Murder with Lens: A Sherlock Holmes Case (221B Baker Street Series)

by S. K. Lloyds

  Ah. Sarah was really worried for him. Reese was really worried for Sherlock. Good-good. John smiled and gave them both a steadying nod. Once he was outside, the cab behind him pulled into the boxy alleyway and out of sight.

  John couldn’t help feeling for the Browning under his coat. Just as quickly, he stopped that. All he could think about was how Sherlock had noticed the killer on mere seconds of fuzzy gas-station video, and here he was telegraphing the gun. He should be less obvious.

  “Relax,” Sherlock said as he caught up. “And stop thinking.”

  They climbed the stairs of the old building Sherlock had been directed to. It was slightly dank in the downstairs, and increasingly bumped and dinged on the way up to the third floor. Holmes passed a pair of young men in the hall who gave him an unfriendly look. They liked John even less. He seemed to have some kind of scent about him that spoke of police or military service. Big surprise there.

  So John hung back from Sherlock, until he noticed a man leaning beside an open door was trying to sell Holmes some kind of white baggy. In a flicker of coat, Sherlock vanished inside that apartment. John actually jolted. That unpleasant surprise prompted John to stick closer to his former addict as soon as he emerged again, which, thankfully, was in a matter of seconds.

  “Steady,” Sherlock told him. “Last door over there is his. And we’re in luck. He’s in.”

  However he knew that…. “So we just go in?” John began to feel his heart rate pick up.

  “Something like,” Sherlock said lightly. “I was going to suggest I go in first, and you follow.”

  “I’m armed.”

  “And I know what I’m doing.”

  “He could be sitting staring at the door with a gun in his hands.”

  “How many people spend time in their apartment doing that?” Sherlock asked. “He’s just been paid. According to The Doves, he’s getting ready to take the Chunnel to France.”

  “With a hatchet and a handgun?” John asked quietly.

  “Well, what else? They won’t search his person.” Sherlock glanced at the door. “Looking at this place, it appears the layout of these apartments is uniform: small side pocket for a bathroom off to the left just inside the door; open living-dining space; left-hand turn; a kitchenette; large bed and bath, give or take a laundry, or storage closet. My money is on him being in the bedroom. He’ll come running if he hears the lock, and he won’t be happy to see us. Oh, and clear the bathroom once we’re in.”

  Sherlock walked up to the door and tricked the lock open. The dealer down the hall backed up and shut himself inside his rooms.

  Holmes opened the door, fully, before he stepped inside, so that no one could hide behind it. John dutifully checked the small, windowless, and empty – as it turned out – loo. Right about then, all hell broke loose. It was like a thunderclap from the blue. John heard a loud bang. Sherlock’s body jerked back. Delov was right at the left hand turn toward the front door.

  As soon as Holmes had come close enough, Delov had simply stepped out and made a wide swing with a terrifically large knife. His fist and the knife butt had dented the wall and sent down a rain of plaster dust. John whipped the gun up, but the scene before him was too tangled for a shot, so he rushed in. Sherlock – somehow – hadn’t been cut. An arching second swipe smacked the same wall as before. The panelling rattled so hard the clock dislodged and went bouncing clear.

  Delov’s expression, for a nanosecond, seemed confused. Why hadn’t he cut the man before him? It appeared unfathomable.

  “Gun!” John shouted to get the man’s attention. He brought up the gun. Delov – who honestly looked mundane apart from a foot-long knife – saw the business end of the Browning and bolted back around the corner. John and Sherlock looked at one another and gave chase, particularly when they heard a window slide.

  “Balcony, John!” Sherlock barked and raced outside without hesitation.

  Delov had his gun now. He whipped it out of the holster, but Sherlock didn’t give the man enough time. Delov grunted and swore, but tall, long-armed Sherlock had the advantage. He didn’t get the muzzle pointing at Holmes. Sherlock smacked Delov’s wrist with his opposite fist – a stunning, upward-angled blow – and drove it to the kitchen window. The glass held until Delov shot it out. His other hand produced a spring loaded blade and Sherlock accomplished an amazing dodge. His long body arched back so quickly it looked like a spasm. John was in shock. The blade passed over Sherlock’s face close enough to trim a few of his eyelashes.

