Chapter Text
The mosquitos and midges weren't bothering him.
He sat on the bank of the river, upright against a tree, hat slouched low over his forehead and head tilted lazily to one side. There was a cigarette tucked behind his right ear, and another balanced between his chin and shoulder. A white cotton shirt, tucked in with due regard for decorum, but he wore no jacket or tie. His black trousers, faded grey and shiny at the knees, were too big for him and puddled at his knees. Nondescript black leather shoes, scuffed on the sides. No wallet or keys. Ginger hair curling around his elfin ears and blue eyes that gazed across the river. But he saw nothing, because he was dead.
This was the way the Somerton Man was discovered, at nine in the morning on what was already shaping up to be the hottest July day in living memory.
The weather was no less stifling in London that morning. John hadn't spent three years in Afghanistan for nothing and was indifferent to the heat, but Harry, who had come around because her own house didn't have a ceiling fan, was sprawled out miserably on the floorboards. Half of her conversation was complaining to her brother about the heat, and the other half was more politely directed at Molly, who was on a nearby sofa with her bare feet up on a cushion and her laptop on her knees.
"Can't you turn up the fan, John?" Harry asked plaintively.
"Nope," John called back from the kitchen, where he was cleaning up after a late breakfast. "It doesn't go any higher than that, and if it did, it would probably crash down and kill someone."
"Is there ice in the fridge? I'd give my non-existent firstborn child for cold water."
"Hang on, I'll bring it in. Water, Molly?"
"Mmm," was the absent response.
It was only day three of Molly's maternity leave, and already things were not boding well for the six months she'd intended to take off. She had worked long weeks—fifty and sometimes sixty hours—since her university days. Even on her honeymoon she'd called the lab to check up on her suspended projects and make sure her temporary replacement wasn't rearranging everything in her absence. Six months off was a concept she was having trouble getting her head around. She'd started time on the computer that morning organising spreadsheets: some pointless filing, so far as John understood it, but for all he knew she was running Barts single-handedly via Wifi. As he leaned over the back of the sofa to pass her the glass of water, he saw that she'd moved on to a webpage of patronising pastel colours, decorated with teddy bears and building blocks.
"Daniel," she said.
Harry lifted her head. "Before I comment, is that a family name or otherwise of sentimental value to you?"
"No."
"Then I hate it. The only Daniel I've ever known was a complete prick."
John silently agreed with her. Daniel Hurst from school had been a complete prick, and he wasn't keen on his firstborn sharing a name with the kid whose hobbies included beating up girls—or trying to, as Harry regularly came off best when they scrapped. Harry wasn't familiar with Dan Tate, an old army 'friend' of John's; but on reflection, Dan Tate was a bit of a prick too. If Molly had her heart set on the name he was going to gently try to steer her away from it, which was a complete violation of their agreement: if the baby was a girl, he would choose her names, as long as neither were Harriet or Clara; if it was a boy, Molly would choose his names, so long as neither were John or Hamish, even as a middle name. John had considered declaring Sherlock off limits as well, except that it seemed very unlikely Molly would choose it. She and Sherlock had been awkward with one another since John had come home from the hospital in February, though he still had no idea how deep that fissure went or how to fix it.
"Caleb?" Molly tried again.
"Depends," Harry said.
"On what?"
"On whether you want him to grow up to be a cricket player. If not, I'd give that one a miss. Besides, either you two know something I don't or you haven't even thought of girl's names."
Both John and Molly had just about given up trying to convince Harry that the baby's sex was still a genuine mystery to them. John was about to explain it again when the front door clinked and then opened with a heavy thud.
"Hi," he said without even turning around. Nobody else in the world but Sherlock Holmes made that kind of dramatic entrance when he was in a mood. As he entered the kitchen, though, John did a double-take. "For God's sake," he said, "are you trying to give yourself heat stroke?"
Sherlock, dressed in his usual black suit and silk shirt, ignored this. He went to the sink, filled a glass of water, and then dumped the contents over his hair, shaking it out like a terrier. "I'm fine," he announced.
John, with a sigh, went to the laundry for the mop. "Just heard on the radio that it's hit thirty already," he said over his shoulder. "How's Mrs. Hudson coping in this?"
"Library."
"Should have gone with her."
Sherlock ignored the implications of John's remark. "I did, yesterday. Half the children in London were there, shrieking and getting their grubby hands all over everything."
"So I take it that's a 'no' on the regular babysitting job on offer, then. What about Smudge?"
"Smudge is the cat, John."
"Not what I asked."
Sherlock, ignoring this, filled the glass from the tap again and made his way into the sitting room, stopping in the doorway.
"Hi, Sherlock," Molly said. She was still clicking away at the laptop.
