Unthinkable, Chapter 1
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Gen
Spoilers: ASiP
Warnings: Trigger warnings for entire story: sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking. Very little on-screen, but the story revolves around these topics.
Special thanks to:
emungere,
lady_ganesh and
akasha_lilian for betaing.
Summary: Promptfic- Sherlock working in a Japanese host club. This got fairly dark.
"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
Chapter 1
Long-distance air travel with Sherlock Holmes, even in first class- which of course Sherlock insisted upon- was everything John had imagined and worse. Eleven hours. Eleven sodding hours of frenzied leg-jiggling, loud deductions on the sex lives of their fellow passengers, recounting of noted air disasters (historical and recent), and whining, whining, whining about how impossibly boring the trip was. ("I thought you'd traveled to Asia before!" John snapped at one point, patience shattered. "Of course," Sherlock said. "But last time I had clonazepam. I assumed you would prefer that we travel free of re-purposed pharmaceuticals.")
It wasn’t even two days since John had come home to find Sherlock offering tea to a civil servant named Sir Ellery Winston and agreeing to find his missing son. Nicholas Winston had been living and working in Japan until three months ago, when his calls and letters home had suddenly stopped. The Tokyo police were getting nowhere and in fact were no longer cooperating with the UK’s embassy at all. Somehow John found himself chivvied into going along, courtesy of a generous expense stipend from Sir Ellery. That was rather dishonest of Sherlock, John thought, but at least he’d agreed to help; even if John was pretty sure he only took the case because Mycroft had warned that the diplomatic climate was dangerous at present and asked Sherlock not to get involved.
By the time John and Sherlock’s plane landed, they’d been traveling all day and it was 9 pm back home, but of course it was 6 am in Tokyo. The airport was a blurry, bright, shrieking nightmare and John was happy to let Sherlock steer him confidently through the crowds, to the baggage claim, to the cab. They stopped briefly to rent Japanese SIM cards for their mobiles, because Sherlock considered mobile phone service on par with oxygen in terms of necessity, then proceeded to the hotel. Once there, John passed out face down on one of the double beds, not knowing or caring what Sherlock planned to do next.
"Gnuh," was John's response when Sherlock finally shook him awake. He still felt like hell, and now the seam from the pillowcase was imprinted all up the left side of his face.
"Get up, you've slept enough," Sherlock said. "It's four o'clock. We can stop for dinner on our way to the police station, if you like."
John slowly got up and looked for his suitcases, which turned out to be lying on the top shelf of the closet. Before John could become annoyed about his things being out of his reach he noticed that his clothes were neatly hanging next to Sherlock's. His flatmate lay back on his own (unmussed) bed and fiddled with his mobile while John used the bathroom and changed into fresh clothes. There was a Starbucks in the lobby of the hotel, but John protested when Sherlock forced a large cup of coffee on him. "The nap was bad enough, I'm never going to sleep tonight as it is."
"You don't want to sleep," Sherlock said firmly, shoving the cup against John's chest so he had to grab it or be scalded. "Most of our work here is going to be done at night, when the clubs are busiest. If you must sleep, it would be better for you to become temporarily nocturnal."
"That's only marginally less unhealthy than your sleep schedule," John muttered, but he took the coffee. “Wait, what clubs?”
“The clubs in Roppongi, where Nicholas Winston likely worked. His father told us he was teaching English to schoolchildren and waiting tables, because that’s what Nicholas told him. But Nicholas came to Japan on a tourist visa, which does not permit employment. He was working illegally but making a good deal of money, which suggests that he was working in a host club or something more directly related to the sex trade.” John blinked. Maybe that was why John had found a small black book entitled Japanese-English Guide to Sex, Kink and Naughtiness tucked into his carry-on. It had got him some very odd looks in the security line.
Instead of hailing a cab, Sherlock dragged him across the street to a tiny restaurant where he ordered for John in careful Japanese. The counterman served John a large bowl of what looked like Pot Noodle but turned out, once John got past the visual weirdness of the random meats and vegetables piled on top, to be ridiculously delicious. Sherlock waved off any suggestions that he himself eat and sipped his coffee while John fumbled with chopsticks and a flat-bottomed spoon.
When John had finished, then Sherlock found them a cab. "Where are we going?" John asked, because he'd listened to Sherlock tell the cabbie but he still had no idea.
"We're going to see Saburo Hayashi, the man in charge of investigating Nicholas Winston's disappearance. He speaks English, according to Sir Ellery, so you should be able to follow the conversation. He will be more honest about the disappearance and Winston’s background because he has no personal attachment and feels no need to be delicate." Sherlock was gazing out the window, watching the city flash by.
"Oh," John said. His brain was still not quite awake.
Sherlock seemed to be feeling effusive, because he just kept going. "Hayashi is a keibu, the local equivalent of the Yard's detective inspector. This is a necessary first stop, but I don't expect it to take very long or be very productive."
"Why not?" John asked. "Didn't Sir Ellery send us here to work with the police?"
"Oh Lord no," Sherlock said. "He sent us here to find his son. The police investigation has stalled, and judging from the treatment which Sir Ellery has been receiving of late, there is little desire to jump-start it. It won't be a serious hindrance; this is the sort of investigation where it doesn't help to be known as a detective. No one in any official capacity admits it, but most of the sex work in Roppongi is done by foreigners working illegally on tourist visas. Someone afraid of being deported is not going to talk to the police."
Sherlock was right about the police, as he was about most things. From the moment they walked into the station, everything felt different, and it wasn't just the fact that they were in a foreign country. John remembered his first crime scene with Sherlock, when everyone save Lestrade made it clear that Sherlock was unwelcome and disliked; there had still been a sort of grudging respect though, at the bottom. They disliked Sherlock because they knew who he was and thought he was a prat, not because they really didn't want his help. At Roppongi's main police station, the constables didn't know who Sherlock was and didn't care. He and John were intruders, and worse than useless; they were a waste of time.
What was kind of amazing to John was that he got this message loud and clear even though nobody called Sherlock a freak or ordered him to get out. Everyone was exceptionally polite to a fault. Hayashi offered them coffee in his office, and smiled a lot and called Sherlock "Homes-san" (skipping the l-sound entirely) and John wasn't quite sure how every word and gesture seemed to say get out and stay out. Sherlock himself was rather shockingly circumspect. He didn't use the word ‘idiot’ even once, and he spoke to Hayashi with polite deference and even bowed to him slightly when they were introduced by a more junior constable. John suspected that this was merely self-preservation, since Sherlock didn't have the connections that he needed to tweak the nose of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and get away with it. With all the subtext to watch, John couldn't call the half hour they spent there boring, but it certainly couldn't be called productive, either.
