Chapter Text
Greg had seen plenty of politicians sauntering into the station, and he knew as well as any other officer what to do with them: deter and delay while alerting the police captain. So when the bulbous man in a fitted suit and coat approached reception, he was already radioing Tommy to give Davies a warning when the politician beamed at reception and said he already saw who he needed to talk to.
He was just latching his radio back onto his hip when the man turned with cold, calculating eyes and gave Greg a predatory smile.
Greg had been so young then, so eager to prove himself.
He’d walked right into the trap.
“DI Lestrade,” the man said warmly, extended his arm like an angler fish dangling a light. “Mycroft Holmes. A private word, if you don’t mind.”
There were very few reasons why Mr. Holmes would recognize Greg or know his recently bestowed rank. “I can’t comment on any active cases,” Greg warned.
“Of course, very understandable,” Mr. Holmes said dismissively, and he swept past Greg with the insufferable air of a man accustomed to getting his way. Greg rushed after him and ushered him into his office, then swept his most recent case files into the top drawer with a twinge of regret. He’d have to re-sort those later.
“Alright, Mr. Holmes,” Greg said. “What can I do for you today?” His question was punctuated by a resonating creak from the chair he’d inherited from his predecessor.
“Wrong,” Mr. Holmes said. He leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh and rapped on Greg’s desk with the end of his umbrella. “The question is, what can I do for you today?”
God, this was why all the officers hated politicians. They always came in acting like they wanted to support the department, and then it was pushing for heavier responses to crime while shorting the budget.
“Well,” Greg said. “That sounds like a question you’ll have to answer, sir.”
Mr. Holmes laughed as though Greg had made a particularly good joke. He had a proper belly laugh, but even that came off as weirdly shallow. Greg waited, growing increasingly tense, as Mr. Holmes regathered himself.
“I’ll give you a choice,” Mr. Holmes said. “The identity of the Prescott murderer, or the rat who helped Stevie Blevins get a mistrial?”
Greg leaned forward in his chair with another agonising creak. “Mr. Holmes, if you have any of that information and choose to withhold it–”
“Oh, it’s not me,” Mr. Holmes said, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s the potential consultant you’ve got locked up.”
Greg hummed and did his best to maintain his composure. By the way Mr. Holmes was smirking at him, he was certain his irritation and desire to arrest the man were coming through strong. When he was sure he could keep his voice level, he gave Mr. Holmes a gritty smile and asked, “Is this an associate of yours, Mr. Holmes?”
“No, dear lord, no,” Mr. Holmes said with another unnerving laugh. “No, certainly not. It’s my brother.”
Greg did a quick mental review of the crooks in lock-up. He didn’t recall any Holmeses. “And who’s that?”
“The man in cell six,” Mr. Holmes said, absolutely nonchalant about revealing his insider knowledge. “Dark hair, six foot tall and twitchy with withdrawal. You have him on record as Alexander Karr. His actual name, however, is Sherlock Holmes.”
He said it grandly, as though he expected a fecking theme song and a title sequence to spill in after it. Greg dug through his desk drawer for a pen and notepad and made sure to keep his eyeroll out of sight. “He can certainly get a plea deal with that information.”
“He won’t be getting a plea deal,” Mr. Holmes said sharply, and Greg looked up in alarm with a hand flying to the torch on his belt. The man’s energy had shifted abruptly from the promised danger of a coiling snake to the certain bite of a charging shark. Just as quickly as his mood had shifted, it vanished. “He’ll give the information for a job interview.”
“I don’t have hiring capabilities,” Greg said. He was running mostly on autopilot, more unnerved by Mr. Holmes’ rapid mood switch than the brute energy he’d exuded. “I can offer him a plea deal, and that’s all.”
“You’re going to offer him three cold cases,” Mr. Holmes said. “And he’s going to solve one within ten minutes, and you’re going to hire him.”
Greg’s jaw was clenched, which his dentist had told him he really couldn’t afford to be doing unless he fancied getting a full back row of implants by the time he was thirty-five. He worked his jaw loose. “Somehow, I still don’t have the authority to hire him. And if he’s locked up, he certainly doesn’t have clearance to look at any case files, active or not.”
