Chapter Text
It was almost midday by the time Greg managed to commandeer a car, though it felt as though far more time had passed, the morning dragging on seemingly forever. Two hours at the Yard had felt closer to two days, and he escaped with a young sergeant by the name of Forbes who had only been promoted from constable back in January, and the strongest coffee Costa would agree to make for him in a frankly oversized cardboard cup. The caffeine burned on the way down, still too fresh and hot for any sane person to drink and he hadn’t wanted to dilute it by adding milk. Not to mention that milk tended to give him a stomach ache at the best of times, and that particular moment - stuck in midday traffic in an air conditioned car with another person - most certainly was not the best of times.
Forbes hadn’t questioned it when Greg slid into the passenger seat, seemingly pleased when he was allowed to take position behind the wheel, carefully guiding the silver BMW out into the steadily thrumming traffic of lunch time London. Roadworks along Victoria Embankment slowed their progress and gave Greg time to think, his drink disappearing rather more quickly than it perhaps should have, the thrum of caffeine in his system doing little to quiet the anxious concern that had overtaken him.
Or, he thought, was serving only to make it worse. The tremor in his fingers was almost certainly due to the lack of care he was providing his body. Perhaps it was time to cut back on the coffee, and make a concerted effort to drink more water instead. How much had he consumed today already? Five cups? Six? He had lost count a while back, and wasn’t entirely certain as to quite how many the one he was presently drinking actually counted as.
Cars filtered around them, taxi cabs mostly, smoke and pollution and noise clogging up the streets and making their permanent mark on the lungs of those who breathed it in. The Thames was no less busy to their right, the water a mass of dark ripples even in the midday heat, sunlight reflecting off each tiny wave as it bounced upon the surface. Boats of all kinds continued their merry back and forth, their progress unaffected by the constant red-amber-green of the traffic lights.
It took a good twenty five minutes to travel the two miles into Clerkenwell, and more than once Greg considered simply leaving the car with Forbes and walking the remainder of the way. The traffic congestion had mostly cleared by the time they reached Blackfriars however, so he kept his seat, remained silent, and was pleased when Forbes chose not to start up a conversation aside from initially asking where they were going. Which was all well and good really, as Greg hadn’t thought to offer the information up himself.
At least parking was straightforward enough, which was a rather distinct bonus of being with the police; they could, within reason, park wherever they needed to, as long as they weren’t liable to cause an unjustifiable obstruction. Farringdon Lane provided ample parking, and while all of the legitimate parking spaces were technically full - technically, because some of the parking jobs down that street were quite frankly atrocious and should be written up - there was enough space immediately outside the pub that leaving the car on the double yellow lines wouldn’t cause a problem. They wouldn’t be overly long anyway; it wasn’t as though Greg had much to go on, and he privately considered the possibility that the whole thing might well be a colossal waste of time.
Still, at least it got him away from his desk, and away from Thompson - he had been stomping around the Yard ever since Greg had departed the man’s office, clearly looking for a fight, and Greg wasn’t about to give him one.
“A pub, sir?” Forbes’ lip quirked upwards into a small smirk, though one look at Greg’s expression and the smile was gone, along with whatever he had intended on following his half-question up with.
“Just keep your eyes open, sergeant.” The Betsey Trotwood had only been open for around half an hour by the time they reached it, and the gathered lunch crowd were scattered around the scant few wooden picnic-style tables outside the front door to the pub, a pleasant hum of chatter and the scrape of cutlery against plates filling the air as the two officers passed. “Take note of anything unusual.” No one paid them any mind, and as Greg pushed his way into the low light of the pub, he he hit with the scent of pie, mash and gravy. His stomach gave an involuntary growl of complaint at being ignored, apparently having already forgotten the breakfast he had shared with Mycroft only hours before, though with how his morning had gone so far it felt more like days.
