Chapter Five: T Minus 67
"I need your advice."
Molly put down the rib cutter and turned away from the body to look at Sherlock. "You need…my advice? About what?"
Sherlock interpreted her tone of voice as projecting both surprise and scepticism, as if the very idea of his seeking advice from her was somehow preposterous. He decided that the best strategy was to be honest. In this case, he wasn't trying to get access to experimental material or to manipulate her, he just needed specialist input from a disinterested third party, someone with more experience than he had in such matters.
"Sherlock?"
He realised that the gap between her question and the reply he had yet to make had somehow widened when he wasn't paying attention. That was happening more these days now that he was living alone. He took a while to think things through before he said them, sort of drifting inside his own head, unaware of time passing. There were occasions when he completely blanked out Mrs Hudson, without realising she was in the room. But, this time he needed to talk to Molly; he just wasn't sure how. He wondered if it might be better to explain the wedding to Molly in an autopsy metaphor, to make her feel more comfortable.
His anxiety levels ratcheted up another notch. I don't have time for this. The pressure to tick another box or two had driven him to Barts and he needed to get back on schedule. He couldn't waste time trying to decipher her moods, or translate what he wanted into something easy. He pulled a folded sheet of paper and walked over to the empty dissection table.
"You're a woman." His tongue stalled on that.
She giggled. "Glad you noticed." Molly lifted her Perspex visor and then slipped it off.
"…engaged to be married. Therefore, the wedding process should not alien to you. It is to me." He paused for a moment, then his tongue caught up again, "… so tell me how to avoid making mistakes about the guest list and invitations."
"Mrs Hudson told me that you're planning the wedding for John and Mary. I thought she was joking. I wouldn't have thought that…um…" Molly ended rather abruptly with "…well, it's way outside your comfort zone."
Sherlock was getting irritated by the number of people who questioned his aptitude to plan the wedding. He bristled and let rip: "On the contrary, my skills are transferable when I can be bothered. I'm better able than either or both John and or Mary to grasp what has to be done at every step and in what order, and at what cost - to project manage the entire process. It's no more complicated than a good serial murder case, if considerably more tedious."
He realised that all that had come out rather quicker and angrier than he had anticipated.
"Whoa, Sherlock; I'm not saying you can't do this." She looked startled by the abruptness of his tone.
He gave her a strained smile, and decided to resort to humour. It was a fall-back when he thought he might have said something awkward. "In The Case of the Best Possible Wedding, as John would call it on his blog, it's actually easier to get answers to the questions because no one is going to go to jail over what they say to me."
Sherlock knew his ploy had worked when she raised her hands with a smile as if surrendering. "Start your interrogation, Sherlock. I'm willing to confess what I know. But why don't you ask John and Mary? It's their wedding, after all."
He pointed to the paper. "I don't want to undermine their belief in my ability to organise their wedding by seeming to be too stupid about these things." Sherlock shifted his shoulders; this was so awkward.
"You're never stupid, Sherlock."
He remembered what happened at Christmas three years ago, and then watched as she did, too. He almost cringed inside as she qualified her statement, "Well, rude maybe, but never intentionally hurtful…anyway." But she said it whilst smiling, and Sherlock was again perplexed. She had been upset at the time when he'd reeled off his deductions about her, but was now smiling. What did that mean?
Was she teasing him? Sherlock found it hard to identify Molly's motivations and behaviours- whenever the conversation strayed outside the technical issues of pathology and autopsies. When did her humour become sarcasm, and if this was sarcasm, what did it mean? Was she criticising him, or "being polite," whatever that meant? There were times that he rather wished that she was still as tongue-tied and reticent in his company as she used to be. Ever since he'd come back, her reaction to him was different. He had trusted her with so much, and she'd kept his secrets. It created a sense of obligation on his part; he knew he should try not to hurt her feelings, but it was so hard.
At the moment, Sherlock felt like he was trying to pick his way across a minefield- at any point he was going to step on someone's feelings with catastrophic results.
He kept his eyes on the list, and decided to plough on. "It's about social etiquette. They're working on the invitation list, and they keep referring to the term plus one. I understand the definition in theory, but I don't understand what it is in practice. Why can't they limit an invitation to just the people they want to be there?"
"Because it's the way things are done, Sherlock. 'Plus one' lets the invited guest choose the person they want to come with them."
This puzzled him. He repeated what she had said, "…They want to come with them…" to buy himself some time. Once he had processed what that meant, he asked, "Why would an invited guest bring someone who doesn't know John and Mary well enough to deserve their own invitation? Why would a person attend a wedding of someone they didn't know?"
Molly's eyes told him one story- she was giving him what he thought might be a kind and sympathetic look, but then she was also biting her lip, too- as if stifling a laugh or maybe trying to hide her amusement at his stupidity.
She explained, "Because the invited guest wants to share the event with their Plus One, whoever they are. It's a party. John and Mary want people to have fun, so they let the guests choose who they want to have fun with."
