Lynton College, Oxford University. Balford room (temporarily serving as police interview room). 25th January 2011.
‘So you’re the private detective.’
‘Consulting detective. And this is my colleague, Dr. Watson.’
Sophie Heaney gives them both an appraising glance, and then sits back in her chair. ‘OK. Can we get on with this? I’ve got a tute at four.’
Sherlock sits down opposite her, and John takes a seat beside him.
The first words out of Sherlock’s mouth are not ones John has ever heard him say to someone involved in a murder case before, even though they are among the most obvious things to say. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘Thank you.’ The girl is studying Sherlock more carefully now. ‘Although rather a ridiculous thing to say if I murdered her.’
‘I don’t know whether you murdered her or not,’ Sherlock says. ‘I don’t have the data to assess that yet. Until then, it doesn’t hurt to be polite.’
This last sentence has John staring at Sherlock in open bewilderment. Sherlock refuses to meet his eyes.
‘Well, I didn’t, as it happens, although there’s obviously no reason why you should believe me.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
The girl smiles slightly. ‘That’s not the usual question, you know.’
‘She caused you a great deal of pain,’ Sherlock says. ‘She abandoned you repeatedly. You could have stopped it all easily, but according to you, you didn’t. Why not?’
‘The idea never crossed my mind,’ Heaney says at last. ‘I didn’t want her dead; that was the last thing in the world I wanted.’
Sherlock nods, once. Then he says, ‘And what about Michael Warder? Why didn’t you kill him?’
The girl’s smile grows slightly wider. ‘Because I didn’t think of it first.’
*
‘”It doesn’t hurt to be polite?”’
‘You’re always telling me so. I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Of course I am. But…’ John trails off, not knowing where to start.
Sherlock forestalls the need for him to say anything else. ‘If she killed her mother, then kindness may cause her to let her guard drop slightly. If she didn’t, then she’s a valuable witness and upsetting her might make her shut down and fail to tell us anything else.’
Sherlock is being evasive now. John smiles. ‘That’s never stopped you before.’
‘I’m going to have to be careful with this one,’ Sherlock muses, ignoring this comment. ‘She’s very intelligent, Sophie Heaney.’
‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call anyone who wasn’t a Holmes intelligent.’
‘Oi!’
John and Sherlock both spin round, startled. A blonde girl who John recognises from the case files as Amy Moore is running towards them.
‘You’re the detective and his friend, right? You were just talking to Sophie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know how she seems,’ the girl says abruptly. ‘But she isn’t - she’s not, really. And she’s not going to jail because she’s too proud to defend herself. I won’t let it happen. Don’t you even try to make that happen.’
Sherlock surveys her. ‘Noted,’ is all he says.
‘She didn’t like Michael, course she didn’t, how could she, doesn’t mean she killed him, and she’d never in a million years kill her mother, she used to have nightmares about her dying. You don’t know anything about her, d’you understand?’
‘I’m not part of the official force,’ Sherlock says, very calm in the face of the torrent of flustered rage facing him. ‘It isn’t, in the end, up to me. But I don’t make mistakes. If she didn’t commit the crimes, I won’t allow her to be arrested for them. All right?’
The girl seems to relax slightly at this. ‘OK,’ she mutters. ‘Sorry for yelling. See you.’ And she’s gone, heading off towards the back quad.
‘Well, that was…interesting,’ John says, staring after her. Then he looks thoughtfully at Sherlock. ‘You care about this lot, don’t you?’
‘Caring about them, as I’ve told you before, isn’t any use to anyone.’
‘But you do, all the same.’
‘I’m interested, that’s all. This is a lot more complicated than the police originally thought.’
‘D’you know who did it yet?’ John asks, teasingly.
‘No. But Sophie Heaney didn’t. If she committed a crime,’ and there’s now a trace amount of pride entering Sherlock’s voice, ‘she’d do it much more cleverly than that.’
Much to Sherlock’s chagrin, John insists on their eating in hall with the students that night. They are staying in college accommodation, after all, and they’ve been offered free meals while they’re here and it’s only sensible to take advantage of it. Besides, it’s polite. None of these arguments particularly resonates with Sherlock, but he finds himself being dragged along anyway.