"That was useless," John said as they left the station.
Sherlock was unperturbed. "As I said, a necessary first stop. Now we can actually get to work."
"No crime scene to speak of,” John said. “So where do we begin?”
"I want to see Roppongi," Sherlock said. "See it properly, from the inside. And then we'll want to visit Avec Amour, the club where Nicholas worked. That was probably the only useful piece of information Hayashi gave us. Those letters he sent his father naturally gave very few specifics on his lifestyle, since he was trying to hide it and lying about his activities. The one clue they've given us is the name Aaron Vass- the only friend Nicholas mentioned by name. Most hiring in the clubs is based on word of mouth, and I suspect Vass is the person who connected Nicholas to his most recent employer." He stopped a cab and yanked the door open.
"So- to Roppongi then?" John settled into the back next to Sherlock.
"No, back to the hotel first. I need to change clothes."
Sherlock had for some reason insisted on packing three large suitcases full of clothing for this trip. He had let John get away with one, but much to John’s disgust insisted on a range of outfits for varying occasions; his usual style was more a change of shirt and a couple pairs of pants tucked in his carryon.
John had been watching Sherlock paw through the closet and mutter distractedly about fabrics for ten minutes before he realized that Sherlock had every intention of going out alone. John immediately put his foot down.
"You don't want to come," Sherlock said flatly. "I'm going to have to take a role." Sherlock selected a pair of trousers, kicked off his shoes, and disappeared into the bathroom.
"Why would that make me want to not come?" John asked the bathroom door. "I like watching you act. And I didn't come all the way to Japan to watch telly in a hotel room." He did enjoy seeing Sherlock put on another persona like a cloak, becoming someone else so entirely that it was sometimes a shock to get Sherlock back at the end of the performance. He could have had a career in theater or film if he had wanted it, and the scary thing was that he had never even had an acting lesson, according to Mycroft.
"I have to start infiltrating these clubs, but not as a detective," Sherlock called back. "And that means posing as a host enjoying a night off. Charming. Witty. Attractive. The sort of man that people feel comfortable talking to."
"Oh," John said. That meant teasing and flirting with everything on two legs, most likely, while John lurked uncomfortably in the background. Probably still better than telly, but not the most enjoyable night out John could imagine.
The door opened. He looked up from studying his fingernails to see that Sherlock was standing in the doorway dressed in a pair of extremely tight black trousers and no shirt, studying his face curiously. "I can't understand why it bothers you so much," he said.
Because it makes you seem inhuman, John didn't say. "It just does," he replied instead.
"You're not a shy man; you'll flirt with someone in front of me," Sherlock continued, as if John hadn't spoken. "You don't show any discomfort when you observe strangers or acquaintances on the pull. It must be something particular to me, but I know it isn't discomfort caused by physical attraction, because you aren't interested in me sexually- I've checked,"
"How have you- no," John backpedaled immediately. "Don't tell me, I don't actually want to know." Sherlock just stared expectantly. "If you must know, it's because you never mean it," John finally said. "It's like when you flattered Molly so she’d give you those severed fingers, or when you gave Sir Ellery that creepy look-at-me-being-normal smile back in the flat. I know you're just pretending to care about them. It's...unkind."
"It's manipulative," Sherlock said. "Not necessarily unkind." He walked back across to the closet and selected a silk button-down, removing it from the hangar.
It is, the way you do it. "It's so calculated. I've never seen you actually, really flirt with someone."
"As I told you when we first met: not really my area," Sherlock said, and shrugged into the shirt he was holding. He tapped a finger against his lower lip for a moment. "John, do you know what a host or hostess club actually is?"
"Uh- some kind of pickup bar?" John guessed. Whorehouse was a more likely possibility, but he wasn't saying that to Sherlock. Sherlock knew what he wasn't saying, apparently, because he shot John an amused look. "Fine. Strip club, then."
"Wrong. Entirely wrong," Sherlock said, starting to button up his shirt. "Certainly some of the seedier places turn to sex to bolster their bottom line. But the concept, which remains pure in many implementations, is romance for hire. The hosts flirt with the clients, flatter them, engage them in conversation. The clients return repeatedly to their favorites, buy them presents and drinks, flirt back. But with a few exceptions, it never leaves the context of the club. If host and client met on the street, they would be strangers. It's a game, a seduction that only exists in a particular context and everyone understands is an illusion."
John stared at Sherlock through the entire explanation, gobsmacked. "They've taken what you do and turned it into an industry," he said. "That's...something."
"It's a comfortable living, for many people," Sherlock said. He swung the bathroom door shut so he could see himself in the full-length mirror that hung on the outside.
"Not for Nicky Winston," John said. "Not any more."
"No," Sherlock said. He finished buttoning his shirt except for the top button, studied himself critically in the mirror, and then unbuttoned the next two down as well.
"I'm still coming, of course," John said. "Don't bother arguing with me." It didn't matter how uncomfortable watching Sherlock play with people made him, the whole point of his being in Japan was to help with the case.
To his surprise, Sherlock didn't protest any further; he only smiled a little at his reflection. "All right," he said. He spent several minutes fussing with his hair but evidently decided to leave it as it was. Then he opened a wooden box that he fished out of the bottom of his suitcase and selected a narrow gold chain that he fastened around his neck so that it just showed through the gap in his collar.
"Hey, what are you doing?" John said as Sherlock went to the closet and began to flick imperiously through John's hanging clothes. He slipped John's one black suit off its hangar and tossed it onto the bed next to him, then went back to look for shirts. A dress shirt with a faint gray pinstripe joined the suit.
"Put it on," Sherlock said briskly. John sat staring; what, was Sherlock dressing him now, like a piece of arm candy? He never usually minded what John wore on a case or any other time, although he did roll his eyes at the jumpers a fair bit. Sherlock sighed heavily, as if John was being impossibly dim. "We will have to go separately, to preserve our cover. You can't be you, obviously, so instead you will be a foreign businessman. Put the suit on."
“I can’t act,” John protested. “I’m rubbish at it.”
