CH 6

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

"Sherlock Holmes," the Cabbie said in a conversational tone. "I was warned about you." Sherlock only raised an eyebrow at that. "I've seen your website too. Brilliant stuff! Loved it!"

"Who warned you about me," Sherlock asked.

"Someone out there who's noticed you," the Cabbie said.

"Who," the younger man asked. "Who would notice me?"

"You're too modest Mr. Holmes," the cab driver said. "You've got yourself a fan."

"I'm really not," Sherlock huffed out at the modesty comment and then asked, "What fan?"

The Cabbie kept quiet and never responded to the question. He just drove Sherlock to some college campus, a nice place for furthering the education of one's mind, but the underlying message was patently clear. The driver only confirmed it, when he said, "One thing about being a cabbie, you always know a nice, quiet spot for a murder. I'm surprised more of us don't branch out."

He motioned for Holmes to follow him. Eventually they ended up in a study hall of all places, as there were many tables and chairs in the room.

"You ready yet, Mr. Holmes," the Cabbie said. "Ready to play?" He pulled out two small, lidded bottles with a single pill in each. He placed them on the table before him, at an equal distance from one another.

"Play what?" Sherlock said in a disappointed tone. 'Surely this isn't all that there is to this drama,' he thought. 'How dull,' but he only told the killer. "It's just a 50-50 chance."

"You're not playing the numbers, you're playing me," the Cabbie said from his position opposite Sherlock. "Now, did I just give you the good pill or the bad pill? Is it a bluff? Or a double-bluff? Or even a triple-bluff?"

"It's still just chance," Sherlock looked at him with a disappointed expression on his face and then at the small bottles. He'd been hoping that there was something more to this farce, so far the cabbie seemed to be just a run-of-the-mill killer.

"Four people in a row," the other man boasted. "It's not just chance."

Sherlock pushed the man's buttons when he stated, "Luck then."

"It's genius," the Cabbie said. "I know how people think. I know how people think I think. I can see it all like a map inside my head. Everyone's so stupid. Even you," the man pointed at him. "Or maybe God just loves me."

"Either way you're wasted as a Cabbie," Sherlock muttered. His thoughts flung and whizzed in his head, 'A map in his head, my arse. The roads you took to get here were not efficient. You're not omnipotent either, no one is, so I highly doubt you know what the true thoughts of your victims were. I'd have only contempt for you, if I ever bothered to feel anything of that nature for someone so base.'

Sherlock looked around the room and calculated everything he'd noticed in the cab and about the cab driver himself. He knew the why of it, but he preferred to hear it from the man and so asked, "So! You risked your life four times...just to kill strangers. Why?"

"Time to play," the Cabbie said in a tone that indicated he didn't want to talk about his situation.

"Oh, I am playing," Sherlock said. "It's my turn now." His eyes narrowed and he began his deductions much in the same way he deduced everyone around him. (...i...) "You're dying! You've been married many years and have two small children, who came to you late in your life and whom you don't see anymore because you're no longer living with your wife, as evident by the age of your clothing and the lack of mending at the buttons and the store bought patches at your elbows. You're lonely, miserable and have lost the will to fight and so you resort to this game in order to bring yourself some relief of the tediousness of your existence. Just because you're dying, you've chosen to murder four people."

The Cabbie gave him a disturbing smile and clarified, "I've outlived four people. That's the most fun you can have with an aneurysm these days." He still smiled and continued to explain his version of the truth. "When I die they won't get much...my kids. Not a lot of money in driving cabs."

"Or serial killing," Sherlock observed.

"You'd be surprised," the other man said.

"Oh," Sherlock noised. "Surprise me."

"I have a sponsor," the Cabbie explained.

"You have a what?"

"A sponsor," the old man said. "For every life I take, money goes to my kids. The more I kill, the better off they'll be. See? It's nicer than you think."

"Who would sponsor a serial killer," Sherlock asked, as his mind thought, 'How completely novel!'

"Who would be a fan of Sherlock Holmes," the Cabbie returned. "Time to chose," he said and pulled out a gun to point it at the Consulting Detective and Guide in order to force the matter.

"What if I don't choose either," Sherlock asked. "I could just walk out of here."

"You could take that 50-50 chance or I can shoot you in the head," the Cabbie said with the gun pointing at the younger man's head. "Funny enough, no one's ever gone for that option."

Sherlock smirked and said, "I'll have the gun please."

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely," Sherlock confirmed. "The gun!"

"You don't want to phone a friend," the Cabbie asked.

