Warning: This chapter contains short but graphic descriptions of torture and references to terrorist activities.

Chapter Twenty Two

Mycroft burst into the Summer Drawing Room, where Molly was watching television, having put all her children to bed. She jumped to her feet.

'What's happened?' she gasped, fearing the worst.

'The kidnapper has been apprehended in Bruges. I must go there.'

'Must you go?' Molly asked, wringing her hands with concern. She knew how fragile Mycroft was, at the moment.

'Yes, I must. We could extradite him but it would take too long. So, we must question him there.'

'No, I meant does it have to be you? Can't someone else do it?'

Mycroft took both her hands in his, to stop the wringing.

'No, Molly, dear,' he said, almost apologetically, 'I have to do it.'

She looked into his eyes and saw, beyond the softened features, the Iceman looking back.

He leaned forward and kissed her, gently, on the cheek.

'Please, explain to the children that Daddy had to go away but will be back as soon as possible.'

'I'll tell them,' she promised. 'You take good care of yourself, Mycroft.'

He gave a tight smile and left the room.

ooOoo

When Sherlock and his entourage arrived at the home of Mr and Mrs Brocklehurst, Rosie automatically led the party round to the back of the house and announced herself by calling out, as she entered the building through the kitchen door.

'Mum, we're home!'

The four visitors stepped into the small utilitarian room and stood around the central table. Sherlock's hair almost brushed the low ceiling. When the girls' mother appeared through the door to the sitting room, her welcoming smile turned to a one of surprise, as she took in the two strange men.

''Ello, luvies! This is a nice surprise,' she greeted her daughters. 'Are you going to introduce me to your little friends?' she added, as though they were still five years old.

'This is Sherlock Holmes, Mum,' said Josie. ''E's the brother of Arthur's chap. And this is his friend, Dr Watson.'

At the title 'Dr', Mrs Brocklehurst gave John a deferential look but he offered his hand, with a winning smile, and said,

'John. Please, call me John.'

She shook his hand and then looked surreptitiously at Sherlock, who was busy scanning the room, taking in every detail and extrapolating information about the characters and depositions of the people who lived here. He felt he knew them, already.

'They're here about Arthur,' Josie explained.

The woman's brow wrinkled, momentarily, evidence of a mother's pain, but she was a little confused.

'Arthur i'nt 'ere, love, y'know 'e i'nt.'

Rosie moved forward and took her mother's hand.

'Arthur's gone missin', Mum. John and Sherlock need to talk to Dad about it.'

'Gone missin'? What d'y'mean?'

'Ey-up, oo's this?' a man's voice drew all their eyes back to the sitting room doorway and Arthur Senior stepped into the crowded kitchen. He swept his gaze around the assembled faces and settled on Sherlock.

'Oo 'r'you?'

The detective drew himself up to his full height, clasped his hands behind his back and looked down his aristocratic nose at the other man.

'My name is Sherlock Holmes. I'm a friend of your son, Arthur,' he declared, in clipped tones.

'I don't 'ave a son. So you're wastin' your time…'Ang on a minute! Are you that Wally Woofter 'e's bin shacked up wi'?'

'I think you may be referring to my brother,' Sherlock replied, the corners of his mouth twitching at the application of such an epithet to his illustrious sibling.

'Well, like I said, I don't 'ave a son so…'

'Arthur is missing, Mr Brocklehurst,' John interrupted. 'We think he's been kidnapped. We're trying to find him.'

'An' oo 'r'you?'

'I'm Captain John Watson of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers,' John replied, playing the military card, guessing correctly that this would get the man's attention and elicit some respect.

'Oh, Capt. Watson, I'm very pleased to meet you,' Arthur Senior declared, offering his hand for John to shake. 'But I don't know how I can help you. I don't know where Arthur is.'

'Oh, Dad...' Mrs Brocklehurst keened, calling everyone's attention to her distress at this terrible news regarding her son.

'Come 'n' sit down, Mum,' Rosie insisted and, with a protective arm around her mother's waist, she led her back to the sitting room. Her husband, remembering his manners at last, invited his other guests to follow, though he gave Sherlock a leary look as he passed, through the doorway.

Once in the other room, the three women took up the sofa, with Mrs Brocklehurst in the middle, being comforted by both her daughters. Sherlock walked over to the front window and stood looking out at the darkened garden and the street, illuminated by the bluish light of a nearby lamp-post. John sat in one arm chair and Mr Brocklehurst in the other.

'Where do you think Arthur is?' Sherlock asked, abruptly, turning to face the room.

'I thought 'e were down in London – or wherever it is 'e lives, now'.

'No, that's not what I asked,' Sherlock replied.

All eyes turned to him. John looked as though he was about to intercede but Sherlock held up a hand, and he sat back in his chair.

'You asked me where I thought Arthur was an' I t…'

'No, Mr Brocklehurst, I didn't ask you where you thought he was. I asked you where you think he is.'

Sherlock walked around the perimeter of the room, his hands still clasped behind his back, but keeping his eyes on Arthur Sr.

'Where do you think he is now?'

''Ow should I know where 'e is?'

Sherlock shook his head.

'No, you don't know where he is but you think you do,' Sherlock stated, baldly.

'Now, look 'ere!' Mr B exclaimed, making to rise from his seat but, in two strides, Sherlock was standing over him, forcing him to sit back, again, and look up, in order maintain eye contact with the tall man.

'When John told you that we thought Arthur had been kidnapped, you smiled.'

'I did not!' the other man exclaimed, indignantly. His daughters and wife glared at Sherlock, defensively.