"I know, but you won't have to act much. You can even use your real name, if you like," Sherlock said. He went back to the wooden box and began sifting through the jewelry again. "You are in Japan on business- an insurance adjustor, perhaps, or a salesman- and your hosts suggested you take in the action in Roppongi. You’ll be chatting people up, not propositioning them, remember. Don't ask any overt questions about Winston, it will make them suspicious. Just steer the conversation. Here." Sherlock tossed him an item that he instinctively caught with his left hand. It was an inexpensive wedding band. "That will be sufficient to explain why you always look so guilty about everything." John had a feeling he'd just been insulted. "Go. Change." Sherlock made a shooing motion with his hands, and John slowly got up and took the clothes into the bathroom.
When he emerged, Sherlock had put his shoes on and was sitting on one of the beds counting a stack of Japanese banknotes into two neat piles. He looked up and studied John judiciously for a moment, then walked briskly over and began tweaking John's appearance. He popped his collar button open, deliberately creased the back of his jacket, and gave a few quick tugs to the dress shirt, creating wrinkles and folds. John stood with bemusement for the treatment, until Sherlock reached behind his head and deliberately rumpled his hair at the back, an unexpectedly intimate gesture. "Hey!" he protested, raising a hand to fend Sherlock off.
Sherlock slapped his hand away. "Hold still. You mustn't look as if you dressed up to come out, you've been at work all day." A few brisk twists of his trousers at the hips and Sherlock seemed satisfied with his results. He seized John's hand and slid a heavy silver-and-steel wristwatch with a flexible band past his knuckles and onto his wrist.
"Necktie?" John asked, fingering the collar button as Sherlock went back to the bed and scooped up one of the piles of banknotes.
"Of course not." Sherlock neatly folded the wad of notes and tucked it into John's trouser pocket. "Best not to carry your wallet in case of pickpockets, the cards may damage your cover anyway if someone saw them."
"Am I meant to be wealthy, then?" John asked. The bulge from the money felt quite conspicuous.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and scooped up the other pile. "John. In that suit? No one would believe it."
"What's wrong with my suit?" John glanced down at his clothing, which was not bespoke, but looked perfectly nice, he thought. "I paid one hundred and thirty quid for this."
"Yes," Sherlock said with disdain. "At Marks and Spencer."
"God, you are such a fashion snob," John grumbled.
"I wired Sir Ellery for funds this morning while you were asleep. This may be expensive- some of the clubs have cover charges, and you will be expected to buy drinks. Be generous but don't drink too much yourself if you can help it. You have enough experience drinking to know your own tolerances." Sherlock pocketed the second stack of notes. "These places cater to natives and resident aliens more than foreign visitors so all the prices will be quoted in yen. Don't tip anyone. If someone hints, it means they want you to buy more overpriced drinks." He paused in his lecture and gave John a careful, speculative going-over. John felt like he was at some sort of job interview. "That will do, I suppose."
John chuckled nervously. "All right then. Cab?"
"Two," Sherlock said. He flicked a business card out of his pocket and passed it to John. It was printed in garish purple ink and was for a club called Sweethearts. "We shouldn't arrive together. I will go first, wait here for five minutes and then come down and ask the concierge to hail you a cab. Give the card to the driver. I know you're going to watch me, whatever I say, but try not to make it too obvious."
Sherlock paused for a moment, then his stance changed, his expression shifted, and suddenly he looked completely different: sweet, open, a little vulnerable, and with a definite air of sensuality. He smiled at John, with a hint of shy reserve that was an obvious mask set over a conniving smugness that wasn't really Sherlock either. Deception upon deception. "See you later," he said in a breathy and altogether too suggestive voice, and disappeared out the door.
Sweethearts turned out to be a poky hole in the wall with a pink neon sign. The place consisted of one room with a lot of low tables surrounded by well-padded chairs, and a long shiny bar. John clumsily paid the cover with a small stack of yen notes, and stood by the door for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dim, pink-tinted lighting and his ears to the drone of Japanese pop music. Then a striking blonde woman was gently touching his arm with her fingertips, and smiling coyly.
"Hello," she said. "I don't think we've met- I'm Lily."
"John," he said, smiling and saying almost by reflex, "Please, may I buy you a drink?"
To John's shock, it was incredibly easy to play the character Sherlock created for him. He decided to be a salesman, and managed to talk convincingly enough about meetings and quotas for a moment when Lily asked, before laughing and saying he didn't want to discuss work. It wasn't so very long ago that John was a student, hanging out in bars and flirting with girls on a nightly basis, and it was easy to fall back on his memories. Treating Lily like a girl he was picking up in a bar worked just fine, and she seemed as comfortable with it as he did. She hung on his every word but kept up her own end of the conversation well, every inch the charming and witty companion.
John supposed it was flattering, to have the attention of such a smart and attractive woman; but he didn't understand how someone could be flattered knowing that it was all a sham, and according to Sherlock everyone who came to these places knew. Who the hell wanted a pretend romance? Wasn't it worth the chance of rejection to try for a real one where you could actually connect to another person, one who didn't just pretend to like and respect you because you kept buying incredibly over-priced and under-spiked drinks from her employers?
It was a long time before John felt confident enough to try to mention anything case-related. Lily didn't react when he dropped a reference to Nicky Winston, so he let it go and cautiously ran the conversation elsewhere for another ten minutes. Then he teased her about working holidays, and she told him a little guiltily that she was meant to be at an exchange program at a local uni, but her friend Carla hooked her up with this job. Carla worked at Club Divinity, and John filed the name away. Not a very productive conversation, but that was okay; John was getting his bearings, feeling things out, and growing more comfortable with his role and with the environment.
He scanned the room as frequently as he dared, and did his best not to let his eyes catch on Sherlock. John had spotted him when he first came in, of course, standing at one end of the bar with an almost waif-like redhead. Some time later he had moved across the room, and through most of John's conversation with Lily he sat on one of the squashy chairs with his knees very close to those of another woman. He smiled often, and seemed to constantly have a drink in his hand. After some forty-five minutes at the club, John performed a periodic check and saw Sherlock setting down his drink. They locked eyes, and John shifted his gaze back to Lily and began skillfully extricating himself from their conversation.
When John made it outside he saw Sherlock halfway up the block, lingering on the curb with a cigarette between his fingers before he turned and headed up the sidewalk. When he stopped under a light post, finishing his smoke, John walked past him and into the club he was standing in front of without looking at him or acknowledging him at all.
When Sherlock decided that they were done in that club, they played out the charade again.
