A Town Called Original Sin- Chapter 2
Title: A Town Called Original Sin - Chapter 2
Fandom/s: Sherlock/Whitechapel Crossover
Pairings: Chandler/Kent
Rating: 15
Disclaimer: Whitechapel and Sherlock belong to ITV and the BBC respectively.
Warnings: Murder, angst, heartbreak, violence, injury, a perchance for cliffhangers, character death.
Spoilers: Post- The Great Game for Sherlock, and Post- Series 2 for Whitechapel.
BETA: 4492
Masterlist and in-depth fic header Here
A/N: Title from Scouting For Girls' "Little Miss Naughty"
Summary: It wouldn't be a copy cat, if they didn't strike more than once.
It was raining harder when John got out of the taxi, it seemingly having followed him from the supermarket to the police station. John didn't often go to Whitechapel, but before the war, before Sherlock he'd had a girlfriend who lived relatively near to Aldgate East tube station, but he'd never paid much attention to the East End of London before. He supposed that it was a haven of crime and- he'd really been watching too much television.
But then, he had been following the news, and the East End was hardly the most conservative part of London. There had been the Second Ripper, who had struck around two years ago. John had heard about it, it was before he met Sherlock, of course, even before he'd come back from Afghanistan. It was the kind of thing that he'd caught up on when he got back to London, the darkness of human nature. He didn't think that people could have it in them to kill in cold murder, and he had to agree with Harry's rage at the failure to capture the man who had taken it upon himself to terrorise the East End. She'd not admitted to being scared, but John knew that she had been. But that was to be expected, she'd mentioned having moved to the area, after, Clara. They didn't talk about it though, it seemed cruel. And then, everything had happened. And that hadn't been it, Sherlock had been busy with the delightful schemes of Moriarty when there had been the second spree of murders, but he knew all about it. How could Sherlock not? It had been a pair of brothers, believing they were the sons of the Kray's who had decided to take revenge on those who incriminated their father. Sherlock had found the case boring when he read of it, saying it had been obvious, far too boring. But John had been horrifically fascinated.
He was jaunted out of his thoughts by a passer-by, who gave him a glower and then continued on his way. John knew what he must look like, standing on the chewing gum laden pavement staring into the middle distance. He couldn't quite comprehend why he hadn't taken the Tube from Baker Street. He'd been within site of Baker Street tube when he'd dashed into the taxi and really, it was much more experience to get a cab. Sherlock had been rubbing off on him, clearly. He'd never been so extravagant before. And he could see the tube station from where he stood, it was totally ridiculous, there was a direct tube line from Baker Street to - which station was that again either Whitechapel or Aldgate East anyway? He shook his head, unless Sherlock paid for the cab he'd get the Hammersmith and City back home after Sherlock's newest case had led him the to scene of the crime.
It was relatively empty inside, with only a few people milling about. Sherlock would be able to work out names, husbands, favourite food from the little evidence that John could garner. It was always fascinating to watch, to see Sherlock astounding people with the little facts about them that he could gather. Sherlock still sprung it upon him at times, when he wanted some attention or flattery, John thought, leaning casually against John's door, asking how Sarah had liked the necklace that he'd bought. John would shake his head and laugh.
“Hello? I'm a colleague of Sherlock Holmes. He's expecting me.”
The receptionist stared at him blankly, looking at a spot just over his right shoulder. John turned around to check that Sherlock wasn't standing behind him. He wasn't, when John looked back at the receptionist he frowned then shrugged and turned away from the desk.
“So I can go then?”
The woman looked back at him, as though she had only seen him there.
“Oh, yes, of course sir.”
Not many people called John sir these days, he wasn't a sir back in the dreary London city, he was just John. Doctor John, officially, but still, just John. No one looked up to him or put him into a position of authority. He was allowed to simply be.
He nodded, courteously but briefly, and reached into his pocket for his phone. He'd just opened up the text message to ask Sherlock where he would be able to locate the morgue, when his phone buzzed.
“Down the staircase, third floor down, the door to your right.”
Sherlock really was quite brilliant.
When he'd followed Sherlock's instructions, and reached the aforementioned location a door swung open, and Sherlock, animated, as only a murder could make him, waved him in.
“John! Now, what do you know of the Whitechapel murders?”