He sniffed and tapped the list. "Then why did they invite Mike Stamford and his wife by name? Why are they choosing for Stamford? His wife doesn't know John; they got married when John was in Afghanistan. Why does a wife get mentioned, but your fiancé didn't?" He pointed out her name on the list-"Molly Hooper, Plus One. That implies you're free to choose, but you've already chosen Tom." Then he gave her a pointed stare, as if daring her to argue with his logic.
She flushed a bit pink. "We're not married yet, Sherlock. Maybe I'd rather have a girlfriend come with me- or even come alone. Tom and me- we're not joined at the hip, you know."
"Joined at the hip…" He heard himself echoing her phrase. Repetition grounded him, a form of communicating in the now that needed no engagement with the brain. Then he caught up. "What does that mean?" An odd image came into his head, of a four legged person trying to walk and would not move on.
"It's just a saying, Sherlock. Sort of a metaphor…or is it an analogy? I never know which is which…it means that two people are inseparable."
"Inseparable…" He rolled his eyes, seeing John and Mary, each with a pelvis that was somehow fused with the other's at the hip. Marriage...the wedding was an operation by the surgeon called Doctor Watson to create this bone bridge that could not be removed. And he was assisting in the operating theatre.
Reality kicked in. "Are you saying that you won't be inviting Tom to the wedding?"
"I don't know. He might not want to come, given the guests are my friends, rather than his or ours. Even after we're married, I'll keep my own friends."
"But you are getting married. You've made your choice; everyone else becomes irrelevant."
She winced at that but he didn't know why. Sherlock looked away from her back down at the paper. He'd done something wrong, again, but he didn't know what. It drove him mad at times- he felt ashamed, as he always did when he finally realised he'd done something stupid.
Feeling perplexed and embarrassed catapulted him back into his childhood, where everything he did seemed to crash into relationship rules he didn't even know, let alone understand. This wasn't the first time he'd misunderstood Plus One.
The first time it was his brother who ticked him off. "How can you not know that you've just upset Mummy and Father again by asking him whether he is going to invite his girlfriend to go with him to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Dinner? Sherlock, we've had this discussion. You know what happened the last time; are you asking him to hit you again?* What you said was just so hurtful to Mummy, too." Mycroft's reproof was clear.
"But…the invitation on the mantel didn't have Mummy's name on it; it just said 'Plus One'. So, I thought that meant the other woman he spends time with; otherwise, they'd put Mummy's name." He was cross. Being nine was no fun. No matter what he did, he always seemed to get people shouting at him.
Mycroft rolled his eyes and then glared. "I've been told I have to explain this to you, so I'm going to do what I was told. In there." He pointed to the door of his father's study. They were at the London townhouse, where Richard Holmes had organised a meal for Mycroft, who was on an exeat weekend from his last term at Eton. His birthday was in four days, but he'd be back at school by then. Mycroft had said he wanted to celebrate by having a meal with the whole family, and then go to a piano recital on Sunday.
Sherlock stomped into the study and turned to face Mycroft. "So, tell me what you have to tell me, and then let me go upstairs. I didn't want dinner anyway." He was in a right strop, and he didn't care whether Mycroft was bothered or not. He'd always hated his own birthday, and he thought everyone made far too much fuss about Mycroft's.
Mycroft just looked at him, with that face of disappointment he put on when Sherlock had done something wrong, yet again. Then he said, "All I wanted was for us to try to be a family, able to share a meal in some semblance of good spirit. By raising the issue of Father's infidelities again, you've made it impossible for them to put that aside for just an evening."
Sherlock was still angry. "That would be lying…It's pretending; everyone says I mustn't lie, so why can they? Why do you want them to lie?"
"You are so…" Mycroft hesitated, but then glared down at him. "…so impossible. Just go upstairs and leave me to sort out the mess you've made, again."
He'd stormed out and up the stairs at speed. That night, Sherlock chose to sleep under the bed rather than in it. Somehow, it felt safer that way. And he stayed in his room and wouldn't come down to say goodbye when Mycroft went back to school. When he got into the car with Mummy, his Father spoke to her through the rolled down window- "Next time, leave him behind at Parham. I won't have him spoil our time with Mycroft again."
"Sherlock? Are you alright?"
Sherlock registered the fact that Molly wasn't at the side of his mother's car- and neither was he. That was then, and this was now. Molly was looking at him with some concern; he must have zoned out again.
"I'm fine." It was his stock answer these days. It was a rote answer for him; one of a drop-down menu of stock answers to people asking questions. It no longer had any meaning for him. What was "fine" in the current context? He had no idea. He just knew that saying anything other than that meant that people would start doing things to him that he didn't like. He wielded the word like a shield.
"Why do you need to know the names of the Plus Ones? What difference does it make?"
He couldn't tell her the real reason: because one of them might be the person who is trying to kill John. He knew that it would sound paranoid. After the six pearls, his anxiety levels were now out of control. He also knew that if he confessed that fact to any one, it would get back to the others. He knew that they talked about him. If he hadn't known that before Hartswood, he certainly knew it now. Mycroft, John and Mary, the therapist Diane Goodliffe, George Hayter, even Esther Cohen*. They talked about him when he wasn't there, and it made him feel- well, actually, he found it hard to deal with that fact.
