TBB: Chapter Three

[caulkhead]

Twelve hours later, Sherlock was proving by actual experiment that the time-honoured role of the Gay Best Friend was indeed far from a bed of roses. True, the silk-clad chaise longue in Cocu was not actively uncomfortable, and the customers provided enough material for deduction about their private lives (buying it for his mistress; thinks her husband has a mistress; hen party; new boyfriend; ill-judged birthday present; passive aggressive anniversary gesture; secret cross-dresser) to both keep him occupied and confirm all his most cynical suspicions about life a deux. He had also worked out 15 different ways in which the contents of the shop could be utilised to commit murder, two of which would be probably be unsolvable without the involvement of an intellect to equal his own. But every so often, the velvet curtain would swish aside, and he would be recalled to what, for the moment, seemed to be his world.

"No. Definitely not. This is a quiet dinner party in Didsbury, not a dramatic reconstruction of a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec. Ostrich-trimmed corsets are right out."

"Awwww. Not even that discreet little orangey-pink one?"

"Especially not "Madam Peaches Presents"."

"I guess, since one of the other guests is a lady romance novelist in her seventies you think maybe I should tone down the raunch, huh?"

"Trust me, it isn't her delicate sensibilities I'm trying to protect.”

“So, what do you suggest? You didn't like a single thing in Harvey Nicks, or Selfridges, and you refused even to go into that cute little shop three roads down.”

“They were playing Andre Rieu. No, there's only one place for it. Bitches.”

“What?”

...........

Half an hour later, he looked up from his phone as she emerged from behind yet another curtain in Rags to Bitches. His eyes travelled assessingly from the full, flowing skirt over the fitted waistline and neatly tailored shoulders.

“Better. Much better. There's just one thing you're forgetting. It is a British dinner party, after all. This is from me ”

He swept a generously-sized cashmere shawl round her shoulders, draping it to cover what flesh remained visible.

“Why, Sherringford, how sweet!”

He came up to stand beside her as she stood preening in the mirror, and dropped a light kiss on her cheek.

“Gooseflesh, darling. Such a bad look.”

---

"Should you be here?"

"She has, inevitably, gone to get something waxed. I managed to convince her that the only place in the whole of Manchester that understood the concept was out in Wilmslow, and told her to mention my name. And then I suggested the staff would want to know all about her blog, so it should take her at least two and a half hours for her to explain herself, never mind actually get the job done. And since I can't keep anything remotely worthwhile in my flat to occupy myself in case she pokes her surgically-lifted nose in places where it shouldn't be, I thought I might as well be bored with you as bored on my own."

"I'm deeply grateful."

"You should be. Weren't you going to make some tea?"

John vanished into the kitchen, his next comments punctuated by the familiar sounds of cupboards opening and closing and the kettle boiling.

“I thought you said you’d persuaded her into something that wouldn’t frighten the horses. So why does she need a…”

The kitchen sounds stopped abruptly.

“Oh. Fuck.”

“Precisely.”

“Sherlock, you’re not helping here.”

"Incidentally, the man from Evans has just dropped off a wooden crate with three live lobsters wrapped in seaweed and wet newspaper in the porch. Do you think that's advisable?"

"It's a bid to keep her out of the kitchen if she arrives early."

"Seriously, John? You can't have read the bit of the blog about the South African mercenary. If you think witnessing you demonstrating your ice-cold executioner side on three helpless crustaceans is going to be a turn-off, I suggest you think again."

"At least it gives me a cast-iron excuse to have a sharpened skewer on hand."

---

By now, Tim was not surprised to see the car waiting for him when he emerged from the office that evening. There was a brief moment of alarm when it headed south across Westminster Bridge, and another when it turned towards Vauxhall. Surely not. But the car drove on past the fortress-like MI6 building, and eventually drew up alongside its own twin on the windswept tarmac of the Battersea helipad.

Mycroft Holmes emerged from his own car to stand waiting under the whirring blades of the helicopter.

“I need a man on the ground. Someone who understands all the implications of what's on that USB drive, and who will tell me what's really going on. You're a historian, visiting the archives – that should allow you to start a few leads on storing records, if you have to. Keep your ears open, and your mouth, as far as possible, shut.”

“I understand, sir. But under the circumstances, wouldn't it be better to go yourself?”

“I can't be seen to be involved. Besides, there's a dinner party. Plays hell with the diet.”

He gestured behind him, and his driver emerged from the car with a briefcase, which he handed to Tim.

“Some reading for the flight. I trust I don't need to tell you not to let it fall into the wrong hands.”

“No sir. Should I eat it after I've read it?” Tim asked before he could stop himself. He thought Mycroft smirked, but perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

He remembered that smirk five minutes later, as the dark ribbon of the Thames was falling away beneath him and he slid open the locks on the case. It contained seven single-sheet biographies, each headed by a single name, a guide to the John Ryland library, and a copy of Riders.

.......