John talked to at least a dozen women that night. None of them recognized the names Nicholas Winston or Aaron Vass, but he did learn a great deal more about the hostess business. At one point a woman calling herself Becca gigglingly confided in him that the hostesses received kickbacks on every bottle that a customer bought; when John heard that he ordered a bottle of champagne and grinned cheekily at her. Most of the hostesses he spoke with seemed cheerfully open and content, but one of them had a tension in her knuckles and a look in her eyes that reminded John of refugees he'd seen in Kabul. John had surreptitiously pressed a 5000 yen note into her palm as he left, but that look haunted him for the rest of the night.
John wasn't sure if the clubs Sherlock led them through that night were part of some predetermined checklist, if they were suggested by successive contacts with hostesses, or if this was the Sherlock Holmes version of a night on the town. The only patterns were that they never spent more than an hour in any one club and that the clubs got steadily seedier as the night wore on. In the third one, a girl John was talking to tried to put her hand on his dick. In the fourth, he glanced over at Sherlock and saw him receiving a lap dance from an enthusiastic hostess; John almost aspirated his gin and tonic and had to be patted on the back by his own companion. It was in the sixth that things got downright dangerous.
There was something about the atmosphere that was off, John could feel it the moment he walked in. The club was not just seedy, it was sleazy: it lacked even the appearance of refinement, the drinks were watered more than usual, and the hostess he was hitting on had a very faint tremor in her hand and kept wiping her nose on her sleeve. John didn't typically frequent those kinds of clubs, but he wasn't an idiot. So when he checked on Sherlock and saw him bent forward over his knees, head close to that of his companion as she made neat arrangements on the table in front of them, he went cold. The girl put the razor down and tilted her head to look up at him and Sherlock smiled lazily at her as he sat back and dug into his pocket. John wasn't even conscious of turning his back on the hostess he was with, because his eyes were stuck on Sherlock's hands, and they were rolling a banknote into a tube and Sherlock was leaning forward again and holy fuck shit what was he playing at.
John had his hands twisted into Sherlock's shirt and was dragging him up and shoving him roughly through the front door before he even thought about what he planned to do. Someone, maybe the girl who was with Sherlock, exclaimed, "Hey!" and John snarled, “Piss off!” because he was not in a mood to be polite and this was Captain John Motherfucking Watson of the RAMC that they were dealing with.
He didn't stop until he had flung Sherlock bodily up against the wall in an alley two buildings down, handling the taller man with a strength not normally hinted at in his build or demeanor. For once, Sherlock looked at him with open wonderment, clearly too startled to get the first word in.
"What. Was. That." John ground it out between clenched teeth.
"Really, John, I know what I'm doing. It's of no great consequence. Not when it's part of a case." Sherlock's face slid into its typical expression of bland amusement, and John swiveled 45 degrees and slammed his open palm against the wall so hard that it sent a sharp shock of pain up his arm. In that moment it was the only way he could prevent himself punching Sherlock Holmes right in his stupid face.
"No consequence. You, a recovering addict, were about to casually snort cocaine for no reason at all. And it's of no consequence." John was amazed that his voice was so calm and conversational. Inside his head he was shouting at the top of his lungs.
The amusement disappeared and Sherlock looked nearly destroyed for a moment before his mouth turned down in an angry line. "Mycroft," he said, his voice dark with threat.
"Wrong for once," John said. "Lestrade told me."
"Oh, Lestrade." Sherlock sounded more himself then, but still looked distinctly unhappy. "There was a reason I didn't tell you about certain aspects of my past, you know."
"Yes, I do know," John said. "The reason is that you are an idiot." They stayed silent a moment, Sherlock lowering his head as if it was weighed down by John's steady gaze. "Is it really worth going back?" John asked. "Over a case you only took to twit Mycroft?"
Sherlock looked back up at John and seemed to consider for a long moment. "No," he said. "No, I suppose it isn't." He opened his mouth again, as if he wanted to say something else, then closed it.
"Don't try it again," John said.
"No," Sherlock agreed immediately.
“Promise me. Or I'm flying back to London right now," John said. It was an idle threat, he would never abandon Sherlock to do stupid and insane things all by himself, and Sherlock probably knew it.
But Sherlock didn't pause or flinch when he looked John straight in the eyes and replied, "I won't. I'll break character first, I swear."
John nodded sharply, and felt himself relax incrementally. Sherlock's tension seemed to ease, too, as he watched John calm down. Sherlock stood up straighter and flicked his shirt back into its proper lines. "Well," he said, clearing his throat. "We can't go back to that club. But I don't expect we'd want to, in any case."
"All those girls were junkies," John said. He felt...not quite disapproving, really. It wasn't the girls' fault that Sherlock didn't have enough sense to say no, and it wasn't his business to police their choices. It was more sad than anything. If they made any money in that hole, it probably went straight back up their noses by the end of the night.
"Yes," Sherlock said. "They're not all volunteers, either. There were strong hints of the slave trade about that place. The girls all kept looking at the Japanese man standing by the bathroom door, did you notice?"
Of course John hadn't noticed. "The slave trade? You mean- what, human trafficking?" Women- and sometimes men- forced into prostitution against their will, passports stolen and debts held over their heads to keep them at work. It was something you heard about on the telly. You didn't expect to see it in reality, at a bar you patronized. John thought of all the money they had pumped into these places tonight, maybe a thousand pounds all told, and felt ill.
"It's not all of them, John." Sherlock was calm and unruffled, but he was still frowning, and John felt that he was at least slightly bothered himself. "Most of the women we spoke with tonight enjoy their work. But this one has a foul stink, metaphorically speaking."
John thought to check his wristwatch. "Christ, it's almost five. No wonder I'm knackered." He was very slightly tipsy, too, for all that he'd not consumed more than a drink and a half in any one club.
"We can head back to the hotel,” Sherlock said. “I think we've seen enough to be going on with."
"I, um- I didn't really find anything out," John confessed. "A couple names of other hostesses, other clubs. No one I talked to knew about Nicky."
"That's all right," Sherlock said. He started up the alley towards the far end, and John fell into step with him. "Tonight was mostly scouting. I've a better idea of how to focus our investigations now. Nicholas Winston's letters had no hint of the whorehouse about them; we want the clubs at the higher end of the spectrum, and now I know how to recognize them.”
On the cab ride back to the hotel, John drowsed lightly against the window. He was aware of Sherlock's eyes on him through most of the journey, but neither of them said anything more.
