v
"Time of death I'd say... an hour ago," John said.
"But we got here two hours ago," Anderson pointed out in a barely repressed snide tone. The bridge of his nose is shriveled up shrewdly.
"He must have been alive when we got here," John said, rocking back on his heels, perched in front of the body lying in the grass.
"Or maybe you're just tired," Lestrade said, carefully.
"Or maybe you're losing you're knack," Anderson muttered.
"Shut up, Anderson!" someone from the cluster of forensic experts and policemen called, making the three of them crowded round the body jump.
John tried to see who said it but it's impossible to tell, everyone over there is laughing. Apart from Donovan that is, but even she is holding back a smile, quivering slightly with the effort of it.
"Tea break, everyone," Greg calls. He and Anderson wander off to find coffee, as do mostly everyone else.
John got up and dusted down his knees. Wales is bitterly cold at this time of year, biting right through the luminous forensic overalls and chilling his skin. It doesn't help that they've been stuck out here for days now. No one can figure out how these murders could have happened or why, and with each piece of information they garner, the more mysterious it gets.
They all know who they'd need on a case like this. Everyone seems to have forgotten they thought he was a fake, muttering "where's that Holmes when you need him?" as they sit baffled by crime scenes.
He hated them for that. He hated them for being hypocrites, for being so shallow and so easily persuaded. He hated them because it was not their fault, not at all. It had nothing to do with them. He hated them because they didn't have to care.
"I think I've got the footprint information!" someone sitting with equipment in the back of a van shouted. People gathered round and John wandered over, hanging back.
Then, without warning, the van had caught fire and everyone was scattering.
"It was a cigarette!"
"It caught on the papers!"
"The notes- the stuff!"
The fire was a small one and they put it out quick enough, but the evidence and the solutions were gone forever once again. Lestrade buried his face in his hands.
"Well don't look at me!" someone yelled in protest. "I don't smoke, I didn't do it!"
A policeman just in front of John began to hum to himself. John recognised it. It was Billy Joel. And suddenly, for the first time in so long, he laughed and he began to sing along.
"We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning."
The policeman, buried in the collar of his florescent jacket turned his head slightly- not enough for John to recognise him by a face- and then started and walked brusquely away. With that, the fleeting happiness was gone, barely having grown beyond a sprout in the first place. John was so lonely.