Chapter Text
Hardly had he entered his office when Sherlock phoned him, inquiring whether anything had been found on the South Bank between Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge. Greg reached into the database.
***
They were grouped around a young man`s body left on the strand of the Thames by receded water. Oozy soil slurped nastily under their shoe soles.
In the light of the coming day, Greg had been watching the consulting detective who seemed to pick up the trail visible only to him. Sherlock looked not just lively – horny. Greg could bet you anything had he felt for Sherlock`s fly, he`d find a mighty stiffy. He grunted quietly imagining John gaping at the sight of such obscenity.
A few months back, Greg convinced himself that Sherlock did not need any intimacy, at least not being high. Lately he wasn`t so sure of that, though. What he knew for certain was this: Sherlock and John had no affair between them. Not that he`d been tracing some signs – he just knew. Considering sincerely John as being a fool.
As John inspected the corpse, bringing out signs of violent death, Sherlock had time to have known the killer`s identity and even, supposedly, the dead man`s name.
‘The water`s destroyed most of the data. But I`ll tell you one thing, that lost Vermeer painting`s a fake,’ said Sherlock, intending to stir up Greg shifting from one foot to the other a little farther off.
‘What?’ Greg startled.
The next part of their dialogue proved to be much more emotional. Sherlock , his eyes suddenly green, gave Greg a piercing look and grined, as if knowing what exactly the puffy with lack of sleep inspector had been thinking of just a couple of minutes earlier. There was no doubt he had read Detective Inspector Lestrade like a note scrawled in childish hand and let him alone only for John who distracted him.
After one more brilliant speech, Sherlock and John left to catch a Golem, and Greg along with his team headed for the Met to draw up papers and prepare the corpse for proper identification.
***
Later that evening, when time allotted by the bomber was almost up, John and Greg had a chance of watching a scene between Sherlock and Miss Wenceslaus, the co-owner of the Hickman Gallery: while Sherlock was trying to force her to admit the painting was a fake, Miss Wenceslaus the patroness of art was laughing in his face and unambiguously hinting to the inspector that it was high time for him to show himself and "his friends" out.
Sherlock had barely bargained with the bomber for a few more precious seconds to try and find the proof. A cold chill fell over the hall as a countdown in a frightened child`s voice started from the loudspeaker.
Greg suddenly felt like an immediate onlooker of an epic combat between two monsters from a blockbuster. And he felt absolutely helpless and doomed to accept any outcome, just praying silently for his monster.
His prayer answered. Three seconds before the forthcoming calamity, Sherlock started to praise whether his own genius or the villain who had composed such a brilliant riddle.
‘Three,’ the trembling clear voice counted, echoing from the farthest corners of the hall. ‘Two.’
‘SHERLOCK!’
‘The Van Burne Supernova.’
When it was over, Sherlock had got to explain to the petrified inspector what the next actions should be: finding and freeing the poor little hostage.
***
‘Are you hungry?’ Cathy asked, nuzzling in her husband`s neck. Her flowery dressing-gown was draped over pyjamas.
‘Starving!’ Greg said and pecked at her ear.
Starting his meal, he realised how hungry he really was.
Cathy retrieved a bottle of beer from the fridge, plonked it in front of him.
‘You don`t look well,’ said she, serving herself some red wine. ‘Anything wrong?’
It`s a bit strange of a cop`s wife to ask questions like that, Greg thought. ‘It`s all right now. Just one scumbag decking a kid out in explosives. We solved the problem, eventually.’
Cathy put her glass aside, and Greg saw fright in her wide brown eyes.
‘That`s dreadful,’ said she, serving herself some red wine. ‘What was the nutter after, then?’
‘There were no demands,’ Greg lied. ‘He just has fun, you know.’
‘Oh my. . .’ Cathy exhaled, picking up her glass again with her trembling hand. ‘I mean, that`s sick… Anyway, you lot did well. Saving the poor thing. Wow!’
‘M`h`m…’ Greg mumbled in agreement through a mouthful of risotto.
‘Dear me. . . those poor parents. . . I can imagine how they felt,’ said Cathy.
‘Aye,’ Greg agreed, taking a gulp from the bottle.
He knew what she was thinking about. Not once, the same thoughts crossed his own mind. Maybe it`s all right they don`t have children. To romp with his nephews, Mark`s teenage sons, now and then is one thing. To give daily attention to a kid of his own - quite another. Just because of his work. And such a selfish woman as his wife would scarcely be happy to spend the best part of her lifetime raising a baby almost with no participation of her husband. Never working, Cathy still had no time to get bored nevertheless: fitness, shopping, friends (not only female), entertainments – all to live a lady`s life to the full. And there`s her husband who she can come back to in case the next lover of hers turns out to be an arsehole. A husband who won`t throw a fit, playing Othello. It`s funny that, unlike many cops going nuts after about a dozen years of their service, Greg`s professional deformation had been expresses merely in his bulldog calm. There`s the only man in the world who knows how to exasperate Greg Lestrade. The wretch enjoys that, though…
‘Really, you guys did great! And they will tell us that policemen are all, at best, mediocrities and freeloaders. At the worst – rapists and murderers,’ said Cathy, interrupting his thoughts.