  This was bad. At Sherlock’s current angle, Delov’s gun arm was close to freedom.

  John caught Sherlock around the neck. He could see that was where the return slash was aimed. Better for Delov to lay open the back of John’s hand than slit Sherlock’s throat like a lamb’s. But John was swinging too – with everything he had, in fact. He cracked Delov in the forehead with the butt-plate of the Browning, so hard that blood exploded down the front of the man’s face and streamed into his eyes. Delov stepped back and bunched his gun and knife hand over his stinging head.

  Sherlock straightened up with a soft gasp, a hand on his throat: “Shoot him.”

  “No, Sherlock, we-”

  Holmes delivered a right hook that threw his entire body down and left. It was a devastating connection that made a sound somewhat like bowling balls colliding – the sound of bone snapping. John knew it well and prayed that wasn’t Sherlock’s hand. The assassin fell. When his head hit the railing, the noise rang through the patio and apartment.

  People in the downstairs apartment were yelling.

  Holmes quickly stepped on the gun, his expensive shoe clamped on the slide stop and the safety. He also caught hold of Delov and was forced to dodge a stab. John had seen the flicker of metal and anticipated the harm. Even as Sherlock moved to dodge aside, John stomped on Delov’s arm. It never got to straighten all the way. John winced, because he knew he’d broken it at the elbow. Now Delov lay on his Isle of Dogs balcony, screaming.

  “Hey!”

  It took a moment for the shouts to penetrate John’s attention. When they did, he looked over the side of the balcony into the alley below. Reese stood on top of the cab, the cabbie worriedly reaching up to keep her from falling.

  “Busy,” Sherlock shouted back.

  “Hear those sirens? Lestrade will be here! Hang on!” she shouted at them both. “You okay?”

  “BUSY!” Sherlock actually looked over the balcony for this shout and then tucked back into the business at hand with a hiss. “John! Pay attention!”

  John ducked back. Delov’s expression was pure murder. He spoke long, drawling, and contemptuous – by the sound of it – Russian at Sherlock.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s saying: I’ll shoot you when you take your boot off this gun.” Sherlock gritted his teeth and leaned on his leg. “Or did you think this was over because you’ve broken his elbow. Dear God, he’s like an ox cart.”

  John saw Delov’s legs move, only minutely. “Sherlock!”

  The world sped up for John Watson, accelerated to battle speed, and grew quiet. Everything else around him, however, seemed to slow perceptibly.

  Holmes’ weight shifted. Delov’s gun came up. John slammed Sherlock down out of the way. He felt the wind of the first bullet blow by. The second nipped his jacket. There wasn’t a third. Effectively, Sherlock had fallen on Delov’s body and tackled the arm swinging the gun. He pushed the wrist and pulled the elbow, taking repeated knees to the side. The gun was still going off. As Sherlock fought Delov’s strength, bullets smacked through the balcony upstairs and rained down puffs of plaster. A child screamed. John suddenly stopped hearing all the madness. In the quiet, he took steady aim on the center of the man’s forehead, exhaled half of his last breath, and held the rest.

  Sherlock jostled aside. John’s shot took off Delov’s ear. It didn’t quite evaporate, as John had seen people do when struck with shoulder launched missiles, but it was close. There was a
new round of screaming.

  “Stick!” Sherlock was shouting breathlessly.

  An expandable baton came through… because Lestrade was right behind them in the door. Sherlock took hold of it with his left hand and delivered a series of pitiless whacks against Delov’s head and shoulders, until the assassin’s body went limp, and Sherlock could take the gun away. Then Sherlock got up from where he’d been kneeling on the killer and took out the clip, panting, “Glock. Magazine. 31 rounds.”

  Oh my God. John shook his head. It was an inversion of the standard 9mm Browning L9A1 magazine in John’s palm, and, no doubt, Delov’s favourite handgun for shooting all day.

  Sherlock handed the weapon over to Lestrade and steadied himself, sucking air; babying his battered ribs.

  “All right?” Lestrade asked him.

  “Not… my first… assassin,” Sherlock gave a final huff, rolled his eyes, and went inside.