Scared was the simplest way to sum it up.
It was symptomatic of his troubles these days. Just as he needed to be competent at social interactions, he was actually regressing. Without the day-to-day friction of having to get along with John in his living space, he was always struggling to get back into gear when in the presence of others. Crime scenes were the only place where he really felt at ease, because no one really expected conversation from him- just a solution.
It had been easier when he was Lars Sigursson. For two years, he switched between personas with relative ease. In the presence of any other person, he could be Lars- one of Moriarty's operatives, acting the role as if he owned it. Lars was smart, articulate, focussed and managed to project just the right combination of arrogance and veniality that made him totally convincing to the criminals he was working against. He had spent months building up the scripts, doing his research, learning his lines. Sherlock had inhabited the role as if a second skin; posture, gesture, voice and language. Only when on his own was he able to shed that skin and be himself.
Once he was back, it was harder. He had to shed Sigursson, but resume being Sherlock Holmes.
John had been wrong when he said, "You love this….being Sherlock Holmes."
When he'd answered "I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," the flippancy confessed a truth. He didn't know, but others seemed to think they did. Even with John, the persona of Sherlock Holmes was defined as what the doctor believed he was, rather than the truth. He'd not seen any of Lars Sigursson, or what he'd gotten up to when not inhabiting that role. John based his beliefs only on what he had seen in the past, rather than what he observed about the present. And in neither case was it the "real" person he was.
Out of sight, out of mind. In his case, there was more truth to that than he would ever allow anyone else to know. He was only Sherlock Holmes when he was in the presence of people for whom that identity had meaning. And that meant repressing the things that Mummy had taught him were "not normal". When the doctor had been living in 221b, Sherlock had at times let himself relax, show a little bit of the "real" person he was, but even so, he'd triggered John's "a bit not good" and "timing" comments when they were in other people's company. In the confines of the flat, it was the violin, his sofa time-outs and his experiments that expressed his true nature. He'd not indulged in some of the more blatant behaviours that he would have preferred to use to ease his anxieties.
One of which he suddenly realised he was doing now without even being aware of it. He'd been running his finger up and down the edge of the guest list, feeling where the slightly rough texture of the paper met the cool slick metal of the table. The contrast was just the sort of stimulation that helped settle his sensory distress, when he was anxious.
Sherlock wasn't the only one who noticed his stimming; Molly was watching his finger, too.
The pathologist's question was still unanswered, and he watched her growing look of concern at his lack of response. Sherlock had a terrible moment of disorientation, seeing himself and her at the same time, as if from a point elsewhere in the room. It was like watching his blatant stim in slow motion through one of Mycroft's cameras- hideously embarrassing.
He willed his finger to stop. He drew breath. Say something, anything.
"Do you think invited guests would mind if I asked them to tell us the name of their Plus One when they RSVP'd?" This came out much faster than he would have liked, but it might work. Sometimes it was best to deflect a question he didn't want to answer by asking one of his own.
She appeared relieved at the fact that he'd said something and gave it some thought. "Well, sometimes they won't know until late on; that could delay acceptances."
He frowned. "That's not acceptable. There are always a few that can't or won't come, but then John and Mary will have to invite others to take their place."
Now she looked surprised. "Why?"
"Because the venue costs have to be guaranteed; minimum number is fifty. So, if people don't come, that's wasted money. They can't afford to waste money."
Now the pathologist was giving him an odd look. "Okay, but…um- that's not the question you started with- why do you need to know the names of the people, as opposed to the numbers?"
Sherlock realised that he'd underestimated her listening skills. He had been over every possible outcome of not knowing who was on the list and vetting them carefully. Repeatedly, from the best possible outcome to the worst most catastrophic one, and everything in between, in great detail as to how/why each could happen, and the likelihood of each outcome. Despite knowing rationally that the most catastrophic ones were not that likely, he still felt wildly anxious over the possibility that the person who was trying to kill John would show up at the wedding.
Molly now wore an expression of real concern, and he knew that he was not holding up his end of the conversation. He hated conversation; it was so inefficient. The frustration at not being able to control the situation was making his jaw hurt.
Sherlock decided to risk a half-truth. "Hotel security needs to have the names- we have to keep uninvited people out."
She tried to stifle a smirk. "It's not a nightclub; you don't need a bouncer. I mean, who would gate crash a wedding?"
"Paparazzi would. Criminals would, if they want to disrupt things as a way of getting revenge for us putting them behind bars. We have enemies, Molly."
"Oh!" She looked startled. "I hadn't thought of that."
"No, well, I have to think of things like that. And contain the risk so it doesn't alarm John or Mary."
"Okay, I get it now. Well, look- the simplest thing is to wait until the people with a plus one say yes, and then when they do, you can contact them by phone or email to ask about their plus one. That way, you can do it without tipping off John or Mary that you're checking up."
