A/N: Yes, I've got one (or more) to finish, I am well aware. However, this came out of my pen first. It's a sequence, let's see if I can get it all out this week and then I'll go back to staring at a blank cursor blinking lonely on a new page. -csf
I.
'Sherlock? John? Open up, it's Lestrade!'
Further heavy banging on 221B's flat door, the one that is never locked, even when the vilest criminals vow revenge on the Baker Street duo.
Today it is locked, and so is the one that leads to the kitchen. Heck, Lestrade has even gone up to John's room upstairs – unlocked, cold and left tidy. John's laptop was missing but that would only mean that Sherlock had taken possession of it again. No signs of the phone or illegal gun, but John often has both on his person at all times. No obvious clothes missing, as if he'd packed a small weekend bag. Apart from an inordinate number of empty tea mugs on the window sill, John's room was tidy and untouched as ever.
Mrs Hudson makes her way up the stairs to the flat, drying her wrinkled hands on a tea towel apparently bought at Kensington Palace's gift shop. Lestrade notices this and immediately dismisses it. He always pays extra attention to details when he's near Sherlock's presence, so accustomed he is to being chastised for not seeing the obvious.
'Inspector, you missed the boys! They're gone now.'
'Gone?' Greg Lestrade asks with a bad shiver down his spine.
'Gone, yes. Didn't they tell you? Oh, I bet it was Sherlock's responsibility to tell you, John's a tiny bit better at remembering such things.'
'Where did they go? They're not answering their phones or emails.'
Mrs Hudson busied herself gathering a key from a brown boot left by the empty coat stand at the landing and unlocking the flat door. Greg follows the key's return into the dusty boot – John's, presumably – with a disbelief shake of the head.
Half of London's serial killers have sworn revenge on Sherlock Holmes and their flat key sits just outside their door.
'Mrs Hudson—'
'Oh, the mess they made', she bemoans as she starts fluffing pillows in the chaotic-as-usual flat. The living room too is cold, the air stagnant, as if no one had opened a window for days. Lestrade thinks of checking the best before dates on the fridge's food items but rapidly recalls Sherlock's mistaking it for a morgue's cold store and desists just as fast. The landlady can say for sure.
'When did they leave?' he asks her.
Mrs Hudson – not the two grown men's housekeeper – busies herself tidying the messy desk table as she assures the nice inspector:
'Not even 24 hours ago. It's a bit early for missing persons reports, isn't it?' she asks earnestly.
DI Lestrade is sure a permanent exception applies to those two troublemakers.
'When did you last see them?'
'Last night, didn't I just say that? Shouldn't you be taking notes or something?'
'Go on, Mrs Hudson, I'm listening.'
She gives him a telling disbelief look.
'Sherlock came home in a flurry of activity and adventure, John was having a nice cuppa with me in my kitchen, downstairs. John is like that, a bit homely, he will have been a lovely boy to his mother, I can tell. But no matter how much fun we were having taking about EastEnders latest plot twist, as soon as Sherlock crossed the threshold, John's eyes lit up altogether in a different way. Oh, those two boys! It's quite obvious that John's day was made, after nearly a full weekend where Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. He hadn't even contacted John to let John know that he was safe! I'm going to have a word with Sherlock's mother, I am. Gallivanting around London, not a care in the world and meanwhile leaving John alone at home? But, of course, John never gets upset, does he?'
Greg hastily nods.
'What happened next?'
'John just excused himself quickly, got up and followed Sherlock around like a puppy. Next thing I knew, they were rushing out of the front door, John was the one saying they were going to be gone for a couple of days, Sherlock not to get them any dinner. Mind you, I'm their landlady, not their cook.'
Lestrade would believe this strict assertion better if Mrs H wasn't recovering her stew pot from atop the stove where her boys left it.
Going past the landlady, Greg takes a quick glance at Sherlock's bedroom – empty, organised, tidy with the same grooming pride that the posh boy turned consulting detective keeps for his personal appearance – and the shared bathroom – toothbrushes missing, corroborating the landlady's story – before returning to the centre of the living room's rug. Something catches his eye, on the octopus coat hangers screwed behind the flat door: Sherlock's iconic long coat and John's asymmetric shoulder patch black jacket.
It's cold outside, nearly winter.
'Mrs Hudson... what were them two wearing when they left?'
The dear old thing pauses to recall, with a shrug of shoulders. 'They were head to toe dressed as paramedics, dear. It wouldn't do to wear anything else while driving an ambulance, would it?' she shakes her head fondly.
Lestrade represses the mental image of Sherlock and John hijacking an ambulance off the streets of London. Heck, John's a doctor, he knows where to find them parked by the A&E.
'Really? Sherlock actually wearing a uniform, huh?' he sniggers instead.
'Oh, it will have been very important, inspector. I don't suppose John would have complied just for kicks, do you think? I didn't even know John could drive, did you? Still, off they went from my very own front door.'
John can't drive, not properly; he drives as if he's constantly avoiding and outracing roadside explosions in the desert. The inspector's voice falters at the onslaught of information. 'Was it a real ambulance?'
