The Enigma Variations. Chapter Sixteen. The Brighton Variation.
Title: The Enigma Variations. Chapter Sixteen/? The Brighton Variation.
author: ghislanem70
rating: NC-17
word count: 6,500 this chapter, 71,000 to date.
warnings: Spoilers for S2Ep3 The Reichenbach Fall; explicit sex, graphic violence, reference to sensory integration syndrome, suicidal ideation.
summary: Post-Reichenbach, John finds he's still got one thing left to live for.
disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
When you let go -- you let go,
you don't know how.
But your walls will fall down,
Yes, your walls will come down.
-Lyrics to Walls, all rights reserved to Sultan & Ned Shepard & Quilla.
John knew instantly that it was going to be very bad.
Crimes scenes yielded up a variety of distinctive, oppressive odors. But it was in Afghanistan, not London, that he had become almost inured to the smell of freshly spilled blood. Almost. He never stopped feeling a stab of sorrow for what it meant. As he eased the cottage door open, the familiar warm metallic scent hit him right in the face.
He crouched low, took a silent step, saw red rivulets still flowing. He held back his instinct to leap first to help the wounded, and look later. Even in Afghanistan, this was usually a bad idea - as he had learned to his cost. He took another silent step. The only sound was a faint groaning.
He waited, crossed the room to the doorway to the next room. Where the blood was. He looked around the doorframe. Two bodies on the floor, one making faint sounds. He backed up and beckoned to Sherlock, who took the scene in at a glance and checked the other rooms, the work of just moments.
No one was there.
# # #
The bodies on the floor were Gerry Murphy, and another of the men who had taken O’Neill from the Three Steps.
They had been shot. One was quite dead. Murphy was faintly wheezing. John started desperate triage that he knew would be futile, not before he had the presence of mind to put on his gloves. He knew not to leave any prints. This man would soon be a corpse; he could see that. Murphy was trying to speak.
“It was O’Neill, wasn’t it?” Sherlock said.
Murphy opened his mouth to whisper. John leaned his ear closed down to his lips to catch what might be his last words. This was something he had done more times than he ever wanted to remember. Terrible memories rose up.
“Nuh. . . Trist,” Murphy said.
“Tryst?” John asked. “No tryst?” This made no sense.
“ Nnnn . . . trust. ”
“No trust, is that it?”
He was gone.
Sherlock was following footprints in the blood, some John’s. Sherlock took care not to tread in it. He opened the door and followed the bloody prints outside. The silver sedan that had sped away from the Three Steps was still parked here. Sherlock knelt in the gravel.
“Sherlock. We don’t have time for deductions. Maybe the third man - or O’Neill -- is hiding in one of the outbuildings. With the shotgun. And we need to do whatever we’re going to do before the police come.”
Sherlock shook his head, but for once without the showy arrogance he might formerly have displayed. And yet even now, John felt a thrill watching that brilliant mind at work.
“No, John -- they’ve both run away,” he said. “Look -“ he pointed to the disturbed gravel. “They sprinted side by side --- across the field.”
“Then we can still catch them - those men in there were shot not ten minutes ago.” One of the few areas of criminal forensics in which his own direct experience exceeded Sherlock’s own was in measuring the probable remaining minutes of survival after lethal wounds.
They ran to their own car. “I’ll drive,” John said, looking over the rock-strewn fields. “It’s not a Land Rover -- but the ground looks like Afghanistan, except for the green.”
They careened across the stony field. It didn’t take long. O’Neill and the third man were sprinting, stumbling over rocks toward the paved road. O’Neill was holding the shotgun, but he wasn’t threatening the other man. “Maybe someone’s picking them up,” John said. He floored it, muttering, “Sorry,” when the car jostled so violently that Sherlock’s head struck the roof of the car just as the sound of a roaring motor filled the air. A shadow passed overhead.
A single-propeller airplane appeared. It landed smoothly in the middle of the road.
“Faster,” Sherlock yelled. John pushed it harder.
“Grab the wheel,” John ordered, and leaned out the driver’s window with his pistol. He tried for the airplane’s tires, resisting an impulse that told him to shoot O’Neill in the back. Sherlock swerved around a huge pothole, spoiling John’s shot. It went wild.
Too late. The door to the airplane swung open, O’Neill and the third man were climbing inside.
Now they were close enough that John thought he could see the outline of the pilot’s head through the cockpit’s window: Dark hair. Aviator shades.
His blood froze.
“Moriarty!” He cried, and for a wild moment he aimed at the cockpit, but the bore of the shotgun was aimed right back. O’Neill blasted. Sherlock swerved, O’Neill missed. The jostling made it impossible to take a clear shot; in a moment, the craft would be airborne. “Slow down,” John shouted as he pushed open the door and rolled out of the driver’s seat to the ground, where he took aim at the wheels and blew one out.
O’Neill looked straight into his eyes, grinning, and blasted again. John heard Sherlock shooting now in a jumbled assault of too-familiar sensations - a slam followed by burning in his arm, the shriek of the aircraft as it careened unsteadily down the road. He rolled and tried one last shot, only to see the craft recede and go airborne.
# # #
John watched it vanish with shock. So close they had been; so close. He thought he had seen Moriarty sneer through the cockpit window, but if he was honest he would have to admit he hadn’t seen the pilot’s face.
“John! John, are you all right?” Sherlock was hovering over him, examining his wound, wrapping the bloody arm with a scarf. John sat up, tried to move it. It moved. It burned. A near miss - some scattering shot had struck his upper arm.
“God - John - a few inches more and it would have struck you in the chest. Like the men in the cottage. I told you, John, I don’t want this - now look at you,” he said, looking stricken at John’s blood on his own hands.
“John,” he said again quietly, and took him into a half-embrace so as not to hurt his wounds.
“It’s only a bit of shot, Sherlock,” John said, his words muffled against Sherlock’s shoulder. His arm burned. He held Sherlock tight and felt his arm pulling him closer, lips against his hair, and for a moment he closed his eyes and imagined that they were not here, they were home, safe.
We will be, he swore to himself.
“We need to tend that immediately,” Sherlock declared, pulling him toward the car. Sherlock’s knowledge of gunshot wounds was probably more extensive than John’s, although not with respect to living persons.
John tried on a reassuring grin that was really a grimace. “My arm can wait. A bit. The police -- they’ll be there any minute - the barkeep called it in,” John said through gritted teeth. Anybody who thought “flesh wounds” were minor had never been shot, he used to say in Afghanistan to new and insensitive medics. “And someone will have heard the gunfire by now, and seen the airplane. We need to get moving before we have to answer any awkward questions.”
Their eyes met in the silent understanding that they definitely weren’t going back to the cottage to meet the police. The abused sedan had a full tank of gas. Sherlock checked his GPS and guided them by circuitous roads back toward Dublin, and sent a coded text to Irene. He prayed that no one was yet searching for Mrs. O’Hare’s borrowed car.
As he contemplated the possibility of being caught by the police, Sherlock’s conscience was clear. Well, a sociopath’s conscience was always clear, but John had taught him the importance of respecting certain moral boundaries. Sherlock did not consider anything he had done up until this moment -- his attack on the Golem and Moriarty’s other creatures that he had hunted down and “reprogrammed”; their gunfight of moments ago -- to be ‘wrong.’ But he knew that the police wouldn’t feel quite the same. He could not afford to become a wanted man. He was a dead man. A ghost. And must stay that way. He drove faster.
John was too focused on these strange events and the searing pain in his arm to spare any thought for whether the police might be looking for him as a wanted man for the murder of Sebastian Moran.
# # #
The Guards arrived at Murphy’s farm. Detective Brian Quinn, the County’s most senior homicide detective , paced around the cottage.
Gerry Murphy was dead, and Nick Bannon too. Close range shotgun blasts. Aidan Laverty, the third man reported to have left the Three Steps with Mick O’Neill, was missing. O’Neill had also vanished. However they had left Murphy’s farm, they hadn’t taken the car they arrived in. They most definitely had driven away in a car, though: one could see fresh tire tracks across the green field.
“McFadden - Get me some impression on those tire tracks,” he said. “And track down Danny Murphy. Tell him not to come back to the farm. Tell him to wait, wherever he is. I’ll send someone down to tell him . . . about his brother.”
