Chapter 6: A Scumbag Symphony (The Cailleach of Caerdydd Continued)

                When Sherlock was about to fight, time slowed down for him.  His mind could see all the weak spots of his opponents in slow motion, and the entire universe for him was suddenly choreographed in a sublime waltz that Johann Strauss could not best.  Even the surrounding breezes slowed, and he could detect every beat of the wings of the bees surrounding him in the woodbine undergrowth behind him.  

                The grasses bent slowly down in the sun at his feet, and the bead of sweat on John’s brow reflected the sparkle of the sun’s orb.  A concerto of tension pulsated in John’s jawline, and in the veins of his hands.  In this moment, breathing in was like drinking a draught of light, and the surge of adrenalin seized his lower back in electric ecstasy.

                The line of freckled ginger and craggy, tan warriors facing him down were in flannel shirts, tees and Levis.  They wore great leather work boots spattered with dust, and were sweating as well, though obviously more from the heat than from fear, as they did not know who they were confronting.

                Sherlock spoke slowly to disarm their attack, hands at his sides, favouring one leg in a casual stance.  “Gentlemen.  To whom do I owe the visit?” he asked quietly, staring straight into the older man who stood in front of them, a full four inches taller than the tallest in their lineup, the shortest of whom was five foot nine.

                “Well, that’s depending on who’s getting’ the favours, now.” said the tall mountain quietly.  “I hear you fairies are lookin’ for fairies.”  The group tittered simultaneously, and Sherlock glanced around, sizing up each one.

                Sherlock’s heightened senses suddenly felt a radiance of heat two feet from him, knowing that John’s rage had been ignited in the otherwise perfectly still statue beside him.  He didn’t dare look in John’s eyes.  He knew they had become black pools of potential obliteration as they stared down the lineup before them.

                “We are sportsmen directed to a shooting range on a friend’s property not far from here.  Do you know of any fairies in the area?  They’re not game, but they might make for good practice.”  Sherlock’s smirk was showing in his voice.  He also was communicating that an exchange of blows could very well lead to bullets, which made two of the group balk enough to look over at their boss, who did not break his gaze. 

                “You know what I’m gettin’ at, lads.  You know very well.  You’re that fairy hat detective from London with your wee pig, and the museum sent you looking for a statue we want.”

                “Statue…statue…doesn’t ring a bell.  Unless it’s Michelangelo, of course.  Fairies love Michelangelo.”  Sherlock narrowed his eyes and smiled.  “And don’t call John a pig.  I don’t think he likes it, and getting him worked up isn’t a very good idea.” He looked over at John, who was ready to tread the ground like a bull in Seville, nostrils flaring a direct line to the magma chamber of Mount Vesuvius.  Sherlock raised his eyebrows and turned his head slowly back to the leader.  

                “Nope, not a good idea at all.”  Sherlock smiled sweetly, his hands casually clasped behind his back.  “But enough with niceties.” he said.  “We have not been properly introduced.”

                “Hughie Mcdonagh.” said the tall man, and narrowed his eyes at Sherlock.  He pronounced his name ‘cue-ee’, which told Sherlock a world of information about how they would fight.  Among other things.

Bare knuckles, head blows, facial blows, tendon punches on the arms and shoulders, liver shots.  Tactics were planned out immediately, guaranteeing that not one blow would land.

“My brother Bobby, brother James, cousins Abraham, Jackie, and Johnny.” he said.  They all raised up their heads at their names.  “Them’s all proper Bible names for good lads, and not fairies like Sherlock.  We’re not settled pervert scum are we lads?”  NO, came the group reply of rough voices, all laughing at once.

“Oh, gentlemen, tsk tsk.  I’m the least settled man you’ll ever know.  I’ve had coffees in Paris more times than you can count.  …Which is up to five, I’m guessing.”  Sherlock snapped his chin upward.  “I don’t sense any primary school graduates among you.  Of course, you don’t need to finish P-4 to flay a horse.” 

John snorted loudly next to him, and added, nearly shouting, “…Or cats and dogs.”

“I don’t think you’re very polite, mister Sherlock.” said the mountain.  “I think you’re very cheeky.  Kind of like a fairy.  They’re pretty cheeky too.”  The group of men let out some loud guffaws this time, crossing their arms in continued curiosity over the direction of the banter.

“Maybe I’m cheeky because I know what you want, and not only do I not have it, but you’re not going to get it.”

“Says who?”

