Chapter Text
As retirement parties went it was ok; there was plenty of booze, food and the music wasn’t so bad. The back room of the Dirty Duck was suitably crowded, ready to give the man a good send off, so why was he feeling so out of sorts?
Perhaps it was all a bit too close to home, Greg thought as he stared gloomily into his Bacardi and Coke. He and Bradstreet had started at the Met on the same day, that was thirty years ago. He was two years younger than Greg but somehow today was his last day in the force. How had that happened? Perhaps having woken up to the fact he was never going to make Chief Inspector, let alone Superintendent, Bradstreet had decided to cut his losses and get out while he was young enough to start again. Who would blame him? Taking his lovely wife, and even lovelier pension and sailing off into the sunset, or rather to the Cotswolds where he was intending to run a post office. His kids had turned out well too, one son in the force and another with his own business somewhere in Gloucestershire, and a grandkid on the way as well by the looks of the daughter-in-law. Yes, life had been kind to Bradstreet.
Greg drained his drink and went up to the bar for a refill.
Not that he was bitter, it wasn’t in his nature, but he couldn’t help comparing what he had to show for his thirty-year stretch. An ex-wife who had given him the run around for twenty years before finally ending the farce by going off with Amy’s PE teacher. What a fucking cliché!
The kids were a disappointment too; Amy was definitely following in her mother’s footsteps and Tom, with his Guy Fawkes mask and his anti-establishment protests, had no time for his old man except when he needed money.
He downed half his drink while still at the bar and ordered another one while he glanced around the room. Goodness, Sherlock had turned up! He usually avoided these sort of gatherings like the plague, but there he was holding court with a few of the rookie officers, gesticulating wildly and swaying ever so slightly. Been on the babycham again, such a lightweight.
Lestrade looked round again, if Sherlock was here then… yes there was John, at the other end of the bar talking to Dimmock. He waved and caught the doctor’s eye; Greg took his drinks back to his booth and was gratified to see John take his leave of Dimmock and make his way over to him. At least there was one poor sod who was even more out of place here than he was.
They caught up with a bit of news, Greg asked how Sherlock had successfully wrapped up a triple murder for Hopkins in a day and a half, while John showed off the latest couple of snaps of Rosie on his phone.
“What's wrong Greg?” John placed his pint down on the table and slipped off his jacket making himself comfortable, “you look like you lost a tenner and found tuppence.”
Greg shrugged, “Do you ever wonder what it is all about?”
“All what?”
“Life.”
“Don’t you start, I’ve just had Dimmock going on the same thing. What is it about a colleague’s retirement that brings on an existential crisis in the metropolitan police officer?”
“Only when the ones that have made a success of it go.”
“Wouldn’t have exactly called Bradstreet successful, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he never rose through the ranks.” John looked over to where the guest of honour was talking to the Assistant Chief Constable. “But likeable enough, and prepared to work with his lordship which was always a bonus.”
“I meant the ones that actually managed to have a life outside the force and the guts to get on with it while they still can.”
John took a large draught of his beer and looked thoughtful. “Can’t see you as anything other than a copper to be honest.”
“True John, I’m stuck in this rut until my knees give out and I end up working as a security guard somewhere, spending my evenings watching CCTV until I peg out one night and I’m not missed for a fortnight.”
“Rubbish we’d miss you after a week… but you know Greg, if you really feel like that go for it, grab it with both hands; you’re still young enough to take the plunge, do something or meet someone new if that’s what you want.”
“Meet someone and take them back to my palatial bedsit in Battersea,” Greg raised a drunken eyebrow, “really?”
John demurred but Greg was on a roll. “With my track record I might as well pick some woman at random, give her a house and half my pension and spare myself decades of aggravation.”
John indicated Greg’s glass. “That’s the drink talking, spirits always make me maudlin.”
“Nah, don’t you ever feel like you’re living the wrong life, like you got off the bus at the wrong stop and you’ve been lost ever since?”
“Don’t I just,” John briefly touched his shoulder, “ex-army doctor, widower and full-time nursemaid to a mad detective… they never gave me that option in careers.”
Greg briefly sobered up and started to apologise but John put his hand out to stop him.
“Sorry Greg… hang on a minute… Sherlock!” Sherlock’s behaviour at social events was always unpredictable. From the other side of the room came the sound of raised voices, there seemed to be an altercation brewing. John sighed.
“Time for Cinderella to go home from the ball, I’m going to put him in a taxi before things get nasty, watch my coat, be back in jiffy.”
“Need a hand?”
