Major Pieces, Chapter 1: Opening Gambit
Rating: PG-13 (for adult themes, not sex)
Pairings: Gen
Spoilers: Through The Great Game.
Warnings: Chapters 1 and 2 contain gory crime scenes. Trigger warnings for discussion of (off-screen) sexual assault and violence against women.
Special thanks to: stellar-dust, my beyond awesome beta, who managed to be both insanely quick and tremendously helpful. Thanks also to everyone who listened to me natter (particularly
melannen, that one night at Sarah's).
Summary: Sherlock knew that he could thoroughly rely upon John Watson's moral sense. And that's why he knew that Lestrade was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Chapter 1: Opening Gambit
The main thing is to develop the pieces quickly. Get them into play as fast as you can. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals
As per usual, by the time John had navigated the milling crowd and the police cordon, Sherlock had already bulled his way into the house where London's latest serial killer had been plying his trade. When John stepped into the blood-spattered bedroom, Sherlock was on one knee beside the dead woman, examining the soles of her feet with his magnifier. John ran his eyes over the corpse: she was naked, no jewelry even, and her face had been mutilated beyond all recognition. The formerly-ivory carpet was spongy with her blood and he could hear the underpadding squish beneath his trainers as he moved out of the doorway. Sherlock seemed oblivious as he moved on to examine the woman's calves.
Lestrade stood back against the far wall, hands in pockets, with an expression of unease plain on his face.
"So, death by exsanguination. What else have we got?" said John.
He could hear a string of late nights and grueling press conferences in Lestrade's answer. "Second death this week by spectacular bleeding, both with similar mutilation of the face, both found nude in their bedrooms, no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The first victim also had a series of cuts to her genitals, ah- internally."
John winced a bit, but Sherlock was of course unfazed. “Any signs of sexual assault?” Sherlock studied the woman's thighs and pelvis, and John hoped he was not about to dive in and check for himself. He could really do without that mental image.
“No, strangely.”
“Why strange?” asked John.
Lestrade opened his mouth to explain but Sherlock cut him off. “A focus on the genitalia usually suggests a killer in some way motivated by sex. But this- mutilation of the face and the interior of the vagina, but no sexual motive? Different. And, of course, fascinating.” Sherlock moved along to the woman's hands, much to John's relief.
“I wouldn't say we've ruled out a sexual motive yet,” Lestrade objected. “Our forensic psychologist-”
“Is an idiot. It's not about the sex, so let's move on.”
John flipped his little notebook out of his pocket. "Who is she, Lestrade?"
"Benjamina Potts," said detective answered.
"Wrong," Sherlock said absently, squinting at not-Benjamina's fingernails.
"Holmes, it's her room, she was dropped off here at seven last night-"
"Her room is a third floor walk-up in Bloomsbury. Unlike Miss Potts, she is a student. Literature. She waits tables at a bistro but she is still unable to pay her bills fully. She doesn't even own a computer." Sherlock managed to make his most obscure deductions sound routine, as if he was reading a menu. After long observation, John was convinced that he did this entirely on purpose, just to be irritating. "And you might as well give up on Potts' boyfriend. He couldn't possibly be the killer and he doesn't have anything useful to tell you."
"Where's Benjamina then?" Lestrade demanded.
"On her way to being victim number three, I shouldn't doubt," Sherlock said. He sounded spectacularly unconcerned, although that was hardly surprising to anyone.
"And who is this?" Lestrade pressed on.
"No idea. Go look for students recently reported missing from the Bloomsbury area. Take some fingerprints. Surely Anderson and his little drones must have training of some kind. John, come have a look."
John slipped on the pair of latex gloves Lestrade handed him, and approached the body himself. He dropped to a crouch on the opposite side from Sherlock, careful to keep his knees out of the blood. He lifted not-Benjamina's arm and felt it, then replaced it. He sniffed the air, then leaned closer to her body and sniffed again. "This body's too old."
"What do you mean?" Lestrade asked.
"She was dead before 7 pm last night."
Sherlock's eyes lit up. He bent over the woman's face, apparently not bothered by the horrific state of it, and inhaled deeply. "Putrefaction!" he declared, in a tone otherwise reserved for children on Christmas morning.
"And the rigor's wrong. Her body should be stiffer than this." John prodded her arm with his fingers, puzzled.
"What about the lividity?" Lestrade asked.
John fought the urge to giggle, as he expected Lestrade would not appreciate the humor. "What lividity? All her blood's on the floor." He touched her belly and her forehead with two fingers.
"Definitely dead more than a day," Sherlock said in a thoroughly self-satisfied tone, now examining the ruin of the woman's features from less than 6 inches away with his magnifier. "Excellent. I do like a creative murderer."
"So this really can't be Benjamina, her boyfriend drove her home from work last night. Her co-workers confirm it." Lestrade grimaced. "So where the hell is she?"
John pulled his glove off and touched the body again on arm, belly, and forehead with his bare fingers. "She's too cold, as well."
Sherlock ripped off his own gloves and felt her skin, looking utterly swept up. "Oh, of course," he said. "Cryopreservation."