Sherlock had one hand on his shoulder, as he pushed him into the room. John noticed idly the array of police officers and medial staff in the room. They were looking over the gurney which obviously contained the deceased. He was brought back to Sherlock with a brief shake of his shoulder.
“What? The original Jack the Ripper of when the Ripper struck again in 2008? Has it happened again? Is that what this is?”
Sherlock frowned, and dropped his hand from John shoulder, shoving it into his pocket, extracting his mobile phone. He looked oddly like he was sulking. John had never found out why he hadn't taken the Jack the Ripper case.
“You know I don't like talking about that case. And anyway, not exactly. Leather-Apron, Spring Heeled Jack, Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Killer, etcetera etcetera, wasn't the only Whitechapel murderer in that period of the 19th century. Only five killing are attributed to the original murderer, but there were more. Many more, and one of these was the murder of Frances Coles. And it is her murder that has been copied here today, well at 2:15 in the morning to be accurate.”
So there was another copy cat killing. Sherlock, who normally found such things boring, was clearly fascinated by the case at hand. John smiled. The other officers in the room frowned as the looked at them, it wasn't that he enjoyed the murders, it was still a human life that had been taken away, but the mystery, the adventure.
Sherlock was still talking.
“Frances Coles, was similar to the Ripper victims. It's only because her murder took place so late, in 1891, months after the murder of Mary Kelly, that she was discounted, although I think there is plenty of evidence to attest to her being the last victim. She was a drunkard, and a prostitute, and although we can't discover, at least not yet, as to whether our victim was a prostitute, she was certainly a drinker. Frances Coles was found under a railway bridge in Chamber Street, so was our victim. The murder was identical in every possible way. Coles murderer was never found as they believed the murder was “tame”, although she wasn't ripped apart, the vicious slashes to her neck indicates that the killer had every intension of being a violent as he could, just as with Frances Coles. Coles was killed in the early hours of the morning, so was our victim. When Frances Coles was found she was still alive and the police officer heard the murders footsteps walk away. Haunted him till the end of his days they say.”
Sherlock looked, terribly, terribly overjoyed at that. And John couldn't help but smile back, a little tensely. Once he saw the body it would become real for him, but now, for now it was just another mystery. Something of great interest.
The medic in charge turned from the body, and turned to face Sherlock. She didn't looked impressed with him, however, she held out her hand for John to shake.”
“Dr Llewellyn, pathologist, pleased to meet you.”
John shook her hand, politely, and gave slight smile.
“Doctor John Watson, friend of Sherlock Holmes, it's a pleasure.”
She seemed to accept that, and turned to frown again at Sherlock.
“Jane Doe here was alive when she was found as well, Community Support Officer, must have been painful, the poor love.”
John bit his lip, he'd been with men who had been injured, held their hands as they died. It was agonising, and to watch the life fall from someone's eyes. It was horrible.
It made it seem real.
“How was she murdered?”
He noticed the light patter of blood on her hands.
“Take a look for yourself doctor.”
The men in the room all turned from the body, almost as one. The only way that they could be told apart, they were all suits and ties and heavy faces, were their hair and their hands. The eldest was his arms crossed defensively around his chest, the youngest hands were shoved in his pockets. The other, the DI, even John could tell that he was a DI's hands were floundering.
Llewellyn gestured towards the neck of the corpse on the gurney, he followed the line of her finger.
“As you can see, there are-”
“Harry?”
~
Kent watched the silence of the room after the door swung shut. Chandler looked slightly ill, he always appeared to be ill when something in the case was outside of his control. He supposed it was better than his solution with the Krays. However much Chandler had a certain charm when he had drunk too much, that smile wasn't comforting on a case.
Chandler turned to the figure of Sherlock, who was still darting his eyes over the body, and his hands were hovering over the injuries, tracing over them like a lover. Tracking where the knife would have struck.
“Harry? Does your associate know the- victim?”
Chandler was normally steadier when talking to suspects, but the cold rationality in the man's, in Sherlock's eyes as he looked over the body was making him falter.
Sherlock frowned, for a brief moment, staring at the body's closed eyes.
“Harry? Does John know a Harry... Of course. Must be his sister, Harriet Watson. Anyway. Could you pass me a swab?”
Miles' face closed, like the slamming of a book, he cast one look of disgust over Sherlock, who was still bent examining the deceased.
He put a hand on Kent's shoulder, patting it gently.
