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There’s a file locked away in a secure box in Greg Lestrade’s flat. He knows that the contents are dangerous, some would say a matter of National Security. As a senior police officer, he’s aware that taking evidence home is a serious breach of protocol, but frankly it’s worth the risk. He’s held onto this for years and he’s never dared to bring it out of the flat before, but now he does. He’s seen John Watson’s devastation, and this could be something that might just bring the grieving doctor some respite.
Greg has been keeping a quiet eye on John ever since Sherlock stepped off the roof of St Barts. They’d been well on the way to becoming true friends before that day, forging a relationship around the human whirlwind that is… was… Sherlock Holmes.
The events leading up to the Reichenbach tragedy almost broke that friendship, but John was a soldier and understands duty. After the furore had died down a little, Greg had turned up at 221B with a bottle of whisky and a bellyful of guilt. After several glasses, John had accepted Greg’s broken apology, seeming to understand that the policeman had had no choice but to bring Sherlock in for questioning. Besides, John’s bile had been directed at another target – Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft. Over a few more glasses, John spilled the whole sorry tale of Moriarty, the code and Mycroft’s betrayal.
Everyone who has spent any significant time in Sherlock’s company has been subjected to Mycroft Holmes as well. Greg has always found it rather amusing just how much the elder Holmes clucked round his younger sibling. He’s seen the umbrella-bearing, rather pompous figure at crime scenes, police stations, hospitals and on one memorable occasion (during a raid) in a brothel. Usually the Holmes brothers could be found by the sound of bickering, followed by one of Sherlock’s melodramatic tantrums before he storms off, leaving Mycroft scowling after him. However Lestrade has also seen Sherlock manhandled into a waiting vehicle in a way that belies the image of a desk-bound civil servant. He’s also seen the cars escalate from a bog standard Ford Mondeo driven by Mycroft himself, to sleek new top of the line Jaguars with chauffeur.
Lestrade finds it hard to reconcile John’s tale with the evidence he’s seen of the lengths that Mycroft would go in his role as over-protective brother. Mycroft may have insulted, bossed around and argued with Sherlock constantly, but his actions have always spoken of someone who cared deeply.
Greg had been ‘interviewed’, soon after first meeting Holmes junior in a meth lab years earlier. Sherlock had been a skinny, strung-out PhD student who’d been supporting his own habit by synthesising drugs for his supplier. Greg had been leading the bust, which had been part of an inquiry into a series of suspected gang-related killings. His team had hauled the kid in for questioning. He’d got as far as interviewing Sherlock, where he had been gobsmacked as the boy first dissected his life and then proceeded to deduce the last two killings from the photos laid in front of him. The interview had been terminated when a man dressed like an expensive lawyer had turned up, posted bail and frog-marched the protesting Sherlock out to the car park.
Lestrade wasn’t stupid; he’d noted what the kid had said and straightaway gone looking for the evidence. To his surprise, the forensics backed up what Sherlock had said and Greg had wanted to find out more. He’d started to make enquiries, when he’d been intercepted by the bail-posting ‘lawyer’ in his own home. The man had warned him off Sherlock with an aplomb that belied his age (no more than thirty by Greg’s estimate) and made unsubtle threats about Greg’s career prospects. Lestrade was senior enough to have confidence and still young enough to think himself invincible; so he’d advised the man that despite his interference, Sherlock Holmes would be helping the police with their enquiries, but that ‘helping’ was not a euphemism. The man had looked startled, but then pleased and had backed off, leaving Lestrade ruffled but otherwise intact. That’s the story he’s always told of the first time he met Mycroft Holmes.
In the here-and-now, John lets him into Baker Street and of course goes to make tea. When he returns, mugs in hand he looks quizzically at the manila file Greg holds out to him in exchange.
“You want to take a look at this. Nostalgia”
John scans the front of the file. First time offender: drunk and disorderly, possession of Class-A drugs. He sighs sadly. The frankly dreadful black-and-white photo of a young man stapled to the front of the file has an all-too-familiar sulk, managing to convey absolute insolence and superiority. Blazingly intelligent pale eyes glare at the photographer from under a tousled mass of curls over a name board reading Holmes...
