John was surprised by the complete lack of police cars in front of the building when the taxi dropped him. The place had been cordoned off but instead of the cruisers with their flashing lights and the familiar uniformed officers, the building was surrounded by Royal Military Police vehicles and the perimeter was being guarded by Redcaps, all of whom eyed him suspiciously as he approached the barrier.
"Sorry, sir, no admittance," a sergeant said, holding up a hand while two corporals shifted their guns in a manner that wasn't threatening but which indicated it could become so very quickly, if John gave them any hint of a reason.
"Doctor John Watson," he said. "Let me show you my ID."
Now the two covering him did raise their guns, their eyes following his movements, their weapons steady. The sergeant to whom John had been speaking gave a curt nod, kept his own weapon down, and watched John intently. John moved slowly and deliberately, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and extending his driver's licence. The sergeant stepped forward, accepted it, and stepped back. He scrutinized it, then at John, before handing it back.
"Sorry, Doctor Watson," he said. "They've been expecting you."
I bet they have, John thought. It was a wonder Sherlock hadn't come storming into the café to get him or that one of Mycroft's cars hadn't rounded him up – because if it was Redcaps and not police, then Mycroft must have arranged it. This whole thing had started with Mycroft wanting Sherlock to look into the Murray case, after all.
At a gesture from the sergeant, the corporals lowered their weapons just enough that they could be brought back up at a moment's notice. John ducked under the barrier.
"Nash, take Doctor Watson up to the flat," the sergeant said. One of the corporals nodded and gestured for John to follow him. John drew a breath – it had been awhile since he'd been escorted by military police and never before in London. They'd accompanied his unit more than once, usually when treating or transferring an important patient.
Bad day for remembering the war, he thought, but shook it off. Nash was talking on his radio, alerting whoever was inside that he was bringing Doctor Watson in. A clipped voice gave an affirmative answer and John was surprised that Sherlock didn't instantly commandeer the radio to start yelling instructions at him.
But what could there be to do? Sherlock had texted him almost an hour ago now, and the fact that he'd stayed on a scene this long was unusual. Normally he blew through them like a whirlwind in a fitted suit and dark curls. Mycroft must be really upset for Sherlock to still be hanging about.
He tried not to stare as they were admitted to the building. It should have been less impressive than it was because he was somewhat used to the manor house in which Sherlock and Mycroft had grown up, but the opulence always managed to overwhelm him and he wondered if any of these people thought about what it was like to grow up in a normal house or flat furnished with a mix of new and old things, to not have staff and cooks and things.
He was transferred to another corporal who took him into the lift and rode with him up to the fifth floor. John wondered how many other flats there were in this building, and if those people had been evacuated.
"Stop right there!" he heard Sherlock yell at him the moment they were through the door. He halted abruptly behind the corporal, looking up. His husband was at the top of a set of curving stairs gripping the railing with nitrile-gloved hands and leaning forward. Mycroft was standing beside him, looking intensely displeased.
John looked away for a quick assessment of the scene – there was a body of a man lying at the foot of the stairs and he had either been pushed down the stairs or the impact of the bullet to his head that had clearly killed him had unbalanced him and he'd fallen. In a small flat, the stairs down which he'd fallen would have been a spiral staircase but space was not an issue here, so the stairs curved gracefully up to the second floor, not quite winding back on themselves.
John glanced to his right and saw the message scrawled on the wall and a young woman not in uniform examining it carefully. She was also wearing gloves, and would occasionally raise a hand as if the touch the image but not actually do so. John frowned, then placed her.
"Holly?" he asked.
She stopped and turned, then smiled. John stared at her a moment, taken aback by seeing the forensic artist here, but then realized Sherlock would have called her in.
"Hi, John," she said, giving him a bit of a rueful look and casting an uncertain glance at the body on the floor. She'd adjusted a lot in the two years since he'd first met her, but she was used to dealing with witnesses and victims, not corpses, and was clearly trying to ignore the body as best she could.
She turned away from John and the corpse, looking up the stairs.
"Sherlock, I don't know what you think I can tell you that you can't figure out on your own!" she called up. "I do sketches of suspects, not analyses of materials! I'm not a crime scene person."
"Anything you can tell me!" Sherlock replied and John saw Mycroft making his way down the stairs towards John although Sherlock hadn't moved.
John heard Holly sigh.
"It's blue permanent marker and it was done by a right handed person and judging by how dry it is, I'd say it was done this morning at the latest."
