Fic: The Descent of Man [Sherlock]
Fic: The Descent of Man, Pt. 4a
The conclusion of my first foray into Sherlock fic - and bring on the crackiness! Believe me, the crackiest elements come directly from the original ACD story this is based on, as you will have guessed ages ago if you are familiar with the original stories. If not, check out the ACD story The Creeping Man, and be prepared to marvel at the bizarritude... :D
Title: The Descent of Man
Part: 4 of 4
Characters: Sherlock, John, Mrs Hudson, DI Lestrade, DS Donovan, Anderson, Mycroft Holmes, "Anthea"
Rating/Warnings: Gen. Some mild swearing. Discussion of gruesome violence. Scientific testing on animals.
Word count: approx. 17,900 (total)
Summary: This one was weird even by Sherlock's standards. And if you've been reading this blog, you'll know that's weird. X-Files weird.
Disclaimer: Sherlock was created for the BBC by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, based on stories and characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I do not own any of this and am making no profit from it.
The Personal Blog of
Dr. John H. Watson
8th March
The Descent of Man, Part 4
So, the last part. The part I’ve been dreading ever since I started telling this story. Not just because it’s incredibly unlikely and outlandish and anybody reading it will think I’m either a) a liar or b) have finally lost it. No, I’ve been dreading it because I can still hardly bear to think about it. It gives me cold sweats, makes the hairs at the back of my neck prickle. It stops me from sleeping at night. Really. I thought I’d seen enough stuff like that already, that I was immune to anything else affecting me that way. Obviously not.
I could spend another couple of hours typing out rubbish like the above to avoid getting on with the story, but that’s not what you’re here for, right? Well, here it is, the shocking conclusion. And in all seriousness, it is shocking. So be warned. It gets worse before it gets better.
We spent that afternoon in Baker Street, me making a half-hearted attempt at the housework and Sherlock stretched out in the chair, bare forearms covered in nicotine patches, tapping away at his laptop with one hand and plucking noisily at that bloody violin with the other.
“Professor Dr Heinrich Ewald Lowenstein!” he suddenly announced as I happened to traipse through the living room dragging the hoover. “And it all becomes clear!”
“It does?” I blinked. “What, you Googled him? Brilliant detective work.”
“An eminent sports scientists and biochemist.” Sherlock ignored my comment. Only one person allowed to be sarcastic in our flat. “Briefly famous, or infamous, about ten years ago when he was convicted in a German court for crimes committed while working for the government of the old DDR…”
“The DDR?” I asked. “East Germany?” I was thinking, first “M”’s silly spy games now East Germany - it really was getting like James Bond.
“Yes,” said Sherlock, testily. “Before its dissolution in 1990, the German Democratic Republic - and you know what they say about countries with “democratic” in the name - spent nearly twenty years engaged in a programme of state-sponsored sports doping, systematically administering performance-enhancing drugs and hormones to just about all of its international athletes. Leaving thousands of teenagers with severe medical problems.”
“I’m not surprised,” I answered. “Abusing steroids at any age can mess you up, but in adolescence…”
“Not just steroids,” he responded. “Their scientists researched ever more exotic treatments in an effort to defeat more sophisticated testing regimes. Lowenstein was a leading light in the field, working directly with Dr Manfred Hoeppner, their chief of sports medicine. Links to the Stasi, so on and so forth...” He snapped the laptop shut: “When East Germany ended, Lowenstein joined a private company called Erfurtpharm, linked to major sports doping scandals in Europe and the United States. After the trial he dropped out of sight but rumours connect him to more recent sports scandals. You may have heard of that thing with the tennis players a few years ago…”
“No,” I admitted, “I haven’t.”
“Neither had I,” he said. “I love the internet.”
“What do performance-enhancing sports drugs have to do with Trevor Bennett and Paul Presbury?” I wondered. “Unless Camford Pharmaceuticals are involved in that as well…”
“In partnership with the Ministry of Defence?” Sherlock scoffed. “You said yourself; whatever Presbury’s working on must have some military application.”
“Maybe it does,” I told him, and I felt sick at the idea that had occurred to me: “Maybe. The sorts of drugs we’re talking about, they’re intended to make the people who use them faster, stronger, increase their stamina…not bad qualities for a combat soldier.”
“Very good, John.” Of course he’d already thought of it.