“No… and to be honest mate, state you’re in, I don’t think you’d be much help if I did.”
Greg watched as John corralled the detective, arms still flailing towards the exit.
Greg wandered back up to the bar and ordered another double and a pint for John, swaying a little himself as he did so. He was necking these pretty fast, not sure why he’d gone for spirits tonight instead of his usual beer. Perhaps it was Bradstreet’s retirement that was making him mourn his lost youth.
Bacardi and coke, it took him straight back to his early twenties, trying to summon up the courage to pull some dish on the dance floor in Heaven, already in the Force, uniform then, and as deeply confused and closeted as anyone could be. After a couple of failed efforts, he’d chucked exploring that side of his sexuality for a conventional life of heterosexual bliss and look where that had got him.
He sat down again, just as John’s coat buzzed. He ignored it until it buzzed again. Greg considered for a moment; he wouldn’t normally bother with someone else’s phone but then it might be Mrs H who was dutifully babysitting Rosie this evening.
He ferreted the phone out of John’s pocket, it wasn’t locked, John never bothered with passwords, Sherlock deduced them anyway.
“Wait outside, car with you in 12. MH”
Of course, Big Brother would know that Sherlock was in this pub, wasted and in need of an escort home. Perhaps he had better reply, message received and understood, but the letters on the keyboard swam a little as he tried to text, and he seemed to have too many thumbs, so he gave up and pressed dial.
It went straight to voicemail.
Greg rang off without leaving a message, bloody Mycroft Holmes. Greg paused and reflected on his lifelong weakness for a certain kind of buttoned up posh boy as epitomised by Mycroft Holmes. Bollocks, what had got into him this evening? It couldn’t just be that another of his contemporaries was retiring that left him feeling that life was passing him by.
People thought that Mycroft Holmes had no heart, the Iceman that woman had called him, he’d seen it in a report. But they didn’t know the Mycroft Holmes that Greg knew, or at least they hadn’t seen what he’d seen, that dreadful night after the mad sister had gone on the rampage. Who had they called for then? Heh? Who had been there to sort out the mess?
Boy she was the scary one, made Mycroft look like a kitten… he paused and savoured the image, a little ginger kitten, he would sit him on his lap and make him purr…
Any road, where was he? That was it, saw another side of Mycroft Holmes that night, saw the soft underbelly. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again and that wasn’t all he wouldn’t mind seeing.
What had John said? Grab it with both hands, well that was just what he was going to do. Totally reckless and fuelled by alcohol he picked up the phone and pressed redial.
Straight to voicemail… again.
“Good evening Mr...” He slurred, stopped and tried again “Good hello Myc… Mikey, Mikey, Mike. You know who this is. It’s me, you can probably see me on the camera, tell me where it is and I’ll wave.” Greg ineffectually waved at the corner of the room, a couple of officers from special branch waved back.
“As I was saying,” Greg paused again, what had he been saying? “As I was saying, he told me to grab it with both hands, and so I am going to… grab it that is.”
Greg stopped again, taking a moment to visualise exactly what it was he intended to grab.
“Please end your call and hang up.”
No, No, No, he hadn’t finished.
Greg quickly pressed redial again, impatiently arguing with the voicemail messaging service, he politely told the woman where to go.
“Listen, it was Sherlock who told me to look after you… I’d look after you all right, you could sit on my lap and purr, Mr Ginger Kitty, I’d look after you, treat you nice and give you a good seeing to just what you need,” Greg smiled to himself. “Fancy you rotten… always have, those legs, blimey, I’d make you walk differently in the morning.”
Satisfied, Greg rang off and put the phone back down on John’s seat. He saw off his drink and half of John’s pint for good measure, then decide he needed a slash. Only there seemed to be a problem with his legs, or maybe it was the table legs because the next thing he knew he was on the floor staring at them. He closed his eyes to make them go away.
When he opened his eyes again, Donovan and her twin sister were peering over him. Funny, never knew that she was a twin. Fancy working with someone all these years and not knowing something like that? Greg was about to say something when the sister disappeared to be replaced by a short ex-army doctor with a grim expression.
“Not another one. Here you two help me get him up.”
The two officers who had had to move sharply out of they way when Greg hit the decks were quick to obey the command.
“Sherlock’s in the car,” Greg heard John explain to Sally “I only came back to get my coat. I think he’d better come back to Baker Street with us.”
Sally seemed to approve of this decision, but Greg had more urgent things on his mind.
“Need a piss.”
“Ok, we’ll go to Baker Street via the gents. Night Sally, I think someone’s going to be feeling rather embarrassed in the morning.”