Gene Expression in Amber - Part 7
Jun. 12th, 2012 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalima1955Title: GENE EXPRESSION IN AMBER part 7
Author: Kalima.
Rating: R for situations and language.
Notes: This story is now complete. Enjoy!
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 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278139.html
Part 2 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278624.html
Part 3 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/280561.html
Part 4 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/281598.html
Part 5 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/283013.html
Part 6 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/283656.html
The driver of the SUV was a tall man, good-looking (or certainly thought of himself as such), with close-cropped light brown hair and dressed in what Sherlock called “expensive casual.” Clearly preoccupied and yet awfully twitchy, the man darted quick nervous glances at parked cars and news stands and the faces of uni kids with backpacks as he moved purposefully towards his destination.
John followed from a discreet distance, pretending to be deeply engrossed in whatever was on the screen of his smartphone. He even tried to text Sherlock but quickly discovered he couldn’t text and walk at the same time – not without running into lampposts anyway. Still, he didn’t have to follow for long. The driver of the SUV entered the very house wherein John suspected a Russian sex slave, a drunken nanny, or Amber Call was being held captive.
He ducked behind the skip in the hotel alley across the way (once a popular youth hostel and now being converted to tiny expensive flats), and sent Sherlock a proper text apprising him of the situation. He didn’t count on a response. Sherlock, for all that he claimed to prefer texts, was no more liable to answer those than he was to get on the line and say hello. Just as John was giving text a try one more time the front door of number twelve opened and another man came out. This one was about John’s height, with dark hair, trendy specs and a leather coat. Scarf flung over his shoulder, hands tucked in his coat pockets; the man looked about for a moment before strolled jauntily off in the direction of Warwick Street. A few seconds later a car pulled away from a kerb.
Once upon a time John would not have recognized that the car was, in fact, following the man, and that it was likely an unmarked surveillance car. Once upon a time he would not have been around the sort of people who might be followed by an unmarked surveillance car. He noted with amusement that the SUV driver had completely missed it.
John pocketed his mobile. Clearly Sherlock and D.I. Lestrade had the situation well in hand.
***
Sherlock made the cabbie wait while he ran upstairs to fetch the charger for his mobile.
It had taken less time than he’d anticipated getting back to London, but the cab ride seemed interminable and by the time he arrived at Scotland Yard Jason Lebowitz had been stewing in his own juices for nearly two hours. Lestrade had been calling and texting him for at least one of those hours and looked decidedly pissed off. Sherlock merely held up his Blackberry and the cord for the charger. Lestrade grunted irritably and pointed at an outlet. Through the two-way mirror they could see Jason fidgeting at the table by himself. He’d pulled out his mobile once or twice but thought better of it each time.
“Three cups of tea, no toilet breaks,” Lestrade told Sherlock. He nodded at Donovan. “Sergeant here’s been warming him up.”
Donovan flicked a glance at Sherlock. “He’s admitted to using an alias. But he’s an actor. They do that.”
“What else?”
“Oh, all kinds of fascinating things. His maternal grandparents were anti-Semitic arseholes which has something to do with the name change. His mother is on one of those Eat Pray Love junkets flitting about the globe trying to find herself through sexual encounters with younger men – his words not mine. He played Silurian Number Four on an episode of Doctor Who—“ Sherlock made a gruff sound of impatience. Donovan smirked then said, “He wants to know why he’s here, obviously. He’s getting antsy, ready to assert his rights.”
“Hello?” Jason called from inside the room as if on cue. They all turned to look at him through the two-way. “This is getting ridiculous,” he grumped. “What’s this all about anyway? I’d like to get out of here. Hello? Seriously. I really need to piss.”
Lestrade gestured to a PC who trotted over. “Escort him to the toilets and bring him right back here.”
Sherlock glanced over at Lestrade’s notes and all the information he himself had found and given to him. “The lawyer in the states. Megan Forsmark. Lead with that.”
***
Amber had distracted Bret with the babies at first. Ten minutes of chatter about all the amazing things they were doing now. Which admittedly wasn’t much at eight weeks, but he seemed genuinely distressed by how much they’d changed since he’d seen them last. She took the opportunity of both his distraction and distress to make a dash for the open door.
She didn’t get far and it was clear he wasn’t going to buy her backwoods country girl act again. He dragged her up the basement steps into the living room, tied her to a dining chair, and poured the juice down her throat, roughly mopping the remains off her face and pyjama top afterwards like she was a naughty child.
He was in the kitchen now, lacing baby bottles with brandy. When she’d seen what he’d meant to do with the brandy, she totally freaked out, begged him, threatened him, struggled against the nylon rope until it cut into her arms and breasts. He’d got right up in her face and screamed, “They’re my children! Mine! You’ve got nothing to do with how they’ll be raised.”
Tears burst out of her eyes and she started to sob and couldn’t seem to stop. He’d pulled back from her then, straightening up, smoothing his shirt down and his hair back. Tried to assure her this was just something the British did differently which she knew was bullshit. “My mother gave me a bit of brandy in milk when I was teething,” he insisted, “and I turned out all right.”
The irony in the statement was lost on neither of them. He’d left the room in a hurry.
Down in the basement, she could hear the babies’ cries changing from displeasure to outrage to anguish. They were only hungry, but the sounds of their need pierced her heart, made her frantic with her own helplessness. It was hard not to struggle even though that would make the drug work all the quicker. Her upper torso and upper arms were bound by the nylon rope wrapped round and round the back of the chair. She could move her forearms a bit, and her hands were free, and she could kick. A good kick in the crotch if she aimed just right. Then what?