'I doubt they make fake ambulances, inspector. Sherlock will have nicked the vehicle right under someone's nose. As for the clothes, Sherlock keeps all sorts of disguises in one of empty bedrooms upstairs, you know? It's nice of him to have started collecting for John too.'
'Any idea what they were up to?' The inspector is feeling concerned, whether by professional instinct or just friendship, he's not sure.
'Oh, that's easy, they were going to kidnap someone by posing as emergency services at their door. Normal people will always open their front door to someone in a uniform. I would say that would have been obvious to a police inspector such as yourself. You should get out more, dear. How about that nice cuppa now? You're looking a bit pale, inspector.'
Greg Lestrade is feeling really uncomfortable now.
'Actually, I need to report this.' He ruffles the grey hair at the back of his head, clumping them in messy spikes.
'Nonsense, deary. Don't make me have to handcuff you to a radiator. You leave Sherlock and John alone, and come have a cuppa with me in my kitchen. I need some advice on a leaky tap and you seem the right person to me.'
'I'm a police inspector, not a plumber.'
'It's all very similar, isn't it?' the landlady quips, grabbing his arm and dragging him out of 221B.
He's not got the courage to contradict the sweet deluded old woman.
It's probably a good thing as two minutes later, Mrs Hudson is getting clean cups from her dishwasher and in there, clean and bright, are several of Sherlock's sets of handcuffs, made shinier by the lemony rinse aid.
.
DI Lestrade groans as he finally comes out of Baker Street, a good couple of hours later. He's now up-to-date with EastEnders, has fixed Mrs Hudson's leaky sink tap and has learned more about her two tenants personal lives – including John's favourite colour of underwear – than he ever wanted to know. He admits to himself he enjoyed spending time with their dotty landlady, both motherly and utterly insane.
Stomach full and scout's promised to not rat on Sherlock, John and the stolen ambulance, Greg now wants to find the two kids and help them out of the mess they are about to land themselves in with the authorities. Even Mycroft Holmes will have a hard time cleaning up after this latest mess.
Life's full of coincidences, as it turns out, because just as Greg walks the sidewalk towards his parked car, an ambulance turns the corner, screeching the brakes, and zigzags through the cars on the road as if a bad re-enactment of a video game. It turns the next corner, as quickly as it came it's gone.
Only John can drive so insanely. They're heading towards the Thames. Only Sherlock can attempt to cross a bridge with in a zigzagging ambulance. Greg finds himself racing after the trail of confused, standstill drivers in John's wake.
Cold air rushing into his lungs, half expecting police cars to turn up anytime in pursuit of the rogue ambulance, Greg runs half a mile perhaps before he catches a glimpse of the same ambulance on the Tower Bridge, metal sparks flying off the side doors as John speeds through the pedestrian walk, scared Londoners and tourists alike finding safe refuge on the road, where drivers have come to a stunned standstill.
Greg can just about swear Sherlock is smiling in delight and pride at his madman and John's jaw is set like steel, hands steady as a surgeon's on the steering wheel. Oh, good grief...
.
I will see you at the Diogenes Club at your earliest convenience. MH
Dammit, Greg mouths as he rereads the text message he just got, with no number associated. Obviously Sherlock's meddling older brother, about to rip off the poor inspector's head for his baby brother's maddening undertakings.
Reluctantly, Greg looks around in the traffic chaos extending back for miles from the now closed off bridge, all of Sherlock's doing. He really doesn't want to be tasked with handling the younger Holmes. Feels like being set up for failure. Greg looks away to his parked car, trapped in the gridlocked traffic, and sighs. He feels himself being scrutinised by a thousand cctv cameras all being diverted towards him. Analysing, deducing, menacing.
Greg takes up a new direction in his walk, towards the inevitability of the Diogenes Club.
.
News of the rogue ambulance and presumption of a kidnapped dignitary spreads through the Yard, reaching even off-duty Yarders. Greg rubs bleary eyes with the heel of his hand, pocketing back his phone. Plenty of Yarders placing bets on the goings-on, no news from Sherlock (obviously!) nor John (hands too busy on the damned steering wheel).
DI Lestrade takes a deeper breath and steals himself a quick invigorating thought; if anyone can find out what those two are up to, it's him, just him. In a moment of delirium he wonders if Sherlock and John's silence is an obvious ruse to spike his curiosity and concern, an open invitation to join the game.
The game is on.
He thinks of Sherlock Holmes, the genius with a difficulty expressing himself through social conventions, and of John Watson, the enabler of said genius who is secretly as much of a nutter as his more widely known as off-his-rocker flatmate. He thinks of Mrs Hudson's tale of paramedic uniforms and stolen ambulances, a tale delivered to him by having the witness come to him. He remembers the needless detour on the ambulance's path so to cross the same street as Greg had parked his car. He thinks of those two's flair for the dramatic. And he safely concludes he's being baited.
No. He's being invited to join the mad duo.
Damn it.
He will join them. As soon as he finds them.
Greg turns off his phone. He doesn't want to run the risk of being traced. What he'll be doing soon will unlikely be even remotely legal.
Mycroft Holmes be damned. He'll have foreseen Greg's loyalty if he's half the mind reader his little brother is.
.
TBC
