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Chapter 6: Searching (2)

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When John regained consciousness, he was only half surprised to see he'd been brought forcefully to the Diogenes Club – drugged, he thought in a daze, rage bubbling in his chest already. His hand automatically searched for his gun, but of course they'd taken it from him. His phone, too.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked Mycroft, who'd just stepped into the room.

John was seething, but Mycroft replied very coldly.

"You kept declining my invitations."

"I was looking for your bloody brother, Mycroft! And you drugged me! Do you even know where he is?"

"He's quite fine, I assure you. Well, except for the fact that by now he must have realized that you have disappeared."

John sighed in relief, but his temper didn't improve.

"Why did you kidnap me then? If you wanted to know what happened, you could have just phoned me!"

"I know very well what happened, Dr. Watson."

John paled.

"You didn't..."

"Obviously I had cameras in the flat."

John clenched his fists.

"Had fun watching?"

"Not really."

Silence.

"So why did you kidnap me?"

"I invited you, John. You just kept declining the invitation."

"What do you want?" John almost snarled.

"To prove a point."

Mycroft's tone was quite dispassionate, and he appeared to be completely indifferent to John's fury. Of course, it only unnerved the doctor even more.

"Which is?" John inquired curtly.

"That what you did couldn't possibly have helped Sherlock in the least."

"Oh yeah? And why is that?"

"He has become very dependant on you. When you leave, he'll be broken again. This is no solution."

John blinked.

"I'm not leaving."

"But you will one day," Mycroft assured.

"I have absolutely no intention to leave."

The elder Holmes snorted.

"Please. Don't tell me a well-balanced, grown man like you still believes in everlasting love."

"My past experiences..."

"... were abundant, I know. And this is perfectly normal."

"That is not what I was going to say! Will you let me finish? My past experiences were... yes, well, numerous if you want, but I think I've given enough proof that Sherlock always comes first."

"And when you'll fall in love with someone? Will he still be your priority then?"

"I am in love with someone."

Mycroft rolled his eyes.

"I do not doubt it, doctor. But no feeling lasts forever. Caring is not an advantage, and Sherlock must overcome this alone, or he will collapse when you are no longer there. Surely even you can understand something this simple?"

"Sherlock needs help at the moment, and it just happens that I am the only one who can provide it!"

"Quite a turn-on, isn't it? Captain."

John snapped and in a second was pulling a startled Mycroft by the collar.

"Don't push it, Mycroft."

The elder Holmes' eyes turned to ice.

"Or what?"

John trembled with rage but let go of his collar and stepped back. Mycroft readjusted himself disdainfully.

"I am not criticizing you, Dr. Watson. I am just pointing out that in the long term, you'll do more damage than good to Sherlock."

John's hands turned to fists, shaking with fury.

"And how do you know that, Mycroft? Concealed your prescience all this time?"

"If you do... 'love' him, you will understand this is for his own good."

"AND HOW SO? Sherlock isn't dependant on me, he only needs a bit of support now because he's going through a crisis!" John burst out. Then, exasperated: "I'm out of here."

"I don't think so," Mycroft replied icily as two bodyguards came in.

"What the–"

"Twenty-four hours. I'll keep you only twenty-four hours. Just enough to show you how reliant he's become. Maybe then will you understand that you are not helping."

John stared, dumbfounded. "You're joking."

"I'm afraid I am not, John."

"Who do you think you are?"

"His only brother."

"And I'm his only friend!" John exploded.

"Not just a 'friend' anymore, are you? Or would any friend deal with a rape victim's trauma by getting off with them?"

All colours left John's face and he just gaped, appalled.

"Do not get me wrong, John. I am not saying you threw yourself at Sherlock when he was most vulnerable, but you have to admit that it looks like–"

John's punch interrupted him, and suddenly the two gorillas were on an enraged John.

"How dare you?"

Mycroft regained his balance and touched his face gingerly.

"Thank you, Dr. Watson. Now you strike me as a very responsible person."

He stepped out of the room and John tried to throw himself at him, but the two guards stopped him.

"Mycroft! Stop this! You're being so stupid!"

"I advise you don't try to knock the door down, you'd only hurt your shoulder. Also I'm afraid this room is sound proof. Don't waste your voice."