Sherlock remembers his two years at Cambridge before he dropped out. He remembers not having any means of cooking for himself and not being able to afford restaurants or takeaway. He doesn’t eat often, of course, but at least a few times a week he’d have to go through the ordeal of sitting in hall on long wooden benches, crushed between people who didn’t want to talk to him.
Lynton College’s formal hall looks very much like the one he remembers. He and John collect the highly dubious-looking food and then take a seat awkwardly at the end of a table full of chattering students.
Sherlock has no intention whatsoever of touching the suspicious greyish goo on his plate. He did eat the sandwich earlier, so John can’t complain. He pokes at it vaguely with a fork, watching the students.
He picks out Heaney and Moore quickly, sitting, like John and Sherlock, at the farthest end of a table, Moore one seat nearer the centre than Heaney. They are very close together, which is inevitable given the lack of space, but they are also leaning very slightly towards each other, their shoulders pressing together. Moore is talking and grinning, gesticulating with her cutlery, and Heaney is half-smiling, too caught up in what her friend is saying, Sherlock thinks, to remember to eat herself.
Someone further down the table calls ‘Amy!’ and Moore twists to respond, grinning at the other person and calling something back to them. Heaney’s barely-there smile disappears instantly, and she looks back down to her plate, but still doesn’t eat anything.
She hates these moments, the moments when Amy’s attention snaps to anybody else, first of all because it leaves her alone, even if it’s only for a minute, but mainly because it reminds her that this girl, who’s all she’s got, doesn’t place the same kind of significance on her, doesn’t have to. That Amy Moore is sane and happy and well-adjusted and popular and Sophie Heaney simply isn’t. That there are plenty of other people who are just as important to Amy as Sophie is, and that one day, probably not far off, someone will be more important.
Sherlock always knows how he deduces things, always has a clear logical progression in his mind that explains it. But he doesn’t know why it is that he can say so precisely what Heaney is feeling, since her expression is so carefully blank. He’s absolutely sure he’s right, though.
Re: FILL 3/?
anonymous
January 18 2011, 13:04:57 UTC
I've been meaning to get around to reading this for days and now I finally have. This is absolutely brilliant so far. ♥ I already love Sophie and Amy rather dearly. Amy's standing up for her was very sweet. And, oh, Sherlock's train of thought in that last bit. My heart goes out to him.
Hopefully there'll be more soon! (Later rather than sooner is also fine, of course, I'm just very excited about this.)
Re: FILL 3/?alltoseekJanuary 20 2011, 18:06:49 UTC
Yeah, Mycroft getting artistic is kinda creepy, not to mention annoying :-)
Now I'm especially enjoying having the two fills for this prompt, because each of you is taking a very different approach. Not only are each set of girls different characters from our boys, they're different from the other set too. Recognizable, but unique. Especially in that young-adult stage of trying to fit in but stand out at the same time :-)
Re: FILL 3/?lizzledpinkJanuary 19 2011, 23:42:35 UTC
First: The name etymology freak in me is SHRIEKING HAPPILY at the names Sophie and Amy. If that wasn't deliberate, well, YOU'RE BLOODY PSYCHIC AND I HUG YOU FOR IT. If it was deliberate, YOU'RE A GENIUS! <333 EEEEEEEEEE!
Second: THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Sherlock knowing Sophie's exact feelings and everything, oh, my heart, it's ASPLODY.
CONTINUE THIS OR I HUNT YOU DOWN AND TERRORIZE YOU (LOVINGLY, OF COURSE) UNTIL YOU DO.
Re: FILL 3/?
anonymous
January 20 2011, 11:18:15 UTC
yes yes the names were totally deliberate and I love you for noticing <3
and thank you! there is a tiny bit more now, although I'm having to update a bit slowly. I'm not sure I'd mind being tracked down and lovingly terrorized, but nevertheless I'll try and produce more :D
The JCR’s a lot fuller at this time of day than it was in the earlier footage. People are relaxing on the sofas, watching TV, drinking and talking. Heaney isn’t there, but Moore’s with a group of friends.
‘How was your Christmas?’ asks one, a boy with dyed red hair and an earring.
‘Oh, not bad,’ Moore replies, taking a swig from her bottle of cider. ‘Quiet, mostly, ‘cept I did go on the ski trip, which was awesome.’
