Brief references to sexual acts and incest.
Chapter Forty Seven
As Sherlock stepped through the door into the bedroom, a movement from the bed pulled him up short. Molly switched on the bedside lamp and leaned back against the headboard, hugging her knees. Sherlock stood still, feeling awkward, waiting for her to say something.
She obliged.
'Why did it take you so long to get out of the car?'
After a few moment's consideration, he stepped forward, untying the belt of his dressing gown and turning sideways, opening the right front panel of the garment to expose his ribs to the light. Molly cast her eyes over the broad area of bruising and her pathologist's expertise filled in the details.
'Your PJ's are on the chair,' she said, inclining her head in that direction.
Sherlock gave a little nod but did not go straight to the chair. Instead, he walked over to the travel cot and placed his hand on Violet's sleeping head, He went to bend forward and drop a kiss on that head but his ribs warned him that might not be such a good idea so, instead, he kissed his finger tips and stroked those across the baby's forehead and then went over to the chair.
Molly watched, her expression implacable, as he picked up his pyjama bottoms and lowered his behind, cautiously, onto the seat in order to put them on. It was like watching a film in slow motion.
'Have you taken any pain relief for that?' Molly snapped.
Sherlock stopped half-way to putting a foot in one leg of his night wear, wondering whether to own up to the whiskey, but decided against and shook his head.
Molly slipped out of bed and went over to the dressing table where she had left her handbag. Reaching inside, she took out a strip of ibuprofen and held it out towards him. He looked at the pills in her hand then pointed to the bathroom and mimed writing. At first, Molly thought he was asking for a glass of water and she was about to tell him to go and get his own but the writing mime made her think again.
'Did the doctor give you a prescription?' she asked. He nodded and pointed to the bathroom again.
She was in two minds to get back into bed and leave him to get his own pills but she knew he probably wouldn't do that so she went into the bathroom herself and found two boxes on the shelf next to the basin. She picked them up and read the labels. One of them was anti-inflamatories. She took one of the tooth mugs and filled it with water but then a thought occurred.
'Have you eaten recently?' she asked, from the bathroom doorway.
He had only managed to get one leg in his PJ's so far and was manoeuvring the second into position. He paused again and shook his head.
Molly put down the glass, marched across to the bedroom door and disappeared. She was gone for about five minutes, during which time Sherlock got both legs into his pyjamas and pulled his t-shirt on, over his head. It was slightly easier with Molly not there because he could groan and gasp as much as necessary. He didn't have to bottle it up.
When she returned, he was sitting on the side of the bed. She handed him a glass of milk and a Kit-Kat bar. It was the only portable food she could find in Mrs Orgreave's well-ordered kitchen.
'Eat the Kit-Kat first,' she instructed then turned her attention to reading the information sheet from the anti-inflamatories, which explained about the dosage and listed any side-effects or contraindications, one of which being not to take them on an empty stomach.
'You are going to have to eat regularly while you're on these or you can't take them,' she informed him, brusquely. He nodded, swallowing the last of the Kit-Kat, and she dispensed two tablets into his hand.
'Take two of these, every six hours, with food,' she said.
He put the tablets into his mouth, one at a time, and washed them down with a gulp of milk. When he went to put the half-empty glass on the bedside table, she intervened.
'Drink it all. You need to protect your stomach lining.'
He drank the rest and put the glass down then sat looking at her, as if waiting for further instructions. She folded her arms and glared at him. He could feel the anger radiating from her, like waves of heat from a raging fire, and he wondered what she might say or do next. She had slapped him, once, a long time ago. He knew she'd regretted that momentary loss of self-control so he didn't think she would slap him again but that did nothing to ease his sense of trepidation. He had never seen her so angry – ever. It made her dangerously unpredictable and that was disconcerting.
'You can't talk at the moment, Sherlock, so we are not going to have this conversation tonight,' she said, at last. 'And I'm probably being far too generous, giving you time to consider your answer but I just need to get this one thing off my chest.'
She paused and licked her lips, as though considering her words very carefully, while he just waited.
He didn't have to wait long.
'When you went charging into that psychiatric hospital, like some sort of latter-day Luke bloody Skywalker, what on earth were you thinking?!'
She hissed those last few words with such vehemence that she inadvertently sprayed his face with spittle. He could see her hands shaking with the effort of not shouting – for the sake of the sleeping children, he was sure. Definitely not on his behalf. He wiped his face with the front of his t-shirt, keeping his eyes on her, just in case she decided to slap him anyway. But she didn't. She just stalked round to her side of the bed and got in, turned off the light, turned her back to him and said not another word.
Sherlock climbed into bed, too, and lay on his back, as far over to his side as he could, so as not to incur any further wrath. He had really wanted to say sorry but he knew she wasn't ready to hear that yet and, actually, he didn't think he deserved her forgiveness. She was absolutely right. What had he been thinking? Well, nothing. That was the point, wasn't it? He hadn't even thought about it. He'd just done it.