"He froze her?" John said.
"Yes, then he thawed her and dumped the body here. He mistimed it, but he must have killed her several days ago- and not in this room, obviously, as that was prior to his abduction of Potts. John, look at these cuts." John bent over them obediently. "Very neat, precise."
"Yeah," John agreed. The wounds were thin, white slits, as if they'd been carved from a sheet of paper. "Definitely post-mortem." Pre-mortem incisions gaped and exposed more sub-surface tissue.
"Her elbow," Sherlock said. John understood the implication immediately and took hold of her arm again, looking in the crook of the elbow. Sherlock checked the other side. "Ah, here." He inspected a tiny pinprick using his magnifier. There was no shame in losing that race, Sherlock was an expert in locating needle marks and John really did not want to know why.
"Not to interrupt, " Lestrade said sarcastically. "But this is my crime scene, so if you don't mind-?"
"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, standing and flapping his hand irritably at the police detective. "First he injected her with a paralytic, then killed her by draining off her blood; the jugular vein is most common for that purpose but it was probably the axillary vein in this case-"
"Yup," John said, inspecting her left armpit and noting the incision where a tube had been inserted.
"That was done elsewhere," Sherlock went on smoothly. "Then the body was brought here, placed on the bed for the cutting and finally artfully arranged on the floor. The cuts were made with a series of at least seven different blades."
"Scalpels," John corrected, remembering what he'd seen in his earlier examination of the woman's face.
"How can you-"
Sherlock sublimated his annoyance at being interrupted by casting Lestrade a scornful look. "Dr. Watson was a surgeon, Inspector, try to keep up." John flinched at the was.
“The blood's all over here,” Lestrade objected, gesturing at the soaked carpet. “What makes you think he had her on the bed?”
Sherlock sighed heavily. “Do you think your superiors are ever slightly disappointed that they employ a detective so dense? I don't think, I see. The marks on her wrists are clearly from rope. Moreover the linens on that bed have not been slept in, and more tellingly they do not match the appalling duvet although every other aspect of this house has a truly horrific devotion to color and pattern coordination. Why would she launder her linens, then make the bed with a non-matching set? Obviously the killer himself remade the bed after he was through.”
"Wait a minute," John said. "If she was cut up on the bed, what is all this blood doing over here? Unless-" John saw Sherlock's mouth open and rushed to beat him to the reveal. "It's not her blood."
Sherlock looked elated. "Precisely," he said. "The blood came from Benjamina Potts, who is most definitely already dead. Which is the answer to the question you were about to ask me, Lestrade; you should realize by now that my deductions will reach the answer you need in the end, they always do."
"Well, usually," Lestrade said grudgingly.
"Always," John said with a grin.
Lestrade gave John a very hard look, and muttered something that sounded like, It must be catching. Then he sighed, clicked his pen, and pocketed it along with his notebook. “One more question, Holmes. If she was already dead when he mutilated her, why tie her up?”
“To keep her steady,” Sherlock said. “Particularly, to anchor her legs apart. The rope around her wrists was just to keep her body taut. I suspect it's tricky to carve someone up in quite that way when she's laying- well, like this.” He gestured at not-Benjamina, who was lying on her back with her legs neatly together.
“Or else he's just trying to be too fucking clever,” Lestrade said disgustedly.
"Additionally, the press's appellation 'the Low Street Butcher' is colorful but inaccurate. This man is an artist, not a butcher. He works in business, obviously, but his training was in sculpture. We'll need to see the reports and the photos from the first scene, as soon as possible." Sherlock pocketed his magnifier. "It will take me a minimum of one hour to identify the cord he used to tie her to the bed." He strode for the door, brushing past John. "Text me when you identify the student, or when you find Potts' body."
John hurried after, giving Lestrade another quick grin and a sheepish "'Bye" on his way out.
Just before they reached the front door, Sherlock turned back for a moment and shouted "Whichever comes first!" back at Lestrade. John pushed past and beat him to the corner, if just barely. Trying to stay ahead of anyone with legs that long was wasted effort, but John always found himself trying anyhow.
"Urgent engagement?" Sherlock asked. If it was possible to eye someone sarcastically, John would say that was what Sherlock was doing.
He shrugged. "Just wanted out of there. That place gave me the creeps."
"No it didn't. You're merely convinced it should. In fact you find yourself alarmed by Lestrade's reaction to your demeanor, which has become much more pragmatic over our time together," Sherlock said matter-of-factly.
John sighed. "I hope you realize that analyzing me relentlessly at the drop of a hat is not going to persuade me to fire my therapist."
"It should, I'm much better at it than she is." Then, in one of the 180 degree changes of subject to which Sherlock was prone, "When we get home and you realize you have to go to the shops for bread and milk, I need you to buy some rope."
"Okay..." The pin dropped. "You already figured out what rope it was? That's unbelievable." John thought for half a second about that statement and revised it. "No, not unbelievable. Or surprising at all, really. You probably keep a mental database of the best rope and twine for subduing kidnap victims. But still pretty amazing." Sherlock smirked slightly. "Wait, why did you tell Lestrade it would take an hour to identify the rope?"