Ligature marks, rope fibres – all of that would be easily detectable with a post mortem even if the drugs were not. Her post mortem, she reminded herself. Yeah, yeah, she’d be with Jesus, but Jason’s and Bret’s stupidity would be of little comfort to her in the after life. They’d go to prison. Piper and Henry - her children - would go into foster care. It could take years for all the legal issues to be settled before they could be put up for adoption, and even if they were, they probably wouldn’t end up together.
This was all presupposing her body was ever found, of course.
The drapes were drawn, the living room lit by a single lamp. Bret’s jacket was on the sofa. She might be able to reach it with her foot and drag it over. He usually kept his cell phone in one of the pockets. She figured she had fifteen minutes at most before the drug rendered any wilful action impossible.
A door creaked and she heard Bret’s footsteps descending to the basement. She hoped to God he wasn’t going to just prop the bottles into their mouths. They were still tiny, they could choke or get too much air in their tummies or smother when the pillows he used to prop the bottles somehow managed to cover their tiny noses and mouths –
All right, okay, calm down Amber, focus. The other very important reason she hoped he didn’t prop the bottles was because he’d be back upstairs that much sooner.
She stretched out a leg, got her foot under the jacket and lifted it off the sofa, dragging it until she could raise her foot high enough for her fingers to grasp the fabric and tug it onto her lap. The phone was a heavy solid weight on the top of her thigh and she carefully manoeuvred it out of the inside pocket.
She’d already decided on a text message, one that she hoped Bret would not link to her if he should check his message log. She had one phone number fixed in her head, the only phone number belonging to anyone in England that she knew by heart, and only because she’d texted it a gazillion times a few weeks ago in a hyper-hormonal frenzy.
She composed the text, pressed “send” then pushed the phone into a pocket, hooked the jacket over her foot again and flung it back onto the sofa. Keys and coins rattled noisily as it landed – not in the same place.
Mere seconds passed before she regretted the message. Stupid long shot. Why, why, why did she choose that? She should have called 911 or whatever it was here, oh God, why couldn’t she remember what it was? Jesus! She stretched out her leg again. At the hotel? Didn’t they have emergency numbers posted by the phone? 999? Maybe? She had no idea where she was, but they could probably reverse the call. Triangulate and figure out where she was. Couldn’t they do that here?
She heard Bret coming back upstairs. He’d propped the damned bottles, the bastard!
She felt her chin sink into her chest, her head so heavy. Even her tears came out slow. She’d blown her chance. The message she’d sent was too obscure. It relied on too many variables, the assumption of shared knowledge, unsubstantiated actions, blind faith –
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1. Yeah. Great. Swell. Thanks for that, Heavenly Father.
She sucked in a breath and pushed it out in a shaky exhalation.
Fine, I’ll give faith another shot. Nothing I can do about it now anyway.
When Bret returned he didn’t seem to notice the altered position of his jacket. In fact, he pushed it away absently so he could sit on the couch opposite her. He took a swallow from the brandy decanter in his hand, grimaced, then looped the toe of his boot under the rungs of her chair and jerked it around, scraping it across the hardwood floor so they were now face to face.
Her ears buzzed, her vision blurred. Terror receded like the tide – still present, just farther away drifting aimlessly under the water.
He looked at her and she forced herself to look back, to look at him for as long as she could so he’d know that she’d remember him even into death. That she would haunt him.
“You remind me so much of Alison,” he said suddenly.
Alison?
And then he started to cry.
***
“So what’s this all about then?”
“As we’ve said already Mr Le Beau,” Sgt Donovan began, “we’re investigating the suspicious death of an American woman named Amber Call. Her body was recovered from the sewers a few days ago.”
One didn’t have to be trained in psychology or interrogation procedures to note Jason’s reaction.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Well, see, the thing is, a lawyer with a firm in America, specifically in the state of Alabama, she claims she was retained by you to broker an arrangement with Amber Call to be a surrogate for the children of you and your partner, Bret Harriman.”
Jason swallowed loudly. “He’s not—he’s not—“
“He’s not your partner is he?”
“No.”
“He’s your brother-in-law, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why you chose to represent yourselves to Megan Forsmark as domestic partners?”
“Er, should I- should I be asking for a solicitor ?”
“You haven’t been accused of a crime, Jason. Unless … do you have something to get off your chest? Do you wish to confess to the murder of Amber Call?”
“She isn’t dead!”
Lestrade punched the air. Sherlock murmured, “I told you he’d fold in no time.”
“We recovered her body,” Donovan was saying. “We’re just waiting for dental records to confirm it.”
“Oh God, oh God. Yeah, um, it’s not her, the one you found, it’s not Amber.”
“I see. Do you know who it is then?”
Jason laid his head onto his folded arms on the table, and nodded.
They’d have a search warrant in under an hour at this rate. Sherlock’s Blackberry was still charging so he checked messages without unplugging it, scrolling past all those from Lestrade. There were two from John and one from a number he didn’t recognize. He almost deleted that one automatically. A glance told him it was probably a wrong number, full of the text-speak he loathed. Spell the damned words you lazy brats. But a closer glance brought a surge of glee— “LEAVING SOON!!!” the message read, “C13H16CINO HOPE 2CUB4IGO BRO.”
Then he cursed, a lot, a long string of curses that actually managed to shock hardened veterans of the Metropolitan Police Service. Before anyone could ask what was up, he tore open the door to the interrogation room, slapped his hands on the table (with his Blackberry still in one of them), and leaned across into the startled, terrified face of Jason Lebowitz.
“She’s there right now you little shit! Did you think being here would provide you an alibi for actual murder?”
“What the hell, Freak?” Donovan said.
Sherlock straightened abruptly and whirled around, waving the device in his hand. “Amber sent me a message over an hour ago. They’re going to kill her tonight. She’s been dosed with ketamine. You need to send a car to his house now. Right now.” They stared at him, mouths open. “NOW.” He didn’t wait to see if they moved, but sped from the room and out of the building and ran until his shouts for a taxi finally got him one.
***
Amber could still feel things, but everything she felt was heavy and soft and hovering somewhere above or beside her – the light, the dark, hunger, her fingers, the rope, Bret’s face snuffling at her breasts, the puff of moist warm breath against her bare skin, his hot tears as he cried for Alison. His wife. Who was dead. Not the sister who died in a car accident that Amber resembled. No. His wife. He was pretending she was Alison now. Making her be his wife. His hand rubbing between her legs told her that. It didn’t feel terrible. Nothing felt as terrible as it should. Her conscious mind was already disconnecting and that was okay because she needed it to go look in on the babies. With a little tug she felt her consciousness pull away altogether. It went to the kitchen first and looked through the cupboards, and looked in the fridge. Looking for something to eat, probably. Then it went to the basement.
***
A call from Sherlock had John rushing from the tavern and yet another plate of food he’d paid for but not got to eat. Back just in time to see a cab pull up to the kerb and Sherlock leap out. John raced after him not bothering to ask what was going on.
Despite his air of terrible urgency and the sound of sirens getting ever louder and closer, Sherlock Holmes took a moment to compose himself, standing there at the front door to Number Twelve. He took a measured breath and blew it out slowly, then knocked on the door and, in a voice not his own, shouted “Oi Bret! Open up, I forgot my key.”
Long breathless seconds passed and then the door cracked open a sliver. Sherlock rammed his shoulder against it, and was inside in a blink. John stepped in behind him and immediately saw the tall man, Bret Harriman presumably, scuttling backwards on the floor of the entry with Sherlock looming over him.
“Stay where you are, Mr Harriman,” the detective said coolly. “The police will be with you shortly.” And indeed, Lestrade entered moments later with two PCs. John was already in the front room by then. Sherlock knew from the tenor of his vocal outrage that he’d found Amber.
“Jesus,” John muttered, trying to untie the ropes. “That bastard, that bastard.”
Amber, tied to a chair, head lolling to the side, her pyjama bottoms around her ankles.
She wasn’t dead.
“We’ll need to cut the ropes, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock called over his shoulder as he went to the kitchen. He ignored the second chorus of outrage, squelched his own trepidation and ducked his head as he went down the steps to the basement.
Though much of the refurbishment had not been completed, the bedroom was done, carpeted in dark blue wool, walls painted bright white. There was a bed, a microwave oven, bottles, nappies, piles of baby clothes, Amber’s own clothes spilling out of her ugly yellow plaid cases on the floor – and one cot containing two babies, both sleeping deeply. Perhaps too deeply, he thought, as he peered in. Someone had attempted to feed them with bottles propped on rolled up towels. The bottles were mostly drained, some of the liquid spilled into the towels and the bedding and onto the babies themselves. But they’d drunk their fill it seemed … or they’d drunk enough to keep them quiet. He leaned in sniffing. Picked up a bottle and shook a few drops onto his hand, sniffing again then tasting –
Or they were drunk. He gave one of the infants a gentle prod. Nothing. He grasped a little arm and wriggled it a bit. Still nothing.
Lestrade appeared at the door just as Sherlock was lifting one out of the cot. Its face contorted and a snorting snuffling sound came out of its mouth. Sherlock let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“Thank God,” Lestrade sighed. “Ambulance is on the way.” He leaned in and picked up the other baby, cradling it in one arm like a pro. “You need to support the head a bit more,” he told Sherlock, demonstrating. He had three of his own at home so he should know. In a rare show of humility, Sherlock conceded to his expertise.
Later, as Amber and her infants were being loaded into the ambulance she saw him and called out. He was surprised she was capable of that much. “There’s my pretend brother,” she said, making a grab for his hand. “You got my message.” Her words were a bit slurred, and she had trouble focusing but otherwise the effects of the drug seemed to be wearing off.
“I did. Very clever.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t remember 999.”
He laughed. “But you could remember my number and the chemical formula for ketamine.”
“You know how it is,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut.
“I do. Yes.” He squeezed her hand then placed it on the stretcher. “I do.”
***
He tried to sneak out the back way but Mrs Hudson caught him.
“Oh good, there you are. The poor girl had a time trying to get the buggy up those stairs, so I invited them in here. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss them, Sherlock. They’ve got so big.”
“Have they?” he said, feigning interest badly.
Mrs Hudson took him at his word not his tone. “Yes. They’re plump and sassy. Come on, come on, they’re only babies and they’ve got more patience than you already.” She latched onto his upper arm in a grip somewhere between a vice and a viper, and dragged him into her sitting room. John was already in the comfortable chair. Amber sat on the sofa lost in a sea of hideous cabbage rose upholstery. She looked happy and healthy, with her pony-tailed hair, rosy cheeks and sensible trainers on her feet. One baby sat upon her lap – the girl one judging by the bow glued to its mostly bald head -- and the boy one (wearing miniscule Levis and a tiny plaid shirt) still in his seat in the buggy, sucking noisily on a dummy.
A dummy!
“Dear God. Why have you started them on those?” Sherlock waved his pointing finger at the offending rubber thing in the boy baby’s mouth.
Amber’s big grin at seeing Sherlock drooped a little, but she offered a demonstration of her reasoning simply enough. She reached into the buggy and pulled the plug out of the baby’s mouth. Startled by the effrontery of her action, then properly outraged, the baby scrunched up his eyes and opened his mouth and began to wail. Amber looked at Sherlock. His expression of contrition was all the confirmation she needed. She reinserted the dummy into the angry mouth of her son and said, “You’re a grumpy baby today aren’t you, Henry? Just like uncle Sherlock.”
