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There are murders that get attention and murders that don’t. This is one of the latter.
The victim’s a woman, early twenties, council housing. Dead on the floor of her flat, strangled. From the men’s clothing that’s scattered about, she lived here with her boyfriend. They’re both clearly drug users—the evidence is all over the flat—and he’s nowhere to be found. There are signs of a struggle. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine what happened, and Lestrade and Sally probably wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t a slow week.
That, and the bottle-green powder that’s all over her bedroom.
“Never seen anything like it,” the officer who’d been first on the scene had reported. “Place was positively covered in the stuff.”
And so now Sally’s here on a Friday afternoon, questioning a bunch of neighbors who—typical Londoners, all—heard nothing and saw nothing and now aren’t saying anything, not to the police, at least—and examining the crime scene, wondering all the while why this woman had to pick Friday, out of all of the days of the week, to be murdered.
Okay, yes, it sounds terrible when you put in that way, but sometimes Sally can’t help it. She doesn’t want anyone to die, and this woman’s life is worth just as much as anyone else’s, but still—gruesome murders notwithstanding—sometimes it’s hard for Sally to think of detecting as anything more than a job. And the woman would be just as dead whether it happened yesterday or today, so why couldn’t she have popped off on a Thursday? Couldn’t she have fought with her boyfriend on a night when Sally didn’t have plans to meet up with her best friend from uni for a takeaway and Season Two of Downton Abbey?
And this green power that’s everywhere? Honestly, it’s probably just some new street drug. Not her department. They pop up like mushrooms after a rain shower (no LDS reference intended), impossible to keep track of or to exterminate. Let the drugs quad handle it.
Things are starting to look a bit better by six; Lestrade got one of the neighbors to admit that he’d heard the woman and her boyfriend fighting the night before, so they’ve got a solid bead on a suspect at least and forensics are almost done with the body. Sally’s thinking that if she can just get back to the Met to get a start on the paperwork there might be a chance of wrapping this up and still getting to meet up with her friend, when she sees him, and all her hopes go to pieces.
It’s the Freak, with his little lap dog of a friend standing slightly behind him, the former all wrapped up in that ridiculous coat complete with scarf even though it’s the middle of May and really quite pleasant outside.
Bollocks.
Sally sighs.
It’s not to be an easy case after all. It never is, not with the Freak here. It won’t end up that the victim, an obvious drug user, was strangled by her addict boyfriend,. No, it’ll be some international web of intrigue where nothing is as it seems, and the Freak’ll have ten thousand reasons that he’ll spit out at top speed about why it’s so completely, utterly, blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain that the boyfriend couldn’t have been the killer.
And that’s not the worst part, even. Because when it’s all over and the real killer’s locked away, the haughty sod’s will go off with John plodding along at his heels, insulted at the idea that they could even think he’d lower himself to take any of his precious time away from whatever he spends his life doing when he’s not making her life hell to stay and help fill out the paperwork.
Once the Freak's gone, yes, that will be about when Lestrade pops his head into her office, and asks if Sally could just take a moment to comfort this witness for Lestrade, because Sherlock had a chat with the poor girl before he left, and now she seems a tad upset for some reason, Lestrade can’t imagine why, and Sally’s so good at comforting people? And after that, if Sally wouldn’t mind finishing the paperwork for this case for him, would she? And could Sally just make it look like Sherlock Holmes hadn’t been on the scene at all? And if it’s not too much trouble, could she also maybe sort of write it all up like they came up with the conclusions all on their own?
Yeah. Because that’s so easy, isn’t it, Lestrade?
The Freak’s made his way inside the flat, and as she watches him examining the woman’s body, Sally can practically see her whole weekend vanishing into mountains of paperwork. Her entire next week, probably.
Honestly, it’s like he’s not even human, just some sort of plague sent to destroy her life any time it seems like things are looking up even a little.
The best thing to do is to keep out of his way, so Sally’s huddled in the main room in the flat (the woman seemed to use it as both living room/kitchen, judging from the mess), away from the body in the bedroom. She’s trying to fill in forms using her notebook as a hard surface to write against in her hands—she doesn’t want to sit down this his place, probably would end up sitting on a needle or something worse—while Lestrade makes calls on his mobile.
