Help us to survive (12/17)
Summary: A crime scene involving a dead anorexic woman hits close to home for John and Sherlock, leading John to discover a disturbing pattern and Sherlock to face his eating disorder in new light.
Notes: This is part of the Eating us Alive verse and will make more sense if you have read at least Eating us Alive and Eating us Alive, again, first. The raw first draft of this story was written around the time I finished posting Eating us Alive, again. At that time, its sole purpouse was to entertain a friend. It was never my intention to create actual plot and make it public, but with the help and inspiration of willowmeg that happened anyway. I’m so grateful for the support throughout this, thank you.
I apoligise in advance for the severe hand waving I’ve occasionally done when it comes to medicine and to criminal law.
-x-
From the moment they had arrived at the crime scene, Lestrade’s eyes had been on Sherlock. For the life of him, John couldn’t understand why. Sherlock had been doing well these last two months since they had taken a real break from the Angel of Death case. He’d been eating sufficiently, if not with much variety, for three weeks by now and John saw no reason for Lestrade to watch over him like he did. If you asked John, nothing showed. Perhaps it was just his own insecurities about taking a murder case again, but whatever it was, it made him extremely guarded. Sherlock had been to Scotland Yard three times in the last months, claiming to have been working on cold cases, and John had chosen to believe him. Seeing Lestrade now made John wonder if it had been a diversion for investigating the Angel of Death those times, too.
John stood in the corner of the small bedsit that was the crime scene, putting on latex gloves, and did his best to focus on the dead woman on the floor rather than on Lestrade and Sherlock. The victim, a law student, was lying face down on the floor. She was short - John would say 155 cm, tops - clearly overweight, and somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. Sherlock had been less intrigued by the dead body, and more by the Wicca-like shrine in the back of the room. That was the reason they had been called in, after all, because as soon as there was anything that could be even remotely linked to witchcraft or the like, the police wanted to get it solved before the press had the opportunity to have its way with it.
“May I?” John asked Lestrade, nodding towards the body on the floor when he was done with the gloves. After receiving confirmation, he squatted down next to the dead woman.
One of the first things he had noted when he stepped into the room was the abrasions on the victim’s left hand. When he examined them closer he saw that they were concentrated to her first three knuckles and her index and middle finger. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking that this couldn’t be happening. To confirm what he already knew, he put a finger in her mouth to feel her teeth.
“Sherlock,” he said, and when Sherlock turned around, he held up the dead woman’s hand to show the abrasions. “Her teeth have taken quite a beating, too.”
Something tightened around Sherlock’s mouth.
“What?” asked Lestrade, looking between them.
John met Sherlock’s eyes to get permission to say something, but Sherlock just stood there, absently touching an old scar on his own right knuckles. John could tell that he was actively avoiding looking at the body.
“She’s bulimic,” John said, turning to Lestrade, when he realised Sherlock wouldn’t say anything. “Probably for quite some time, by the state of her teeth.”
“Really?” Lestrade seemed very sceptical as he let his eyes wander over the dead body. “But she’s so-“
“Fat?” Sherlock snapped, giving Lestrade a dark glare.
“Well, yeah.”
Both John and Sherlock stared at him.
“What?” Lestrade asked again.
John shook his head and turned back to the dead woman, searching for any kind of needle marks. Sherlock abandoned the shrine to instead search her nightstand, and then her bathroom.
“Anything?” John asked as soon Sherlock came out to the bedsit again.
“Atorvastatin, naproxen, Rennie and about five other antacids, paracetamol, two types of laxative, and what I assume is homemade ipecac,” Sherlock said, sounding inappropriately relieved.
John sat back on his heels, just as pleased with those findings as Sherlock. It didn’t last long though, because Sherlock’s next search - under the bed - generated an ice-cream box with seven prefilled insulin pens.
“John,” he said, handing him the ice-cream box. His face was once again neutral, but John could swear there was a tremor in his voice.
John took the box, picking up one of the pens just to make sure it was empty. “Damn…”
“Guys, seriously, what?” Lestrade said, sternly this time. “I need to get the real people in here.”
