Sherlock Fic - The Bauble, chapter 5

[r_scribbles]

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Sherlock decided to eschew all of the fine cafes and restaurants around Covent Garden, and instead go back to Baker Street for breakfast at Speedy’s. John was in little doubt that their “breakfast” was actually a stakeout – the fact that Sherlock very carefully chose a table a few feet from the front window, grabbed a broadsheet newspaper and then stalked around the tables finding a particularly shiny sugar bowl to swap with theirs only confirmed this. He had to admit, he felt a little uncomfortable about performing a stakeout right next door to his own home.

‘What are we waiting for?’ he asked, looking at the menu.

Sherlock smiled. ‘Our quarry from Covent Garden.’

‘What – you think he’s going to come to us?’

‘He’s stupid and desperate enough to try to break in to an occupied building where he knows he’d be recognised. I know he’s going to come to us.’

There was a long pause. ‘So, why are you phobic of mimes?’

Sherlock glared at him. ‘Two words, John. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter – Mister Noseybonk.’

‘Oh!’ John frowned – the repressed horrific childhood memory rising up and gesticulating silently, terrifyingly at him. ‘Eurgh. Yes. Well, now I think I’m scared of mimes, now.’

-x-

Drinks. 221b. Tomorrow from 6pm. Greg Lestrade will be there. –SH

I know u owe me 1 but u really don’t have 2 find me a boyfriend u know x

Clearly I do, since left to your own devices, your taste in men is problematic to say the least. –SH

Ha bloody ha. Yes I’ll b there. Hope I’m not called out 2 the morgue again this year but that prob depends on ur girlfriends xx

Ha bloody ha. –SH

U spending the rest of the day w John? Xx

Yes. And Mrs Hudson. Mycroft will be coming tomorrow night, too, so be warned. –SH

That’ll b nice! Nice not to spend Xmas alone isn’t it xx

Stop saying “Nice” –SH

NICE NICE NICE SEE YOU TOMORROW NICE AND HAVE A NICE XMAS XXX

-x-

Breakfast turned into elevenses, which turned into an early lunch. John was just contemplating whether he could fit in yet another sandwich when Sherlock set down his fourth cup of coffee of the day and stared at the sugar bowl.

‘He’s here.’

John was in a position where he could see out through the window without looking too conspicuous. He looked out at the street beyond. The little ratty man was in the other side of the street, gazing at 221. After doing this for around 30 seconds, he then crossed the road and inspected the building a little closer up.

Sherlock pushed the newspaper over at John. ‘Interesting story in there, John.’ He got up, swiftly. ‘Just off to the loo.’

John picked up the paper. ‘Which page?’

‘Any page.’

And, Sherlock was gone.

John was just about able to duck down under the open newspaper before the ratty man anxiously entered the café.

‘Can I help you?’ asked the girl at the till.

‘Er,’ said the ratty man. ‘Would you mind if I just used your loo? I… I’ll buy something…’

‘It’s all right. It’s at the back, on the left.’

The ratty man scurried off. John peered at him from his table. He was just wondering whether following him would be the right thing to do, or whether the potential three-man punch-up in a tiny public toilet would just be too impossible to explain when Sherlock came back.

‘So, is this actually a stakeout,’ asked John, ‘or have you taken up cottaging in your spare time?’

‘He didn’t go to the toilet, John. As I suspected, he slipped through the window, climbed on a bin and is currently scaling the fence that leads to Mrs Hudson’s garden. He’ll break in either through 221c or, more likely, the ground floor flat.’

John got up. ‘What? Mrs Hudson. We’ve got to…’

Sherlock waved a hand. ‘I sent her on a little mission this morning. Told her my present for Molly had broken and I didn’t have time to get her another one. She’ll happily put in the hours scouring for a non-existent replacement vase, for Molly. Everyone loves Molly. Don’t worry, by the way. Molly’s present’s fine. It isn’t even a vase.’

‘That’s not what I was worried about. Sherlock – that creep’s breaking into Mrs Hudson’s bedroom!’

‘Wrong. He’s breaking into our flat, only because that’s on the top floors, he has to do so via Mrs Hudson’s bedroom. He won’t touch anything in there.’

‘But he’ll ransack our home.’

‘Well, he’ll try.’ Sherlock lead him out of the café.

The waited by the front door, in silence. Sherlock pressed his ear against it.

‘There,’ he whispered.

John pressed his ear against the door as well, and heard footsteps within. The person inside was rushed but trying to be quiet. John heard the familiar sound of the creaky step, and held his breath as the intruder climbed the stairs. There was another pause.

‘Trying to use a credit card on our door latch’, whispered Sherlock. ‘Here’s hoping he manages it – we’ve got Mrs Hudson’s window to replace as it is without adding a kicked-down front door.’ There was the sound of the upstairs door being kicked, and Sherlock pulled a face. ‘Oh, must you?’

‘Sherlock,’ whispered John, ‘what exactly are you planning on doing when he has broken into our flat?’

‘Talk to him.’