When asked to identify all of the persons who had been in the Three Steps when O’Neill was abducted, the barkeep did not at first recollect the shabby backpackers. If he thought of them at all, he had assumed they had gone to hike Slieve Gullion, as many did; and no, he had not seen them leave. They were not from the village. They seemed to be foreigners. At least the tall one. He knew they hadn’t been involved in the fracas with O’Neill - everyone there had seen that was Murphy and his boys.
It would be several hours before Quinn got around to sending someone to question O’Neill’s mother, Mrs. O’Hare, about the altercation in the Three Steps.
# # #
Being a woman who, for various reasons, did not believe is blabbing to the Guards about one’s business, even when it might affect her own son, Mrs. O’Hare kept her mouth shut.
“So you can tell us nothing at all, Mrs. O’Hare, about why Gerry Murphy and your son got into an altercation at the Three Steps?”
“It was not an ‘altercation,’ Detective Quinn. Those boys attacked my Mick. Three to one. I know no more than everyone knows in Dromintee - Gerry Murphy always hated my son.”
“It’s a bit more serious this time, Mrs. O’Hare. Gerry Murphy’s dead. Can you think of anywhere your son would go? He’s not here, for example? We’ve called down to Dublin; he’s not returned to his flat. No one has seen him at the station.”
“My son’s not here. I wouldn’t tell you if he was. What do you take me for? My son’s done nothing wrong, ” she said vehemently. She took a long drink of whiskey from a glass before her on the table. No tea for Mrs. O’Hare. “For my nerves,” she said. “This is a terrible thing. It’s my birthday, you know.”
She broke into tears and the Guards backed out of her tidy cottage. “We’ll send a female Guard around in the morning to take your statement, Mrs. O’Hare,” Quinn said with some exasperation. The woman was hiding something.
In his experience, though, everyone in Dromintee had something to hide.
# # #
After the Guards departed, Irene emerged from the back room.
“Thank you. I’m so grateful,” she said in Nordic-accented English. “I’m sure there is a good explanation for Sven . . . not returning. Perhaps he decided to hike Slieve Gullion after all, and his mobile battery is dead. He’ll be back soon, I’m sure. We’re returning to Oslo the day after tomorrow. We can’t become involved with police matters, not here in a foreign country, you can understand this? These things don’t concern us. Sven was just trying to help - he has always been very brave and selfless,” she said without a hint of irony.
“Nobody wants to mix with the Guards, that’s sure,” Mrs. O’Hare said equably. “But aren’t you worried for your brother, Miss Siegerson?” She gave her a sharp look.
Irene took a deep breath and sat down beside Mrs. O’Hare. “I am, rather, but Sven can take care of himself. I think I’d like a drink,” she said. The other woman reached for her decanter, but Irene stopped her. “Allow me.”
She produced a bottle from her capacious handbag and surreptitiously checked her mobile. Her heart leaped to know that at least, Sherlock was safe; safe with John. The code was unmistakable. She was to go her own way now, unless Sherlock needed her again. Now that he had been reunited with John Watson, she very much doubted if Sherlock ever would. She was surprised by hot tears welling up.
“Stop it,” she admonished herself softly. Then she composed herself and turned to Mrs. O’Hare. “I’m writing an article about Irish whiskies. This is 15 year old Greenore.”
Irene uncorked the bottle and poured them both a shot.
“Slainte, lass,” Mrs. O’Hare said appreciatively. She was not, in fact, over concerned about her son Mick’s disappearance. Her son knew well how to take care of himself.
In fact, both of her sons did.
She knocked back the exceptionally smooth whiskey.
Suddenly she was very tired indeed. It had been a trying day. Not at all what she had hoped for her birthday.
“Mrs. O’Hare, lie down, dear. . . “ she heard as though from the end of a long tunnel.
Her vision darkened, and she knew nothing more until the next morning when the female Guard rapped politely at her front door. She rose from her sofa in confusion. She was still wearing her birthday dress.
The lovely Miss Siegerson was gone.
Worse, she’d taken the bottle of Greenore with her.
# # #
It must be said that James Moriarty loved speed. Not the drug, never that; his own internal mechanisms, complex and deadly, ran quite fast enough without stimulants.
But speed in all of its most exciting manifestations - the acceleration of events as he orchestrated them, set them in motion to his own music; the incredible swiftness of the advent of death, at any time and in any place, if he so chose - and very often, he did.
However, in the months since winning his ultimate game, he had been forced to restrict himself to speed of the more prosaic sort: such as, for example, the scorchingly fast French-made Dahmer -Socata TBM 850 - the single engine prop plane capable of speeds equal to a light jet.
“You have a new toy,” his brother observed idly. Moriarty was sensitive to the gently implied criticism.
“It was on loan. But now you’ve gone and gotten it shot up - we’ve lost a tire. We might crash on landing!” Moriarty was just trying to upset his brother. He was confident he could still land safely. Probably. And he certainly had no intention of dying, notwithstanding his theatrics on the roof of Barts. “And you’ve gotten blood all over the seats. They were custom. Hermes. I’ll have to buy it now and burn the seats; have new ones made. In France.” He was whining really. O’Neill looked out the window. “But I wonder . . . Westwood . . .” he murmured to himself.
They were approaching top speed: 300 knots, 345 miles per hour. They were already far, far away from Dromintee and the little farm in Cullyhanna, and climbing fast.
“How much?” O’Neill didn’t really care, but it was something prosaic to talk about, to bring his heart rate back normal. It was almost there already, he noted with satisfaction. He wiped blood from his face with a handkerchief.
“Two point three million,” Moriarty said. “I’ll handle it.”
“The rules, James. Remember the rules. Lying low. No more . . . shall we say, dramatic gestures.”
“Oh really!” Moriarty shrieked. “What’s all this Grand Guignol, then? Under the circumstances, I think it’s time for a little renegotiating, brother.” He pushed the craft even faster, higher, then dropped it into a corkscrew spin. “Isn’t this magnificent?”
If he had thought to terrify his older brother for once, he must have been disappointed. Mick O’Neill stared out the window at the spinning wings, the ground as it approached with wicked speed. He looked bored. Even though he had just stabbed Aidan in the heart with a pair of sheep shears pinched from Murphy’s farm. An amazing sensation, if too fleeting.
“But I did what you said - you gave your word - I don’t understand, “ Aidan had gasped, seeing the blade in his hand, knowing his fate. His body was bundled in the back. That would have to be dealt with too.
His brother loved long-range planning.
He himself preferred improvisation.
Moriarty pressed a few buttons, fiddled with the controls, and the aircraft smoothly recovered. “These French engineers take all the fun out of flying. Practically flies itself. Where’s the suspense in that?” he fretted, looking glum. He consoled himself by pushing the aircraft to its top speed. He savored the sight of gauges pushing into the red zone.
O’Neill gave a short barking laugh. It might have been at the sight of his younger brother enjoying his new toy, and a rare day out of confinement. Or it might have been at the exquisite sensation of his clothes and skin, stained with another man’s blood.
“All right. You came through for me, I’ll come through for you. I always do, don’t I? Now, what is it you want, James?”
“I want to go back to London,” he snarled, his mood swinging viciously, just like that. There were dangerous sounds coming from the engine now.
“Ah. Travel. Yes. Well. Do you think you’re ready? Don’t look at me like that. We can talk about it. I’m thinking of travel too. A bit farther from home is best for me, under the circumstances. Regrettable. But this would seem to be an ideal opportunity for me to attend to our concerns in Macau.”
“’Home.’ I cannot understand it - why you wanted to go home at all? See what’s happened now. I was right!”
“You were. But it was Mother’s birthday, you unnatural wretch,” O’Neill said almost fondly. He was rather proud of James’ complete lack of natural affection for his family. Like his former nemesis Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty was a sociopath. It was one of the things that had made their game so thrilling while it lasted. Whether James could accurately be classified as “high functioning,” though, depended upon whether operating as a law unto himself, a conscienceless, remorseless orchestrator of crime - from murder to more mundane capers -- could fairly be considered “high functioning.”
But O’Neill didn’t have the leisure now to contemplate his brother’s interesting psyche. He had his own little problems to think about. He still clutched the bloody sheep shears in his pocket. He liked the slick feel of gore on the blades. It had been too long.
“I was entitled, under the circumstances, to a little present for myself,” he said conversationally.
But this was something he knew his brother did not understand. The blood. The irresistible impulse. This was one of the keys to their enduring partnership. Their different preferences in crime made them an almost perfect whole, he reminded himself.
James Moriarty abhorred getting his hands literally dirty. Most especially, he abhorred getting them bloody.
“Stop babbling, would you - shut up and just listen to that. It’s beautiful.” Moriarty actually looked happy. A rare occurrence, especially since the death of Sherlock Holmes. As he had particular need for Jim to be tractable for a short while, this was good.
“Wonderful. Just try to slow a bit over the sea, will you, Jimmy?” he said over the din. “I’ll just get rid of my friend.”
“I’m a speed demon!” Moriarty shrieked as the engine screamed.
# # #
It was nighttime. Sherlock broke into a small neighborhood pharmacy and stole a list of supplies at John’s direction. “John, we need someplace private to tend your arm - we’ll get a hotel. But we have to change clothes. We can’t look like the backpackers from Dromintee.”
Sherlock rummaged in their bags, found John’s good suit, and pulled out black trousers, a stylish turtleneck jumper and new scarf for himself. They helped each other out of their clothes, John cursing at the pain in his arm, but for all that they found themselves snickering as they twisted awkwardly in the tight confines of Mrs. O’Hare’s car.
“Get your bloody elbow out of my ear, you bony git,” John huffed, giggling. He hadn’t felt this light since . . .perhaps Devon, the end of the Baskerville case. It made no sense at all: he had just been shot, he’d probably seen Moriarty and let him get away. But they were here, they were alive, they were together. His thawing heart swelled a little. He felt hope.
Their ungainly struggles had fogged the windows. Once dressed, they gazed greedily, still shocked to see one another’s faces after so long apart.
“Come here,” John said roughly, and pulled Sherlock close and kissed him until his burning arm forced him to stop far sooner than he willingly would have, pulling away breathless and filled with a desperate kind of joy under the pain and fear.
“You’ll hurt your arm,” Sherlock scolded, pulling away, smoothing John’s jacket.
“It’s all right - - you don’t feel ---“
Sherlock shook his head. “It’s not that. At least - I’m determined that it won’t.”
“Have you any idea - an idea at all - how long I’ve wanted to be able to do that?” He ignored the pain in his arm and decided he deserved more - but Sherlock stopped him.
“After we patch up your arm, perhaps you’ll show me,” he grinned wickedly.
# # #
They left the car in a car park and took a bus into Dublin. They bought new luggage at a touristy shop. John watched as Sherlock, looking haughtily suave, acquired a room in an expensive business hotel. Inside, John was able to doctor his own arm quite capably with Sherlock’s assistance. He reluctantly took a tablet for the pain.
They both showered, and John smiled to see Sherlock very deliberately stalk around the room with nothing but a towel around his narrow hips. In 221b, he had always been careful to wrap himself in his dressing gown. And John had always admired the view, imagining much more. Sherlock smiled down at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“I couldn’t bloody be thinking anything else,” John growled, reaching for the towel.
“John -“ Sherlock gripped the towel and looked very serious.
John sighed. “I know.” He thumped back against the bed with a deep sigh. “We need to talk.”
“We need to decide what to do next.”
“My plan’s no different. Follow everything that leads to Moriarty. That was him today. I know it,” he said. “No telling now where they were going. We need to find out.”
“O’Neill won’t be able to return to Dublin now. He’ll have to leave Ireland for good.”
“That’s not what I meant. Sherlock. It’s time for you tell me-everything.”
Sherlock swallowed. He feared talking about Bart’s, and the fall. It would drive them apart again, he knew. “John - not yet. Please. I promise. . . . that I will.”
John’s jaw clenched, but he nodded. “If that’s how you feel,” he said. “Tell me about Dublin, then.”
Sherlock explained that he had tracked and interrogated several of Moriarty’s favored tools of destruction - a scattered team of assassins from around the globe, capable of carrying out murders for hire or for whatever motive Moriarty pleased. And that some revealed Moriarty was rumoured to have a brother, even more vicious than he was.
More than one had been ordered to deliver items to locations in Dublin, most often Connolly train station. And one had once stayed behind, unobserved, and was able to see who retrieved the package. It was a man in a uniform of the train station, an official. It was sometimes good to store up information, even information that you weren’t supposed to have. He had taken the trouble to find out the man’s name: O’Neill. In case it should ever be important.
“Once we learned the name, I retrieved his photo. Simple - it’s on the railway’s website. And once I saw his face, I knew. None of the assassins knew. They had never met Moriarty, never seen his face.”
“Sherlock.” John looked at him very seriously, frowning. “What happened . . .to these people? The ones you . . .interrogated, I mean. Did you -“
“I didn’t kill them, John. If that’s what you’re asking. I haven’t killed anyone.” He went to his new luggage, pulled out his little case with his vials of the terror drug and explained what he had done. He and Irene, working as a team. John touched one of the vials. The idea that Sherlock had felt comfortable enough with the fascinating Miss Adler to involve her in something so hugely dangerous gave him a deep pang: fear that she couldn’t be trusted, and hot jealousy for Sherlock’s obvious respect for her mettle and worse, her intellect. He swallowed it down and promised himself that he wouldn’t let her spoil his present fragile happiness.
“We would have gone after the man named Sebastian Moran, next. He’s very close to Moriarty. But he’s in London. I don’t want to go back to London unless I’ve no other option, it’s too dangerous. But John - in Drogheda, you said Moran’s name.”
John looked at Sherlock steadily. He had finally removed his dark lenses, and Sherlock looked back into their blue depths. They were still dark.
“About that. I guess you haven’t looked at the news for a few days.”
“No.”
John pulled out his mobile and showed Sherlock the news.
Sebastian Moran had been shot three days ago by a gunman on a London rooftop.
Sebastian Moran had planned to murder Kitty Reilly, according to her confidential source: an incognito gunman, who had told Reilly of Moran’s plan to kill her, then saved her life just moments before Moran would have pulled the trigger.
The gunman’s identity was unknown, and he remained at large. He was urgently wanted for questioning by Scotland Yard.
Kitty Reilly’s most explosive revelation, however, was about Sherlock Holmes.
“Sherlock Holmes Was Innocent, Framed By Criminal Mastermind James Moriarty,” screamed the Sun’s headline. “Kitty Reilly’s Story, Exclusive To The Sun!”
Reilly, it transpired, had greatly improved her investigative reporting skills; stung, perhaps, by Sherlock Holmes’ insults at Old Bailey. And digging, digging deep, she had peeled back the layers of the identity of the failed actor, Richard Brook, who had claimed to have been coerced into cooperating with Sherlock Holmes’ grandiose plans to fool the world into thinking him the world’s greatest detective.
# # #
Richard Brook had agreed that she could write a book, telling his story: the story of his deception by Sherlock Holmes. They had discussed it, excitedly, at her flat. It would be a best seller. They would be rich; Brook would become a great actor. Wine had been drunk.
After Sherlock’s suicide, though, Brook had gone into hiding; vanished, in fact. At first she had thought that Brook was frightened by these shocking events. Brook had a very timid nature, in her limited experience with the man.
Brook had put her in contact with man he referred to as his “agent,” one Sebastian Moran. She met with Moran a few times. He assured her that Brook was hiding from the press, wishing to remain in seclusion after the tragic suicide of Sherlock Holmes. Brook was crushed. He blamed himself, Moran said, for allowing Sherlock to manipulate him as far as he had. The charade had gone much too far.
Reilly had wanted to believe. She really had. Her bestseller was halfway finished. But after more than two weeks without contact from Brook, she had begun digging.
It was harder work than she had ever done - but every one of the references for Richard Brook’s purported acting credentials - stage plays, children’s television, had all proven to be dead ends. The “children’s show” had been a late-night broadcast on a public access station in Ireland. The award it had purportedly been given was from an entity that no one could remember having worked with. A charitable institution for which Brook had claimed to perform for disadvantaged children - turned out to be an empty warehouse.
