"Freak to see you!" Donovan called resignedly to Lestrade, slumping over. Sherlock strode past her quickly and after a sweeping glance around the room he knelt down by the body and began inspecting the dead man's tattered work shoes.
"Jealousy is the fear of comparison and the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius, Sgt. Donovan," Sherlock flung the words at her almost absentmindedly, now holding up a pair of shoelaces to the light.
Donovan watched him, speechless, her mouth hanging open incredulously. Lestrade was baring the brunt of her glares for bringing Sherlock to the crime scene. Greg rolled his eyes; as joyous as a Christmas murder made the holiday season – not – he had just been handed this case and the last thing he wanted after having to start an investigation two days before Christmas Day was to listen to Sherlock and Sally's quibbling. Their tiring gripes bored him to tears.
Greg was glad when the new forensics officer entered the room to break the volatile atmosphere and silent accusations being thrown at him. The man was new at the Yard and had been assigned to help Lestrade's team, having been transferred from a police station somewhere around Woking. Or Surrey – Lestrade couldn't remember. Greg had seen him around once or twice but had never been formally introduced. He walked over to the man who was already in the blue forensics suit. The tech peeled off his rubber gloves and shook Lestrade's hand.
"You're Anderson, the new forensics tech?" Greg asked.
"Yes, you'll be Detective Inspector Lestrade?" he answered.
"Yep, pleased to meet you. This is Sgt. Donovan," Greg ignored the look Anderson was giving Donovan as he introduced them, "and this is Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective."
Anderson glanced over at Sherlock who hadn't moved a muscle to greet him. Instead, Sherlock continued with his inspection of the body, now blowing on the man's reading glasses. He seemed like he couldn't have been less interested in meeting Anderson.
"Hello, nice to meet you!"
After a pause in time, Sherlock stood with a sigh and turned. Lestrade watched Sherlock's gaze settle on Anderson's hands, then ear, then his shoes, and finally Sherlock looked him in the eye and dipped his head slightly. If Anderson thought this was strange behaviour he was hiding it well. After announcing he was going to inspect the path outside, Sherlock left the three officers alone, and Lestrade got down to business with Anderson. Once the Anderson had rigged up his equipment Sherlock sauntered back in. He took one look at the room and stopped dead, before turning his head and exaggeratedly rolling his eyes.
"Oh, good Lord," Sherlock muttered in Anderson's direction.
The tech's head whipped around to frown at the consulting detective while Donovan and Lestrade sighed and shook their heads. Sally looked on at the pair amusedly. She was quite interested to see how this new one would hold up against the wrath of Sherlock.
"What's wrong?"
"You, your methods, everything…" Sherlock said in a wholly unimpressed tone.
Anderson looked slightly offended.
"What do you mean?" he scoffed.
"I know it can be difficult, but try to keep up. Even with my superior grasp of the English language, it's difficult to find any other better way of expressing everything that's wrong than 'everything'."
"Well what do you suggest? You, who, unlike me, has no official qualifications in this field!"
"Stop doing everything you're doing and start doing everything you're not. Or better yet, just let me handle the case."
"What do you mean?" Anderson, indignant, was now genuinely confused. "What do you think I'm doing wrong?"
"Well, to mention only one of the seventeen or eighteen things I could point out, you should be using magnetic powder to scan for fingerprints on this floor, not a regular powder – this surface is grained and porous. Also, you shouldn't even be bothering to collect samples from here, because you'll find they will match the victim exactly. Where you want to be looking is the windowsill and below this picture frame."
"You are the detective, I am the forensic scientist; I think that as this is my area of skill, I am more competent than you, and I would like to be treated as –"
Greg braced himself for the onslaught: Anderson had just insulted Sherlock, and that warranted no mercy.
"Lestrade, please background check your team recruits next time, and try to find techs who have at least a little bit of knowledge of their field. And someone whose rich parents with contacts didn't buy his way into university and then almost fail their course, passing with the absolute bare minimum and receiving the lowest marks of their cohort. Also try to find someone who isn't about to cheat on his wife of three years with your second-in-charge."
And without another word, Sherlock swept from the room, leaving in his wake a very stunned and silent Anderson and a shocked Donovan.
"So sorry about him," Greg apologised. "I'm just going to go and…"
He didn't bother to invent a reason, but left. He noticed with some satisfaction though that as he walked out of the room, Anderson switched fingerprint powders. Well, he had it coming, Greg reasoned.
"How'd you know all of that about Anderson?"