John and Sherlock looked at each other. John raised his eyebrows slightly; Sherlock looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but he gave a small nod.
John nodded once, too, and got up. “You have another serial suicide on your hands,” he told Lestrade.
“What?”
Sherlock snorted. “Is that the only word in your vocabulary today?”
“Sherlock,” John said, giving him a look. He put the insulin down on the bed, turning back to Lestrade. “Let’s go outside.”
They all stepped into the corridor. John didn’t stop walking until they were at the far end of it, out of earshot from the crime scene. Sherlock stood next to him, hands deep in his pockets, looking firmly in the direction they had come from, but it was obvious - to John at least - that he wasn’t seeing the people going in and out of the bedsit.
“Well?” Lestrade prompted.
John wet his lips, doing his best to keep his focus on Lestrade. “This woman killed herself with insulin, just like the woman at the Rosewood Hotel.”
At the mention of the Rosewood suicide, Lestrade gave Sherlock a quick glance. John cleared his throat to get Lestrade’s attention back to him.
“After you printed out the file for Sherlock, I got curious and started looking into it. Wanted to see if she was diabetic or not, since you know I told you it’s mostly diabetics and medical personnel that use insulin.”
“So this is you?”
“Yes,” John said, keeping his voice much quieter than necessary. “It turns out she wasn’t diabetic, and that she was unemployed, which means she probably didn’t have legal access to insulin. Just like the insulin we found in that room wasn’t prescribed, or at least not handed out properly.”
“How do you know that?”
John raised his eyebrows. “Besides the fact that she had seven individual pens in an ice-cream carton under her bed?”
“It’s enough that I take this kind of thing from him,” Lestrade said, pointing at Sherlock.
“I’m sorry,” John said, sighing. “It’s just… not important right now. So, when I started to investigate it, I found fourteen other women with eating disorders who had killed themselves in the same way. This one makes sixteen in total.”
Lestrade looked from one to the other, seeming both confused and annoyed by all of it. “The Rosewood thing was ages ago. Why haven’t you- Sixteen dead women? John?”
“I know,” John said, shaking his head. “It’s just that I don’t have anything. Not really. I have screen names, five mentions of an unnamed man who seems to supply the insulin, and an educated guess that all of these women are from the London area.”
“You think there’s something to this?” Lestrade asked Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded, but didn’t look at him.
“Well, then,” Lestrade muttered, sighing deeply. “Do you have documentation for all of it?”
“Yes,” said John.
“Good.” It didn’t sound like he thought any of this was anything but frustrating. “Go home. Get it. Meet me at Scotland Yard as soon as you possibly can. I… need to go back in there and change their instructions. Anything else you want to clue me in on?”
“Get her computer?”
Lestrade gave John a demeaning look.
“Sorry, I didn’t-“
“No, it’s…” Lestrade’s face softened, and he waved it off. “We really should start talking football, you know. See you at the office in a couple of hours.”
As soon as Lestrade turned to walk back to the crime scene, both John and Sherlock deflated. John allowed himself to look at Sherlock again, who had gone pale, but otherwise looked overly calm.
“Lying to the police is a criminal offence,” Sherlock said under his breath, still sounding strained.
“It’s not like it’s my first time,” John mumbled. “You okay?”
Sherlock shook his head, seemingly more to wake up than to answer. “Don’t worry.”
John was about to protest, but then he heard Donovan calling out directions over at the crime scene. The coroner arrived. Lestrade stepped out into the corridor again to let him inside. John nodded; this wasn’t the place, but there was one more thing he needed to say.
“I’m sorry.”
Sherlock turned to him, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “It needed to be done,” he said, soberly but detached. “It was a sufficient enough lie.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” John admitted, with a small frown. “We should go back to Baker Street.”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other; for a moment neither of them bothered putting on a face and John wondered for a split second if he looked as wrecked at Sherlock. Then, as if on a given cue, they both straightened up. Sherlock even took his hands out of his pockets as they walked past the crime scene, his open coat billowing behind him as if he had nothing to hide.