“No, it’s not very good,” I snapped. “Soldiers need to be in control of themselves.” For the first time in a while, my leg started to ache again. “The side-effects of the sorts of drugs you’re talking about include heightened aggression, irritability, paranoia…” I thought of the way Paul Presbury had nearly gone for Sherlock earlier today. If I’d ever seen a man out of control, it had been him. “You hear about fighter pilots off their heads on Benzedrine dropping bombs on Afghan wedding parties,” I said. “Can you imagine soldiers who were incredibly fast, incredibly strong, but in a permanent state of violent rage? Can you imagine the kinds of things they could do?”
“Like climbing the side of a building and smashing a man’s head to jelly with their bare hands?” Sherlock asked, calmly. “For instance?”
“Bloody hell…” I sank involuntarily onto the sofa. I could feel my hand shaking again, and not just my hand. Sherlock’s phone chimed to say he had a text.
“There’s our cue,” He sprang from the chair, sauntering towards the bedroom.
“Where are you going now?”
“Now?” he asked. “Now we’re going to go and meet up with Edith. That was her to say she’s made the necessary arrangements for us to break into Camford Pharmaceuticals.”
“Break into Camford Pharmaceuticals?” I thought of “M”’s warning about getting in the way of “these people”. “You must be out of your mind!”
“John,” said Sherlock.
“We’ll be lucky if we only end up in prison!”
“John.”
“Yeah?”
“Your hand’s stopped shaking.”
“Yeah.” I looked down at it, clenching and unclenching my suddenly rock-solid fist. “Yeah, it has.”
“Get dressed for some burglary,” he told me, leaving the room. “And bring your gun.”
“What gun?” I asked.
“Fine,” he sighed. “Bring that very, very convincing gun-shaped soap-on-a-rope you keep hidden in the bottom of your underwear drawer.”
“Why would you be going through my underwear drawer?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“John,” he replied, “once again you’re asking yourself the wrong question. Knowing what you know about me, the question you should be asking yourself is why wouldn’t I be going through your underwear drawer?”
He did make a very fair point, I suppose.
It was dark as the taxi dropped us around the corner from the Camford Pharmaceuticals labs. The only items in my wardrobe that seemed like “burgling clothes” were a pair of old camo trousers and a rather worse-for-wear black hoodie, hood up in a slightly lacklustre effort to conceal my identity. I could feel the gun, hard and angular against the small of my back where I’d tucked into my trousers, the bottom edge of the hoodie concealing it. It made me feel more confident than I probably should have been. It felt right.
“God,” Sherlock scoffed, shaking his head at my appearance. He, by contrast, was an elegant shadow in black, barely visible as he took the lead, keeping close to the tall wire fence. “Here.” He stopped and handed me something from the bag he was carrying. A black knitted ski mask and a pair of surgical gloves. I don’t even want to know how he came to have those just knocking around the flat. I quickly put on both gloves and mask and saw that he was similarly equipped. He, of course, looked like some sort of super-cool ninja - I dread to think what I looked like.
“Come on, John.” Sherlock stepped up to the fence. I noticed we were in nearly the same place where “Anthea” had kidnapped us earlier that day.
“How do we get over?” I whispered.
“We’re climbing,” he replied as if it should have been obvious. Well, okay it was, but that fence was about fifteen feet of wire mesh, glinting dully in the light of the nearest streetlamp with razor wire coiling along the top. Nevertheless, Sherlock was already halfway up it, the fence shaking and rattling as he used the diamonds of the mesh as hand- and toeholds. When he got to the top, he hung one-handed for a moment, pulling something from the bag and draping it over the razor wire. A blanket, folded a few times to provide just enough protection for him to clamber awkwardly over the top and start down the other side of the fence.
I glanced around for passers-by or security, heart thumping, and then followed. I haven’t had much physical exercise since being wounded, but I’m still pretty fit and this is the type of stuff the Army makes you do all the time. I like to think I managed the climb and the awkward scramble over the covered razor wire better than Sherlock had. The noise the fence made, though - I couldn’t believe nobody came running. There were supposed to be dogs on the grounds, weren’t there? I didn’t feel frightened though, not exactly. I felt excited, pumped on adrenaline.
It is the best feeling in the world, I realise that now, and I realise that I’ll do just about anything to keep feeling it, even trail around after Sherlock and put up with all his backchat and rubbish. Because it’s as much of an addiction, a drug, to me as Sherlock’s puzzles are to him.