He nodded. She'd just validated his original idea. It would allow him to vet the guests, quietly. He'd wanted to try it out on her, but by coming up with it herself, it made it easier for him. Phoning these people would be next to impossible- he loathed speaking on the phone. If he couldn't see the other person, it was hard to know anything about them; he relied on his visual ability to observe the truth. But, if phoning was the only way to keep John alive, then he'd steel himself for the ordeal.
"Thank you, Molly. That's a good idea."
She gave him a tentative smile. "What else can I help you with?"
Given how difficult this first question had proved, his resolve to tackle the others withered. He could only manage so much awkwardness at any one time.
"I'll come back later to ask you about other stuff."
She smiled back, and this time, he was able to see it as relief. "Yes, of course. It's nice to be useful to you on something that doesn't involve a dead body."
He swept up the guest list and strode out of the mortuary. Another box ticked. He started the ninth iteration of the wedding plan in his head that day, moving through each step as a way of grounding himself. It had become a soothing process, a bit like one of the Tibetan mantras. Repetition and perseveration could be useful traits, not just evidence of his defective mind. With each box ticked, it was another step forward through the mine-field. He was determined to get this right- his gift to John, his atonement for all the hurt he had caused his friend.
Halfway up the stairs to street level, his visual grasp on reality fragmented. One moment he was not even thinking about going up the step, and the next moment nothing made any sense at all. What his memory told him should be a window letting light into the stairwell became a blank rectangle of white, disassociated with anything else other than the taste of iron. Bannisters were straight dark lines, unconnected to anything. They spoke to him in the key of G major, and smelled of cinnamon. Behind him from somewhere he heard sounds, but could not tell what they were. Voices? A door opening? He didn't know; the noise didn't make any sense and it frightened him. He grabbed almost blindly at the stair rail, missing it completely as his depth perception deserted him.
There was a sharp pain in his right knee, and he looked down but couldn't make sense of what he saw. Rationally, he knew he had fallen, and the edge of the step had jammed into his knee. Sherlock put both hands onto what he guessed was the step, afraid that he was going to keep falling through a floor that he could not trust as being there.
Then there was something beside him, and he shied away, unsure of what it was. There were noises, and then he felt pressure on his arm, and under his shoulder. Frightened, he shoved it away and moved away to the right, where he collided with something metal. Grabbing it, he levered himself upright. Then fright derailed into flight and his mind disconnected from his body as it moved of its own accord, oblivious to what his disordered senses were saying.
As he made it out of Barts onto the street, he was able to ease his panicked panting long enough to close his eyes and take a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, order had been restored. Whatever had just happened was over, but it left him badly shaken. Losing control like that was a sign that he needed to find somewhere safe, soon. He called over a passing taxi and threw himself into the back, saying "Pentonville Road".
He could not go back to Baker Street; not in this condition. It was no longer the place it had once been. Mrs Hudson was wrong when she said that while he was away she'd "kept everything just like it was- just how you like it."
It was a lie. The version of the flat that he took with him in his Mind Palace was perfect -everything in its proper place. No matter what hellhole he ended up in, no matter how often he had to come to terms with new places, strange faces on the road to dismantling Moriarty's network- none of that mattered as long as he could retreat at the end of the day to his Mind Palace version of 221b.
Once back in London, Sherlock could not help but compare his Mind Palace version of Baker Street perfection with what confronted him each morning. Everywhere he looked, he could see what wasn't there: John. His things. The physical evidence of their co-habitation. There were gaping holes in the fabric of the flat, and they were all he could see. The place hummed a funeral march in the key of D# minor.
Everything had changed.
The count-down on the wall showed him that the change was irreversible. A ticking bomb in the train carriage of his well-being and there was no off switch. It was enough to drive him to the comfort of old habits. Fighting off the cravings just tightened the noose of anxiety. So far, he was still clean, but having his transport system constantly awash with the adrenaline of anxiety made it hard to control his other forms of release.
Being aware of Big Brother via Mycroft's surveillance cameras meant Sherlock kept the more obvious behaviours under control while in the flat. But, now, when the pressures seemed to be increasing, when his anxiety levels were rising, when he kept being confronted by the fact that he was no closer to solving the problem of who was trying to kill John- well, he couldn't keep up the façade on a twenty four/seven basis. He needed some down time.
Which bolt hole is best?
At this time of the year, a lot of his choice spots were cold, damp and miserable. Leinster Gardens was over a tube line; noisy as hell and he didn't think he could cope with that at the moment. The bolt hole of choice was on Pentonville Road; he'd used it for the de-frag after he broke and re-broke his wrist for the third time in Gloucestershire. But a twinge in his knee reminded him of just how hard it was to gain access to it. And the fact that a medicine chest of pain relief in more than one form would be there, too.
He opted for Dagmar Court. It had a number of advantages. Although it was highly likely that both Lestrade and Mycroft were aware of the place*, he wouldn't be gone long enough for them to start looking. Sherlock pressed the red button to connect the microphone in the back to the cabbie. "Changed my mind; head for Tower Gateway." There was one particular place where he knew he could change taxis without being spotted on camera, and yet was busy enough that Mycroft's surveillance team would be chasing shadows for hours. He then switched off his phone and removed the sim card and the battery, slipping both in his pocket with the useless phone, now confident that his movement would not be traced.
