I am not lonely [Mystrade]

CHAPTER 37 : Strychnine

Mycroft sighed heavily and drank a gulp of his tea. It was already 3 in the morning and a huge amount of papers were laid out on his desk in front of him, most of them besmeared with the official's handwriting in green ink, large bits of the text simply stroked out by thick marker pen's lines. The elder Holmes rubbed his hand on his face, repressing a yawn. He would have given pretty much anything to join Gregory in bed and sank under the warm duvet and never wake up but instead he was once again trying to extinguish a fire lighten up by the Government, just days before they were to be replaced, not that the next Prime Minister would act differently than this one actually. Since he was in his position, Mycroft had seen half a dozen of Prime Ministers going by and all of them had been as deceptive as the former and he held very few hopes that the new one would act differently. In fact, despite his position in the state hierarchy and his use to the political affairs, he never had voted of all his life, knowing that whoever he would had voted for, this wouldn't be the men who would really take the decisions. He and his colleagues that layin the shadow were the real masters of this country and they couldn't care more about the sensibilities of the governments they were supposed to serves. However, if he had had to vote for some reasons, the auburn would have had a hard time to choose for whom, his education sending him right to the Tories without a single question, when his personal experiences and personality would have been a place for the labour's ideas, one of the few conflict which was absolutely insolvable even by his great mind.
Focusing back on his work, he grabbed a piece of paper, barely seeing the lines that were dancing in front of his tired eyes. While trying to concentrate on the document he was holding, he saw his office's door moving slightly and heard the noise of claws on the flooring before feeling Marcus rubbing himself against his master's legs. The latter ran a gentle hand on the dog's head, looking at him with a little pout. "Can't sleep ?" he asked him in a low voice. Of course, he knew the dog couldn't answered him, but it was better than speaking to himself like he usually had the habits of doing when he was left alone for to long. He extended his legs, allowing the puppy to climb on his lap and, one hand still wandering softly on the animal's skin, he returned to his work, knowing that he couldn't escape it and that he would have no sleep before he would be done with it.
Before dating Greg, the auburn had never really been bothered about working at night. Actually, his entire life was, at the time, dedicated to his work and home was just one of his manifold offices. But these days, he was finding it more and more difficult to be turned apart from his husband even if they were in the same building and he would have killed for a job with strict office hours. He always had had a difficult love / hate feeling about his work, despising the fact of having to play god every now and then, the impossible hours and dull meeting he had to attend and loving the fact of being at the very heart of the state and just finding it interesting and exciting overall. It was only this feeling of excitement which restrained him from quitting his job, but he sometime had wondered what it would feel like to have a 'normal' job, just for one day, being a lawyer like his uncle and coming back home at night, knowing that you will be able to enjoy your evening without having to care about a possible call about a possible worldwide crisis. He never had talked about these ideas with anyone, not even his partner, keeping it for himself, thinking about it every time that, when sat at his office in the Holmes Mansion, he looked up to the wall opposite him to see his framed law diploma from the Imperial College. He never had pleaded, never had got the opportunity to wear the robe, having secured his job at the cabinet office a couple of months before he actually graduated, thanks to his father retirement in his favour. He probably could have become a great solicitor, like all his comrades at the Imperial that could now be seen on television every time an important trial was to take place, always being first in everything when still at school and winning countless rhetoric contests since his early teenage years. But that was nearly 25 years ago and the official knew that it was now a distant memory, not even a failed dream, just an opportunity he hadn't seized, turning to another one that had more or less contented him since then, even if it was sometime a heavy cross to bear.
When Mycroft looked up from his papers again after adding his last note and put them back in the beige files they had come in, dawn was already near and the dark blue sky was starting to turn purple. The auburn grabbed his pocket watch, sighing and yawning. It was six and a half and he was supposed to have a meeting with Sir Robert Edwin at eleven, not allowing him more than three hours of sleep if he didn't want to be late. Putting the sleeping dog down on the floor, he raised to his feet and stretched his arms before climbing the stairs and quickly undressing himself. He slipped under the duvet and pressed his body against Gregory's, comforting himself with the contact of the warm skin and the delicate scent of shampoo in his lover's hair. Unconsciously, the detective wrapped an arm around his partner shoulders and quickly the official started snoring gently, his warm breath tickling the yarder's ear.