“I won’t insult you by offering you money,” Mr. Holmes said. “And I would prefer not to pull rank on you. Thank you, by the way, for letting Chris know I’m in. So instead, detective, I’ll ask you this: what matters more to you, saving lives and catching repeat offenders, or toeing regulation?”
God, Greg hated politicians.
“I’ll await the order from my superiors, thanks,” Greg said, and a tremendously satisfying flicker of surprise flashed across Mr. Holmes’ face.
“Certainly,” Mr. Holmes said.
He stood up and saw himself out, and Greg thought that was the end of it.
Or, at least, he did until he found himself standing in front of cell 6.
The man inside was clearly mad. He was gesturing and talking to thin air with shaky hands and a voice that kept climbing towards a yell before dropping back to incomprehensible whisperes.
“Sherlock?” Greg asked.
The inmate stiffened, then spun around. “So Mycroft has gotten his little hooks into you,” he sneered.
“Not if I can help it,” Greg said.
Sherlock scoffed. “What does he want?”
Greg snorted. “He asked me to offer you a job.”
“Oh, he asked, did he?”
“Not in so many words,” Greg said. “He did mention you might have some things worth talking about.”
“Did he?” Sherlock looked Greg up and down, and Greg took a step back. Sherlock gave an immense groan, and when he started talking again, his words landed like artillery. “Working the ferry case, of course, but not accounting for corporate greed– police never do, do they, idiots, the lot of them– with the deterioration of sea brine, yes, it was an accident, but there was still a clear perpetrator and victim, she didn’t stand a chance once she hit the water, not with the wedding dress, and the person who pranked her– you’ll be wanting to talk to the wedding photographer again. They’ll have deleted the relevant evidence, undoubtedly, but you’ll be able to see who else was present, who else was taking sunset photos, and who else has documentation of her death. There, it’s solved, now you can clear out and leave me in peace.”
“...what?” Greg said.
“The photographer, detective, talk to the photographer. Shall I spell it out for you? Watch out, it’s tricky, this one, it starts with a Grecian p-h- making a fff sound–”
“No need to be a bastard about it,” Greg said. “How do you know about that case?”
“Oh, the case that’s in the newspapers and all over the radio?” Sherlock drawled. “How ever did I hear about it?”
Greg gave a passing thought as to how Mycroft could have snapped a picture of the case file before Greg had shoved it in a drawer, and then, he supposed, bribe security to tell Sherlock what case he was working on. It sounded preposterous, but was no less preposterous than Sherlock’s spiel.
“--the problem, you idiots have eyes but refuse to do anything useful with them, and I can only imagine that your brains are all rotted from disuse. They’re not intended for ornamentation.”
“The Prescott murder,” Greg said. “What have you got on that one?”
“Husband,” Sherlock said curtly. “Murder-suicide.”
“He couldn’t have–”
“The weapon was ice. You can tell by the blood viscosity differential in the carpet fibres.”
“Huh,” Greg said. “And you know about that one because–”
“New owners replaced the carpet and tossed out the old one,” Sherlock shrugged. “One of my acquaintances acquired it as a sleeping pad.”
“And the Blevins mistrial?”
“Had dirt on Judge Hankett. Hankett’s son frequents certain areas of ill repute.”
“Huh,” Greg said again. There was potential, of course, that everything that Sherlock was saying was utter bullshit, but he spoke with such conviction that it was hard to imagine it as anything short of the truth.
“Next!” Sherlock demanded. “What else is there?”
“Well,” Greg said carefully, “I’ll have to verify what you’ve said so far, but it will certainly lessen your sentencing–”
“I don’t care about that,” Sherlock bit out. “ Next.”
“You don’t care…about getting out of prison?” Greg asked.
“Are you always this slow, or is it because you haven’t finished your coffee this morning?”
“Now hold on,” Greg said. Every word Sherlock had spoken so sounded like an insult that it was rather underwhelming to be actually insulted. Much more pressing, however, was the source of the addict’s intel. But before Greg could get his question out, Sherlock was already answering it.
“The faded coffee stains on your shirt, frequent drinker, saving money– getting married soon, perhaps–”
It was impressive, but even more than that, it was alarming and unbelievable, and Greg was certain that he didn’t want to have anything to do with the man.