Half an hour later, as he limped south on the Isle of Dog's Thames pathway, he left the trendy buildings of Canary Wharf behind him and headed for the more mundane Samuda Estate; its five buildings housed some fifteen hundred people. Built in the mid-1960s, it was now managed by the Tower Hamlets Council- which suited him perfectly. As the third most deprived borough in the country, Tower Hamlets didn't have the revenue base to do up the derelict underground car parking areas that had been built, but then fallen into disrepair. This was council housing; every resident was sure to be on housing benefit. Security had always been dodgy; the locals knew better than to park cars down there- it was like an invitation to have them broken into or stripped down and left on blocks. That said, not many could afford a car, even a clapped out banger. The place was definitely down-at-heel. Graffiti abounded, drugs changed hands, squatters tried to move into the underground space. The council threw in the towel in the late 1980s and the garages were blocked off, and left to rot*.
Sherlock was heading for a bolt hole he had not been to in more than four years. It had once been a convenient place to stop in and enjoy the cocaine he'd bought from the dealer who worked the Samuda estate. He needed it for a different reason this time. He'd finally put a name to it- that shadow he kept catching out of the corner of his eye, the high pitched whine just beyond even his range of hearing. It was depressing really, to be able to give its howling song a name. Well, it was a lament, actually- or perhaps a dirge- called depression.
It affected him in a way that most people in his life had never understood. Because he didn't express emotion the way that most neurotypicals did, it was rarely diagnosed as such. People saw and judged his behaviour, but didn't observe what it meant. But he knew it for what it was. It was a beast that lived in the dungeon of his Mind Palace. For the most part, he tried to ignore it. And succeeded, often enough. He buried it at the deepest levels, along with some unpleasant memories of people he'd prefer not to think about. Moriarty was down there. So was his father. Both were next door to the black thing called depression.
But occasionally, a keening whine rose up from the subterranean levels into the corridors of his Mind Palace. Like fingernails on a blackboard, he heard the scratch of its claws on his skin. It made him want to run, to scream and join in a chorus with the beast's howling. To really, finally let loose. He tried to anchor his mind, stuff his ears with the cotton wool nonsense of John and Mary's wedding. If he filled his day with the ridiculous paraphernalia of their nuptial rites, he might be able to drown out the howls coming up from the basement. Jeremiah Clarke's trumpet voluntary became a shield; he turned up the volume loud, and ignored the mournful loneliness in that howl from the bowels of the basement.
But the anxiety crept in the back door, seeped in through the pores of his skin, became locked into his muscle memory. Sherlock moved like one who was aware of the hunting wolf about to break loose, running down the corridors. He resolutely looked away, not willing to make eye contact with the beast in his mind's eye. I'm not prey; look elsewhere- I'm fine! The beast throwing itself against its chains in the basement knew better. It was just biding its time.
As a result, Sherlock knew he had to do whatever was necessary to get his senses back on track. The incident in the Barts stairwell was the first sign of the door to the basement being torn apart. The situation called for extreme measures.
As he picked the locks on the door guarding the stairs down to the car park of Dagmar Court, Sherlock could hear the sound of the beast in the harsh squeal of rusted metal being forced to yield. He used his pocket torch to find his way across the debris-strewn garage area to the far corner- an abandoned store-room in which he could find some refuge from what was hunting him. As he came closer, the dopamine rush of anticipation pushed away the adrenaline of anxiety.
The room was full of stale air, but he didn't care. The torch showed him in the evidence of dust that no one had been in the room since he'd last used it. No furniture, nothing but bare walls and concrete floor. Because he'd thought it possible that refurbishment of the garages might happen while he was away, he'd cleared out everything the last time he'd used it, and not bothered to re-stock it yet. Perfect. He wanted no distractions, no temptations. Just solitude, away from the beast.
Sherlock took off the Belstaff and his suit jacket, hanging both on a hook on the back of the door, left there by some caretaker decades before. He then toed off his shoes, followed by his shirt, vest, trousers, left sock, right sock and finally the underpants, all of which he carefully folded and stacked. It was cold, but naked felt good- no friction of seams, no rasp of fabric, or restriction of leather shoes. The cold gave his skin something else to think about.
He sank down with his back against the cold cement block wall and just…let go.
Like a snake sloughing off an old skin, he shed the restraints that kept his hands in check. His right hand found the point where the wall and the floor met, and his index finger began to test the different textures. The twin sensations obliterated thought, and replaced them with focused stimulation. Sherlock switched off the torch, welcoming the dark. That was a distinct improvement. The EMDR therapy had eliminated his PTSD trigger of darkness and bright light, which was a relief. There were no similarities between this and the Chinese hell-hole he'd been locked in. This time, with nothing to see, his eyes could rest, knowing that he was in control of light.
