Chapter Text
“Hey Greg, it’s a gorgeous mornin’ so give us a big smile, eh?” The old woman tosses her grey curls and winks as she steps in front of D. S. Lestrade, blocking his path. Lestrade replies with a grin, dropping coins into her cup, ignoring the scents of London street life clinging to her tattered overcoat.
“Good morning to you, Miriam. You’re out early! You know St. Aidan’s is serving free breakfast now ‘til Christmas, right? You ought to go over there and see what they’ve got. Tell ‘em you’re on orders from the police to fatten up for winter.”
Miriam sniffs and pulls a thick red scarf tight around her chin. “No thanks, love. Too many CCTV cameras over there and too many Americans trackin’ all our lives these days. Besides—I got money to buy my breakfast this week, thanks to your old friend. Gonna get a fat bacon sandwich at the deli down the street. I’ll save you a bite.”
Lestrade reckons Miriam must be up to her old business of informing on drug dealers in the neighborhood for pocket money. She’s a scrappy one, not afraid of anything or anyone—outside of the NSA and alien deathrays. The “old friend” must be Gregson or one of the other Yarders working on the drugs squad these days. Greg hopes they’re paying her well.
Before he can tell her to be careful of the chill that’s on its way in from the north tonight, Miriam looks over his shoulder, her face twisting into a scowl. She quickly picks up her duffle bag—filled to bursting with god-knows-what—and ducks into the nearest alleyway. Lestrade turns around to catch sight of a uniformed copper hustling a couple of twenty-something homeless boys down the street. The copper seems to be handling them politely, so Lestrade doesn’t interfere this time. She’s under orders to keep loiterers away from the shops, but he can’t help thinking the Met should be using her on a real case rather than as a street cleaner.
He walks a few blocks out of his way to stop at his favorite bakery. There are relatively few real pleasures in his life these days, so he allows himself a treat and a pricey coffee a couple of times a week. This morning an odd rumble of anxiety in his gut woke him early, so now he has plenty of time before catching the underground to work.
The smell of baking bread and whiffs of a sweet, floral honey cheer him up as he steps into the bakery. He waves at Nia, the manager’s teenage daughter, who is busy folding napkins at a corner table. He orders a large coffee and a cinnamon and walnut pastry. Nia rolls her dark eyes at him, full of disdain, as usual. She wears a perpetually pained expression and “Believe in Sherlock” tattooed around her wrist. He’s occasionally seen her in the neighborhood with that Sowersby kid, both in those ridiculous deerstalkers. Lestrade finds it hard to believe that the cult of Sherlock fanatics is still going strong when the man hasn’t appeared on television or in the newspapers for almost two years. Well, unless you’re Anderson, and then you see Sherlock in every newspaper from here to Bangalore, apparently. Lestrade can’t believe a brilliant scientist like Anderson is actually entertaining these fantasies, same as the teenagers. Must simply have a hell of a lot of time to kill now he’s been sacked, poor bugger.
Lestrade sits at a table near the window to eat his pastry and let the steam from the coffee warm his face. Fuck Mondays. He has six burglaries waiting on his desk from last week—all appear to be related, but he has no decent leads. The perpetrators are breaking into travel agencies and mobile phone shops, but don’t seem to be stealing anything other than paperwork, just rummaging through the bins and account books. His team is working under the assumption that they’re taking credit card and banking numbers, but they can’t seem to trace how the numbers are being used. All six of the businesses are operated by and for immigrants from Asia—the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Indonesia—who use small banks based overseas. These financial crimes are full of frustrations and dead ends, and Lestrade often longs for something tangible, something real he can get his hands on—not a bunch of digits and passwords floating in the ether.
Truth be told, Lestrade hates working burglaries and fraud cases and hates the bloody Chief Superintendent for pushing him out of homicides. The man was just trying to add insult to injury after the demotion. Lestrade has spent twenty years proving himself at the Met, and at age 50, after the Sherlock inquest, practically had to start from square one: new colleagues, new procedures, and a cramped new bachelor flat after the divorce finally got finished.
Last month he considered going to Sally after she settled into his old D.I. post, to ask her to put in a word so he could get back on a homicide team. But the awkwardness between them still makes calling for a favor tough. He’d only been able to get up the energy to collect the miscellaneous stuff from his old desk a couple of weeks ago. At least he'd been able to say hello to John when he'd dropped it off--good excuse to check up on him. Lestrade had been missing their Thursday night darts games lately, but given the raw, pained look in John's eyes, it's probably still too soon to try to invite him out for a pint again.
Lestrade stares out of the window and swallows more coffee, dreading the coming week, wondering if life will ever feel normal again.
His phone buzzes in his pocket just as he’s taking a bite of the pastry.
“Lestrade here,” he mumbles.
“Don’t come in to the Yard, Greg. Go straight down to Smithfield. We got another burglary and it’s even odder than the ones last week. The uniforms say this time there’s blood and signs of a struggle at the scene. I’m sending Dimmock and one of the forensics boys too, just in case. I want you to act as liaison between burglary and homicide, if you find a body. Sending a car to pick you up now. Where are you?”
“I’m at that bakery—the one where we got Dimmock’s birthday cake last year. I’ll wait on the corner in front.”
He can’t help smiling as he shoves the rest of his pastry into his coat pocket for later. Maybe this will be his way back in. He can’t believe he’s so excited about something that could be gruesome. He’s not the late, great Sherlock Holmes, after all. He shouldn't be thinking of crime and mayhem as Christmas presents. Still, someone has to take the case.
“Thanks, Donovan. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. Look forward to working with you again, Greg.”