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English
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Part 21 of Inktober 2017
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2018-01-09
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1,467
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1/1
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Experienced Observancy

Summary:

He rallies his patience. "You're observant, you have military experience. Where would you put a sniper's nest?"

///

One crime scene afternoon, John gets shoved unceremoniously into the limelight.

Notes:

Not-today's prompt was "mystery/short". I don't know about the mystery bit, but I can tell you know it's not short.

Work Text:

Sherlock's coat swirls around his ankles when he stops. The room is small, cramped, though its outfitting would probably drive John to call it cosy instead. Much more interestingly, sprawled at an unnatural angle half-on the battered Chesterfield sofa is a dead body. Male, approximately forty-five years of age, stayed in the flat for a solid three days prior to death due to illness and prolonged vomiting. (Clear path to bathroom, acid-scarred bowl on end table within reach but not a chemist of any sort.) Shot through the shoulder, a lot of blood but not a prolonged death - an artery.

He notes discrepancies as Lestrade shuffles around to stand by the unbroken window, eyeing the crime scene himself from the new angle. Good. Sherlock hates it when people rely purely on him to find clues. This is one of the reasons he finds Lestrade. . . tolerable.

"Sniper," he says after a millisecond longer, "obviously. I know I usually say this, but it's appalling if you truly needed me for this."

Lestrade and John will recognise the joke for what it is - of course he's seen that it isn't that simple - but some prove their ignorance yet again by sneering.

"Not that simple, Freak." He sounds disgustingly self-satisfied. "Oh, yeah. You missed something, know-it-all. Pretty major thing, as well, we all noticed right away -"

Sherlock merely lifts an eyebrow. "Hardly. Given the way Donovan rolled her eyes, Anderson, you had to have it explained for you." He lets that sink in for a moment, and then: "I reiterate that your IQ has managed to be so low as to be less something to be stepped over and more of a pothole to be avoided."

Lestrade hides the twitching of his lips under the pretense of looking out of the window. Anderson has been notably irritating today, then, Sherlock thinks, and then wonders when he stopped minding doling out insults in Lestrade's stead.

John is the one to say, "What have you got?"

Unusual, but not unheard of. John has also noticed Lestrade's amusement - slight narrowing of eyes, upturned mouth, second hand irritation and humour both.

"Long distance shot," he begins, slipping past John to get to the window with the bullet hole, "far longer than the shooter is comfortable with, possibly even enough to need a little bit of a push. If that's true, it's most likely going to be a duo - makes sense, allows for easy and flexible disguises and cover stories - but if it's not then this is a crack shot, solo, accustomed to violence and death."

Lestrade chooses then to chime in with a too-innocent, "Like the guy who killed the cabbie?"

To his everlasting credit, John does absolutely nothing. Sherlock is the one to send a sharp look Lestrade's way.

(Humour, light eyes, smiling mouth. Teasing. Rhetorical question, though it opens the possibility for a line of coded conversation. . .)

"Maybe," Sherlock says. He makes sure to sound nonchalant, a little airy; John's eyes are still wary underneath the cool front, and his hand has slipped into his pocket to wind the tail of a cable tie around his fingers. Anxious fiddling. Odd habit. "Certainly, he may be from a similar background - military of some kind, or simply war -" He cuts himself off. "Hm."

"You think they're linked?" Anderson says incredulously. "That case was years ago!"

Sherlock opens his mouth, glaring, but then John catches his eye and shakes his head warningly. Sherlock has learnt the hard way that it's not worth ignoring.

He closes his mouth.

Lestrade sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "'Course they're not linked. Doesn't mean there can't be similarities. Sherlock, theorising is all well and good, but can we get to the odd bit now?"

"Like how a bullet can bounce off the arm of one ratty green sofa?" Anderson kicks at one of the feet of the Chesterfield, sneering again.

John shifts, eyes narrowing slightly again, and Sherlock suddenly realises that said ratty green sofa does in fact look startlingly similar to the one in the backgrounds of some of John's childhood photos. Sentiment. Interesting, but please don't start a fight with Anderson over kicking a sofa.

