Chapter Text
Introducing... Anderson!
Anderson was fed up. He'd had a bad bad day. You know the kind, you get up in the morning and think, "it's going to be crap..." The alarm went off, time to get up, and Anderson recoiled in horror as his foot landed on a wet sticky pile of ick. Yep, the cat had hawked up a hairball in the night and kindly placed it where his foot usually landed. From there on it only got worse. Anderson thinks now he should have seen the hairball, followed by the empty milk container in the fridge when he went to make his coffee, then the morning paper that landed in his ornamental koi pond YET AGAIN (rotten bloody paper boy, no Christmas bonus for HIM this year), as a warning but no. Ever the optimist (!!), Anderson firmly told himself the day could only get better from here, and he set off to work.
Arriving at New Scotland Yard, Anderson took the lift up to his floor and headed for the coffee-maker in the kitchenette near his office. Coffee should help! But OMFG, what IS it with people and work kitchenettes? Unwashed plates and cups piled near the dishwasher (which was empty), some idiot had used a wet spoon in the sugar then dumped it into the coffee container, no clean teaspoons in the drawer, and a bit of what probably started life as a Sara Lee cheesecake but now looked like a wildlife farm for mould sitting boldly beside Anderson's own personal coffee cup on the shelf above the fridge. Ewwwww! Just NASTY.
Sighing deeply, Anderson ran his cup under the boiling water from the urn to sterilise it, burning his fingers in the process and dropping the cup into the sink where it shattered a glass that was already in there. Bugger. Picking out the broken glass delicately, Anderson cut one of his burned fingers. OK, this was looking decidedly like a *sign*... time to go BUY coffee! It was not to be, though. On the way out, Lestrade spotted Anderson and called him into his office.
"A body's been found in an office nearby, get the address off Donovan. It's a man... probably... apparently he's not in very good shape..."
"Probably a man?"
"Bit hard to tell, by all accounts. Found under a Coke machine."
Ewww. Not good. When Anderson and Donovan arrived at the scene, he could see why there was no real certainty as to the gender of the corpse. All that was visible was a lot of blood, the top of the victim's head just showing at one end, and a pair of feet at the other end. The feet were wearing Nike trainers, probably size 7 or 8, and the hair that was visible was light brown, not close cropped but not long either. Still could have been a man or a woman. Anderson took photos and careful notes, then called for the machine to be lifted from the victim.
As the heavy machine was lifted up, the body rose up too, looking like he (or she) was standing up, but then suddenly it separated from the machine with a squelchy tearing sound that turned Anderson's stomach. As it landed, Anderson was surprised by the amount of damage sustained. This guy (or girl) was practically a pancake. Sure the machine was heavy, but it looked like it would have had to drop on the victim from some height to squash a human body like a bug. Anderson's mind was working hard as he took more photographs and notes, and started carefully examining the surrounding area for clues as to how this incident happened.
"Wallet over here sir!" one of the constables present at the scene called out to Anderson.
He went to pick it up, and Anderson snapped "Oi! Put on a glove first! Evidence, Constable!!!"
"Oh! Sorry!" The constable blushed, but snapped on a pair of gloves before bringing the wallet over. Anderson used a pencil to open it, hoping to spot some ID. Nope, nothing visible. So he bagged it to be taken back to headquarters for more careful investigation.
Eventually the SOCO had gathered as much evidence as he was likely to find, and was packing his samples away for further analysis. Suddenly there was a disturbance, and raised voices. Oh oh, he knew that deep caramel voice... that is, he knew that annoying loud voice. Sherlock! Hurrying in to the crime scene like a superhero, coat flying dramatically behind him, with his trusty sidekick John trailing along in his wake.
"Just once!" thought Anderson. "Just ONCE I'd like to be left alone to do my job!"
But no, Sherlock was here to save the day... again.
"Move over Anderson!" Sherlock brushed by him. John glanced apologetically at Anderson, but said nothing. Both men stared at the body, which was still lying in place as they had to get a bigger trolley to take it away on.
"Hmmm.... squashed under a Coke machine?" Sherlock pondered.
Anderson started to say that the damage was too great to be explained by the machine tipping over onto the victim, but Sherlock gave him a withering look and told him to shut up, if he wanted Anderson's opinion he'd have farted.
"Too much damage for a Coke machine... Not enough blood either, if it comes to that. If you've been squashed there should be blood everywhere, not just puddled around the body. So, must have happened somewhere else. Is there a trail of blood? Oh, look, a drop over by the elevator. Mmm. Look at the direction of the spatter, it's pointing TOWARD the Coke machine, not away which you'd expect if it had landed there from over here. So it came from the direction of the lift...."
A few more observations later, and Sherlock had determined that the victim WAS a man, he'd been killed when a jealous co-worker prised open the faulty lift doors when the lift was upstairs and pushed him into the lift well where he landed on a trolley full of tools at the bottom of the lift well, left there by the maintenance man who'd been fixing the lift. The co-worker had pushed the button for the lift to go down to the basement, squashing the victim between the bottom of the lift and the maintenance trolley. The killer then went down and retrieved the body, using plastic sheeting to load it into the elevator then to place the dead guy on the floor in front of the Coke machine. He pulled out the plastic and tipped the machine onto the already dead guy, making it look like an accident. How did he know it was a man? Well look at the watch, would a lady wear a big chunky watch like that? And it was engraved with his name, see?
So yeah, once again, Sherlock got the credit. Anderson was highly peeved. He'd done his job properly! He was already convinced that the Coke machine was not the cause of death! He'd PHOTOGRAPHED the blood spatter! He was ON THE RIGHT TRACK!!!! So why? Just.... WHY????
So Anderson did all that he COULD do in this situation - he finished his paperwork in high dudgeon and went home.