Chapter 33
Friday evening settled over Edinburgh with the promise of the weekend ahead for some people.
Lucy Warren stood in her Leith flat, staring at her wardrobe.
She was tired and wanted nothing more than to sit with a glass of wine and watch some TV, but one of her friends had texted her, saying they were heading into town for a few drinks and invited her along.
Her social life was all over the place as it was, which meant non-existent. She had texted back that she could only stay for a couple. That was fine. Her few friends knew she worked crazy hours.
The past week had been exhausting – the warehouse raid, the discovery of the memorial plates, the endless interviews and dead ends in the search for David Duffy. They’d followed up on every lead Art and Cameron could find and come up with nothing.
Brodie had finally sent everyone home at six o’clock earlier that evening, insisting they all needed rest, that fresh eyes tomorrow would serve them better than exhausted officers stumbling through evidence on a Friday night.
Lucy had been grateful – her body ached with tiredness, her mind felt like fog and the thought of a normal Friday evening doing something that wasn’t police work had seemed like a small miracle.
She settled on dark jeans and a green silk blouse that she knew looked good on her, casual enough not to seem like she was trying too hard but nice enough to show she’d made an effort.
Minimal make-up, her hair loose rather than pulled back in its usual work ponytail.
When she checked herself in the mirror, she saw someone who looked almost like the Lucy she’d been before joining the force, before the job had consumed every waking hour.
They were going to meet in a pub on Cockburn Street at eight o’clock, which gave her plenty of time to walk there from the tram stop in St Andrew Square, maybe browse some shop windows on the way.
She decided to jump in a taxi instead of using the tram.
Cockburn Street was heaving. Friday night crowds heading out for their own evenings – groups of friends spilling out of pubs, couples walking hand in hand, the ordinary rhythms of city life that felt almost foreign after a week spent immersed in death and investigation.
By the time the taxi reached Cockburn Street, it was 8.
55 p.m. The pub was easy to spot, its warm lights and bustling interior visible through large windows.
Lucy went inside. Her friends weren’t there.
Maybe they were running late? She shook her head.
This was just the meeting point. They might have had a swift one.
She sent a text to her friend but there was no answer.
Maybe her phone was sitting in the bottom of a handbag, or switched off.
At nine, she admitted defeat. Her friends weren’t coming, or they’d been. She didn’t want to sit here all night on her own.
Lucy stepped back out into the cold Edinburgh night, disappointment gripping her.
She pulled out her phone to try texting again, then stopped.
What was the point? If they’d really wanted Lucy to be there, they would have waited.
They knew she didn’t work bankers’ hours.
Fuck them. Then she chastised herself. It wasn’t their fault, it was hers.
She started walking, down Cockburn Street, towards Waverley Bridge. She would get a tram at St Andrew Square and go home, have an early night and be fresh for work tomorrow.
The street was busy with Friday night revellers, people spilling out of bars and restaurants, music drifting from open doorways. Lucy was absorbed in her own thoughts, in her mixture of disappointment and wounded pride.
Somebody bumped into her shoulder and she spun round, her reflexes sharp.
‘Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,’ the man said.
She looked up and found herself face to face with Ronald Holmes, the pathologist from Dunfermline. She couldn’t think of him as Sherlock all the time.
‘Lucy!’ Holmes seemed genuinely delighted to see her, his face lighting up with recognition. ‘What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know you frequented Edinburgh on Friday nights.’
Before Lucy could respond, Holmes turned and shouted down the street to a group of men walking towards Waverley Bridge.
‘I’ll catch up with you lot later! Save me a pint!’
One of them waved acknowledgement, and Holmes turned his attention back to Lucy, his dark eyes warm with interest.
‘So what brings you to this part of town? Meeting friends?’
‘I was supposed to be, but I was late,’ Lucy admitted.
Holmes’s expression shifted to concern. ‘Oh no. What a terrible way to end the week. And here I was thinking I was the only one having a rough Friday evening – my friends dragged me out for drinks when all I wanted was a quiet night in with a book.’
‘Liar. I remember you liked a drink. You and I had quite a few ourselves. Your colleagues seem to have abandoned you,’ Lucy observed, nodding towards the group who were just going out of view.