‘Talk to him. Right. And what if he doesn’t want to talk – what if he’s armed?’

‘He isn’t.’

‘You said he was desperate, earlier.’

‘He is. He’s also an absolute novice. Not suited to a life of crime at all.’

John heard the door finally give way after a series of frantic shunts and kicks.

‘Can we go after him now?’ he whispered, urgently, ‘before he destroys anything else of ours?’

‘Yes, all right.’ Sherlock quietly turned his key in the lock, and they crept, mindful as ever of the creaky step, up towards the bangs and clatters that were coming from their flat.

They slipped through the kicked-down door to flat b, unnoticed by the man going through their kitchen cupboards.

‘Anything in particular you’re looking for?’ Sherlock asked, ‘or are you just browsing today?’

The ratty man jumped, and turned to face them, horrified. He actually shrieked a little bit. John hadn’t heard a man properly shriek in ages. John sidestepped to grab a poker from the fireplace, which he proceeded to wield with his best silently menacing air between the intruder and the doorway.

‘Sir wouldn’t be looking,’ continued Sherlock, ‘for an 18lb white goose with a black bar on its tail, by any chance?’

‘I…’ said the ratty man. ‘I…’

‘Only, I’m afraid that that’s long gone. There was a little present inside it – can you believe that? A lovely, shiny blue bauble.’

The ratty man sounded as if he was about to swallow his own tongue.

‘They should have stuck a paper hat and a crap joke in it as well,’ added Sherlock, ‘then it would have been perfect.’

‘I…’

‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ Sherlock leaned against his chair. ‘Put those things back in our cupboard would you, Mr Ryder? Or, can I just call you Nicholas?’

Nicholas Ryder put packets of pasta and tins of beans back into the kitchen cupboard with shaking hands. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘Oh, come on now, Nicholas. You must know who I am. Otherwise why would you have broken in?’

‘Well… yes. You’re Sherlock Holmes. You were in the papers…’

‘Well, then.’

‘I…’ said Nicholas. Clearly, this was becoming quite the catchphrase of his.

‘You work for the Hotel Cosmopolitan – acting as Duchess’ personal valet during her stays in the penthouse.’ Sherlock gave him a brief, cold smile. ‘You suspected I had the diamond – tell me it had crossed your mind at least that I might want to do a little digging into where it had come from – read up on the police’s reports of the theft? Your eyewitness account was a very vivid painting, I must say.’

‘But…’ Nicholas stalled in the kitchen doorway. ‘But the police never took my photo for their reports…’

Sherlock sighed, wearily. ‘The Hotel Cosmopolitan has a Facebook page. You friended it, with your photo – in uniform, I noticed, very smart – as your avatar.’

Nicholas looked horribly lost and small, for a man who had just kicked their door down. ‘Oh.’

‘Let me paint another picture,’ said Sherlock, enjoying this far more than John was entirely sure was necessary. ‘You, for reasons I’m sure you’re about to divulge, had the Morcar Blue Diamond swallowed by a goose, which you then lost. You managed to trace it to Breckinridge’s, but stalled there. Nobody there would so much as hear you out. I imagine you made a break in attempt there last night, which failed, and tried your luck again this morning when you saw a side window had been left ajar. I doubt that you recognised me straight away – at the time I pursued you, you assumed I was just a concerned citizen. But you’d overheard me mention the Alpha Inn, so you went and asked there. That’s when you found out from Mike that I had picked up Henry Baker’s goose. You panicked, came straight over here, found it empty, and broke in to get back your ill gotten gains.’

‘I… it isn’t like that!’

‘Oh, I’m sorry – did you genuinely get lost looking for Speedy’s toilet?’

‘No! I mean. I don’t even want it any more! I just… I read about you. The stuff with that Moran bloke, and all the proof you uncovered about Richard Br… Moriarty. And if you could get to them, well. And then when I found out from him at the Alpha that you had the diamond, well, I knew you’d be able to trace it back to me. I just wanted to get rid of it.’

‘So, instead you decided to break in and negate my even having to trace the trail back to you. How thoughtful.’

‘I…’ Nicholas gazed down at the floor, miserably. ‘I was…’

‘Desperate?’ chipped in John.

Nicholas nodded.

‘You do realise,’ said Sherlock, ‘that you are, without a doubt, the most incompetant jewel thief I’ve ever crossed paths with, professionally? Somebody put you up to this. It wouldn’t have been your own idea.’

Nicholas stalled.

‘If you don’t tell me now, I’ll only find out anyway,’ Sherlock reminded him.

‘Cathy,’ murmured Nicholas. ‘She’s Duchess’ PA. Sort-of. Pretty low ranking, poor girl.’

‘You’re sleeping with her,’ said Sherlock.

‘How did…?’ Nicholas faltered, and looked down again. ‘Yeah. Dunno what she sees in me. It’s not even as if I get paid much. Mind you, neither does she. And Duchess has just got so much, she’s just dripping with money and jewels. All we wanted was a little bit of it. That diamond would have set us both up for life.’