The more Sherlock insisted Amber not refer to him in any sort of familial way, the more she did it, almost on purpose, just to annoy him. He carefully ignored her. He noticed John trying not to laugh and ignored him as well.
“Look, baby girl,” Amber said close to her daughter’s ear, “That’s the man that brought you into this world.”
John wiggled his fingers “hi” at the baby. “Sherlock mentioned something about you doing your graduate work at Cambridge come spring?”
“It’s ranked super high for its chemistry department. And I don’t even have to worry about the money it costs. The families are taking care of everything. They’re even buying me a little house. And I have a nanny.” Even the word made her giddy. She said it again, “A freaking nanny!” She jostled the baby on her knee sing-song-ing “nanny” over and over again.
“What brings you into London then? Other then the pleasure of our company?”
Amber tensed slightly, the baby on her lap spit up and she fussed for a moment, wiping and adjusting bows.
“It’s a hearing, John,” Sherlock explained quietly. “To set the court dates for a criminal trial.”
“Oh. Oh, but you didn’t need be here for that, surely?”
“The lawyers said I didn’t, but Jason’s going to cop a plea or plea down or whatever y’all call it here, and I don’t want Bret to pull that nonsense.”
“Too right,” Mrs. Hudson declared. Her brow furrowed. “I still don’t understand how it was all supposed to work. The papers made it sound like you and that Alison could’ve been twins, but nowadays they’ve got DNA tests and the like. They would have been found out even if you were the spitting image of Alison Harriman.”
“Only because Amber came to me,” Sherlock said. “If they’d have stayed in contact with her, kept her from panicking like she did, they might never have been caught, especially if it were based on identification of the bodies. DNA testing is quite costly, and isn’t done under most circumstances. Usually positive ID by family members suffices. Alison’s body had Amber’s personal identification on it. And Amber here would have been identified by Bret and Jason. They were the only ones available at the time. Jason and Alison’s father was in treatment for pancreatic cancer in Geneva, and their mother was in Brazil—”
Amber pursed her lips and made a sound of disapproval. “She’s horrible. I know she’s had a terrible loss and it’s not very Christian of me to think that, but she’s been a total bitch to me. She acts like I’m the one who tried to con the family.”
Sherlock chuckled. “If you look at it from her perspective though, maybe you can understand her frustration. Nicola Copper marries a Jewish man for love and as a result is basically cut out of her parents’ will. Her children are provided with trust funds but that’s it. Her twin brother, on the other hand, runs off to America to become a rockabilly guitarist, marries a girl so that he can stay in that country, gets her pregnant, abandons her, and yet he is set to inherit everything – oh. That reminds me. Here.” He withdrew an envelope from the pocket of his coat and handed it to her. “From the office of the medical examiner in Los Angeles.”
Amber took the envelope looked at it for a moment. “So he’s definitely dead. My father.”
“Yes. That’s why Megan Forsmark’s firm was originally retained. To determine the status of Nicolas Copper and inform him that he - and his direct descendents, of course - were the beneficiaries of your grandfather’s holdings in the company. If Nicolas was dead and also had no children, then it all went to the children of Jason and Alison.”
“Oh.”
“Right. You knew nothing about your father or his family. You looked enough like Alison that the resultant offspring would pass muster. Until Alison died unexpectedly – over a game of Scrabble at a cottage in the Lake District apparently – it probably would have worked to the benefit of all concerned.”
“Sherlock, really!” Mrs Hudson said.
“How do you reckon?” John echoed, equally shocked.
“What?” Sherlock said looking at them like they were mad. “Amber would have ended with a substantial sum, gone back to University, and these children would still be well cared for. More than well cared for.”
“Bret put his wife in a chest freezer,” Amber pointed out.
“To be fair she was already dead.”
“Okay, Sherlock,” John said clapping his hands together. “You’re done talking now. Look. Amber brought cookies she made herself, and Mrs. Hudson has tea.”
Later, full of Snickerdoodles and black tea, John, Amber, and Mrs Hudson exclaimed over the adorable doings of babies that couldn’t do much of anything but reach for objects they shouldn’t have and try to put those objects into their mouths. Sherlock did his best impersonation of disinterested teenager engrossed in a game of Angry Birds. But after twenty minutes he couldn’t take it anymore.
“When are you supposed to get your brain back again?”
“Shut up. They’re adorable and you know it. I mean, look at them. Plus they’re smart as whips. My genes are definitely the dominant ones.”
“No argument there,” Sherlock said with a snort of laughter.
“If you ever decide you wanna have kids I’m totally your go-to gal.”
Silence fell upon the room.
“Oh come on! Why’re y’all all so serious over here?”
Sherlock looked up from his Blackberry. “Well, you did just offer to bear my children. It’s a weirdly incestuous offer.”
“Good grief! We wouldn’t have actual sex! Just good old fashion medical procedures.”
“Technically, I believe I’d still have to have sex with myself and frankly, I’m just not attracted to me in that way.”
“Please,” John said, rolling his eyes. “You love yourself in every way.”
“Is this about the long showers again? Because I’ve explained it has to do with mild OCD.”
“Which you exhibit under no other circumstances—“
“I can cite plenty of examples of situation specific OCD.”
“Yeah, pull the other one why don’t you.”
Sherlock looked shifty-eyed.
“You hear that, children? Momma’s fake brother doesn’t want to be her baby-daddy.”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head, and rose to clear the tea things.
“Besides” Sherlock went on, “I’m sure any fruit of my loins could only be a harbinger of the coming apocalypse.”
“You’re not that evil. Anyway, I’d raise them. So they’d be brilliant and kind and probably save the world.”
“Or take it over and rule it absolutely,” John said, grabbing the last of Amber’s cookies from the tray before it vanished into Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen.
“Or that,” Sherlock conceded. He caught Amber’s eye and they both burst out laughing.