At this, Sherlock clattered down the stairs, overtaking his brother and bypassing the body, giving John an impatient gesture to join them. John stared – apparently any problems between them were forgotten. Then he huffed an irritated sigh at himself. There was a man lying murdered on the floor in front of him and the killer was someone they'd encountered before. He wasn't going to let Sherlock's deception go, but he could deal with the fact that this was not the time nor the place.
"And someone about five-ten, five-eleven," Sherlock said, standing beside Holly. "Look here, the pen marks are less certain at the top of the letters than at the bottom, indicating he had to reach because–", he held up a hand without touching the wall, "this would be a comfortable starting point for someone my height but the bottoms of the letters are smooth, indicating he was reaching less at the point. Anyone taller than him, closer to my height would show an opposite pattern. Same thing with the drawing of the houses; he starts at a comfortable height and has to bend over to draw the bases, so the lines are somewhat rougher. Right handed, yes, I think you're correct, because there's no smudging, although– John, could you do this without smudging?"
"If I held my hand properly," John replied. "Or wrote backwards."
"No, no hesitation on the wording. If he were writing backwards, we'd see more irregularities in the lettering because he'd have to think about it. This was done quickly and efficiently and he didn't have to concentrate. Look at the body, John, please."
John repressed a sigh and crouched down carefully next to the corpse. Mycroft was standing over him a moment later, extending a pair of gloves that John snapped on easily. It made it simpler to examine the corpse although he wished he had something to cover his mouth and nose – it was cool enough in the flat but the man had been dead the better part of the day. Since nine thirty-seven, if the broken watch on his wrist was any indication.
He was a mess. The blood from the exit wound on the back of his head had congealed on the carpeted floor along with what John knew were bits of brain matter. It angered him suddenly that no one had cleaned this up yet, that the man had been left lying where he'd died like some sort of sideshow exhibition.
"Shot at point blank range by a hand gun," John said. "He was dead before the fall, so he either fell when he was shot or he was pushed."
"Pushed," Sherlock said.
"What?" John asked, looking up. "How do you know?"
"He wasn't shot close enough to the top of the stairs to have fallen down them, or at least not that far on his own. He was deliberately pushed."
"Why would you push a dead body down a set of stairs?" John demanded.
"To send a message," Sherlock replied crisply.
"He shot a man in the head so he could say hi to you?" John snapped, anger flaring through him again. "Mycroft, what the hell is going on? Who is he anyway? Why am I here?"
"Benjamin Laurence, Minister of State for the Secretary of State for Defence," Mycroft replied in a hard voice.
John looked up at his brother-in-law again quickly, noting the anger in his eyes he hadn't spotted before and realized suddenly why Mycroft was here and why it was the Redcaps outside, not the police.
John looked down again quickly and checked the body for bruising, needle- or ligature marks or any other signs he'd been hurt or held before being killed.
"He was also friends with James Murray," Mycroft said.
John raised his head again quickly.
"Oh, you're kidding," he said softly.
"I am not," Mycroft replied. "Sherlock, enough. John, upstairs. This is why you're here. Ms. Adams, please stay down here if you would be so kind."
Holly nodded and John peeled off his gloves, leaving them beside the body as he pushed himself to his feet. He followed Mycroft up the stairs, Sherlock right behind him. John could feel his husband's presence and body heat and he expected to feel the light touch of a hand on his back, but Sherlock didn't get any closer to him. John couldn't tell if he was disappointed about that or not.
Mycroft must know something's going on, he thought with an internal sigh. Thankfully the case was taking priority at the moment.
It wasn't hard to peg where Laurence had been shot, given the splatter on the floor and the lower part of the walls, and Mycroft led them carefully around the worst of it. John wondered if they were contaminating any evidence or if there had already been a military forensic team here. Given that Mycroft seemed to have taken charge, he was willing to bet that Sherlock was the first expert on the scene and Mycroft was waiting until his brother was finished before letting anyone else have access.
Mycroft led them down a wide corridor with a Persian rug running its length then stopped in front of a door that was being guarded by another Redcap corporal. He gestured for John and Sherlock to go inside and John stepped hesitantly into the study and library, looking around, then turned back.
"Where's everyone else?" he finally thought to ask.
"Laurence was the only person who lived here," Mycroft replied.
"No staff or anything? In a flat this big?"
"No full-time staff," Mycroft said.
"We're five storeys up," John protested. "How did he get in here?"
"Sherlock?" Mycroft asked.
