Mycroft."
"Well, that we know about," John said. "Perhaps she does her share of consulting, too. A consulting secret agent?"
Sherlock raised his eyebrows; this was a good point.
"I'm just thinking – does David look at all familiar to you?"
"Yes," Sherlock replied promptly and John looked up, appearing surprised. "Like Nicholas Merkley."
John looked back down at the picture quickly, biting his lower lip, considering this.
"Yes, I can see that," he agreed. "Although it seems unlikely."
"Highly improbable," Sherlock agreed. "I'll not rule it out, but it's far down on my list of information with which to follow up. If Daniel Goodnow was his biological father, I shall renounce my atheism, because in that case, there would have to be a god having a good go at us."
At this John gave a surprised chuckle, looking back up, his brown eyes twinkling.
"But that's not what you were thinking," Sherlock said. If it had been, John wouldn't have been surprised when Sherlock mentioned Nicholas Merkley's name.
"No," John agreed, then fell silent again, contemplating the photograph again, his brown eyes thoughtful.
"John," Sherlock prompted.
John looked up and held out the picture. Sherlock crossed the room and took it, looking down at it, trying to pin where John's thoughts were going. Angela and David MacTaggart grinned up at him from their frozen moment.
"I was rather thinking he looks like you."
Sherlock looked up sharply, eyes narrowing.
"Don't be daft. I don't have any children. I'd remember that."
"Yes," John said, nodding. "Well. I wasn't actually suggesting that it was you."
Realization kicked in remarkably quickly, even for Sherlock. He stood still a moment, then inhaled a sharp breath, spinning on his heel and storming back into the hallway, bellowing his brother's name.