‘Didn’t you get stuck there for like a week because of the snow?’
‘Yeah, but it was kind of nice, actually, getting an extra week to hang out, even without any skiing.’
[Pointless chatter. Sherlock considers fast-forwarding, but something important could come up and he’d miss it. Nothing to do but sit through the babble.]
‘You coming to Poptarts tonight?’ asks another of the group, a girl in a short blue dress.
‘No, can’t, sorry.’
‘Why not?’
Moore hesitates. ‘I…Sophie’s going, and she doesn’t like me to go with her.’
‘You’re not serious.’
Moore looks very uncomfortable now. ‘Look, she’s my friend, and I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so…’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, why is she your friend?’
Moore sits up a little straighter. ‘I - I sort of do mind.’
‘But she’s - I don’t mean it in a mean way, but she’s - well, she’s not normal, is she?’
Moore doesn’t say anything.
‘I mean come on, Amy, telling you which clubs you can and can’t go to? That’s weird, you have to admit it. And she’s got pictures of skeletons and neatly-labelled thousand year old preserved corpses on her noticeboard, and she never talks about anything but her subject, when she talks about anything at all.’
‘She does with me.’
‘Really?’ The girl looks amused. ‘Like what?’
Moore shrugs. ‘Lots of stuff. Look, it’s not important. I get why you guys don’t - but, well, I like her. Let’s just drop it, OK?’
‘But I’m worried about you.’ The girl puts a gentle hand on Amy’s arm. [Sherlock grits his teeth, then forces his face to relax when he realises what he’s doing.] ‘She’s - I mean, it’s not as if she’s just a bit eccentric. She’s…I think she’s probably got some sort of, you know’ - her voice lowers - ‘mental illness, or something. And her telling you not to go to Poptarts because she’s going there isn’t what friends do, I’m sorry. She doesn’t like you, Amy, she’s not capable of that, she just gets a kick out of manipulating you.’
‘Fine, I’ll come,’ Amy [Moore, Sherlock hurriedly corrects himself] says abruptly, standing up. ‘Just let me go and get changed.’
‘Yaaay!’ cheers the group [and Sherlock doesn’t know what the sudden weight at the pit of his stomach is, but he flicks the monitor off and spins the chair away, thinking that a quick break can’t do any harm.]
‘Just the footage from the college isn’t going to be enough. I need to talk to the security staff at some of Oxford’s clubs and bars; the students spend more time there than anywhere else.’
‘But the victims weren’t students.’
‘No, but the murderer might have been.’
John frowns. ‘But you don’t think it’s Heaney.’
‘No, not really.’
‘But why would any other student kill them?’ John says, puzzled. ‘And what are you going to find out from looking at club footage anyway? You won’t be able to hear anything anyone’s saying.’
Sherlock shrugs. ‘I’ll see you back at the room,’ he says.
It’s around lunchtime, but John’s already eaten, and it looks like Sherlock’s going to be gone all afternoon again. John sighs, and wonders what he’s doing in Oxford, and whether Sherlock really expects him to be of any use.
He’s been cooped up in the room all morning, so he goes downstairs with the vague intention of having a walk round the quad, maybe visiting the Fellows’ Garden. Stepping outside, he nearly bumps right into Amy Moore.
‘Sorry!’ she says brightly, and then takes in who he his. ‘Oh, it’s - you’re -‘
‘John.’ He puts out his hand and she shakes it slightly nervously.
‘I’m Amy. But I guess you know that.’
‘Yeah.’ He grins at her. ‘We have already met, of course.’
She blushes. ‘I’m sorry about that. I just…it’s getting to all of us, this stuff. And Sophie’s my friend, and nobody seems to remember the fact that her mother’s just died and - ah, crap, I’m getting wound up again, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ John says, unconsciously adopting his reassuring-the-patient voice. ‘Of course you’re on edge; it’d be very surprising if you weren’t. And I’m glad you stuck up for your friend. I don’t expect she has many people prepared to do that, does she?’
John honestly hadn’t meant to say that last bit. Amy smiles a little sadly. ‘No, she doesn’t. I’m not sure she really appreciates being stuck up for, mind you, but I don’t really care whether she likes it or not.’
