earlgreytea68 | Scotch, Examined (1/1)

Title - Scotch, Examined (1/1)
Series - 7/10 in the Scotch series
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Lestrade, John, Mycroft, OCs
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Lestrade meets John for a couple of pints. Revelations follow.
Author's Notes - Many, many thanks to arctacuda for the beta and sensiblecat for the Britpick.

Everything Is Chess - Scotch - Scotch, the Third - Scotch, the Fourth - Scotch, the Fifth - Scotch, the Sixth

Scotch, Examined

They eventually figured out the drowning at the desk, without Mycroft’s help. It had involved lack of consciousness and a bowl of water. John had helped on the case and had seemed to enjoy himself, and when it was over Lestrade took him and Colin out for a pint.

Colin only stayed for the single pint, clearly nervous about the informal socializing, and he looked relieved when he finished and ducked out.

John was amused. “He’s terrified of you.”

“Well, I’m terrifying,” said Lestrade.

John practically collapsed with laughter at this, which made Lestrade happy because it was good to hear John laugh. He gestured for another round and let John laugh.

“Well, now I’m a little offended,” he said, smiling to show he wasn’t at all offended.

“No, no.” John tried and pretty much failed to make his face serious. “Not at all. You are terrifying. I’ve always said that about you.”

“Really? Because in that case I want to complain about the way you portray me in your blog.”

“Join the queue.”

The fresh pints were deposited in front of them.

“Did you order more?” John asked.

“Yes,” Lestrade said, firmly. “And I’ll not take no for an answer. I’ve already been deserted by two of my invitees. If you leave, too, I’ll question my own powers of hospitality.”

“You can’t have powers of hospitality and be terrifying at the same time.”

“I can try.”

“Who else did you invite?” John asked. “You said two people had deserted you.”

“Oh, Molly. I thought, you know, it might do her good.” Lestrade hesitated, because things had been going so well, and he didn’t want to bring up Sherlock.

“I haven’t seen her…since the whole thing…She wouldn’t even talk to me, not even right after…”

“Right after?”

“Yes, when I ran into her, at the hospital, when I was trying to get information and no one would tell me…” John trailed off and took a deep breath. “Can we not talk about it?”

“Of course.”

“How are you? How’s Penelope?”

“Oh.” Lestrade realized he’d never told John. “I left Penelope.”

“You did? I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“She was cheating on me, John,” he pointed out, wryly.

“Well. Yes. I know. But still.” John paused, then said, “Did you know before Sherlock told you at Christmas? Because I always thought it was awful if that was how you’d found out.”

Lestrade chuckled grimly. “No, I knew before then. Actually, I’d suspected for a while, but do you want to know when I really knew? The day I met you.”

“The day you met me?” John looked surprised.

“The day I met you, over poor Jennifer Wilson’s body, do you remember Sherlock told us she was a serial adulterer?”

“And he walked through how he knew,” John recalled, realization dawning on his face.

“Exactly.”

John winced. “Well. That couldn’t have been pleasant.”

Lestrade shrugged. “It’s over and done with now.”

“Still. I am sorry, Greg.”

“It’s okay,” said Lestrade, heartily. “I’m apparently dating Mycroft Holmes.”

John blinked at him. “You’re what?”

“It’s the strangest thing. He keeps inviting me for drinks. He’s teaching me chess.”

John stammered, “He…You…What?”

“I think he’s lonely.”

John lifted his eyebrows. “You think Mycroft Holmes is lonely?”

“Why shouldn’t he be lonely?”

“Because he’s Mycroft Holmes.”

“And, as we both know so well, the Holmeses are unfeeling sociopaths incapable of having friends.”

John stared at him. “Soooooo.” He drew the word out. “Now you’re friends with Mycroft Holmes?”

“Apparently.”

“What do you even talk about?”

“He’s actually funny.”

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same person.”

Lestrade laughed. “Yes, we are. Come on, you used to be friendly with him.”

“I was never friendly with him, I was just…allied with him. And anyway, that all changed when he…”

“What was it, exactly, that he did?”

“You’re his friend now,” said John, scathingly. “Why don’t you ask him over a chess game?”

“I did ask him.”

“What did he say?”

“The best I can deduce, he made a conscious decision at some point not to have Moriarty killed, and it backfired on him. He regrets it, you know.”