“His sister? Good god. Go after him lad. And tell Mansell that we've got a positive identification-”
“-Miss Harriet Watson, 36, sister of Doctor John Watson.”
Sherlock appeared to be taking this investigation in his stride, no matter of the consequences.
“When I want your opinion, sir, I shall ask for it.”
Kent closed the door behind him, before he could see the argument. He didn't want the shouting to reverberate down the corridor.
He was used to interviewing witnesses, when he'd first joined the team he hadn't been good at even that. But eventually that had become his role, Miles would work with which ever DI they'd been given. Fitz, Sanders and McCormack, poor McCormack would do the leg work, and Kent would be diverted from the action to talk to the witnesses, to listen to them cry and to try and make sense of their stories.
He'd got quite good at it.
That had all changed when Chandler had arrived though, through the course of the Ripper investigation he'd still been talking to suspects more than getting involved with the investigation. But Chandler made sure that all the team were, well, part of the team. Chandler would choose to take Kent with him, rather than anyone, and Kent felt like his contribution was being respected. That he was being respected. Chandler respected him.
Of course, he still spoke to suspects and witnesses alike. He'd been good at gathering information. And then there had been the Kray's.
Kent still flinched if someone came up behind him unexpectedly.
He tried to suppress it, but the first time that Chandler had put a hand on his hip without warning, he'd lashed out. It hadn't helped that he'd been in empty office. There were too many bad memories held in connection with the Kray's case.
“Sir? John Watson?”
The shorter man looked up at him blankly. His eyes betraying the enforced calm that had been plastered onto his face. He looked awful, he looked shellshocked. Kent couldn't blame him. To find something out like this, like that.
John wasn't shaking exactly, not from what Kent could tell, but his hands were slammed into his pockets, the material being worried intensely.
So Kent did the only thing that he could think of. He bought John a cup of tea. Steering John towards the cafe, although it was little more than just a collection of benches and a coffee machine, he stepped back. Allowing John to choose where he wished to sit, it was basic technique, so as not to put pressure on the victim. Not that John was the victim as such, the family member. Not that he hadn't suffered.
“I hate to do this sir, but-” “-Stop calling me sir, it's John-” “-very well John. Is there anything about your sister that you think could be relevant to this enquiry?”
John snorted, one of those harsh laughs, that Kent recognised. It was never a good side.
“I'm assuming that this is definitely a murder enquiry then?”
That laugh always sounded so wrong coming out of the bereaved. Kent tried not to flinch. But it seemed so make worse when the laughed stopped, and John's body kept shaking.
The plastic cup was showering John's hands with hot droplets of badly made tea. He didn't even flinch.
Kent winced as he took the shaking cup from John's hands, the tremor abating slightly, now that John had nothing to hold.
“Can I have a moment to myself please? I, I need to take it in.”
Kent nodded, not wholly satisfied that he shouldn't stay with him, and stepped away.
Still watching John he extracted his phone from his jacket pocket -it made the cut of his trousers swell oddly if he left it in his pocket.
Mansell was clearly bored, as he picked up on the second ring.
“Kent? I think I've got a lead. There's a missing woman, reported about a week ago-”
Kent remembered being the new boy in the group, always very pleased and keen to help and be involved. It had been Chandler who had made him a proper member of the group. It always appeared to be Chandler.
“Mansell, we've got a positive identification for the body.”
He could almost hear the wind come out of Mansell's sails.
“Oh, who is it? I'll look her up on the database.”
He did feel sorry for him, he'd come into the team to replace Sanders and Fitz and was having to make an effort to fit in to the extent that McCormack had. McCormack's death had hit him and Miles the hardest, they'd seen him, and it had been them who had found him. They'd been close in a way that Kent never had been to the team.
“Miss Harriet Watson, age 36. Sister of a Doctor John Watson. And we've got another copy-cat killing. Someone's copying-” At this he looked around the emptying room, and hushed his tone as he muttered the words “-the Ripper again. Or at least, we think they are.”
Mansell laughed, not out of humour, but Kent still frowned. Mansell hadn't been on the case with them. He didn't know what it had been like, the Ripper wasn't fun. Chandler had nightmares over it still.
Kent's nightmares focused in on the Kray's.
“Who's idea was that then Kent? Won't have been Skip's he was dead against it last time what what I 'ear.”
