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“You had one job,” John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he reached for the paper showing Sherlock’s bloodwork with his other hand. “One.”
“Yeah,” Greg Lestrade sighed, looking remarkably small for a large man. “”M sorry.”
“’Keep him out of trouble,’ I said. ‘Don’t let him overextend himself. He’s only been out of hospital two weeks,” John continued, building up a head of steam now. He could hear unhappy, incoherent sounds in the background, along with a lot of splashing.
“Yeah,” Greg said again, nodding. “Quiet and safe. I remember.” He looked studiously at his own shoes, while leaning against the kitchen counter.
“Well. Does that—” they both flinched at the sudden bleat of pain from the bathroom behind them, before John pointed vigourously in that direction —"meet that definition for you?” His voice was rising—needed to control that, or Sherlock would hear him.
Greg shook his head. “No,” he said. “But it’s not as bad as it seems. He’s not really hurt—” he was interrupted by what sounded suspiciously like a sob from the loo, and they both flinched again. “He’s just drugged, so he’s like a little kid,” he said helplessly, as the sounds of an upset Sherlock continued to resonate in the background.
John smiled. Clearly not a nice smile, judging by the older man’s instinctive step back. “And let’s talk about that, shall we? How, exactly, did he get drugged? Especially when he’s still taking a laundry list of other medications, which he, and you, both should know makes it dangerous to introduce something else without checking interactions?”
A frazzled Denny suddenly poked her head out the bathroom door. “He’s puking again now. So thank you for that, Lestrade,” she snarled, and closed the door with an angry snap.
“Christ,” Greg sighed, thrusting his hands distractedly through his hair. “It’s not all my fault, I swear! He’s a grown man!”
“A grown man with the survival instincts of a depressed lemming,” John snapped. “And you know what he’s like when he’s focused on a case—you’ve lived with him these past weeks, for God’s sake!”
Greg deflated. “Yeah,” he sighed again.
“So, walk me through it,” John said, grappling for patience. “How did he end up with enough benzodiazepine and MDMA in his system that you had to carry him inside at A&E, even though when they pumped his stomach it was almost empty? As well as covered in whatever the hell that goo was?”
Before he could answer, the bathroom door opened again and Denny poked her head out. “Come help me get him to bed,” she said. “He’s not likely to make it on his own.” There was a whine of incoherent protest behind her which they all ignored.
Both John and Greg moved forward to help, but at first it fell to John—Sherlock, still damp, pink and wrapped in an extra-large towel, launched himself forward and draped both arms tightly around John’s shoulders. “Johhhhhhn,” he said, a warble in his voice. “She pulled my hair. And I was sick.” He looked soulfully into John’s eyes, his pupils enormously round and black. He looked rather like an especially well-groomed raccoon.
John took Sherlock’s weight with a grunt, reaching to pat his back soothingly. “Yeah, I know,” John said. “We could hear. You’ll feel better after a kip, I promise. Can you walk, now?” Because that didn’t seem to be going particularly well. In the end, Greg came forward and gently disengaged one spidery arm, draping it across his own shoulders so they could maneuver to the bedroom.
In short order the detective was tucked into bed, Denny settling into the side chair with her needlepoint just in case. She glowered at Greg. “If he throws up again, you’re cleaning it up,” she said firmly.
“Fair enough,” Greg sighed.
They wandered back into the lounge and sat—John, rather cross and waiting for an answer, Greg weary and resigned to providing it.
It had happened like this: because John was required at his own house, tending to his wife and extremely new (and exceptional) baby, Greg had moved in with Sherlock temporarily to keep him on an even keel during this phase of his recuperation. Well. Theoretically, anyway. Greg and Mrs. Hudson managed meals, medication, and hospital visits (the necessity of having someone take charge having become clear after Sherlock had let a serious upper respiratory virus rampage unchecked for a week because he “didn’t want to bother anyone”)*. Denny was also at Baker Street frequently, so John had a pair of medical eyes to give him informed updates as required.
That approach had worked fine up to now—the first week out of hospital Sherlock had been too weak to do much more than complain, and Greg was a past master at ignoring that. But as time went by Sherlock had gained enough strength that he had begun a relentless campaign to return to The Work, on some basis.
Greg had resisted. And resisted. And resisted. But then had come the call: Donovan had a (non-violent, local, and interesting) case that she reluctantly thought Sherlock could help on. She’d called Greg to run it by him, and after thinking about it, he’d agreed to take Sherlock out to the relevant location that morning.
“It was perfectly safe, John,” Greg insisted. “All we had to do was walk around the plant with the manager and look for clues. Nobody but us, the manager and the security staff there, nothing explosive or poisonous, no danger at all, really.”
John raised a cynical eyebrow. “Which explains why I got a call that Sherlock was at A&E getting his stomach pumped, how?”
Greg flushed. “Well, yeah, that…I mean, it was an accident, nothing more. The whole thing started because a whistleblower had gone to the authorities about the plant, saying he knew the products were being intentionally adulterated somehow to sell more product. But he turned up dead before he could give any details. The officials pulled all the products off the market—yoghurt, mostly—and didn’t find anything suspicious, really. At least nothing poisonous or the like—I don’t know what all they tested for. But that didn’t make sense—if they were willing to kill to keep the secret, something had to be there.”
John nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. But I mean—if they wanted to sell more products, it wouldn’t likely be something really harmful, would it?”
“Yeah, that’s what Sherlock said,” Greg replied. “Well, he used more words, but still.” He grinned. “But he also said he couldn’t rule out random stupidity. So we started searching the plant. Came upon this back room with a huge tank that wasn’t connected to the packaging line, and asked the manager about it. He pointed us up on this catwalk that ran along the top, where we could check it out for ourselves—said it was being stored for future use, but he didn’t really know anything about it—that was Research and Development’s turf, apparently.”
