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Anomalies	By : Harpling Category: S through Z > Sherlock (BBC) > Sherlock (BBC) Views: 3513 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Sherlock, the BBC, or any of the characters mentioned herein, nor am I making any money from writing this.

Chapter List
- 15
- 16
- 17
Title: Anomalies
Author: Harpling
Characters, Pairing: Sherlock/John, Lestrade, Mycroft, Donovan, Anderson, Dimmock, Mrs. Hudson, OC
Rating: G
Summary: Sherlock Holmes was a man accustomed to anomalies. Things out of place formed the bulk of his work, after all. But why was he so slow to notice them in his own behaviour?
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and I am making no money from them.
Warnings: Manly man love
Beta’d by the extraordinary Lynn Maxwell and not yet Brit-picked.

Chapter 16

In the morning, Sherlock left before Jamie was awake. He had had an uncomfortable night after she left, pacing the sitting room and trying very hard to think about the various connections presented by the clues tacked to the wall. Eventually, his body gave up and forced his brain into a restless slumber on the sofa. Even asleep, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking, visions of tattoos and bees swirling around his subconscious and mixing with the hazy image of a compact, tanned, blonde body, splayed out naked and pointing accusing fingers. When he finally woke, it was with a persistent throbbing in his groin that required a very cold shower and determined recitation of Latin verbs to subside. It was too early to face any more conversations like the one they’d had the night before. If his calculations were correct, the police should have finished interrogating Anya. He headed to Scotland Yard, hoping Lestrade would be there to let him see the tapes. Unfortunately, the first person he saw was not the Detective Inspector he’d hoped to see.
“Inspector Dimmock, what a pleasure so early in the morning. I see you’re settling in nicely around the station. I’d avoid any confrontations with Anderson over in Forensics if I were you, though. He doesn’t strike me as the type to share.”
“What are you on about, Holmes?”
“Oh, nothing. Give Sergeant Donovan my regards.”
“Don’t try to pretend you’ve worked anything out,” he sneered as he walked away. “You don’t scare me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Glad to see Sally’s been making some new friends. Her toiletries always smell so nice. What’s that scent in her shampoo? Strawberry Rain, is it?”
Dimmock froze. “What are you implying?”
“Oh, nothing. Don’t mind me. I was just wondering – is sleeping with your subordinates a suspension or just a formal reprimand? I can never remember….”
Dimmock’s expression could curdle milk. “What do you want, Holmes?”
“A woman was brought in last night for an unlicensed firearm and possible connection to money laundering. I need to speak with her.”
“Not going to happen. She’s been moved to a safe house at her request. I can let you see the interview tapes, though.”
“Fine. Bring me everything you have on her. I’ll wait.” Dimmock hurried off, leaving Sherlock to wonder at the stupidity of people. Honestly, they spent so much time and energy trying to achieve something that really didn’t matter. Well, it hadn’t mattered before. He had to wonder if he would become as distracted and desperate as Sally Donovan seemed to be. If things worked out between them, would he tire of John as quickly as Sally tired of her lovers? He considered the possibility of becoming aroused by someone else. It didn’t seem likely.
With all the tools at his command, he conjured a mental image of every person he knew, imagining them naked or in mid-coitus. It was not a pleasant exercise. Molly’s timid cries, Lestrade’s greying chest hair, Sally’s grotesque voluptuousness, Anderson’s sneering face twisted in the throes of passion. Sherlock shuddered. Even thinking about such scenarios was unpleasant. Solely for the sake of comparison, he let his mind turn to speculating about John’s likely reactions.
He already had quite a bit of data from which to extrapolate: he knew the shape of John’s entire body, if not the specifics of color and texture in the area that had been covered by his shorts after stripping in the kitchen. He knew that John’s respiratory rate increased while becoming much shallower when he was aroused. He knew that, when engorged, John’s genitals grew from twelve and half centimetres to a full length of just over twenty centimetres. He knew that the side of John’s neck, just below his ear, was sensitive to touch.
But there were so many other things he didn’t know about John’s body. Was the sparse, golden hair on his chest coarse or soft? Was every part of his neck sensitive? What other areas were sensitive? Would he be quiet when stimulated, his harsh, panting breath the only sound of his imminent orgasm? Or would he make loud, wanton, moaning noises as he sought friction, enough to startle Mrs. Hudson and possibly Mrs. Turner next door? All of these questions demanded answers; Sherlock needed to know exactly how John would sound and look and feel at every stage of arousal.