He lay in the dark, looking up at the invisible ceiling, asking himself what exactly he thought he could have done that all those trained Special Ops guys couldn't. And he could not come up with a single convincing argument.
ooOoo
In the still night air, through the open study window, Mycroft heard the engine of the motor bike from a mile away. By the time the vehicle pulled up outside the front of the house, he was standing at the front door. The courier cut the engine, rolled the bike onto its stand and climbed off, opened the paniers and took out two red canvas bags. The biker walked over to Mycroft and put the bags on the ground, flipped up the helmet visor and took an electronic device from one of the many pockets in the high-vis jacket.
'Sign here, please, sir,' the courier said, with a winning smile.
Mycroft took the device and the stylus, scribbled his signature and handed both objects back to the courier, who put them back into her pocket, picked up the bags and gave them to Mycroft.
'Thank you, my dear,' he said.
The woman smiled again.
'No problem, sir. Good night,' she said.
'Good night to you, and safe journey,' Mycroft replied.
He watched as the courier got back on her motorbike, kick-started it, rolled it off the stand and wheeled away, with a cheery wave, roaring back down the drive and off into the dark night. Mycroft carried the bags inside and closed the front door. Both bags, made of thick, stiff canvas, were secured with a padlock but he had a key in his study that would open both locks and that's where he went.
He opened the larger of the two bags first and found Sherlock's suit, shirt and shoes in there. He put that to one side. The second, smaller bag proved to be a veritable cornucopia. It contained six DVD's, three old-fashioned VHS video cassettes and a mobile phone. The phone, he thought, might be Sherlock's but that was impossible to verify, as the battery was dead. He put it with the clothes.
Taking the six DVD's, he looked at the hand-written labels. Four of them were labelled 'Security' with two dates, from and to. All, that is, but the fourth one, which only had a 'from' date. The other two were labelled, rather enigmatically, A and B. Pragmatically, Mycroft opened 'A' and slipped the disc into the disc drive in his laptop, then he sat down at his desk and waited for it to load.
He recognised the environment immediately. It was his bedroom in the flat in Cadogan Square. And he recognised himself, too. The first mystery was how this footage of his private inner sanctum had been obtained. The physical means was obvious. Someone had installed a camera in the smoke detector, immediately above his bed. But who had done that? And when and how? And why had Mycroft not known about this until now?
Mycroft pressed Fast Forward to advance the action to the point where his co-star in this erotic fantasy was revealed, then paused the screen. How had they done that, he wondered, put Andrew Lewis's face on that body? And whose body was it? And when had the original encounter taken place? He shunted the footage on to the next section and watched with amazement as his doppelganger performed a very lewd act on a most unlikely partner whilst that person did the same to him. Charles Meadows, Mycroft thought, was an excellent Estate Manager and a good human being but he really was not his type! Even had he not been a member of his staff, and assuming that they had met in a purely social setting, he would not have found the man remotely attractive!
And as for the act of mutual pleasuring…No! Mycroft advanced the video to the next section which, he assumed, would be the piece featuring himself and his brother apparently engaged in a spot of incest.
The moment the new video began to play, Mycroft gave a gasp of understanding and sat back in his chair. He recognised this footage – or rather he recognised where this footage came from - but it had been heavily manipulated. For one thing, the setting appeared still to be his bedroom in Cadogan Square but he knew that the bed linen had belonged to his mother and had never been anywhere near the flat in Knightsbridge.
Secondly, the original footage from which this had been adapted had been discovered amongst his mother's personal effects – in her bedroom safe – after her death and had been in Mycroft's possession ever since, most recently secreted in the safe in his bedroom at Cadogan Square.
The original sexual partner, a kitchen assistant, caught on camera cavorting with the adolescent Sherlock had been summarily sacked by his mother, dismissed without a reference, and sent packing. Mycroft had only learned about the sordid affair after he discovered the video evidence, recognized the young woman in question and asked the family cook if she knew anything about it. The cook had been sworn to secrecy by his mother but, now Mrs Holmes was dead, her loyalty transferred to Mycroft and she had spilled the beans.
Mycroft picked up the VHS video cassettes and looked at them more closely. One cassette looked very much like another and these had no labels or other identifying markings but he had a good idea where these had come from, what was on them and who had 'acquired' them from that place. Another mystery solved. He would send these cassettes, along with the 'sex tapes', to the tech guys in his department and they would confirm his suspicions and explain how the sex tapes had been made.
He pushed the DVD and the video cassettes back into the canvas bag and rubbed his face. He was dog tired and needed to go to bed. DVD 'B' and the security footage would have to wait. Tomorrow was likely to be a difficult day, taking the children to see their Poppah and having to watch Arthur explain that he would not be coming home for a while – possibly not for ever, if he could not be convinced that Mycroft was innocent of all charges.
Trust was a delicate flower. Once damaged, it rarely recovered completely.
ooOoo
Round One down. Seconds out, Round Two...