I dropped to the ground, inside the laboratory complex. It all seemed very smooth so far, as burglaries went.
If DI Lestrade reads this, we’re both going to jail, aren’t we?
Well, maybe not, considering what happened later, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.
“Stay close,” Sherlock ordered. He pointed at the corner of the nearest building, then at a tree standing near the fence to our left, and I realised why he had been looking at the fence earlier. We were in a blind spot. The way the CCTV cameras were positioned, we could walk from the fence to the building where Trevor had died, and provided we did it in a relatively straight line neither of the two nearest cameras would see.
“Must be how the killer got in and out,” I told him.
“It seems like a reasonable theory,” he agreed. “Whether by sheer luck or animal cunning, well that’s another question…” For a moment, I thought he was talking about me and my theorising, but then I realised he meant the killer.
“Animal?” I queried, thinking of chimps again, but he waved me into silence. For a moment, we crouched at the base of the fence, waiting and listening. Every muscle in my body tensed; I caught myself holding my breath without even thinking, as if by staying still and silent I could make myself invisible.
“Is that you?” a voice hissed in the darkness. All I could make out was a slim black shape near the tree Sherlock had pointed out, but I recognised the voice:
“Edith?”
“Quiet,” Sherlock whispered, irritably. We straightened up and saw that it was her, also dressed for burglary it seemed, and she was not alone. “I didn’t say anything about bringing guests along,” Sherlock told her.
“After the mess you made today,” she shot back, “I didn’t have any choice, did I?” She indicated the two young men who were with her, scruffy student types but they looked determined. “This is Tom and this is Asim, they’re going to help us get the animals out.”
“Get the animals out?” I blurted. I didn’t actually know why Sherlock had decided to break in here, but somehow he didn’t strike me as the animal-rescuing type.
“Yeah,” Edith insisted. And the glance she gave me, as if amazed by my stupidity, was not a million miles away from the way Sherlock sometimes looked at me. “Look,” she told Sherlock, “did you really think it was a good idea sending me a text from Trevor’s phone - the morning after he was murdered, for God’s sake - accusing me of being an animal rights activist? I’ve spent the afternoon being questioned by two nasty fellas in suits, and not your Inspector Lestrade either. I think they were a bit heavier than he is.”
“He isn’t my Inspector Lestrade,” Sherlock replied, obviously annoyed at his own slip-up. He turned to me: “John, if you ever blog this, make sure you keep this bit in. It’s good to be reminded that I make mistakes…very occasionally. Keeps me honest.” Your wish, Sherlock, is my command.
“I’m getting out tonight,” Edith said. “It’s not as if I’m employed here under my real name and details. I’m going to disappear, but while I’ve still got access we’re going to get those animals out. That’s the deal. I get you into Paul’s office like you asked, and you help us get those chimps and dogs out of here. We’ve got contacts can get the chimps out of the country no questions asked, and the dogs…well, they’re just dogs, we can place them just about anywhere.”
“I don’t make deals,” Sherlock told her.
“You do tonight.” Something in her face, something hard, made me think she wasn’t bluffing. It does that to some people, something like finding Trevor dead, once they get over the shock. Believe me, I know. Sherlock just shrugged, conceding the point but not looking happy about it. Edith handed him a pale rectangular object: “That’s a visitor pass - I lifted it from the reception desk before. The alarm code on the first floor is zero-four-five-zero-seven. When you’ve done what you need to do, we’ll be in the animal house.” With that, she and her associates took off across the carpark, carefully following the route Sherlock had pointed out. So he wasn’t the only one to spot that either. I’m keeping you honest, Sherlock - you said it yourself!
“This way, John.”
I followed him to the corner of the lab building, pressing up against the wall as we approached the entrance. The pass worked. So did the alarm code. About three minutes later we were in Presbury’s office on the first floor, walking round like we owned the place. Well, Sherlock was walking round like he owned the place. I was expecting security to show up at any moment, and wondering what the sentence was for carrying a concealed firearm while breaking and entering.
“Did you see Presbury before?” Sherlock asked, switching on his pencil torch and casually going through drawers and filing cabinets.
“Yes, I saw him.” I was keeping an eye on the door. Someone had to. “I was standing right next to you when he nearly attacked you, remember.”