"Because that is how long it will take you to go buy it." John sighed in resignation. "Don't fuss, I'll write it down for you."
He did, later in the day, but first they had to rush to the morgue at Bart's, only to be told that the first body had already been autopsied and released for burial. Then a mad dash to the scene of the first murder, where they double-teamed Rebecca Barstow's sister- John sympathized and Sherlock flirted- until Barstow's over-protective brother threw them off the property, and a pair of constables who had no idea who Sherlock and John were backed him up.
Another rush to the morgue, in time for the arrival of the student's body. That was followed by Sherlock putting on his best "normal bloke" smile, the one that made John vaguely uneasy, and persuading Molly to bump it up to the top of her to-do list. He put on such a convincing act that she let them stay in the room and watch. It apparently surprised Molly that both of them were capable of being so utterly detached about proceedings which sickened most people, but it didn't surprise John; they had both been desensitized by massive over-exposure to corpses.
The only part that was the slightest bit weird to John was watching Molly do the bit where she methodically examined the woman's vagina, finding and photographing a series of deep gashes carved from the labia almost all the way to the cervix. It was a strange thing for a doctor to feel shy about, but he had never been a fan of clinical (as opposed to recreational) examination of a woman's vagina. Still, watching Molly crunch through a woman's cartilage with an absurdly large knife was a picnic compared to what he'd seen in Afghanistan, and Sherlock was just weird. He'd probably seen his first autopsy at age five.
Sherlock's streak of social engineering successes came to a halt when they arrived at Lestrade's office to demand access to Barstow's house. Lestrade just leaned back in his chair and flipped his pen onto the desk. "Sorry, but you'll have to go through Dimmock for the Barstow scene." He did sound genuinely sorry, John thought, perhaps because of the constant low-grade hostility between the two detective inspectors. John suspected that the main source of the antagonism was actually Sherlock, or rather Sherlock's involvement in police work. Typically enough, Sherlock did not care in the slightest that his misbehavior was what kept the detectives at each others' throats.
"I thought this was your case, Lestrade." Well, except when the rivalry kept him from getting what he wanted. Then he cared plenty.
"It was Dimmock's," Lestrade said. "I was brought in when the second body was found and we realized they were connected."
"He's useless. Get rid of him," Sherlock snapped.
"God, I wish," Lestrade said. "But Dimmock has a friend in the Commander's office."
"One of the fringe benefits of my profession," Sherlock mused aloud to no one in particular, "is the lack of jockeying for promotion."
"Well, how nice for you," Lestrade said. "Go bother Dimmock, would you?"
So they did. It did not begin well.
"You ordered the crime scene cleaned up this morning?" Sherlock exploded.
The trouble was that the blind banker case had been a bad way to start a working relationship. Ending the case with the members of an international criminal conspiracy all dead or missing had made Dimmock look very stupid, and his resentment had combined with Sherlock's condescension and matured into a strong mutual dislike. John thought the whole thing fascinating to watch, like a nature special on lions. Or apes, some animal where the males were always posturing at each other. Only, usually animals were showing off for the females. Were there animals that battled this way out of sheer arrogant bloody-mindedness?
"You knew I had been called in to consult! Why didn't you preserve it?"
Dimmock inspected his nails, feigning boredom with Sherlock's outburst. "Because it was unnecessary. My forensics team had already processed the scene thoroughly."
"Damn your team! They probably missed everything of any significance!"
"I'm sorry, what did you read at uni, again?" Dimmock's voice was a parody of honest curiosity.
"Chemistry," Sherlock ground out between clenched teeth.
"Not forensic science? Hmm." Dimmock dropped his pretense of nonchalance and glared. "Holmes, Lestrade invited you in and I'll respect that because I respect him-"
"Liar," Sherlock said.
"But," Dimmock continued loudly, "You need to understand that this is not your personal playground. I'm happy to provide you with documentation and photographs upon which you can render your...expert opinion."
It was not Sherlock's first argument with Dimmock, but it was the first he lost so conclusively. If there had been any way to subvert Dimmock and get what he wanted anyway, Sherlock would have done it, but he could not un-sanitize the crime scene. Instead, they went home and he threw himself into an epic sulk complete with flouncing, couch-diving, and endless sniping comments about John's taste in jumpers and his extremely annoying habit of tapping his pinky on the shift key while he read his e-mail. John finally got fed up and went out for groceries and for Sherlock's bloody rope. Fortunately, it wasn't long after he returned that Lestrade came by with an envelope packed with evidence from the crime scene at Rebecca Barstow's house. There was nothing quite like pathology reports and gory photographs to pull Sherlock out of one of his moods.
Sherlock happily deduced that this victim did not belong at her crime scene either- "She's homeless, her body has been thoroughly washed, but look at the ground-in dirt at her wrists and ankles, look at the callouses on her feet"- that the wounds on the face were not similar to the second victims but absolutely identical, that the blood at the scene did not belong to the body and in fact probably belonged to Barstow (wherever she was), and that the killer had some familiarity with police procedure and forensics, as he had evidently taken great care in cleaning any traces of himself from the scene.
