Fic for goldvermilion87: Just another day.
Title: Just another day.
Recipient: goldvermilion87
Author: solrosan
Characters/Pairings: John Watson, ‘Anthea’, Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes. No pairing.
Rating: G.
Warnings: No warnings apply.
Summary: A quite ordinary day in John’s, ‘Anthea’s’ and Lestrade’s lives, because even lives involving the Holmes Brother are filled with routine. In the end nothing ever really happens to anyone.
Notes: Hello, goldvermilion87! I hope you’re not too disappointed with getting a fic and I hope you will enjoy it. For fics you said “funny stories and slice of life stories.” I can’t guarantee the fun part, but this fic shows small slices of the everyday life the characters live.
I want to give a huge thanks to zedille who is a constant source of encouragement and swissmarg for swift and wonderful betaing. Thank you, both of you!
- o -
Since John started working at this surgery he had taken up the habit of eating breakfast at work. It wasn’t only because the break room had a fantastic selection of tea and freshly baked bread from the bakery next door, but also because it was nice to eat at a table that was 100 % eyeball-free. He wasn’t the only one taking advantage of this benefit, making the early mornings one of the social highlights of John’s day. It had become a part of a routine he had come to appreciate, even if John spent most mornings reading a paper, trying to ignore texts from Sherlock.
When his phone chimed for the fifth time he gave up. Sherlock was hard to ignore even when he was on the other side of the city.
Where are you? SH
I’m bored. SH
John? SH
It’s important. SH
Come home right now. SH
John smiled. If it hadn’t it been for the second text he would almost have believed there was something going on.
I’m at work, Sherlock.
The response came within seconds.
Dull. SH
Didn’t you have something at Barts?
Not for another 22 h. SH
Go for a walk or something. Weather’s lovely.
Ugh. SH
Come home! SH
John put the mobile away in his locker. It was a very pleasant way to get Sherlock to shut up and if John didn’t know there was an ‘amazing murder’ or ‘fantastic abduction’ that needed their immediate attention he couldn’t be lured away from work. Some days it worried John that he didn’t have better self-discipline, but most days he just locked away his phone and didn’t think about it.
With a second cup of tea in his hand John sat down in front of his computer and did his very best to pick out which appointments would have him running late today and why. Perhaps he wasn’t a consulting detective to the Met, but he sure as hell had a good track record for figuring out beforehand why the regulars were really there on any particular day. Sherlock would probably call it guessing; John called it learning from experience.
He came to the conclusion that he would probably be on schedule until the fifth patient. The first four were all repeats and seemingly straightforward - two old ladies and a gentleman who were getting their (unexciting) test results back, leading to some changes in prescription dosages, and a mother who pulled her child out of kindergarten every time she had a sniffle. Pretty satisfied with his chances for staying on schedule the first hour, John hid his empty tea mug in a desk drawer and went to the waiting room to get Mrs Kent.
She was a very short, elderly woman who, in spite of pain caused by osteoarthritis in her hands, hip, and knees, always smiled when she came to the surgery. John had the feeling she had been really pretty when she was young. Going through her results didn’t take more than a couple of minutes, and John spent the rest of her scheduled time talking to her about her grandson, who was starting university that fall.
The second appointment, the mother with the child, went as swiftly as expected as well, but after that his predictive powers failed him. The next patient, Mrs Hook, complained about some side effects of one of her prescriptions, which made it necessary to take another set of tests to see if they actually were side effects and not symptoms of something else.
It wasn’t a problem, but as a result he had to spend the following ninety minutes starting each appointment with an apology. Most of them didn’t mind, or at least said they didn’t, but the father whose son was on his third ear infection in four months spent a whole five minutes yelling at him and the rest of the time being rude and, consequently, putting John even more behind schedule. Thanks to a late cancellation he still managed to have time to eat his lunch before the staff meeting and not during it like two of the other doctors.
Instead he could drink his tea without stress while they tried to schedule the new home visit requests around the ones they already had. John didn’t usually get assigned many of them since most of the patients in their area had favourites and John was still ‘the new one’. They tried to accommodate that as well as they could, giving him more appointments and administrative work. In the end he got two home visits and they wrapped up the meeting by making sure everyone knew they had to turn in their recorded overtime before the end of the week.
On his way out John resisted the urge to look at his mobile. Instead he took one of the surgery’s phones before leaving for the home visits.
- o -
Once upon a time she had the unspoken goal to come to work before Mr Holmes. Now she knew that only ever happened when he wasn’t in the country. The first thing she did when she got to the office this and every other morning was turn on the kettle and the coffee maker: tea for him, coffee for her. While she waited for the beverages she studied the day's schedule, playing the ‘When Will This Go Off The Rails Today?’ guessing game. Her money was on his security briefing - low odds on that one, it almost always ran long - or her meeting at Thames House, but she had a dental appointment at three that she could easily skip and Mr Holmes… well, he had to not run late today. She put down her Blackberry when the kettle boiled, prepared the tea and walked the nine steps to Mr Holmes’ office.
Out of well-established habit she knocked before going in, even though she didn’t have to. She found her boss at his desk with the landline to his ear.
'Good morning,' she mouthed, moving two notepads and putting down his tea. Mr Holmes nodded as both greeting and thanks, scribbling down 'Conf. call TSE' on a Post-it. She wrote 'Sec. brief 07:15' on the same Post-it and stuck it on his computer screen before retreating to her desk, her coffee and her own call sheet for the morning.
In the middle of her third call Mr Holmes came out to refill his tea. She held out her empty mug for him to do the same with hers. When he returned with it, she handed him the print-outs of five surveillance footage stills, all showing Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson on the way home from dinner the previous night.
“Nothing this morning?” he asked, putting them back on her desk.
She covered the microphone on the phone. “No, just Dr Watson leaving for work.”
Mr Holmes nodded. He didn't seem particularly interested. “Who are you on with now?”
“I’m holding for Mortimer, Treasury not Cabinet. Anything in the security briefing?”