The side-street was overhung with mature trees; the houses were ample, detached, with big gardens. The house to which Tim had been directed was gabled and turreted in an architectural style which been current when the Bastables were still hunting for treasure in the Lewisham Road.

John Watson - instantly recognisable from the photograph clipped to the biography – opened the door.

"Oh," John said, "I've just picked up a phone message about you. Tom, is it?"

"Tim. Ah, I'll be your cousin for this evening."

"Mycroft," John muttered venomously. "Just when you think the situation couldn't possibly get more over-complicated he has to add his own little baroque touch. This dinner party has already got two guests about whom I know nothing whatsoever except that they're called Nicky and Sandy and apparently have a very large dining-room table and a very low boredom threshold; one guest about whom I know a lot too much who thinks we may be married on the astral plane, a fourth guest whose cat is currently on loan to my flatmate for a little light espionage and now you show up trying to pose as a member of a family none of whom you know from Adam."

"Actually," Tim said, "I met your sister on Thursday."

John's face froze. "How was she?" he enquired in a voice utterly devoid of expression.

"I - ah - think she's very worried about you." The skin between his shoulder-blades crawled with tension.

John sighed. "Um. Well, if you're going to be a member of the family, even if only for the evening, you'd better know Harry doesn't set about worrying in a particularly constructive manner."

"I know." At John's surprised look Tim raised his still bandaged hand. "She bit me." He paused for a moment. "In all fairness, I was trying to force-feed her an anchovy at the time."

"Feed her an anchovy? What imbecile thought up that idea? My sister's a drunk, not a bloody penguin."

.......

The doorbell rang just as John, his sleeves rolled up, was preparing to attack the first lobster.

"I'll get it," Tim said quickly. "Don't want the starter making a bid for freedom out of the back door."

"Much though I share the impulse," John said darkly. Tim grinned - he hoped reassuringly - and headed to the door.

His first thought on encountering the tiny brunette with the impossibly high heels in the porch was to wonder if they'd all been maligning her unnecessarily. After all, she could have had no idea of the value of what was on the memory stick and, so far as anyone could tell, any gossip that idiot Rodgers had managed to tell her about the Cabinet he'd made up out of whole cloth.

And then he shivered, recollecting Mycroft Holmes's face on that first morning in the office, and the tense, almost whispered words on the helipad.

"It's not the USB in her hands that we're worried about. It's who else might have it in their sights."

Confronted with the woman herself, Tim was struck by her air of not actually being on the same planet, despite her physical proximity. He'd had a girl-friend like that, once - Amelai's favourite, slightly bewildered mantra had been, "But darling, things like that don't happen to people like us." No-one could convince Amelia that anything truly bad could happen to her; Tim had never quite worked out whether it was because she didn't think of herself as truly real or whether she thought she was the only real one in a universe of phantoms.

Certainly Amelia would never have worried her own safety might be compromised by mentioning on the internet that she was in possession of hot Cabinet secrets; it looked like this one was much the same.

"Hi," he said cheerfully. "I'm John's cousin Tim. Come in and have a drink. John's just pithing lobsters in the kitchen."

---

Getting into the flat was a matter of seconds. For all the landlord's boasts about modern security and top class features, the door had yielded to a credit card and a little persuasion in less time than it would take the flat's legitimate tenant to use her keys. He hadn't even needed the picks. He'd memorised the position of her fingers on the alarm key-pad the first day he'd been here.

The interior of the flat scarcely presented any more excitement. Replacing the government standard-issue USB stick - hidden, he noted, without satisfaction, exactly where he had deduced it would be - was again, a matter of seconds. The MacBook Pro on the table yielded obediently to his second guess - S0ulmate. Moments later, he had the file on screen, and had replaced it with a set of exceptionally boring photos of a Civil Service retirement party, all vetted by Mycroft to ensure there was nothing of the least interest to the most paranoid of viewers. A quick sweep through the rest of the files revealed nothing more than a half-written screen play, a couple of blog entries, and a number of pictures scarcely more interesting than the ones he had just posted. Boring. He shut the laptop down, carefully returned the chair to its original position and turned to the rest of the flat.

They didn't need him for this job. Lestrade could have done it. Anderson could have done it. The flat contained little more than the bare minimum provided by the landlord – she was, after all, only expecting to be there for six months. Laptop. Clothes. Shoes – none of them particularly well suited to Manchester weather. Cosmetics – well, at least the mascara was waterproof. An ipod – taste in music utterly bland and unadventurous. More importantly, no documents stored on it. A Kindle. A few books. The Secret. Jude the Obscure. A Screenwriter's Guide. Wallpaper* guides to London and Paris. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Nother usual reading material. And the extremely rare New York 1886 edition at that. His eyebrows rose as he read the inscription on the flyleaf. Ruth and Eddie Frow.

Mycroft's going to have a fit.

For the first time since starting this ridiculous charade, he could feel his mind starting to work at full speed. He slipped the book into his pocket. Game on.