Author: Kalima.
Rating: R for situations and language.
Notes: This story is now complete. Enjoy!
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 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278139.html
Part 2 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/278624.html
Part 3 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/280561.html
Part 4 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/281598.html
Part 5 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/283013.html
Part 6 http://lordshiva.livejournal.com/283656.html
The driver of the SUV was a tall man, good-looking (or certainly thought of himself as such), with close-cropped light brown hair and dressed in what Sherlock called “expensive casual.” Clearly preoccupied and yet awfully twitchy, the man darted quick nervous glances at parked cars and news stands and the faces of uni kids with backpacks as he moved purposefully towards his destination.
John followed from a discreet distance, pretending to be deeply engrossed in whatever was on the screen of his smartphone. He even tried to text Sherlock but quickly discovered he couldn’t text and walk at the same time – not without running into lampposts anyway. Still, he didn’t have to follow for long. The driver of the SUV entered the very house wherein John suspected a Russian sex slave, a drunken nanny, or Amber Call was being held captive.
He ducked behind the skip in the hotel alley across the way (once a popular youth hostel and now being converted to tiny expensive flats), and sent Sherlock a proper text apprising him of the situation. He didn’t count on a response. Sherlock, for all that he claimed to prefer texts, was no more liable to answer those than he was to get on the line and say hello. Just as John was giving text a try one more time the front door of number twelve opened and another man came out. This one was about John’s height, with dark hair, trendy specs and a leather coat. Scarf flung over his shoulder, hands tucked in his coat pockets; the man looked about for a moment before strolled jauntily off in the direction of Warwick Street. A few seconds later a car pulled away from a kerb.
Once upon a time John would not have recognized that the car was, in fact, following the man, and that it was likely an unmarked surveillance car. Once upon a time he would not have been around the sort of people who might be followed by an unmarked surveillance car. He noted with amusement that the SUV driver had completely missed it.
John pocketed his mobile. Clearly Sherlock and D.I. Lestrade had the situation well in hand.
***
Sherlock made the cabbie wait while he ran upstairs to fetch the charger for his mobile.
It had taken less time than he’d anticipated getting back to London, but the cab ride seemed interminable and by the time he arrived at Scotland Yard Jason Lebowitz had been stewing in his own juices for nearly two hours. Lestrade had been calling and texting him for at least one of those hours and looked decidedly pissed off. Sherlock merely held up his Blackberry and the cord for the charger. Lestrade grunted irritably and pointed at an outlet. Through the two-way mirror they could see Jason fidgeting at the table by himself. He’d pulled out his mobile once or twice but thought better of it each time.
“Three cups of tea, no toilet breaks,” Lestrade told Sherlock. He nodded at Donovan. “Sergeant here’s been warming him up.”
Donovan flicked a glance at Sherlock. “He’s admitted to using an alias. But he’s an actor. They do that.”
“What else?”
“Oh, all kinds of fascinating things. His maternal grandparents were anti-Semitic arseholes which has something to do with the name change. His mother is on one of those Eat Pray Love junkets flitting about the globe trying to find herself through sexual encounters with younger men – his words not mine. He played Silurian Number Four on an episode of Doctor Who—“ Sherlock made a gruff sound of impatience. Donovan smirked then said, “He wants to know why he’s here, obviously. He’s getting antsy, ready to assert his rights.”
“Hello?” Jason called from inside the room as if on cue. They all turned to look at him through the two-way. “This is getting ridiculous,” he grumped. “What’s this all about anyway? I’d like to get out of here. Hello? Seriously. I really need to piss.”
Lestrade gestured to a PC who trotted over. “Escort him to the toilets and bring him right back here.”
Sherlock glanced over at Lestrade’s notes and all the information he himself had found and given to him. “The lawyer in the states. Megan Forsmark. Lead with that.”
***
Amber had distracted Bret with the babies at first. Ten minutes of chatter about all the amazing things they were doing now. Which admittedly wasn’t much at eight weeks, but he seemed genuinely distressed by how much they’d changed since he’d seen them last. She took the opportunity of both his distraction and distress to make a dash for the open door.
She didn’t get far and it was clear he wasn’t going to buy her backwoods country girl act again. He dragged her up the basement steps into the living room, tied her to a dining chair, and poured the juice down her throat, roughly mopping the remains off her face and pyjama top afterwards like she was a naughty child.
He was in the kitchen now, lacing baby bottles with brandy. When she’d seen what he’d meant to do with the brandy, she totally freaked out, begged him, threatened him, struggled against the nylon rope until it cut into her arms and breasts. He’d got right up in her face and screamed, “They’re my children! Mine! You’ve got nothing to do with how they’ll be raised.”
Tears burst out of her eyes and she started to sob and couldn’t seem to stop. He’d pulled back from her then, straightening up, smoothing his shirt down and his hair back. Tried to assure her this was just something the British did differently which she knew was bullshit. “My mother gave me a bit of brandy in milk when I was teething,” he insisted, “and I turned out all right.”
The irony in the statement was lost on neither of them. He’d left the room in a hurry.
Down in the basement, she could hear the babies’ cries changing from displeasure to outrage to anguish. They were only hungry, but the sounds of their need pierced her heart, made her frantic with her own helplessness. It was hard not to struggle even though that would make the drug work all the quicker. Her upper torso and upper arms were bound by the nylon rope wrapped round and round the back of the chair. She could move her forearms a bit, and her hands were free, and she could kick. A good kick in the crotch if she aimed just right. Then what?
Ligature marks, rope fibres – all of that would be easily detectable with a post mortem even if the drugs were not. Her post mortem, she reminded herself. Yeah, yeah, she’d be with Jesus, but Jason’s and Bret’s stupidity would be of little comfort to her in the after life. They’d go to prison. Piper and Henry - her children - would go into foster care. It could take years for all the legal issues to be settled before they could be put up for adoption, and even if they were, they probably wouldn’t end up together.