Reilly tracked down a director of the charity to his modest flat in Bayswater. He slammed the door nervously in her face at her questions. He seemed afraid, she thought. When she returned the following day, the flat was empty and the man was gone. A neighbor said a moving van had appeared in the night and taken all his things away. It was considered very mysterious.
And then Reilly had been contacted by the man who had saved her life, telling her that Moran was planning to kill her, and exactly why. Moran was not a theatrical agent. Moran was an assassin in the employ of James Moriarty, the criminal mastermind who was everything that Sherlock Holmes had claimed during the disastrous trial of Richard Brook.
The newspaper implied that serious questions were being asked as to whether Scotland Yard’s baseless accusation of kidnapping against Sherlock Holmes had driven the man to take his own life. Questions were being asked, too, about Holmes’ rooftop confession - whether the distraught man had simply had a mental breakdown, his confession merely the delusion of a deranged mind.
# # #
Giving back the mobile, Sherlock took John’s hand. The hand that had pulled the trigger on Moran. “John. It was you. You killed Sebastian Moran.”
“I did,” he said. “He was going to kill me. Reilly too. Moriarty didn’t like my new blog, or her questions.”
Sherlock was ashamed. He had selfishly refused to look at John’s blog, after the fall. Except for one entry: “He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.” After that, he couldn’t bear to look again.
And so, John poured out his story to Sherlock; or most of it: the story of his blog campaign to restore Sherlock’s reputation; Moran’s answering warning shot, striking Mycroft albeit harmlessly. The wild suspicion that drove him to test the DNA from the bones in Sherlock’s grave. He couldn’t look at Sherlock, then; couldn’t explain how it was the sight of Mycroft, striding down Baker Street in Sherlock’s own coat, looking like the ghost of his brother, that made John imagine that Sherlock could somehow still be alive.
“John. I’m . . . I’m sorry. I thought . . . that you could forget, have a safe life. You have to believe me.” John could see tears in his eyes. He remembered the tears in his voice, at the fall, and he was torn then between his very real pain at that deception and the need to stop Sherlock’s grief any way he could.
“I never forgot, not for a day, not for a minute. I could never forget you,” was all he could say, his own throat thick with tears, and they held each other tight.
“I never forgot you, either, John,” Sherlock whispered against his neck.
The pills had eased the pain in John’s arm, made him feel pleasantly warm and unnaturally tranquil. The coiled tension from the day’s battle - he could only think of it as that, no different to Afghanistan, really - gently receded. He kissed Sherlock then, who kissed him right back, a glorious exploration of tongue and lips that went on so long that their lips were sore and they were both breathless. Sherlock pushed him gently back onto the bed.
“I believe,” he said, “that it’s my turn.” He was pulling at John’s plush hotel robe, exposing his lean body, so different than he remembered. He ran his hand down his chest, over his stomach, down to the elastic of his briefs, where he stroked and pulled a little.
When John began to protest, he put his other hand over his mouth. “Shush,” he said. “I won’t hurt your arm. Sit still. I need to, John,” he said, with simple unashamed wanting.
John’s skin was so warm under his hand, and responsive too; he could feel little shivers as he stroked, more lightly than he could tolerate on his own skin. He would experiment with different types of touching, he promised himself. When this was over, he would find out everything that gave John pleasure. The thought made his own cock harden.
He was glad that he didn’t need to wear gloves to touch John, the feel of his skin as his fingertips grazed the top of his briefs was thrilling. John thrust up with a soft moan, and Sherlock eased the briefs down, exposing his cock, already stiffening without the slightest touch. John looked down at Sherlock’s hand, hovering at his cock. Sherlock looked back into those blue eyes, so dark, and grasped his cock in his hand, where it instantly throbbed, once, and became harder.
They both groaned. It felt thick and hot, heavy in his grasp. It was nothing like touching himself, and certainly not like touching of the very few others he had endured contact with to this extent. He wanted to watch John come in his hand. He licked his palm and stroked, clasping his hand tighter, but it was too rough. “Wait,” he said, and retrieved the little bottle of hotel lotion from the bathroom and poured it out into his hand. He returned his slicked hand to John’s cock and stroked again, rubbing the head on the way up.
“Oh god,” John gasped.
“Good?” Sherlock asked, repeating the maneuver.
“Yes - “ John gasped, and watched Sherlock’s hand working his hardening cock, a sight so exciting that he had to screw his eyes shut or the show would be immediately over. Sherlock felt an unaccustomed surge of power, so satisfying: to be able to give this to John. The feel of his swelling cock, the sound of John’s increasingly ecstatic moans, the feel of precome as it leaked out and shone on the tip of his head; all this he savored and classified as among the most superior sensations he had ever experienced up to this moment.
He took his time, stroking faster, then slower, massaging the sensitive head, until John’s thighs began to shake and he pulled up fistfuls of sheet. Inspired, he couldn’t resist an experiment - leaning over and taking his rigid cock deeply into his mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” John gasped.
The experiment was a success. Now for variation. He sucked hard.
“You’re making me come, oh god,” John cried, thrusting his hands into Sherlock’s hair as he came down his throat, his entire body shuddering, his cock pulsing on his tongue. He pressed down and took it all in, the first time he had ever permitted a man to do this. The salty, musky taste was strange and erotic. He moaned as John’s cock softened, and swallowed. Now he had some of John inside him, he thought, curiously satisfied with this. John’s fingers were stroking through his hair.
“That was amazing,” John said with a grin, and Sherlock gave a crooked smile back.
# # #
The next morning, Sherlock’s brain produced the question that had been infiltrating his mind while he slept.
“John - Kitty Reilly says she had a confidential source. You, obviously. Did she tell you anything about Moriarty? She let him stay in her flat for a time.”
John sat up, sheets pooling around his waist. “I did ask her. I asked her for anything at all connected to Moriarty, no matter how trivial or farfetched. She gave me this.”
John showed Sherlock his mobile. It was a photograph of a necklace. A silver chain such as was worn for dog tags. A round silver coin or medal hung from the chain. The resolution was not good. There were what seemed to be two dolphins leaping, and initials running around the edge of the disc: B.S.C.G.D. There was a number at the bottom: 1860, and also at the top: 1991.
“Kitty Reilly said that Moriarty wore this around his neck. Once he took it off for a moment and she snapped this with her mobile. She asked him what it was, but he wouldn’t answer. She never saw it after that. I couldn’t figure out what it was.”
“Really, John, it’s simple enough,” Sherlock said, working his mobile silently. Finally he paused.
“This is fascinating,” he said.
After a few moments, he showed John an image: The crest of the Brighton Swim Club, in blue and white, two leaping dolphins and a shield.
The Brighton Swim Club proudly stated that it was arguably the oldest swim club in the world, having been established in 1860.
“Brighton - swimming -,” John said.
“Yes. Carl Powers.”
“So, it was what - Carl Powers’ swim medal? We know Moriarty killed him. Did he keep it as what, a trophy?” John was well aware that killers kept trophies from their victims. Lestrade had mentioned it sometimes, and he and Sherlock had also uncovered such artifacts.
“Yes, you are right, John. A swim medal. From 1991. But it didn’t belong to Carl Powers.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because these initials. B.S.C. G.D. Brighton Swim Club. Girls Division.”
John was astonished. “Moriarty was wearing some girl’s medal?”
Sherlock’s eyes grew unfocussed as he assimilated this fact. “Yes, John. This changes everything,” he whispered.
“How?”
“It’s the rules of the game. He wanted to burn out my heart. He put everything he had into doing so,” Sherlock said seriously. “And he won. Almost won.”
“Right, but. . . “
“Don’t you see? Moriarty told me I was him. He wanted me to be him. He learned everything he could about me. To trap me, to win. To burn out my heart. Because he wanted me to take the same journey he had taken.”
John shook his head. “What does the swimming medal mean in all of this?”
“You don’t wear a girl’s medal around your neck for more than twenty years unless she meant something very special. Unless you loved her,” Sherlock said. “Somebody burned out Moriarty’s heart.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to go back to where it all began, John. We’re going to Brighton.”
To be continued . . .