'Oh, not a proper smile, not a big toothy grin, but the corners of your mouth went up – just a tad. In Behavioural Psychology, that's called a micro-gesture, the tiny, unintentional movements that we make that give away what we are really thinking, regardless of what might be coming out of our mouths, at the time. It's what Forensic Psychologists look for, when the police hold press conferences for the families of missing children, and so forth, especially if they think that the family members might be implicated.'

'Sherlock…' John murmured but the hand came up again and John shut up.

'Are you tellin' me y' think I kidnapped my own son?' the father spluttered.

'No,' he replied, 'I'm not. I don't think you actually understood the conditions of the deal you were making.'

'Dad?' Josie said, in a doubtful tone.

'Don't listen to 'im. Jose! 'E's talking rubbish!'

'What did he tell you they would do with Arthur?' Sherlock asked, almost casually, though he still stood over the other man, intimidatingly.

'What did 'e tell me? What the 'ell are y' on about?'

Sherlock's mobile phone chimed in his pocket and he held up a finger, to put the conversation on 'pause', took out his phone, opened the text, read it, nodded, then opened his email ap, which immediately pinged to signal the arrival of mail. He opened this and skim-read it, nodding as he did so.

Everyone else in the room looked on, mesmerised.

At last, Sherlock spoke again.

'Your good friend, Mick Robinson,' he declared, turning to look at Arthur Sr once more, 'what do you know about him?'

'What do y' mean?' 'E's a mate. End of.' Mr B was not impressed by the detective's interrogation techniques.

'No, he is not, Mr Brocklehurst. He's no mate of yours. Look.'

Sherlock turned the phone to show the screen to the seated man. Arthur's dad squinted at it for several seconds then shook his head, in confusion.

'That's…that's not…'

'Oh, yes, I'm afraid it is.'

Sherlock handed the phone to John, so he could read the file attachment that the email had delivered. It was an MI5 file and the picture at the top was of a tall, well-built man, standing to attention, wearing some sort of paramilitary uniform. The name underneath the photograph had been redacted but the information pertaining to the person had not. John read it, quickly, then said,

'Oh. My. God.'

'What is that?' Arthur Brocklehurst stammered. 'What does it mean?'

'On the way over here, Mr Brocklehurst, I texted a friend of mine and asked her to run a check on your Mick Robinson, or whatever his real name is,' Sherlock explained, 'and this is what she discovered.

Your new best friend is a member of a Far Right paramilitary organisation, known as Combat 18, which has affiliations with the BNP and the NSM. It's a neo-Nazi organisation whose aim is to destabilise democratically elected Governments whom they believe to be too liberal.

Over the years, its members have carried out a number of terrorist attacks, in the United Kingdom, on immigrant and gay communities, their intension being to start a race war, in British towns and cities, so that the general population will vote for those political parties which advocate tighter immigration controls and homophobic legislation.

You have been duped, Mr Brocklehurst, into handing your son over to enemies of the State who intend to use him as a means to bring down the Government!

I don't know how, not precisely. But they targeted Arthur the moment he came to work at the house. They sent their agent here to insinuate himself into the family's social circle, to gather information. Robinson would have quickly identified the father's homophobic tendencies, which he would have flagged up as a possible means to an end. They've been playing the long game, these people, biding their time until an opportunity presented itself to strike. Arthur's 'coming out' mission was the catalyst that set the plan in motion.'

'This really is about Mycroft, after all.'

All four members of the Brocklehurst family looked shocked to their cores. What Sherlock was describing was beyond belief, so far outside their compass as to be incomprehensible. But Arthur Sr was even more stunned than the women. He sank back in his chair, shaking his head and opening his hands in a gesture of utter desperation.

Josie reached out for the phone and John gave it to her. She read the contents of the file then passed it to her sister. Their mother, who was sobbing quietly, showed no desire to read the file herself.

'Dad,' Josie said, breaking the tense silence, 'what have you done?'

'I didn't know, Josie, honestly, I didn't know!'

'Just tell us what you did, Dad,' Josie shrieked, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that she would brook no refusal.

''E sed they could cure 'im. 'E brought a doctor to see me oo sed 'e could cure 'im o' bein' gay..!'

'What sort of doctor?' John asked, his body stiffening.

''E were some sort o' therapist, 'e said,' whined the other man, plaintively. 'Er, sommat beginnin' wi'…er…Apparition? Summat like tha'?' he gabbled

'A Reparation Therapist?' John spat.

'Yes! Yes! Tha' were it!'

'Oh, good god, man!' Dr Watson exclaimed, jumping to his feet. 'Those people are not proper doctors!'

John, beyond furious, began pacing back and forth in front of the older man.

'They buy their qualifications off the Internet! And they use a combination of pseudo-science and religious mumbo-jumbo to exploit vulnerable people who are either struggling to come to terms with their sexuality or who are being pressurised by their families to deny it!'

He stopped and leaned over Arthur's father, giving him the full force of Capt Watson's ire.

'These people use physical abuse and torture in order to persuade their subjects to convert to heterosexuality. They beat them and poison them, starve them, and deprive them of all physical comforts.'

'John,' Sherlock, for once, was the voice of caution.

'They strip them naked and spray them with high pressure hoses!'

'John!' Sherlock said again, more insistently.

But Dr Watson was in full rant mode and nowhere near finished.

'They attach electrodes to their bollocks and plug them into the mains…'

'STOP!' Rosie screamed, just as Sherlock grabbed his friend by the shoulders and spun him round to fix him with a warning glare.

'Enough, John,' he said, firmly, 'I think they get the message.'

'Where is he, Dad?' Josie demanded, though trembling lips, choking back her tears.

'I don't know!' her father wailed. 'They didn't tell me!'

ooOoo