It's Sherlock's turn to widen his eyes significantly. John puffs out a long breath and lets it go, having also learnt that warnings such as those are best heeded.

"It's called a ricochet, not bouncing, Anderson, Jesus," Lestrade is saying. "Do you even work for the Met?"

Anderson bristles, but then Sherlock is being engaged again by (satisfied/proud) Lestrade, and by the time the greasy arse realises he's been completely shunted out of the conversation Sherlock is already crouched over the body, pointing to the bullet hole in the shoulder.

". . . given the location of the wound, the sniper was far enough away for the bullet's trajectory to be buffeted and made uncertain. Combine that with the likely distances, the entry angle of the bullet, and it would have had to go through the wall. These are badly built flats, yes, but there are bricks in this wall. It's impossible."

He grins and claps his hands together. But he still doesn't know quite yet, so he says:

"Brilliant. This is at least a five. John?"

John startles, having been lost in thought. "What?"

Sherlock eyes him. Something about that look. . . it'll come to him in a moment. "Where's the nest?"

"I'm sorry?"

Sherlock wonders if John had his morning wake-up mug of tea today. The answer is yes, but it doesn't seem like it. Maybe he needs more?

He makes a mental note to get the man a strong cup to go in the tea shop around the corner when hey leave. Not that he's concerned.

He rallies his patience. "You're observant, you have military experience. Where would you put a sniper's nest?"

John stares for a moment longer. Then, shaking himself out of it, he goes - not to the window, as expected, but to a seemingly random spot in the wall. He lifts a hand and wiggles his pinky finger into a hole that was otherwise completely invisible unless you stood right against the wall. The hole is disguised so well that were he high and unaware of the sniper context, Sherlock would have fully believed that John was poking holes through both brick walls and the laws of physics. It doesn't even look like a rip in the wallpaper. (Though, admittedly, the wallpaper is rather riotous in itself, and so the hole has ample opportunity to blend in.)

"Sniper shot through the wall, just like you said. The bullet wasn't stopped by the bricks because they had removed one ahead of time." John glances at Lestrade. "That bumps it up to murder, if it wasn't already, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Lestrade manages. He sounds a little strangled, awed. Sherlock can relate to that - he's putting things together even as John is speaking, but it's a close enough thing that he's honestly not sure who'll finish first.

"The bullet hole in the glass is a decoy, not that it needs it. Single glazing, so it doesn't show the angle of fire very well if at all, though I bet if it were double glazing you'd be able to see clearly that the angle is completely wrong."

John meets their eyes, pulls his shoulders back into parade rest unconsciously.

"Not only was a brick removed, cameras were placed. Two, actually, for proper orientation and distance comprehension, maybe a third but I can't see it -"

John snaps his fingers at the bookshelves and the long painting above the entrance. One book's spine is distorted, a bit lumpy with its hidden camera, and there is a faint reflection in the painted woman's eye that shouldn't be there. He's still going.

". . . so the bullet came through the gap from the missing brick, hit Roylane in the shoulder. It was a brilliant shot in regards to aiming -"

Through the brick hole, into the shoulder -

"- went right through the -"

The bullet hit dead-on, the -

"- thoracoacromial artery."

John glances at the rusty splash of dried blood around the bullet hole and rotates his shoulder absentmindedly, like he's feeling it too.

Sherlock wonders, not for the first time, just how close that bullet came.

"Are we done here?" John says. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, at Sherlock. "This one didn't let me eat breakfast, and I'm starving."

Donovan's mouth is still hanging open. Anderson is just blankly staring. Lestrade has had one eyebrow creeping steadily up his forehead over the course of John's explanation, but to his credit that's all the shock he's outwardly displaying.

"Only if you tell us how you knew all that," Lestrade says.

"I saw something like it in Afghanistan," John supplies immediately. "Excellent. Sherlock, come on, I'm making you buy me Chang's."

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