-x-
Chapter 13
Notes: This is part of the Eating us Alive verse and will make more sense if you have read at least Eating us Alive and Eating us Alive, again, first. The raw first draft of this story was written around the time I finished posting Eating us Alive, again. At that time, its sole purpouse was to entertain a friend. It was never my intention to create actual plot and make it public, but with the help and inspiration of willowmeg that happened anyway. I’m so grateful for the support throughout this, thank you.
I apoligise in advance for the severe hand waving I’ve occasionally done when it comes to medicine and to criminal law.
-x-
From the moment they had arrived at the crime scene, Lestrade’s eyes had been on Sherlock. For the life of him, John couldn’t understand why. Sherlock had been doing well these last two months since they had taken a real break from the Angel of Death case. He’d been eating sufficiently, if not with much variety, for three weeks by now and John saw no reason for Lestrade to watch over him like he did. If you asked John, nothing showed. Perhaps it was just his own insecurities about taking a murder case again, but whatever it was, it made him extremely guarded. Sherlock had been to Scotland Yard three times in the last months, claiming to have been working on cold cases, and John had chosen to believe him. Seeing Lestrade now made John wonder if it had been a diversion for investigating the Angel of Death those times, too.
John stood in the corner of the small bedsit that was the crime scene, putting on latex gloves, and did his best to focus on the dead woman on the floor rather than on Lestrade and Sherlock. The victim, a law student, was lying face down on the floor. She was short - John would say 155 cm, tops - clearly overweight, and somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. Sherlock had been less intrigued by the dead body, and more by the Wicca-like shrine in the back of the room. That was the reason they had been called in, after all, because as soon as there was anything that could be even remotely linked to witchcraft or the like, the police wanted to get it solved before the press had the opportunity to have its way with it.
“May I?” John asked Lestrade, nodding towards the body on the floor when he was done with the gloves. After receiving confirmation, he squatted down next to the dead woman.
One of the first things he had noted when he stepped into the room was the abrasions on the victim’s left hand. When he examined them closer he saw that they were concentrated to her first three knuckles and her index and middle finger. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking that this couldn’t be happening. To confirm what he already knew, he put a finger in her mouth to feel her teeth.
“Sherlock,” he said, and when Sherlock turned around, he held up the dead woman’s hand to show the abrasions. “Her teeth have taken quite a beating, too.”
Something tightened around Sherlock’s mouth.
“What?” asked Lestrade, looking between them.
John met Sherlock’s eyes to get permission to say something, but Sherlock just stood there, absently touching an old scar on his own right knuckles. John could tell that he was actively avoiding looking at the body.
“She’s bulimic,” John said, turning to Lestrade, when he realised Sherlock wouldn’t say anything. “Probably for quite some time, by the state of her teeth.”
“Really?” Lestrade seemed very sceptical as he let his eyes wander over the dead body. “But she’s so-“
“Fat?” Sherlock snapped, giving Lestrade a dark glare.
“Well, yeah.”
Both John and Sherlock stared at him.
“What?” Lestrade asked again.
John shook his head and turned back to the dead woman, searching for any kind of needle marks. Sherlock abandoned the shrine to instead search her nightstand, and then her bathroom.
“Anything?” John asked as soon Sherlock came out to the bedsit again.
“Atorvastatin, naproxen, Rennie and about five other antacids, paracetamol, two types of laxative, and what I assume is homemade ipecac,” Sherlock said, sounding inappropriately relieved.
John sat back on his heels, just as pleased with those findings as Sherlock. It didn’t last long though, because Sherlock’s next search - under the bed - generated an ice-cream box with seven prefilled insulin pens.
“John,” he said, handing him the ice-cream box. His face was once again neutral, but John could swear there was a tremor in his voice.
John took the box, picking up one of the pens just to make sure it was empty. “Damn…”
“Guys, seriously, what?” Lestrade said, sternly this time. “I need to get the real people in here.”
John and Sherlock looked at each other. John raised his eyebrows slightly; Sherlock looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but he gave a small nod.
John nodded once, too, and got up. “You have another serial suicide on your hands,” he told Lestrade.
“What?”
Sherlock snorted. “Is that the only word in your vocabulary today?”
“Sherlock,” John said, giving him a look. He put the insulin down on the bed, turning back to Lestrade. “Let’s go outside.”
They all stepped into the corridor. John didn’t stop walking until they were at the far end of it, out of earshot from the crime scene. Sherlock stood next to him, hands deep in his pockets, looking firmly in the direction they had come from, but it was obvious - to John at least - that he wasn’t seeing the people going in and out of the bedsit.
“Well?” Lestrade prompted.
John wet his lips, doing his best to keep his focus on Lestrade. “This woman killed herself with insulin, just like the woman at the Rosewood Hotel.”
At the mention of the Rosewood suicide, Lestrade gave Sherlock a quick glance. John cleared his throat to get Lestrade’s attention back to him.
“After you printed out the file for Sherlock, I got curious and started looking into it. Wanted to see if she was diabetic or not, since you know I told you it’s mostly diabetics and medical personnel that use insulin.”
“So this is you?”
“Yes,” John said, keeping his voice much quieter than necessary. “It turns out she wasn’t diabetic, and that she was unemployed, which means she probably didn’t have legal access to insulin. Just like the insulin we found in that room wasn’t prescribed, or at least not handed out properly.”
“How do you know that?”
John raised his eyebrows. “Besides the fact that she had seven individual pens in an ice-cream carton under her bed?”
“It’s enough that I take this kind of thing from him,” Lestrade said, pointing at Sherlock.
“I’m sorry,” John said, sighing. “It’s just… not important right now. So, when I started to investigate it, I found fourteen other women with eating disorders who had killed themselves in the same way. This one makes sixteen in total.”
Lestrade looked from one to the other, seeming both confused and annoyed by all of it. “The Rosewood thing was ages ago. Why haven’t you- Sixteen dead women? John?”
“I know,” John said, shaking his head. “It’s just that I don’t have anything. Not really. I have screen names, five mentions of an unnamed man who seems to supply the insulin, and an educated guess that all of these women are from the London area.”
“You think there’s something to this?” Lestrade asked Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded, but didn’t look at him.
“Well, then,” Lestrade muttered, sighing deeply. “Do you have documentation for all of it?”
“Yes,” said John.
“Good.” It didn’t sound like he thought any of this was anything but frustrating. “Go home. Get it. Meet me at Scotland Yard as soon as you possibly can. I… need to go back in there and change their instructions. Anything else you want to clue me in on?”
“Get her computer?”
Lestrade gave John a demeaning look.
“Sorry, I didn’t-“
“No, it’s…” Lestrade’s face softened, and he waved it off. “We really should start talking football, you know. See you at the office in a couple of hours.”
As soon as Lestrade turned to walk back to the crime scene, both John and Sherlock deflated. John allowed himself to look at Sherlock again, who had gone pale, but otherwise looked overly calm.
“Lying to the police is a criminal offence,” Sherlock said under his breath, still sounding strained.
“It’s not like it’s my first time,” John mumbled. “You okay?”
Sherlock shook his head, seemingly more to wake up than to answer. “Don’t worry.”
John was about to protest, but then he heard Donovan calling out directions over at the crime scene. The coroner arrived. Lestrade stepped out into the corridor again to let him inside. John nodded; this wasn’t the place, but there was one more thing he needed to say.
“I’m sorry.”
Sherlock turned to him, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “It needed to be done,” he said, soberly but detached. “It was a sufficient enough lie.”
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” John admitted, with a small frown. “We should go back to Baker Street.”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other; for a moment neither of them bothered putting on a face and John wondered for a split second if he looked as wrecked at Sherlock. Then, as if on a given cue, they both straightened up. Sherlock even took his hands out of his pockets as they walked past the crime scene, his open coat billowing behind him as if he had nothing to hide.
-x-
Chapter 13