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Mycroft sighed. He looked both directions along the pavement. Of all the people in sight, Gregory Lestrade was not one of them. He tapped the tip of his umbrella against the ground a few times. A pair of young men were nearing him, laughing, shoving each other’s shoulders, pointing up at the building. Then they saw Mycroft. They separated, one going to either side of him, passing him, and kept walking. Mycroft’s eyes narrowed, his lips thinned. He exhaled through his nose, and pushed open the door.
The noise was much, much louder than he had expected, and made him wince. He made his way down the dim, blue-lit stairs. There was an attendant at a podium at the bottom. Mycroft reached for his wallet.
He had never been in a club like this before. He understood it, of course. Up to a point. Paying to see someone dance alluringly, naked or nearly so, that made sense. Most humans found the human form attractive, one way or another. What he didn’t understand was why anyone would wish to pay to see nudity in the company of others, and usually many of them strangers. Even attending as a group seemed distasteful. Surely if one desired the arousal of exotic dancing and was willing to pay, privacy was more desirable. The private rooms he could understand. The large, communal room with three poles on the stage and the crowd of men around the front…he understood a little less.
It wasn’t difficult to spot the DI. Most of the black lights were aimed at the stage or the bar. Greg’s grey hair almost glowed. And then he grinned.
Mycroft blinked, and looked away. Greg’s attention was focused on the stage, and he wasn’t alone.
“Inspector.”
Greg’s eyes jerked away from the gymnastics on stage, the grin melting off his face. The whites of his eyes were ludicrously bright, and Mycroft sighed inwardly. “What are you doing here?” The words fell out of his face and he backed up against the edge of the bar as though afraid he might catch something.
Mycroft gave him a nasty, brief smile. “Looking for you. Obviously.”
Greg glanced back at the bar, at the looks he was getting from his companions. “Ohh, this is not gonna be fun,” he muttered. He turned away from everyone, grabbed his drink off the bar, and waved Mycroft after him. “Come on.”
Greg headed for a curtained doorway. Mycroft followed, not entirely comfortable. “What was wrong with the bar?”
“Whatever you have to say, whatever brought you in here to say to me, is not something I want anyone else to hear.”
“I don’t think this is going where you think it is,” Mycroft said, smiling and slowing.
Greg stopped and turned to look at him. He’d checked his jacket, and was wearing a plain, dark shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His tan was still dark enough that the blacklight had no purchase on him, except for the slightly lighter stripe where his wedding ring had been. “Then why are you here?” Greg asked bluntly.
“Information.”
Greg rolled his eyes and turned away again. “Exactly. Come on.” Mycroft bit his cheek, and followed. They were stopped at the doorway by a bouncer. Greg glanced back at Mycroft. “He’s with me.” The man nodded, and held the curtain aside. Mycroft ducked through after Greg.
Inside, the noise wasn’t quite so oppressive. The room seemed to be dedicated to the more private, intimate dances. Contact was not just allowed with the audience. Greg saw him looking, rolled his eyes, and waved him on. “D’you mind?”
Mycroft glared over, then saw Greg was speaking to one of the girls, who shook her head at them. Greg went through another curtain. The light was dimmer, and felt like a changing area in a department store, with several doors opening off a narrow hall. Greg lead them down to the last door, tapped, then went inside.
Mycroft glanced around. It was barely large enough to be a closet. There was one chair, and a ledge. A countertop. He didn’t want to define it. Greg leaned against the wall, and was clearly enjoying the fact that he knew his way around the place better than Mycroft.
“Greg, what are you doing here?” Mycroft sighed, shaking his head. He folded his arms, mirroring Greg and leaning his back against the opposite wall.
“I’m working, as it happens,” Greg said firmly. “Two girls were abducted from here last week, and beaten half to death. Which you knew perfectly well or you wouldn’t have known where I was anyway.”
Mycroft conceded the point. “You could have delegated.”
“Short-handed as it is. Now what do you want?”
“I want to know what you want.”
Greg frowned impatiently at him. “What the hell does that mean? What are you talking about?”
“It’s Thursday.”
Greg shook his head, blinking stupidly at him.
Mycroft sighed. “The date?”
“It’s the twenty-th…oh, fuck.” He turned away, put his face in his hands, and sat down heavily. “Jesus. Fuck. The hearing.”
“Yes.” Mycroft watched him carefully. He did seem genuinely upset, but that was no guide. “I did try to ring you earlier.”
“You wouldn’t have caught me. We got stuck in a meet, phone died… been a hell of a day.” Greg rubbed his chin, staring absently at the wall. “Jesus. She’s going to score points off this, no question. I’ll have to reschedule, and God knows what else is going to happen. Fuck.” He put his elbows on his knees and hid his face again in his large hands. “Fucking hell. Why can’t this just be over? She’s got the savings, the house, most of the furniture. I was lucky to get the guest bed and my pension.”
