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Apr. 8th, 2012 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalima1955Title: GENE EXPRESSION IN AMBER (Part 4/?)
Author: Kalima.
Rating: R for situations and language.
Notes: No babies were harmed in the making of this fic. Yeah, I’m going to need more chapters.
Summary: A pregnant woman wants Sherlock Holmes to find her missing employers and then goes missing herself. Sherlock may be able to solve the puzzle, but he might never be able to make it right.
(Hopefully I've caught all the mistakes, if not I'm sure y'all will tell me.)
Part 1 here: http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278139.html
Part 2 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278624.html
Part 3 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/280561.html
Sherlock Holmes did not believe in premonitions. Premonitory signs were data transmitted through the sensorium and kinesthesia, unconsciously perceived by inattentive minds. All the obvious connections between sensation and observation were therefore missed, dismissed or ignored. Sherlock only ignored things he chose to ignore.
Which is why, after Lestrade rang off, he interpreted the strange shudder running up his spine and out the top of his head as the sign of a flu coming on. He grabbed a handful of vitamins, gulped them down with tepid tea and was out the door.
“That won’t do any good,” John pointed out, hurriedly pulling on a jacket as he followed him into the street. “And will likely only make you nauseous.”
“You told me I should take vitamin supplements.” Sherlock’s voice contained an element of petulant accusation, prepared in advance for the failure of vitamin supplements and John’s advice.
“With your toast! As a preventative measure. To make up for the many ways you abuse your body. If you’ve caught a bug, vitamins won’t help much after the fact.”
“Not terribly useful to me then,” Sherlock said, and hailed a taxi.
John tried a different tact. “Look. I have some oscillococcium back in the flat if you really think you’re coming down with something. Worth a shot.”
But a cab was already at the kerb and Sherlock was already climbing in. With a resigned sigh, John got in after him. Sherlock gave the address to the driver and settled back into the seat, his eyes scanning the traffic.
“She must have been very attractive,” he said after a moment.
John, accustomed to, but still never quite following, the abrupt segues and weird nonsequiturs of his flat mate, asked, “Who? The victim?” Was there a victim? He realized he had no idea, not even of where they were going.
“The rep that gave you the samples of oscillococcium. Unless you’ve suddenly become a proponent of homeopathy?” John could feel his face heating up. “Doubtless, she extolled the virtues and amazing properties of a bacterium found in duck offal. You probably agreed to try it yourself and let her know, thereby establishing a sound reason to contact her via her mobile number on the card she gave you.” He cocked an eye John’s direction, “I assume she was quite the hottie. Pharma reps usually are.”
“Pharmaceutical sales reps don’t push Newton’s complexes and Bach flower remedies as a rule, but yes, she was quite…fit.”
Sherlock’s smile was bright but fleeting, quickly giving way to impatience and a loud complaint, “Come on, man! We could have walked there faster!”
***
Sgt Donovan escorted them past the cordon. She seemed uncharacteristically subdued, didn’t address him as “freak” even once. Sherlock was fairly certain this was not because she’d been asked to be polite to him. It was something about the crime scene caused her strange quiescence.
“Sewer flusher found the body,” she said as they approached the huddle of activity. Sherlock saw the worker in question, hunched and visibly shaken as a young PC tried to take a preliminary statement. “Poor guy thought he’d located a fat berg. I guess they get a lot of those along this part of the Embankment. Fat bergs I mean. Not bodies.”
Sewer bodies were challenging, so many variables to factor in. He’d been quite looking forward to it. The flutter in his stomach became a queasy churning.
John nudged his arm. “You all right?”
“The vitamins. Don’t make me say it.”
John chuckled. “Yeah. Okay. It’s enough that you know I was right. Emergency techs usually keep biscuits or crackers in the ambulance. I’ll go find you something.” He headed toward the flashing lights.
Near the manhole, down which the poor unlucky sewer worker had discovered a body instead of a mountain of congealed illegally dumped cooking oil and wet-wipes, Lestrade was on his phone, turned away from Sherlock in partial profile. A couple of other sewer workers outfitted in white and yellow coveralls and hip waders were standing near it as well. Forensics Services people, in similar protective gear, wandered to and fro with take away cups of tea or coffee. Lyerla was the forensics Scene of Crime officer, which was a relief. He didn’t feel up to a confrontation with Anderson. Lyerla hadn’t worked with him much and so didn’t actively hate him yet.
Still, all the milling about meant they were either waiting on him with growing resentment, or they thought they’d finished, when in fact they were likely milling about all over the important bits.