John laughs. ‘Well, for what it’s worth,’ he says and pauses, knowing that what he’s about to say is fantastically unwise, but he can’t quite help himself: ‘my friend doesn’t think she did it.’
Amy looks up. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. And he’s a genius. He’ll find out who really did it, and Sophie will be fine.’
‘He’d better.’
There is a look on her face that John recognises, a look that’s both fiery and incredibly composed. He remembers catching sight of it in the window of a field hospital when they brought in Murray, and John decided very calmly that the man was certainly not going to die, and there was to be no arguing about it on the part of the universe, fate or God. He didn’t have a chance to have a look at his wavering reflection in the swimming pool, but he knows it was there on his face again when he clutched Jim Moriarty to his own explosives, knowing for certain that he wasn’t going to allow Sherlock to be shot or blown up. Amy Moore looks like that now, like she’s very calmly deciding that, if necessary, she will befriend some criminals, break her friend out of prison and run away with her to some island somewhere. Like she wouldn’t have to think twice about it.
Baby Love Bar, Oxford, 11th January 2011. 10.30 pm.
[Sherlock has done his research before viewing the footage. It appears that most of the clubs in Oxford have particular themed student nights on various days of the week, and that ‘Poptarts’ is the ‘Baby Love Bar’’s Tuesday gay night. The rest of the time, it’s a straight club, and it seems that even on Tuesdays at least half the crowd are heterosexual.]
Moore and her friends come in on the top screen, but Sherlock’s eyes are busy scanning the lower screen, showing the basement level. It doesn’t take him long to locate Heaney. She’s on one of the seats in the corner, engaged in kissing a girl a head shorter and probably some years older than her. Sherlock watches her with interest. She kisses in a cool, practised, measured sort of way, and Sherlock can see her very brief pauses to note what’s working and what isn’t, then returning to repeat the successful experiments with an intensity that’s more ruthless than passionate.
Moore’s group are coming down the stairs, newly-purchased drinks in hand.
Heaney pulls back from the other girl, not far, but enough for Sherlock to see that they’re both drunk, eyes unfocused, faces flushed - though that’s probably partly from the kissing, too - and that the other girl is even drunker than Heaney is, possibly only upright because of Heaney’s hands behind her back supporting her.
Then Moore is hovering awkwardly next to them, saying something, and Heaney turns round. Sherlock wishes he could hear their conversation, but it’s impossible, so he just watches Moore look increasingly unhappy and pleading, and then Heaney getting up, leaving the girl she’d been kissing flopping on the corner seat looking bewildered, and striding up the stairs and towards the door of the club.
Moore tugs at her hair miserably, downs her drink and goes to buy another one. The girl in the blue dress looks, from what Sherlock can see of her face, quite relieved that Heaney’s gone. Sherlock turns off the computer, and wonders what on earth he thinks he’s doing. There are murders to solve, and this isn’t getting him anywhere.
‘So you’re the private detective.’
‘Consulting detective. And this is my colleague, Dr. Watson.’
Sophie Heaney gives them both an appraising glance, and then sits back in her chair. ‘OK. Can we get on with this? I’ve got a tute at four.’
Sherlock sits down opposite her, and John takes a seat beside him.
The first words out of Sherlock’s mouth are not ones John has ever heard him say to someone involved in a murder case before, even though they are among the most obvious things to say. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘Thank you.’ The girl is studying Sherlock more carefully now. ‘Although rather a ridiculous thing to say if I murdered her.’
‘I don’t know whether you murdered her or not,’ Sherlock says. ‘I don’t have the data to assess that yet. Until then, it doesn’t hurt to be polite.’
This last sentence has John staring at Sherlock in open bewilderment. Sherlock refuses to meet his eyes.
‘Well, I didn’t, as it happens, although there’s obviously no reason why you should believe me.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
The girl smiles slightly. ‘That’s not the usual question, you know.’
‘She caused you a great deal of pain,’ Sherlock says. ‘She abandoned you repeatedly. You could have stopped it all easily, but according to you, you didn’t. Why not?’
‘The idea never crossed my mind,’ Heaney says at last. ‘I didn’t want her dead; that was the last thing in the world I wanted.’
Sherlock nods, once. Then he says, ‘And what about Michael Warder? Why didn’t you kill him?’
The girl’s smile grows slightly wider. ‘Because I didn’t think of it first.’