Then Sherlock bursts into the room, his frantic movements making his coat flap about him like he’s in the middle of a hurricane. “I’ve identified it,” he says, his eerie pale eyes wide with excitement.
“Identified what?” Lestrade asks.
“The powder,” the Freak says. “I’ve identified the green powder. You’ll need to take off your shirt now,” he adds, as though that sentence follows logically from his first.
Sally’s so startled she almost drops her notebook.
“What?” Lestrade says. “Why?”
John’s come up behind Sherlock, holding some sort of kit. Before the Freak can launch into one of his dizzily condescending explanations, John says, “Sherlock thinks the green stuff’s been stolen from Baskerville. The lab there’s been working on a weapon that fatal upon contact with the skin, and some of their samples are missing. If he’s right, and this is that drug—”
“And I am right,” Sherlock interrupts.
“—then if any of you got any of it on your skin while you were looking around here or at the body, you need to get it off immediately, or you’ll be dead in two hours. It shows up in ultra-violet light.” John ups his kit, and pulls out what looks like a miniature torch. “So if you take off your shirt, I can run this light over you to see if any of the powder’s got on you. It comes off with a bit of this solution, so that should be easy, but Sally and Lestrade have been in the flat for a while, so we need to be quick.”
“And you just carry an ultra-violet light and solutions to remove poison around with you at all times?” Sally asks, looking over John to the Freak.
“There was a sixty-five percent chance we’d find the drug here,” the Freak says. “It’s called preparation. Ever heard of it, Donovan?”
She glares at him, and he stares back at her coldly.
“All right,” John interrupts, switching on the torch. “We don’t have any time to waste.”
Sally doesn’t look away from the Freak. “I’m not stripping on your say so.”
“Fine,” he replies. “Don’t. Given that you spent twenty minutes looking at the body and at least half an hour in this flat after that you’ve got a twenty-three percent chance you’ve got the poison on you, and it has a ninety-five percent fatality rate according to Dr. Mortimer so that’s a twenty-two percent chance—rounding up of course—that you’ll be dead in less than two hours. But go ahead. Take the chance. It’s just your life on the line.”
“Sherlock,” John says his name like a sigh. “You don’t need to bully people. Look, it’s okay, Sally, I’ll go first, see?” And he’s handing the ultra-violet light to Sally as he struggles off his jumper and then the shirt he’s wearing underneath.
She puts down her notebook and steps up to him. Close up, he’s more muscular than she would have imagined, but also more compact, not much taller than she is. “What should I do?” she asks.
“Just run the light over me. If nothing glows, I’m good.”
She shines the torch down the front of his torso. “Turn around,” she says, and he does. He has a scar on his shoulder, pink and painful-looking—he was in the army in Afghanistan, Sally suddenly remembers Lestrade telling her—and his skin is pale with a few freckles.
Nothing glows.
“You’re good,” she says.
“All right,” John says. He doesn’t visibly react to the information that his skin is free from poisons, just takes the torch from her to shine it on Lestrade (who undressed while she was helping John) and Sally is reminded again that he’s steadier than he looks.
Lestrade’s skin doesn’t glow either. “I suppose we were careful,” he says, and Sally can see him breathe a sigh of relief when he learns that he doesn’t have any of the powder on him.
“Now, you,” John says, turning to Sally.
She pauses.
“We can go into another room for privacy,” John says. “It’s okay. I’ve been a doctor for years, and I’ve seen lots of—”
“No.” Sally starts to unbutton her blouse. “No, it’s fine.”
She’s acutely conscious that, for what’s probably the thousandth time since she joined the police, she’s the only woman in a room full of men. Does she want to undress in front of them? No. But the only thing worse than actually being different is reminding people that you are.
She puts her blouse on the chair. She feels open, and exposed, but she’s careful to keep her voice steady, business-like. “Okay.”
John shines the torch to her chest, and then stops. “Sally,” he says, “I, um, need you to be. I need to make sure the poison didn’t get on you at all…” He trails off, looking down, and Sally’s eyes follow his gaze to her bra.
“Listen, we can still go in another room, and—” John offers.
“No,” Sally says again, reaching around to unhook her bra. She remembers her old supervisor, the first and only female one she’d had, telling Sally on her first day on the job, when the women’s toilets had been broken and she’d complained about having to use the men’s, They won’t ever forget that you’re a woman. So you have to.