Pairings: Gen
Spoilers: ASiP
Warnings: Trigger warnings for entire story: sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking. Very little on-screen, but the story revolves around these topics.
Special thanks to:
emungere,
lady_ganesh and
akasha_lilian for betaing.
Summary: Promptfic- Sherlock working in a Japanese host club. This got fairly dark.
"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
Chapter 1
Long-distance air travel with Sherlock Holmes, even in first class- which of course Sherlock insisted upon- was everything John had imagined and worse. Eleven hours. Eleven sodding hours of frenzied leg-jiggling, loud deductions on the sex lives of their fellow passengers, recounting of noted air disasters (historical and recent), and whining, whining, whining about how impossibly boring the trip was. ("I thought you'd traveled to Asia before!" John snapped at one point, patience shattered. "Of course," Sherlock said. "But last time I had clonazepam. I assumed you would prefer that we travel free of re-purposed pharmaceuticals.")
It wasn’t even two days since John had come home to find Sherlock offering tea to a civil servant named Sir Ellery Winston and agreeing to find his missing son. Nicholas Winston had been living and working in Japan until three months ago, when his calls and letters home had suddenly stopped. The Tokyo police were getting nowhere and in fact were no longer cooperating with the UK’s embassy at all. Somehow John found himself chivvied into going along, courtesy of a generous expense stipend from Sir Ellery. That was rather dishonest of Sherlock, John thought, but at least he’d agreed to help; even if John was pretty sure he only took the case because Mycroft had warned that the diplomatic climate was dangerous at present and asked Sherlock not to get involved.
By the time John and Sherlock’s plane landed, they’d been traveling all day and it was 9 pm back home, but of course it was 6 am in Tokyo. The airport was a blurry, bright, shrieking nightmare and John was happy to let Sherlock steer him confidently through the crowds, to the baggage claim, to the cab. They stopped briefly to rent Japanese SIM cards for their mobiles, because Sherlock considered mobile phone service on par with oxygen in terms of necessity, then proceeded to the hotel. Once there, John passed out face down on one of the double beds, not knowing or caring what Sherlock planned to do next.
"Gnuh," was John's response when Sherlock finally shook him awake. He still felt like hell, and now the seam from the pillowcase was imprinted all up the left side of his face.
"Get up, you've slept enough," Sherlock said. "It's four o'clock. We can stop for dinner on our way to the police station, if you like."
John slowly got up and looked for his suitcases, which turned out to be lying on the top shelf of the closet. Before John could become annoyed about his things being out of his reach he noticed that his clothes were neatly hanging next to Sherlock's. His flatmate lay back on his own (unmussed) bed and fiddled with his mobile while John used the bathroom and changed into fresh clothes. There was a Starbucks in the lobby of the hotel, but John protested when Sherlock forced a large cup of coffee on him. "The nap was bad enough, I'm never going to sleep tonight as it is."
"You don't want to sleep," Sherlock said firmly, shoving the cup against John's chest so he had to grab it or be scalded. "Most of our work here is going to be done at night, when the clubs are busiest. If you must sleep, it would be better for you to become temporarily nocturnal."
"That's only marginally less unhealthy than your sleep schedule," John muttered, but he took the coffee. “Wait, what clubs?”
“The clubs in Roppongi, where Nicholas Winston likely worked. His father told us he was teaching English to schoolchildren and waiting tables, because that’s what Nicholas told him. But Nicholas came to Japan on a tourist visa, which does not permit employment. He was working illegally but making a good deal of money, which suggests that he was working in a host club or something more directly related to the sex trade.” John blinked. Maybe that was why John had found a small black book entitled Japanese-English Guide to Sex, Kink and Naughtiness tucked into his carry-on. It had got him some very odd looks in the security line.
Instead of hailing a cab, Sherlock dragged him across the street to a tiny restaurant where he ordered for John in careful Japanese. The counterman served John a large bowl of what looked like Pot Noodle but turned out, once John got past the visual weirdness of the random meats and vegetables piled on top, to be ridiculously delicious. Sherlock waved off any suggestions that he himself eat and sipped his coffee while John fumbled with chopsticks and a flat-bottomed spoon.
When John had finished, then Sherlock found them a cab. "Where are we going?" John asked, because he'd listened to Sherlock tell the cabbie but he still had no idea.
"We're going to see Saburo Hayashi, the man in charge of investigating Nicholas Winston's disappearance. He speaks English, according to Sir Ellery, so you should be able to follow the conversation. He will be more honest about the disappearance and Winston’s background because he has no personal attachment and feels no need to be delicate." Sherlock was gazing out the window, watching the city flash by.
"Oh," John said. His brain was still not quite awake.
Sherlock seemed to be feeling effusive, because he just kept going. "Hayashi is a keibu, the local equivalent of the Yard's detective inspector. This is a necessary first stop, but I don't expect it to take very long or be very productive."
"Why not?" John asked. "Didn't Sir Ellery send us here to work with the police?"
"Oh Lord no," Sherlock said. "He sent us here to find his son. The police investigation has stalled, and judging from the treatment which Sir Ellery has been receiving of late, there is little desire to jump-start it. It won't be a serious hindrance; this is the sort of investigation where it doesn't help to be known as a detective. No one in any official capacity admits it, but most of the sex work in Roppongi is done by foreigners working illegally on tourist visas. Someone afraid of being deported is not going to talk to the police."
Sherlock was right about the police, as he was about most things. From the moment they walked into the station, everything felt different, and it wasn't just the fact that they were in a foreign country. John remembered his first crime scene with Sherlock, when everyone save Lestrade made it clear that Sherlock was unwelcome and disliked; there had still been a sort of grudging respect though, at the bottom. They disliked Sherlock because they knew who he was and thought he was a prat, not because they really didn't want his help. At Roppongi's main police station, the constables didn't know who Sherlock was and didn't care. He and John were intruders, and worse than useless; they were a waste of time.
What was kind of amazing to John was that he got this message loud and clear even though nobody called Sherlock a freak or ordered him to get out. Everyone was exceptionally polite to a fault. Hayashi offered them coffee in his office, and smiled a lot and called Sherlock "Homes-san" (skipping the l-sound entirely) and John wasn't quite sure how every word and gesture seemed to say get out and stay out. Sherlock himself was rather shockingly circumspect. He didn't use the word ‘idiot’ even once, and he spoke to Hayashi with polite deference and even bowed to him slightly when they were introduced by a more junior constable. John suspected that this was merely self-preservation, since Sherlock didn't have the connections that he needed to tweak the nose of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and get away with it. With all the subtext to watch, John couldn't call the half hour they spent there boring, but it certainly couldn't be called productive, either.