“I do.” said Sherlock. “What would you lot do with an ancient artifact? Put it on the mantel? It doesn’t exactly match plastic wrapped chairs in Italian leather.  And caravans don’t have mantels, do they.”  He began to pace slowly to the right, away from John, then stopped.

“You assume too much, fairy man.” said Mcdonagh. “That artifact was stolen from my family’s caravan site over a hundred years ago by a settled family in Fermanagh who didn’t want us by their fields.” said Hughie.  “She was ours for fifty generations, she keeps the bean sidhe away from our childer and gives our family the right to kingship of the fightin’ lads.”

“Rubbish.” said Sherlock.  “It’s worth fifty grand and you’re selling it to the highest bidder.  What’ll that pay for, half a wedding?” he snorted. “That’s if the bride doesn’t have a dress full of budgies and Christmas lights.”

“You’re getting too free for us to keep our fists to ourselves, fairy.” said Mcdonagh, which was precisely what he wanted, as well as the five other men.  They were looking for a fight.

“Was it the archdruid who put you up to this?” asked Sherlock bluntly.  As soon as he asked that, the entire group erupted with laughter.

“He wanted trouble, I think.” said Mcdonagh.  “We don’t get put up to nothin’. We do what we like, and you are in our way, boyo.”

“Not really.  I’d stick to flogging electronics that fell off the back of a lorry, if I were you.  It’s better for your health.” said Sherlock darkly.

At that moment one of the transit van doors opened to reveal a scrawny looking woman in her forties, in a plain retro-looking tan dress and her fiery red, obviously-coloured hair in a massive beehive that seemed not to have changed since 1963.  A freckly and sullen 7-year-old boy sat next to her, staring straight ahead, sulking about not being out in the fight.  She leaned over toward one of the men, an overweight but beefy ginger man named Jackie, and muttered quietly.

Sherlock’s sharp hearing heard her asking with some impatience when they would get back, as she had “spuds on”.

At that moment Jackie hauled off and boxed her in the ear, hard, with one meaty fist.  She immediately crumpled, holding the side of her head, mouth open in agony.  “Keep yer mouth shut, woman, this is business.” he said matter-of-factly.  “We’re sortin’ the pervos.”

Sherlock’s eyebrows went straight up nearly into his hairline, and John, simmering on a slow fuse, simultaneously exploded.  He went airborne straight toward the ginger who punched her, and Sherlock reached out lightning fast for the back of his shirt collar.  John stopped short, twisting in his skin like an electrified lizard, face as red as Christmas and his lips pressed white over bared teeth.  He shot one glare at Sherlock, who snapped his head in a lightning “no” motion and mouthed, “wait.”

At that moment, all the men stepped forward in ecstatic anticipation of one-sided mayhem.  Hughie, James and Bobby got to within two feet of John and Sherlock, who was holding John back with both hands, and John had the front of Sherlock’s good shirt twisted and wrung in his fist, raging at Sherlock’s entreaty to hesitate.  The three men leaned in, eyes flaming, waiting for the first blow to land, knowing that ‘settleds’ didn’t like seeing women put in their ‘place’.  At all.  This was their chance for a massive punch-up, and they wanted one.  The other three cousins leaned in behind them, waiting their turns to land a blow.

Sherlock looked at John.  John looked at Sherlock.  Both loosened their grips and took a giant breath. 

“PROTESTANT CHOPS.” said Sherlock.  Unlike ‘Vatican Cameos’, which was hitting the deck, this meant only one thing: a jump straight up into the air, and a simultaneous dispatch of two enemies with airborne Glasgow headbutts.

The choreography of West Side Story was reborn in a scumbag symphony.  And in a crescendo of grace, John and Sherlock popped up into the air like spring-loaded corks, and brought their foreheads down slap onto the nasal bones of Hughie and Bobby Mcdonagh, shattering their lumpy noses instantaneously as their two great meaty fists landed right hooks in the air.  K-SHMUCK went the sickening, wet sound of flesh and bone.  At that second, four men launched themselves at John and Sherlock.  Both John and Sherlock grabbed their two men by the shirtfront and pulled them toward the other two.  The heads of four men impacted one another simultaneously and all four crumpled to the ground. 

The entire first round was over in literally five seconds, and John launched himself toward the Defender before any one of the big men could stand back up for another round.  He tore the door open and found his lockbox under the seat, and as he desperately dialed in the 4-digit combination, Abraham, a dark and curly-headed man with a craggy and weatherbeaten face, got up slowly along with Hughie.  It was too late, however.  John’s Walther was aimed straight at all of them and he shouted.