“Nothing important. Sort that out first,” Mr Holmes said, vaguely gesturing at her computer, where she had the beginning of a flowchart whose goal was to figure out why the LIBOR was behaving the way it was. There wasn’t anything drastic happening yet, but after having spent far more time than they wanted to monitoring British interests in the European Central Bank during the prolonged financial crisis they really wanted to be pre-emptive when it came to a possible bank chaos at home.
She was about to answer him when Mortimer-Treasury-not-Cabinet came to the phone and she removed her hand from the microphone.
“Good morning, sir,” she said with her most cheerful voice. “My name is Kate Roberts and I’m calling from Justice. No, I’m just following up on a thing so that I can file it away. I came back from parental leave - Oh, thank you. A girl. As I said, I just came back and the chap who filled in, well, bless him, but his handwriting could make pharmacists cry.”
Mr Holmes stood there watching her for a moment before walking back to his office. She followed him with her eyes as he walked away, still talking about some made-up sod’s poor penmanship. It led absolutely nowhere in the end, and neither did the second call she made to Treasury, but the third generated a small amount of information.
She kept going through the call sheet, each call taking between five and twenty minutes depending on what persona she felt necessary to take on and whether or not the person on the other end actually had any useful information.
In the middle of a phone call that didn't seem to be going anywhere, her Blackberry chimed. She was grateful for a reason to hang up, but frowned when she saw the notification was regarding Mr Holmes’ brother and not about the latest Euribor numbers she had requested. The surveillance/babysitting of Sherlock Holmes was one of her bigger annoyances, but she had realised long ago that nothing helped stabilise the British political climate more than Mr Holmes knowing his brother was safe.
“Sir,” she said when she peeked into his office and saw that he wasn’t on the phone. “They’ve located the third of Detective Inspector Lestrade’s credentials.”
“Where?”
“Kilburn,” she said, reading through the e-mail she had received. “Your brother was picked up at Sudbury golf course where he was apparently walking around picking up the balls to examine the diameter of the dimples. He was detained by club security and when he showed the DI’s identifications they sent him to Kilburn, where he is in custody now.”
Mr Holmes didn’t look amused. “Has the Inspector been informed yet?”
“Probably.”
“If they haven’t, see if you can’t intercept it.” Mr Holmes looked at his watch, frowning. “And if possible have the credentials sent to me at BIS if it’s before one o’clock and after that to Parliament.”
“And your brother?”
“I feel inclined to leave him there, but that would be cruel to the police,” Mr Holmes muttered as he started to collect the things he needed for his meeting. Louder, he said: “Don’t worry about Sherlock, just get the Inspector’s credentials sent to me and I’ll deal with it later.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, turning to her phone to find the number for Kilburn Police Station. “I’ll be over at Thames House from about two o’clock, but I’ll send you what I’ve done this morning before that.”
Mr Holmes nodded. “See you back here around six.”
“Yes, sir.” She looked up from her phone and nodded once more before leaving to prepare for the meeting at Thames House over lunch.
- o -
It had taken Lestrade quite a while to realise that the terrible sound waking him this morning was the alarm clock. Now, mid-morning meeting, he began to wish that he hadn’t woken up at all. The meeting was the same as always: updates on who did what yesterday and who was going to do what today. Who was waiting for forensics, who had interviews to do, who was stuck, and so on. It was the routine that didn’t make its way into good fiction. Since the current workload was relatively light the meeting wasn’t supposed to take more than an hour, but Donovan was on holiday and the newly-appointed DS filling in for her drove Lestrade up the wall. The kid was a careerist, talking non-stop about closed-case rates and namedropping higher-uppers he had this or that relationship with.
The only reassuring thing was that everyone else in the room seemed to be as fed up with the man as Lestrade was. So as soon as he finished his second coffee (the first one from the machine in the break room) he ended the meeting, opting to do desk rounds instead to catch up with the people who hadn’t had their turn yet.
Just before noon he finally managed to sit down at his own desk and read over the double homicide that Donovan had been working on and that he would have to brief the CPS on later today. He didn’t look forward to that particular meeting, but at least it was Vickery, who was easy to work with, even at the occasional times when there was the obvious ‘Sherlock hole’. Donovan’s double homicide was spotless, though. No Sherlock hole anywhere.
He didn’t get to go through more than half the report before he received a text message.
South entrance. MH
“No,” Lestrade told the empty room. The DS was giving him enough of a tension headache without Mycroft Holmes adding to it. A couple of minutes later the mobile chimed again.
Now, Inspector. MH
Lestrade frowned, finding himself wishing that if any of the Holmes brothers were to bother him today it should have been Sherlock. At least with Sherlock he had some sort of authority. Mycroft, on the other hand, had the annoying ability to make Lestrade feel somewhere between a schoolboy and a butler.
Five minutes, and then you can go back to your day, Inspector. MH
Five minutes with a Holmes never meant just five minutes, but Lestrade gave up because he knew he didn’t really have a say when Mycroft Holmes sent for him. He saved what he had on his computer, closed the physical files lying around the room, and locked the door to his office. In an act of rebellion he took the detour past the break room and had another cup of coffee before heading downstairs to the south entrance. The least he could do was make Mycroft Holmes wait a little bit longer.
Outside the entrance most frequently used by those employees who drove to work, Lestrade was surprised to find Mycroft Holmes standing next to his ubiquitous black car, eyes closed and facing the sun.
“Didn’t take you for a sun worshiper,” Lestrade said as a greeting.
Mycroft opened his eyes, giving him a stiff smile. “The Whitehall tan doesn’t suit everyone.”
“What do you want?”
“Will the double homicide hold up in court?”
“If it doesn’t it’ll be on the CPS,” Lestrade said with a bit more confidence than he had.
Mycroft smiled his stiff smile again.