This was all presupposing her body was ever found, of course.
The drapes were drawn, the living room lit by a single lamp. Bret’s jacket was on the sofa. She might be able to reach it with her foot and drag it over. He usually kept his cell phone in one of the pockets. She figured she had fifteen minutes at most before the drug rendered any wilful action impossible.
A door creaked and she heard Bret’s footsteps descending to the basement. She hoped to God he wasn’t going to just prop the bottles into their mouths. They were still tiny, they could choke or get too much air in their tummies or smother when the pillows he used to prop the bottles somehow managed to cover their tiny noses and mouths –
All right, okay, calm down Amber, focus. The other very important reason she hoped he didn’t prop the bottles was because he’d be back upstairs that much sooner.
She stretched out a leg, got her foot under the jacket and lifted it off the sofa, dragging it until she could raise her foot high enough for her fingers to grasp the fabric and tug it onto her lap. The phone was a heavy solid weight on the top of her thigh and she carefully manoeuvred it out of the inside pocket.
She’d already decided on a text message, one that she hoped Bret would not link to her if he should check his message log. She had one phone number fixed in her head, the only phone number belonging to anyone in England that she knew by heart, and only because she’d texted it a gazillion times a few weeks ago in a hyper-hormonal frenzy.
She composed the text, pressed “send” then pushed the phone into a pocket, hooked the jacket over her foot again and flung it back onto the sofa. Keys and coins rattled noisily as it landed – not in the same place.
Mere seconds passed before she regretted the message. Stupid long shot. Why, why, why did she choose that? She should have called 911 or whatever it was here, oh God, why couldn’t she remember what it was? Jesus! She stretched out her leg again. At the hotel? Didn’t they have emergency numbers posted by the phone? 999? Maybe? She had no idea where she was, but they could probably reverse the call. Triangulate and figure out where she was. Couldn’t they do that here?
She heard Bret coming back upstairs. He’d propped the damned bottles, the bastard!
She felt her chin sink into her chest, her head so heavy. Even her tears came out slow. She’d blown her chance. The message she’d sent was too obscure. It relied on too many variables, the assumption of shared knowledge, unsubstantiated actions, blind faith –
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1. Yeah. Great. Swell. Thanks for that, Heavenly Father.
She sucked in a breath and pushed it out in a shaky exhalation.
Fine, I’ll give faith another shot. Nothing I can do about it now anyway.
When Bret returned he didn’t seem to notice the altered position of his jacket. In fact, he pushed it away absently so he could sit on the couch opposite her. He took a swallow from the brandy decanter in his hand, grimaced, then looped the toe of his boot under the rungs of her chair and jerked it around, scraping it across the hardwood floor so they were now face to face.
Her ears buzzed, her vision blurred. Terror receded like the tide – still present, just farther away drifting aimlessly under the water.
He looked at her and she forced herself to look back, to look at him for as long as she could so he’d know that she’d remember him even into death. That she would haunt him.
“You remind me so much of Alison,” he said suddenly.
Alison?
And then he started to cry.
***
“So what’s this all about then?”
“As we’ve said already Mr Le Beau,” Sgt Donovan began, “we’re investigating the suspicious death of an American woman named Amber Call. Her body was recovered from the sewers a few days ago.”
One didn’t have to be trained in psychology or interrogation procedures to note Jason’s reaction.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Well, see, the thing is, a lawyer with a firm in America, specifically in the state of Alabama, she claims she was retained by you to broker an arrangement with Amber Call to be a surrogate for the children of you and your partner, Bret Harriman.”
Jason swallowed loudly. “He’s not—he’s not—“
“He’s not your partner is he?”
“No.”
“He’s your brother-in-law, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why you chose to represent yourselves to Megan Forsmark as domestic partners?”
“Er, should I- should I be asking for a solicitor ?”
“You haven’t been accused of a crime, Jason. Unless … do you have something to get off your chest? Do you wish to confess to the murder of Amber Call?”
“She isn’t dead!”
Lestrade punched the air. Sherlock murmured, “I told you he’d fold in no time.”
“We recovered her body,” Donovan was saying. “We’re just waiting for dental records to confirm it.”
“Oh God, oh God. Yeah, um, it’s not her, the one you found, it’s not Amber.”
“I see. Do you know who it is then?”
Jason laid his head onto his folded arms on the table, and nodded.
They’d have a search warrant in under an hour at this rate. Sherlock’s Blackberry was still charging so he checked messages without unplugging it, scrolling past all those from Lestrade. There were two from John and one from a number he didn’t recognize. He almost deleted that one automatically. A glance told him it was probably a wrong number, full of the text-speak he loathed. Spell the damned words you lazy brats. But a closer glance brought a surge of glee— “LEAVING SOON!!!” the message read, “C13H16CINO HOPE 2CUB4IGO BRO.”
Then he cursed, a lot, a long string of curses that actually managed to shock hardened veterans of the Metropolitan Police Service. Before anyone could ask what was up, he tore open the door to the interrogation room, slapped his hands on the table (with his Blackberry still in one of them), and leaned across into the startled, terrified face of Jason Lebowitz.
“She’s there right now you little shit! Did you think being here would provide you an alibi for actual murder?”
“What the hell, Freak?” Donovan said.
Sherlock straightened abruptly and whirled around, waving the device in his hand. “Amber sent me a message over an hour ago. They’re going to kill her tonight. She’s been dosed with ketamine. You need to send a car to his house now. Right now.” They stared at him, mouths open. “NOW.” He didn’t wait to see if they moved, but sped from the room and out of the building and ran until his shouts for a taxi finally got him one.