Lestrade pocketed his mobile, and seeing Sherlock standing apart from the action, raised a hand and a querulous brow. The milling people moved and shifted and suddenly he had a clear view of a body wrapped in a plastic sheet and laid on a tarp on the paving, a body that was supposed to be in the sewer.
What the hell?
“What the hell?” he said hotly, closing the distance between Lestrade and himself in a couple of long strides. “You’ve hauled it out already? Why am I here? Why are you wasting my time? How can I work if I’m not able to examine the body where it was found, how it was found?”
Lestrade drew back with a grimace of irritation. His unflappable good nature was stretched thin today. “Which question would you like me to answer first?”
“Why am I here?”
“You’re here because I thought you might recognize the victim.” Lestrade’s brows furrowed and he cocked his head. “I thought I made that clear on the phone.”
“You did not.”
“You probably stopped listening after ‘body in the sewer.’ Anyway….” He made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the tarp. Lyerla, crouched beside the body, turned her head away briefly to take a deep breath before peeling back the plastic sheet.
The coat was filthy, soaked through and torn up, but still recognizably red wool under the muck, a red wool trench coat with besom pockets. Buttons missing, one still hanging by a thread he knew wouldn’t match. The face was bloated, distorted and swaths of skin had been blasted away by water pressure. Black hair was strewn across the raw, naked planes of cheeks and chin like clumps of oily sea weed. He gulped so loud he could hear it echoing inside his head.
“Oh, well,” he said softly, “that’s – that’s not good.”
“Is it her? The one I sent your way? Do you recognize her?”
“I – I recognize the coat.” A terrible anxiety washed over him quite suddenly -- John mustn’t see this. Don’t let him see. Not until I can--
“Oh my God.” Too late. “Oh no, oh my God...”
“John—“
The good doctor was stood, bag of crisps clenched in one fist, the fingers of his other hand curled against the side of his gaping mouth. Sherlock could almost hear the man’s heart hammering at his ribcage. John tore his gaze away from the body to fix on Sherlock an expression so raw that the ever-so-brilliant consulting detective stumbled back a step as if he’d been shoved hard in the chest.
“I thought you— you said— I asked you to find out -- to make sure she was okay. Jesus. Jesus Christ.” He leaned forward suddenly, bracing his hands on his knees like he was going to be sick.
John had seen bodies blown to bits on the battlefield. He’d seen the dead in all states of disarray and decomposition. How could this make him ill? How could this be worse? “John, listen to me. This isn’t Amber, I know it looks as if it might be her—“
“Sherlock…” Lestrade’s vocal tone was the same one he used when breaking terrible news to the families of murder victims. “She had a wallet with ID on her.”
Sgt. Donovan stepped into Sherlock’s space. She held up a crinkled, sodden, plastic-coated driving license between a nitrile covered thumb and forefinger. Her mouth was pinched with grim distaste yet she still managed to seem smug about it.
“I wasn’t sure if this was the same woman, “Lestrade said, “The name seemed familiar but I didn’t take her report. Hell, I just happened to be walking by on my way to lunch when I heard the accent. We couldn’t do much for her so I gave her your number. Of course, the woman I saw was really pregnant and this one…isn’t. Thought maybe she’d come to see you… which…” He looked from one man to the other, “she did…apparently. We weren’t sure if we needed to be looking for the remains of an infant or…or what.” Lestrade looked away scratching at the back of his neck.
Sherlock thought he understood this reticence. “No one wants to look for dead babies. I get it. There’s no need to put anyone through that.”
“Why do you say that?” John croaked out. He cleared his voice and when he spoke again there was a combative edge to it. “She came to see you. She gave birth to twins the same night. They might very well need to look for the remains of infants down there.”
“No. Really. They don’t. Infants are rarely the victims of murder, in any case.”
“Except by their mummies and daddies,” Donovan pointed out.
“This woman didn’t dive into the sewers, babes in arms. You’d just be wasting time and resources--“
“Jesus,” Donovan muttered, shaking her head.
“Should I have paid you?” John asked suddenly.
“What?”
“I fucking asked you, and you said you would. Would you have done it if I’d offered to pay you?”
The question shocked the air from his lungs. He couldn’t get words to come out of his mouth for several long excruciating seconds. “I rarely accept remuneration for my work, as you know, often to your consternation.”
“You wanted to charge her.”
“No. I didn’t want to deal with her at all. You asked me to and I said I would. You didn’t exactly follow up on my progress though, did you? Too busy banging your married girlfriend as I recall.”