“Look,” Lestrade said, sighing, “I have a Sergeant upstairs who’s probably conducting a hostile take-over of my office as we speak, and I’m sure you have other things on your schedule today than sunbathing outside the Yard, so why not just tell me what this is about so that we both can get on with our days?”
Mycroft raised his eyebrows slightly, but at least he didn’t smile that horrible smile again. From the inside pocket of his suit jacket Mycroft took out a thick envelope and handed it to Lestrade.
“You know, if you want to bribe me this is an awful place to do it,” Lestrade said, but took the envelope nonetheless since he was fairly sure it didn’t contain money.
“If you took bribes I wouldn’t have any use for you.”
Lestrade looked at him suspiciously as he opened the envelope. He wasn’t quite sure, but that could have been a compliment. Inside the envelope was a police badge. It didn’t take him long to figure out that it was his badge.
“Thank you,” Lestrade said, sighing again, as he put the envelope in his inside pocket and made damn sure that he still had on the credentials he had brought with him to work that morning. “Where did he use this one?”
“Kilburn, they have him in custody,” Mycroft said. “Something about dimple diameters on golf balls and trespassing.”
“And impersonating a police officer.”
“And there was that, yes.” Mycroft frowned. “I would appreciate it if you could go down there and… smooth over that particular one.”
“Sorry, I’m briefing the Crown Prosecutor in about an hour,” Lestrade said, feeling quite smug about not dropping everything to run errands for the Holmeses. “And I was serious about the DS covering for Donovan, I can’t-“
“I didn’t say it was urgent, Inspector,” Mycroft interrupted, smiling stiffly again.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Lestrade said. “But don’t you have ways of fixing this yourself?”
“Detective Inspector,” Mycroft said as he opened the door to the car, “this is the way.”
Lestrade watched the car drive off, partly to be sure it actually left, before he walked back inside. He was grateful that he was getting at least some of his stolen credentials back. Losing them in the first place was bad enough; having Sherlock use them to try and get in and out of police stations all over London was worse. Still, getting them back this way felt uncomfortably close to a bribe - with or without Mycroft’s claim that it wasn’t - because it did come with obligations.
- o -
Lestrade’s meeting with the Crown Prosecutor went better than expected. They had a solid base of forensic evidence, two good witness statements, four halfway decent statements, and a proper paper trail. Donovan had done a good job. Now it was up to Vickery and the West Ham supporter (Lestrade never managed to remember her name) to do the rest. Vickery seemed sure they would be able to pin the murder on the suspect. The court date was set for two days after Donovan returned from her holiday, in case she would have to be called as a witness.
Now he was standing outside a holding cell in Kilburn, feeling all the positive energy he had brought with him from the CPS meeting slowly draining out of him. The Custody Officer was more than happy to hand Sherlock over to Lestrade and was now filling out the transfer forms.
“Are you coming or not?”
Sherlock was lying on the floor and had so far not opened his eyes to look at Lestrade. He had, however, greeted him by name, but Lestrade believed he said the same thing every time the cell was opened and wasn’t impressed.
“Sherlock.”
“Fine,” Sherlock said, getting up with a loud sigh to show just how very inconvenient this was. “It’s quite amusing what a short leash Mycroft has you on these days.”
“You running around flashing my ID does speed up my attention.” Lestrade moved Sherlock from the cell to the front desk with one hand on his shoulder.
“You should keep better track of your things.”
“You shouldn’t pick my pockets,” Lestrade hissed as the Custody Officer came with the papers he needed to sign. When Sherlock had also signed for his personal belongings, Lestrade - once again with his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder - led him out of the station to the car park.
“Why on earth were you at the golf course?” Lestrade asked as he put Sherlock in the car - unmarked, but Sherlock still frowned at having to get into a police car.
“Research purposes.”
“Right…. Watch your fingers.” Lestrade closed the car door, partly wishing Sherlock had left his fingers in the way.
“It was John’s idea,” Sherlock muttered in his defence when Lestrade sat down in the driver’s seat.
“Sure it was.” Lestrade turned on the radio to help him ignore Sherlock. It wasn’t really necessary since Sherlock turned away and stared out the window as soon as they started to drive. Lestrade’s mind started to wander back to the office, trying to remember what he had promised to do when he got back and who was likely to be in the building.
“Drop me off at Bart's,” Sherlock said after several minutes.
“Do I look like a cabbie to you?” Lestrade asked. “I’m dropping you off at Edgware Road and then you can go wherever you damn well please.”
Sherlock snorted, but didn’t protest. When Lestrade stopped the car a while later Sherlock stepped out without protest, but also without saying anything else.
“You’re welcome,” Lestrade said to the closed door. Feeling somewhat paranoid, he made sure that he still had his badge and that Sherlock hadn’t pickpocketed him again. He was satisfied when he found both the one Mycroft had returned and his current one in place.
He looked at his watch; it wasn’t even four o’clock, which meant he would probably have time to check whether or not they’d got in touch with the choking victim's family yet, go over the forensic report one more time with Black because he feared she was starting to feel the water closing in over her head, and finally get through the papers HR had sent him a week ago. And he would probably still be back home in time for the football. Satisfied with his prospects for the rest of the day, Lestrade took a short detour to the coffee stand two blocks from the Yard and bought good coffee for his entire team.
- o -
The discussion in conference room three (for some reason nicknamed Heorot) at Thames House was going in circles, a polite way of saying that they weren’t going to accomplish anything useful today either. This was the second meeting concerning reprioritisations within the organisation due to large budget deficits over the last five years that Mr Holmes had sent his assistant to sit in on. In plain terms it was a meeting about what they could cut without risking national security and she was mainly there to make sure no one cut too much from the Northern Ireland budget, but also to see if she could learn anything that might have a bearing on what she was working on back at the office. Her focus had started to drift a long time ago - her open notepad slowly filling with doodles - when the screen on her Blackberry lit up.