*
‘”It doesn’t hurt to be polite?”’
‘You’re always telling me so. I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Of course I am. But…’ John trails off, not knowing where to start.
Sherlock forestalls the need for him to say anything else. ‘If she killed her mother, then kindness may cause her to let her guard drop slightly. If she didn’t, then she’s a valuable witness and upsetting her might make her shut down and fail to tell us anything else.’
Sherlock is being evasive now. John smiles. ‘That’s never stopped you before.’
‘I’m going to have to be careful with this one,’ Sherlock muses, ignoring this comment. ‘She’s very intelligent, Sophie Heaney.’
‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call anyone who wasn’t a Holmes intelligent.’
‘Oi!’
John and Sherlock both spin round, startled. A blonde girl who John recognises from the case files as Amy Moore is running towards them.
‘You’re the detective and his friend, right? You were just talking to Sophie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know how she seems,’ the girl says abruptly. ‘But she isn’t - she’s not, really. And she’s not going to jail because she’s too proud to defend herself. I won’t let it happen. Don’t you even try to make that happen.’
Sherlock surveys her. ‘Noted,’ is all he says.
‘She didn’t like Michael, course she didn’t, how could she, doesn’t mean she killed him, and she’d never in a million years kill her mother, she used to have nightmares about her dying. You don’t know anything about her, d’you understand?’
‘I’m not part of the official force,’ Sherlock says, very calm in the face of the torrent of flustered rage facing him. ‘It isn’t, in the end, up to me. But I don’t make mistakes. If she didn’t commit the crimes, I won’t allow her to be arrested for them. All right?’
The girl seems to relax slightly at this. ‘OK,’ she mutters. ‘Sorry for yelling. See you.’ And she’s gone, heading off towards the back quad.
‘Well, that was…interesting,’ John says, staring after her. Then he looks thoughtfully at Sherlock. ‘You care about this lot, don’t you?’
‘Caring about them, as I’ve told you before, isn’t any use to anyone.’
‘But you do, all the same.’
‘I’m interested, that’s all. This is a lot more complicated than the police originally thought.’
‘D’you know who did it yet?’ John asks, teasingly.
‘No. But Sophie Heaney didn’t. If she committed a crime,’ and there’s now a trace amount of pride entering Sherlock’s voice, ‘she’d do it much more cleverly than that.’
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Sherlock remembers his two years at Cambridge before he dropped out. He remembers not having any means of cooking for himself and not being able to afford restaurants or takeaway. He doesn’t eat often, of course, but at least a few times a week he’d have to go through the ordeal of sitting in hall on long wooden benches, crushed between people who didn’t want to talk to him.
Lynton College’s formal hall looks very much like the one he remembers. He and John collect the highly dubious-looking food and then take a seat awkwardly at the end of a table full of chattering students.
Sherlock has no intention whatsoever of touching the suspicious greyish goo on his plate. He did eat the sandwich earlier, so John can’t complain. He pokes at it vaguely with a fork, watching the students.
He picks out Heaney and Moore quickly, sitting, like John and Sherlock, at the farthest end of a table, Moore one seat nearer the centre than Heaney. They are very close together, which is inevitable given the lack of space, but they are also leaning very slightly towards each other, their shoulders pressing together. Moore is talking and grinning, gesticulating with her cutlery, and Heaney is half-smiling, too caught up in what her friend is saying, Sherlock thinks, to remember to eat herself.
Someone further down the table calls ‘Amy!’ and Moore twists to respond, grinning at the other person and calling something back to them. Heaney’s barely-there smile disappears instantly, and she looks back down to her plate, but still doesn’t eat anything.
She hates these moments, the moments when Amy’s attention snaps to anybody else, first of all because it leaves her alone, even if it’s only for a minute, but mainly because it reminds her that this girl, who’s all she’s got, doesn’t place the same kind of significance on her, doesn’t have to. That Amy Moore is sane and happy and well-adjusted and popular and Sophie Heaney simply isn’t. That there are plenty of other people who are just as important to Amy as Sophie is, and that one day, probably not far off, someone will be more important.
Sherlock always knows how he deduces things, always has a clear logical progression in his mind that explains it. But he doesn’t know why it is that he can say so precisely what Heaney is feeling, since her expression is so carefully blank. He’s absolutely sure he’s right, though.