  John crept carefully across the balcony and sat with his back against the rails. His heart was thundering inside, and his head spinning full of a riptide of blood. Images flickered through his mind like fireworks: ambushes, injuries, IEDs from a world away. Damn. Not again. This was like dreaming, wide awake. He checked his clip and chamber, set the safety, and put his gun away. Slowly the noise drew back into the sobbing breaths before John: Delov was in agony. He was a doctor. He should be doing something about that. He should be….

  Donovan crouched beside him. “John. John Watson. Can you hear? Where did you get the gun?”

  John didn’t bother to reply. He looked up at the balcony above. “I’ve got to go upstairs. There were kids. Mind Sherlock, just for a minute?”

  Search as he might for wounded and injured, no door would open to his knocking. He hoped the sturdy construction had spared them.

  Adrenaline was making John’s blood feel chilly inside his skin. And by the time John ran back into the apartment, Sherlock was standing in the front room with Reese. She touched his side carefully, and he made a small grunt of displeasure and carried on speaking. “Yes. Hatchet’s on him – hello John – I could hear it when he hit the balcony.”

  “Murder weapons still in situ,” Reese nodded. “You’re pretty sharp in a fight Holmes. Side took a wailing. Let me see your hands.”

  Sherlock turned over his hands. One was pristine. The knuckles of the other were bruised, red, and swollen. Holmes looked at the mess with a detached air of curiosity, both of them studying what had become of his fist. Finally, Reese looked up. “Well, at least it’s not your left hand. Sarah, could you clean up some cuts. His hand will have hit the glass when Delov shot the window out.”

  “I’m cut?” Sherlock turned his hand until he could see the bloody scrapes. “Oh please.”

  “You only feel it in the morning,” John clapped Sherlock on the elbow. “I cannot believe you didn’t snap his neck with that right, Sherlock. All I could hear was bone splitting.”

  Sherlock’s brows drew up a moment. “Pity it took the starch out of my hand.”

  “Idiots.” Reese steered Holmes to the nearby couch so that Sarah could work on him. Right after, it seemed, Sarah seized hold of John and rifled his clothes looking for injuries, that was. It was startling. Finding none, she hugged him. By the time she set in on Sherlock’s hand, John had already moved on to Delov’s care.

  “So he fired at a police officer,” John looked up at Lestrade. “I mean, he tried to kill Sherlock, not to mention me and half the upstairs.” Delov was cuffed, hand and foot. His face was black and blue, but his blue eyes still glinted with hate. He passed easily in and out of consciousness as John worked to make him comfortable for the paramedics who were on the way.

  Lestrade nodded. “That was nice work… that you should have left to professionals. But nice.”

  “Look, respectfully, Detective Inspector, either Sherlock has a badge, or he doesn’t. It’s confusing to everyone involved, otherwise,” John finished setting the arm and bound it in a sheet Donovan had fetched. It was hard work, with the man cuffed.

  “You two aren’t trained to apprehend a suspect.”

  Sherlock shot off the couch, his hand half wrapped in bandages. “Come on, Lestrade. You lot would have shot him in the head. What good would he be then?” He looked down at Delov. “What did you do with the boy’s head and the hands?”

  The man slurred emphatic Russian, blood bubbling on his lips.

  “Not in this lifetime you won’t. Now who paid you? Who contacted you? I want a name.” Sherlock said. He said it over again in such excellent Russian, it surprised even Delov. “Tell me.”

  In thickly accented English, Delov said. “I will kill you in your bed.”

  “You wouldn’t make it in the flat.” Sherlock sneered and stepped away.

  John snorted. That was right. Mycroft had the place monitored.

  “He’s a bad read, now,” Reese reached up and gave a jumping muscle in John’s shoulder a squeeze. “Everything we’d normally see is wrecked by the pain and swelling. If we give the hospital a little time to soften him up with anesthetic, he’ll be like cookie dough. That was one crazy ass brawl, though. I can’t believe he didn’t nail one of you.”

  “Yeah,” John huffed and gave her small hand rubbing his shoulder a grateful squeeze. Really, there was a spark of some emotional element to her that was lacking entirely in Sherlock.

  “You gotta deal with that flaming case of PTSD, though, Doc.” She deposited a peck on his cheek, and then went to join Lestrade. John just hoped that Sarah and Sherlock hadn’t overheard.