It was a notification that the motion detector in 221B had picked something up. She entered her password code to turn on the camera in the Holmes-Watson sitting room. In the grainy still shots (one taken every tenth of a second) she saw Sherlock Holmes hanging up his coat and tossing his scarf on sofa. Then he disappeared to the kitchen, where they didn’t have a camera.
She noted the time. She had already missed her dental appointment, which wasn’t all bad. Still, they had to wrap this up. She cleared her throat. It was all she needed to get the room’s attention.
“This isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “How about rescheduling a new discussion after the weekend?”
Everyone got out their day planners. There was a short argument about dates and times and in the end she had to accept that if there was going to be a third meeting she would have to skip her next Brussels trip.
When she finally came back to the office, the first thing she did was turn on the coffee maker. Then she knocked on Mr Holmes’ door, but when she saw that he hadn’t come back yet she didn’t bother putting the kettle on. Instead she sat down at her desk to do a quick documentation of the unproductive meeting and pick up the morning’s work where she had left it.
Mr Holmes came back to the office at quarter past six. He had that little wrinkle between his eyes that he always had when he came back from Parliament these days. She glanced at her computer screen, wishing she had some good news to share with him.
“Good evening, sir,” she said, getting up from her chair to make him a cup of tea.
“Good evening,” Mr Holmes said absently, reading the notes on her desk upside-down. “Did you see the draft about the H7N9 virus?”
“The bird flu? Yes, but I haven’t read it.” She turned around after putting the kettle on. “Should I?”
“No, I don’t see any point in that just yet,” Mr Holmes said. “Any luck with the cuts?”
“No, and I have to cancel Brussels next week.” She sat down again, pulling a couple of printed photographs out from under a binder and handing them to Mr Holmes. “He came home around four.”
Mr Holmes looked at the photographs showing his brother playing the violin. “At least that’s something.”
She decided not to respond because, to her mind, getting Sherlock Holmes out of a holding cell wasn’t enough to make a good day’s work.
“Any changes for tomorrow?” Mr Holmes asked as he walked over to make himself tea.
“I have a ten-minute slot with the BBA that I booked this afternoon,” she said, putting up both their schedules on the computer screen and pointing at her meeting as he came back to her desk. “Mr Dayton called and wanted to postpone your meeting until after lunch, which I said was fine” - Mr Holmes nodded his approval - “and I still think we should start planning for the Royal Christening.”
Mr Holmes gave her a brief smile; the Royal Christening had become her Carthago delenda est.
She smiled as well. “I’ll make sure you have an updated version of both our schedules tonight and I’ll send you the LIBOR material before noon tomorrow.”
“Don’t stay too late,” Mr Holmes said, nodding once for good night.
“Same to you, sir.”
She shook her head slightly when the door to Mr Holmes’ office closed. The last thing she did before logging out of her computer and locking up her desk was to order dinner for Mr Holmes and tell him to eat it before it got cold.
- o -
It was John’s turn to close the surgery that evening. He was fairly satisfied with his afternoon. He had managed to keep to schedule until the ninth appointment after lunch. Thanks to that he managed not only to write out all the refill prescriptions but also to call the drugstore on Hornsey Road which had been looking for him in the morning to clarify if he really meant one mg 100 times a day or the other way round.
He did a last round of the surgery, emptying the dishwasher and making sure all the lights were out before he locked up. The first thing he did once outside was check his mobile to see how many times Sherlock had tried to get his attention during the day (and whether he had actually missed an ‘amazing murder’ or a ‘fascinating abduction’).
John frowned. There were no new texts from Sherlock, but instead a call from Mycroft. From experience he knew that could only mean one of two things: either Mycroft wanted to get hold of Sherlock and Sherlock refused, or something had happened to Sherlock. The second option seemed more likely since Sherlock hadn’t been complaining about being bored. John looked up and down the street, but since there wasn’t a black car anywhere he drew the conclusion that whatever had happened either a) was already sorted or b) wasn’t life-threatening.
To be on the safe side he still texted Sherlock on his way to the Tube.
Are you all right?
I’m bored. SH
Any idea why Mycroft’s called me?
No. SH
Not quite convinced, but satisfied that it had taken Sherlock less than a minute to respond to the first text, John decided not to call Mycroft back. Sherlock was obviously in possession of both his phone and his senses, so if whatever Mycroft had wanted was important he would call again.
It was after the worst rush and the station close to the surgery was relatively deserted, just a group of teens, a couple suits on their way home, and - judging by their scarves - some football supporters. Lestrade’s team, John noticed, and remembered that Lestrade had suggested they should watch a match together sometime. When the train arrived John popped in his headphones and started the next chapter of his book - Digital Fortress, a gift from Harry.
He didn’t get off at Baker Street, but went on to Great Portland Street and then walked back to the flat. On the way he took the detour past the Japanese place where Sherlock had credit (something about finding a missing letter a year ago) to buy dinner.
“You’re late,” Sherlock said as soon as John walked into the kitchen.
“I stopped on the way and got dinner.” John unpacked the takeaway on the small corner of the table that was marked off by tape and reserved for food. John wasn’t sure, but he had the distinct feeling that Sherlock was moving the tape closer and closer to the edge. “Mihoko sends her love.”
“Hopefully extra gyoza as well.”
John shook his head ever so slightly, but smiled as he held out a container. “Of course she did. And extra soy sauce, even though I told her we still had some from last time.”
Sherlock smiled slightly, taking the last container out of the plastic bag, and helped John carry it all to the sitting room. John followed just in time to see Sherlock clear off the coffee table by pushing everything onto the floor with his foot, but he decided to not say anything about it.
“Did you find something to do today?” John asked, handing Sherlock a pair of chopsticks.
“Hm, in a matter of speaking.”
John gave him a questioning look to get a further explanation, but Sherlock seemed to find the food too interesting to answer. For a moment John contemplated asking what he meant, but Sherlock’s way of avoiding eye contact and the phone call from Mycroft told John he was probably better off not knowing. He never thought he would say it, but before he met Sherlock he had never understood the beauty of routine. It was rather nice to have days when nothing happened to him from time to time.