‘That`s nothing, we got used to it,’ Greg uttered modestly and swallowed down the rest of his beer.
He spotted a suspicious gleam in her eyes as she asked, ‘Will you tell me?’
He shook his head. ‘This is a classified case. We`ve got MI5 meddling in, you know.’ He was not that eager to tell her how it really was: if she finds out a thing about Sherlock she might find out all the rest of the story. How, during her several-month absence, her half of matrimonial bed was being occupied by a great detective. Not only did Greg not want to upset his wife, he also was not going to let anybody into his the very sacred secret.
A few months back, he was being overwhelmed with rage. Rage at himself, rage at Sherlock, rage at Cathy who left her husband to the mercy of a ruthless monster devouring Greg`s soul and devastating his life day after day (which was Sally Donovan`s opinion and his own). Greg was desperate to get rid of his dark, dirty passion. And what a relief it was as an angel in his shining armour had come into picture. . . or, sooner, had descended from heaven! The angel`s name was John Watson. Escaping his own miserable fate of an invalided soldier, John had saved Sherlock his cocaine addiction and a maniac poisoner, and liberated Greg from Sherlock. But after a while, Greg`s glee somehow ebbed while his dark, dirty passion seemed no more to be that dark and dirty… .
***
He fell asleep once his head touched the pillow.
***
There`s the bank of the Thames again, where Alex Woodbridge`s body has been found. John and the officers keep arguing over the length of fingers which could leave bruises of that size and location on the corpse. Every now and again a cry of a seagull wedges into the human murmur.
‘Gonna take a leak,’ Greg informs who knows who, and makes for the colonnade of reinforced concrete piles bearing the foundation of a stately red brick building.
When strong wind keeps blowing from the sea, water rises up, reaching the foundation and submerging the piles completely; albeit now there are merely slimy layers of tiny aquatic plants all up the three-meter piles reminding of that, along with the wet ground of the stony river bottom.
No one pays attention to the Inspector, who disappeared into damp dimness of the dirty-green colonnade. He doesn`t need to look back to know Sherlock`s following him.
A couple of minutes later, Inspector Lestrade finds himself embracing the consulting detective from behind, nuzzling between his scarf and hair smelling of expensive cigarettes, and poking awkwardly into his coveted, willingly stuck out arse. Folds of the ill-starred upturned coat in between them and slippery mud under their feet limit the amplitude of the movements. Bitten by an ear, Sherlock has twitched with pain and slipped on a wet piece of gravel, and they both have plopped into the mud, after which Greg starts thrusting himself fiercely into Sherlock`s body, knocking little painful cries out of him.
***
Opening his eyes, Greg found himself in the cozy darkness of his own bedroom. The coziness gladdened him up not one little bit, for his boner could compete for its hardness with those damned reinforced piles on the river strand, let alone his balls ached badly.
He turned to Cathy and toched her shoulder. She mumbled sleepily and shifted away. He dared not wank, having his wife by his side, so he got out of bed and sneaked into the bathroom.
Having taken position over the tub, his legs apart, he squeezed his cock in his fist and tilted it down, and closed his eyes.
Grasping Sherlock`s hips, Greg`s relenlessly pumping into his body bent forward. At last, adding mentally adding an extra, say, two inches to his not so short manhood (that`s what the git gets for provoking men exhausted with their life!), Greg takes an extremely deep thrust. Jerking his hips convulsively and reveling in the sweet music of painful screams, he fills in the sore borehole to the brim…
He walked up to the sink and laved his face with icy water; he had no idea what all these jars, sprays, and tubes were for, since for the last decade, in his view, Cathy looked just the same. It couldn`t be due to all this stuff, could it? He risked taking a glimpse of his pretty happy physiognomy peeping out of the mirror through his wife`s abundant cosmetic potions. Oh Sherlock....
He returned to the bedroom, carefully lay down beside Cathy and soon fell asleep.
***
Thoroughly avoiding looking at Sherlock in the face, he`d been listening to hin interrogating Miss Wenceslaus since the workday had started. Bracing himself, he glanced at the consulting detective focused on his prey. In the morning light Sherlock looked very handsome and somehow rejuvenated. Like a vampire gotten drunk on fresh blood a little time before.
‘What are we looking at, Inspector?’ the "vampire" severely demanded, seemingly regarding Greg as his subordinate.
The inspector dutifully reported Miss Wenceslaus`s rap sheet. While confessing, the criminal Czeck woman who lost all her last night`s gloss was mainly speaking to him, rightfully assuming him to be much less dangerous.
When she arrived at the point of her story, Sherlock had somehow transformed. He sat bolt upright in his chair and slightly turned it round to face her. Like a daring young cat ready to snatch a mature rat, he was mesmerizing her with his unblinking eye. Having heard "Moriarty", he leaned back in his chair and tried to hide a strange smile in his steepled fingers.
Greg was displeased with that smile. Suddenly, it hurt nastily inside his chest.