He was very glad the weather was still cool enough to warrant wearing his long coat, as it covered the otherwise obvious signs of his own arousal. Still, this line of mental investigation had proven illuminating. John was attractive; others were not. Therefore, it was logical to assume that his fascination with John would continue for the foreseeable future. The question of whether he would continue to be distracted by the idea of sex with John could only be addressed once John’s physical involvement in the process had eliminated the hypothetical nature of the query.
His conclusions were interrupted by the reappearance of Detective Inspector Dimmock, bearing a fairly thin folder and a disc. “Right. Here’s the file on her, with everything we were able to find. Her statement is in there, with the transcript of her interrogation, but there’s a video of it all in there as well. You can use one of the viewing rooms to watch it all, and then you can bloody well get out.”
“Thank you, Dimmock. It’s always so nice to see you.” Once he had the video playing on the monitor of the Spartan room, Sherlock ignored the written transcript. Intonation and body language always revealed so much. He supposed that Dr. Bell was right: people said things in the silences between words.
The blonde woman on the screen looked utterly defeated, dwarfed by the heavy, metal table and chairs surrounding her. At the Inspector’s prompting, she spoke in a quavering voice, all signs of a Russian accent gone, “My name is Anya Michelle Karjavin. I was born in Torridge, in Devon. My father was from Russia, came over to marry my mum. She’s from Torridge all her life.” She paused and drew a shuddering breath before continuing, “I came to London when I was twenty to find a job. I got work at Magnolia Imports. They wanted someone who could speak Russian to their suppliers in Moscow, and I learned Russian from my da. He used to speak it at the house when I was little, see? It wasn’t a great job, but it was better than I’d had in Torridge. So I went to school here and learned computers and Magnolia eventually moved me to tech support. I’m good with computers; I know how to fix them and how to make them speak to me. That’s where the trouble started, actually. I met this bloke at a bar, Ewan Thompson. He was really fit, really cool. And he chatted me up a bit. Asked me out for drinks a couple of times, got coffee with me. Everything was great.
“And then Ewan’s brother got in an awful lot of trouble. He asked for my help to get his brother out of the country. Seamus, that was his brother, had been caught up in a political rally and arrested. He hadn’t even been planning to go, he was just following some friends. And then the coppers came and arrested everyone they could catch, and they caught Seamus. Ewan was really upset about it. Said they hadn’t even told his mum, that it would kill her to know her son had a criminal record. And Seamus was trying to marry this girl from Nice, but he’d never be allowed to sponsor her for citizenship with that on his file. I thought it was just awful.
“So I said I’d help. Ewan told me his brother was trying to get to France, and he’d marry his girl there. That way, she’d already be married to a British citizen and they’d have to let her move here. All they needed my help with was getting him out of the country in the first place. Because he’d been arrested for political activities, they were keeping a watch on the border for him. But he wasn’t connected in any way to my mum and da’s car, so they wouldn’t even stop me. It sounded easy enough. I drove him down to Cheriton, and he hid in the boot while we were in the Chunnel. He told me to wait for him to go and get his girlfriend in Chalais, so I hung about for a bit. Figured they were going to the Registry or whatever it’s called in France, to get their license and all. Then he comes back with this other person with him, all wrapped up in a muffler, so I couldn’t really see what she looked like. Had a lot of suitcases with her though; they almost didn’t fit in my car. Really heavy, too. This girl, Angelique I think was her name, didn’t know any English, and I don’t have any French, so we didn’t talk much on the way back to England. Seamus had to hide in the boot again. When we got back to Cheriton, they both hopped out and took all their suitcases and just said ‘Thanks’ and ‘Bye.’ I haven’t heard from either of them since, so I guess they made everything right with the local Registry and all. Anyway, Ewan would have told me if anything really bad had happened.” She looked up at the Inspectors interviewing her but apparently found no help there.
With a sigh, she continued, “Everything was ok for a bit, but a couple weeks ago, Ewan said there’d been a problem. Some of his mates had found out that we’d smuggled Seamus out of the country, and they was threatening to turn us both in. They said, if we didn’t want them to go to the police, I had to act as a drop point for someone they just called The Queen. They wanted to use my flat because it couldn’t be traced back to anyone they knew. I told them I couldn’t because I had a flat-share, and she wouldn’t like it if a whole troop of strangers came tramping through every night. But they said they’d take care of her. I was afraid they’d kill her, and I kind of like Jamie. Jamie Wilson, she’s my flatmate. And she’s a bit odd, yeah, but she pays her half of the rent on time and doesn’t turn up her music too loud or anything. But they said they wouldn’t hurt her, just get her out of the way.