She’s gone this far. It would be worse if she backed off now.
Lestrade’s face is red. “Donovan, I don’t think we need to—”
The Freak’s in the corner, staring at her, his eyes, cold, appraising. He keeps his attention fixed resolutely on her face, like he hasn’t even noticed that she’s naked from the waist up, and his failure to acknowledge that this is anything out of the ordinary somehow makes her feel more exposed than Lestrade’s flustered embarrassment.
She puts her bra on the chair. “Just get it over with.”
Lestrade turns his back. The Freak doesn’t.
“Okay,” John says. He brings up the light and runs it over her, his gaze warm but clinical. Which sounds odd, Sally realizes, but there’s really no other way to describe it. No sexual energy at all—for which she’s relieved—but he’s not cold either.
There’s a quiet kindness in his attempts to scan her as quickly as he can without missing anything, like he knows how uncomfortable she feels. Sally’s used to thinking of John as nothing more than an appendage to the inhuman Sherlock, and this glimpse of him as an independent being is odd but not unpleasant.
He’s probably a good doctor, she thinks.
“Sally?” John saying, “I think you’re okay, so you can…Wait, just a moment.”
“What?” Sally asks. “Is something wrong?”
John moves away from her, picking up something from the table. “Let me just finish checking,” he says, and she relaxes, tells herself, it’s almost over, and then suddenly John’s taking her hand and she feels him pour something wet on her wrist.
She jumps, and he drops her hand.
“What is that?” she says.
“It’s nothing,” John says. “You’re fine. You just had a spot of the powder on your wrist, but it’s all gone now. I got it off.”
Sally looks down at her wrist. She doesn’t see any powder, but she can feel her skin crawling. Did she really have it on her? Was the Freak right and it could have killed her in two hours if John hadn’t got it off?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks.
“Because I knew you’d be scared, and I didn’t want you to have to feel it on you, not even for a second.”
John moves toward her, as if he’s going to give her a hug, and then steps back, as though remembering that’s she’s half naked, and picks up her bra and shirt and holds it out to her. “You’re safe, Sally, it’s gone.”
Sally realizes that she’s trembling. Oh, and still naked from the waist up in front of John, her boss (with his back turned, but still), and the Freak.
She hurriedly dresses, telling herself to stop shaking right now, and get it together. “All right, then,” she says. Forces herself to make her voice brisk, calm, like she hadn't been two hours from death not less than a minute ago. “That’s taken care of then, right? Can we all get back to solving the murder now?”
Sherlock looks up from the shelf, as Lestrade turns back to face Sally.
“Yes,” the Freak says, “Donovan speaks sense for once. Lestrade, I’m going to need to speak to that neighbor you mentioned, and then—”
“We’re not done, Sherlock,” John interrupts.
“Yes we are.”
“No,” John says. “We aren’t.” He holds up the ultra-violet light. “We’ve still got to check you.”
“Me?” Sherlock says. “Why?”
“You were in the room with the body and the powder all over it just like the rest of us. And you’ve been wandering through the flat, too. I need to make sure you don’t have any of it on you.”
“I don’t have any on me,” he says, as though the very notion is insulting.
“Well,” John says slowly—How is he always so patient with this monster? Sally always want to strangle the Freak within five minutes—“You probably don’t have any on you, but we can’t take that chance, so you need to let me look, just like I did with Greg and Sally and just like Sally did with me.”
“It’s not necessary.”
Why is he being so stubborn? He looks almost…nervous.
“Go ahead then.” Sally can’t resist adding, “It’s, what, a ninety-five chance that you’ve got poison on you or whatever? Why not take the gamble? It’s just your life.”
“Fine.” The Freak takes off his scarf, then his coat, his movements petulant, like a child. He folds it on a chair and starts unbuttoning his shirt.
He looks strange without the coat, long and stretched, like a child whose body hasn’t caught up with his height.
Sally can’t remember if she’s ever seen him without the coat. Given the way he looks in the suit, maybe it’s not so surprising. The Freak certainly loves to make an entrance when he joins their crime scenes, and he cuts a much less impressive figure in a suit that’s clearly about a size too big than he does in sweeping in with the long dark coat billowing around him.