Recipient: goldvermilion87
Author: solrosan
Characters/Pairings: John Watson, ‘Anthea’, Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes. No pairing.
Rating: G.
Warnings: No warnings apply.
Summary: A quite ordinary day in John’s, ‘Anthea’s’ and Lestrade’s lives, because even lives involving the Holmes Brother are filled with routine. In the end nothing ever really happens to anyone.
Notes: Hello, goldvermilion87! I hope you’re not too disappointed with getting a fic and I hope you will enjoy it. For fics you said “funny stories and slice of life stories.” I can’t guarantee the fun part, but this fic shows small slices of the everyday life the characters live.
I want to give a huge thanks to zedille who is a constant source of encouragement and swissmarg for swift and wonderful betaing. Thank you, both of you!
- o -
Since John started working at this surgery he had taken up the habit of eating breakfast at work. It wasn’t only because the break room had a fantastic selection of tea and freshly baked bread from the bakery next door, but also because it was nice to eat at a table that was 100 % eyeball-free. He wasn’t the only one taking advantage of this benefit, making the early mornings one of the social highlights of John’s day. It had become a part of a routine he had come to appreciate, even if John spent most mornings reading a paper, trying to ignore texts from Sherlock.
When his phone chimed for the fifth time he gave up. Sherlock was hard to ignore even when he was on the other side of the city.
Where are you? SH
I’m bored. SH
John? SH
It’s important. SH
Come home right now. SH
John smiled. If it hadn’t it been for the second text he would almost have believed there was something going on.
I’m at work, Sherlock.
The response came within seconds.
Dull. SH
Didn’t you have something at Barts?
Not for another 22 h. SH
Go for a walk or something. Weather’s lovely.
Ugh. SH
Come home! SH
John put the mobile away in his locker. It was a very pleasant way to get Sherlock to shut up and if John didn’t know there was an ‘amazing murder’ or ‘fantastic abduction’ that needed their immediate attention he couldn’t be lured away from work. Some days it worried John that he didn’t have better self-discipline, but most days he just locked away his phone and didn’t think about it.
With a second cup of tea in his hand John sat down in front of his computer and did his very best to pick out which appointments would have him running late today and why. Perhaps he wasn’t a consulting detective to the Met, but he sure as hell had a good track record for figuring out beforehand why the regulars were really there on any particular day. Sherlock would probably call it guessing; John called it learning from experience.
He came to the conclusion that he would probably be on schedule until the fifth patient. The first four were all repeats and seemingly straightforward - two old ladies and a gentleman who were getting their (unexciting) test results back, leading to some changes in prescription dosages, and a mother who pulled her child out of kindergarten every time she had a sniffle. Pretty satisfied with his chances for staying on schedule the first hour, John hid his empty tea mug in a desk drawer and went to the waiting room to get Mrs Kent.
She was a very short, elderly woman who, in spite of pain caused by osteoarthritis in her hands, hip, and knees, always smiled when she came to the surgery. John had the feeling she had been really pretty when she was young. Going through her results didn’t take more than a couple of minutes, and John spent the rest of her scheduled time talking to her about her grandson, who was starting university that fall.
The second appointment, the mother with the child, went as swiftly as expected as well, but after that his predictive powers failed him. The next patient, Mrs Hook, complained about some side effects of one of her prescriptions, which made it necessary to take another set of tests to see if they actually were side effects and not symptoms of something else.
It wasn’t a problem, but as a result he had to spend the following ninety minutes starting each appointment with an apology. Most of them didn’t mind, or at least said they didn’t, but the father whose son was on his third ear infection in four months spent a whole five minutes yelling at him and the rest of the time being rude and, consequently, putting John even more behind schedule. Thanks to a late cancellation he still managed to have time to eat his lunch before the staff meeting and not during it like two of the other doctors.
Instead he could drink his tea without stress while they tried to schedule the new home visit requests around the ones they already had. John didn’t usually get assigned many of them since most of the patients in their area had favourites and John was still ‘the new one’. They tried to accommodate that as well as they could, giving him more appointments and administrative work. In the end he got two home visits and they wrapped up the meeting by making sure everyone knew they had to turn in their recorded overtime before the end of the week.
On his way out John resisted the urge to look at his mobile. Instead he took one of the surgery’s phones before leaving for the home visits.
- o -
Once upon a time she had the unspoken goal to come to work before Mr Holmes. Now she knew that only ever happened when he wasn’t in the country. The first thing she did when she got to the office this and every other morning was turn on the kettle and the coffee maker: tea for him, coffee for her. While she waited for the beverages she studied the day's schedule, playing the ‘When Will This Go Off The Rails Today?’ guessing game. Her money was on his security briefing - low odds on that one, it almost always ran long - or her meeting at Thames House, but she had a dental appointment at three that she could easily skip and Mr Holmes… well, he had to not run late today. She put down her Blackberry when the kettle boiled, prepared the tea and walked the nine steps to Mr Holmes’ office.
Out of well-established habit she knocked before going in, even though she didn’t have to. She found her boss at his desk with the landline to his ear.
'Good morning,' she mouthed, moving two notepads and putting down his tea. Mr Holmes nodded as both greeting and thanks, scribbling down 'Conf. call TSE' on a Post-it. She wrote 'Sec. brief 07:15' on the same Post-it and stuck it on his computer screen before retreating to her desk, her coffee and her own call sheet for the morning.
In the middle of her third call Mr Holmes came out to refill his tea. She held out her empty mug for him to do the same with hers. When he returned with it, she handed him the print-outs of five surveillance footage stills, all showing Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson on the way home from dinner the previous night.
“Nothing this morning?” he asked, putting them back on her desk.
She covered the microphone on the phone. “No, just Dr Watson leaving for work.”
Mr Holmes nodded. He didn't seem particularly interested. “Who are you on with now?”
“I’m holding for Mortimer, Treasury not Cabinet. Anything in the security briefing?”