“They made me set up a couple of websites first, for some stupid, daft company that wasn’t real. Something to do with gingers. And then I was to give Jamie an advert for a job looking to hire gingers. Jamie’s got really crazy hair, see? So I did all that, and then Jamie tells me she’s got an evening job and we should celebrate. We never did, though. Never got around to it. That’s when Ewan’s mates came around and told me I had to stay in the flat all day, waiting to meet people who would bring stacks of cash and leave it with me. Only they didn’t call it cash; they called it pollen, which I thought was a bit stupid, but they had guns, so I wasn’t going to argue. They gave me a gun as well and said I always had to keep it with me, but I didn’t like holding it.
“I did that a couple of times and nothing ever went wrong. And then tonight this bloke comes just walking into the flat and says he’s John, Jamie’s doctor friend. He takes some of her things and left again. I don’t think he was actually John, though. Jamie said once that John didn’t like being shorter than all the women he dated, and this was a great tall bloke. But nothing happened for a bit. Misha – that’s a code name and I don’t know his real name – came by and made his delivery and then there were police swarming all over and arresting us both. And that’s all, I guess,” she ended rather lamely.
The detectives questioned her for particulars, but Anya didn’t really know much more than she had already said. She’d never met anyone in the organization except the few people dropping off money at her flat. The man who picked up the cash had never told her his name, just that he was sent by The Queen. Ewan Thompson, of course, was deeply involved in the whole scheme, but he was almost certainly using a code name as well. When questioned, Anya admitted that Seamus looked nothing at all like Ewan, being very small and dark rather than tall and pale. She hadn’t thought it odd at the time because, “Well, I don’t look much like my brother. He’s got brown hair and all.”
When they had gotten everything they could out of her, the Inspector in charge informed Anya that she would be allowed to leave on bail, and that someone had already come to post it for her. At the news that she was free, however, Anya looked utterly terrified. “Please, don’t make me go. They’ll kill me they think I’ve talked to you. And they’ll know, somehow. I won’t make it ten steps. You can keep me here, can’t you? Put me in a jail cell or one of those safe houses or something? Please, don’t send me back to them!” She was sobbing and clinging to the hard chair
The rest of the video was just the police making arrangements to send her to a safe house. Sherlock turned it off. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the rest of the file. All of Anya’s statements checked out. A man had been arrested with her, but there was no connection prior to the raid that anyone could find. He had refused to speak since being brought in. Thinking in the dull, drab, little room was impossible; there was no skull except the one in Sherlock’s own head. And he needed to think. He returned the file to the desk sergeant, but there was no sign of Dimmock. Or Lestrade, for that matter. It seemed the entire police force was avoiding him after being proven wrong for doubting him last night. Well, so much the better. It was easier to think without being surrounded by such stupidity.
Vindication reminded him of Jamie, and he sent her a text with the latest developments. Anya in protective custody. Ginger Advancement League a scam to keep you away. Don’t go back to your flat. Call Lestrade for a safe house. SH Doubtless the people who had been making the drops last night would still be watching the flat. Jamie would have to stay elsewhere. And no way could she remain in Baker Street. Last night had been more than enough.
He wandered the streets of London for quite a while, considering all the ramifications of Anya’s statement. Whoever ‘Seamus’ turned out to be, he was already wanted for other crimes. That much was clear from his behaviour in the Chunnel. ‘Angelique’ could have been anyone. It wasn’t even certain that she was female, wrapped up as Anya had described. So far, Sherlock had only been considering London shipping lanes as possible channels for importing illegal goods, but it was clear that The Queen had worked out a system to bring in goods – and probably people – using the Eurostar. It would seem that that method was riskier, involving the participation of willing or particularly stupid outside parties. And, for all her skills with computers, Anya Karjavin was one of the stupidest people he had ever met, not excepting Anderson and Kevin Philips.
But, for all his work, he was no closer to finding the person responsible for pulling the strings of this hive of smugglers than when John left. The only people he had definitely found were not in a position to provide any concrete information about the upper levels of the organization. Any concrete evidence had only led them to the barest edge of the activities going on. He was missing something important, something really big, and he couldn’t afford any more distraction until he solved this case. Perhaps it was a good thing that John was in New Zealand.
Finally, Sherlock turned his steps toward Baker Street. Perhaps there was something in the map that he had missed. Or in one of the text messages. He still hadn’t fully analyzed that sample of the oily residue that Lestrade had found on the bottom of the cases in the warehouse. Plan firmly in mind, he bounded up the steps to his flat. And stopped. And stared. John Watson stared back at him.
- 15
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Anomalies