"Obvious; rich family and happy childhood by his unstressed face and manner of speech. Judging by what I had seen of his intellect – or lack thereof – in such a short time by what he was doing he certainly wouldn't be able to go to university based on school marks, so he bought his way in. Again, his limited intellect and the uncertainty with which he was working showed his placing in the ranks of his university leaving grade, but if he's working now he must have passed – but only with the bare minimum."
"Obvious," Lestrade sighed.
He watched Sherlock as the consulting detective swept around the scene, swooping and in out of rooms and doors, bending and craning his neck, quickly and methodically inspecting, cataloguing and deducing. There was something majestic about it; it was almost like a dance. Sherlock trod through the steps gracefully with an ethereal ease.
"Well, I need to go back to your dim-witted tech to see if my findings correlate with his. Though whether or not he's succeeded in finding anything relevant to the case is in the lap of the Gods."
Greg wished as he watched Sherlock stride off that the consulting detective would get on with at least one of the officers on the force that wasn't Lestrade.
Greg was making polite conversation with Caroline's brother David at his wife's family Christmas dinner while Caroline pottered fluttered around the kitchen. Greg could hear arguing her sister-in-law about he best way to drizzle sauce on the Christmas pudding. He thanked his lucky stars that he couldn't even cook a piece of toast and didn't have to deal with kitchen stress as well as everything else.
The argument was steadily escalating. It was making things slightly awkward for Greg and David as they listened to their wives.
David tipped his head towards the kitchen: "What about the women in there? Bloody vixens when they're together."
"You should've asked Caroline's approval when picking a bride," Greg joked.
"Then I'd still be single. Her mission in life: a personal vendetta against everyone in a relationship with me."
Finally, the infamous Christmas pudding emerged from the kitchen, unscathed by the argument, but with a particularly…artistic-looking drizzle of sauce. The women who carried it, however, were not unscathed, but huffed at each other, and Greg decided that it would be for the best to get out of this house as soon as possible.
Once he and Caroline had gulped down their pudding they made a hasty exit from the Christmas dinner. Finally they stepped out into the frosty December night to wander through London. They hadn't taken their car as it was in for repairs – bloody good timing, Lestrade thought sarcastically – but Greg didn't mind walking. In fact, meandering through this very upmarket area of London was exactly what Greg had wanted to do; here, everyone went the whole way with Christmas lights.
The streets glittered as snow swirled before the couple. Caroline flung out her hands, and started skipping and twirling down the street, crying out in delight, her bright red coat fluttering behind her. She was a six-year-old again. Greg beamed. This is what he loved about Christmas. Abandoning all dignity, he spun around as well to meet her quite a way down the road – she could whirl through the snow very quickly. When he caught up to her Greg tackled her and, supporting his wife by her back, grinned mischievously in her flushed face.
"Thank God we got out of that awful Christmas dinner," Caroline laughed.
Greg took her hand and they ambled through the snow still drifting down from the sky, falling thicker and thicker with the time that passed.
Just then, as if timed perfectly to ruin the magical moment, Lestrade's phone buzzed with an incoming message.
"Who on earth texts at 9 pm on Christmas night?" Caroline asked.
Greg checked his phone: Brainwave; the woman owning a beige evening gown with a small purple stain size of a 1p coin is your murderer. SH.
"Who was it?" Caroline asked again, craning her neck to see Greg's phone's screen.
"Sherlock about the case. What's he doing thinking about that now?"
Aren't you a bit busy with Christmas to be thinking about murders? I mean, I know they're jolly and festive and all, but still. Greg. It was quite literally only a couple of seconds before he received a reply; Greg wondered whether Sherlock actually sat there for hours and practiced typing messages faster than humanly possible. Greg had to press each key individually and slowly, taking an eon to text one simple line. Why would I be? SH. Greg thought about the text, and though he knew Sherlock wasn't one for sentimentality, he found it slightly sad that the consulting detective might be alone tonight. But Caroline tugged at his arm, and he pocketed the mobile. He promised himself to pop around to Sherlock's tomorrow.
A roguish grin spread over Greg's face. He would force Sherlock to the Lestrades' New Year's party they were planning. What good fun that would be, Greg thought happily. Amused, he imagined Sherlock's face at the party while he and Caroline ambled down the street and out of sight.
A/N: Hey everyone! So it's been a while…and I'm not sure I'm too happy with this chapter, as a lot of it is set-up for the next chapter. It was eluding me for a long time, since I was more interested in writing later parts of the story. But here it is! I'd love feedback, as always, and your readership is greatly appreciated! Thanks so much to everyone who's stayed reading with me so far!