Listen to Walls Here
back: Chapter Fifteen: Dangerous Men:( Read more... )
next: Chapter Seventeen: Dead Man's Hand: ( Read more... )
author: ghislanem70
rating: NC-17
word count: 6,500 this chapter, 71,000 to date.
warnings: Spoilers for S2Ep3 The Reichenbach Fall; explicit sex, graphic violence, reference to sensory integration syndrome, suicidal ideation.
summary: Post-Reichenbach, John finds he's still got one thing left to live for.
disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
When you let go -- you let go,
you don't know how.
But your walls will fall down,
Yes, your walls will come down.
-Lyrics to Walls, all rights reserved to Sultan & Ned Shepard & Quilla.
John knew instantly that it was going to be very bad.
Crimes scenes yielded up a variety of distinctive, oppressive odors. But it was in Afghanistan, not London, that he had become almost inured to the smell of freshly spilled blood. Almost. He never stopped feeling a stab of sorrow for what it meant. As he eased the cottage door open, the familiar warm metallic scent hit him right in the face.
He crouched low, took a silent step, saw red rivulets still flowing. He held back his instinct to leap first to help the wounded, and look later. Even in Afghanistan, this was usually a bad idea - as he had learned to his cost. He took another silent step. The only sound was a faint groaning.
He waited, crossed the room to the doorway to the next room. Where the blood was. He looked around the doorframe. Two bodies on the floor, one making faint sounds. He backed up and beckoned to Sherlock, who took the scene in at a glance and checked the other rooms, the work of just moments.
No one was there.
# # #
The bodies on the floor were Gerry Murphy, and another of the men who had taken O’Neill from the Three Steps.
They had been shot. One was quite dead. Murphy was faintly wheezing. John started desperate triage that he knew would be futile, not before he had the presence of mind to put on his gloves. He knew not to leave any prints. This man would soon be a corpse; he could see that. Murphy was trying to speak.
“It was O’Neill, wasn’t it?” Sherlock said.
Murphy opened his mouth to whisper. John leaned his ear closed down to his lips to catch what might be his last words. This was something he had done more times than he ever wanted to remember. Terrible memories rose up.
“Nuh. . . Trist,” Murphy said.
“Tryst?” John asked. “No tryst?” This made no sense.
“ Nnnn . . . trust. ”
“No trust, is that it?”
He was gone.
Sherlock was following footprints in the blood, some John’s. Sherlock took care not to tread in it. He opened the door and followed the bloody prints outside. The silver sedan that had sped away from the Three Steps was still parked here. Sherlock knelt in the gravel.
“Sherlock. We don’t have time for deductions. Maybe the third man - or O’Neill -- is hiding in one of the outbuildings. With the shotgun. And we need to do whatever we’re going to do before the police come.”
Sherlock shook his head, but for once without the showy arrogance he might formerly have displayed. And yet even now, John felt a thrill watching that brilliant mind at work.
“No, John -- they’ve both run away,” he said. “Look -“ he pointed to the disturbed gravel. “They sprinted side by side --- across the field.”
“Then we can still catch them - those men in there were shot not ten minutes ago.” One of the few areas of criminal forensics in which his own direct experience exceeded Sherlock’s own was in measuring the probable remaining minutes of survival after lethal wounds.
They ran to their own car. “I’ll drive,” John said, looking over the rock-strewn fields. “It’s not a Land Rover -- but the ground looks like Afghanistan, except for the green.”
They careened across the stony field. It didn’t take long. O’Neill and the third man were sprinting, stumbling over rocks toward the paved road. O’Neill was holding the shotgun, but he wasn’t threatening the other man. “Maybe someone’s picking them up,” John said. He floored it, muttering, “Sorry,” when the car jostled so violently that Sherlock’s head struck the roof of the car just as the sound of a roaring motor filled the air. A shadow passed overhead.
A single-propeller airplane appeared. It landed smoothly in the middle of the road.
“Faster,” Sherlock yelled. John pushed it harder.
“Grab the wheel,” John ordered, and leaned out the driver’s window with his pistol. He tried for the airplane’s tires, resisting an impulse that told him to shoot O’Neill in the back. Sherlock swerved around a huge pothole, spoiling John’s shot. It went wild.
Too late. The door to the airplane swung open, O’Neill and the third man were climbing inside.
Now they were close enough that John thought he could see the outline of the pilot’s head through the cockpit’s window: Dark hair. Aviator shades.
His blood froze.
“Moriarty!” He cried, and for a wild moment he aimed at the cockpit, but the bore of the shotgun was aimed right back. O’Neill blasted. Sherlock swerved, O’Neill missed. The jostling made it impossible to take a clear shot; in a moment, the craft would be airborne. “Slow down,” John shouted as he pushed open the door and rolled out of the driver’s seat to the ground, where he took aim at the wheels and blew one out.
O’Neill looked straight into his eyes, grinning, and blasted again. John heard Sherlock shooting now in a jumbled assault of too-familiar sensations - a slam followed by burning in his arm, the shriek of the aircraft as it careened unsteadily down the road. He rolled and tried one last shot, only to see the craft recede and go airborne.
# # #
John watched it vanish with shock. So close they had been; so close. He thought he had seen Moriarty sneer through the cockpit window, but if he was honest he would have to admit he hadn’t seen the pilot’s face.
“John! John, are you all right?” Sherlock was hovering over him, examining his wound, wrapping the bloody arm with a scarf. John sat up, tried to move it. It moved. It burned. A near miss - some scattering shot had struck his upper arm.
“God - John - a few inches more and it would have struck you in the chest. Like the men in the cottage. I told you, John, I don’t want this - now look at you,” he said, looking stricken at John’s blood on his own hands.
“John,” he said again quietly, and took him into a half-embrace so as not to hurt his wounds.
“It’s only a bit of shot, Sherlock,” John said, his words muffled against Sherlock’s shoulder. His arm burned. He held Sherlock tight and felt his arm pulling him closer, lips against his hair, and for a moment he closed his eyes and imagined that they were not here, they were home, safe.
We will be, he swore to himself.
“We need to tend that immediately,” Sherlock declared, pulling him toward the car. Sherlock’s knowledge of gunshot wounds was probably more extensive than John’s, although not with respect to living persons.
John tried on a reassuring grin that was really a grimace. “My arm can wait. A bit. The police -- they’ll be there any minute - the barkeep called it in,” John said through gritted teeth. Anybody who thought “flesh wounds” were minor had never been shot, he used to say in Afghanistan to new and insensitive medics. “And someone will have heard the gunfire by now, and seen the airplane. We need to get moving before we have to answer any awkward questions.”
Their eyes met in the silent understanding that they definitely weren’t going back to the cottage to meet the police. The abused sedan had a full tank of gas. Sherlock checked his GPS and guided them by circuitous roads back toward Dublin, and sent a coded text to Irene. He prayed that no one was yet searching for Mrs. O’Hare’s borrowed car.
As he contemplated the possibility of being caught by the police, Sherlock’s conscience was clear. Well, a sociopath’s conscience was always clear, but John had taught him the importance of respecting certain moral boundaries. Sherlock did not consider anything he had done up until this moment -- his attack on the Golem and Moriarty’s other creatures that he had hunted down and “reprogrammed”; their gunfight of moments ago -- to be ‘wrong.’ But he knew that the police wouldn’t feel quite the same. He could not afford to become a wanted man. He was a dead man. A ghost. And must stay that way. He drove faster.
John was too focused on these strange events and the searing pain in his arm to spare any thought for whether the police might be looking for him as a wanted man for the murder of Sebastian Moran.
# # #
The Guards arrived at Murphy’s farm. Detective Brian Quinn, the County’s most senior homicide detective , paced around the cottage.
Gerry Murphy was dead, and Nick Bannon too. Close range shotgun blasts. Aidan Laverty, the third man reported to have left the Three Steps with Mick O’Neill, was missing. O’Neill had also vanished. However they had left Murphy’s farm, they hadn’t taken the car they arrived in. They most definitely had driven away in a car, though: one could see fresh tire tracks across the green field.
“McFadden - Get me some impression on those tire tracks,” he said. “And track down Danny Murphy. Tell him not to come back to the farm. Tell him to wait, wherever he is. I’ll send someone down to tell him . . . about his brother.”