Gregory gently lifted his partner's head away from his chest and adjusted the duvet over the auburn's naked shoulders before exiting the bed and dressing up silently. He haven't heard the official crawling into bed but he could easily have guessed that it haven't been a long time by the auburn's clothes carelessly laying on the floor, an action that was absolutely against all his praxis, him who usually always took great care of his suits and hanged them up in the dressing room before going to sleep. The detective placed a last kiss on his sleeping husband lips and stepped out of the room, closing the door, careful not to wake him up. A complete English breakfast was waiting for him downstairs and he started eating it joyfully, starving for no precise reason. While gobbling up his crumbled eggs, he grabbed one of the newspapers Mycroft had insisted to had delivered every morning and turned to the sport page, learning happily that Arsenal had won their game against Chelsea the night before.
It's in a great spirit that he climbed in his car and joined the crowded London traffic, tapping his finger on the wheel gently on the music rhythm. He was waiting at a traffic light when he felt his phone ringing in his pocket.
"DI Greg Lestrade ?" he introduced himself when taking the call.
"Hey Greg, it's Molly." a woman voice greeted him.
"Oh, Hi ! How's life ?" exclaimed the detective, surprised by this early call but happy to have some news of his friend.
"Great, great really. I was wondering, would you care to come to Barts this morning ?" she asked her voice seeming as happy as Gregory's.
"What for ?" wondered the man, following the car in front of him to the next light.
"Sherlock is to come, he apparently has a conclusion on one of your dead case and that had required that I found him two bodies. I thought you could be interested." enlighten him the post-mortem employee.
"Yeah, I'd like that. When do you want me to be there ?" accepted the inspector in a smile.
"Well John said they would be there around 8.30." advised him the young woman.
"Right, well I'll come straight away without going by the Yard then, no used to go to there if it's to leave after 10 minutes." chuckled the yarder. "We'll have time to drink a coffee then."
"Yeah sure ! See you then !"concluded Molly before hanging up the call.
The detective moved from a line to another, changing direction, without paying attention to the concert of angry horns behind him. A little more than 15 minutes later he was parked in front of St Bartholomew Hospital in central London, his second office like he sometime laughed with Molly and John. He climbed to the fifth floor where the young woman was waiting for him, a warm coffee in each hands. The DI placed a kiss on the doctor's cheek and took one of the cup, smiling at the sight of the hot beverage on this cold January morning.
"Thanks Molly. So did John told you what case that was all about ?" he wondered, taking a seat on one of the lab tables.
"Hmm, please Greg ..." the woman told him off gently. "If you could maybe not sit there,thank you."
"Oh yes, sorry ..." he apologized, pulling to him the stool she was pointing out to him.
"No problem ... John have told me about a hang man that you believed couldn't be a suicide. Ring a bell to you ?" continued Hooper.
"Oh yes, the fisherman. Old case, one or two years at least by now ..." explained Gregory. " So, apart from that, how was your holidays?"
They chatted about their Christmas and new year during nearly half an hour before they were joined by Sherlock and John, the former carrying a little bottle of bluish liquid. The detective raised an eyebrow when the younger Holmes threw him the sample.
"What's that ?" he wondered, sceptical.
"Death in a bottle." replied the other one, in one of his melodramatic moment.
"Sherlock, the showing off ? We've discussed that already." lectured him DrWatson.
"Strychnine." developed the consulting detective with an apologetic look at the blonde. "It's a molecule that at a reasonable level is used to improve sport skills but badly used, it's lethal. Nobody looked for it as it provoke death by asphyxia, so does the hanging. Quite clever, especially when not injected but ingested."
"Ingested ?" said Greg, surprised.
"Yes, diluted in a bottle of alcohol, I would guess whisky." added the black-haired, playing with a pipette.
"But where could we find strychnine nowadays ? A dealer would sell that ?" asked the yarder.
"Rat poison." answered Molly. "It's now forbidden but I suppose we can still find some old box of it in some cellars."
"Exactly Hooper. Two or three doses of this in a bottle of whisky and goodbye Mr Fisherman." approved the young man.
"So it's a murder ?" demanded the DI, willing to confirm his hypothesis.
"Or it's a murder, or we have someone who was really willing to die in order to kill himself twice." nodded the man.
"And who could have done this ?"asked Molly, looking rather shocked and uncomfortable.
"Ask Scotland Yard, some say they are quite good with this." retorted Sherlock before exiting the room, closely followed by John who threw the two other a little 'sorry for him' look before closing the door.
"Well I'd better be off too." concluded the policeman, handling the sample to the young woman. "Could you test this sample and tell me if you find the same conclusion than Sherlock please?".
"Yes, sure." answered Molly with a smile before the yarder exited the room with a last grin to her.