There was a very very awkward silence in which the only sounds were traffic and people clearing their throats or tittering nervously. Premonitions are premonitions because they’re only realized in hindsight, when all the subtle clues and warning signs you blithely ignored come back to bite you in the arse.
John had gone stone still, his default response when under extreme stress. “Separated,” he said coolly. “She’d been separated for eight months.”
Sherlock knew he was looking at the same man who’d shot a murderous cabbie through a window from a building across the way, yet he kept talking. “Does that knowledge alleviate some of the guilt you’re feeling right now?”
“Fuck’s sake, Sherlock,” Lestrade said, rubbing at the furrow between his brows.
“No.” John said. “Is that how you’re justifying it to yourself? Amber’s dead because I wasn’t there to remind you to-- what? Do your chores? Keep your promises?”
“I don’t need justification! Do you know why? Because that—“ He thrust an arm in the direction of the body, “That. Is. Not. Amber.”
Relief, hope, something of the kind, flickered briefly on John’s face before despair washed over him again. Even if he wanted to believe it, it was clear from his demeanor that he couldn’t get past his own sense of responsibility. “It’s somebody though, Sherlock. Somebody in her coat, carrying her ID.”
“No one you know.”
“That doesn’t – that’s not even –“ He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyelids. “Ah, Christ, yeah, I can’t – I can’t do this. I’m going home.” And he started walking.
The clenching in Sherlock’s gut intensified at the finality in John’s words and actions. “What just happened?”
To his credit, Lestrade did not give pause to dramatic exits. “What makes you think this isn’t Amber Call?”
After a moment, Sherlock dragged his focus back to the matter at hand. “Um…well, one very important piece of physical evidence.” Which I would have pointed out sooner if John hadn’t said what he said. “Amber had a tattoo on her right ankle, an unusual tattoo -- the electron configuration of copper.” At Lestrade’s blank expression, he sighed. “It’s a kind of notation for identifying elements of the periodic table. The letters and numbers were arranged in a flying geese formation. Just above the malleolus.”
“Strange choice. She seemed more the butterfly type,” Lestrade said.
“I thought it was an arrow at first. I didn’t see it up close until—“ Sherlock broke off, having no desire to further evoke an image of Amber grunting on the floor, all blood and shit and —
“No tattoo,” Lyerla confirmed.
“So it isn’t Amber Call,” Sgt. Donovan said. “But we’re supposed to think it is? Is it possible she--?”
“No. Don’t be stupid,” Sherlock snapped. “Amber didn’t kill someone so she could disappear. She’s been forced to disappear herself.” Before anyone could ask why, words began tumbling out of him. He paced back and forth as if trying to catch up with rapidly firing neurons. “It was a strange choice wasn’t it? Why copper? Copper, copper. Copper is the metal of Venus – no, she was self-declared Christian. Girly goddess worship quite out of the question. Copper. Malleable, ductile, excellent conductor of heat and electricity, low chemical reactivity. Lovely patina. Too artsy. Amber? Amber. Eminently practical. Smart, dedicated. Reading advanced chemistry at university. Cancer research using DNA micro arrays. Mother dead. Father absent. Unknown? No. She knows who he is. Two passports. Father’s a British national--” He sucked in a breath. “Oh. Of course. I’m an idiot.”
“Finally,” Donovan muttered. A couple of the police constables chuckled.
But they were officially beneath his notice now or at least off his radar. He’d caught the thread at last and ran with it. Literally. “I didn’t think she was in any immediate danger. That’s changed!” he cried, breaking into a trot.
“Who? Amber? Why? What’s changed? Damn it Sherlock—“
Lestrade started jogging after him, pissed off about it. Sherlock turned and ran backwards saying, “I think your body might be Madeleine Copper’s granddaughter, Alison!” Forward again, he took off at a dead run. “I’ll meet you a Bart’s. Get Dr Hooper to do the exam—“ he shouted over his shoulder. And spared them no more thought.
If he was right (and he was) Amber was also the granddaughter of Madeleine Copper, widow of W. M. Copper of Copper-Harriman Industries. Harriman not Harman. Amber’s children were heirs to a fortune. Amber was never meant to know that, of course.
An inheritance scam. Lovely.
John’s reaction had made Sherlock unable to think properly, to see the evidence, to draw appropriate inferences and conclusions. John’s emotions were distressing and hurtful and hurt. He’d wasted too much time trying to navigate and outmaneuver an emotional shit storm, when he could have avoided it altogether. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Author: Kalima.