‘More like I’m abandoning them. There’s only so much shop talk about post-mortems one can endure over drinks.
’ Holmes smiled, and Lucy was struck again by how different he seemed outside of work – less formal, more personable.
Just like the last time, a few years ago, when they had had some fun together when he had been working for a spell at the Edinburgh city mortuary in the Cowgate.
‘Look, I know this is rather forward, but since you’ve had a disappointing evening, would you like to get something to drink?
And save me from an evening of forced socialising with people who want to discuss decomposition rates over their beer. ’
Lucy hesitated. Going for a drink with Sherlock? The alternative was going home alone to her flat, ordering takeaway and spending the evening feeling sorry for herself. Besides, she remembered him being rather a lot of fun…
‘You know what? That would be fantastic, but actually I skipped dinner and now I’m more interested in eating than getting blootered. Besides, I’m working tomorrow. This case is running us ragged.’
‘Excellent!’ Holmes gestured down Cockburn Street. ‘I’m sure we could find a restaurant somewhere.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I know the ma?tre d’ at the Hawksmoor in the Edinburgh Grand, down in St Andrew Square. Does that work for you?’
‘Perfect. But I want to make it clear that we split the bill.’
‘Och, away, woman. I can buy a friend dinner without there being any strings attached.’
‘Always the charmer, Ron.’ She liked calling him by his first name.
They walked down the curved street together, Sherlock keeping up an easy stream of conversation about Edinburgh on Friday nights, the best places to eat and his amusing complaints about his work colleagues’ inability to discuss anything other than their jobs.
Lucy found herself relaxing, the tension and disappointment of the evening beginning to ease.
The hotel lobby was warm and busy, filled with the comfortable chaos of families and groups of friends.
Sherlock opened the Hawksmoor entrance door for her and spoke to his friend, who smiled and told them there was no problem getting a table.
They were seated in a booth near the back, with menus appearing almost immediately.
‘So,’ Sherlock said once they’d ordered, ‘tell me, do you usually meet your friends on a Friday?’
‘If we don’t have a major case going.’
‘Sounds good. Bit of drinking, bit of dancing then home for a bit of how’s your father?’ He laughed.
She laughed back. ‘You don’t know me very well,’ Lucy pointed out, amused.
‘I seem to recall that I got to know you very well last time.’ He smiled at her.
‘You’ll make me blush,’ she said when the waiter brought their drinks over.
‘Lucy Warren? Blush? I don’t think so.’
‘What about you? What do you do when you’re not performing post-mortems?’
Sherlock considered this. ‘Nothing exciting. I go out drinking with friends sometimes. Stay in and watch Netflix.’
‘What about a girlfriend?’
He laughed. ‘Not at the moment. Still looking for the right one to settle down with. What about you? What does DI Warren do when she’s not solving crimes?’
‘Honestly? Not much lately. The job takes up most of my time.’ Lucy realised how pathetic that sounded. ‘I’ve been meaning to join a gym, or take up running, or do literally anything that isn’t work-related, but I keep putting it off.’
‘The curse of interesting work,’ Sherlock said sympathetically.
The steaks arrived, enormous and fragrant. They dug in, the conversation shifting to safer topics – Edinburgh landmarks, the best places to get proper coffee, Sherlock’s amusing stories about growing up in Dundee.
‘Does it ever bother you?’ Lucy asked. ‘Working with the dead every day?’
Sherlock considered this seriously. ‘Not really. I think I see it differently than most people do. The dead can’t suffer any more – whatever pain they experienced in life is over.
What I do is give them dignity, give them a voice to explain what happened to them.
There’s something almost sacred about that, in a way. ’
It was a thoughtful answer, spoken with genuine feeling. Lucy found herself warming to him just like she had the last time.
They finished the steak and ordered more drinks, the conversation flowing easily.
Sherlock had a dry wit that caught Lucy off guard, making her laugh with his observations about hospital politics and the peculiar egos of surgeons.