Lestrade was characteristically glum about this, but Sherlock was delighted. "It's usually the case with a true serial killer, rather than a spree killer. They're very careful, very particular, very aware of the pursuit. They want to taunt, they want to be clever. I love when they want to be clever, and this one isn't just pretending." He beamed happily.
"So glad you approve," Lestrade said. "You're an obsessively morbid git, you know that?"
"So's our killer," Sherlock said cheerfully. "And that's how I'll catch him. Well, that and the fact that I'm much cleverer than he is."
Lestrade was called back in to the Yard around one in the morning. John fell asleep at three with a toxicology report in his hand, and when he woke up Sherlock was still intent on the contents of the packet, which he had spread across the coffee table. John blearily dressed in fresh clothes and left for a day at the clinic around eight, and Sherlock didn't even glance up.
That evening, when John pounded up the steps and into the flat, Sherlock was still ensconced on the sofa, staring at crime scene photos. Only now he had tacked them up on the wall over the mantel to form a giant mural. The various decorations from the mantelpiece had been piled in a heap on the floor, but the skull was sitting neatly in John's chair, facing Sherlock. "I got curry," he said. Sherlock didn't reply or look away from his photos.
John set the bag of food on top of the papers on the coffee table and went to hang up his jacket. "You didn't answer your phone."
"I'm working."
"Well I didn't know if you wanted spicy or not, so I got vindaloo and butter chicken. I'll eat whichever you don't want." John dropped his mobile on the end table and rooted in the bag for forks.
"Eat both then, I'm working." Sherlock made a show of pushing the bag away and studying the report it had been resting on.
"Do you even remember when you ate last?" John said, knowing it was best to come sideways at these things.
"Tuesday morning," Sherlock said. "I haven't deleted that yet. You made eggs."
"And what is today?"
"Wednesday," he said distractedly, holding a blown-up photograph of a woman's forearm an inch from his face with one hand, and scratching the back of his head with the other.
"Sherlock, it's Thursday. Eat the damn curry." John thumped down the butter chicken in front of him, crammed the plastic fork into the hand holding the photo, and retreated to his chair. He set the skull gently on the end table. Sherlock scowled hugely, threw down the fork and photograph, and marched across to turn the skull exactly ten degrees anticlockwise, so that it faced him again. He flopped dramatically back onto the sofa.
"You're as bad as Mycroft with your mothering," Sherlock muttered. John knew that he considered this to be one of the more brutal insults in his arsenal. When it provoked no response, he added, "If you keep eating so much take-out, you'll soon be as fat as Mycroft as well."
John swallowed a mouthful of vindaloo. "My BMI is perfectly appropriate. And so is your brother's, since you brought it up. You, however, would need to gain at least a stone to be called underweight."
Sherlock pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I have an eating disorder," he announced.
"No you do not," John said instantly. "You just can't be arsed."
"That's your considered medical opinion, is it, doctor?"
"It's my considered medical opinion that if I walked out of here right now, you'd starve yourself to death out of sheer...bullheadedness," John retorted. "You ponce."
"Intransigence," Sherlock mumbled to his forearms.
"What?"
"The word you were looking for is 'intransigence.'" Sherlock suddenly sat up, seized the fork, and began poking resentfully at the chicken. After a moment he said, "I want the vindaloo."
John slowly counted ten and then swapped styrofoam containers with him. Sherlock started poking the vindaloo, but he did put some of it in his mouth this time, which was progress. John waited till Sherlock had a second forkful before asking, "Learn anything, then?"
"A bit," he said, chewing. "Both bodies have cellular damage caused by the formation of ice crystals. They were definitely frozen. However that also makes the time of death even murkier. We're estimating based on the windows of time when the victims disappeared. The killer is almost certainly killing them immediately."
John hmm'd a bit. "Did they identify the student's body yet?"
"No. The police have enough evidence though, it's just a matter of legwork. We do have a name for the first victim- Abigail Charner. She had an arrest record, mostly for trespassing and vagrancy, so her prints were on file." Sherlock chewed thoughtfully. "No one reported her missing. Unfortunate."
"Yeah, it's sad," John agreed. "I can't imagine nobody even noticing that I had gone."
"What?" Sherlock said, looking mystified. "Oh! Oh, no. Unfortunate because if we found someone who knew her, we could more easily determine when she was taken. Would give us more data on how the murderer is operating. I've put out some feelers." Sherlock pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and continued to eat with one hand while he fiddled with the buttons.
John was just returning from binning the empty food containers when Sherlock's mobile rang. After one look at his intent expression, John went to put on his jacket. He was at Sherlock's elbow holding his greatcoat when the man hung up and exclaimed John's name. Only a slight widening of the eyes betrayed Sherlock's surprise as he realized John was already next to him.
"I have deduced that Lestrade found Benjamina Potts' body," John said, smirking.
The momentary shock vanished from Sherlock's face, to be replaced by his customary aloofness. "Obviously," he said archly. "Shall we?"