“Nothing important. Sort that out first,” Mr Holmes said, vaguely gesturing at her computer, where she had the beginning of a flowchart whose goal was to figure out why the LIBOR was behaving the way it was. There wasn’t anything drastic happening yet, but after having spent far more time than they wanted to monitoring British interests in the European Central Bank during the prolonged financial crisis they really wanted to be pre-emptive when it came to a possible bank chaos at home.
She was about to answer him when Mortimer-Treasury-not-Cabinet came to the phone and she removed her hand from the microphone.
“Good morning, sir,” she said with her most cheerful voice. “My name is Kate Roberts and I’m calling from Justice. No, I’m just following up on a thing so that I can file it away. I came back from parental leave - Oh, thank you. A girl. As I said, I just came back and the chap who filled in, well, bless him, but his handwriting could make pharmacists cry.”
Mr Holmes stood there watching her for a moment before walking back to his office. She followed him with her eyes as he walked away, still talking about some made-up sod’s poor penmanship. It led absolutely nowhere in the end, and neither did the second call she made to Treasury, but the third generated a small amount of information.
She kept going through the call sheet, each call taking between five and twenty minutes depending on what persona she felt necessary to take on and whether or not the person on the other end actually had any useful information.
In the middle of a phone call that didn't seem to be going anywhere, her Blackberry chimed. She was grateful for a reason to hang up, but frowned when she saw the notification was regarding Mr Holmes’ brother and not about the latest Euribor numbers she had requested. The surveillance/babysitting of Sherlock Holmes was one of her bigger annoyances, but she had realised long ago that nothing helped stabilise the British political climate more than Mr Holmes knowing his brother was safe.
“Sir,” she said when she peeked into his office and saw that he wasn’t on the phone. “They’ve located the third of Detective Inspector Lestrade’s credentials.”
“Where?”
“Kilburn,” she said, reading through the e-mail she had received. “Your brother was picked up at Sudbury golf course where he was apparently walking around picking up the balls to examine the diameter of the dimples. He was detained by club security and when he showed the DI’s identifications they sent him to Kilburn, where he is in custody now.”
Mr Holmes didn’t look amused. “Has the Inspector been informed yet?”
“Probably.”
“If they haven’t, see if you can’t intercept it.” Mr Holmes looked at his watch, frowning. “And if possible have the credentials sent to me at BIS if it’s before one o’clock and after that to Parliament.”
“And your brother?”
“I feel inclined to leave him there, but that would be cruel to the police,” Mr Holmes muttered as he started to collect the things he needed for his meeting. Louder, he said: “Don’t worry about Sherlock, just get the Inspector’s credentials sent to me and I’ll deal with it later.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, turning to her phone to find the number for Kilburn Police Station. “I’ll be over at Thames House from about two o’clock, but I’ll send you what I’ve done this morning before that.”
Mr Holmes nodded. “See you back here around six.”
“Yes, sir.” She looked up from her phone and nodded once more before leaving to prepare for the meeting at Thames House over lunch.
- o -
It had taken Lestrade quite a while to realise that the terrible sound waking him this morning was the alarm clock. Now, mid-morning meeting, he began to wish that he hadn’t woken up at all. The meeting was the same as always: updates on who did what yesterday and who was going to do what today. Who was waiting for forensics, who had interviews to do, who was stuck, and so on. It was the routine that didn’t make its way into good fiction. Since the current workload was relatively light the meeting wasn’t supposed to take more than an hour, but Donovan was on holiday and the newly-appointed DS filling in for her drove Lestrade up the wall. The kid was a careerist, talking non-stop about closed-case rates and namedropping higher-uppers he had this or that relationship with.
The only reassuring thing was that everyone else in the room seemed to be as fed up with the man as Lestrade was. So as soon as he finished his second coffee (the first one from the machine in the break room) he ended the meeting, opting to do desk rounds instead to catch up with the people who hadn’t had their turn yet.
Just before noon he finally managed to sit down at his own desk and read over the double homicide that Donovan had been working on and that he would have to brief the CPS on later today. He didn’t look forward to that particular meeting, but at least it was Vickery, who was easy to work with, even at the occasional times when there was the obvious ‘Sherlock hole’. Donovan’s double homicide was spotless, though. No Sherlock hole anywhere.
He didn’t get to go through more than half the report before he received a text message.
South entrance. MH
“No,” Lestrade told the empty room. The DS was giving him enough of a tension headache without Mycroft Holmes adding to it. A couple of minutes later the mobile chimed again.
Now, Inspector. MH
Lestrade frowned, finding himself wishing that if any of the Holmes brothers were to bother him today it should have been Sherlock. At least with Sherlock he had some sort of authority. Mycroft, on the other hand, had the annoying ability to make Lestrade feel somewhere between a schoolboy and a butler.
Five minutes, and then you can go back to your day, Inspector. MH
Five minutes with a Holmes never meant just five minutes, but Lestrade gave up because he knew he didn’t really have a say when Mycroft Holmes sent for him. He saved what he had on his computer, closed the physical files lying around the room, and locked the door to his office. In an act of rebellion he took the detour past the break room and had another cup of coffee before heading downstairs to the south entrance. The least he could do was make Mycroft Holmes wait a little bit longer.
Outside the entrance most frequently used by those employees who drove to work, Lestrade was surprised to find Mycroft Holmes standing next to his ubiquitous black car, eyes closed and facing the sun.
“Didn’t take you for a sun worshiper,” Lestrade said as a greeting.
Mycroft opened his eyes, giving him a stiff smile. “The Whitehall tan doesn’t suit everyone.”
“What do you want?”
“Will the double homicide hold up in court?”
“If it doesn’t it’ll be on the CPS,” Lestrade said with a bit more confidence than he had.
Mycroft smiled his stiff smile again.
“Look,” Lestrade said, sighing, “I have a Sergeant upstairs who’s probably conducting a hostile take-over of my office as we speak, and I’m sure you have other things on your schedule today than sunbathing outside the Yard, so why not just tell me what this is about so that we both can get on with our days?”