The best description he could come up with for the Betsey Trotwood was eclectic. Not that Greg hadn’t drank away the stresses of the day in similar pubs before, did so on a semi-regular basis in fact. It of course had the traditional - and oft-seen in small London pubs of this ilk - corner bar lined with bottles and glasses over to the left, and small square wooden tables dotted around the room furnished with wooden chairs that had been lovingly smoothed down by hands and legs and backs over years of use. The walls were a mixture of wooden panelling, verdant green paint and what looked to be brick-print wallpaper. A couple of patrons looked up as they entered, before returning to their food. By contrast with those outside, each of the clientele within the pub seemed to be dining alone, and one grizzled-looking man sat alone in the far corner surrounded by what looked at first glance to be no less than five empty pint glasses.
He took a moment to wonder what had gone quite so wrong for that particular gentleman that he could be approaching six-deep only half an hour after the pub had opened. Sherlock’s insight would have been interesting on that one, perhaps, though it would also likely have gotten them into an altercation with the man.
Not that he can. Greg swallowed down the rising tightness in his chest, suddenly finding that he was no longer hungry, and made his way over to the bar while studiously ignoring the spark of ill-timed curiosity. The woman tending it was perhaps in her early fifties, dark red hair pulled back into a short ponytail, a few strands falling loose as she busied herself wiping down the already spotless bar and he knew she was keeping one green eye firmly fixed on them both.
“Good afternoon,” Greg started, pulling out his ID card for her to see and keeping his expression neutral. “I’m Detective Inspector Lestrade, and this is Sergeant Forbes, both of Scotland Yard. We’re on a missing persons case at present and have been led to believe that the man in question visited here with an acquaintance perhaps six weeks ago. Would it be alright if I asked you a few questions?”
“Sorry, luv.” She didn’t look particularly sorry, he thought, her face drawn into a bored sort of expression. “Only been working here a couple weeks, can’t help if it were before that. Got a photo of this missing lad?” He did, of course; Greg wasn’t about to take any chances, and had furnished each of his officers with images of the missing consulting detective on the off-chance that a potential witness may come to light at any given moment. It hadn’t particularly helped thus far, but better to have the photo on him than be caught without it. The woman studied it for a moment, face pinched.
“No, don’t recognise him. Not a regular, anyhow. Why not ask Barry over there in the corner? He’s in here often enough, might be of more help.” She tipped her pointed chin up in the general direction of one of her patrons, the same man whose pie and mash had caught the attention of Greg’s stomach upon entering the pub, though the plate sat upon the wobbly table was now mostly empty.
“Thank you. If you do happen to spot him, here’s my card.” The small white business card was fairly nondescript, corner already bent when he passed it to her, and she barely glanced at it before shoving the thing in her pocket.
“There a reward in it?” The bartender huffed, about ready to go back to looking busy until her next customer arrived, clearly only vaguely interested in the conversation.
“Officially, no. Unofficially, however, if you manage to help us track him down alive and well, I have certain assurances from the family that there may be some compensation for your time and effort.” Mycroft’s words, not his, but it got the woman’s full attention and he held her gaze for longer than necessary before turning to find the gentleman she had indicated was already watching them.
“Would it be alright if we asked you a few questions?” Forbes asked the man with a soft smile, clearly more invested in this line of questioning than Greg had thought he might be.
“Of course, sit yourselves down lads, you’ll give me neck ache otherwise.” The man chuckled, pushing the chair opposite himself out from under the table with his foot and taking another mouthful of his rapidly dwindling lunch. He looked to be perhaps a little older than Greg, wider around the middle certainly, and with a grinning, reddish face that seemed perhaps a little too affable. Judging from his suit, Greg would have said an office worker, though the tailoring was somewhat more bespoke than he was used to seeing for the area so perhaps a manager? He was the sort of person who most would find instantly likeable without ever really being able to pinpoint precisely why. Greg, fortunately, wasn't 'most people' and offered the man a critical glance.