"After you."
[ Previous | Next]
Pairings: Gen
Spoilers: Through The Great Game.
Warnings: Chapters 1 and 2 contain gory crime scenes. Trigger warnings for discussion of (off-screen) sexual assault and violence against women.
Special thanks to: stellar-dust, my beyond awesome beta, who managed to be both insanely quick and tremendously helpful. Thanks also to everyone who listened to me natter (particularly
melannen, that one night at Sarah's).
Summary: Sherlock knew that he could thoroughly rely upon John Watson's moral sense. And that's why he knew that Lestrade was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Chapter 1: Opening Gambit
The main thing is to develop the pieces quickly. Get them into play as fast as you can. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals
As per usual, by the time John had navigated the milling crowd and the police cordon, Sherlock had already bulled his way into the house where London's latest serial killer had been plying his trade. When John stepped into the blood-spattered bedroom, Sherlock was on one knee beside the dead woman, examining the soles of her feet with his magnifier. John ran his eyes over the corpse: she was naked, no jewelry even, and her face had been mutilated beyond all recognition. The formerly-ivory carpet was spongy with her blood and he could hear the underpadding squish beneath his trainers as he moved out of the doorway. Sherlock seemed oblivious as he moved on to examine the woman's calves.
Lestrade stood back against the far wall, hands in pockets, with an expression of unease plain on his face.
"So, death by exsanguination. What else have we got?" said John.
He could hear a string of late nights and grueling press conferences in Lestrade's answer. "Second death this week by spectacular bleeding, both with similar mutilation of the face, both found nude in their bedrooms, no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The first victim also had a series of cuts to her genitals, ah- internally."
John winced a bit, but Sherlock was of course unfazed. “Any signs of sexual assault?” Sherlock studied the woman's thighs and pelvis, and John hoped he was not about to dive in and check for himself. He could really do without that mental image.
“No, strangely.”
“Why strange?” asked John.
Lestrade opened his mouth to explain but Sherlock cut him off. “A focus on the genitalia usually suggests a killer in some way motivated by sex. But this- mutilation of the face and the interior of the vagina, but no sexual motive? Different. And, of course, fascinating.” Sherlock moved along to the woman's hands, much to John's relief.
“I wouldn't say we've ruled out a sexual motive yet,” Lestrade objected. “Our forensic psychologist-”
“Is an idiot. It's not about the sex, so let's move on.”
John flipped his little notebook out of his pocket. "Who is she, Lestrade?"
"Benjamina Potts," said detective answered.
"Wrong," Sherlock said absently, squinting at not-Benjamina's fingernails.
"Holmes, it's her room, she was dropped off here at seven last night-"
"Her room is a third floor walk-up in Bloomsbury. Unlike Miss Potts, she is a student. Literature. She waits tables at a bistro but she is still unable to pay her bills fully. She doesn't even own a computer." Sherlock managed to make his most obscure deductions sound routine, as if he was reading a menu. After long observation, John was convinced that he did this entirely on purpose, just to be irritating. "And you might as well give up on Potts' boyfriend. He couldn't possibly be the killer and he doesn't have anything useful to tell you."
"Where's Benjamina then?" Lestrade demanded.
"On her way to being victim number three, I shouldn't doubt," Sherlock said. He sounded spectacularly unconcerned, although that was hardly surprising to anyone.
"And who is this?" Lestrade pressed on.
"No idea. Go look for students recently reported missing from the Bloomsbury area. Take some fingerprints. Surely Anderson and his little drones must have training of some kind. John, come have a look."
John slipped on the pair of latex gloves Lestrade handed him, and approached the body himself. He dropped to a crouch on the opposite side from Sherlock, careful to keep his knees out of the blood. He lifted not-Benjamina's arm and felt it, then replaced it. He sniffed the air, then leaned closer to her body and sniffed again. "This body's too old."
"What do you mean?" Lestrade asked.
"She was dead before 7 pm last night."
Sherlock's eyes lit up. He bent over the woman's face, apparently not bothered by the horrific state of it, and inhaled deeply. "Putrefaction!" he declared, in a tone otherwise reserved for children on Christmas morning.
"And the rigor's wrong. Her body should be stiffer than this." John prodded her arm with his fingers, puzzled.
"What about the lividity?" Lestrade asked.
John fought the urge to giggle, as he expected Lestrade would not appreciate the humor. "What lividity? All her blood's on the floor." He touched her belly and her forehead with two fingers.
"Definitely dead more than a day," Sherlock said in a thoroughly self-satisfied tone, now examining the ruin of the woman's features from less than 6 inches away with his magnifier. "Excellent. I do like a creative murderer."
"So this really can't be Benjamina, her boyfriend drove her home from work last night. Her co-workers confirm it." Lestrade grimaced. "So where the hell is she?"
John pulled his glove off and touched the body again on arm, belly, and forehead with his bare fingers. "She's too cold, as well."
Sherlock ripped off his own gloves and felt her skin, looking utterly swept up. "Oh, of course," he said. "Cryopreservation."