He really wasn’t.
Except for how everything was exactly as he’d said. The photographer had plenty of photos of tourists taking pictures of the bride, and it was clear how all the evidence was accounted for with an ice weapon and a judge’s addicted son. So against Greg’s better judgement, he dipped into the files room and pulled up some fifty-years gone cold cases and traipsed back down to the cells.
Sherlock fell upon the cases like a famished animal, then magically spat out answers to the lot of them.
“Not magic,” Sherlock spat contemptuously, quickly followed by, “no, I can’t read minds either.”
“It you want to be a consultant,” Greg said, not even remotely wishing to unpack Sherlock’s venom, “then you’ll need to be clean.”
“Did Mycroft put you up to this?”
“No, that’s standard Yard policy, I’m afraid,” Greg said dryly.
Sherlock’s eyes darted around the cell, where he’d strewn the cold case files. “I won’t be constrained by all your red tape. You need me.”
“Mr. Holmes,” Greg retorted, “I only knew of your existence today. I assure you that Scotland Yard would carry on without you.”
“Not very effectively,” Sherlock sneered.
He was such a feral, dramatic creature, and Greg didn’t feel remotely equipped to handle whatever negotiation was required here. “Look, do you want in or not?”
Sherlock huffed irritably in a way that Greg was fairly certain meant yes, so he set about collecting the case files and told Sherlock to find him again when he was ready to pass a drug test.
Two weeks later, Sherlock popped uninvited into his office with a newspaper rolled around the sensational headline of a tainted supply of paracetamol to demand Greg immediately test him.
*********************
The main thing about Sherlock Holmes was that he was bloody awful. He harassed witnesses and– Greg suspected– worked outside the law to gather evidence, he berated everyone in the department, he delighted in engaging in drama for the press, and he was just generally off-putting for everyone to work with. Before working with him in a professional context, Greg might have thought that Sherlock may have been driven to drugs by having Mycroft as a brother, but he was starting to think the drugs had also been a bid for Sherlock to handle being himself. He was just also so damn much, demanding and pushy but extraordinary in a way that made Greg feel like he belonged back in a grade school. Sherlock chased two of the forensic investigators into an early retirement, and after their replacements immediately followed suit, Greg took to pre-emptively debriefing new employees about Sherlock before they had the misfortune of him deriding them to their faces for some nearly-forgotten childhood trauma. The only threat Sherlock seemed to take particularly seriously was when Greg promised to cut off his access to the morgue if he caught wind of one more complaint from the morticians.
There were moments where Greg truly thought their relationship was developing, like the time Sherlock interrupted his one-year wedding anniversary dinner with Anna, high as a kite, to explain the latest case and, oh, also there’d been a burglary at his flat and now there was confidential case information in the hands of the accomplice’s girlfriend’s cousin. Greg had wanted to absolutely pummel the shit out of the bastard and explained as much before affirming Sherlock’s decision to tell Greg about. Then he’d layed into him about the drugs, and Sherlock explained that he’d just needed the extra push to fit the pieces of the case together. Greg informed him that if giving Sherlock cases was going to push him towards drugs, Greg wasn’t going to be part of it. Sherlock sneered something about Greg being scared of Mycroft, and Greg might’ve ruffed him up a little while yelling that he wasn’t going to have Sherlock overdosing on his conscience. Sherlock had tilted his head to the side, like a mutt seeing something it didn’t quite understand, and then apologised for interrupting and disappeared down the street. Well, not exactly apologise, but it was certainly implied.
But then less than a month after that, Sherlock burst into Greg’s office while his co-workers were singing him Happy Birthday and passing out donuts, and he’d made some very unkind and unnecessary remarks about Greg turning grey early and fussing about them all wasting time acting like Greg’s life mattered in the scale of things. It’d hurt more than Greg expected, but Sherlock’s barbs always landed a little, so he was practised in jovially telling Sherlock to take a donut or piss off.
All in all, Sherlock was an incredible tool– in both senses of the word– but Greg didn’t call on him unless he needed to.
The string of forced suicides was such a quintessential Sherlock Holmes case, even before the little shite got the press all stirred up about it.