“Apologies for interrupting your lunch, Mister-?” Forbes took the offered chair and Greg pilfered one from a nearby empty table, joining the pair, happy to let his sergeant take the lead for the moment.
“Barry Hawthorne.” The man replied, shifting his knife to his left hand so that he might offer his right to shake once Forbes had scribbled the name down on his pad. “Heard you talking to old Carla there, you fellas got yourselves a missing person?”
“Oi, less of the old from you.” Carla called from the bar, and Barry chuckled in response, earning a middle finger from the woman that Greg only just caught from the corner of his eye.
“Yes, he went missing a couple of weeks ago.” Forbes turned to catch Greg’s attention, not that he particularly needed the prompting - the photograph was on the table before the sergeant had finished speaking, Sherlock’s face staring up at them, the snap from the previous Christmas, and one that he hadn’t known Molly was taking. His expression was soft, unguarded, an unconscious smile tugging at his lips.
Greg thought, when he first saw it, that Sherlock might have been looking at John when it was taken.
“Would have been in here about six weeks ago, by our estimation.” Greg finally added, watching Barry closely as his brow furrowed in thought as he cast his attention over the picture.
“Six weeks ’s a long time, so I can’t be absolutely sure, but you don’t see many with cheekbones like that round here. He a model or something?”
“Nothing of the sort.” It might have been amusing in any other circumstances, though Greg did make a mental note to inform Sherlock of his apparently wasted modelling talent once they finally found the bastard - and then proceed to mock him mercilessly about it for as long as was feasibly possible. “You remember seeing him, then?”
“Yeah, I think I do. Looks familiar, but I couldn’t tell you how long back - don’t think it was six weeks, mind. Maybe about a month back.” A month would put Sherlock’s presence there extremely close to the date of his disappearance, and deviated sharply from the contents of the dossier - although that was if he continued to assume he had managed to translate the cryptic and mostly redacted document correctly. There was the undeniable possibility as well that Sherlock had visited the location more than once, though the why of the matter was still frustratingly out of reach.
“Do you happen to know if he was here with anyone else, or whether he came alone?” Greg knew Sherlock well enough to know that the man would not have willingly sought out a pub environment unless he had a very good reason to do so, and there was the issue of the mysterious blonde man as well, if he was involved at all.
“Alone, I think. Came in, made a beeline for the stairs like he owned the place, came back down a short while later. Don’t think he ordered anything, but I got the feeling he knew the place. Not a regular though, that’s for sure - we all know one another, and he wasn’t a familiar face. Might have been meeting someone and they didn’t show, don’t know. Why, you after someone else as well?”
“We’re still pursuing the possibility that there might be someone else involved, yes.” There was a twinkle in the man’s eye, and Greg leaned back in his chair to add some distance between them, an uncomfortable sensation bubbling up from within. Forbes didn’t seem to notice it, but there was something about this man that put Greg on edge. He seemed too open, too eager for details they couldn’t give.
Hell, they hadn’t even released the details of Sherlock’s present status as missing to the papers yet.
“Think he’s been snatched away by this other bloke? Or lass, you never know nowadays.” Barry swiftly corrected himself, though the assumption seemed innocent enough. The remaining smear of mash and gravy which marred his plate sat forgotten and cold, his attention fixed entirely on Greg without flicking even once to Forbes who was still scribbling something down on his notepad.
“That isn’t something we’ve been able to discount.”
“What do they look like, this other person? ” Barry was leaning further and further forward in his seat, belly pressed against the wooden table hard enough that the four legs squeaked against the floor as it shifted. His enthusiasm was jarring, and Greg felt a rising sense of unease at the back of his neck.
“We’re still working on a composite sketch” Greg lied smoothly, hoping that his team would have something for him on their return to the Yard. He would get nowhere with the description as it presently stood; ‘a man with blonde hair’ could account for a fairly high percentage of the population of London, and that was assuming the man in question was actually a Londoner and hadn’t travelled in from further afield. “Would we be able to call on you once we have more information, should we need to?”