  ***

  At the Yard, it was possible to hear Special Agent Young shouting at Reese halfway across Lestrade’s floor. For John, it was off-putting. He liked Reese, her mix of innocence, humour, and high intelligence was an echo of his flatmate’s, and John was beginning to see he was sort of designed to get along with extraordinary people like Reese, and Sherlock.

  Speaking of Sherlock, the genius paced restlessly and waited for the tirade to end. Lestrade’s squad seemed irritated with his hyperactivity, but, so far, made no comment on it. John didn’t feel the need to step in, but watched Sherlock’s expression grow darker and darker.

  Finally, Sherlock threw his hands out and up as if conducting. “Lestrade, that martinet of a woman is wasting our time. Do something.”

  “It’s CIA business, Sherlock,” Lestrade also looked down the hallway. “We’re not involved.”

  Holmes put his head down and tried – John swore – to be patient. It lasted a record 30 seconds. Then he turned and stalked toward the yelling.

  “Sherlock. Don’t interfere,” Lestrade rubbed his eyes as Holmes cut through the desks from Lestrade’s squad, and made a straight line of his trip to the blackened room that Reese kept. That office was in the far corner of the area that Lestrade’s people occupied.

  “We should follow him,” John said quickly.

  Lestrade looked hopeless. “Why?”

  John pointed out, “Because he’s angry.”

  “What? He’s what?” Lestrade glanced after Holmes’ trim figure striding away. His wasn’t the only head to turn in Sherlock’s direction.

  This was stunning to John. He caught hold of Lestrade’s sleeve. “You didn’t see his face?”

  Donovan got up from her desk, “Freak almost always looks put out, John.”

  “He was grinding his teeth,” John was astonished they’d missed this. He set off after Holmes. “It’s not just that he wants to get back to the case – I mean, he’s impatient; this is Sherlock we’re talking about.”

  Sherlock reached the door of the black boxy office and threw it open.

  “Oh damn,” John started to lope. The conversation inside the room changed instantly.

  Sherlock’s deep voice boomed through the office. “This is not a trained animal! Do not roll up your regulations and smack her about the head with them! Considering not one of you possesses the faculties required to solve this case, dispense with the fatuous idea you have any inp
ut here and stay the hell out of our way!”

  John reached the door first. Sherlock shoved past him on the way out, stone-faced, and, at the end of his hand was Reese’s wrist. He hauled her along in a fashion anyone else might have called negligent, or even violent, and she stared at him.

  “Sherlock,” John turned to follow. “Calm down.”

  He swung an arm, “Don’t speak to me.”

  “I know you know this, Holmes: she ran off in a foreign country with a pair of men they don’t know to track down an infamous assassin, and this was after drugging one of her-”

  Holmes turned John’s way. “Don’t speak to me right now, John.” He released Reese and shouted, “The whole lot of you shut up! All this yelling, and fussing, and milling about. We gave you the man who killed Lawrence Waters. Find something to occupy yourselves, quietly, and let us think.”

  John backed up from Holmes a step. More than anything, this made Sherlock’s temper brake.

  ***

  “Maybe it’s too much adrenaline from the fight, but you’re a bit unglued,” John told Sherlock quietly. He smoothed his coat. “So what’s happened?”

  Holmes huffed a few deep breaths of air and looked across at where Reese stared at him. Her face was entirely unguarded. When Sherlock was being so obvious about reading people, he tended to look keen as a weapon – his inner radar making his green eyes seem soulless. Reese, with those societally imposed screens down, had the unblinking intensity of a camera. Sherlock looked away from her almost immediately, the corners of his mouth dimpling his cheeks in a soft grimace. Whatever John could make out in Sherlock’s expression and posture, she was seeing gads more, and he was visibly pulling himself under control again, because of it. Finally, he looked at John, no more than a passing glance, and managed, “I… need quiet.”

  “Yeah, fine, we’ll get you quiet,” John rolled his shoulders. He did hear Young clacking hurriedly across the office at them. She was sure to want to yell some more. “Lestrade, you’re not going to get anything further from these two until they unwind. Where can we go while you handle the CIA?”

  “God,” Lestrade sighed mightily.