"Working on it," Sherlock replied, striding past John and heading for the windows. John followed him with his gaze, then saw something lying on a small round mahogany table next to a leather armchair. It caught his attention because it was the only thing that seemed out of place in a room in which everything else was neatly stored. Whatever else Laurence had been, he'd been organized.
"Yes, that's it," Sherlock said vaguely without looking back. John walked over to it and picked it up carefully. The paper itself was familiar, that same parchment-coloured stationery on which he'd been sending letters the last ten years.
On it, in pink pencil crayon, was a circle of carefully drawn roses. John stared at it, then look back up at Mycroft.
"A circle of flowers?" he asked. "A wreath?"
"A ring of roses," Sherlock corrected, drawing back from the windows and looking up at the frames with a pensive expression on his face.
John stared at the image again for a moment, then pressed a hand over his eyes.
"We all fall down," he muttered. "And he 'fell' down the stairs."
"Indeed," Sherlock said crisply and Mycroft shot his brother a dark look. John put the paper back down and tried to swallow on his anger at a killer who was taunting them with nursery rhymes.
If he had expected Sherlock to be finished shortly after he'd arrived and Mycroft to let them go quickly, he was wrong. John didn't know how much time had passed but it felt like several hours as Sherlock combed the whole flat as thoroughly as John had ever seen him do and Mycroft had quiet conversations on his cell phone. Holly was dispatched in short order and John watched her go with no small amount of envy – the scones he'd had before coming here were a poor substitute to an actual dinner and it had been a long time since the hasty half a sandwich he'd had for lunch in between seeing patients.
He listened with half an ear as Mycroft and Sherlock argued about something. Mycroft probably wasn't giving them all the information but that wasn't surprising. It was Mycroft, after all. John examined the body again but found nothing he hadn't seen before.
Finally Mycroft let them leave, sending them home in one of his cars. John settled in the back, grateful that the driver was removed from them by a pane of darkened glass. He sank into the leather seat and leaned his head against the headrest.
"Why this, why now?" Sherlock muttered to himself, stretching his long legs in front of him. "It's obvious why Laurence, but why wait? Why delay? The timing must be important – it always has been in the past."
"What do you mean, why wait?" John murmured. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sherlock give him a sharp glance.
"Weren't you listening to Mycroft?"
"Not really, no," John said.
He felt Sherlock staring at him and turned his head enough to see his husband's grey eyes in the dim interior of the car. Although the sun was still up, the darkly tinted windows made the passenger seats feel like a small private world.
"Laurence was rather vocal about delaying the vote given the reason for Murray's absence in April," Sherlock replied. "He was apparently quite displeased that it went ahead and spoke out to the press about it."
"Oh," John replied.
Sherlock stared at him. John looked at the roof of the car and sighed.
"Yeah, sorry I'm not that enthusiastic right now," he said, hearing the hint of sarcasm slip into his voice, unable to stop it. He was hungry, tired, and couldn't shake the hurt and disappointment no matter how distracting a murder investigation should have been.
He remembered Sherlock's face when they realized that the killer was giving them a choice between finding him and finding Kelsi Murray's body. And Anna Anderson's and Jon Kipling's. That complete impotent frustration. And then the way they all looked when they realised they'd been played and the killer had led them to the grave and had walked away just as unknown as he had been ten years previous.
He was just toying with them again. Probably not even with them, but with Mycroft. "Holmes" didn't have to be Sherlock, after all.
Sherlock fell silent as the car purred through the evening traffic. John closed his eyes, just hoping they'd be home soon so he could have something to eat. Probably nothing more than a can of soup. It seemed somehow fitting for the way his marriage felt right now.
"There's nothing else," Sherlock said after several long minutes. John frowned.
"You mean it was only Laurence who spoke out about the vote going ahead?" he asked with a sigh.
Sherlock didn't reply and John cracked an eye to see him looking surprised.
"No, John, I don't know. I meant there was nothing else that I was keeping from you."
John opened both his eyes now and raised his head. Sherlock was giving him an uncertain look and pressed his lips together. He hesitated, fiddling absently with the fabric of his trousers, before speaking again.
"Sam said I needed to tell you that."
John felt a flash of irritation and perverse amusement. Apparently it was full disclosure time to the point where Sherlock had to tell John who'd suggested this to him. He was annoyed that Sherlock had been talking to Sam about it, but realized that was not at all fair. He had Tricia to talk to and he had been talking to her a lot. It was unreasonable to expect that Sherlock couldn't get help from a friend of his.
John just wasn't feeling very reasonable at the moment.
He met Sherlock's gaze and held it for a moment.