“Course, mate!” Barry grinned, taking far more enjoyment from the whole thing than was perhaps normal. “It’s all a bit exciting this, isn’t it? Bloke goes missing and I get to help with the case, proper dream come true.”
“Forbes, if you could take down Mister Hawthorne’s details, I’m going to take a look upstairs to see if I can find anything.” With a nod to Carla as he passed, Greg left the rest up to his sergeant and made his way slowly up the too-steep staircase to the top floor of the pub. He needed to take a proper look around, he reasoned, yet there was no denying that the conversation with the man downstairs had set him on edge, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why. A gut instinct, nothing more, but something about Barry had seemed entirely wrong, almost manic in his reactions.
Greg wasn’t about to discount it - he had spent long enough with both Sherlock and Mycroft to know not to.
Speaking of… the top floor of the pub was entirely deserted, more wooden tables set out around the room and red walls making the place feel cosy and warm. Greg fingered the tasselled shade of a table lamp as he pressed his phone to his ear, listening to it ring. The base of the lamp took the form of a decidedly feminine pair of legs in fishnets and high heels, and he wondered where the proprietor had even managed to find something like that as the call connected.
“Detective inspector.” Anthea’s voice sounded down the line, no less clipped and businesslike than she had been earlier that day. “Do you have information for me to pass onto Mr. Holmes?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Why had he thought this would be a good idea again? Aside from the fact that his thoughts kept returning to Mycroft whether he wanted them to or not, his focus split in a way he couldn’t afford. He might have been able to write it off as concern, considering how they had left things, but Greg wasn’t so blind to his own inner thoughts that he could wilfully ignore the blindingly obvious cause of his distraction.
“Should I arrange a meeting to discuss matters, or would a phone conversation suffice?”
“A meeting.” He decided, hoping that he'd have more than two eye witness sightings and some missing camera footage by the time Mycroft was well enough - and free enough - to see him. “Please.” He finally added, earning what he assumes is an amused hum from Anthea.
“A car will pick you up at lunch time tomorrow, you will be dining with Mr. Holmes, wear the dark grey suit with the burgundy tie.” He could hear the sound of nails on a keyboard down the line, the quiet click of keys only audible due to the almost-silence of the deserted upstairs rooms he was meant to be combing over. “If anything changes in the interim, keep me informed.”
“Yeah, will do. How is he?” A pause, and if Greg wasn’t very much mistaken Anthea seemed somewhat surprised by his concern. “Mycroft, how’s he doing?”
“He will need a few more hours and a decent night’s sleep, but he is-” She paused, considering her next word carefully. “-functional.” So, still suffering despite the medication. It wasn’t surprising really, considering the state Greg had left him in that morning and the fact that the man had pushed himself far beyond what either of them should have allowed. He shouldn’t be up and about, much less working, and yet that seemed to be the insinuation from Anthea’s very deliberate phrasing.
“Alright. No point telling him to take it easy really, is there?” If there was something that neither of the Holmes brothers seemed capable of, it was moderation, particularly where their own health was concerned.
“Not particularly, shall I pass on your well-wishes to him?”
“Yeah, please.” And really, what else could he say? Anthea offered a curt goodbye and ended the call, leaving the room in near-silence. It lasted only a moment before Greg’s phone rang again, caller ID showing it to be one of the phones at the forensics lab and he answered it without pause.
“Lestrade.”
“We were advised to give you a call if we found anything with the coat.” He didn’t recognise the voice on the other end of the line, but then again Greg didn’t exactly spend much time down in the labs - he had no reason to, not since he broke things off with Lisa, the lab tech he had dated for a month or so a bit too soon after his divorce.
“Go on then, what’ve you got?”
“A note, it’s...um-” There was a pause, and Greg felt his stomach drop. “I think you should come and see for yourself, sir.”