 “Keep bloody still, or you’ll walk home without tyres and a bullet in your arse.”  John was as cool as a slab of morgue steel at this stage.  He angled his head down and was heaving great lungfuls of adrenalin-tinged air, eyebrows straight up.  “You just pushed the Fifth Northumberland, and if you make one bloody move…” he aimed straight at Abraham, now staring down the barrel. “…you will get what the Taliban got.”  Abraham slowly moved toward John in a challenge of will, one foot closer to John, and raised his chin in defiance.

John answered by pulling back the hammer, his eyes now pools of darkness.  “…don’t.” he said, very quietly.  Even the breeze had died down, holding its breath.

“Yes, John.  Very effective.  Manly as hell.  Let’s crack on.”  Sherlock was standing legs slightly askance, his coat splayed out behind him in abandon, and missing two shirt buttons thanks to John’s earlier grip.  John kept the 30-caliber automatic trained on the group as he circled round to stand close to Sherlock.  All the men were starting to get up now and slowly back toward their vans.

“Not you.” Sherlock pointed to Hughie Mcdonagh, along with John’s gun which shadowed Sherlock’s arm.  “You stand right there.  The rest of you, get in your vehicles, and drive away.  All of you.  Now.  Leave Hughie’s car and he will follow you.”

The group followed Sherlock’s orders fast and peeled out of the gravel lay-by where the Defender was parked.  The sunshine returned, and the slow trills of Classic FM returned noticeably to the day’s events, now a Bach choral ensemble from one of the Brandenburgs.

John and Sherlock were still on high alert, gun trained on Hughie, but Sherlock had relaxed.  They began to back Hughie toward his new BMW, still with its paper tag in the rear window.  Sherlock walked toward him steadily, and Hughie backed up slowly until his back hit the back door of his car, pressing himself against the car while Sherlock leaned slowly into his face.

Sherlock pressed his right leg straight into Hughie’s denim crotch.  John cleared his throat, and averted his eyes with a sigh of exasperation, gun still trained on Mcdonagh.  This would do nothing to dispel rumours, he thought. 

Sherlock’s tall form leaned in hard on Mcdonagh’s beefy frame, both eye to eye, Sherlock staring him down with one hand leaning on the car behind Mcdonagh’s head.

Sherlock leaned in to speak four inches from Mcdonagh’s ear.  “We’re finished here, fairy man.” he said.  “Will we see you again?”

“You don’t play nice or fair, Holmes.  We will get our justice at some stage, you know that.”

“It’s not justice, you’re scum, it won’t be today, and it won’t be for Dafydd Pryce, Hughie.  Now be a good boy and run your whippets a nice, long, long way away from me.”  He stared straight into Hughie’s eyes.  “…And John.  Alright?”

Hughie didn’t answer. He merely stared at Sherlock.

Sherlock casually backed off from pinning Mcdonagh to the BMW with his knee.

“Get out.” he seethed, quietly.  Mcdonagh quickly slid into the car as smooth as satin, peeled off out of the gravel, and was gone.

John dropped his gun and uncocked the hammer.  

“Interesting.” he said, and quietly stashed it in the small of his back, covering it with his own tee and flannel shirt.  “Shall we get to our destination, then?” he asked.

“Might as well now, they won’t be coming to look for us again out of stupidity.  It’s our best window to examine the site.” said Sherlock.  “Shall we?” he wheeled round and stalked toward the drivers side of the landrover.

“Coming,” said John, and jumped into the side.  Then they were gone.

It took them precisely two minutes of coming down from the adrenalin high to begin the cackling natter of post-brawl man bonding.  Although in Sherlock’s case, it was decidedly more focused on the overtly disgusting faults of criminal muscle.

“Phwoarr!” said Sherlock.  “Did you smell that lot?” He wrinkled his nose and grinned.  “It was like a room full of French cheese covered with twenty canisters of Axe.”  John erupted with laughter.

“I thought it was more like the world’s most rancid chip van in the East End.  The one with the mice in with the chips.  …And twenty cans of Axe.”  John leaned forward to pull the pistol out from his jeans, pulled back the chamber to take out the round, pocketed it and put the safety back on.  “They use the Daily Mail to serve the fish and chips, so that you can even read shite while eating it.”