"The gun," Sherlock shouted. The cab driver pulled the trigger and a little bitty flame came from the muzzle of the fake firearm. He snorted and muttered, "I know a real gun when I see one."

The Cabbie shrugged and said, "None of the others did."

"Clearly," Sherlock commented. He stood up and said, "Well this has been very interesting. I look forward to the court case."

"I bet you get bored, don't ya? I know you do," the Cabbie said. "Man like you. So clever! But what's the point of being clever, if you can't prove it." He was goading the Consultant now. "Still the addict, but this, this is what you're really addicted to. You'd do anything...anything at all to stop being bored. You're not bored now, are ya? Innit good..."

Meanwhile, John had arrived at the college, but his senses didn't tell him that he was in the wrong building until it was too late. He was in a similar study hall like room and across the way he noticed Sherlock holding a pill in his hand, looking at it. His heart nearly stopped and he whispered, "No!"

His body reacted before his mind. He opened the windowed quickly. Then pulled his gun from the back of his pants, where it was lodged securely to hide it from the general public. He concentrated on his breathing, aimed... and fired twice at the grinning Cabbie. The bullet went through the old man's shoulder and the second nicked an artery, which meant that the old man was bleeding out and dying fast.

Sherlock whirled around, after he'd dropped the pill from the shock of a real gun's rapport and from the air being disturbed twice by his right ear without causing any damage to him. He looked behind him to the open window across the way and then to the one in the room he was in. He blinked because there was only one bullet hole and yet he had distinctly heard two shots fired.

He looked around and picked up the pill that he had dropped. He knelt down and got into the Cabbies gasping face and said, "I was right, wasn't I. I chose the right pill, didn't I? Tell me!"

The Cabbie was gasping and knew he was dying, but looked away and refused to give the younger man the satisfaction of being right. He ignored the question.

"Okay then," Sherlock said, throwing the pill in the dying man's face to get his attention focussed back on him. "Tell me this: your sponsor, who was it?" He stood up and looked down. "The one who told you about me...my fan... I want a name."

"No," the Cabbie said.

"You're dying, but there's still time to hurt you," Sherlock said, as he stepped on the man's wound. He pressed down slowly, causing the pain to treble and he said, loudly, "Give me a name." He pushed down with more pressure. "A name," he calculated his pressure and added some more after each question. "Now," more pressure. "Name," he asked louder, followed by more pressure. He pressed harder and shouted, "A NAME!"

The poor, serial killer, cabbie man who should have died of an aneurysm was dying from blood loss and was in more pain than he ever believed that he'd be in, in his life. He couldn't hold it anymore and shouted back at the younger man, "MORIARTY!"

Sherlock released the pressure from his foot, which allowed the blood to flow more freely and in short killed the serial killer off more quickly. He was not interested in making any attempts to save that man's life. In the first place he wasn't a doctor and in the second, the man had killed four fairly innocent people for money.

He turned to look through the hole from the window and knew that whoever fired the gun was a well-versed crack-shot. 'Two bullets through the same hole,' he thought. 'If I didn't know any better, I'd say it had to have been a Sentinel or else some kind of rare expert marksman.'

The police showed up not long after, since DI Lestrade had chosen to do the same thing that John Watson had done. They followed the phone to its static position and to the closed college. They had suspected that another murder was going to be attempted, so several cars were dispatched including an ambulance.

John had ducked out of the way and ran away from the area. He had his phone on him, but that was expected, since he too had followed it in order to find Sherlock. He was surprised to receive a call from one of DI Lestrade's lackeys.

"Hello," he said. He listened and said, "I'm nearby too. I'll be right there."

He had to be careful about when the police could see him. He waited until he saw the emergency services people come out of the building with Sherlock wrapped in a ridiculous orange emergency blanket. He chuckled at what he heard the young man muttering, but he took his position between two police cars, behind the blue and white police tape. He was close enough for his new flatmate to see him, but far enough away that the police wouldn't suspect that he'd been in the area for a while.

Sherlock was guided to sit on the tail gate of the ambulance, as the police milled about taking answers from the crowd that had gathered in the area to see what was going on. He shrugged off the blanket, but a few minutes later another ambulance attendant placed it back around his shoulders with a pat to his back, which caused him to have a confused look on his face.

Lestrade came forward with grin.

"Why have I got this blanket?" Sherlock asked the man, as he lifted a corner of the dreaded orange thing. "They keep putting this blanket on me!"

"Yeah," DI Lestrade said. "That's for shock."

"I'm not in shock," Sherlock protested.

"Yeah...," the Inspector said in an amused tone. "But some of the guys want to take photographs."