Kent bit his lip, he wasn't sure how to explain the other detective.
“We're... it's complicated. Miles wants you to get all that you can on Watson.”
Mansell hummed through the phone.
“Yeah, sure. Tell him I'm on it.”
He sounded quite dejected, and Kent couldn't blame him. He hung up sharply, Mansell didn't need long goodbyes. With a job to do, the team got down to it and worked.
Shoving his phone back into his jacket pocket, he looked at John. Sometimes he forgot that he was dealing with people who had once been alive, this this was more than dead bodies and facts and figures. They were once living, breathing people, with families and friends.
Kent looked down, but John coughed.
“May I see her? When Sh-Sherlock's finished of course-”, his voice caught in his throat. Kent thought it seemed wrong that John was making allowances for that man's behaviour when it was his sister who he was treating like nothing but a body. He frowned but didn't say anything. “I, want to see her. I need to see her.”
~
“It's frankly astounding the amount that you can gather from the dead. Both about the murderer and the murdered. Fascinating. ”
Sherlock didn't care for the scowls that were following him around the room. There was little case for sentiment, and if the police were going to show their ineptitude yet again, then it made sense for him to step in to the breach.
It wasn't quite as dramatic for him to reveal his deductions to an audience who-unlike John- had little care for them, but speaking them aloud at least allowed him to develop the point of thought at a rate that they could at least understand.
“If you can tell sexuality from the dead, is it biologically inherent or not? I shall have to think on this further. Despite John having mentioned his sister a few times -very dull, very average- maybe she can redeem herself in death. This is just brilliant.”
And it was brilliant. It wasn't the most violent of deaths, nor the most interesting. But there was something about a copy-cat killer. Repeating the crimes of the un-caught. It was as if they wanted to emulate that mystic. Of course, the 2008 Ripper had succeeded. This was a second chance, for Sherlock, to prove his worth against the world's greatest killer. In his head, having read the reports of the Ripper, the original Ripper, he'd known who was a victim and who wasn't. And he'd known that he could have caught him.
For the hundredth time he cursed Mycroft, for having him 'indisposed' for the duration of 2008. He was clean. That case was just what he would have needed-
“I need the CCTV from Chamber Street. It does have CCTV doesn't it? Or at least some of the shops must have private networks. Get them for me. I need to know what time she was last seen alive and by who.”
It was Chandler, who found his tongue at last.
“Look we don't have this information. And even if we did, we're not obliged to release it to civilians.”
Sherlock grabbed up a pair of rubber gloves from the side and snapped them on. Llwellyn gave him a look but didn't make any effort to stop him from interfering with her lab.
“Aren't you meant to be the police? Honestly, aren't you able to do anything?”
Not that Sherlock was looking at the team, -two of them in the room, the DI and the DS, it was only a small team, which indicated that the one who had gone after John was the third in command, but still only a DC, and there was another DC back at the station, it was too easy- instead he was rubbing the congealing blood between his finger tips.
“We only identified her as Harriet Watson five minutes ago. We cannot be expected to gather such information.”
Sherlock tusked, the dead always gave more information than the living anyway.
“See, look at the angle of this cut, from the ripped skin it indicates that the killer found the initial cut difficult, from the deception of the body both in 1891 and today, it wasn't a complicated murder. Could have been completed in only seconds, therefore why the struggle. Even Harriet's struggling wouldn't have produced that. The only explanation was that the killer was left handed, but worked with his right. Empirical evidence that this was a copy cat killing.”
Chandler, was washing is hands again from the hand pump in the corner of the room. OCD was the relevant explanation, it was barely worth the deduction that it took. Even John could have worked it out, if he hadn't left the room.
He looked around.
“Remembered your friend now, 'ave you?”
And the DS. Sergeant Ray Miles, son of Freddie The Dip, and approaching retirement. With the tenacity of a bull dog, it was artistic language certainly. But suitable.
“John, of course.”
It was hardly relevant.
Chandler frowned, as he continued to rub the foam into the crooks of his fingers. It was hardly a condition that made itself suitable for police work.
“He's not human.”
And for mistakes for a pathologist to make that was among the worst of them, like not being able to tell if a man was dead or not. He was as human as anyone else in the room, as human as the cold, bloody body of John's sister.
Of John's sister.
“Get out of this room sir, or I will make you.”
Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | (Interlude) | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Epilogue I | Epilogue II
Fandom/s: Sherlock/Whitechapel Crossover
Pairings: Chandler/Kent
Rating: 15
Disclaimer: Whitechapel and Sherlock belong to ITV and the BBC respectively.
Warnings: Murder, angst, heartbreak, violence, injury, a perchance for cliffhangers, character death.
Spoilers: Post- The Great Game for Sherlock, and Post- Series 2 for Whitechapel.
BETA: 4492
Masterlist and in-depth fic header Here
A/N: Title from Scouting For Girls' "Little Miss Naughty"
Summary: It wouldn't be a copy cat, if they didn't strike more than once.
It was raining harder when John got out of the taxi, it seemingly having followed him from the supermarket to the police station. John didn't often go to Whitechapel, but before the war, before Sherlock he'd had a girlfriend who lived relatively near to Aldgate East tube station, but he'd never paid much attention to the East End of London before. He supposed that it was a haven of crime and- he'd really been watching too much television.
But then, he had been following the news, and the East End was hardly the most conservative part of London. There had been the Second Ripper, who had struck around two years ago. John had heard about it, it was before he met Sherlock, of course, even before he'd come back from Afghanistan. It was the kind of thing that he'd caught up on when he got back to London, the darkness of human nature. He didn't think that people could have it in them to kill in cold murder, and he had to agree with Harry's rage at the failure to capture the man who had taken it upon himself to terrorise the East End. She'd not admitted to being scared, but John knew that she had been. But that was to be expected, she'd mentioned having moved to the area, after, Clara. They didn't talk about it though, it seemed cruel. And then, everything had happened. And that hadn't been it, Sherlock had been busy with the delightful schemes of Moriarty when there had been the second spree of murders, but he knew all about it. How could Sherlock not? It had been a pair of brothers, believing they were the sons of the Kray's who had decided to take revenge on those who incriminated their father. Sherlock had found the case boring when he read of it, saying it had been obvious, far too boring. But John had been horrifically fascinated.
He was jaunted out of his thoughts by a passer-by, who gave him a glower and then continued on his way. John knew what he must look like, standing on the chewing gum laden pavement staring into the middle distance. He couldn't quite comprehend why he hadn't taken the Tube from Baker Street. He'd been within site of Baker Street tube when he'd dashed into the taxi and really, it was much more experience to get a cab. Sherlock had been rubbing off on him, clearly. He'd never been so extravagant before. And he could see the tube station from where he stood, it was totally ridiculous, there was a direct tube line from Baker Street to - which station was that again either Whitechapel or Aldgate East anyway? He shook his head, unless Sherlock paid for the cab he'd get the Hammersmith and City back home after Sherlock's newest case had led him the to scene of the crime.
It was relatively empty inside, with only a few people milling about. Sherlock would be able to work out names, husbands, favourite food from the little evidence that John could garner. It was always fascinating to watch, to see Sherlock astounding people with the little facts about them that he could gather. Sherlock still sprung it upon him at times, when he wanted some attention or flattery, John thought, leaning casually against John's door, asking how Sarah had liked the necklace that he'd bought. John would shake his head and laugh.
“Hello? I'm a colleague of Sherlock Holmes. He's expecting me.”
The receptionist stared at him blankly, looking at a spot just over his right shoulder. John turned around to check that Sherlock wasn't standing behind him. He wasn't, when John looked back at the receptionist he frowned then shrugged and turned away from the desk.
“So I can go then?”
The woman looked back at him, as though she had only seen him there.
“Oh, yes, of course sir.”
Not many people called John sir these days, he wasn't a sir back in the dreary London city, he was just John. Doctor John, officially, but still, just John. No one looked up to him or put him into a position of authority. He was allowed to simply be.
He nodded, courteously but briefly, and reached into his pocket for his phone. He'd just opened up the text message to ask Sherlock where he would be able to locate the morgue, when his phone buzzed.
“Down the staircase, third floor down, the door to your right.”
Sherlock really was quite brilliant.
When he'd followed Sherlock's instructions, and reached the aforementioned location a door swung open, and Sherlock, animated, as only a murder could make him, waved him in.
“John! Now, what do you know of the Whitechapel murders?”