When asked to identify all of the persons who had been in the Three Steps when O’Neill was abducted, the barkeep did not at first recollect the shabby backpackers. If he thought of them at all, he had assumed they had gone to hike Slieve Gullion, as many did; and no, he had not seen them leave. They were not from the village. They seemed to be foreigners. At least the tall one. He knew they hadn’t been involved in the fracas with O’Neill - everyone there had seen that was Murphy and his boys.
It would be several hours before Quinn got around to sending someone to question O’Neill’s mother, Mrs. O’Hare, about the altercation in the Three Steps.
# # #
Being a woman who, for various reasons, did not believe is blabbing to the Guards about one’s business, even when it might affect her own son, Mrs. O’Hare kept her mouth shut.
“So you can tell us nothing at all, Mrs. O’Hare, about why Gerry Murphy and your son got into an altercation at the Three Steps?”
“It was not an ‘altercation,’ Detective Quinn. Those boys attacked my Mick. Three to one. I know no more than everyone knows in Dromintee - Gerry Murphy always hated my son.”
“It’s a bit more serious this time, Mrs. O’Hare. Gerry Murphy’s dead. Can you think of anywhere your son would go? He’s not here, for example? We’ve called down to Dublin; he’s not returned to his flat. No one has seen him at the station.”
“My son’s not here. I wouldn’t tell you if he was. What do you take me for? My son’s done nothing wrong, ” she said vehemently. She took a long drink of whiskey from a glass before her on the table. No tea for Mrs. O’Hare. “For my nerves,” she said. “This is a terrible thing. It’s my birthday, you know.”
She broke into tears and the Guards backed out of her tidy cottage. “We’ll send a female Guard around in the morning to take your statement, Mrs. O’Hare,” Quinn said with some exasperation. The woman was hiding something.
In his experience, though, everyone in Dromintee had something to hide.
# # #
After the Guards departed, Irene emerged from the back room.
“Thank you. I’m so grateful,” she said in Nordic-accented English. “I’m sure there is a good explanation for Sven . . . not returning. Perhaps he decided to hike Slieve Gullion after all, and his mobile battery is dead. He’ll be back soon, I’m sure. We’re returning to Oslo the day after tomorrow. We can’t become involved with police matters, not here in a foreign country, you can understand this? These things don’t concern us. Sven was just trying to help - he has always been very brave and selfless,” she said without a hint of irony.
“Nobody wants to mix with the Guards, that’s sure,” Mrs. O’Hare said equably. “But aren’t you worried for your brother, Miss Siegerson?” She gave her a sharp look.
Irene took a deep breath and sat down beside Mrs. O’Hare. “I am, rather, but Sven can take care of himself. I think I’d like a drink,” she said. The other woman reached for her decanter, but Irene stopped her. “Allow me.”
She produced a bottle from her capacious handbag and surreptitiously checked her mobile. Her heart leaped to know that at least, Sherlock was safe; safe with John. The code was unmistakable. She was to go her own way now, unless Sherlock needed her again. Now that he had been reunited with John Watson, she very much doubted if Sherlock ever would. She was surprised by hot tears welling up.
“Stop it,” she admonished herself softly. Then she composed herself and turned to Mrs. O’Hare. “I’m writing an article about Irish whiskies. This is 15 year old Greenore.”
Irene uncorked the bottle and poured them both a shot.
“Slainte, lass,” Mrs. O’Hare said appreciatively. She was not, in fact, over concerned about her son Mick’s disappearance. Her son knew well how to take care of himself.
In fact, both of her sons did.
She knocked back the exceptionally smooth whiskey.
Suddenly she was very tired indeed. It had been a trying day. Not at all what she had hoped for her birthday.
“Mrs. O’Hare, lie down, dear. . . “ she heard as though from the end of a long tunnel.
Her vision darkened, and she knew nothing more until the next morning when the female Guard rapped politely at her front door. She rose from her sofa in confusion. She was still wearing her birthday dress.
The lovely Miss Siegerson was gone.
Worse, she’d taken the bottle of Greenore with her.
# # #
It must be said that James Moriarty loved speed. Not the drug, never that; his own internal mechanisms, complex and deadly, ran quite fast enough without stimulants.
But speed in all of its most exciting manifestations - the acceleration of events as he orchestrated them, set them in motion to his own music; the incredible swiftness of the advent of death, at any time and in any place, if he so chose - and very often, he did.
However, in the months since winning his ultimate game, he had been forced to restrict himself to speed of the more prosaic sort: such as, for example, the scorchingly fast French-made Dahmer -Socata TBM 850 - the single engine prop plane capable of speeds equal to a light jet.
“You have a new toy,” his brother observed idly. Moriarty was sensitive to the gently implied criticism.
“It was on loan. But now you’ve gone and gotten it shot up - we’ve lost a tire. We might crash on landing!” Moriarty was just trying to upset his brother. He was confident he could still land safely. Probably. And he certainly had no intention of dying, notwithstanding his theatrics on the roof of Barts. “And you’ve gotten blood all over the seats. They were custom. Hermes. I’ll have to buy it now and burn the seats; have new ones made. In France.” He was whining really. O’Neill looked out the window. “But I wonder . . . Westwood . . .” he murmured to himself.
They were approaching top speed: 300 knots, 345 miles per hour. They were already far, far away from Dromintee and the little farm in Cullyhanna, and climbing fast.
“How much?” O’Neill didn’t really care, but it was something prosaic to talk about, to bring his heart rate back normal. It was almost there already, he noted with satisfaction. He wiped blood from his face with a handkerchief.
“Two point three million,” Moriarty said. “I’ll handle it.”
“The rules, James. Remember the rules. Lying low. No more . . . shall we say, dramatic gestures.”
“Oh really!” Moriarty shrieked. “What’s all this Grand Guignol, then? Under the circumstances, I think it’s time for a little renegotiating, brother.” He pushed the craft even faster, higher, then dropped it into a corkscrew spin. “Isn’t this magnificent?”
If he had thought to terrify his older brother for once, he must have been disappointed. Mick O’Neill stared out the window at the spinning wings, the ground as it approached with wicked speed. He looked bored. Even though he had just stabbed Aidan in the heart with a pair of sheep shears pinched from Murphy’s farm. An amazing sensation, if too fleeting.
“But I did what you said - you gave your word - I don’t understand, “ Aidan had gasped, seeing the blade in his hand, knowing his fate. His body was bundled in the back. That would have to be dealt with too.
His brother loved long-range planning.
He himself preferred improvisation.
Moriarty pressed a few buttons, fiddled with the controls, and the aircraft smoothly recovered. “These French engineers take all the fun out of flying. Practically flies itself. Where’s the suspense in that?” he fretted, looking glum. He consoled himself by pushing the aircraft to its top speed. He savored the sight of gauges pushing into the red zone.
O’Neill gave a short barking laugh. It might have been at the sight of his younger brother enjoying his new toy, and a rare day out of confinement. Or it might have been at the exquisite sensation of his clothes and skin, stained with another man’s blood.
“All right. You came through for me, I’ll come through for you. I always do, don’t I? Now, what is it you want, James?”
“I want to go back to London,” he snarled, his mood swinging viciously, just like that. There were dangerous sounds coming from the engine now.
“Ah. Travel. Yes. Well. Do you think you’re ready? Don’t look at me like that. We can talk about it. I’m thinking of travel too. A bit farther from home is best for me, under the circumstances. Regrettable. But this would seem to be an ideal opportunity for me to attend to our concerns in Macau.”
“’Home.’ I cannot understand it - why you wanted to go home at all? See what’s happened now. I was right!”
“You were. But it was Mother’s birthday, you unnatural wretch,” O’Neill said almost fondly. He was rather proud of James’ complete lack of natural affection for his family. Like his former nemesis Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty was a sociopath. It was one of the things that had made their game so thrilling while it lasted. Whether James could accurately be classified as “high functioning,” though, depended upon whether operating as a law unto himself, a conscienceless, remorseless orchestrator of crime - from murder to more mundane capers -- could fairly be considered “high functioning.”
But O’Neill didn’t have the leisure now to contemplate his brother’s interesting psyche. He had his own little problems to think about. He still clutched the bloody sheep shears in his pocket. He liked the slick feel of gore on the blades. It had been too long.