"That was useless," John said as they left the station.
Sherlock was unperturbed. "As I said, a necessary first stop. Now we can actually get to work."
"No crime scene to speak of,” John said. “So where do we begin?”
"I want to see Roppongi," Sherlock said. "See it properly, from the inside. And then we'll want to visit Avec Amour, the club where Nicholas worked. That was probably the only useful piece of information Hayashi gave us. Those letters he sent his father naturally gave very few specifics on his lifestyle, since he was trying to hide it and lying about his activities. The one clue they've given us is the name Aaron Vass- the only friend Nicholas mentioned by name. Most hiring in the clubs is based on word of mouth, and I suspect Vass is the person who connected Nicholas to his most recent employer." He stopped a cab and yanked the door open.
"So- to Roppongi then?" John settled into the back next to Sherlock.
"No, back to the hotel first. I need to change clothes."
Sherlock had for some reason insisted on packing three large suitcases full of clothing for this trip. He had let John get away with one, but much to John’s disgust insisted on a range of outfits for varying occasions; his usual style was more a change of shirt and a couple pairs of pants tucked in his carryon.
John had been watching Sherlock paw through the closet and mutter distractedly about fabrics for ten minutes before he realized that Sherlock had every intention of going out alone. John immediately put his foot down.
"You don't want to come," Sherlock said flatly. "I'm going to have to take a role." Sherlock selected a pair of trousers, kicked off his shoes, and disappeared into the bathroom.
"Why would that make me want to not come?" John asked the bathroom door. "I like watching you act. And I didn't come all the way to Japan to watch telly in a hotel room." He did enjoy seeing Sherlock put on another persona like a cloak, becoming someone else so entirely that it was sometimes a shock to get Sherlock back at the end of the performance. He could have had a career in theater or film if he had wanted it, and the scary thing was that he had never even had an acting lesson, according to Mycroft.
"I have to start infiltrating these clubs, but not as a detective," Sherlock called back. "And that means posing as a host enjoying a night off. Charming. Witty. Attractive. The sort of man that people feel comfortable talking to."
"Oh," John said. That meant teasing and flirting with everything on two legs, most likely, while John lurked uncomfortably in the background. Probably still better than telly, but not the most enjoyable night out John could imagine.
The door opened. He looked up from studying his fingernails to see that Sherlock was standing in the doorway dressed in a pair of extremely tight black trousers and no shirt, studying his face curiously. "I can't understand why it bothers you so much," he said.
Because it makes you seem inhuman, John didn't say. "It just does," he replied instead.
"You're not a shy man; you'll flirt with someone in front of me," Sherlock continued, as if John hadn't spoken. "You don't show any discomfort when you observe strangers or acquaintances on the pull. It must be something particular to me, but I know it isn't discomfort caused by physical attraction, because you aren't interested in me sexually- I've checked,"
"How have you- no," John backpedaled immediately. "Don't tell me, I don't actually want to know." Sherlock just stared expectantly. "If you must know, it's because you never mean it," John finally said. "It's like when you flattered Molly so she’d give you those severed fingers, or when you gave Sir Ellery that creepy look-at-me-being-normal smile back in the flat. I know you're just pretending to care about them. It's...unkind."
"It's manipulative," Sherlock said. "Not necessarily unkind." He walked back across to the closet and selected a silk button-down, removing it from the hangar.
It is, the way you do it. "It's so calculated. I've never seen you actually, really flirt with someone."
"As I told you when we first met: not really my area," Sherlock said, and shrugged into the shirt he was holding. He tapped a finger against his lower lip for a moment. "John, do you know what a host or hostess club actually is?"
"Uh- some kind of pickup bar?" John guessed. Whorehouse was a more likely possibility, but he wasn't saying that to Sherlock. Sherlock knew what he wasn't saying, apparently, because he shot John an amused look. "Fine. Strip club, then."
"Wrong. Entirely wrong," Sherlock said, starting to button up his shirt. "Certainly some of the seedier places turn to sex to bolster their bottom line. But the concept, which remains pure in many implementations, is romance for hire. The hosts flirt with the clients, flatter them, engage them in conversation. The clients return repeatedly to their favorites, buy them presents and drinks, flirt back. But with a few exceptions, it never leaves the context of the club. If host and client met on the street, they would be strangers. It's a game, a seduction that only exists in a particular context and everyone understands is an illusion."
John stared at Sherlock through the entire explanation, gobsmacked. "They've taken what you do and turned it into an industry," he said. "That's...something."
"It's a comfortable living, for many people," Sherlock said. He swung the bathroom door shut so he could see himself in the full-length mirror that hung on the outside.
"Not for Nicky Winston," John said. "Not any more."
"No," Sherlock said. He finished buttoning his shirt except for the top button, studied himself critically in the mirror, and then unbuttoned the next two down as well.
"I'm still coming, of course," John said. "Don't bother arguing with me." It didn't matter how uncomfortable watching Sherlock play with people made him, the whole point of his being in Japan was to help with the case.
To his surprise, Sherlock didn't protest any further; he only smiled a little at his reflection. "All right," he said. He spent several minutes fussing with his hair but evidently decided to leave it as it was. Then he opened a wooden box that he fished out of the bottom of his suitcase and selected a narrow gold chain that he fastened around his neck so that it just showed through the gap in his collar.
"Hey, what are you doing?" John said as Sherlock went to the closet and began to flick imperiously through John's hanging clothes. He slipped John's one black suit off its hangar and tossed it onto the bed next to him, then went back to look for shirts. A dress shirt with a faint gray pinstripe joined the suit.
"Put it on," Sherlock said briskly. John sat staring; what, was Sherlock dressing him now, like a piece of arm candy? He never usually minded what John wore on a case or any other time, although he did roll his eyes at the jumpers a fair bit. Sherlock sighed heavily, as if John was being impossibly dim. "We will have to go separately, to preserve our cover. You can't be you, obviously, so instead you will be a foreign businessman. Put the suit on."
“I can’t act,” John protested. “I’m rubbish at it.”