Sherlock had one hand on his shoulder, as he pushed him into the room. John noticed idly the array of police officers and medial staff in the room. They were looking over the gurney which obviously contained the deceased. He was brought back to Sherlock with a brief shake of his shoulder.
“What? The original Jack the Ripper of when the Ripper struck again in 2008? Has it happened again? Is that what this is?”
Sherlock frowned, and dropped his hand from John shoulder, shoving it into his pocket, extracting his mobile phone. He looked oddly like he was sulking. John had never found out why he hadn't taken the Jack the Ripper case.
“You know I don't like talking about that case. And anyway, not exactly. Leather-Apron, Spring Heeled Jack, Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Killer, etcetera etcetera, wasn't the only Whitechapel murderer in that period of the 19th century. Only five killing are attributed to the original murderer, but there were more. Many more, and one of these was the murder of Frances Coles. And it is her murder that has been copied here today, well at 2:15 in the morning to be accurate.”
So there was another copy cat killing. Sherlock, who normally found such things boring, was clearly fascinated by the case at hand. John smiled. The other officers in the room frowned as the looked at them, it wasn't that he enjoyed the murders, it was still a human life that had been taken away, but the mystery, the adventure.
Sherlock was still talking.
“Frances Coles, was similar to the Ripper victims. It's only because her murder took place so late, in 1891, months after the murder of Mary Kelly, that she was discounted, although I think there is plenty of evidence to attest to her being the last victim. She was a drunkard, and a prostitute, and although we can't discover, at least not yet, as to whether our victim was a prostitute, she was certainly a drinker. Frances Coles was found under a railway bridge in Chamber Street, so was our victim. The murder was identical in every possible way. Coles murderer was never found as they believed the murder was “tame”, although she wasn't ripped apart, the vicious slashes to her neck indicates that the killer had every intension of being a violent as he could, just as with Frances Coles. Coles was killed in the early hours of the morning, so was our victim. When Frances Coles was found she was still alive and the police officer heard the murders footsteps walk away. Haunted him till the end of his days they say.”
Sherlock looked, terribly, terribly overjoyed at that. And John couldn't help but smile back, a little tensely. Once he saw the body it would become real for him, but now, for now it was just another mystery. Something of great interest.
The medic in charge turned from the body, and turned to face Sherlock. She didn't looked impressed with him, however, she held out her hand for John to shake.”
“Dr Llewellyn, pathologist, pleased to meet you.”
John shook her hand, politely, and gave slight smile.
“Doctor John Watson, friend of Sherlock Holmes, it's a pleasure.”
She seemed to accept that, and turned to frown again at Sherlock.
“Jane Doe here was alive when she was found as well, Community Support Officer, must have been painful, the poor love.”
John bit his lip, he'd been with men who had been injured, held their hands as they died. It was agonising, and to watch the life fall from someone's eyes. It was horrible.
It made it seem real.
“How was she murdered?”
He noticed the light patter of blood on her hands.
“Take a look for yourself doctor.”
The men in the room all turned from the body, almost as one. The only way that they could be told apart, they were all suits and ties and heavy faces, were their hair and their hands. The eldest was his arms crossed defensively around his chest, the youngest hands were shoved in his pockets. The other, the DI, even John could tell that he was a DI's hands were floundering.
Llewellyn gestured towards the neck of the corpse on the gurney, he followed the line of her finger.
“As you can see, there are-”
“Harry?”
~
Kent watched the silence of the room after the door swung shut. Chandler looked slightly ill, he always appeared to be ill when something in the case was outside of his control. He supposed it was better than his solution with the Krays. However much Chandler had a certain charm when he had drunk too much, that smile wasn't comforting on a case.
Chandler turned to the figure of Sherlock, who was still darting his eyes over the body, and his hands were hovering over the injuries, tracing over them like a lover. Tracking where the knife would have struck.
“Harry? Does your associate know the- victim?”
Chandler was normally steadier when talking to suspects, but the cold rationality in the man's, in Sherlock's eyes as he looked over the body was making him falter.
Sherlock frowned, for a brief moment, staring at the body's closed eyes.
“Harry? Does John know a Harry... Of course. Must be his sister, Harriet Watson. Anyway. Could you pass me a swab?”
Miles' face closed, like the slamming of a book, he cast one look of disgust over Sherlock, who was still bent examining the deceased.
He put a hand on Kent's shoulder, patting it gently.