His left hand began to move in what was a wrist-strengthening exercise learned long ago. His physiotherapist who gave him the exercise had no idea he had handed a fifteen year old boy with a broken wrist the perfect excuse to stim. Then he got his toes in on the act, each one clenching in order and then releasing, in time with the hand flap and the finger stroke.
Repetitive physical actions gave Sherlock the means to escape the beast. Locked into the process, he was able to slip his mind into neutral, to ignore things that were causing anxiety. He was able to control his stimming, and would not get lost in it- ten minutes of each ritual would be enough to re-set his sensory functions. First, the physical stims with his hands and feet. Then he would turn to each sense. Oral and taste – in the dark, he would run lips and then tongue over different surfaces- his skin, the cloth of the Belstaff, the wall, alternating with a soft bite of his lips- just to the point of pain. He found the pain intensified the taste and scent. Already, the pain in his knee was providing a useful background music to soothe his nerves.
Sherlock then tested his hearing. Like a bat, whistling a single tone- almost a drone- and then moving his head right and left, to note how the pitch and echo changed when he altered his position- first close to a wall, then away. Repeating that same whistled tone exactly the same pitch and length of time, every time. If he ran out of breath or broke the drone of the whistle, he had to start over.
Then he'd work on getting his visual sense back on stream, using the torch to shine a light on a particular surface- as many different textures as he could manage, getting up very close to it and observing what he saw. Then he'd back his eyes up a foot, and do the same thing to that surface, registering the differences.
Finally, he put it all together. He put his torch into the pocket of the Belstaff, shining the beam onto the ceiling. The single beam of light was used as his anchor, when he went to the middle of the room and executed a series of pirouettes en dehors- on his left leg, as his right knee wasn't up to it at the moment. Spins were the final stage, when he would use all of his senses to recover his balance. His dance teacher at Harrow had never realised what relief Sherlock had when he was finally able to spin without the other boys looking at him like he was someone demented.
"If you have to stim, Sherlock, find ways to disguise it." His mother's advice still held true more than two decades later. In this case, he could ditch the disguise; the walls of the store room in Dagmar Court gave him shelter from judgment.
The endorphins released over the hour soothed him. It wasn't the euphoria of a cocaine rush, but it was enough to sweep aside the excess lactate that had built up in his blood system, driven there by his anxiety. People rarely understood that stimming had a purpose.
At the end, he was so cold despite the physical exercise that he was pleased to get dressed again. As ever, he dressed in exactly the same routine as he had been taught by his mother when he was four. Every single time he'd got dressed since that day, he heard her voice, quietly counting out the steps, which he always heard in his mind:
"One, the underpants. Two, right sock. Three, left sock. Four, vest; Five, shirt. Six, trousers; seven, belt. Eight, shoes. Nine, jacket; Ten, coat. Don't forget, if it's cold outside, the plus one. Remember eleven."
His hands took the scarf and doubled it over, slipping it around his neck, forming the loop by opening his left hand and then pushing the two ends through the loop with his right hand. Then he pulled the ends with his left hand and it settled properly against his throat.
Time to be Sherlock Holmes again.
oOo
The pain in his knee beat a lovely rhythm with his stride, keeping up the sensory stimulation. There wasn't a sound from the basement levels of his Mind Palace. Sherlock felt better than he had for weeks. He was so relaxed that he was nearly at Crossharbour DLR station when he remembered to put his battery and SIM card back in the phone.
Immediately, the red light at the top of the phone blinked and the phone vibrated.
He tapped the messages icon and scrolled.
3.12 pm Molly rang- said you had a fall. You ok? It was John's number. He deleted it.
Then two in rapid succession from Lestrade:
3.45 A body, 29 Ryder Lane, SE4 1YW. Weird, definitely *not* boring.
4.06 Where are you? CoD = elephant! Zoo keeper and Watson on way.
He typed a reply.
4.26 ETA 4.46. Keep the elephant there SH
He took the DLR six stops south- under the Thames and then on to Lewisham station- only ten minutes. From here, it was only a ten minute walk to Ryder Lane. His bruised knee would hold out.
Lestrade greeted him at the door of what appeared to be yet another one of the identikit 1930s semi-detached houses that lined Ryder Lane.
"You're not going to believe this, but there is a real, live elephant in the middle of the crime scene." Sherlock hobbled past him into the hallway, where he could see John Watson standing in the dining room, along with a number of white clad forensic officers, obviously loitering with intent. The doctor came out into the hall.
"What happened to your leg?"
"Not now, John." Sherlock headed for the back of the house, where the living room was likely to be. John followed; Lestrade brought up the rear, saying "watch out. We haven't cleared the room yet."
Two steps into the room, Sherlock stopped and John did, too. Despite being told what to expect, it was still a shock to see a real live elephant in the living room. It was being stroked by a handler wearing a green waterproof jacket emblazoned ZSL on the back in big white letters. Nevertheless, the elephant clearly didn't like the intrusion of new people- it raised its trunk and trumpeted a challenge that was definitely ear-splitting inside the room.
The assault on his senses flooded his brain. The unexpected sight, so out of context in the room, was punctuated by a one hundred plus decibel noise, and underscored by the rank aroma of both urine and shit. The white living room carpet was fouled with the stuff.