Mycroft raised his eyebrows slightly, but at least he didn’t smile that horrible smile again. From the inside pocket of his suit jacket Mycroft took out a thick envelope and handed it to Lestrade.
“You know, if you want to bribe me this is an awful place to do it,” Lestrade said, but took the envelope nonetheless since he was fairly sure it didn’t contain money.
“If you took bribes I wouldn’t have any use for you.”
Lestrade looked at him suspiciously as he opened the envelope. He wasn’t quite sure, but that could have been a compliment. Inside the envelope was a police badge. It didn’t take him long to figure out that it was his badge.
“Thank you,” Lestrade said, sighing again, as he put the envelope in his inside pocket and made damn sure that he still had on the credentials he had brought with him to work that morning. “Where did he use this one?”
“Kilburn, they have him in custody,” Mycroft said. “Something about dimple diameters on golf balls and trespassing.”
“And impersonating a police officer.”
“And there was that, yes.” Mycroft frowned. “I would appreciate it if you could go down there and… smooth over that particular one.”
“Sorry, I’m briefing the Crown Prosecutor in about an hour,” Lestrade said, feeling quite smug about not dropping everything to run errands for the Holmeses. “And I was serious about the DS covering for Donovan, I can’t-“
“I didn’t say it was urgent, Inspector,” Mycroft interrupted, smiling stiffly again.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Lestrade said. “But don’t you have ways of fixing this yourself?”
“Detective Inspector,” Mycroft said as he opened the door to the car, “this is the way.”
Lestrade watched the car drive off, partly to be sure it actually left, before he walked back inside. He was grateful that he was getting at least some of his stolen credentials back. Losing them in the first place was bad enough; having Sherlock use them to try and get in and out of police stations all over London was worse. Still, getting them back this way felt uncomfortably close to a bribe - with or without Mycroft’s claim that it wasn’t - because it did come with obligations.
- o -
Lestrade’s meeting with the Crown Prosecutor went better than expected. They had a solid base of forensic evidence, two good witness statements, four halfway decent statements, and a proper paper trail. Donovan had done a good job. Now it was up to Vickery and the West Ham supporter (Lestrade never managed to remember her name) to do the rest. Vickery seemed sure they would be able to pin the murder on the suspect. The court date was set for two days after Donovan returned from her holiday, in case she would have to be called as a witness.
Now he was standing outside a holding cell in Kilburn, feeling all the positive energy he had brought with him from the CPS meeting slowly draining out of him. The Custody Officer was more than happy to hand Sherlock over to Lestrade and was now filling out the transfer forms.
“Are you coming or not?”
Sherlock was lying on the floor and had so far not opened his eyes to look at Lestrade. He had, however, greeted him by name, but Lestrade believed he said the same thing every time the cell was opened and wasn’t impressed.
“Sherlock.”
“Fine,” Sherlock said, getting up with a loud sigh to show just how very inconvenient this was. “It’s quite amusing what a short leash Mycroft has you on these days.”
“You running around flashing my ID does speed up my attention.” Lestrade moved Sherlock from the cell to the front desk with one hand on his shoulder.
“You should keep better track of your things.”
“You shouldn’t pick my pockets,” Lestrade hissed as the Custody Officer came with the papers he needed to sign. When Sherlock had also signed for his personal belongings, Lestrade - once again with his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder - led him out of the station to the car park.
“Why on earth were you at the golf course?” Lestrade asked as he put Sherlock in the car - unmarked, but Sherlock still frowned at having to get into a police car.
“Research purposes.”
“Right…. Watch your fingers.” Lestrade closed the car door, partly wishing Sherlock had left his fingers in the way.
“It was John’s idea,” Sherlock muttered in his defence when Lestrade sat down in the driver’s seat.
“Sure it was.” Lestrade turned on the radio to help him ignore Sherlock. It wasn’t really necessary since Sherlock turned away and stared out the window as soon as they started to drive. Lestrade’s mind started to wander back to the office, trying to remember what he had promised to do when he got back and who was likely to be in the building.
“Drop me off at Bart's,” Sherlock said after several minutes.
“Do I look like a cabbie to you?” Lestrade asked. “I’m dropping you off at Edgware Road and then you can go wherever you damn well please.”
Sherlock snorted, but didn’t protest. When Lestrade stopped the car a while later Sherlock stepped out without protest, but also without saying anything else.
“You’re welcome,” Lestrade said to the closed door. Feeling somewhat paranoid, he made sure that he still had his badge and that Sherlock hadn’t pickpocketed him again. He was satisfied when he found both the one Mycroft had returned and his current one in place.
He looked at his watch; it wasn’t even four o’clock, which meant he would probably have time to check whether or not they’d got in touch with the choking victim's family yet, go over the forensic report one more time with Black because he feared she was starting to feel the water closing in over her head, and finally get through the papers HR had sent him a week ago. And he would probably still be back home in time for the football. Satisfied with his prospects for the rest of the day, Lestrade took a short detour to the coffee stand two blocks from the Yard and bought good coffee for his entire team.
- o -
The discussion in conference room three (for some reason nicknamed Heorot) at Thames House was going in circles, a polite way of saying that they weren’t going to accomplish anything useful today either. This was the second meeting concerning reprioritisations within the organisation due to large budget deficits over the last five years that Mr Holmes had sent his assistant to sit in on. In plain terms it was a meeting about what they could cut without risking national security and she was mainly there to make sure no one cut too much from the Northern Ireland budget, but also to see if she could learn anything that might have a bearing on what she was working on back at the office. Her focus had started to drift a long time ago - her open notepad slowly filling with doodles - when the screen on her Blackberry lit up.
It was a notification that the motion detector in 221B had picked something up. She entered her password code to turn on the camera in the Holmes-Watson sitting room. In the grainy still shots (one taken every tenth of a second) she saw Sherlock Holmes hanging up his coat and tossing his scarf on sofa. Then he disappeared to the kitchen, where they didn’t have a camera.