Sherlock snorted and then asked, "What about the shooter?"

"Cleared off before we got here," Lestrade told him. "But a guy like that would have had enemies, I suppose. One of them might have been following him, but we've got nothing to go on."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Sherlock said with a roll of his eyes, like the police had missed much of the obvious.

"Okay," Lestrade said with a sigh. "Gimme!"

"The bullets they dug out of the wall are from a handgun," Sherlock deduced with speedy accuracy. "A kill shot like that over that distance from that sort of weapon, you're looking for a crack-shot and not just any marksman, since two bullets were fired through only one bullet hole in the glass window of the room, without shattering it. Whoever it was, their hands mustn't have shaken at all so clearly that person is acclimated to violence, possibly someone with enhanced senses in order to see and fire with that kind of precision. They didn't fire until I was in immediate danger so obviously, they have a strong moral principle. You're looking for someone probably with a history of military service..."

He looked around at the gathering crowd, wondering if he could deduce who the shooter was from anyone nearby, as he continued, "With nerves of steel," he paused again when his eyes landed on John. He blinked, looked away and said, "Actually, you know what? Ignore me, I'm babbling."

"Sorry?"

"Ignore all of that, it's just the...uh," Sherlock paused really briefly. "Shock talking, yeah, just the shock..."

"Wait," Lestrade said. "Where are you going?"

"I just need to...uh," Sherlock looked at John, who was standing at parade rest, which Lestrade fully noted. That's when he saw who the young Consulting Detective was focussed on. "To talk to him about the rent..."

"But I still have questions for you," Lestrade said.

"Oh what now," Sherlock said in an exasperated tone. "I'm in shock! Look, I've even got a blanket." He lifted the corners of it to wave them at the Inspector.

"Sherlock," DI Lestrade protested.

"And I've just caught your serial killer," Sherlock explained with a wave to the dead body coming out of the building behind him. "More or less..."

"All right, fine," Lestrade said. "But I want you down at the Yard tomorrow morning to give me a proper statement." He received a nod in return and huffed with a flutter of two hands flapping them at the young man to shoo him on his way, before he turned to continue his investigation of the dead cab driver.

Sherlock walked to where John was waiting for him. He took off the offensive eye-searing blanket and tossed it into the nearest blue and white.

"It was just explained," John said with a nod to the forensics people milling outside of the buildings door, quite a distance from where they were walking away from the scene. "So two pills then?"

Sherlock just looked his new flatmate over and then asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course I'm all right," John returned with a questioning frown.

"Well, you have just killed a man," Sherlock said in a very low tone, so that his voice didn't carry to any potentially nearby Sentinels.

"Yes, I...," John shrugged and said. "True, true, but he wasn't a very nice man. He took you away from me."

"No! No, he really wasn't was he?" Sherlock questioned, but didn't mention the possessive statement that the other man had made.

"And frankly," John said. "He was a bloody awful cabbie."

"That's true," Sherlock said with a nod and a grin. "He was a bad cabbie. You should have seen the route he took to get us here." He chuckled, as he recalled it.

The younger man's mischievous nature caught John and he found himself giggling along. "Stop," he giggled and chuckled too. "We can't giggle," he hissed, as he tried to hold in his mirth. "It's a crime scene. Stop it."

"You're the one who shot him," Sherlock giggled back. "Not me!"

John sobered up a bit and then said, "You were going to take that damn pill weren't you."

"Of course I wasn't," Sherlock said. "I was biding my time. I knew you were there."

"No you didn't," John returned. "That's how you get your kicks isn't it? You'd risk your life to prove you're clever. I heard you! You wanted to know that you had gotten the right pill."

Sherlock huffed and then asked, "Why would I do that?"

"Because you're an idiot," John replied with a grin. He received a cheeky one in return.

"Hungry, I know a place that's got excellent Chinese takeaway," Sherlock said. "You can always tell a good Chinese place by examining the bottom third of the door."

"What?" John asked, as he noted another scent in their vicinity that nearly matched Sherlock's. He also noticed his new flatmate freeze at the sight of a man in a suit with an umbrella hooked to his arm. The man's pretty assistant was there still clicking away on her Blackberry device, not paying attention to anything around them, but Watson had the feeling that she knew just what was going on because there was something about her that made him think she was a Sentinel. "Sherlock that's him, that's the man I was talking about from earlier."

"I know exactly who that is," Sherlock muttered back.

"So," the man's tone oozed out of his mouth in such a way that John wanted to smack him. "Another case cracked. How very public spirited of you. Though that's never really your motivation is it?"