Rating: R for situations and language.
Notes: No babies were harmed in the making of this fic. Yeah, I’m going to need more chapters.
Summary: A pregnant woman wants Sherlock Holmes to find her missing employers and then goes missing herself. Sherlock may be able to solve the puzzle, but he might never be able to make it right.
(Hopefully I've caught all the mistakes, if not I'm sure y'all will tell me.)
Part 1 here: http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278139.html
Part 2 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278624.html
Part 3 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/280561.html
Sherlock Holmes did not believe in premonitions. Premonitory signs were data transmitted through the sensorium and kinesthesia, unconsciously perceived by inattentive minds. All the obvious connections between sensation and observation were therefore missed, dismissed or ignored. Sherlock only ignored things he chose to ignore.
Which is why, after Lestrade rang off, he interpreted the strange shudder running up his spine and out the top of his head as the sign of a flu coming on. He grabbed a handful of vitamins, gulped them down with tepid tea and was out the door.
“That won’t do any good,” John pointed out, hurriedly pulling on a jacket as he followed him into the street. “And will likely only make you nauseous.”
“You told me I should take vitamin supplements.” Sherlock’s voice contained an element of petulant accusation, prepared in advance for the failure of vitamin supplements and John’s advice.
“With your toast! As a preventative measure. To make up for the many ways you abuse your body. If you’ve caught a bug, vitamins won’t help much after the fact.”
“Not terribly useful to me then,” Sherlock said, and hailed a taxi.
John tried a different tact. “Look. I have some oscillococcium back in the flat if you really think you’re coming down with something. Worth a shot.”
But a cab was already at the kerb and Sherlock was already climbing in. With a resigned sigh, John got in after him. Sherlock gave the address to the driver and settled back into the seat, his eyes scanning the traffic.
“She must have been very attractive,” he said after a moment.
John, accustomed to, but still never quite following, the abrupt segues and weird nonsequiturs of his flat mate, asked, “Who? The victim?” Was there a victim? He realized he had no idea, not even of where they were going.
“The rep that gave you the samples of oscillococcium. Unless you’ve suddenly become a proponent of homeopathy?” John could feel his face heating up. “Doubtless, she extolled the virtues and amazing properties of a bacterium found in duck offal. You probably agreed to try it yourself and let her know, thereby establishing a sound reason to contact her via her mobile number on the card she gave you.” He cocked an eye John’s direction, “I assume she was quite the hottie. Pharma reps usually are.”
“Pharmaceutical sales reps don’t push Newton’s complexes and Bach flower remedies as a rule, but yes, she was quite…fit.”
Sherlock’s smile was bright but fleeting, quickly giving way to impatience and a loud complaint, “Come on, man! We could have walked there faster!”
***
Sgt Donovan escorted them past the cordon. She seemed uncharacteristically subdued, didn’t address him as “freak” even once. Sherlock was fairly certain this was not because she’d been asked to be polite to him. It was something about the crime scene caused her strange quiescence.
“Sewer flusher found the body,” she said as they approached the huddle of activity. Sherlock saw the worker in question, hunched and visibly shaken as a young PC tried to take a preliminary statement. “Poor guy thought he’d located a fat berg. I guess they get a lot of those along this part of the Embankment. Fat bergs I mean. Not bodies.”
Sewer bodies were challenging, so many variables to factor in. He’d been quite looking forward to it. The flutter in his stomach became a queasy churning.
John nudged his arm. “You all right?”
“The vitamins. Don’t make me say it.”
John chuckled. “Yeah. Okay. It’s enough that you know I was right. Emergency techs usually keep biscuits or crackers in the ambulance. I’ll go find you something.” He headed toward the flashing lights.
Near the manhole, down which the poor unlucky sewer worker had discovered a body instead of a mountain of congealed illegally dumped cooking oil and wet-wipes, Lestrade was on his phone, turned away from Sherlock in partial profile. A couple of other sewer workers outfitted in white and yellow coveralls and hip waders were standing near it as well. Forensics Services people, in similar protective gear, wandered to and fro with take away cups of tea or coffee. Lyerla was the forensics Scene of Crime officer, which was a relief. He didn’t feel up to a confrontation with Anderson. Lyerla hadn’t worked with him much and so didn’t actively hate him yet.
Still, all the milling about meant they were either waiting on him with growing resentment, or they thought they’d finished, when in fact they were likely milling about all over the important bits.