She noted the time. She had already missed her dental appointment, which wasn’t all bad. Still, they had to wrap this up. She cleared her throat. It was all she needed to get the room’s attention.
“This isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “How about rescheduling a new discussion after the weekend?”
Everyone got out their day planners. There was a short argument about dates and times and in the end she had to accept that if there was going to be a third meeting she would have to skip her next Brussels trip.
When she finally came back to the office, the first thing she did was turn on the coffee maker. Then she knocked on Mr Holmes’ door, but when she saw that he hadn’t come back yet she didn’t bother putting the kettle on. Instead she sat down at her desk to do a quick documentation of the unproductive meeting and pick up the morning’s work where she had left it.
Mr Holmes came back to the office at quarter past six. He had that little wrinkle between his eyes that he always had when he came back from Parliament these days. She glanced at her computer screen, wishing she had some good news to share with him.
“Good evening, sir,” she said, getting up from her chair to make him a cup of tea.
“Good evening,” Mr Holmes said absently, reading the notes on her desk upside-down. “Did you see the draft about the H7N9 virus?”
“The bird flu? Yes, but I haven’t read it.” She turned around after putting the kettle on. “Should I?”
“No, I don’t see any point in that just yet,” Mr Holmes said. “Any luck with the cuts?”
“No, and I have to cancel Brussels next week.” She sat down again, pulling a couple of printed photographs out from under a binder and handing them to Mr Holmes. “He came home around four.”
Mr Holmes looked at the photographs showing his brother playing the violin. “At least that’s something.”
She decided not to respond because, to her mind, getting Sherlock Holmes out of a holding cell wasn’t enough to make a good day’s work.
“Any changes for tomorrow?” Mr Holmes asked as he walked over to make himself tea.
“I have a ten-minute slot with the BBA that I booked this afternoon,” she said, putting up both their schedules on the computer screen and pointing at her meeting as he came back to her desk. “Mr Dayton called and wanted to postpone your meeting until after lunch, which I said was fine” - Mr Holmes nodded his approval - “and I still think we should start planning for the Royal Christening.”
Mr Holmes gave her a brief smile; the Royal Christening had become her Carthago delenda est.
She smiled as well. “I’ll make sure you have an updated version of both our schedules tonight and I’ll send you the LIBOR material before noon tomorrow.”
“Don’t stay too late,” Mr Holmes said, nodding once for good night.
“Same to you, sir.”
She shook her head slightly when the door to Mr Holmes’ office closed. The last thing she did before logging out of her computer and locking up her desk was to order dinner for Mr Holmes and tell him to eat it before it got cold.
- o -
It was John’s turn to close the surgery that evening. He was fairly satisfied with his afternoon. He had managed to keep to schedule until the ninth appointment after lunch. Thanks to that he managed not only to write out all the refill prescriptions but also to call the drugstore on Hornsey Road which had been looking for him in the morning to clarify if he really meant one mg 100 times a day or the other way round.
He did a last round of the surgery, emptying the dishwasher and making sure all the lights were out before he locked up. The first thing he did once outside was check his mobile to see how many times Sherlock had tried to get his attention during the day (and whether he had actually missed an ‘amazing murder’ or a ‘fascinating abduction’).
John frowned. There were no new texts from Sherlock, but instead a call from Mycroft. From experience he knew that could only mean one of two things: either Mycroft wanted to get hold of Sherlock and Sherlock refused, or something had happened to Sherlock. The second option seemed more likely since Sherlock hadn’t been complaining about being bored. John looked up and down the street, but since there wasn’t a black car anywhere he drew the conclusion that whatever had happened either a) was already sorted or b) wasn’t life-threatening.
To be on the safe side he still texted Sherlock on his way to the Tube.
Are you all right?
I’m bored. SH
Any idea why Mycroft’s called me?
No. SH
Not quite convinced, but satisfied that it had taken Sherlock less than a minute to respond to the first text, John decided not to call Mycroft back. Sherlock was obviously in possession of both his phone and his senses, so if whatever Mycroft had wanted was important he would call again.
It was after the worst rush and the station close to the surgery was relatively deserted, just a group of teens, a couple suits on their way home, and - judging by their scarves - some football supporters. Lestrade’s team, John noticed, and remembered that Lestrade had suggested they should watch a match together sometime. When the train arrived John popped in his headphones and started the next chapter of his book - Digital Fortress, a gift from Harry.
He didn’t get off at Baker Street, but went on to Great Portland Street and then walked back to the flat. On the way he took the detour past the Japanese place where Sherlock had credit (something about finding a missing letter a year ago) to buy dinner.
“You’re late,” Sherlock said as soon as John walked into the kitchen.
“I stopped on the way and got dinner.” John unpacked the takeaway on the small corner of the table that was marked off by tape and reserved for food. John wasn’t sure, but he had the distinct feeling that Sherlock was moving the tape closer and closer to the edge. “Mihoko sends her love.”
“Hopefully extra gyoza as well.”
John shook his head ever so slightly, but smiled as he held out a container. “Of course she did. And extra soy sauce, even though I told her we still had some from last time.”
Sherlock smiled slightly, taking the last container out of the plastic bag, and helped John carry it all to the sitting room. John followed just in time to see Sherlock clear off the coffee table by pushing everything onto the floor with his foot, but he decided to not say anything about it.
“Did you find something to do today?” John asked, handing Sherlock a pair of chopsticks.
“Hm, in a matter of speaking.”
John gave him a questioning look to get a further explanation, but Sherlock seemed to find the food too interesting to answer. For a moment John contemplated asking what he meant, but Sherlock’s way of avoiding eye contact and the phone call from Mycroft told John he was probably better off not knowing. He never thought he would say it, but before he met Sherlock he had never understood the beauty of routine. It was rather nice to have days when nothing happened to him from time to time.