Chapter Text
“God Sherlock, give me something.” DI Greg Lestrade cried turning in frustration and only being stopped from kicking the wall of the crime scene by the swift interception of DS Beth MacDonald.
“Working on that Graham” a baritone growl came from the man on his hands and knees head underneath the victims bed.
“Greg” muttered the DI with a shake of his head.
Sherlock leapt up from his previous position and gave a yell. “Out, all of you out!” His eyes closed, face scrunched in concentration.
“I can't leave you alone at a crime scene Sherlock, don't much fancy another demotion because of you.” argued Greg.
Sherlock Holmes’ eyes flew open to give him a withering glare before his long arm flew out to his side pointing at Beth. “She can stay everyone else out.”
Beth and Greg shared a look before Greg signalled all the other officers out of the door closing it behind him.
****
Greg just shrugged his shoulders and grimaced at me in apology before pulling everyone else out of the room. Once the door shut I braced myself and turned to find Sherlock, eyes yet again closed and hands moving around in front of him. I didn't have much experience of being at a crime scene with Sherlock, but I had seen him bawl out enough people in the 3 months I had been with the team to know that I would be best off if I put up and shut up.
Getting my promotion and moving to London had been the highlight of my year, but working with Sherlock was testing to say the least. It was definitely easier when John Watson accompanied him or rather acted as his minder. But, whatever you had to say about Sherlock and his acerbic nature, he got results. His ability to work out complex crimes from a sample of pollen in a mud scrape, or the fingernails of a distraught relative was simply amazing to witness.
I was interrupted from my wondering thoughts. “If you insist on thinking so loudly, at least try to narrow your thoughts to the current case sergeant.” He went back to concentration mode, this time pacing the room. I quietly watched him, my thoughts as he'd suggested back on the case at hand. This was the ninth in a string of murders of couples expecting babies. That was the only link we had between them all. The victims had started out as high profile couples but couple number 4, 5 and 8 had been out of the public eye. They had all been together less than 18 months and had come from a variety of locations across the south of England. That was why the connection between them had only come to light now, and in all honesty only because Sherlock had walked into Scotland Yard insisting there was a link that he had discovered from the news reports and demanded that we got case files from the relevant forces for him.
The first couple were murdered 2 years’ prior, a former glamour model and much younger daytime TV presenter husband, then 19 months ago a politician and his lawyer wife were found murdered. Then came the young pop star and her husband. The pattern had changed when couple number 4 were a teacher and his new wife, followed by two teachers, then a football player and his girlfriend, a model and her banker boyfriend and finally the bodies currently tied to two chairs, two young relatively unknown struggling actors married for only 6 months. There were no other links between them, they had never met to our knowledge.
I was shaken from my thoughts as the silence was broken “Now we know he records them; sees behind the façade they present to the outside world.”
“He records them?”
He flits around the room pointing to various shelves and lamps etc. “Small tacky spots indicate the location of small recording devices, insufficient evidence of whether the camera has sound recording function as well.”
I shivered a small wave of revulsion at the thought of being recorded in my bedroom. Muttering again to myself “He records them.”
He continued to explain his long fingers dancing in front of him as fast as he was talking “Well they might just watch live feeds but balance of probability suggests it would not be possible to watch them all the time, job, family, friends etc. taking up time, therefore they record them, may even edit some of the clips that make them angry to watch before meeting them for the last time.”
“The last time? Oh because he's careful he meets them beforehand to check he's got them right.”
He looked up at me then with an appraising look and a “Yes, good you get it.”
****
That was surprising! He had let her stay as she was by far the least stupid of them all, but even so he had not expected her to pick up his train of thought so quickly. He nodded at her again and gave her an expectant look.
She continued “He's clever, really clever, he sees them, meets them, watches their interactions without them batting an eyelid and only when he is sure does he act. But why is he killing them, why these couples, what’s his motive? “
Oh yes she was good, asking the right questions with no prompting. Interesting. Let’s see what she can do. I left the room, beckoning her with my hand. “Let’s attempt to answer that question.”
******
Six hours later I had something. Jumping up from my chair, I legged it for Greg’s office, grabbing Sherlock by the arm as I passed him. Shaking off my hand he silently followed me. I threw open the door of Greg’s office.