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Hopefully there'll be more soon! (Later rather than sooner is also fine, of course, I'm just very excited about this.)
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[and mycroft is writing in balloon text like a ten year old who's just discovered wordart, it's quite sweet really, if somewhat difficult to copy]
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Now I'm especially enjoying having the two fills for this prompt, because each of you is taking a very different approach. Not only are each set of girls different characters from our boys, they're different from the other set too. Recognizable, but unique. Especially in that young-adult stage of trying to fit in but stand out at the same time :-)
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Second: THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Sherlock knowing Sophie's exact feelings and everything, oh, my heart, it's ASPLODY.
CONTINUE THIS OR I HUNT YOU DOWN AND TERRORIZE YOU (LOVINGLY, OF COURSE) UNTIL YOU DO.
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and thank you! there is a tiny bit more now, although I'm having to update a bit slowly. I'm not sure I'd mind being tracked down and lovingly terrorized, but nevertheless I'll try and produce more :D
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The JCR’s a lot fuller at this time of day than it was in the earlier footage. People are relaxing on the sofas, watching TV, drinking and talking. Heaney isn’t there, but Moore’s with a group of friends.
‘How was your Christmas?’ asks one, a boy with dyed red hair and an earring.
‘Oh, not bad,’ Moore replies, taking a swig from her bottle of cider. ‘Quiet, mostly, ‘cept I did go on the ski trip, which was awesome.’
‘Didn’t you get stuck there for like a week because of the snow?’
‘Yeah, but it was kind of nice, actually, getting an extra week to hang out, even without any skiing.’
[Pointless chatter. Sherlock considers fast-forwarding, but something important could come up and he’d miss it. Nothing to do but sit through the babble.]
‘You coming to Poptarts tonight?’ asks another of the group, a girl in a short blue dress.
‘No, can’t, sorry.’
‘Why not?’
Moore hesitates. ‘I…Sophie’s going, and she doesn’t like me to go with her.’
‘You’re not serious.’
Moore looks very uncomfortable now. ‘Look, she’s my friend, and I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so…’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, why is she your friend?’
Moore sits up a little straighter. ‘I - I sort of do mind.’
‘But she’s - I don’t mean it in a mean way, but she’s - well, she’s not normal, is she?’
Moore doesn’t say anything.
‘I mean come on, Amy, telling you which clubs you can and can’t go to? That’s weird, you have to admit it. And she’s got pictures of skeletons and neatly-labelled thousand year old preserved corpses on her noticeboard, and she never talks about anything but her subject, when she talks about anything at all.’
‘She does with me.’
‘Really?’ The girl looks amused. ‘Like what?’
Moore shrugs. ‘Lots of stuff. Look, it’s not important. I get why you guys don’t - but, well, I like her. Let’s just drop it, OK?’
‘But I’m worried about you.’ The girl puts a gentle hand on Amy’s arm. [Sherlock grits his teeth, then forces his face to relax when he realises what he’s doing.] ‘She’s - I mean, it’s not as if she’s just a bit eccentric. She’s…I think she’s probably got some sort of, you know’ - her voice lowers - ‘mental illness, or something. And her telling you not to go to Poptarts because she’s going there isn’t what friends do, I’m sorry. She doesn’t like you, Amy, she’s not capable of that, she just gets a kick out of manipulating you.’
‘Fine, I’ll come,’ Amy [Moore, Sherlock hurriedly corrects himself] says abruptly, standing up. ‘Just let me go and get changed.’
‘Yaaay!’ cheers the group [and Sherlock doesn’t know what the sudden weight at the pit of his stomach is, but he flicks the monitor off and spins the chair away, thinking that a quick break can’t do any harm.]
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‘Just the footage from the college isn’t going to be enough. I need to talk to the security staff at some of Oxford’s clubs and bars; the students spend more time there than anywhere else.’
‘But the victims weren’t students.’
‘No, but the murderer might have been.’
John frowns. ‘But you don’t think it’s Heaney.’
‘No, not really.’
‘But why would any other student kill them?’ John says, puzzled. ‘And what are you going to find out from looking at club footage anyway? You won’t be able to hear anything anyone’s saying.’
Sherlock shrugs. ‘I’ll see you back at the room,’ he says.