“His sister? Good god. Go after him lad. And tell Mansell that we've got a positive identification-”
“-Miss Harriet Watson, 36, sister of Doctor John Watson.”
Sherlock appeared to be taking this investigation in his stride, no matter of the consequences.
“When I want your opinion, sir, I shall ask for it.”
Kent closed the door behind him, before he could see the argument. He didn't want the shouting to reverberate down the corridor.
He was used to interviewing witnesses, when he'd first joined the team he hadn't been good at even that. But eventually that had become his role, Miles would work with which ever DI they'd been given. Fitz, Sanders and McCormack, poor McCormack would do the leg work, and Kent would be diverted from the action to talk to the witnesses, to listen to them cry and to try and make sense of their stories.
He'd got quite good at it.
That had all changed when Chandler had arrived though, through the course of the Ripper investigation he'd still been talking to suspects more than getting involved with the investigation. But Chandler made sure that all the team were, well, part of the team. Chandler would choose to take Kent with him, rather than anyone, and Kent felt like his contribution was being respected. That he was being respected. Chandler respected him.
Of course, he still spoke to suspects and witnesses alike. He'd been good at gathering information. And then there had been the Kray's.
Kent still flinched if someone came up behind him unexpectedly.
He tried to suppress it, but the first time that Chandler had put a hand on his hip without warning, he'd lashed out. It hadn't helped that he'd been in empty office. There were too many bad memories held in connection with the Kray's case.
“Sir? John Watson?”
The shorter man looked up at him blankly. His eyes betraying the enforced calm that had been plastered onto his face. He looked awful, he looked shellshocked. Kent couldn't blame him. To find something out like this, like that.
John wasn't shaking exactly, not from what Kent could tell, but his hands were slammed into his pockets, the material being worried intensely.
So Kent did the only thing that he could think of. He bought John a cup of tea. Steering John towards the cafe, although it was little more than just a collection of benches and a coffee machine, he stepped back. Allowing John to choose where he wished to sit, it was basic technique, so as not to put pressure on the victim. Not that John was the victim as such, the family member. Not that he hadn't suffered.
“I hate to do this sir, but-” “-Stop calling me sir, it's John-” “-very well John. Is there anything about your sister that you think could be relevant to this enquiry?”
John snorted, one of those harsh laughs, that Kent recognised. It was never a good side.
“I'm assuming that this is definitely a murder enquiry then?”
That laugh always sounded so wrong coming out of the bereaved. Kent tried not to flinch. But it seemed so make worse when the laughed stopped, and John's body kept shaking.
The plastic cup was showering John's hands with hot droplets of badly made tea. He didn't even flinch.
Kent winced as he took the shaking cup from John's hands, the tremor abating slightly, now that John had nothing to hold.
“Can I have a moment to myself please? I, I need to take it in.”
Kent nodded, not wholly satisfied that he shouldn't stay with him, and stepped away.
Still watching John he extracted his phone from his jacket pocket -it made the cut of his trousers swell oddly if he left it in his pocket.
Mansell was clearly bored, as he picked up on the second ring.
“Kent? I think I've got a lead. There's a missing woman, reported about a week ago-”
Kent remembered being the new boy in the group, always very pleased and keen to help and be involved. It had been Chandler who had made him a proper member of the group. It always appeared to be Chandler.
“Mansell, we've got a positive identification for the body.”
He could almost hear the wind come out of Mansell's sails.
“Oh, who is it? I'll look her up on the database.”
He did feel sorry for him, he'd come into the team to replace Sanders and Fitz and was having to make an effort to fit in to the extent that McCormack had. McCormack's death had hit him and Miles the hardest, they'd seen him, and it had been them who had found him. They'd been close in a way that Kent never had been to the team.
“Miss Harriet Watson, age 36. Sister of a Doctor John Watson. And we've got another copy-cat killing. Someone's copying-” At this he looked around the emptying room, and hushed his tone as he muttered the words “-the Ripper again. Or at least, we think they are.”
Mansell laughed, not out of humour, but Kent still frowned. Mansell hadn't been on the case with them. He didn't know what it had been like, the Ripper wasn't fun. Chandler had nightmares over it still.
Kent's nightmares focused in on the Kray's.
“Who's idea was that then Kent? Won't have been Skip's he was dead against it last time what what I 'ear.”
Kent bit his lip, he wasn't sure how to explain the other detective.
