Loving a Holmes

Toby

It had been about a month since we had gone dealt with 'The Ghost Drive' case, as John called it, Sherlock still wasn't happy with the name but he got over it when we started getting other cases. We start on one with a man who was asking if his wife was up to anything since she thought she was too good for him. We were trying to listen to him up we kept hearing Greg and Detective Hopkins outside the door, Hopkins was one of the detectives Sherlock had helped while he was spinning plates while Mary was pregnant. Unable to focus due to hearing them talking Sherlock gets up from his seat and walks over to the door and opens it. "Will you two keep please kept it down?" Sherlock slams the door closed before crossing back to his chair. I am sitting next to him in one of the chairs at the table. "Now, you haven't always been in life insurance, have you? You started out in manual labor." The man opens his mouth in surprise. "Oh, don't bother being astonished. Your right hand's almost an entire size bigger than your left. Hard manual work does that."

The man nods. "I was a carpenter, uh, like me dad."

"And you're trying to give up smoking, unsuccessfully, and you once had a Japanese girlfriend that meant a lot to you but now you feel indifferent about."

The man nods and looks down into the pocket on his shirt and the several small cylindrical items in it. He smiles across to Sherlock. "E-cigarettes."

"Not just that, ten individual e-cigarettes. Now, if you just wanted to smoke indoors, you would have invested in one of those irritating electronic pipe things, but you're convinced you can give up, so you don't want to buy a pipe because that means you're not serious about quitting, so instead you buy individual cigarettes, always sure that each will be your last. Anything to add, John?" Sherlock glances briefly towards John's chair, then does a startled double-take. "John?"

Floating at seated head height in John's chair is a red balloon with a face drawn on it. The eyebrows are tilted inquiringly and the face has an impressed smile. The balloon is held in place by a piece of string wrapped around a book propped up on the seat. A moment later the real John pops his head around the kitchen door. I laugh softly. "Sherlock, John hasn't been there for almost two hours."

John nods. "Yeah, but I'm listening."

Sherlock frowns, then glances briefly towards the client. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You know I value your little contributions."

"Yeah? It's been there since nine this morning."

"Where were you?"

"Helping Mrs. H with her Sudoku."

The client looks over to Sherlock. "What about my girlfriend?"

"What?"

"You said I had an ex."

"You've got a Japanese tattoo in the crook of your elbow in the name 'Akako.' It's obvious you've tried to have it removed. If she'd really hurt your feelings, you would have had the word obliterated, but the first attempt wasn't successful and you haven't tried again, so it seems you can live with the slightly blurred memory of Akako, hence the indifference."

"Sorry. I thought you'd done something clever. No, no. Ah, but now you've explained it, it's dead simple, innit?"

The side of John's mouth twitches up into a smile. Sherlock pulls in a long breath, straightening up in his seat as he turns more towards the client, then he breathes out deeply through his nose. "I've withheld this information from you until now, Mr. Kingsley, but I think it's time you knew the truth."

"What?"

"Have you ever wondered if your wife was a little bit out of your league? As I do, from time to time, with my lovely Madison here. You thought she was having an affair. I'm afraid it's far worse than that. Your wife is a spy. That's right. Her real name is Greta Bengtsdotter. Swedish by birth and probably the most dangerous spy in the world. She's been operating deep undercover for the past four years now as your wife for one reason only: to get near the American embassy which is across the road from your flat. Tomorrow the US president will be at the embassy as part of an official state visit. As the president greets members of staff, Greta Bengtsdotter, disguised as a twenty-two stone cleaner, will inject the president in the back of the neck with a dangerous new drug hidden inside a secret compartment inside her padded armpit. This drug will then render the president entirely susceptible to the will of their new master, none other than James Moriarty."
John and I look at Sherlock as if he is crazy, as he continues. "Moriarty will then use the president as a pawn to destabilize the United Nations General Assembly which is due to vote on a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, tipping the balance in favor of a first strike policy against Russia. This chain of events will then prove unstoppable, thus precipitating... World War Three."