It’s around lunchtime, but John’s already eaten, and it looks like Sherlock’s going to be gone all afternoon again. John sighs, and wonders what he’s doing in Oxford, and whether Sherlock really expects him to be of any use.
He’s been cooped up in the room all morning, so he goes downstairs with the vague intention of having a walk round the quad, maybe visiting the Fellows’ Garden. Stepping outside, he nearly bumps right into Amy Moore.
‘Sorry!’ she says brightly, and then takes in who he his. ‘Oh, it’s - you’re -‘
‘John.’ He puts out his hand and she shakes it slightly nervously.
‘I’m Amy. But I guess you know that.’
‘Yeah.’ He grins at her. ‘We have already met, of course.’
She blushes. ‘I’m sorry about that. I just…it’s getting to all of us, this stuff. And Sophie’s my friend, and nobody seems to remember the fact that her mother’s just died and - ah, crap, I’m getting wound up again, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ John says, unconsciously adopting his reassuring-the-patient voice. ‘Of course you’re on edge; it’d be very surprising if you weren’t. And I’m glad you stuck up for your friend. I don’t expect she has many people prepared to do that, does she?’
John honestly hadn’t meant to say that last bit. Amy smiles a little sadly. ‘No, she doesn’t. I’m not sure she really appreciates being stuck up for, mind you, but I don’t really care whether she likes it or not.’
John laughs. ‘Well, for what it’s worth,’ he says and pauses, knowing that what he’s about to say is fantastically unwise, but he can’t quite help himself: ‘my friend doesn’t think she did it.’
Amy looks up. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. And he’s a genius. He’ll find out who really did it, and Sophie will be fine.’
‘He’d better.’
There is a look on her face that John recognises, a look that’s both fiery and incredibly composed. He remembers catching sight of it in the window of a field hospital when they brought in Murray, and John decided very calmly that the man was certainly not going to die, and there was to be no arguing about it on the part of the universe, fate or God. He didn’t have a chance to have a look at his wavering reflection in the swimming pool, but he knows it was there on his face again when he clutched Jim Moriarty to his own explosives, knowing for certain that he wasn’t going to allow Sherlock to be shot or blown up. Amy Moore looks like that now, like she’s very calmly deciding that, if necessary, she will befriend some criminals, break her friend out of prison and run away with her to some island somewhere. Like she wouldn’t have to think twice about it.
‘He will,’ John says. ‘I promise.’
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[Sherlock has done his research before viewing the footage. It appears that most of the clubs in Oxford have particular themed student nights on various days of the week, and that ‘Poptarts’ is the ‘Baby Love Bar’’s Tuesday gay night. The rest of the time, it’s a straight club, and it seems that even on Tuesdays at least half the crowd are heterosexual.]
Moore and her friends come in on the top screen, but Sherlock’s eyes are busy scanning the lower screen, showing the basement level. It doesn’t take him long to locate Heaney. She’s on one of the seats in the corner, engaged in kissing a girl a head shorter and probably some years older than her. Sherlock watches her with interest. She kisses in a cool, practised, measured sort of way, and Sherlock can see her very brief pauses to note what’s working and what isn’t, then returning to repeat the successful experiments with an intensity that’s more ruthless than passionate.
Moore’s group are coming down the stairs, newly-purchased drinks in hand.
Heaney pulls back from the other girl, not far, but enough for Sherlock to see that they’re both drunk, eyes unfocused, faces flushed - though that’s probably partly from the kissing, too - and that the other girl is even drunker than Heaney is, possibly only upright because of Heaney’s hands behind her back supporting her.
Then Moore is hovering awkwardly next to them, saying something, and Heaney turns round. Sherlock wishes he could hear their conversation, but it’s impossible, so he just watches Moore look increasingly unhappy and pleading, and then Heaney getting up, leaving the girl she’d been kissing flopping on the corner seat looking bewildered, and striding up the stairs and towards the door of the club.
Moore tugs at her hair miserably, downs her drink and goes to buy another one. The girl in the blue dress looks, from what Sherlock can see of her face, quite relieved that Heaney’s gone. Sherlock turns off the computer, and wonders what on earth he thinks he’s doing. There are murders to solve, and this isn’t getting him anywhere.
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