"He froze her?" John said.
"Yes, then he thawed her and dumped the body here. He mistimed it, but he must have killed her several days ago- and not in this room, obviously, as that was prior to his abduction of Potts. John, look at these cuts." John bent over them obediently. "Very neat, precise."
"Yeah," John agreed. The wounds were thin, white slits, as if they'd been carved from a sheet of paper. "Definitely post-mortem." Pre-mortem incisions gaped and exposed more sub-surface tissue.
"Her elbow," Sherlock said. John understood the implication immediately and took hold of her arm again, looking in the crook of the elbow. Sherlock checked the other side. "Ah, here." He inspected a tiny pinprick using his magnifier. There was no shame in losing that race, Sherlock was an expert in locating needle marks and John really did not want to know why.
"Not to interrupt, " Lestrade said sarcastically. "But this is my crime scene, so if you don't mind-?"
"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, standing and flapping his hand irritably at the police detective. "First he injected her with a paralytic, then killed her by draining off her blood; the jugular vein is most common for that purpose but it was probably the axillary vein in this case-"
"Yup," John said, inspecting her left armpit and noting the incision where a tube had been inserted.
"That was done elsewhere," Sherlock went on smoothly. "Then the body was brought here, placed on the bed for the cutting and finally artfully arranged on the floor. The cuts were made with a series of at least seven different blades."
"Scalpels," John corrected, remembering what he'd seen in his earlier examination of the woman's face.
"How can you-"
Sherlock sublimated his annoyance at being interrupted by casting Lestrade a scornful look. "Dr. Watson was a surgeon, Inspector, try to keep up." John flinched at the was.
“The blood's all over here,” Lestrade objected, gesturing at the soaked carpet. “What makes you think he had her on the bed?”
Sherlock sighed heavily. “Do you think your superiors are ever slightly disappointed that they employ a detective so dense? I don't think, I see. The marks on her wrists are clearly from rope. Moreover the linens on that bed have not been slept in, and more tellingly they do not match the appalling duvet although every other aspect of this house has a truly horrific devotion to color and pattern coordination. Why would she launder her linens, then make the bed with a non-matching set? Obviously the killer himself remade the bed after he was through.”
"Wait a minute," John said. "If she was cut up on the bed, what is all this blood doing over here? Unless-" John saw Sherlock's mouth open and rushed to beat him to the reveal. "It's not her blood."
Sherlock looked elated. "Precisely," he said. "The blood came from Benjamina Potts, who is most definitely already dead. Which is the answer to the question you were about to ask me, Lestrade; you should realize by now that my deductions will reach the answer you need in the end, they always do."
"Well, usually," Lestrade said grudgingly.
"Always," John said with a grin.
Lestrade gave John a very hard look, and muttered something that sounded like, It must be catching. Then he sighed, clicked his pen, and pocketed it along with his notebook. “One more question, Holmes. If she was already dead when he mutilated her, why tie her up?”
“To keep her steady,” Sherlock said. “Particularly, to anchor her legs apart. The rope around her wrists was just to keep her body taut. I suspect it's tricky to carve someone up in quite that way when she's laying- well, like this.” He gestured at not-Benjamina, who was lying on her back with her legs neatly together.
“Or else he's just trying to be too fucking clever,” Lestrade said disgustedly.
"Additionally, the press's appellation 'the Low Street Butcher' is colorful but inaccurate. This man is an artist, not a butcher. He works in business, obviously, but his training was in sculpture. We'll need to see the reports and the photos from the first scene, as soon as possible." Sherlock pocketed his magnifier. "It will take me a minimum of one hour to identify the cord he used to tie her to the bed." He strode for the door, brushing past John. "Text me when you identify the student, or when you find Potts' body."
John hurried after, giving Lestrade another quick grin and a sheepish "'Bye" on his way out.
Just before they reached the front door, Sherlock turned back for a moment and shouted "Whichever comes first!" back at Lestrade. John pushed past and beat him to the corner, if just barely. Trying to stay ahead of anyone with legs that long was wasted effort, but John always found himself trying anyhow.
"Urgent engagement?" Sherlock asked. If it was possible to eye someone sarcastically, John would say that was what Sherlock was doing.
He shrugged. "Just wanted out of there. That place gave me the creeps."
"No it didn't. You're merely convinced it should. In fact you find yourself alarmed by Lestrade's reaction to your demeanor, which has become much more pragmatic over our time together," Sherlock said matter-of-factly.
John sighed. "I hope you realize that analyzing me relentlessly at the drop of a hat is not going to persuade me to fire my therapist."
"It should, I'm much better at it than she is." Then, in one of the 180 degree changes of subject to which Sherlock was prone, "When we get home and you realize you have to go to the shops for bread and milk, I need you to buy some rope."
"Okay..." The pin dropped. "You already figured out what rope it was? That's unbelievable." John thought for half a second about that statement and revised it. "No, not unbelievable. Or surprising at all, really. You probably keep a mental database of the best rope and twine for subduing kidnap victims. But still pretty amazing." Sherlock smirked slightly. "Wait, why did you tell Lestrade it would take an hour to identify the rope?"