Sherlock laughed out loud, sharing their distaste for a despised Tory tabloid.  He was far more relaxed after a fight than before.  He felt alive, powerful, and calm, and John felt his calm as well, both buzzing with a decidedly strange sort of afterglow that the rest of the world easily ascribed to other human joys.  Most of the world couldn’t understand what it meant to stand your ground, or how pleasurable it was when followed through. 

But most of the world wasn’t John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, a two-man army who accomplished more than an actual army in dismantling the liberties that scumbags seize from the gentle.  Few people wasted the time and embraced the mayhem necessary to do just that, and to be honest, nobody ever sets out wanting it.  It simply becomes an acquired taste after years of tiresome bullying.  Sherlock’s was at the hands of hatred, John’s at the hands of Taliban, and both wouldn’t put up with it for a second while simultaneously satisfying their deep seated and ghoulish curiosity.

It was a recipe for the world’s deepest bond of friendship between two diametrically opposed individuals so different, that the collision of matter and antimatter couldn’t possibly obliterate a conspiracy with greater gusto.

As their chuckling died down, the sycamores became deep and gnarled, mixed in with oak, white pine, and yew, all becoming mossy and enveloped in a magical green light.  The whole forest smelled like deep moss and fresh turned dirt, and the reservoir to their right became a river, then a trickle, and fell in among rocks to a picturesque waterfall.  They drew to the left at the Y in the road and 300 yards down, Pritchard’s cabin came into view, with an odd round hillock behind the cabin, covered with hawthorn bursting with blooms.

They pulled the Defender up the drive and behind the cabin to hide it from the main roadway.  They were screened by a barn and a berm of hedgerows at least two centuries old, but Sherlock couldn’t be too careful.  He reached into the duffel and pulled out a blanket of camo netting, and after liberating the sample kit and canteens in a backpack with John properly holstering his pistol under a light jacket, they both tucked the camo net under the front bumper and pulled it over the Landrover in one swoop.

“You think we need branches as well?” asked John.

“Not really.” said Sherlock.  “Just luck, if Pryce’s friends come looking again.”  He cheerily whistled as he checked his pockets for the usual bits and bobs.  All in order.

“Right.  Now which direction?” asked John, looking around him at the quiet back courtyard of Pritchard’s cabin, which he noticed now was built of long dark vertical cedar panels and sported a quite new tin roof.  All around it was landscaped with fuchsias, and the crimson and lavender buds hung on the bushes in heavy bundles.

Sherlock dug deeply into his duster pocket and pulled out a dog-eared set of Google prints along with his email from Pritchard.  “I have an elevation map of the forest area and the relative position of the cabin.” said Sherlock.  “The email gives me a general idea of the direction of activity, and the front door is…let’s see…directly west.   That’s where he found the spear and heard the shouting.”

John noticed something different.  “You’ve not got your iphone.  That’s like living without a limb for you.” he said, somewhat perplexed.

“Mycroft is sending locator signals because he’s a tit.  Also, you’re here, so there’s no point.”

“Molly might worry, or your parents.” said John, a bit bemusedly.

“Molly takes very good care of herself, and my parents can ring Mycroft if they need me that desperately.” said Sherlock, looking up from the printed email.  “There’s nothing like wasting government resources to locate me, making him resort to comforting their sensibilities the old-fashioned way.”

“What way is that?”

“Lying to them.”  Muttered Sherlock.

John chuckled.  Sherlock continued to plot their path around the property, planning a spiral route that would cover the maximum amount of territory.  The sun was high in the sky now, and it was decidedly warm.  John pulled the military cap out of his jacket pocket and put it on along with a military spec set of Ray-Bans.

“Oh.  Almost forgot.”  John pulled off the pack and unzipped it, reaching in.  “For keeping the sun out of your eyes.” He pulled out the despised deerstalker, and frisbeed it toward Sherlock’s head, both fronts spinning like a perfect googly cricket ball.  Against all laws of probability, it landed whap-smack right on top of Sherlock’s curly mop, askance and with one front obscuring half his face.

This was too much.  John erupted and danced in his military boots with laughter, clapping his hands.  Sherlock stood stock still and allowed him his moment.  He didn’t dignify an answer, and not even touching the hat, looked back down at his Google notes and compass to continue studying them, deadpan.

John found this even more hilarious.  He cackled for a full three minutes, punctuated by Sherlock’s occasional, “Not funny, John.”, which was utterly betrayed by a chinny grin.