“You looked at him,” Sherlock said, “but did you see him?” He held the torch in his mouth to remove an armful of cardboard folders from the nearest cabinet, flicking through them. I waited for the punchline. Eventually, he dropped the folders on the floor in disgust and sat down at Presbury’s desk, switching on the computer.
“Yes?” I asked. “I assume you’re going to make some stunningly clever observation that I missed because I’m thick, so just get on with it.”
“Meow,” Sherlock commented. “Why do we always have to argue when we’re out?” His fingers danced across the keyboard. As you can probably guess, Sherlock finds working out other people’s passwords as easy as working out everything else about them. “What colour was Presbury’s hair?” he asked.
“What? Er…sort of dark grey, I suppose.”
“And yet in the picture on the security pass hanging around his neck, it was nearly white.”
“He started dyeing it,” I shrugged. “A lot of men do.”
“And did he also manage to have a hair transplant without anybody noticing?” Sherlock asked. “It was thicker than in the picture too. The only way Trevor or Edith wouldn’t have remarked upon that is if it was a gradual change, too gradual to notice if they were seeing him every working day. And why would a serious scientist with no private life suddenly decide to dye his hair anyway?”
“To feel better about himself?” I theorised. “Anyway, he didn’t have “no private life”, did he? He slept with Edith.” I fidgeted: “Tried to.”
“Yes,” said Sherlock, attention wandering from the computer to the desk itself. He quickly examined the in-tray, phone, a webcam, a pen holder, some papers, then started on the desk drawers. One was locked; he immediately produced his lockpick. “An older man tries to start a relationship with a much younger woman, experiences embarrassing sexual performance issues. Younger woman then instead begins a relationship with his much younger assistant…” He looked up from his lockpicking: “Well, you’re more of an expert on that kind of thing than I am, John, but even I can see the implications there.”
“You think Presbury killed Trevor out of jealousy?” I asked.
“One of the really classic motives,” he commented, finally getting the drawer open. “Old-school. Sex or money; the causes of just about every murder, when you get right down to it. And I don’t think he killed Trevor. I know it.” From the drawer he produced another one of those FedEx envelopes, already open. He tipped it out over the desktop, but the only thing that came out was another of Professor Lowenstein’s invoices. Sherlock glanced at it and cast it aside: “Did you see his hand this morning?”
“Bandaged from where Roy bit him.”
“And bleeding,” Sherlock said. “There were spots of blood on the bandage. From a wound inflicted nearly three weeks ago? No, from where he smashed his own hand to pulp against Trevor’s skull. That must have smarted in the morning.”
“I’ll bet.” I glanced nervously at the door again.
“And the knuckles of his other hand, you might have noticed, were bruised and abraded, as if from, well…from walking around on them.”
“So what do you think happened last night?”
“I think it happened four or five weeks ago,” he replied. “When Edith and Trevor became lovers and Presbury went to his conference in Berlin.”
“Where he met Lowenstein?” I guessed.
“Yes. Perhaps he went specifically to see him, to discuss the research he was doing for the government. To compare notes. Well, he did more than that because when he returned he seemed like a changed man.”
“Aggressive and irritable.” I thought about it: “Aggressive and irritable and receiving these mysterious parcels from Germany…”
“About which he was extremely secretive, according to Trevor.” Sherlock stood up from the desk.
“So, obviously he must be on something. Something Lowenstein has been sending him from Germany for two thousand quid a dose. Pricey.”
“Money is no object to the determined addict.” And the way Sherlock said it, half to himself without meeting my gaze, makes me think he might know something about that sort of thing. “He receives the parcels roughly every nine days judging by the dates on the invoices, and takes their contents when he receives them, explaining why the previous incidents…”
“…were nine days apart.” The obvious question, though, was: “What’s he taking, then, and why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Sherlock asked, heading for the door again, the purloined pass at the ready. “What would a man in his position - lusting after a younger woman, humiliated by his own ageing body, confronted with a younger sexual rival - what would he want?”
“Something to…” I almost laughed at the idea: “Something to rejuvenate himself?”
“Hence the hair,” Sherlock replied, exiting into the corridor. I quickly followed him.
“But that’s just stupid,” I pointed out. “Somebody like Presbury would know all too well that it’s scientifically impossible.”
Continued here: http://jjpor.livejournal.com/67479.html