"Because that is how long it will take you to go buy it." John sighed in resignation. "Don't fuss, I'll write it down for you."
He did, later in the day, but first they had to rush to the morgue at Bart's, only to be told that the first body had already been autopsied and released for burial. Then a mad dash to the scene of the first murder, where they double-teamed Rebecca Barstow's sister- John sympathized and Sherlock flirted- until Barstow's over-protective brother threw them off the property, and a pair of constables who had no idea who Sherlock and John were backed him up.
Another rush to the morgue, in time for the arrival of the student's body. That was followed by Sherlock putting on his best "normal bloke" smile, the one that made John vaguely uneasy, and persuading Molly to bump it up to the top of her to-do list. He put on such a convincing act that she let them stay in the room and watch. It apparently surprised Molly that both of them were capable of being so utterly detached about proceedings which sickened most people, but it didn't surprise John; they had both been desensitized by massive over-exposure to corpses.
The only part that was the slightest bit weird to John was watching Molly do the bit where she methodically examined the woman's vagina, finding and photographing a series of deep gashes carved from the labia almost all the way to the cervix. It was a strange thing for a doctor to feel shy about, but he had never been a fan of clinical (as opposed to recreational) examination of a woman's vagina. Still, watching Molly crunch through a woman's cartilage with an absurdly large knife was a picnic compared to what he'd seen in Afghanistan, and Sherlock was just weird. He'd probably seen his first autopsy at age five.
Sherlock's streak of social engineering successes came to a halt when they arrived at Lestrade's office to demand access to Barstow's house. Lestrade just leaned back in his chair and flipped his pen onto the desk. "Sorry, but you'll have to go through Dimmock for the Barstow scene." He did sound genuinely sorry, John thought, perhaps because of the constant low-grade hostility between the two detective inspectors. John suspected that the main source of the antagonism was actually Sherlock, or rather Sherlock's involvement in police work. Typically enough, Sherlock did not care in the slightest that his misbehavior was what kept the detectives at each others' throats.
"I thought this was your case, Lestrade." Well, except when the rivalry kept him from getting what he wanted. Then he cared plenty.
"It was Dimmock's," Lestrade said. "I was brought in when the second body was found and we realized they were connected."
"He's useless. Get rid of him," Sherlock snapped.
"God, I wish," Lestrade said. "But Dimmock has a friend in the Commander's office."
"One of the fringe benefits of my profession," Sherlock mused aloud to no one in particular, "is the lack of jockeying for promotion."
"Well, how nice for you," Lestrade said. "Go bother Dimmock, would you?"
So they did. It did not begin well.
"You ordered the crime scene cleaned up this morning?" Sherlock exploded.
The trouble was that the blind banker case had been a bad way to start a working relationship. Ending the case with the members of an international criminal conspiracy all dead or missing had made Dimmock look very stupid, and his resentment had combined with Sherlock's condescension and matured into a strong mutual dislike. John thought the whole thing fascinating to watch, like a nature special on lions. Or apes, some animal where the males were always posturing at each other. Only, usually animals were showing off for the females. Were there animals that battled this way out of sheer arrogant bloody-mindedness?
"You knew I had been called in to consult! Why didn't you preserve it?"
Dimmock inspected his nails, feigning boredom with Sherlock's outburst. "Because it was unnecessary. My forensics team had already processed the scene thoroughly."
"Damn your team! They probably missed everything of any significance!"
"I'm sorry, what did you read at uni, again?" Dimmock's voice was a parody of honest curiosity.
"Chemistry," Sherlock ground out between clenched teeth.
"Not forensic science? Hmm." Dimmock dropped his pretense of nonchalance and glared. "Holmes, Lestrade invited you in and I'll respect that because I respect him-"
"Liar," Sherlock said.
"But," Dimmock continued loudly, "You need to understand that this is not your personal playground. I'm happy to provide you with documentation and photographs upon which you can render your...expert opinion."
It was not Sherlock's first argument with Dimmock, but it was the first he lost so conclusively. If there had been any way to subvert Dimmock and get what he wanted anyway, Sherlock would have done it, but he could not un-sanitize the crime scene. Instead, they went home and he threw himself into an epic sulk complete with flouncing, couch-diving, and endless sniping comments about John's taste in jumpers and his extremely annoying habit of tapping his pinky on the shift key while he read his e-mail. John finally got fed up and went out for groceries and for Sherlock's bloody rope. Fortunately, it wasn't long after he returned that Lestrade came by with an envelope packed with evidence from the crime scene at Rebecca Barstow's house. There was nothing quite like pathology reports and gory photographs to pull Sherlock out of one of his moods.
Sherlock happily deduced that this victim did not belong at her crime scene either- "She's homeless, her body has been thoroughly washed, but look at the ground-in dirt at her wrists and ankles, look at the callouses on her feet"- that the wounds on the face were not similar to the second victims but absolutely identical, that the blood at the scene did not belong to the body and in fact probably belonged to Barstow (wherever she was), and that the killer had some familiarity with police procedure and forensics, as he had evidently taken great care in cleaning any traces of himself from the scene.