"Molly," he said, obviously doing his best to sound pleasant. "You're looking very…"
He stopped. John, who had just come in and was trying not to trip over his sister on the way over to his armchair, gave him a warning glance. Sitting down, he could practically see Sherlock mentally conjuring up assorted adjectives and then striking them out, one by one.
"You're looking well," he finally said with effort.
"Thanks," was the listless response. "I am."
This had been a new progression over the past few weeks: Molly and Sherlock could now sit in the sitting room together and have an awkward-but-civilised conversation. This embarrassing courtesy over, Sherlock turned his attention to Harry instead.
"Harriet." He knew it grated on Harry's nerves to be addressed by her real name. She was still on the floor, like one of the cats. Lazily, she rolled over and looked up at him.
"Sherlock," she said. "We meet again. You look ridiculous. Who the hell wears a jacket on a day like this?"
Lestrade, who had driven to work that morning and was now basking in the air conditioning in his office, was already getting tired of hearing variations on: Sorry I'm going to be late, sir. Tube's broken down. The bus was full, had to wait for the next one...
Bloody Tube. Whose idea was it, anyway, to use carriages made in Germany, ones that broke down like that under the stress of a bit of heat? Still, it could be worse. He'd just got word that another train was stuck on the tracks near Waterloo, and the transit authorities had deemed it wasn't safe to let anyone on or off. It was peak-hour and crowded, and no engine also meant no air conditioning. Murtagh and Barber were both stuck on that train, and Thompson had called in sick, which pretty much guaranteed that somebody, somewhere, was about to be found horribly dead.
Jacob Dyer had been very much on time that morning, however. On time and annoyingly keen to work. He'd reported for duty and taken to the overnight incident reports with a smile on his face, which Lestrade didn't trust.
The terrible thing about it was this: Jake was a nice kid who made Hayley happy and treated her well. He hadn't even flinched on Hayley's suggestion several weeks before that they 'come clean' together about what was going on. It had been the first time Lestrade had realised one of his underlings was afraid of him, and he'd hated it.
"Rough morning, sir," Jake said now with a wry little grin. "Just heard from Barber. They think they're going to be at least another hour of it."
"Lucky them."
"Wouldn't say that, sir. I'd much rather be here."
"Jake." Lestrade dropped formalities. "Look, I appreciate the effort you made to get in here and do your job when just about everyone else has called in late or isn't coming in at all. But you don't need to overdo it."
"I'm really not, sir."
Dyer had a straight face, but Lestrade, glancing up, saw it wasn't going to be straight for long. "Okay," he said, "you're dying to tell me. What's happened?"
"Some poor old woman isn't doing so well on the train… crowd, heat, you know. Threw up on Barber. They think she's okay, but I'd prefer a mountain of paperwork over being vomited on any day."
"You and me both." Lestrade stopped himself before he said what he would have said to anyone else in Jake's position: Just you wait until you have kids. They'll spew on you at least once. "You still don't have to overdo it, though," he said instead.
There was a short silence, and he was about to say more, when the phone on his desk rang. Groaning, he reached over to answer it. Great. This was it. The wonderful murder they were too understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with. "Dyer, I swear I'll sell my firstborn child if it'll guarantee this phone call isn't going to result in some major awful investigation," he said, fingers resting on the handset.
"I'd much prefer it if you didn't do that, sir."
"You would, wouldn't you." Lestrade sighed and picked up the receiver. "Lestrade."
"Sherlock Holmes."
John, who'd finally had a chance to pick up the morning paper, resisted the urge to roll his eyes. There'd been a time when he thought Sherlock's habit of answering his phone with his bizarre name was... kind of cool, like something out of a crime procedural. By now, though, he was over the novelty and was instead keeping a running tally of how often Sherlock picked up with his name and how often with 'hello'. The caller was probably Greg—Sherlock liked to answer the phone with 'Sherlock Holmes' when he suspected he was being summoned. John gave half his attention to the newspaper on his lap, while keeping an ear out as Sherlock paced the room.
Lestrade had found a body. Or at least, someone had.
"Where...? Where's that?"
And it had been found in some godawful little provincial outpost, if Mr. Googlemaps didn't even know where it was.
"Bit outside your jurisdiction, isn't it? What's so unusual about this one?" Sherlock turned and clicked his fingers, and John picked up a pen from the coffee table and threw it to him. "Okay," he said down the line, then uncapped the pen with his teeth and spat the cap onto the floor. "Say that again. Case sensitive, gaps, everything."
"Sherlock, what the hell—!"
But it was too late to stop him. John put his head in his hands. "Oh my God," he muttered. "You did that. You really did that."
Sherlock had written at least one note on the wall at Baker Street, not long after John had moved in there. Obviously a habit he hadn't grown out of. He'd by now wandered out to the kitchen, still talking. With a sigh, John got up to see what was so urgent that it just had to be written on his sitting room wall.
Tamam Shud
WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB