Chapter Text
“Do you want a salad?” John asked from the kitchen, where he was carefully attempting to put together a quiche that did not include the botulinum toxin that Sherlock was cultivating. At least this time he had neatly labelled it.
“Mm… yes.”
John smiled in anticipation of getting Sherlock to eat something and slid the quiche into the cooker. As he bent into the fridge to see what he had in the way of greens, carefully avoiding two beakers of an extremely nasty-looking liquid, he caught the sound of Sherlock’s mobile ringing. Surprisingly, Sherlock answered it, then put it on speaker. John straightened up and poked his head around from the kitchen.
“Will you come? And John?” Lestrade’s voice sounded strained; subdued.
“Why?” Sherlock asked suspiciously. He wasn’t sure yet if he was suspicious of the request or of the voice.
“It’s just… something’s not right.”
“Well, I suppose. We’ve got nothing better to do,” Sherlock huffed. “Text me the address.”
“John!” he shouted as he got their coats from the closet. He heard his text alert sound; that would be the address. “We’re needed.”
John sighed and nodded, moved the still-cold quiche into the fridge, turned off the cooker, and wiped his hands on the tea towel. A few minutes later, they were in a cab.
“Red Lion Yard in Mayfair,” Sherlock instructed the driver. It was a short ride through the mid-afternoon weekday traffic.
John waited to about a count of thirty before he broke the silence. “Any idea what’s up?” he prodded.
“Hm?” Sherlock murmured, his eyes fixed out the window.
“All right then,” John murmured back.
Red Lion Yard was a quiet, no-through road. Sherlock led the way up to the entry of an old but beautifully maintained building. There was a security system panel at the main door. It displayed several labelled buttons and a number pad, presumably for the tenants to enter their entry codes. Sherlock selected one of the buttons and hit it; while they waited to be buzzed in, his grey eyes swept the entryway, pausing briefly at the CCTV camera mounted discretely in one upper corner and trained directly at them.
“Sherlock? Come on up. First floor.” The familiar voice of Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, distorted by the staticky speaker next to the door, squawked at them. There was a buzzing and the inner door unlocked.
John followed his flatmate up a flight of stairs. The door, which had a brass “C” screwed onto it, was immediately opened by Lestrade himself. They entered a small hallway.
“Thanks for coming,” Lestrade said. His voice was low; rough. “Come on. It’s this way.” He led them to the right. They turned a corner. Down a long hallway, there were two partially open doors and, blocking the end of the hallway, a closed door.
There was an ominous double trail of narrow, red tire marks and footprints leading from a closed door all the way down the hall to the flat door.
Lestrade took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It swung away from them and revealed—a blood bath. Sherlock didn’t appear to react at all, but John sucked in his breath a bit. He had seen plenty of terrible things during his army service, and subsequently during his time with the world’s only consulting detective, but somehow coming across that much blood in what was otherwise an apparently pristine, bright, and modern kitchen was disturbing.
“Careful. The floor’s covered in it,” Lestrade commented, pointedly stepping sideways. Sherlock did the same, and John stood still in the open doorway, carefully not stepping in the tire and foot trails.
The kitchen was almost square, with a typical arrangement of cabinets, sink, cooker, and fridge, two windows, and a small table with two chairs. The floor in front of the table was absolutely covered in blood, with splashes on the table. One of the chairs was tipped back onto the floor, its back legs in the blood pool. It was obvious from the number of footprints and other marks that several people had been on the scene. Sherlock made a face; useful evidence had probably been lost.
There was a large lump of dough on a wooden board on the table, next to an empty mixing bowl. Somehow, the blood on the dough was particularly obscene.
“What the hell happened here?” John finally burst out.
Sherlock stood stock still, his eyes flashing as he swivelled his head and took in everything.
“Well, in theory it was a suicide attempt…” Lestrade began.
“Attempt? With that amount of blood loss?” John challenged.
“Yeah. It’s a miracle she’s alive,” Lestrade agreed. “They were going to have to take her straight into surgery.”
“But you think it was a murder attempt,” Sherlock interrupted in a low voice.
“Yeah,” Lestrade sighed. “That’s why I’m here. We always have to investigate things like this. But this time it just doesn’t… I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. But I can’t put my finger on it.”
“So you called me?” Sherlock shot at him, still looking around intently.
“It’s not just that. I mean, I am capable of leading an investigation, you twat! It’s that I recognized the name and address.”
“Oh?” Sherlock looked up from where he was now squatting, staring intently at the floor while carefully keeping his long coat from dragging in the blood.
“Yeah. I’ve been here before, see. About nine months ago. A hit and run.”
And now John would have sworn that the detective inspector looked guilty.
“Explain.” Sherlock stood up and examined the sink and the counter surrounding it.
“You might have read about it,” Lestrade began fitfully. “The victim was a bit famous; some kind of inventor engineer or something.”
“William Atkinson,” Sherlock supplied, now opening a drawer.
“Yeah!” Lestrade was a bit surprised, but only a bit. “He was hit by a transit van on his way to work.”
“God. That’s awful. Did you get who did it?” John rubbed his hand over his mouth.
“No. It was half seven on a foggy morning. No witnesses. No leads. No useful video—just some grainy shit. All we know for sure is that there were two people in the vehicle.”
Sherlock, still with his back to them, piped up. “It was a grey transit van going approximately 50 miles per hour down a very narrow alley. He must have heard it coming; he was headed down the alley but it hit him on his left side, so he probably turned back to look. It was a tight fit. They couldn’t turn around. They had to reverse out.”
“You been hacking into Yard records again? You weren’t involved in that one.”
John shot Sherlock a frown and asked, “Did he die instantaneously?” He wasn’t entirely sure which of the two men he was asking at this point.
“No. Not quite.” That was Lestrade.
“So the driver and the passenger both just—left him? Was he robbed?”
“No. But they did search him.” That was Sherlock.
“But that’s…” John spluttered, horrified.
“Yeah.” Lestrade sounded a bit defeated.
“And now who–”
“His widow,” Sherlock interrupted, looking out the kitchen window, his shoulders tense.
“Yeah,” Lestrade confirmed quietly. “Jordan Atkinson. She was found by a neighbour.”
Sherlock suddenly shoved past John and headed back down the hallway. John rolled his eyes and they followed. They went all the way down the hall and stepped through an archway into the sitting room. Sherlock swept the room with his eyes, absorbing data like a sponge.
It was roomy and quite nice. It contained a low-backed 3-seater sofa and matching 2-seater, placed to form an L. The 3-seater faced the windows, with a coffee table in front of it and a flat-screen television mounted between the windows. A large Oriental carpet tidily defined the entire sitting area. To one side was what looked like a dining table, but it had an office chair pulled up to it; from the papers and other items piled on it, it was obviously used as a desk. It also had a carpet under it.
There were book cases everywhere, most of them floor to ceiling and all full to overflowing, with double layers of the smaller books and some books shoved crossways along the tops of others. There was a sideboard decorated with framed photos and in a small alcove was a digital keyboard. The entire room had an airy feel to it due to the windows, which were enormous.
Sherlock paused to look intently at the clutter on the desk. John, following his gaze, noted a cardboard box that had once held copy paper on the chair. It was empty. Sherlock then doubled back, heading down the hall. He selected one of the partially open doors, pushing it to reveal a large bedroom. Like the sitting room, it was also tastefully decorated. And it was a mess.
Every drawer seemed to be at least partially open; the contents either heaped up in it or on the floor. There was a large cupboard with three doors, all open. There were some plastic storage boxes on the floor just outside one of them. None of the lids were closed properly, items spilling out messily.
Sherlock took one long look, then dashed down the hall to the next door. It opened to another fair-sized room. This space was apparently set up as a sort of combined office and art studio or workroom. John noticed a large table partially covered in tiny baskets with ribbons tied to their handles. There were stacks of clear plastic tubs against a wall, each full of all sorts of colourful things; he saw a multitude of artificial flowers. There was a clever sort of rack mounted on the side of the table that held multiple spools of shiny ribbon, one matching the bows on the baskets. Most of the tubs were labelled in tidy lettering—the marker ink was purple. There was a small desk that held a laptop and the usual things one found on a desk: a stapler (also purple), pencil holder (covered in a floral-print fabric), and the like. On the wall above the desk was a pretty cork board covered in lists and a large calendar, and another board with crisscrossed ribbons that held a multitude of photos.
“Ha!” Sherlock exclaimed.
“What?” Lestrade said, tiredly.
“Tell me what happened,” the younger man countered, looking intently at the detective inspector, his strange grey eyes gleaming.
“Well, not much to tell. Someone—a woman who lives in a flat downstairs—called 999 to report a serious suicide attempt; a woman had slashed her wrist and was bleeding out. Ambulance dispatched; took her to University College Hospital A & E. She was in shock and unconscious—massive blood loss, obviously—but there’s a chance she’ll pull through if they could get her sewn up.”
“Which flat is the neighbour in?” Sherlock demanded, heading toward the door.
“Hang on, you wanker! I have to go with you.” The DI strode after him.