"All right," he said finally, hoping Sherlock was telling the truth. He paused for a moment, then added: "I ran into Sarah today."
For a moment, Sherlock looked stricken, then smoothed over his features as best he could. John sighed.
"I ran into her while I was having coffee with Tricia. We chatted. That's all. I'm not about to run off and have an affair with her or with anyone. I'm not trying to get you back because that would be childish and unjustified. I'm not going to cheat on you because I'm angry at you, and you don't have to think that you've got to accept it because you hurt me. It's not an eye for an eye, Sherlock. I'm just telling you because I think you should know."
Sherlock held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded and looked away. John had never seen his husband look so uncertain and chastised and was startled to realize he didn't really feel bad about it.
They spent the rest of the ride to the flat in silence and trudged up the steps together. John went into the kitchen immediately and made some soup and toast, setting half of it aside for Sherlock. He sat at the kitchen table and ate in silence, not surprised that Sherlock didn't join him. When he was done, he rinsed his dishes and went back into the living room.
Sherlock was not sitting in his chair but standing near the desk, fiddling with something from his chemistry set – John couldn't see what. He looked up when John came in and put whatever it was down on the table before crossing the room. John watched him with some surprise since he'd rarely seen Sherlock out of his armchair all week.
Sherlock stepped up to him until he was standing half a pace away and looked down, uncertainty scrawled all over his features. He searched John's face then raised a hand, hesitating before carefully touching John's cheek. When the doctor didn't pull away, he ran his thumb lightly over John's lips then dropped his hand, bent down, and kissed him softly.
John didn't move for a few seconds, then kissed back. They stayed that way, barely touching, barely moving, for a long moment. Sherlock pulled away carefully and met John's eyes again, then kissed him a second time. He deepened it slightly this time and John let him, parting his own lips a bit. He felt Sherlock's tongue dart over his lips, over the front of his teeth, but didn't give him any more access. Sherlock ran his tongue over John's bottom lip again then caught it lightly, sucking on it.
John shifted slightly and Sherlock moved minutely toward him. He felt Sherlock's hands on his waist after a moment, resting against his shirt just above his belt. They stayed there for a few seconds then skimmed very lightly upward, his fingertips tracing John's chest then the skin on his throat where his shirt parted and his flesh was exposed. He felt goose bumps at the contact but also felt curiously disconnected from it. A week ago, the sensation would have gone straight through him, making him want more.
Now he wasn't sure he wanted anything.
He moved closer and felt Sherlock's fingers undoing the first two buttons on his shirt. Sherlock pulled out of the kiss then kissed him again, lightly, before trailing his lips across John's jaw. John titled his head, feeling the fabric of his shirt pushed aside, feeling Sherlock's cool fingers against his skin. He closed his eyes, waiting.
Come on, John, he told himself.
It felt familiar and it felt good, but he didn't want it.
He searched for the feeling but his body seemed shut off. John pressed his eyes closed a bit more tightly, putting his own hands on Sherlock's hips, hoping that would help.
He wanted to want it. He just didn't actually want it.
The realization made him snap his eyes open and he must have tensed because Sherlock stopped and drew away, searching his face, his expression questioning and vulnerable.
John inhaled deeply and reached up, wrapping his fingers around Sherlock's, drawing the detective's hands away from his body. He saw the hard flash of hurt and shock in Sherlock's eyes.
"I'm sorry," John said quietly. "I just– can't. Not yet."
Sherlock stared at him a heartbeat longer then closed his eyes. He gave a single nod and stepped back, pulling his hands lightly from John's grasp. They stood frozen, then John made himself say:
"Why don't you get a start on the case? Mycroft will appreciate your help."
Sherlock set his jaw and kept his eyes closed for several seconds, then opened them and nodded again.
"Of course," he replied and his voice sounded taut and raw, and John could hear the strength he was trying put into it. He felt a flash of guilt but it dissipated quickly; it wouldn't help matters to force himself to do something he didn't want to do, and Sherlock would have figured it out. And if he hadn't figured out until it was too late, he never would have forgiven John. They didn't need any more resentment going around.
"I'm– going to shower," John said. Sherlock gave another abrupt nod and John hesitated before making himself move away. He shut the bathroom door behind him, not bothering to lock it.
He stripped down and turned up the hot water as high as he could tolerate then climbed in. He immersed himself completely under the spray before leaning his head against the cool tiles on the wall, lacing his hands together on the back of his head and closing his eyes. John just stood there, letting the water pour over him until it went cold and he had to shut it off and get out.