"I know, but you won't have to act much. You can even use your real name, if you like," Sherlock said. He went back to the wooden box and began sifting through the jewelry again. "You are in Japan on business- an insurance adjustor, perhaps, or a salesman- and your hosts suggested you take in the action in Roppongi. You’ll be chatting people up, not propositioning them, remember. Don't ask any overt questions about Winston, it will make them suspicious. Just steer the conversation. Here." Sherlock tossed him an item that he instinctively caught with his left hand. It was an inexpensive wedding band. "That will be sufficient to explain why you always look so guilty about everything." John had a feeling he'd just been insulted. "Go. Change." Sherlock made a shooing motion with his hands, and John slowly got up and took the clothes into the bathroom.
When he emerged, Sherlock had put his shoes on and was sitting on one of the beds counting a stack of Japanese banknotes into two neat piles. He looked up and studied John judiciously for a moment, then walked briskly over and began tweaking John's appearance. He popped his collar button open, deliberately creased the back of his jacket, and gave a few quick tugs to the dress shirt, creating wrinkles and folds. John stood with bemusement for the treatment, until Sherlock reached behind his head and deliberately rumpled his hair at the back, an unexpectedly intimate gesture. "Hey!" he protested, raising a hand to fend Sherlock off.
Sherlock slapped his hand away. "Hold still. You mustn't look as if you dressed up to come out, you've been at work all day." A few brisk twists of his trousers at the hips and Sherlock seemed satisfied with his results. He seized John's hand and slid a heavy silver-and-steel wristwatch with a flexible band past his knuckles and onto his wrist.
"Necktie?" John asked, fingering the collar button as Sherlock went back to the bed and scooped up one of the piles of banknotes.
"Of course not." Sherlock neatly folded the wad of notes and tucked it into John's trouser pocket. "Best not to carry your wallet in case of pickpockets, the cards may damage your cover anyway if someone saw them."
"Am I meant to be wealthy, then?" John asked. The bulge from the money felt quite conspicuous.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and scooped up the other pile. "John. In that suit? No one would believe it."
"What's wrong with my suit?" John glanced down at his clothing, which was not bespoke, but looked perfectly nice, he thought. "I paid one hundred and thirty quid for this."
"Yes," Sherlock said with disdain. "At Marks and Spencer."
"God, you are such a fashion snob," John grumbled.
"I wired Sir Ellery for funds this morning while you were asleep. This may be expensive- some of the clubs have cover charges, and you will be expected to buy drinks. Be generous but don't drink too much yourself if you can help it. You have enough experience drinking to know your own tolerances." Sherlock pocketed the second stack of notes. "These places cater to natives and resident aliens more than foreign visitors so all the prices will be quoted in yen. Don't tip anyone. If someone hints, it means they want you to buy more overpriced drinks." He paused in his lecture and gave John a careful, speculative going-over. John felt like he was at some sort of job interview. "That will do, I suppose."
John chuckled nervously. "All right then. Cab?"
"Two," Sherlock said. He flicked a business card out of his pocket and passed it to John. It was printed in garish purple ink and was for a club called Sweethearts. "We shouldn't arrive together. I will go first, wait here for five minutes and then come down and ask the concierge to hail you a cab. Give the card to the driver. I know you're going to watch me, whatever I say, but try not to make it too obvious."
Sherlock paused for a moment, then his stance changed, his expression shifted, and suddenly he looked completely different: sweet, open, a little vulnerable, and with a definite air of sensuality. He smiled at John, with a hint of shy reserve that was an obvious mask set over a conniving smugness that wasn't really Sherlock either. Deception upon deception. "See you later," he said in a breathy and altogether too suggestive voice, and disappeared out the door.
Sweethearts turned out to be a poky hole in the wall with a pink neon sign. The place consisted of one room with a lot of low tables surrounded by well-padded chairs, and a long shiny bar. John clumsily paid the cover with a small stack of yen notes, and stood by the door for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dim, pink-tinted lighting and his ears to the drone of Japanese pop music. Then a striking blonde woman was gently touching his arm with her fingertips, and smiling coyly.
"Hello," she said. "I don't think we've met- I'm Lily."
"John," he said, smiling and saying almost by reflex, "Please, may I buy you a drink?"
To John's shock, it was incredibly easy to play the character Sherlock created for him. He decided to be a salesman, and managed to talk convincingly enough about meetings and quotas for a moment when Lily asked, before laughing and saying he didn't want to discuss work. It wasn't so very long ago that John was a student, hanging out in bars and flirting with girls on a nightly basis, and it was easy to fall back on his memories. Treating Lily like a girl he was picking up in a bar worked just fine, and she seemed as comfortable with it as he did. She hung on his every word but kept up her own end of the conversation well, every inch the charming and witty companion.
John supposed it was flattering, to have the attention of such a smart and attractive woman; but he didn't understand how someone could be flattered knowing that it was all a sham, and according to Sherlock everyone who came to these places knew. Who the hell wanted a pretend romance? Wasn't it worth the chance of rejection to try for a real one where you could actually connect to another person, one who didn't just pretend to like and respect you because you kept buying incredibly over-priced and under-spiked drinks from her employers?
It was a long time before John felt confident enough to try to mention anything case-related. Lily didn't react when he dropped a reference to Nicky Winston, so he let it go and cautiously ran the conversation elsewhere for another ten minutes. Then he teased her about working holidays, and she told him a little guiltily that she was meant to be at an exchange program at a local uni, but her friend Carla hooked her up with this job. Carla worked at Club Divinity, and John filed the name away. Not a very productive conversation, but that was okay; John was getting his bearings, feeling things out, and growing more comfortable with his role and with the environment.
He scanned the room as frequently as he dared, and did his best not to let his eyes catch on Sherlock. John had spotted him when he first came in, of course, standing at one end of the bar with an almost waif-like redhead. Some time later he had moved across the room, and through most of John's conversation with Lily he sat on one of the squashy chairs with his knees very close to those of another woman. He smiled often, and seemed to constantly have a drink in his hand. After some forty-five minutes at the club, John performed a periodic check and saw Sherlock setting down his drink. They locked eyes, and John shifted his gaze back to Lily and began skillfully extricating himself from their conversation.
When John made it outside he saw Sherlock halfway up the block, lingering on the curb with a cigarette between his fingers before he turned and headed up the sidewalk. When he stopped under a light post, finishing his smoke, John walked past him and into the club he was standing in front of without looking at him or acknowledging him at all.
When Sherlock decided that they were done in that club, they played out the charade again.