***
Amber could still feel things, but everything she felt was heavy and soft and hovering somewhere above or beside her – the light, the dark, hunger, her fingers, the rope, Bret’s face snuffling at her breasts, the puff of moist warm breath against her bare skin, his hot tears as he cried for Alison. His wife. Who was dead. Not the sister who died in a car accident that Amber resembled. No. His wife. He was pretending she was Alison now. Making her be his wife. His hand rubbing between her legs told her that. It didn’t feel terrible. Nothing felt as terrible as it should. Her conscious mind was already disconnecting and that was okay because she needed it to go look in on the babies. With a little tug she felt her consciousness pull away altogether. It went to the kitchen first and looked through the cupboards, and looked in the fridge. Looking for something to eat, probably. Then it went to the basement.
***
A call from Sherlock had John rushing from the tavern and yet another plate of food he’d paid for but not got to eat. Back just in time to see a cab pull up to the kerb and Sherlock leap out. John raced after him not bothering to ask what was going on.
Despite his air of terrible urgency and the sound of sirens getting ever louder and closer, Sherlock Holmes took a moment to compose himself, standing there at the front door to Number Twelve. He took a measured breath and blew it out slowly, then knocked on the door and, in a voice not his own, shouted “Oi Bret! Open up, I forgot my key.”
Long breathless seconds passed and then the door cracked open a sliver. Sherlock rammed his shoulder against it, and was inside in a blink. John stepped in behind him and immediately saw the tall man, Bret Harriman presumably, scuttling backwards on the floor of the entry with Sherlock looming over him.
“Stay where you are, Mr Harriman,” the detective said coolly. “The police will be with you shortly.” And indeed, Lestrade entered moments later with two PCs. John was already in the front room by then. Sherlock knew from the tenor of his vocal outrage that he’d found Amber.
“Jesus,” John muttered, trying to untie the ropes. “That bastard, that bastard.”
Amber, tied to a chair, head lolling to the side, her pyjama bottoms around her ankles.
She wasn’t dead.
“We’ll need to cut the ropes, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock called over his shoulder as he went to the kitchen. He ignored the second chorus of outrage, squelched his own trepidation and ducked his head as he went down the steps to the basement.
Though much of the refurbishment had not been completed, the bedroom was done, carpeted in dark blue wool, walls painted bright white. There was a bed, a microwave oven, bottles, nappies, piles of baby clothes, Amber’s own clothes spilling out of her ugly yellow plaid cases on the floor – and one cot containing two babies, both sleeping deeply. Perhaps too deeply, he thought, as he peered in. Someone had attempted to feed them with bottles propped on rolled up towels. The bottles were mostly drained, some of the liquid spilled into the towels and the bedding and onto the babies themselves. But they’d drunk their fill it seemed … or they’d drunk enough to keep them quiet. He leaned in sniffing. Picked up a bottle and shook a few drops onto his hand, sniffing again then tasting –
Or they were drunk. He gave one of the infants a gentle prod. Nothing. He grasped a little arm and wriggled it a bit. Still nothing.
Lestrade appeared at the door just as Sherlock was lifting one out of the cot. Its face contorted and a snorting snuffling sound came out of its mouth. Sherlock let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“Thank God,” Lestrade sighed. “Ambulance is on the way.” He leaned in and picked up the other baby, cradling it in one arm like a pro. “You need to support the head a bit more,” he told Sherlock, demonstrating. He had three of his own at home so he should know. In a rare show of humility, Sherlock conceded to his expertise.
Later, as Amber and her infants were being loaded into the ambulance she saw him and called out. He was surprised she was capable of that much. “There’s my pretend brother,” she said, making a grab for his hand. “You got my message.” Her words were a bit slurred, and she had trouble focusing but otherwise the effects of the drug seemed to be wearing off.
“I did. Very clever.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t remember 999.”
He laughed. “But you could remember my number and the chemical formula for ketamine.”
“You know how it is,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut.
“I do. Yes.” He squeezed her hand then placed it on the stretcher. “I do.”
***
He tried to sneak out the back way but Mrs Hudson caught him.
“Oh good, there you are. The poor girl had a time trying to get the buggy up those stairs, so I invited them in here. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss them, Sherlock. They’ve got so big.”
“Have they?” he said, feigning interest badly.
Mrs Hudson took him at his word not his tone. “Yes. They’re plump and sassy. Come on, come on, they’re only babies and they’ve got more patience than you already.” She latched onto his upper arm in a grip somewhere between a vice and a viper, and dragged him into her sitting room. John was already in the comfortable chair. Amber sat on the sofa lost in a sea of hideous cabbage rose upholstery. She looked happy and healthy, with her pony-tailed hair, rosy cheeks and sensible trainers on her feet. One baby sat upon her lap – the girl one judging by the bow glued to its mostly bald head -- and the boy one (wearing miniscule Levis and a tiny plaid shirt) still in his seat in the buggy, sucking noisily on a dummy.
A dummy!
“Dear God. Why have you started them on those?” Sherlock waved his pointing finger at the offending rubber thing in the boy baby’s mouth.
Amber’s big grin at seeing Sherlock drooped a little, but she offered a demonstration of her reasoning simply enough. She reached into the buggy and pulled the plug out of the baby’s mouth. Startled by the effrontery of her action, then properly outraged, the baby scrunched up his eyes and opened his mouth and began to wail. Amber looked at Sherlock. His expression of contrition was all the confirmation she needed. She reinserted the dummy into the angry mouth of her son and said, “You’re a grumpy baby today aren’t you, Henry? Just like uncle Sherlock.”
The more Sherlock insisted Amber not refer to him in any sort of familial way, the more she did it, almost on purpose, just to annoy him. He carefully ignored her. He noticed John trying not to laugh and ignored him as well.