Besides, it’s the Freak, so it’s no shock that he looks, well, freakish without his coat. Sally should really look away now anyway, because God knows that she has absolutely no desire to see him shirtless of all people, but then he gave her such a hard time before, and she’s just had such a shock with that powder on her, and somehow she can’t stop staring as he finishes unbuttoning his shirt, and drops it to the floor, and—
Oh. Oh.
Sally sees a lot of dead bodies in her course of work, and because of the context by which she comes into contact with them—victims of abusive homes, prostitutes who meet up with the wrong customers, drug users who’ve overdosed—a lot of them are in seriously bad shape. Still, Sally would estimate that a good number of the bodies she’s seen on the job look better than the Freak does.
He’s thin in a way that’s far too severe to be healthy, every rib visible, the ridge of his collarbone sharply defined, and his trousers loose even though it looks like he’s put his belt on the tightest buckle. Add to all that skin that’s so pale he looks like all the blood’s been leached from his body, and yeah—Sally can understand why he might have seemed reluctant to take of his shirt.
When he speaks, though, his voice is his usual baritone, no acknowledgment in his tone that anything might be unusual about his appearance. “John,” he says, “shall we get on with this?”
John’s doesn’t move. He plainly had no idea the Freak looked like this; he’s staring at Sherlock with an expression that’s shock and horror and sadness all mixed up together.
It’s almost enough to make Sally feel bad for him. On the one hand, it’s the Freak, of course there’s something wrong with him—Sally’s never seen him eat on a case, which means she’s never really seen him eat at all, and there are those rumors that Lestrade met him on some kind of drugs bust—so it should be no shock he looks like this. But on the other hand, she looks at John, and she think help be think how she would feel if her best friend, flatmate, colleague (whatever those to are to each other, Sally doesn't know) looked like that.
Sally glances at Lestrade. He’s about the same; his face a mixture of worried and surprised, although maybe not so shocked as John’s is.
“John,” Sherlock says again.
“Right.” The Freak’s order is enough to start John into motion.
He starts running the torch over Sherlock, plainly trying to replicate the professional examination he conducted on Sally and Lestrade, but his hands shake. He drops the light once, picks it up, tells the Freak, “Turn around, let me do your back” (the Freak’s back isn’t any better, just a boney spine with each ridge sticking out and more of that paper white skin) and then John’s done.
“Okay,” he tells Sherlock. “You’re clean.”
The Freak’s been motionless during the whole procedure, showing no sign of discomfort and making no attempt to shield his body from their gazes, but almost before the words are out of John’s mouth, he’s putting his shirt back on, fingers flying over the buttons, and shrouding himself in his coat.
The finishing touch is the scarf, and once that’s wrapped around his neck he looks almost normal (normal for the Freak, Sally amends). Still too thin, maybe, although the coat hides most of it, makes his form look more substantial than it really is. But the illusion’s broken now, and Sally knows that she won’t be able to look at him without seeing ribs and spine and collarbone stretched over too pale skin.
“Now that we’ve done through that useless little exercise,” the Freak says, putting his hands together, “Lestrade, the neighbor?”
There’s a moment when the specter of what they just saw hovers in the air like an after-image, and no one moves.
Then Lestrade blinks as though clearing the image from his mind, and visibly pulls himself back into the case. “Right. Donovan, you need to rope off the bedroom, make sure no one else goes in and gets any of that powder on them. Sherlock, John, come with me.”
And then it’s all calling Scotland Yard to get someone to come over and get a sample of the powder for the lab, and roping off the bedroom, and paperwork and paperwork and more paperwork. Throughout, Sally tries to avoid thinking about both the Freak and about the fact that she almost just died today.
She’s largely successful in both endeavors, the only failure in the former being a short conversation she can’t avoid overhearing as she stands guard by the victim’s bedroom.
Lestrade, and the Freak, from the living room:
“Sherlock, I—”
“No, I’m not using again,” the Freak interrupts.
“Sherlock, I didn’t—”
“Yes, I remember the helpline number you gave me when we first meet.”
“Sherlock,” Lestrade tries again, “I just—”
“Yes, I know that you’re here for me, and that I can come to talk about anything.” Sherlock says in a monotone.