“I was entitled, under the circumstances, to a little present for myself,” he said conversationally.
But this was something he knew his brother did not understand. The blood. The irresistible impulse. This was one of the keys to their enduring partnership. Their different preferences in crime made them an almost perfect whole, he reminded himself.
James Moriarty abhorred getting his hands literally dirty. Most especially, he abhorred getting them bloody.
“Stop babbling, would you - shut up and just listen to that. It’s beautiful.” Moriarty actually looked happy. A rare occurrence, especially since the death of Sherlock Holmes. As he had particular need for Jim to be tractable for a short while, this was good.
“Wonderful. Just try to slow a bit over the sea, will you, Jimmy?” he said over the din. “I’ll just get rid of my friend.”
“I’m a speed demon!” Moriarty shrieked as the engine screamed.
# # #
It was nighttime. Sherlock broke into a small neighborhood pharmacy and stole a list of supplies at John’s direction. “John, we need someplace private to tend your arm - we’ll get a hotel. But we have to change clothes. We can’t look like the backpackers from Dromintee.”
Sherlock rummaged in their bags, found John’s good suit, and pulled out black trousers, a stylish turtleneck jumper and new scarf for himself. They helped each other out of their clothes, John cursing at the pain in his arm, but for all that they found themselves snickering as they twisted awkwardly in the tight confines of Mrs. O’Hare’s car.
“Get your bloody elbow out of my ear, you bony git,” John huffed, giggling. He hadn’t felt this light since . . .perhaps Devon, the end of the Baskerville case. It made no sense at all: he had just been shot, he’d probably seen Moriarty and let him get away. But they were here, they were alive, they were together. His thawing heart swelled a little. He felt hope.
Their ungainly struggles had fogged the windows. Once dressed, they gazed greedily, still shocked to see one another’s faces after so long apart.
“Come here,” John said roughly, and pulled Sherlock close and kissed him until his burning arm forced him to stop far sooner than he willingly would have, pulling away breathless and filled with a desperate kind of joy under the pain and fear.
“You’ll hurt your arm,” Sherlock scolded, pulling away, smoothing John’s jacket.
“It’s all right - - you don’t feel ---“
Sherlock shook his head. “It’s not that. At least - I’m determined that it won’t.”
“Have you any idea - an idea at all - how long I’ve wanted to be able to do that?” He ignored the pain in his arm and decided he deserved more - but Sherlock stopped him.
“After we patch up your arm, perhaps you’ll show me,” he grinned wickedly.
# # #
They left the car in a car park and took a bus into Dublin. They bought new luggage at a touristy shop. John watched as Sherlock, looking haughtily suave, acquired a room in an expensive business hotel. Inside, John was able to doctor his own arm quite capably with Sherlock’s assistance. He reluctantly took a tablet for the pain.
They both showered, and John smiled to see Sherlock very deliberately stalk around the room with nothing but a towel around his narrow hips. In 221b, he had always been careful to wrap himself in his dressing gown. And John had always admired the view, imagining much more. Sherlock smiled down at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“I couldn’t bloody be thinking anything else,” John growled, reaching for the towel.
“John -“ Sherlock gripped the towel and looked very serious.
John sighed. “I know.” He thumped back against the bed with a deep sigh. “We need to talk.”
“We need to decide what to do next.”
“My plan’s no different. Follow everything that leads to Moriarty. That was him today. I know it,” he said. “No telling now where they were going. We need to find out.”
“O’Neill won’t be able to return to Dublin now. He’ll have to leave Ireland for good.”
“That’s not what I meant. Sherlock. It’s time for you tell me-everything.”
Sherlock swallowed. He feared talking about Bart’s, and the fall. It would drive them apart again, he knew. “John - not yet. Please. I promise. . . . that I will.”
John’s jaw clenched, but he nodded. “If that’s how you feel,” he said. “Tell me about Dublin, then.”
Sherlock explained that he had tracked and interrogated several of Moriarty’s favored tools of destruction - a scattered team of assassins from around the globe, capable of carrying out murders for hire or for whatever motive Moriarty pleased. And that some revealed Moriarty was rumoured to have a brother, even more vicious than he was.
More than one had been ordered to deliver items to locations in Dublin, most often Connolly train station. And one had once stayed behind, unobserved, and was able to see who retrieved the package. It was a man in a uniform of the train station, an official. It was sometimes good to store up information, even information that you weren’t supposed to have. He had taken the trouble to find out the man’s name: O’Neill. In case it should ever be important.
“Once we learned the name, I retrieved his photo. Simple - it’s on the railway’s website. And once I saw his face, I knew. None of the assassins knew. They had never met Moriarty, never seen his face.”
“Sherlock.” John looked at him very seriously, frowning. “What happened . . .to these people? The ones you . . .interrogated, I mean. Did you -“
“I didn’t kill them, John. If that’s what you’re asking. I haven’t killed anyone.” He went to his new luggage, pulled out his little case with his vials of the terror drug and explained what he had done. He and Irene, working as a team. John touched one of the vials. The idea that Sherlock had felt comfortable enough with the fascinating Miss Adler to involve her in something so hugely dangerous gave him a deep pang: fear that she couldn’t be trusted, and hot jealousy for Sherlock’s obvious respect for her mettle and worse, her intellect. He swallowed it down and promised himself that he wouldn’t let her spoil his present fragile happiness.
“We would have gone after the man named Sebastian Moran, next. He’s very close to Moriarty. But he’s in London. I don’t want to go back to London unless I’ve no other option, it’s too dangerous. But John - in Drogheda, you said Moran’s name.”
John looked at Sherlock steadily. He had finally removed his dark lenses, and Sherlock looked back into their blue depths. They were still dark.
“About that. I guess you haven’t looked at the news for a few days.”
“No.”
John pulled out his mobile and showed Sherlock the news.
Sebastian Moran had been shot three days ago by a gunman on a London rooftop.
Sebastian Moran had planned to murder Kitty Reilly, according to her confidential source: an incognito gunman, who had told Reilly of Moran’s plan to kill her, then saved her life just moments before Moran would have pulled the trigger.
The gunman’s identity was unknown, and he remained at large. He was urgently wanted for questioning by Scotland Yard.
Kitty Reilly’s most explosive revelation, however, was about Sherlock Holmes.
“Sherlock Holmes Was Innocent, Framed By Criminal Mastermind James Moriarty,” screamed the Sun’s headline. “Kitty Reilly’s Story, Exclusive To The Sun!”
Reilly, it transpired, had greatly improved her investigative reporting skills; stung, perhaps, by Sherlock Holmes’ insults at Old Bailey. And digging, digging deep, she had peeled back the layers of the identity of the failed actor, Richard Brook, who had claimed to have been coerced into cooperating with Sherlock Holmes’ grandiose plans to fool the world into thinking him the world’s greatest detective.
# # #
Richard Brook had agreed that she could write a book, telling his story: the story of his deception by Sherlock Holmes. They had discussed it, excitedly, at her flat. It would be a best seller. They would be rich; Brook would become a great actor. Wine had been drunk.
After Sherlock’s suicide, though, Brook had gone into hiding; vanished, in fact. At first she had thought that Brook was frightened by these shocking events. Brook had a very timid nature, in her limited experience with the man.
Brook had put her in contact with man he referred to as his “agent,” one Sebastian Moran. She met with Moran a few times. He assured her that Brook was hiding from the press, wishing to remain in seclusion after the tragic suicide of Sherlock Holmes. Brook was crushed. He blamed himself, Moran said, for allowing Sherlock to manipulate him as far as he had. The charade had gone much too far.
Reilly had wanted to believe. She really had. Her bestseller was halfway finished. But after more than two weeks without contact from Brook, she had begun digging.
It was harder work than she had ever done - but every one of the references for Richard Brook’s purported acting credentials - stage plays, children’s television, had all proven to be dead ends. The “children’s show” had been a late-night broadcast on a public access station in Ireland. The award it had purportedly been given was from an entity that no one could remember having worked with. A charitable institution for which Brook had claimed to perform for disadvantaged children - turned out to be an empty warehouse.