He asked about her work in a general way that didn’t push boundaries, seemed genuinely interested in how she’d ended up in the police, although she was sure she’d told him the last time, and listened attentively when she talked about the challenges of being a woman in what was still, despite everything, a male-dominated profession.
‘Fancy another drink somewhere else?’ Sherlock suggested as they settled the bill – he’d once again insisted on paying, waving away her protests. ‘There’s a decent wine bar just around the corner. Unless you need to get home?’
Lucy checked her phone. Ten thirty.
‘Another drink sounds great. At my place. But I can’t get hammered.’
‘Me neither. I’m on call.’
They walked out into St Andrew Square. ‘Shall we hop on a tram?’ she said.
‘I’d rather just sit down in it,’ he replied, laughing.
She laughed back. ‘The tram stop is right at my building in Leith. I’ve moved since you were last here, drinking with me.’
‘Lead the way.’
They rode the tram down to the Shore and five minutes later were in her flat.
‘So,’ Sherlock said, settling back in his chair after Lucy got them both a beer from the fridge, ‘tell me something interesting about yourself that has nothing to do with police work.’
‘That’s a challenge,’ Lucy admitted. ‘I feel like I’ve become my job lately.’
‘Then tell me about before. What did you want to be when you were younger?’
‘A writer,’ Lucy said, surprising herself with the admission. ‘I wanted to write novels. Crime novels, actually, which I suppose explains the career choice.’
‘What stopped you?’
‘Life, I suppose. University, then work, then the realisation that I didn’t have anything interesting to write about. All the best crime fiction comes from people who’ve actually experienced something worth writing about.’
‘And now you have,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Years of police work, real crimes, real investigations. You could write the most authentic crime novel ever written.’
‘Maybe someday,’ Lucy said, though she doubted it. The idea of sitting down and actually writing seemed impossibly distant, a dream from a younger, more optimistic version of herself.
They talked for another hour, then two. Lucy lost track of how many drinks they’d had – enough that the edges of the world had gone pleasantly soft, enough that she was laughing more freely than she had in months, enough that when Sherlock suggested they should probably call it a night, she heard herself saying something she definitely hadn’t planned to say.
‘Thank you for saving me from a miserable evening alone after being stood up,’ Lucy replied. ‘I was ready to go home and eat ice cream while hate-watching terrible reality TV.’
‘A noble pursuit, but I think we can agree this was superior.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I should probably go,’ Sherlock said eventually, though he made no move to stand. ‘It’s late, and you’ve had a long week. Which isn’t over, if you’re working tomorrow. I won’t be unless I get a call.’
‘You could stay,’ Lucy heard herself say. ‘If you want. I mean, it’s late, and taxis can be hard to find at this hour. Plus it would cost a fortune to Fife.’
Sherlock set down his mug and turned to face her properly. ‘Lucy, are you sure? You’ve had quite a bit to drink, and I don’t want you to do anything you might regret tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure,’ Lucy said, and she was. She was tired of being alone, tired of every evening being about work, tired of the careful professional boundaries she maintained every single day. Tonight, she just wanted to be a normal person having a normal connection with someone who made her laugh.
Sherlock smiled, genuine and warm. ‘Then I’d love to stay.’
Lucy leaned in, and he met her halfway, their lips meeting in a kiss that was gentle and unhurried. His hand came up to cup her cheek, and she leaned into the touch, feeling something in her chest unknot, some tension she’d been carrying for longer than she’d realised finally releasing.
When they broke apart, Sherlock’s expression was soft and affectionate. ‘You’re quite remarkable, DI Warren.’
‘Lucy,’ she corrected. ‘When I’m not at work, I’m just Lucy.’
‘Then Lucy it is.’ Sherlock stood and offered his hand, pulling her to her feet. ‘I can sleep on the couch,’ he said with a grin.
Lucy led him towards the bedroom, her heart racing but her mind clear. Tomorrow she’d go back to being DI Warren, professional and focused. Tomorrow she’d chase leads and interview suspects and piece together evidence.
But tonight, for just a few hours, she was simply Lucy – a woman who’d had a nice dinner, several drinks, and met someone who made her feel like a person rather than just a police officer.
Tomorrow would come soon enough.
For now, this was enough.