The handler spoke quietly. "Just stay where you are." Then he resumed stroking the elephant, and her trunk lowered again. He was feeding her something from a bag by his feet. A low rumble could be heard from the animal.
Through the sliding patio doors, Sherlock could see a large van reversing up the back garden, adding its reversing beeps to the soundtrack of the crime scene.
"Do you know this elephant?" He asked the question very quietly, but pitched just loud enough to reach the handler.
"Yep. This is Myana. She was supposed to be on her way last night, on Turkish Airways flight 1984 from Heathrow. Before you ask, I have absolutely no idea how she got in here, or why. And if you give me ten minutes, I will have her out of your way."
"She may be a witness." Sherlock pointed to the crumpled form, only half of which he could see from where he was standing. The sofa was between him and the rest of the body. "Or even the murder weapon."
The handler shook his head. "Not this one; she's not a killer. Her mother was. Mya killed her keeper, Jim Robson, in 2002. Myana is her daughter."
Sherlock sniffed, trying to get past the overwhelming scent of animal dung. "You're from Whipsnade."
The handler nodded.
"I remember the case." He snapped on his pair of blue latex gloves.
John's eyebrows rose. "The case?"
"Coroner's inquest concluded that Mya killed her keeper with malice of intent. She trapped his legs with her trunk so he couldn't get away and repeatedly stepped on his head*."
The look on John's face told Sherlock he was imagining the damage. Behind him, Lestrade whispered, "Gross."
"Hmm." The van's reversing beeps had stopped, and two men also in ZSL gear were now opening the back doors and lowering into place a ramp that had metal fences, to ensure an animal would board. The patio doors were slid open just far enough to meet the fenced ramp.
The handler began to push on Myana's chest, leaning in with his weight. Obligingly, she backed up to the left of the coffee table and then executed a three point turn before following the handler up the metal ramp and into the truck. John closed the patio doors, as Lestrade yelled back down the hallway, "Coast is clear."
Immediately, three white suited Forensic officers came into the room. They stopped for a moment on the threshold, obviously stunned by the scent and the mess. Then one headed for the patio door to dust for finger prints, while a second joined Sherlock where he had crouched down beside the body. The third started taking photographs.
John had joined him, too, looking over the consulting detective's shoulder at the wound in the dead man's head. The doctor commented, "The elephant has an alibi, unless it's learned how to fire a gun."
Sherlock stood up, a little unsteady on his injured knee, before grinning. "Don't be so sure, John. An elephant's trunk has over forty thousand muscles compared to the human body's paltry six hundred and thirty nine."
Lestrade was standing with his arms crossed, his expression a mixture of bafflement and annoyance. "So, what the hell is an elephant doing here, instead of in a zoo or running around the plains of Africa?"
"Not Africa, Lestrade. Myana is Elephas maximus, not Loxodonta. The Asian elephant is more genetically similar to the extinct woolly mammoth than to the African elephant."
"That doesn't answer the question, Sherlock. What does an elephant, any elephant- African, Asian or European- have to do with this dead body?"
"There's no such thing as a European elephant; can you really be so ignorant about zoology?"
Lestrade lost it. "What the hell has a full grown bloody elephant have to do with this body?"
"Myana is not a full-grown elephant; she's only two meters tall, and less than twelve years old, with another meter to go before she reaches full maturity. And the blood is not on the elephant; it's on the floor." Then Sherlock pointed to something else, a sports bag lying up against the wall, between the television and a bookcase. "Not just under the body; it also appears to be oozing from that bag as well."
Immediately, the forensic officer by the patio doors zeroed in on the sports bag, and used his gloved hands to pull the zipper. Lestrade and Sherlock leaned over the man's shoulder to see what was in the bag.
The photographer was in action, too, the flash in repeated use, as his colleague pulled something out of the bag.
Lestrade gave voice to his dismay. "That's a hand. A severed hand."
Sherlock gave him a grunt of agreement. "And there's more where that came from, if the amount of blood is anything to go by."
The officer by the body came over and spread a plastic sheet onto the carpet. "Keep it separated from the elephant shit and piss. The lab's going to have a hard enough time."
By the time the sports bag was empty, they had enough parts to make up a human body. John thought the butchery had taken place post mortem, "but here and soon after she died, because my guess is there is more blood here than you'd expect to find, if she'd been killed elsewhere."
The severed head's rictus grin stared up from the plastic sheet, her short brown hair plastered to the skull by blood.
"White female, Mid-thirties. Musculature well-developed; either she was a gym fanatic, or did something in the martial arts. Possibly military." Sherlock was talking to himself now, and looking at the pieces of blood-soaked fabric. He found what he was looking for and held it up.
"John, your professional opinion, please. You've seen enough blood soaked versions of this fabric."
John's brow furrowed. "Enough for a lifetime. That's a light olive anti-static cool max combat T-Shirt; part of the British Army's PCS."
The forensic officer had taken a fingerprint off the severed right hand onto his electronic scanner. His laptop was open and on the coffee table. It pinged and all eyes zoomed in on the message.