“Look, baby girl,” Amber said close to her daughter’s ear, “That’s the man that brought you into this world.”
John wiggled his fingers “hi” at the baby. “Sherlock mentioned something about you doing your graduate work at Cambridge come spring?”
“It’s ranked super high for its chemistry department. And I don’t even have to worry about the money it costs. The families are taking care of everything. They’re even buying me a little house. And I have a nanny.” Even the word made her giddy. She said it again, “A freaking nanny!” She jostled the baby on her knee sing-song-ing “nanny” over and over again.
“What brings you into London then? Other then the pleasure of our company?”
Amber tensed slightly, the baby on her lap spit up and she fussed for a moment, wiping and adjusting bows.
“It’s a hearing, John,” Sherlock explained quietly. “To set the court dates for a criminal trial.”
“Oh. Oh, but you didn’t need be here for that, surely?”
“The lawyers said I didn’t, but Jason’s going to cop a plea or plea down or whatever y’all call it here, and I don’t want Bret to pull that nonsense.”
“Too right,” Mrs. Hudson declared. Her brow furrowed. “I still don’t understand how it was all supposed to work. The papers made it sound like you and that Alison could’ve been twins, but nowadays they’ve got DNA tests and the like. They would have been found out even if you were the spitting image of Alison Harriman.”
“Only because Amber came to me,” Sherlock said. “If they’d have stayed in contact with her, kept her from panicking like she did, they might never have been caught, especially if it were based on identification of the bodies. DNA testing is quite costly, and isn’t done under most circumstances. Usually positive ID by family members suffices. Alison’s body had Amber’s personal identification on it. And Amber here would have been identified by Bret and Jason. They were the only ones available at the time. Jason and Alison’s father was in treatment for pancreatic cancer in Geneva, and their mother was in Brazil—”
Amber pursed her lips and made a sound of disapproval. “She’s horrible. I know she’s had a terrible loss and it’s not very Christian of me to think that, but she’s been a total bitch to me. She acts like I’m the one who tried to con the family.”
Sherlock chuckled. “If you look at it from her perspective though, maybe you can understand her frustration. Nicola Copper marries a Jewish man for love and as a result is basically cut out of her parents’ will. Her children are provided with trust funds but that’s it. Her twin brother, on the other hand, runs off to America to become a rockabilly guitarist, marries a girl so that he can stay in that country, gets her pregnant, abandons her, and yet he is set to inherit everything – oh. That reminds me. Here.” He withdrew an envelope from the pocket of his coat and handed it to her. “From the office of the medical examiner in Los Angeles.”
Amber took the envelope looked at it for a moment. “So he’s definitely dead. My father.”
“Yes. That’s why Megan Forsmark’s firm was originally retained. To determine the status of Nicolas Copper and inform him that he - and his direct descendents, of course - were the beneficiaries of your grandfather’s holdings in the company. If Nicolas was dead and also had no children, then it all went to the children of Jason and Alison.”
“Oh.”
“Right. You knew nothing about your father or his family. You looked enough like Alison that the resultant offspring would pass muster. Until Alison died unexpectedly – over a game of Scrabble at a cottage in the Lake District apparently – it probably would have worked to the benefit of all concerned.”
“Sherlock, really!” Mrs Hudson said.
“How do you reckon?” John echoed, equally shocked.
“What?” Sherlock said looking at them like they were mad. “Amber would have ended with a substantial sum, gone back to University, and these children would still be well cared for. More than well cared for.”
“Bret put his wife in a chest freezer,” Amber pointed out.
“To be fair she was already dead.”
“Okay, Sherlock,” John said clapping his hands together. “You’re done talking now. Look. Amber brought cookies she made herself, and Mrs. Hudson has tea.”
Later, full of Snickerdoodles and black tea, John, Amber, and Mrs Hudson exclaimed over the adorable doings of babies that couldn’t do much of anything but reach for objects they shouldn’t have and try to put those objects into their mouths. Sherlock did his best impersonation of disinterested teenager engrossed in a game of Angry Birds. But after twenty minutes he couldn’t take it anymore.
“When are you supposed to get your brain back again?”
“Shut up. They’re adorable and you know it. I mean, look at them. Plus they’re smart as whips. My genes are definitely the dominant ones.”
“No argument there,” Sherlock said with a snort of laughter.
“If you ever decide you wanna have kids I’m totally your go-to gal.”
Silence fell upon the room.
“Oh come on! Why’re y’all all so serious over here?”
Sherlock looked up from his Blackberry. “Well, you did just offer to bear my children. It’s a weirdly incestuous offer.”
“Good grief! We wouldn’t have actual sex! Just good old fashion medical procedures.”
“Technically, I believe I’d still have to have sex with myself and frankly, I’m just not attracted to me in that way.”
“Please,” John said, rolling his eyes. “You love yourself in every way.”
“Is this about the long showers again? Because I’ve explained it has to do with mild OCD.”
“Which you exhibit under no other circumstances—“
“I can cite plenty of examples of situation specific OCD.”
“Yeah, pull the other one why don’t you.”
Sherlock looked shifty-eyed.
“You hear that, children? Momma’s fake brother doesn’t want to be her baby-daddy.”
Mrs. Hudson shook her head, and rose to clear the tea things.
“Besides” Sherlock went on, “I’m sure any fruit of my loins could only be a harbinger of the coming apocalypse.”
“You’re not that evil. Anyway, I’d raise them. So they’d be brilliant and kind and probably save the world.”
“Or take it over and rule it absolutely,” John said, grabbing the last of Amber’s cookies from the tray before it vanished into Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen.
“Or that,” Sherlock conceded. He caught Amber’s eye and they both burst out laughing.