Reilly tracked down a director of the charity to his modest flat in Bayswater. He slammed the door nervously in her face at her questions. He seemed afraid, she thought. When she returned the following day, the flat was empty and the man was gone. A neighbor said a moving van had appeared in the night and taken all his things away. It was considered very mysterious.
And then Reilly had been contacted by the man who had saved her life, telling her that Moran was planning to kill her, and exactly why. Moran was not a theatrical agent. Moran was an assassin in the employ of James Moriarty, the criminal mastermind who was everything that Sherlock Holmes had claimed during the disastrous trial of Richard Brook.
The newspaper implied that serious questions were being asked as to whether Scotland Yard’s baseless accusation of kidnapping against Sherlock Holmes had driven the man to take his own life. Questions were being asked, too, about Holmes’ rooftop confession - whether the distraught man had simply had a mental breakdown, his confession merely the delusion of a deranged mind.
# # #
Giving back the mobile, Sherlock took John’s hand. The hand that had pulled the trigger on Moran. “John. It was you. You killed Sebastian Moran.”
“I did,” he said. “He was going to kill me. Reilly too. Moriarty didn’t like my new blog, or her questions.”
Sherlock was ashamed. He had selfishly refused to look at John’s blog, after the fall. Except for one entry: “He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.” After that, he couldn’t bear to look again.
And so, John poured out his story to Sherlock; or most of it: the story of his blog campaign to restore Sherlock’s reputation; Moran’s answering warning shot, striking Mycroft albeit harmlessly. The wild suspicion that drove him to test the DNA from the bones in Sherlock’s grave. He couldn’t look at Sherlock, then; couldn’t explain how it was the sight of Mycroft, striding down Baker Street in Sherlock’s own coat, looking like the ghost of his brother, that made John imagine that Sherlock could somehow still be alive.
“John. I’m . . . I’m sorry. I thought . . . that you could forget, have a safe life. You have to believe me.” John could see tears in his eyes. He remembered the tears in his voice, at the fall, and he was torn then between his very real pain at that deception and the need to stop Sherlock’s grief any way he could.
“I never forgot, not for a day, not for a minute. I could never forget you,” was all he could say, his own throat thick with tears, and they held each other tight.
“I never forgot you, either, John,” Sherlock whispered against his neck.
The pills had eased the pain in John’s arm, made him feel pleasantly warm and unnaturally tranquil. The coiled tension from the day’s battle - he could only think of it as that, no different to Afghanistan, really - gently receded. He kissed Sherlock then, who kissed him right back, a glorious exploration of tongue and lips that went on so long that their lips were sore and they were both breathless. Sherlock pushed him gently back onto the bed.
“I believe,” he said, “that it’s my turn.” He was pulling at John’s plush hotel robe, exposing his lean body, so different than he remembered. He ran his hand down his chest, over his stomach, down to the elastic of his briefs, where he stroked and pulled a little.
When John began to protest, he put his other hand over his mouth. “Shush,” he said. “I won’t hurt your arm. Sit still. I need to, John,” he said, with simple unashamed wanting.
John’s skin was so warm under his hand, and responsive too; he could feel little shivers as he stroked, more lightly than he could tolerate on his own skin. He would experiment with different types of touching, he promised himself. When this was over, he would find out everything that gave John pleasure. The thought made his own cock harden.
He was glad that he didn’t need to wear gloves to touch John, the feel of his skin as his fingertips grazed the top of his briefs was thrilling. John thrust up with a soft moan, and Sherlock eased the briefs down, exposing his cock, already stiffening without the slightest touch. John looked down at Sherlock’s hand, hovering at his cock. Sherlock looked back into those blue eyes, so dark, and grasped his cock in his hand, where it instantly throbbed, once, and became harder.
They both groaned. It felt thick and hot, heavy in his grasp. It was nothing like touching himself, and certainly not like touching of the very few others he had endured contact with to this extent. He wanted to watch John come in his hand. He licked his palm and stroked, clasping his hand tighter, but it was too rough. “Wait,” he said, and retrieved the little bottle of hotel lotion from the bathroom and poured it out into his hand. He returned his slicked hand to John’s cock and stroked again, rubbing the head on the way up.
“Oh god,” John gasped.
“Good?” Sherlock asked, repeating the maneuver.
“Yes - “ John gasped, and watched Sherlock’s hand working his hardening cock, a sight so exciting that he had to screw his eyes shut or the show would be immediately over. Sherlock felt an unaccustomed surge of power, so satisfying: to be able to give this to John. The feel of his swelling cock, the sound of John’s increasingly ecstatic moans, the feel of precome as it leaked out and shone on the tip of his head; all this he savored and classified as among the most superior sensations he had ever experienced up to this moment.
He took his time, stroking faster, then slower, massaging the sensitive head, until John’s thighs began to shake and he pulled up fistfuls of sheet. Inspired, he couldn’t resist an experiment - leaning over and taking his rigid cock deeply into his mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” John gasped.
The experiment was a success. Now for variation. He sucked hard.
“You’re making me come, oh god,” John cried, thrusting his hands into Sherlock’s hair as he came down his throat, his entire body shuddering, his cock pulsing on his tongue. He pressed down and took it all in, the first time he had ever permitted a man to do this. The salty, musky taste was strange and erotic. He moaned as John’s cock softened, and swallowed. Now he had some of John inside him, he thought, curiously satisfied with this. John’s fingers were stroking through his hair.
“That was amazing,” John said with a grin, and Sherlock gave a crooked smile back.
# # #
The next morning, Sherlock’s brain produced the question that had been infiltrating his mind while he slept.
“John - Kitty Reilly says she had a confidential source. You, obviously. Did she tell you anything about Moriarty? She let him stay in her flat for a time.”
John sat up, sheets pooling around his waist. “I did ask her. I asked her for anything at all connected to Moriarty, no matter how trivial or farfetched. She gave me this.”
John showed Sherlock his mobile. It was a photograph of a necklace. A silver chain such as was worn for dog tags. A round silver coin or medal hung from the chain. The resolution was not good. There were what seemed to be two dolphins leaping, and initials running around the edge of the disc: B.S.C.G.D. There was a number at the bottom: 1860, and also at the top: 1991.
“Kitty Reilly said that Moriarty wore this around his neck. Once he took it off for a moment and she snapped this with her mobile. She asked him what it was, but he wouldn’t answer. She never saw it after that. I couldn’t figure out what it was.”
“Really, John, it’s simple enough,” Sherlock said, working his mobile silently. Finally he paused.
“This is fascinating,” he said.
After a few moments, he showed John an image: The crest of the Brighton Swim Club, in blue and white, two leaping dolphins and a shield.
The Brighton Swim Club proudly stated that it was arguably the oldest swim club in the world, having been established in 1860.
“Brighton - swimming -,” John said.
“Yes. Carl Powers.”
“So, it was what - Carl Powers’ swim medal? We know Moriarty killed him. Did he keep it as what, a trophy?” John was well aware that killers kept trophies from their victims. Lestrade had mentioned it sometimes, and he and Sherlock had also uncovered such artifacts.
“Yes, you are right, John. A swim medal. From 1991. But it didn’t belong to Carl Powers.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because these initials. B.S.C. G.D. Brighton Swim Club. Girls Division.”
John was astonished. “Moriarty was wearing some girl’s medal?”
Sherlock’s eyes grew unfocussed as he assimilated this fact. “Yes, John. This changes everything,” he whispered.
“How?”
“It’s the rules of the game. He wanted to burn out my heart. He put everything he had into doing so,” Sherlock said seriously. “And he won. Almost won.”
“Right, but. . . “
“Don’t you see? Moriarty told me I was him. He wanted me to be him. He learned everything he could about me. To trap me, to win. To burn out my heart. Because he wanted me to take the same journey he had taken.”
John shook his head. “What does the swimming medal mean in all of this?”
“You don’t wear a girl’s medal around your neck for more than twenty years unless she meant something very special. Unless you loved her,” Sherlock said. “Somebody burned out Moriarty’s heart.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to go back to where it all began, John. We’re going to Brighton.”
To be continued . . .
Listen to Walls Here
back: Chapter Fifteen: Dangerous Men:( Read more... )
next: Chapter Seventeen: Dead Man's Hand: ( Read more... )