Mycroft smiled sympathetically. “The second-best bed.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“God damn it. Right. Fine.” Greg looked up, not really seeing Mycroft, rubbing his hands on his thighs. “Okay. Tomorrow I’ll see if I have any favours left that I can call in.”
Mycroft pursed his lips, but didn’t move. There wasn’t much room for Greg to stand up again without bumping into him in the tiny room. “If it’s a matter of calling in favours, I may be of some use to you.”
Greg focused on him uncertainly. “Ah. Yeah. Well.”
“I sense uncertainty.”
This time he laughed. “Well, yeah. I’m not exactly sure what you’re offering, or how much a favour from you’s going to cost,” Greg said bluntly. “I mean, your brother’s a handful enough as it is.”
“Why should he be involved?”
“I…don’t know? What exactly are you offering?”
“I am acquainted with a sizable number of legal professionals. What would you like me to offer?”
He laughed again, and this time it was full-voiced, loud and open. Mycroft didn’t find this reassuring. “Yeah, well, if you could just make a few calls, finalize my divorce, cut all the strings between me and her, that’d be fantastic. Cheers, mate. See you in the boozer.” He put his hands on his legs as if to get up, then realized Mycroft was neither smiling nor moving. “It’s a joke. I’m not seriously believing you can do that.”
Mycroft looked down, then reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a neat, crisply folded bundle of papers, and his pen, and handed them to Greg without speaking.
Greg recoiled, but was already unfolding them before Mycroft spoke. “I wasn’t sure if you’d missed the hearing intentionally. I thought perhaps you weren’t yet fully decided. But if you would like your freedom, sign, and it shall be taken care of. You need not speak of it ever again, to anyone, if you so wish. Or I can send someone over tomorrow to go over the entire proposal with you. Suffice to say that you come out rather better than you were hoping, and further negotiations would be pointless. Of course, if you choose…”
But Greg had already spread the papers on the tiny countertop and was signing. “Here.” He thrust them back at Mycroft. “There. Done. Over.”
Mycroft blinked. “I…see.”
This time Greg did push himself up, his face brushing against Mycroft’s jacket on the way. “I want it behind me. It was a bad job from the start. Over now. No sense dragging it out.”
“I understand.”
“So are you going to want some kind of quid pro quo? Name it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“That is what I said.”
Greg hitched up his belt, studying Mycroft carefully, his head to one side. “Huh. You don’t get to be…whatever the hell you are without knowing a little something about marionettes.”
“You’ve met my brother.”
“So you want a lifetime babysitter?”
Mycroft smiled. “Gregory, if I wanted a favour from you, I would ask. As it is, you tolerate Sherlock. I’ve most of a lifetime learning what a…difficult task that is. This has just gone a little way to redressing the balance.”
Greg thought for a long moment, studying him, considering the implications. “You do know he’s helpful. Sometimes. Most of the time. I don’t just let him hang around crime scenes because you think it keeps him out of cold storage.”
“If our needs overlap, so much the better.”
Greg gave him another long, slow look, then nodded. “Right. Well. That’s…good, then.”
“I shall have these taken care of in the morning,” he said briskly, tucking the papers back into his pocket. “Tomorrow evening you will officially be a free man.”
“Yeah. Well.”
Something in the tone made Mycroft pause. “Problem?”
“Just thinking about the next five minutes of my life. Didn’t see much choice at the time, but I’m coming out of the back room of a strip club with another man, who’s got my divorce paperwork.”
“No one will know the latter.”
“It’s more that this is an undercover job, and now I just might be turning heads for the wrong reasons. If it were a gay bar, it wouldn’t be quite so memorable.”
“I see.” Mycroft smiled icily. “Do you think you can look terrified?…”
When Greg Lestrade returned to the main room moments later, he did look terrified. Mycroft Holmes walked ahead of him, unhurried, umbrella in one hand, his eyes darkened by wide pupils in the dim light. The bright, glowing white of his shirt collar caught several eyes, and there were double-takes as his expression registered. Greg separated from him as quickly as he could, rejoining his companions at the bar. He shrugged off their questioning looks, instead watching Mycroft’s exit in the mirror behind the bar. One of the bar staff saw the wave of uneasiness surrounding Mycroft’s progress, and approached him a little aggressively. Mycroft stopped him dead before he even got within reach. He simply turned his head and focused his entire attention on the man. It wasn’t a fast movement. The man stopped, said something, and Mycroft raised an eyebrow at him. Then he looked away, and made his way out.
The plainclothes officer next to Greg leaned over with a wide, fake grin and said, “What the fuck just happened to you? Should we be following him?”
“Nah,” Greg said, glancing back at the exit again. “It’s fine. Just… if you see that guy around, don’t piss him off, yeah?” He smiled to himself. Wouldn’t hurt to foster that image a little.
The next morning, Greg found a text message from an unknown number.
I enjoyed that. But next time, I choose the location. -M