Lestrade was characteristically glum about this, but Sherlock was delighted. "It's usually the case with a true serial killer, rather than a spree killer. They're very careful, very particular, very aware of the pursuit. They want to taunt, they want to be clever. I love when they want to be clever, and this one isn't just pretending." He beamed happily.
"So glad you approve," Lestrade said. "You're an obsessively morbid git, you know that?"
"So's our killer," Sherlock said cheerfully. "And that's how I'll catch him. Well, that and the fact that I'm much cleverer than he is."
Lestrade was called back in to the Yard around one in the morning. John fell asleep at three with a toxicology report in his hand, and when he woke up Sherlock was still intent on the contents of the packet, which he had spread across the coffee table. John blearily dressed in fresh clothes and left for a day at the clinic around eight, and Sherlock didn't even glance up.
That evening, when John pounded up the steps and into the flat, Sherlock was still ensconced on the sofa, staring at crime scene photos. Only now he had tacked them up on the wall over the mantel to form a giant mural. The various decorations from the mantelpiece had been piled in a heap on the floor, but the skull was sitting neatly in John's chair, facing Sherlock. "I got curry," he said. Sherlock didn't reply or look away from his photos.
John set the bag of food on top of the papers on the coffee table and went to hang up his jacket. "You didn't answer your phone."
"I'm working."
"Well I didn't know if you wanted spicy or not, so I got vindaloo and butter chicken. I'll eat whichever you don't want." John dropped his mobile on the end table and rooted in the bag for forks.
"Eat both then, I'm working." Sherlock made a show of pushing the bag away and studying the report it had been resting on.
"Do you even remember when you ate last?" John said, knowing it was best to come sideways at these things.
"Tuesday morning," Sherlock said. "I haven't deleted that yet. You made eggs."
"And what is today?"
"Wednesday," he said distractedly, holding a blown-up photograph of a woman's forearm an inch from his face with one hand, and scratching the back of his head with the other.
"Sherlock, it's Thursday. Eat the damn curry." John thumped down the butter chicken in front of him, crammed the plastic fork into the hand holding the photo, and retreated to his chair. He set the skull gently on the end table. Sherlock scowled hugely, threw down the fork and photograph, and marched across to turn the skull exactly ten degrees anticlockwise, so that it faced him again. He flopped dramatically back onto the sofa.
"You're as bad as Mycroft with your mothering," Sherlock muttered. John knew that he considered this to be one of the more brutal insults in his arsenal. When it provoked no response, he added, "If you keep eating so much take-out, you'll soon be as fat as Mycroft as well."
John swallowed a mouthful of vindaloo. "My BMI is perfectly appropriate. And so is your brother's, since you brought it up. You, however, would need to gain at least a stone to be called underweight."
Sherlock pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I have an eating disorder," he announced.
"No you do not," John said instantly. "You just can't be arsed."
"That's your considered medical opinion, is it, doctor?"
"It's my considered medical opinion that if I walked out of here right now, you'd starve yourself to death out of sheer...bullheadedness," John retorted. "You ponce."
"Intransigence," Sherlock mumbled to his forearms.
"What?"
"The word you were looking for is 'intransigence.'" Sherlock suddenly sat up, seized the fork, and began poking resentfully at the chicken. After a moment he said, "I want the vindaloo."
John slowly counted ten and then swapped styrofoam containers with him. Sherlock started poking the vindaloo, but he did put some of it in his mouth this time, which was progress. John waited till Sherlock had a second forkful before asking, "Learn anything, then?"
"A bit," he said, chewing. "Both bodies have cellular damage caused by the formation of ice crystals. They were definitely frozen. However that also makes the time of death even murkier. We're estimating based on the windows of time when the victims disappeared. The killer is almost certainly killing them immediately."
John hmm'd a bit. "Did they identify the student's body yet?"
"No. The police have enough evidence though, it's just a matter of legwork. We do have a name for the first victim- Abigail Charner. She had an arrest record, mostly for trespassing and vagrancy, so her prints were on file." Sherlock chewed thoughtfully. "No one reported her missing. Unfortunate."
"Yeah, it's sad," John agreed. "I can't imagine nobody even noticing that I had gone."
"What?" Sherlock said, looking mystified. "Oh! Oh, no. Unfortunate because if we found someone who knew her, we could more easily determine when she was taken. Would give us more data on how the murderer is operating. I've put out some feelers." Sherlock pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and continued to eat with one hand while he fiddled with the buttons.
John was just returning from binning the empty food containers when Sherlock's mobile rang. After one look at his intent expression, John went to put on his jacket. He was at Sherlock's elbow holding his greatcoat when the man hung up and exclaimed John's name. Only a slight widening of the eyes betrayed Sherlock's surprise as he realized John was already next to him.
"I have deduced that Lestrade found Benjamina Potts' body," John said, smirking.
The momentary shock vanished from Sherlock's face, to be replaced by his customary aloofness. "Obviously," he said archly. "Shall we?"
"After you."
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