“I think I have something Sir, come see.” Greg gave a small nod and wordlessly pushed his chair back and followed me to my desk, Sherlock accompanying him. I sat down and opened it up to the internet pages I had been browsing.
Greg leaned closer over my shoulder. “You read a lot of gossip mags at work Beth?”
“No the gossip mags are our lead. Look, every one of our first three couples had articles, or passing comments made about the state of their relationship.” I pushed back on my chair to let them see the screen better.
*****
When Beth had slammed into my office like a bat out of hell I was pretty convinced it would be some Sherlock related incident. Like last month’s interruption in the middle of a conference call with the superintendent because Sherlock had made Helen cry with a brilliant deduction about her boyfriend’s new colleague and future lover. The outcome of which was that Helen had locked herself in the ladies until Sherlock left and Sherlock had refused to leave as he was thinking. I was pleasantly surprised then that this was case related. Beth was a good addition to the team. With Sally getting promoted and taking on her own team, the space it opened up had been filled well by Beth; actually it was filled better by Beth than it ever had been by Sally. Although both were competent Beth was a much better team player and worked well with all members of the team, including the unofficial ones like Sherlock.
I read on over Sherlock’s shoulder as he flicked between the open tabs on Beth’s terminal. They weren’t just articles around the couple’s marriages but articles preceding each couple meeting including a particularly juicy sex scandal involving Paul Cornall the MP victim at the second crime scene that I vaguely remembered reading about at the time it broke about 5 years ago.
Sherlock abruptly straightened up almost head butting me in the process and flew away to pace in a small circle behind both me and Beth, muttering to himself, before striding off and out of the office without a word in response to me calling out to him.
Shaking my head in disbelief at a Holmes disappearing act yet again, I went back to the job in hand. “Right this is a great find MacDonald, get a few of the others looking into the other couples. Let’s concentrate on the famous ones first see if there is a link there with these and then we can look into the others.”
*****
The next morning in Greg’s team meeting the team were discussing the findings of the previous evenings work when Sherlock strode in in his normal brusque manner talking over everyone else. “Well done Greg your team finally has a member who can carry out some simple detective work.” Greg’s response was to groan and drag both hands down his face at this backhanded compliment.
“Your sergeant was right; all the couples targeted contained an alleged cheating spouse.”
“Yep, we had worked that out for ourselves mate, in fact it’s what we were discussing when you made your grand entrance” Greg replied with an exasperated sigh. “We were gonna’ try and make a connection with the non-public eye couples today.”
“Done that.” Sherlock called over his shoulder as he plugged a USB into the PC currently linked to the projector showing yesterday’s work.
“Unencrypted USB won’t work on…” one of the team members started to call out and cut themselves off as Sherlock opened it and pulled up a document.
“You Bastard! Something else you’ve nicked from one of us.” Greg admonished.
“I prefer the term borrowed” replied Sherlock cockily before he started to explain the new evidence.
“Three of the four victims at crime scene 4 and 5 were teachers at large secondary schools. Schools are microcosms of society. They have their own gossip columns although they are more commonly found on social media than in print. A scroll through various Facebook feeds and a look at a few dozen blogs of the pupils of these two schools were enough for me to find evidence that there were at least rumours rife about these victims.” And with that he yet again disappeared with a dramatic swish of his coat.
*****
I was knackered, having spent the afternoon predominantly on the phone to various reporters trying to find out their sources and generally getting absolutely bloody nowhere, when Greg and Sherlock got back from their trip to Park View High School in Chelmsford, where Rachel Edds and Joseph Remante our fifth pair of victims had worked.
“How’d it go Sir?” I asked Greg stifling a yawn, eager to talk to anyone but a non-co-operative journalist.
“Oh, swimmingly right up until the point where Sherlock decided to shove the photo of the headmistress and Joseph Remante having sex into the face of the headmistress and demand to know why there was photographic evidence, on a pupil’s blog, of her shagging an employee 20 years her junior, whose girlfriend was pregnant. Then he pissed off when she became hysterical and unable to answer any questions leaving me to try and calm her down.” He said glaring the entire time at Sherlock who just looked on at him with an expression of indifference. He then turned to me. “I have scheduled another meeting with her tomorrow morning, having assured her that tall, dark and rude over there will not be in attendance, so clear your diary MacDonald.”