---

Tim's day job involved plenty of rubbing shoulders with famous people and, for that matter, with important people, who, he had learnt very early, were not at all the same thing, though the two groups sometimes overlapped. However, seeing that familiar mane of silver-tawny hair and wicked, laughing eyes across the dinner table he felt as tongue-tied and adrift as a teenage autograph hunter at the stage door.

She grinned cheerfully at him. "So you're John's cousin? Yet another of the devastatingly attractive Watson clan?"

The mischief in her eyes lit an answering spark in him. "Oh, it's John who's the international stud-muffin. As his sister Harry calls him."

Spluttering gasps came from beside him; John, apparently, choking on his wine. Tim patted him solicitously on the back and smiled at the novelist. "Actually, you know, if it hadn't been for the help I got from your books, I'd have led a sad and lonely life on the romantic front."

"You'll have a bloody sad and lonely old age if you don't get better at keeping your mouth shut," John hissed at him, emerging from the depth of his handkerchief. "As will my sodding sister."

"Oh, John, don't be so uptight. Quite apart from anything else, it's perfectly true." She winked at the blogger. "Wouldn't you agree? I think it's that air of concentrated power he radiates. Like the winter sun; low, but intense."

"Ah. You're saying I'm short. Look, I'm the anatomy specialist round here, and I can tell you five foot seven is a perfectly average height for a British man. I've no idea why people witter on about it, as if I were some sort of hobbit or something."

"I'm sure there's a really bad chat-up line in that," Tim murmured thoughtfully.

"I'm sure you'll have thought it up by the time we've got to pudding."

The novelist waved her hand at them. "Boys!" she said reprovingly. "Stop squabbling. Tim; I'm dying to know about you and my books. I do hope you haven't been naughty enough to take seduction tips from Rupert?"

"Only in absolute emergencies," Tim said demurely. Across the table Nicky – whom Tim had identified by a decidedly non-standard app on his Government issue smart phone as the Earl of Ribchester – let out a quick honk of laughter.

"Worked for me." He winked at his Countess – Sandy – who grinned back.

"Rubbish," she said. "I knew you were the one from the very start. I thought you'd feel more in charge if you thought you had a chase on your hands. But actually it was a drag-hunt from the very beginning."

"Gee, people actually go hunting in drag in this country?"

Four people around the dining room table looked open-mouthed. Tim waved his arm expansively.

"Well, it's not something that gets talked about openly. You know – 'the first rule of Drag Hunt –'"

"'- is that no-one talks about Drag Hunt'?" Her eyes were wide – absolutely transfixed on his face.

People this gullible shouldn't be let out without a minder.

He pushed back the tiny flicker of his conscience and nodded.

"It all started – well, there've been pockets of it here and there going back over a century, in fact there's a pretty overt reference to it in Somerville & Ross's The Irish R.M. - God alone knows why that wasn't caught by the editor - but it really picked up after the last Government brought in the Hunting Act 2004. Sort of part subversion, part sublimation, I suppose. But there's no thrill like clearing a five-barred gate side-saddle in a formal presentation gown, elbow-length gloves in glace kid and ostrich feathers. Or so I've been told."

He came to a halt and took a deep swallow of his wine. Across the table, the novelist lifted her own glass in salute.

"You’re a very dangerous man, Tim Watson."

"And you should just meet his boss," John muttered.

Now who needs a lesson in keeping his mouth shut?

John's eyes acknowledged as much.

"So, what exactly is it you do?" Sandy asked, as the awkward silence threatened to become prolonged.

"I'm a semiotician." That, fortunately, produced exactly the five-fold blank stare Mycroft's briefing note had assured him it would. He waved his hand. "I've been given a chance to examine the Oxyrhynchus Fragment – there's a hope I might be able to explode a rather dangerous theory about the age and provenance of the Gospel of John which is gaining a bit too much traction in those Dominionist circles who have always drawn upon unstated Gnostic traditions…"

He allowed his voice to tail off artistically. The blogger gulped.

"But that sounds fabulous. Obscure areas of research and ancient manuscripts and on-line conspiracies. Like Dan Brown writes it, but you're actually living it."

"Well, I've not had to fight off albino monks yet." Tim thought he'd managed precisely the right nonchalant tone with that.

"I'm sure it's only a matter of time," John said meaningfully. He rose to his feet and started gathering up starter plates. "Tim, could you give me a hand clearing?"

"Certainly. " He picked up the discarded lobster platter and gestured towards the door. "After you, shortarse."

John shrugged. "Don't think you can get a rise out of me that way. I've only ever had one regret about my height, and it's that it stopped me being a hooker once I got into the Sixth Form. "

He vanished towards the kitchen, his arms full of crockery.

Tim had never before regretted not opting for the vest-pocket stealth camera app for his phone, but he would dearly have loved to capture the blogger's expression for posterity. And he devoutly hoped Nicky didn't have a heart weakness, or judging by his purpling face as he suppressed a giggling fit, Sandy would be the Dowager Countess before they got to the coffee and liqueurs stage.

He beamed on the assembled company.

"Mine's an unusual family," he observed, and followed John to the kitchen.