“Oh, I’m well aware,” said John, bitterly. “He’s apologized. It was worse than just not having him killed.”

“Worse in what way?”

“You’d have to ask him. And while you’re at it, ask him why he doesn’t correct all these ridiculous lies about Sherlock being a fraud. Which are lies.” John suddenly peered at him closely. “You do know that, right?”

Lestrade held his gaze. “Yes. I do.”

John sighed suddenly. “I don’t want to…I know Mycroft’s sorry about how it all turned out, I just can’t see us ever having a pint together.”

“I don’t think anyone has a pint with Mycroft Holmes.”

“You do.”

“We have Scotch.”

“Of course you do,” said John. “And he apparently makes funny jokes.”

“We talk. I don’t know, we just talk about normal things. Colin, for instance. We talk about Colin.”

“Do you tell him Colin’s terrified of you?”

“Colin isn’t terrified of me.”

“Mm-hmm,” said John, into his drink.

“I would tell him that Colin continues to come up with some interesting theories, except that Mycroft says there’s nothing clever about being wrong—” Lestrade cut himself off abruptly.

“That’s a Holmesian thing to say, isn’t it?”

But Lestrade didn’t hear him. He frowned, and he was no longer in the pub, he was sitting beside Mycroft’s enormous fireplace. What’s clever about being wrong? Mycroft had said. He was sitting in his lounge, watching Mycroft with a violin on his lap. I suppose I can’t fault you for wanting to undo things. And I suppose I can’t fault you for being reasonably clever about it. He stared at John without seeing him, seeing instead Molly’s shaking hands, her determination that he know she was perfectly okay. Molly, who was at the hospital when Sherlock died and refused to speak to John about it…

“Greg.” John waved his hand in front of Lestrade’s face. “Hello? Are you there?”

“Reasonably clever,” Lestrade murmured.

John looked bemused. “What?”

“He said I was reasonably clever. I was asking about the violin. And he said…But what’s clever about being wrong?”

John was smiling at him in a puzzled sort of way. “What are you talking about?”

“I have to go.” Lestrade stood abruptly.

“Wait, what?”

“I’m sorry.” Lestrade hurriedly counted out some notes, tossed them on the table. “I have to go.”

“Is everything all right? Greg!” John called after him.

“It’s fine,” he called back, and hailed a cab.

***

If he used his computer, Mycroft would know immediately. Mycroft knew everything he did immediately. Lestrade didn’t know how, and somehow it had stopped bothering him. When had that stopped bothering him? Lestrade felt like he had just woken up from some sort of dream, or emerged from some sort of drug-induced haze, or something. Everything seemed sharper and clearer, especially Mycroft Holmes.

Lestrade half-dashed into the station and, out of breath, gasped to the first constable he saw, “I need to use your computer.”

The constable looked alarmed. “What? For…What?”

Lestrade impatiently pushed him out of the way. “Don’t ask questions,” he said. “Go get me some coffee.”

The constable stared at him.

“Well, hurry up,” said Lestrade, and was pleased when the constable scurried off.

Lestrade minimized the solitaire game the kid had been playing. Luckily, he was already logged into the computerized file system. If Mycroft was somehow monitoring who viewed his brother’s file, maybe he wouldn’t immediately assume it was Lestrade.

Lestrade called up the coroner’s report. It was brief, perfunctory, to the point. Really one of the shortest he had ever seen. He skimmed quickly through it. Blunt impact trauma to the head consistent with falling from a considerable height, it read. And the signature was Doctor Molly Hooper, Medical Examiner. Dated the day of Sherlock’s death.

Lestrade called up the certificate of death. Signed by Doctor Molly Hooper, Medical Examiner.

So Molly had pronounced Sherlock dead and determined the cause of his death, all in one rapid, quickfire day.

Lestrade scrolled, pulling up the release documentation. The body, together with all clothing and belongings of one Sherlock Holmes, deceased—Lestrade scanned down the list, registering the mobile phone, and the overcoat—all of it released on the same day as Sherlock’s death. The signature acknowledging receipt was deliberately illegible, but Lestrade recognized the contour of the M at the beginning of it. He had received plenty of notes signed with that M.

Lestrade hit print on everything, just as the constable came back with the coffee.