“We're... it's complicated. Miles wants you to get all that you can on Watson.”
Mansell hummed through the phone.
“Yeah, sure. Tell him I'm on it.”
He sounded quite dejected, and Kent couldn't blame him. He hung up sharply, Mansell didn't need long goodbyes. With a job to do, the team got down to it and worked.
Shoving his phone back into his jacket pocket, he looked at John. Sometimes he forgot that he was dealing with people who had once been alive, this this was more than dead bodies and facts and figures. They were once living, breathing people, with families and friends.
Kent looked down, but John coughed.
“May I see her? When Sh-Sherlock's finished of course-”, his voice caught in his throat. Kent thought it seemed wrong that John was making allowances for that man's behaviour when it was his sister who he was treating like nothing but a body. He frowned but didn't say anything. “I, want to see her. I need to see her.”
~
“It's frankly astounding the amount that you can gather from the dead. Both about the murderer and the murdered. Fascinating. ”
Sherlock didn't care for the scowls that were following him around the room. There was little case for sentiment, and if the police were going to show their ineptitude yet again, then it made sense for him to step in to the breach.
It wasn't quite as dramatic for him to reveal his deductions to an audience who-unlike John- had little care for them, but speaking them aloud at least allowed him to develop the point of thought at a rate that they could at least understand.
“If you can tell sexuality from the dead, is it biologically inherent or not? I shall have to think on this further. Despite John having mentioned his sister a few times -very dull, very average- maybe she can redeem herself in death. This is just brilliant.”
And it was brilliant. It wasn't the most violent of deaths, nor the most interesting. But there was something about a copy-cat killer. Repeating the crimes of the un-caught. It was as if they wanted to emulate that mystic. Of course, the 2008 Ripper had succeeded. This was a second chance, for Sherlock, to prove his worth against the world's greatest killer. In his head, having read the reports of the Ripper, the original Ripper, he'd known who was a victim and who wasn't. And he'd known that he could have caught him.
For the hundredth time he cursed Mycroft, for having him 'indisposed' for the duration of 2008. He was clean. That case was just what he would have needed-
“I need the CCTV from Chamber Street. It does have CCTV doesn't it? Or at least some of the shops must have private networks. Get them for me. I need to know what time she was last seen alive and by who.”
It was Chandler, who found his tongue at last.
“Look we don't have this information. And even if we did, we're not obliged to release it to civilians.”
Sherlock grabbed up a pair of rubber gloves from the side and snapped them on. Llwellyn gave him a look but didn't make any effort to stop him from interfering with her lab.
“Aren't you meant to be the police? Honestly, aren't you able to do anything?”
Not that Sherlock was looking at the team, -two of them in the room, the DI and the DS, it was only a small team, which indicated that the one who had gone after John was the third in command, but still only a DC, and there was another DC back at the station, it was too easy- instead he was rubbing the congealing blood between his finger tips.
“We only identified her as Harriet Watson five minutes ago. We cannot be expected to gather such information.”
Sherlock tusked, the dead always gave more information than the living anyway.
“See, look at the angle of this cut, from the ripped skin it indicates that the killer found the initial cut difficult, from the deception of the body both in 1891 and today, it wasn't a complicated murder. Could have been completed in only seconds, therefore why the struggle. Even Harriet's struggling wouldn't have produced that. The only explanation was that the killer was left handed, but worked with his right. Empirical evidence that this was a copy cat killing.”
Chandler, was washing is hands again from the hand pump in the corner of the room. OCD was the relevant explanation, it was barely worth the deduction that it took. Even John could have worked it out, if he hadn't left the room.
He looked around.
“Remembered your friend now, 'ave you?”
And the DS. Sergeant Ray Miles, son of Freddie The Dip, and approaching retirement. With the tenacity of a bull dog, it was artistic language certainly. But suitable.
“John, of course.”
It was hardly relevant.
Chandler frowned, as he continued to rub the foam into the crooks of his fingers. It was hardly a condition that made itself suitable for police work.
“He's not human.”
And for mistakes for a pathologist to make that was among the worst of them, like not being able to tell if a man was dead or not. He was as human as anyone else in the room, as human as the cold, bloody body of John's sister.
Of John's sister.
“Get out of this room sir, or I will make you.”
Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | (Interlude) | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Epilogue I | Epilogue II