Greg grins when he sees John realise.
John stops. Blinks.
“Bloody hell.”
Greg sips his tea while John re-reads the page, stares at the photo a few seconds, then tears open the file and barks a sharp laugh as he sees the much larger colour print of the mugshot. There’s no mistaking identity from this one, because Sherlock Holmes didn’t have auburn hair, gray-blue eyes or freckles, although he had inherited his older brother’s teenage expression perfectly.
“How in buggeration did you manage to get hold of this, Greg? I would have thought that all evidence would have been erased a long time ago, given what he does.”
John drops next to Lestrade on the elderly sofa as the detective points to one of the signatures at the bottom of a statement. “I was there, wasn’t I?” Indeed, G.Lestrade is scrawled as arresting officer next to the looping, elegant cursive ‘Mycroft Holmes’ where the young offender had signed on the dotted line.
“I was doing my time on the beat after graduating from Hendon. He was pretty memorable, it has to be said. Posh ginger prat, off his head on a cocktail of E and vodka in a nightclub in Camden. Picked a fight with a bloke who accused him of being overfamiliar with his girlfriend. Got tossed out on his arse, where me and my old sergeant rescued him after he tried to get cuddly with the bouncer too. He spent most of the ride to the station telling us he loved us and trying to snuggle with me.”
John can’t help it and sniggers at the image.
“The mugshot was after he’d suffered an hour-long lecture on the evils of drugs, while I tried desperately not to laugh in the background as the second interviewing officer. Knowing him now, he must have been aware of me, but god it was so funny watching him go from all sweet and cuddly to full-on ‘You’re not the boss of me!’ mode. He could glare for England even then. ‘Mikey’ was a mouthy little bugger to my Guv’nor, so the old sod decided to throw the book at him and charge him.”
John is flicking through the statements and the other photos. It’s almost impossible to reconcile the neat and dapper Mycroft Holmes, British Government, with the scruffy sullen delinquent in a blood-stained ‘Frankie Says…’ t-shirt, jeans and torn leather jacket.
“The funniest part was when he woke up after a night in the cells with a god-awful hangover. It’s not often you see someone an actual shade of green. That was when he realised what he’d done the night before and begged us not to tell his Mum and Dad or his Headmaster. He'd bunked off from Harrow with a friend. Lucky for him he was just eighteen, so we took pity, charged him, didn’t tattle and sent him packing after several mugs of tea”
Greg pauses to drink his own cup of tea now, eyes back in the past and a small grin on his face.
“I didn’t recognise him at first, but he did the whole Bond villain thing when I first met Sherlock about a decade later and I thought he looked familiar. Took me a bit to remember, but two such ridiculous names… had to be a connection. Nothing showed up on the PNC though, which was odd. I went back to Camden Station and managed to snag the hard copy by chatting up the records officer. I thought that this would be useful leverage one day, after how high-handedly he treated me so I ‘borrowed’ it and well…”
John huffs in amusement as he reads the file. Not just a criminal, but a ridiculous one too. He can’t help but imagine Mycroft cringing in sheer embarrassment.
“Luckily for me, I don’t think Big Brother remembers the lowly constable who patted him on the back while he was throwing his guts up in a north London gutter in 1987.” Greg continues cheerfully. “However, if I do disappear you now know where to start looking for my remains.”
Finally, John gives in and breaks down in laughter. The two men giggle like schoolboys over the whole episode.
After the chuckles die down, John asks quietly “Do you think Sherlock knew?”
Lestrade shakes his head, still smiling. “I doubt it. I think Mikey has been hiding this one for decades. Can you imagine Sherlock not throwing in his face the fact that Mycroft’s the one with the actual drugs conviction?”
John smiles fondly. Greg cheers internally. Mission accomplished.
The file will go back in the box. Just in case…