Lestrade’s moved closer to Sherlock with each attempt to complete a sentence, and the contrast between Lestrade’s figure, solid but by no means bulky, and Sherlock’s severely tempered form, is striking.
“Does that about cover it?” the Freak adds. “Are you finished? Can we move back to matters of relevance? I believe that you said you had the victim’s phone?”
Lestrade seems like he’s about make another attempt, then capitulates. “Yes,” he says, leading the Freak away, “I’ve got it right here.”
Hours later, Sally’s got the scene secured, the police tape sorted, handed off everything that needs to be handed off to the local force, and she’s finally on the stairwell about to exit the building when she hears footsteps, then voices on the stairwell above her.
“I know you’re not tired,” someone’s saying, his words measured and patient, like he’s repeating an argument that he’s had many times before.
Sherlock and John. Damn it.
Sally steps away from the stairwell, back into the hallway, and waits there for them to go by.
The footsteps stop.
“But I’m basically dead on my feet here. Let’s go home,” She hears John say. “We can watch some telly, get a curry,” he adds. His attempt to make this last suggestion appear casual sounds painfully unsubtle.
“I’m not talking about this with you,” Sherlock says. “Not tonight, John.”
“It’s fine. It’s fine. You don’t have to.” Sally hears movement, and if it were anyone but the Freak she’d have imagined John putting an arm around him. “Let’s just get you home, okay?”
Sally waits until their footsteps have petered out before she steps back on the stairwell—thankfully empty—and finally, finally, heads home.
When she gets into her flat, it’s past midnight, her date to watch Downtown Abbey long cancelled, and Sally’s too tired to do much but heat up some leftovers in the microwave before collapsing into bed.
Oh well. She read somewhat that Season Two wasn’t very good anyway.
*
The next time she sees the Freak, summer’s in full swing, they’re on a case, and true to form, it’s a mess of one, complete with long hours, lost weekends, and reams upon reams of paperwork.
It’s one in the morning, and Sally’s running on about six hours of sleep in the last forty-eight hours, struggling to keep her eyes open as she looks over another medical report—there’s been a string of mysterious deaths in nursing homes, Sally thinks the killer’s an angel of mercy-type nurse, but of course the Freak says it’s far more complicated than that—when Anderson puts his head into her office to tell her that Lestrade’s ordered up some coffee and donuts to as a thank you for working through the night.
Sally stands up, suddenly starving. Her last meal was hours ago, and that was just some soup heated up in the break room microwave.
On her way to break room, she sees the Freak (John left hours ago, pleading an early morning appointment with a patient). Of course Sherlock’s still here, sitting at one of the empty cubicles, a mountain of papers on the disk beside him as he types quickly into a computer, and his ever-present coat wrapped around him. He’s hunched over the computer, so she can’t see much (not like she’s interested in looking at him closely anyway) but she thinks the coat looks looser than last May, like what’s she’s seeing is more fabric and less flesh.
She pauses.
How long was it before she went in the break room? Sally tries to remember. She avoided it for ages after she started working, certain the conversation would be all bloke stuff about football and girls and God knows what else (she’d been right about the football). Must have been three months before she’d finally taken the plunge and gone in to eat a package of crisps with the rest of them. And that had only been because Lestrade had practically dragged her in.
She stops behind Sherlock’s cubicle.
“What is it, Donovan?” He says without turning around.
So he’s memorized the footsteps of everyone in the office. Seriously creepy.
“No, not the footsteps, Donovan,” he says, still not turning away from his computer. “I can see your reflection in my screen. And even if I did recognize your footsteps, it would hardly be ‘creepy.’ You’re the only one here wearing pumps—unless Anderson’s broken out the pair that he usually reserves for, shall we say, more recreational activities than a murder investigation—it’s hardly difficult to hear the difference between flats and heels on a hard surface. The clacking, you know.”
“How did you know that I—”
“How did I know that you thought I had memorized your footsteps? Your eyes widened when I said your name without turning. You frowned. Clearly my knowing that you were behind me upset you. How did I know it was you? You wondered.” In a mockery of her voice, he continues, “Oh, my footsteps must have given me away! Sherlock’s learnt all the footsteps of everyone in the office. How creepy!”