John stared in shock as Mycroft just left him there. This couldn't be happening.

xXx

Meanwhile, Sherlock was panicking in the empty flat.

Either John had been kidnapped by Moriarty again, or he'd left for good. He wouldn't go to Harry, and he didn't currently have a girlfriend, so Sherlock had no idea where he could have gone – and that was all the more frightening.

He turned the living-room upside down in order to find his phone (what a stupid idea to confiscate it – or had John been planning this? No, Sherlock wouldn't believe it.) His hands were trembling as he dialled John's number.

"Hello, this is John Watson. I can't answer at the moment but..."

Sherlock cursed and hung up nervously. Stupid voicemail. He dialled another number.

"Hello?" said Lestrade's voice.

"Is John with you?"

"What? Is this Sherlock?"

"Is he with you? Have you seen him?"

"You always text, has something happened to–"

Sherlock hung up and sighed in exasperation. And fear. The next person he called was Mike Stamford, then Bill Murray, and he'd never been so glad that he'd stolen John's phone to take note of his contacts. His attempt was fruitless, though – no one seemed to have seen him.

Now the sense of dread clearly overrode his irritation and frenzy. He felt very cold suddenly. Swallowing with difficulty, he opened his laptop and went on his site to see if any suspicious message had been left – but there was none. Taking a deep breath, he wrote:

Do you have him?

As he posted it, he tried not to think too much about whether he would prefer getting an affirmative answer or not.

Sherlock couldn't just wait here until his nemesis answered or John appeared at the door, so he went out to all the places he could think of, bars and pubs and even parks, asking every Baker Street Irregular around to know if they'd seen him. Some had in fact, and told him he'd been walking briskly as if he were very busy or very intent on getting wherever he was going. Sherlock paled and felt the ice grow in his chest.

In the end, he spent the entire night out roaming the streets of London, checking his website on his phone, almost hoping Moriarty would finally answer, tell him where they were, what he wanted from him so he could get John back, no matter the cost. He even texted Mycroft, and as he wasn't answering, actually called him and left a message because his older brother didn't deign take up his call.

Exhausted, he went back to the flat only at dawn, as his phone didn't have any battery left. His fingers felt numb from dialling the same numbers over and over again all night – John's of course, and Mycroft's too. He'd received a text from Mycroft telling him he was unfortunately busy at the moment but that he got his message and hadn't seen anything suspicious about John on the surveillance cameras. He'd been recorded for the last time near Trafalgar Square, but then they lost his trail. He suggested he may have just been staying over at a friend's, because he needed some air, perhaps?

Sherlock had almost crushed his phone as he'd read the message.

Back at the flat, he checked his site on the laptop again – and shivered when he saw he had got an answer:

Ooh, still alive, pretty boy? No Johnny here, I'm afraid – Daddy's a busy man, you know. Trouble in paradise? :D

Sherlock let his hand fall slowly back to his side. This meant John was gone. Just gone. It suddenly hit him that he hadn't seen his flatmate's laptop lying around. Filled with dread, he started looking for it, and then for anything else, anything at all that belonged to John.

Except for a few forgotten items, it seemed like he'd packed up everything and left.

Sherlock fell into a chair. How could he have missed this? Wasn't it noticeable enough? He should have seen it sooner. But you didn't want to see it, a voice whispered, unpleasantly reminiscent of that of one mad consulting criminal...

xXx

John Watson knew when to give up. Most of the time, anyway.

Sometimes, he just didn't care whether his behaviour was rational or not – like now, as he was still trying to force the door with his good shoulder, which wasn't so good anymore – he'd been locked up for more than thirteen hours. He'd shouted quite a bit, too, but there were no windows and he knew how to recognize sound proof walls when he saw them. This was serious. He just had to get to Sherlock's side. He knew his friend would believe he'd been kidnapped, and God knew what would happen if he went back to Moriarty believing that he was holding him as a hostage, when the culprit was, in fact, his own brother.

John swore he'd kill Mycroft for this.

xXx

"Elias Openshaw and James Calhoun were segregationists."