‘What a sad story, Mr Ryder. I’ve got a sadder one, however. All about an innocent man, with a wife and two small children, who is facing a lengthy prison sentence simply for fixing a leak. You framed Wayne Horner.’

Nicholas’ shoulders shuddered with his deep exhale. ‘Yes. We knew if we just took it, we’d be the ones they’d suspect straight away. I’d seen Wayne around the hotel loads over the years – got chatting with him, we’d got pretty friendly. He mentioned about his convictions from when he was younger. So, when Duchess and most of her team were out, I mucked around with one of the radiators, caused a little leak that’d just take Wayne twenty minutes or so to fix. And as soon as he’d gone, I took the diamond.’

‘You set up one of your own mates.’ John shook his head.

‘Look, all we wanted was for the police’s eyes to go on to someone else while we got the diamond hidden and then made our escape. We thought the whole case against him would collapse, no harm done! But then, things started going pear shaped.’

‘I’d say that “going pear shaped” is quite the understatement, considering the loss of your entire haul,’ said Sherlock, ‘but go on.’

‘I kept the diamond on me until I could get away – I was almost having kittens, giving statements to the police with the bloody thing sellotaped to me under my uniform. I just… I had to get out of London, but I couldn’t leave the country yet, we weren’t off work til Christmas Day – I was worried they’d work out it was us too quickly. So I made the excuse that I had to visit my sister Maggie that evening – drop off Christmas presents for my nieces. She’s down in Sussex, you see. Manager of Oakshott Organic.’

‘A goose farm.’

‘Geese, ducks, turkeys, that sort of thing. I think those birds get better food and accommodation than a lot of people in London.’ Nicholas shook his head. ‘I got over there before she was done for the day. She had to get a bit of admin done, so she left me there, with the geese all waddling about, happy as Larry, no idea they were going to get killed for Christmas orders the next day. And that’s when I thought of it. Maggie always lets me have whichever Christmas bird I like, at a discount. So, I saw this one with the really distinctive bar on its tail, and… well, it took a bit if persuading, but...’

‘You fed the diamond to the goose.’

Nicholas closed his eyes, and nodded. ‘When Maggie came back, I asked if I could get my bird, while I was there, you know. She was surprised at how specific I was, but after a lot of chasing, we caught the one with the black bar, and she broke its neck. I took it home, feeling much better – nobody would look for the stone there, would they? Only, Cathy started getting antsy. She didn’t like that I’d taken my eye off the stone… well. Off the goose. Well. Off both, I suppose. So, yesterday she said she’d got in touch with someone who’d buy it off us, so we should open the goose up. And the bloody diamond wasn’t there.’ Nicholas rubbed his face in despair. ‘There’d been a second goose with a black bar on its tail. I’d got the wrong one. I phoned my sister, but she said that lot of geese had all gone off to Breckenridge’s in Covent Garden…’

‘…and there, your story meets ours.’ Sherlock sighed. ‘Oh, dear, Nicholas. They say that crime doesn’t pay. I can testify that sometimes it does, but only when done well, and you really have done it terribly, terribly badly.’

‘I know.’ Nicholas was close to tears. ‘I’m not cut out for this, I never should have done it. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. This was just a disaster from start to finish.’

He took a step towards Sherlock. John mirrored his step, brandishing the poker in warning. Not that it was entirely necessary, save to protect Sherlock’s jacket from getting damp.

‘Please, Mr Holmes. Please, help me! I’ll do anything I can to get Wayne out of trouble, I’ll never step out of line again, just please, God, help me!’

‘Oh dear, Nicholas.’ Sherlock got up, and walked over to a bookshelf.

‘What are you going to do?’ Nicholas asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.’ Sherlock pulled a DVD from the bottom shelf. ‘I am going to sit down, and watch Die Hard, and eat all the coffee creams in our tin of Quality Street, because it’s Christmas Eve. And then, once the McClanes have been reunited & Al Powell has learned to kill again, I’ll contact the police, tell them about the diamond and the goose, and that I’ve traced its trail back to Oakshott Organic, and that although the manager of said establishment is clearly an innocent party, she’s also the sister of one Nicholas Ryder, the man left in charge of the hotel suite when the jewel went missing – a man who, from DNA evidence in the hair you just shed on my rug, broke in to 221b while we were out on the case to look for the jewel that I fortunately had on me at the time – a man who, it seems, has vanished from my radar, the clever swine.’

‘What?’ asked John.

‘What…?’ echoed Nicholas. ‘What does this mean?’

‘It means that, by Christmas night, the pop star will have her bauble back, the Horner children will have their father back, and, unless you manage to bungle your escape as badly as you did your great diamond heist, I never hear of you again. Ever. Because, if I do…’

Nicholas took a few faltering sidesteps towards the door. ‘You… really? You’d really give me a second chance?’

Sherlock plopped himself down into his chair. ‘Yippee-Ki-Yaye, Motherfucker. Now, get out.’

‘Thank you! Oh, thank you!’

‘Out!’

Chapter 6