Rose Watson Moriarty

Beginnings

Prologue

It had been a simply bright day, the kind where the trees look like they are standing against a blue screen. Sherlock pushed the pram, the only thing that kept Rose quiet and got her out of his father John's hair for a few hours. The wound of Mary's passing was still raw and the two men had settled on raising Rosemund, Rose, the best they could with the occasional help from Ms. Hudson and Molly. On this particular day, Sherlock had been sent out to retrieve pasties from the local shoppe, everyone in agreement that sunshine and responsibility was the best cure for his obnoxious surliness. 

When he arrived there, prams were lined up, all filled with sleeping or fussing babies, parents having left them for a moment to go inside and place their orders and it was there he parked it, next to another similar looking pram. He paused for a moment to gaze at the sweet scented little girl who gave a small sigh, dreaming of things that only babies dreamt of. There was no fear of just leaving the pram outside as everyone did, following the concept that it takes a village to raise a child and in the time of everyones memory not a baby had ever gone missing. So it surprised no-one when a man sharply dressed in a Westwood came up and releasing the break on the pram simply walked away and disappeared among the crowds of people out and about to enjoy the sunshine and the blooming trees. 

17 years later

The snow was dancing aimlessly, undecided whether to fall up or down, just letting itself be driven by the hellish wind that was blowing in and rising from the great darkness that covered the receding ocean surf. Together, they swirled dancing round and round in the darkness between the fishermen warehouses that were all shut for the night. This went on until the wind got fed up and dumped its dance partner in drifts along the wall. And there the dry windswept snow was settling around the shoes of the man that I had just shot in the chest and neck. Blood was dripping down onto the snow from the bottom of his shirt. I don't actually know alot about snow, or much else for that matter, but I'd read that snow crystals that form when it's really cold are completely different from wet snow, heavy flakes or the crunchy stuff. That it's the shape of the crystals and the dryness of the snow that makes the hemoglobin in the blood retain that deep red color. Either way the snow under him made me think of a kings robe all red and lined with ermine like the drawings in a book of English fairy tales my Uncle Jim used to read to me. The evening post had said that if the cold carried on like this until the New Year, this year would be the coldest year on record and that we'd remember it as the start of the new ice age that scientists had been predicting for a while, but then again what did I know. All I knew, was that the man in front of me would soon be dead; there was no mistaking the way his body was shaking. It was one of the Fishermen's men, but it was nothing personal. I had told him as much as he collapsed, leaving a smear of blood down the wall. If I ever get shot I rather it be personal. I didn't say it to stop his ghost from coming after me, my beliefs in ghosts are my own. I just couldn't think of anything else to say. Obviously, I could have just kept me mouth shut, that's what I usually do after all. So there must have been something that made me so talkative all of a sudden. Maybe, because there were only a few days to go before Christmas, I've heard people are suppose to feel closer to each other around Christmas.

I thought the blood would freeze on top of the snow and end up just lying there, but instead the snow sucked the blood up as it fell , drawing it under the surface, hiding it as if it had some sort of use for it. As I walked towards my motorbike I imagined a snowman rising up from the snowdrift one with clearly visible veins of blood under its deathly pale skin of snow and ice. On the way back to my flat I called my uncle from a phone box to let him know the job was done. My uncle replied with his nonchalant "that's good". As usual he didn't ask any questions. Either he'd learned to finally trust me over the course of the time I had worked as a fixer for him or else he didn't actually wanted to know.