Chapter 2- The Departed
"So that's it?!" Lestrade asked me agape like an astonished monkey. "You can't be serious." He exclaimed letting his arms drop to his sides in total frustration.
"All of the evidence is there." I responded coolly as I walked at a fast pace back to the road to catch a cab. All in all it was a bit more of a challenge than I let on, but even so it hadn't taken up more than four minutes of my time and I cursed myself for not simply having the cabbie who had dropped me off wait. Then again, the warehouse was disused and in a very shabby district of London so it was surprising he took the fare at all for fear of unwittingly becoming what he probably assumed would be a murder, drugs deal, or prostitution bit and not necessarily in that order. "But as usual you and the least worst London could string together overlook the obvious in search of the stupidly convenient." I glanced at my phone to check the time and did curse under my breath. It was rush hour and the weather had become cold and wet. Getting a cab would prove far more difficult than solving the case I had come for.
"Sherlock," he nearly pleaded, "it doesn't make any bloody sense. You want me to put in an official inquiry report that the man in that building hung himself by standing on a block of ice until it melted?"
"Classic insurance scam." I shrugged, somewhat agitated. I pulled my thick and warm coat around me tighter so as to preserve as much body heat as possible. "He likely took out a policy only recently- otherwise why make it look like an accident?" I asked rhetorically. I didn't expect him to answer, or rather hoped he wouldn't, yet he seemed to take it as an invitation to prolong my suffering. I shut my eyes tight in agony and let out a very deep and bothered sigh when he began to speak.
"I dunno, because he wanted to spare his family?" He asked incredulously, his thick semi-cockney accent sounding jarringly grating as the pitch of his voice rose.
"Oh come on." I rolled my eyes in disgust. "Why bother? It was clear from the yellowness of his skin and the distended abdomen he was dying of liver disease, probably from a life of hard drinking. He knew he was dying and it would have been impossible to hide that from anyone he may have cared about. Most insurance policies have a two year exclusion for cases of suicide, so he had to disguise his death as a homicide in order for his family to collect the benefits. Scatter some packets of heroin and cash about the place and make it look like a drug deal gone bad. A brilliant idea if the detectives that come to investigate aren't willing to look beyond the length of their own noses." I really was starting to become impatient with the cold and Scotland Yard's mind-numbing stupidity. I had no confidence that should I ever turn up dead they could do a respectable job of figuring out why unless it was all caught on a nearby camera with me all the while holding up cue cards explaining each step of the process for them.
"So, he just stood there waiting for what….an hour or more?" Lestrade was still having difficulty wrapping his mind around the mechanics of it all which I found both predictable and slightly amusing.
"Well, given the temperature, humidity, length of rope, and the man's height, the block of ice would have had to be at least 15 centimeters thick for it all to work and at that rate it would have taken something like three days." I quickly calculated.
"What?!" My befuddled companion bleated in abject horror. "He stood there for three days waiting to die?"
"No." I droned, severely disappointed in his lack of reason. "He was dressed too lightly to have stood there for all that time. His family would've had plenty of time to file a missing persons complaint and in any case, he would've frozen to death before then anyway. But we know that didn't happen because corpses don't develop ligature marks." I replied testily. "Good god, man. Do you really think he would have stood there for three days humming 'God Save the Queen' and waiting for his time? I mean, I give him proper credit for his determination, but no one is worth that."
"Alright then, freak. Tell us what happened." Donovan approached the yellow tape barricade that delineated the crime scene from the ordered outside world. She glared at me from under her dark curls, arms folded defiantly across her chest. Her contempt was palpable and in a way I couldn't blame her. If she harbored ill will against me because I had the propensity for critical analysis, I was equally bored by her lack thereof.
I smirked in her direction and smugly began to lay it all bare for them like a magician pulling back the curtain to reveal how he'd managed to saw the lovely assistant in half. "What you failed to note was the position of the body. It was directly over a floor vent which provides heat to the building via a boiler furnace. Your victim placed the ice on the grate and only had to wait 6 to 8 minutes for his fate and the evidence, save for a few minor puddles around the edges on the floor, slipped down the ductwork." I pulled on my gloves with a self-satisfied exaggerated smile and turned to walk to the nearest intersection in search of a way home. I didn't look back to see the expressions on their faces, but I could only assume they were dumbfounded as usual and that was enough for me.
"Wait!" Lestrade called after me. "So what then- we tell his family the poor sot offed himself and they don't get the money?"
"Not my concern." I yelled over my shoulder. "You called me to tell you how he died, not to solve your moral dilemmas for you. Might I suggest you call a priest if you need further guidance?" I curtly quipped, turning up the collar of my coat.
As I walked in the night toward home past darkened alleys, abandoned buildings, and tunnels where people engaged in all manner of abuse to themselves and others in their bid to just survive, I couldn't find it in myself to feel sorry for the man. Whoever he was and whatever his reason for doing so, he made his own choices in life and ultimately his death. His family may feel pain in the months to come, but ultimately he would only become a whisper in their memories and in the end, that was all anyone could ever hope for from the most compassionate among us to the lowliest pariah.
No matter how I thought of it, the sum total was always the same. My parents, Mycroft, Ms. Hudson, John- they would all follow the same script of quiet grief and then insidious amnesia until I was all but forgotten and then what? For all those who came after, my name would mean nothing to them aside from whatever they happened to accidentally read in the papers about a man who seemed to have a gift for solving crimes, except no one really liked him and some even suspected he may have had a hand in them all. Within two generations I might as well not have even existed, but while I had come to accept this eventuality I realized this was not true of most and the very idea was an affront to their fragile sense of self- delusional as it may have been.
But what would I feel? John would be disappointed to know that when it came to death, I was something of the machine he thought me to be. It is the way of nature that a child bury his parents and in truth while my mother held a particular place of affection in my heart if only because she tried but utterly failed to understand her own creation, I likely would not weep at their graveside. It would be much the same for Mycroft, although I would likely harbor at least some smoldering flicker of resentment that he get to gain access to a special knowledge of what truly lay beyond before I. Ms. Hudson, well-meaning as she was, was not my mother despite her efforts to coddle me as though I were her own child and it would be an challenge to find another flat with a landlady who was willing to overlook my questionable behaviors. But then there was John.
How someone so quickly could slip past my usually caustic defenses was a surprise to me. My brutal sarcasm, short temper, and unforgivable refusal to pick up milk were at times a source of annoyance to him, yet he patiently stood in the face of the gale storm of my rapidly shifting moods and racing thoughts until he was able to get his bearings. He was willing to go along with my insane plans yet keen to tell me when I was being patently ridiculous. He stoically abided my inadvertent insults of his intelligence and need for the affection of others while never giving up hope that someday I could function socially without firmly planting my foot in my mouth within the first sentence. But even so, he was always there to smooth things over and save me from myself. People fear or loathe what they don't understand and that was Donovan's take on things- she and so many others call me a freak or worse because they know I'm not like them. He was the only person I'd ever met that never quite understood me, but didn't let that put him off like the curious memes of odd pairings such as gorillas with a pet kitten he's so fond of.
John wasn't with me on this cold and blustery night as he thought it more preferable to spend his hours with some girl he had met somewhere. It amazed me that although deep down he knew it wouldn't work he continued to try to fill some need that even he hadn't identified. Perhaps he was the same to me and the thought gave me pause. While it didn't cause any particular reaction within me to consider the demise of others I knew, there was some part of me that wanted to avoid dwelling on a time when he would no longer be around, so I quietly heeded it and dropped my head down against the howling wind, walking faster toward my place of relative comfort.