“And what was it?” John asked. “Some kind of additive?”
Greg shook his head. “Naw, and that’s the funny part—it was honey. Really top-quality honey, too, according to Sherlock.” He saw John’s face and grimaced. “No, of course I didn’t let him taste it. Not intentionally, anyway.”
John blinked. “Um…’not intentionally’?”
Greg sighed. “Yeah, well. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this was likely what the whistleblower was talking about. So Sherlock said we needed a sample—a pretty good-sized one, too, since he wanted to run a number of tests. I looked around and saw some glass containers on the counter below the tank, and asked the manager to toss one up. And he did, but he didn’t toss it to me—he chucked it at Sherlock, who of course raised his right arm to grab it—”
“Which hurt,” John interjected.
“—which hurt. A lot, apparently. And before I could do anything Sherlock slapped his arm to his side, doubled over—and fell in the sodding tank,” Greg continued. “Head-first, as it happened, and he swallowed a good mouthful in the process. The fact the stuff is so thick was good and bad—he didn’t fully sink, and was able to turn right-side up on his own. But it was too thick to really ‘swim’ in, and it took us a couple of tries to haul him out, including one that had him slipping back under again, so he swallowed even more.”
“Did you call for help? Or 999?” John asked.
“Well, no,” Greg said, “not at first. I mean, he wasn’t hurt other than stretching his incisions a bit, and swallowing what we thought was honey, which he likes. He was cross about his clothes, but otherwise OK. So I got the sample and put it in my coat pocket, and we started back through the plant. But about halfway back he suddenly sat down in the middle of the floor, so quick I almost stepped on him. Said he felt ‘odd’. But he didn’t seem especially concerned about it, I have to say.”
John nodded. “That’ll be the MDMA. Calm and trusting, I’d assume.”
“Yeah, I’d say,” Greg grinned. “And once it really hit, he sort of de-aged by, oh, thirty years or so. Don’t tell him I said so, but he asked to hold my hand on the walk back to the car.” He sobered a bit. “But that didn’t stop him from solving the case, by the way—well, mostly anyway, though he got kinda incoherent explaining the last bits. That’s when I realized I needed to take him somewhere to get checked out, rather than just calling you.”
“Solved it? How?” John asked.
“Not sure—maybe the drugs knocked something temporarily loose in his brain, who knows?” Greg replied. “So, you remember the whistleblower said they were planning on adulterating the product with something that would lead to people buying more.” John nodded. “Well, in a strange, criminal kind of way, one thing that would lead to folks doing that would be to addict them to it. And that’s what the honey was for.”
John made a confused, questioning sound.
“No, see, I know it sounds mad,” Greg said. “But I confirmed lots of this with Donovan while I was waiting at A&E. Sherlock said that someone had put large amounts of drugs—something mildly addictive, presumably, we didn’t know what at the time—in the honey. The honey would be added to the products—they were rolling out a new honey-based line anyway, so it would already be getting some marketing attention. And, so the theory went, once people were eating it on the regular, they’d want more. Lots more, since they’d basically be consuming a Xanax smoothie. They wouldn’t have any idea, they’d just know they felt better when they ate it, and felt off when they didn’t.”
“That’s…awful. But they were probably not wrong,” John said slowly.
Greg grimaced. “Yeah. Come to find out, the company owner’s nephew—also a part-owner--works in R&D, and happens to be a fairly heavy recreational drug user. Has contacts with some movers and shakers on the dealer side, and he decided to go into business with them on a larger scale, so to speak. Not sure yet who killed the whistleblower—my money’s on the dealers, but it could go either way. My lot are on their way to pick up the nephew now. So it’s all fine: we stopped an operation that could have potentially harmed a lot of people, Sherlock figured it out before it really got started, and he’ll be OK once he sleeps it off. I call that a good day overall.”
They settled in the lounge for a bit, chatting quietly about nothing in particular. After an hour or so Mrs. Hudson came up and asked for John’s help. “I put together a quick dinner—no reason for you two to go hungry, since I was cooking for Denny and Sherlock anyway. There’s plenty to go around. You can come get the dinner tray while I finish up baking the pudding.”
Dinner was delightful, as always—a rich, flavourful beef stew, salad, and stewed apples. Sherlock, of course, wasn’t awake yet, so Mrs. H. put his plate in the oven. Denny, too, decided to wait— “I don’t need it yet, and I might as well eat with him. He eats more when he has company.”
Dessert was delicious—an apple tart, with a wonderful rosemary-scented syrup that was poured generously over the top. John and Greg both had seconds, and John decided he needed to get the recipe for Mary. “What is this, anyway?” he asked. “I know there are apples, but I’m not sure what else.”
“Oh, it’s just a tart,” Mrs. H said, her cheeks a little pink from the praise. “It’s the syrup that makes the difference. You steep rosemary, clove and a couple of other things in honey for an hour, then boil it on the stove briefly to intensify the flavour.” She smiled towards the closed bedroom door. “You have Sherlock to thank for that, actually—I was planning to make something else, but when I saw the lovely big jar of honey he left on the table downstairs I couldn’t resist.”
John and Greg froze as one. John finally moved, looking to the policeman. “Greg.” He really didn’t need to say more.
“Yeah?” Greg said feebly.
“Where did you leave the sample?” John said, needing to make sure.
Greg sighed and gave up. “Just where you’re thinking,” he said, and picked up his phone to call Donovan.
And John, picking up his own to call his long-suffering wife to let her know he wouldn’t be home till morning, looked back at Greg. “One. Job.” he mouthed sotto voce while the phone rang. “One.”