“Thanks,” said Lestrade, grabbing it and his print-outs and retreating to his office. He sensed the constable looking bewilderedly after him.

Lestrade closed the blinds to the outside window, just in case, and sat behind his desk. He looked again at Molly’s coroner’s report. Body identified by the decedent’s brother, Mycroft Holmes. Everything, thought Lestrade. Everything, in one day, Molly and Mycroft: pronouncement of death, pronouncement of cause, disappearance of the body. In one day.

Lestrade stared at the papers in front of him, shocked at himself. How had he never thought to look into this before? How had he…

Well, he’d been busy, he allowed. He’d been consumed by his own guilt, first of all. And then there had been the internal investigation. And then there had been Mycroft, who, when he got too close, asked too many questions about the violin, launched a charm offensive and threw him entirely off the scent. The violin. Sherlock Holmes’s beloved violin. If Sherlock Holmes was going to start a new life, how could he possibly do it without his Stradivarius?

Anger coalesced inside of Lestrade, the sort of icy cold fury that could only be provoked by being made a fool of. It had all been in front of him, all along, and he had known, damn it, and they had played him, both Holmes brothers. Played him like that bloody Stradivarius. While he and John and Mrs. Hudson waded through guilt and what-ifs, self-persecution and grief, Mycroft and Sherlock had both simply sat on the sidelines and watched.

His head ached. He put it in his hands, leaning on his desk, and he sat like that for hours, until noise began to stir in the station around him, the earliest arrivers starting their day. He finally lifted his head and looked at his watch. It was seven. He turned and opened the blinds of his window, looking for black cars up and down the street. He saw none.

He went in search of his DCI, wondering if he was there that early.

He was. “Lestrade,” he said, in surprise, seeing him at the door. “Don’t usually see you here this early, unless you’ve got a case on, and I didn’t think you had.”

“No. Not right now.” Lestrade hesitated. “I’ve got a couple of questions, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t…read into them, or anything. They’re just…questions.”

His DCI smiled. “Policemen never just ask ‘questions.’ What’s bothering you?”

Lestrade tried to gather his racing thoughts. “Sir, who was put in charge of the investigation into Sherlock Holmes’s death?”

His DCI looked curious. “There was no investigation into Sherlock Holmes’s death.”

“Why not?”

Now he looked surprised. “Well, it was a pretty clear case of suicide, don’t you think?”

“Did the order come down from above?”

“What?”

“Was there an order from above? Not to look into Sherlock Holmes’s death?”

His eyes narrowed on him. “As a matter of fact, yes. Why? How did you know about that? Do you think it wasn’t a suicide? You think it was a murder?”

“No, sir,” said Lestrade, with a tight smile. I don’t think there was a death at all.

***

Lestrade went to Mycroft’s house. He should have been exhausted, having not slept all night, but his anger was keeping his adrenaline high, and he pounded on the door until the butler answered it and said, in surprise, “Inspector Lestrade.”

Because Mycroft Holmes’s butler knew who he was now, yes. This was his life now.

Lestrade pushed past him into the front hall. “Where is he?” he demanded.

The butler was quizzical. “Not at home. He’s at the office.”

Lestrade still had no idea where Mycroft’s office was. He walked back out of the house without saying another word to the butler and pulled out his mobile and punched send viciously next to Mycroft’s number.

He picked up on the third ring, with a half-curious, half-concerned, “Greg?”

And yes, he was on a first-name basis with Mycroft Holmes. When had this happened? How had he let it? “I thought we weren’t playing chess anymore, you and I,” accused Lestrade.

Lestrade could sense Mycroft’s confusion. “Where did you get that idea? We play chess all the time.”

“Not literal chess. Conversational chess.”

“What are you talking about?” Mycroft demanded, sounding impatient. “What’s happened?”

“Your brother’s alive,” said Lestrade, deciding that he didn’t want another second without the truth having been said. “You and he and Molly Hooper engaged in a massive conspiracy to make it look like he committed suicide, but he’s alive.”

Mycoft paused for a very long time on the other end of the line. Lestrade could practically hear him assessing his options.

“Checkmate,” he told him, into his continued silence.

“Where are you?” Mycroft asked him.

“Find me,” said Lestrade, and hung up the phone.

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