Lestrade looked up from his papers and met eyes with none other than Sherlock Holmes. He couldn't help but smile, seeing this as the detective's way of apologising for his earlier behaviour. Still took him a whole night to come, he thought, half-annoyed, half-amused. Then he wondered if John had anything to do with it, and tried very hard not to imagine what he could have done to Sherlock to make him change his mind. He cleared his throat.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Because it's in the report. They left the US after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Act in 1965 because they lived in Texas and couldn't stand 'negroes'. Except that Elias thought James had gone too far with whatever he did to Adanna Ndiaye."

"Wait, who's that?" Lestrade frowned.

"The stepmother! For goodness' sake Lestrade, did you even read that report?"

"Go on", the D.I. grumbled.

"I don't know whether he planned to make her disappear or if something went wrong and then he just had to – what's certain though is that Elias wasn't very happy and stopped working with him altogether. He probably threatened him with going to the police, but didn't because in the end, he shared the same beliefs, and also because I am quite sure they weren't exactly angels back there in the States. Calhoun surely had some things to hold against Openshaw, if he were to talk."

"Then what's with the pips?"

"I already told you that, I believe."

"What?"

"The Ku Klux Klan. Remember Moriarty's..."

He trailed off, shaken by the name he hadn't uttered since...

"Sherlock?"

He pulled himself together. I am not going to fear a name, he thought fiercely.

"… Moriarty's little game with the bombs. I told you back then five pips were a code used by the Ku Klux Klan as a warning. Obviously both Calhoun and Openshaw would be familiar with it – I'd even look into their activities back in Texas if I were you, but you've certainly got better things to do. No more harm can be done anyway, all the Openshaws are dead."

"Exactly! Why did they die?"

Sherlock stared.

"Oh God, how can you not die of boredom?"

"Sherlock, to the point!"

"Calhoun felt that Elias Openshaw was going to spill it all and had in his possessions papers that compromised them both. He was ready to use them, or at least, so he thought. So Calhoun panicked and sent the orange pips. Elias ran amok, burnt the papers and ran out..."

"For Christ's sake if you're making that up..."

"You said to the point!"

"Fine."

"… and ran out to his own demise. There were no signs of struggle on the body because there was no struggle. James Calhoun was an old uni pal, and even if he did send him a death message, it was more of a symbolic code between them. Elias Calhoun couldn't possibly suspect his best friend of actually killing him."

He shivered and paused in his explanation. Lestrade arched an eyebrow.

"Well, it cost him his life. Just like the others. Joseph Openshaw didn't like James Calhoun, but would never suspect him of murder – not even his wife's, although he must have been aware of his hatred for black people. Calhoun must have met him on Portsdown Hill and pushed him over the chalk-pit. As for John... "

He shivered again and resisted the urge to bang his head on the wall. Idiot!

"...as for John Openshaw, I presume he must have been quicker in throwing him in the Thames. Probably knocked him out first on the pavement so it would look like he'd just tripped, knocked himself out and then fallen into the river."

"Why should he have been quicker?"

"Oh please, Lestrade, just think for once! John knew someone was after him, he came all the way to London to ask for your help because he was scared to return to Horsham, hence his staying in London for a few days. It would've seemed suspicious even to him that James Calhoun was in London on a week-day. It would've taken merely a few seconds for it to dawn on him I'd say, even if he wouldn't have been sure. Calhoun had to be quicker this time."

"I need proof, though. I can't just go and arrest him for three murders!"

"Here. I recorded his fake alibi for John's murder when I was in the pub. You figure out how to make him spill the rest. I've done quite enough already."

He turned to leave.

"Wait! Sherlock, are you all right? Where is John?"

Sherlock paused in his tracks.

"Gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"I mean gone, gone!"

"But that's preposterous!"

"How so? He is allowed to have a life, you know."

"Something must have happened to him!"

"Nothing happened to him."

"Then where is he?"

"I don't know. And I don't care."

"Sherlock!"

He stormed out of the Met without looking back. What was there to look back to anyway? Everything he wanted was supposed to be where he was going now, home... But the word no longer held any meaning. Sherlock wasn't sure it hurt, really. All he could feel was the cold spreading from his chest and the gnawing emptiness eating away the last shreds of warmth.

xXx

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tbc