Lestrade pocketed his mobile, and seeing Sherlock standing apart from the action, raised a hand and a querulous brow. The milling people moved and shifted and suddenly he had a clear view of a body wrapped in a plastic sheet and laid on a tarp on the paving, a body that was supposed to be in the sewer.
What the hell?
“What the hell?” he said hotly, closing the distance between Lestrade and himself in a couple of long strides. “You’ve hauled it out already? Why am I here? Why are you wasting my time? How can I work if I’m not able to examine the body where it was found, how it was found?”
Lestrade drew back with a grimace of irritation. His unflappable good nature was stretched thin today. “Which question would you like me to answer first?”
“Why am I here?”
“You’re here because I thought you might recognize the victim.” Lestrade’s brows furrowed and he cocked his head. “I thought I made that clear on the phone.”
“You did not.”
“You probably stopped listening after ‘body in the sewer.’ Anyway….” He made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the tarp. Lyerla, crouched beside the body, turned her head away briefly to take a deep breath before peeling back the plastic sheet.
The coat was filthy, soaked through and torn up, but still recognizably red wool under the muck, a red wool trench coat with besom pockets. Buttons missing, one still hanging by a thread he knew wouldn’t match. The face was bloated, distorted and swaths of skin had been blasted away by water pressure. Black hair was strewn across the raw, naked planes of cheeks and chin like clumps of oily sea weed. He gulped so loud he could hear it echoing inside his head.
“Oh, well,” he said softly, “that’s – that’s not good.”
“Is it her? The one I sent your way? Do you recognize her?”
“I – I recognize the coat.” A terrible anxiety washed over him quite suddenly -- John mustn’t see this. Don’t let him see. Not until I can--
“Oh my God.” Too late. “Oh no, oh my God...”
“John—“
The good doctor was stood, bag of crisps clenched in one fist, the fingers of his other hand curled against the side of his gaping mouth. Sherlock could almost hear the man’s heart hammering at his ribcage. John tore his gaze away from the body to fix on Sherlock an expression so raw that the ever-so-brilliant consulting detective stumbled back a step as if he’d been shoved hard in the chest.
“I thought you— you said— I asked you to find out -- to make sure she was okay. Jesus. Jesus Christ.” He leaned forward suddenly, bracing his hands on his knees like he was going to be sick.
John had seen bodies blown to bits on the battlefield. He’d seen the dead in all states of disarray and decomposition. How could this make him ill? How could this be worse? “John, listen to me. This isn’t Amber, I know it looks as if it might be her—“
“Sherlock…” Lestrade’s vocal tone was the same one he used when breaking terrible news to the families of murder victims. “She had a wallet with ID on her.”
Sgt. Donovan stepped into Sherlock’s space. She held up a crinkled, sodden, plastic-coated driving license between a nitrile covered thumb and forefinger. Her mouth was pinched with grim distaste yet she still managed to seem smug about it.
“I wasn’t sure if this was the same woman, “Lestrade said, “The name seemed familiar but I didn’t take her report. Hell, I just happened to be walking by on my way to lunch when I heard the accent. We couldn’t do much for her so I gave her your number. Of course, the woman I saw was really pregnant and this one…isn’t. Thought maybe she’d come to see you… which…” He looked from one man to the other, “she did…apparently. We weren’t sure if we needed to be looking for the remains of an infant or…or what.” Lestrade looked away scratching at the back of his neck.
Sherlock thought he understood this reticence. “No one wants to look for dead babies. I get it. There’s no need to put anyone through that.”
“Why do you say that?” John croaked out. He cleared his voice and when he spoke again there was a combative edge to it. “She came to see you. She gave birth to twins the same night. They might very well need to look for the remains of infants down there.”
“No. Really. They don’t. Infants are rarely the victims of murder, in any case.”
“Except by their mummies and daddies,” Donovan pointed out.
“This woman didn’t dive into the sewers, babes in arms. You’d just be wasting time and resources--“
“Jesus,” Donovan muttered, shaking her head.
“Should I have paid you?” John asked suddenly.
“What?”
“I fucking asked you, and you said you would. Would you have done it if I’d offered to pay you?”
The question shocked the air from his lungs. He couldn’t get words to come out of his mouth for several long excruciating seconds. “I rarely accept remuneration for my work, as you know, often to your consternation.”
“You wanted to charge her.”
“No. I didn’t want to deal with her at all. You asked me to and I said I would. You didn’t exactly follow up on my progress though, did you? Too busy banging your married girlfriend as I recall.”