John talked to at least a dozen women that night. None of them recognized the names Nicholas Winston or Aaron Vass, but he did learn a great deal more about the hostess business. At one point a woman calling herself Becca gigglingly confided in him that the hostesses received kickbacks on every bottle that a customer bought; when John heard that he ordered a bottle of champagne and grinned cheekily at her. Most of the hostesses he spoke with seemed cheerfully open and content, but one of them had a tension in her knuckles and a look in her eyes that reminded John of refugees he'd seen in Kabul. John had surreptitiously pressed a 5000 yen note into her palm as he left, but that look haunted him for the rest of the night.
John wasn't sure if the clubs Sherlock led them through that night were part of some predetermined checklist, if they were suggested by successive contacts with hostesses, or if this was the Sherlock Holmes version of a night on the town. The only patterns were that they never spent more than an hour in any one club and that the clubs got steadily seedier as the night wore on. In the third one, a girl John was talking to tried to put her hand on his dick. In the fourth, he glanced over at Sherlock and saw him receiving a lap dance from an enthusiastic hostess; John almost aspirated his gin and tonic and had to be patted on the back by his own companion. It was in the sixth that things got downright dangerous.
There was something about the atmosphere that was off, John could feel it the moment he walked in. The club was not just seedy, it was sleazy: it lacked even the appearance of refinement, the drinks were watered more than usual, and the hostess he was hitting on had a very faint tremor in her hand and kept wiping her nose on her sleeve. John didn't typically frequent those kinds of clubs, but he wasn't an idiot. So when he checked on Sherlock and saw him bent forward over his knees, head close to that of his companion as she made neat arrangements on the table in front of them, he went cold. The girl put the razor down and tilted her head to look up at him and Sherlock smiled lazily at her as he sat back and dug into his pocket. John wasn't even conscious of turning his back on the hostess he was with, because his eyes were stuck on Sherlock's hands, and they were rolling a banknote into a tube and Sherlock was leaning forward again and holy fuck shit what was he playing at.
John had his hands twisted into Sherlock's shirt and was dragging him up and shoving him roughly through the front door before he even thought about what he planned to do. Someone, maybe the girl who was with Sherlock, exclaimed, "Hey!" and John snarled, “Piss off!” because he was not in a mood to be polite and this was Captain John Motherfucking Watson of the RAMC that they were dealing with.
He didn't stop until he had flung Sherlock bodily up against the wall in an alley two buildings down, handling the taller man with a strength not normally hinted at in his build or demeanor. For once, Sherlock looked at him with open wonderment, clearly too startled to get the first word in.
"What. Was. That." John ground it out between clenched teeth.
"Really, John, I know what I'm doing. It's of no great consequence. Not when it's part of a case." Sherlock's face slid into its typical expression of bland amusement, and John swiveled 45 degrees and slammed his open palm against the wall so hard that it sent a sharp shock of pain up his arm. In that moment it was the only way he could prevent himself punching Sherlock Holmes right in his stupid face.
"No consequence. You, a recovering addict, were about to casually snort cocaine for no reason at all. And it's of no consequence." John was amazed that his voice was so calm and conversational. Inside his head he was shouting at the top of his lungs.
The amusement disappeared and Sherlock looked nearly destroyed for a moment before his mouth turned down in an angry line. "Mycroft," he said, his voice dark with threat.
"Wrong for once," John said. "Lestrade told me."
"Oh, Lestrade." Sherlock sounded more himself then, but still looked distinctly unhappy. "There was a reason I didn't tell you about certain aspects of my past, you know."
"Yes, I do know," John said. "The reason is that you are an idiot." They stayed silent a moment, Sherlock lowering his head as if it was weighed down by John's steady gaze. "Is it really worth going back?" John asked. "Over a case you only took to twit Mycroft?"
Sherlock looked back up at John and seemed to consider for a long moment. "No," he said. "No, I suppose it isn't." He opened his mouth again, as if he wanted to say something else, then closed it.
"Don't try it again," John said.
"No," Sherlock agreed immediately.
“Promise me. Or I'm flying back to London right now," John said. It was an idle threat, he would never abandon Sherlock to do stupid and insane things all by himself, and Sherlock probably knew it.
But Sherlock didn't pause or flinch when he looked John straight in the eyes and replied, "I won't. I'll break character first, I swear."
John nodded sharply, and felt himself relax incrementally. Sherlock's tension seemed to ease, too, as he watched John calm down. Sherlock stood up straighter and flicked his shirt back into its proper lines. "Well," he said, clearing his throat. "We can't go back to that club. But I don't expect we'd want to, in any case."
"All those girls were junkies," John said. He felt...not quite disapproving, really. It wasn't the girls' fault that Sherlock didn't have enough sense to say no, and it wasn't his business to police their choices. It was more sad than anything. If they made any money in that hole, it probably went straight back up their noses by the end of the night.
"Yes," Sherlock said. "They're not all volunteers, either. There were strong hints of the slave trade about that place. The girls all kept looking at the Japanese man standing by the bathroom door, did you notice?"
Of course John hadn't noticed. "The slave trade? You mean- what, human trafficking?" Women- and sometimes men- forced into prostitution against their will, passports stolen and debts held over their heads to keep them at work. It was something you heard about on the telly. You didn't expect to see it in reality, at a bar you patronized. John thought of all the money they had pumped into these places tonight, maybe a thousand pounds all told, and felt ill.
"It's not all of them, John." Sherlock was calm and unruffled, but he was still frowning, and John felt that he was at least slightly bothered himself. "Most of the women we spoke with tonight enjoy their work. But this one has a foul stink, metaphorically speaking."
John thought to check his wristwatch. "Christ, it's almost five. No wonder I'm knackered." He was very slightly tipsy, too, for all that he'd not consumed more than a drink and a half in any one club.
"We can head back to the hotel,” Sherlock said. “I think we've seen enough to be going on with."
"I, um- I didn't really find anything out," John confessed. "A couple names of other hostesses, other clubs. No one I talked to knew about Nicky."
"That's all right," Sherlock said. He started up the alley towards the far end, and John fell into step with him. "Tonight was mostly scouting. I've a better idea of how to focus our investigations now. Nicholas Winston's letters had no hint of the whorehouse about them; we want the clubs at the higher end of the spectrum, and now I know how to recognize them.”
On the cab ride back to the hotel, John drowsed lightly against the window. He was aware of Sherlock's eyes on him through most of the journey, but neither of them said anything more.