"Identity withheld. Contact S&ILs."
"Oh, shit." Lestrade's expletive was echoed by a sigh from John. Sherlock was already in motion, spinning away from the pair, while pulling his phone out and hitting speed dial.
A moment later, his brother answered. "What is it this time?" There was the usual blend of annoyance and boredom being used to cover concern that Sherlock was ringing him rather than texting.
"Someone is taking exception to your people these days. One dead confirmed by finger print." He gestured with his hand at the body by the sofa and then said to the Officer, "See if this one is playing for our side, too." Then he turned to John. "Take a photo of the woman's head, and send it to Mycroft."
"Where?" His brother's tone shed the ennui and became utterly focused.
"29 Ryder Lane, SE4 1YW." John took the photo and sent it by e mail.
"Let me talk to Lestrade. At least, I assume he is on the scene. I can hear police procedures going on in the background."
"That's not necessary. Tell me, and I can tell him."
"No. Hand the phone over. NOW."
"Piss off." Sherlock cut the connection. He wanted more time with this most intriguing case.
Barely three seconds later, Lestrade's phone rang. His "hello" was a tad wary. The silence lengthened as whatever Mycroft was saying to him made the Detective Inspector's eyebrows ascend his forehead.
"Alright, alright. Keep your shirt on. We'll get out just as soon as one of your people shows up. But, I'm not walking away from a crime scene until I've got someone to pick up the ball."
More silence, as Sherlock deduced from Lestrade's posture that a rather heavy duty series of threats was being made.
"B…" He was going to say 'bye', but changed it to "bugger just cut me off. We've got ten minutes at most. But I'm supposed to take you two out of the house right now."
Sherlock glared. "No."
"Yeah, he said you'd say that. I'm to tell you that he'll have my head instead of hers on a platter in front of the Chief Superintendent if you two aren't out on the pavement in three minutes." He pointed to the ceiling. "Big Brother will be watching. Apparently, he's got drones in the air already."
John's eyes widened. "Bloody hell, this isn't Afghanistan."
Sherlock was in motion. He picked up the CSE's laptop. "Any joy on the other body?"
"Nothing yet- so probably not one of ours."
Lestrade walked over and plucked the laptop out of Sherlock's hands, giving it back to the officer.
"And on that note, we're out of here."
Sherlock paced up and down the pavement outside of the house, still limping slightly. The pain now annoyed him, almost as much as his brother's attitude. The relaxation of the afternoon's private session at Dagmar Close had evaporated. Now, a new kind of anxiety was taking hold while Lestrade kept going on about the elephant. "They must have delivered the elephant the same way the Zoo collected him."
"Her." Sherlock muttered as he passed the DI.
Lestrade rolled his eyes. "What difference does it make whether the elephant is male or female, Sherlock?"
"None." He was so annoyed by his brother's interference that he was reduced to monosyllabic answers.
Lestrade carried on. "So, someone comes with an unknown victim accompanied by an agent, shoots him on the spot, kills the agent, chops it up and stuffs her body in a bag, and puts an elephant in the room. Why?!"
Sherlock whirled about to face the DI. "Can you really be so dense? Everyone knows the saying, "the elephant in the room". It is a metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed- an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss."
"So, you think the murderer has gone to all this trouble- kidnapping an elephant, driving it here, killing and then dumping the bodies and the elephant in here- what, just to make a point about something that no one is addressing?" Lestrade's incredulity made his voice rise with each word.
"Yes. That much is obvious, even to an idiot." Sherlock rolled his eyes, to make his ridicule obvious enough for even Lestrade to register.
"Well, pardon me."
As three black cars turned onto Ryder Lane at speed, John calmly asked "What's the issue that no one is addressing?"
"That is the proper question to ask, John. And unfortunately, my brother doesn't want me to find out the answer. But whoever is engineering this little crusade against his agents does. And that is rather intriguing, don't you think?"
oOo
From the Personal Blog of Doctor John Watson:
"Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for what we found at 29, Ryder Lane in Brockley.
Greg called us in. It was a typical suburban house in a typical suburban street. But inside that typical suburban house were two bodies. And an elephant. An actual elephant. Standing there in the middle of the room looking, well a bit bored, to be honest.
And... sorry! It's another one that I can't actually blog about because of the Official Secrets Act! I've probably said too much as it is. Although I'm not as bad as Sherlock. The amount of times I've had to stop him telling people about it."
Author's notes:
* The first time he raised the issue of his father's infidelities it covered in Ex Files, the chapter called Expedition.
*The OCs mentioned here appear in Devonshire Squires and Magpie: One For Sorrow
*Dagmar Court is real; mentioned in HLV, as one of the "three known bolt holes" by Lestrade, when Sherlock leaves the hospital after being shot. And the garages were actually sealed up.
*The incident with Mya, the Burmese elephant, actually happened. As a result, she and the other two elephants were removed from London Zoo in Regent's Park, and taken to Whipsnade Zoo. London Zoo no longer had elephants, alas.