There was a very very awkward silence in which the only sounds were traffic and people clearing their throats or tittering nervously. Premonitions are premonitions because they’re only realized in hindsight, when all the subtle clues and warning signs you blithely ignored come back to bite you in the arse.
John had gone stone still, his default response when under extreme stress. “Separated,” he said coolly. “She’d been separated for eight months.”
Sherlock knew he was looking at the same man who’d shot a murderous cabbie through a window from a building across the way, yet he kept talking. “Does that knowledge alleviate some of the guilt you’re feeling right now?”
“Fuck’s sake, Sherlock,” Lestrade said, rubbing at the furrow between his brows.
“No.” John said. “Is that how you’re justifying it to yourself? Amber’s dead because I wasn’t there to remind you to-- what? Do your chores? Keep your promises?”
“I don’t need justification! Do you know why? Because that—“ He thrust an arm in the direction of the body, “That. Is. Not. Amber.”
Relief, hope, something of the kind, flickered briefly on John’s face before despair washed over him again. Even if he wanted to believe it, it was clear from his demeanor that he couldn’t get past his own sense of responsibility. “It’s somebody though, Sherlock. Somebody in her coat, carrying her ID.”
“No one you know.”
“That doesn’t – that’s not even –“ He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyelids. “Ah, Christ, yeah, I can’t – I can’t do this. I’m going home.” And he started walking.
The clenching in Sherlock’s gut intensified at the finality in John’s words and actions. “What just happened?”
To his credit, Lestrade did not give pause to dramatic exits. “What makes you think this isn’t Amber Call?”
After a moment, Sherlock dragged his focus back to the matter at hand. “Um…well, one very important piece of physical evidence.” Which I would have pointed out sooner if John hadn’t said what he said. “Amber had a tattoo on her right ankle, an unusual tattoo -- the electron configuration of copper.” At Lestrade’s blank expression, he sighed. “It’s a kind of notation for identifying elements of the periodic table. The letters and numbers were arranged in a flying geese formation. Just above the malleolus.”
“Strange choice. She seemed more the butterfly type,” Lestrade said.
“I thought it was an arrow at first. I didn’t see it up close until—“ Sherlock broke off, having no desire to further evoke an image of Amber grunting on the floor, all blood and shit and —
“No tattoo,” Lyerla confirmed.
“So it isn’t Amber Call,” Sgt. Donovan said. “But we’re supposed to think it is? Is it possible she--?”
“No. Don’t be stupid,” Sherlock snapped. “Amber didn’t kill someone so she could disappear. She’s been forced to disappear herself.” Before anyone could ask why, words began tumbling out of him. He paced back and forth as if trying to catch up with rapidly firing neurons. “It was a strange choice wasn’t it? Why copper? Copper, copper. Copper is the metal of Venus – no, she was self-declared Christian. Girly goddess worship quite out of the question. Copper. Malleable, ductile, excellent conductor of heat and electricity, low chemical reactivity. Lovely patina. Too artsy. Amber? Amber. Eminently practical. Smart, dedicated. Reading advanced chemistry at university. Cancer research using DNA micro arrays. Mother dead. Father absent. Unknown? No. She knows who he is. Two passports. Father’s a British national--” He sucked in a breath. “Oh. Of course. I’m an idiot.”
“Finally,” Donovan muttered. A couple of the police constables chuckled.
But they were officially beneath his notice now or at least off his radar. He’d caught the thread at last and ran with it. Literally. “I didn’t think she was in any immediate danger. That’s changed!” he cried, breaking into a trot.
“Who? Amber? Why? What’s changed? Damn it Sherlock—“
Lestrade started jogging after him, pissed off about it. Sherlock turned and ran backwards saying, “I think your body might be Madeleine Copper’s granddaughter, Alison!” Forward again, he took off at a dead run. “I’ll meet you a Bart’s. Get Dr Hooper to do the exam—“ he shouted over his shoulder. And spared them no more thought.
If he was right (and he was) Amber was also the granddaughter of Madeleine Copper, widow of W. M. Copper of Copper-Harriman Industries. Harriman not Harman. Amber’s children were heirs to a fortune. Amber was never meant to know that, of course.
An inheritance scam. Lovely.
John’s reaction had made Sherlock unable to think properly, to see the evidence, to draw appropriate inferences and conclusions. John’s emotions were distressing and hurtful and hurt. He’d wasted too much time trying to navigate and outmaneuver an emotional shit storm, when he could have avoided it altogether. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