“But how did you—”
“How did I know you would think it was ‘creepy’? You’ve used the word ‘creepy’ to describe my behavior three times in emails to Lestrade and twice in texts to Anderson. Other possibilities would be ‘weird’, ‘psychopathic’, ‘disturbing’—you’ve used each one at least twice in emails, phone calls or texts—but ‘creepy’ is the term you employ most frequently. It’s late, you’re tired. Balance of the probabilities says it’d be the one that would most likely run through your thoughts at this moment.” He swivels his chair around to face her. He’s pale, his gaunt cheeks sharp and sickly under the harsh overhead light of the office. Part of that’s because it’s one in the morning, and part’s of its not. He pauses. “So. You had a question for me?”
Sally puts her hand up, feels the headache that’s beginning to pulse at her temple. No good deed, indeed.
“Lestrade’s brought coffee to the break room.”
“And this is important because?”
He can’t make anything easy, can he?
“It’s just,” Sally says. “Well, the coffee’s in the break room, if you want any. I think we’re all going in for a bit. You know, clear the head. Take a bit of break. There’s donuts, too. If you’re hungry.”
“Yes, thank you for the clarification, Donovan, very helpful. Imagine, going into the break room for a break.”
Why does she even bother?
“Yeah, okay then,” she says. “Well, that’s where everyone will be if you want to join us.”
“Why would you want me to join you?” he says.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sally snaps, unable to be polite to him anymore. “I haven’t seen you eat anything in the more ten hours we’ve been working on this case, so I figured you might be hungry? Because I want to get this case solved and I know that you’ll think better once you’ve had some coffee? Because I’m running on no sleep, and I’m delirious, and for some reason I’m extending invitations in hopes of helping crazy people who don’t have enough sense to take care of themselves?”
He stares at her, his expression unreadable.
“So there are lots of reasons,” she finishes. “Take your pick.”
“Oh,” he says.
“So are you coming?” she asks.
“Maybe.” He appraises her for a moment, then adds quietly, after she’s already half-way turned and walking away from him, “Thank you for the invitation.”
Right then.
She stalks off, spends twenty minutes demolishing a frosted donut while Anderson not-so subtly mentions to her that his wife will be off at a teachers’ conference next weekend (God, she doesn’t have the mental energy to deal with him right now) before heading back to her office.
Sherlock doesn’t come in to the break room.
It’s half past three when Sally finally heads home. She’s nowhere close to done, but she needs to change her clothes, and get maybe a few couple hours sleep before she can face another day of this investigation.
She’s on the street, scanning for a taxi—the world that eerie-half shade it gets at the time of the day when it can’t seem to decide whether to remain clocked in darkness or slip into the light of early morning—when Sherlock comes up behind her.
“Going home, Donovan?” he asks.
“I should think that would be obvious,” she says.
His response is to bring his coat tighter around himself; if he picks up on her joke, he doesn’t show it.
“Are you going home?” she asks.
She’s expecting a litany of reasons why it should be blindingly obvious to her where he’s going, but all he says is, “No. I need to make a few inquiries before morning.”
He looks tired, more so than she. It’s June now, and London’s not really that warm, not at the ungodly hours of the early morning at any rate, but bundled up in that coat, Sherlock looks like he’s dressed for the depths of winter. It’s more than the coat, too—the pale skin, the lean, starved planes of his face. He looks closed, like nothing, not the heat, not her offer of food and coffee, can touch him.
“Listen—” she starts, not knowing how she’s going to finish.
A taxi pulls up.
Sally looks down at it, then back up at Sherlock. “Do you want it?”
“No.” He shakes his head, steps out of the road and onto the pavement. “I can walk; it’s not far.”
She hesitates.
“Go ahead,” he says.
She’s so tired.
“All right.”
She gets in the taxi, gives the cabbie her address, and leans back in the seat, deliberately not watching Sherlock recede into the distance. She wonders if John knows where Sherlock is, wonders when Sherlock last slept, or ate. Your flatmate’s wandering around London at bloody three in the morning about to pass out. Just thought you’d want to know, she imagines texting John. But she doesn’t have his number, and what business is it of hers anyway?
She closes her eyes, and tries to think about getting back to her flat, taking a shower, getting some sleep. She tells herself that it doesn’t matter; that she’s not worried.
It’s just the Freak. He’ll be fine.