"What are you doing here," Sherlock grumped, as he crossed his arms.

"As ever, I'm here because I'm concerned for you," the man said.

"Yes," Sherlock hissed. "I've been hearing about your concern."

"Always so aggressive," the man said. "Didn't it ever occur to you, that you and I belong on the same side?"

"Oddly enough, no," the younger man retorted in a childish defiant manner.

"We've more in common than you like to believe. This petty feud between us is simply childish," the man said. "People will suffer and you know how it always upset Mummy."

"I upset her," Sherlock asked in a mock tone of surprise. "Me?" His hand went to his chest and then he put it down to his side with clenched fist. "It wasn't me that upset her, Mycroft."

"No," John said and looked from one to the other, noticing quite quickly some resemblances. "No, wait. Mummy! Who's Mummy?"

"Mother, our Mother," Sherlock explained. "This is my brother Mycroft. Putting on weight again?" He jibed his elder sibling.

"Losing it," Mycroft returned with what might be a pout, if you squinted in just the right way. "In fact..."

John inhaled and then questioned, "He's your brother?"

"Of course he's my brother," Sherlock said, as he stood next to his brother.

"So he's not..." John looked from one to the other in fascination. They didn't look that much alike and yet some of their mannerisms were, including the familial scent markers he was quickly learning to differentiate.

"Not what?" Sherlock looked at the Doctor, curious about what the man was thinking about or if the man was using his enhanced senses to determine them.

"I don't know," John shrugged. "A criminal mastermind, maybe?"

Sherlock snorted and said, "Close enough."

"For goodness sake, Sherlock, don't misrepresent me," Mycroft said. "I occupy a minor position in the British Government."

"He is the British Government," Sherlock said in an irritated tone. "When he's not too busy being the British Secret Service or the CIA on a freelance basis." He took hold of John's arm to nudge him away from the Ministry man. "Good evening Mycroft. Try not to start a war before I get home, you know what it does to the traffic."

John pulled away and turned back to ask, "So when you say you're concerned about him," he glanced at the younger man's back. "You are actually concerned."

"Yes, of course," Mycroft replied with a confused look on his face.

"I mean," the Doctor asked. "It actually is just a childish feud?"

"He's always been so resentful. Came into his abilities later than most," Mycroft said. "You can image the Christmas dinners."

"Yeah," John replied absently and then shook his head. "No. God no!" He took off after his new flatmate without speaking to anybody else. Eventually he caught up to the man who slowed down for him. "So," he said, as he looked up to that strange, wonderful face. "Dim sum?"

"Mm," Sherlock noised and then he attempted to boast. "I can always predict the fortune cookies."

"No you can't," John huffed.

"Almost can," Sherlock tried to convince the doctor, but it didn't work. So he asked one of the questions still unanswered. "You did get shot though?"

"Sorry?"

"In Afghanistan," Sherlock said. "There was an actual wound, which lead to your being discharged."

"Oh! Yeah," John replied. "Shoulder!"

"Shoulder," Sherlock said in a triumphant tone. "I thought so."

"No you didn't!"

Sherlock looked and then said, "The left one."

"Lucky guess," John returned.

"I never guess," Sherlock stated.

John snorted and said, "Yes you do." He looked at his new friend's enthusiastic expression. "What are you so happy about?"

"Moriarty," Sherlock replied.

"Ah," John said. "I heard that part. So who is he?"

"I have no idea," Sherlock said. "I know we'll learn about him soon enough."

Back at the police lines, Mycroft looked at the way the two men were interacting and he didn't quite like it, although, he was secretly pleased that his brother had someone around to curb his more impulsive habits. A doctor, who's only a GNA Sentinel, might just be what would be what Sherlock needed.

"Interesting, that soldier fellow," Mycroft said to his assistant, knowing that she was only keeping half an ear out for him. She was a lot of things to him and invaluable for now. "He could be the making of my brother or make him worse than ever. Either way we'd better upgrade their surveillance status, Grade 3 active."

"Sorry sir," she looked up from her Blackberry, prepared to send the data for the surveillance team and asked. "Who's status?"

"Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson," Mycroft said, as he watched the men run away and through the streets like giddy children running away from a parent in play. He shook his head, entered his car and left the scene too. "I want a report on Moriarty, as soon as possible."

"Yes sir," the woman said, clicking away the order to the appropriate people, on her ever present Blackberry device.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

END

(...i...) This deduction did not come from the internet, but from my own memory of episode one. I haven't been able to find my copy of season 1, yet, but I have a few ideas on where to look (psst...my room's a mess so I guess cleaning would be the first order of the day).