I can't remember where Sherlock was. No doubt off hijacking some unsuspecting doctor's laboratory bench, pestering an officer of the law. That's not what he would have called it, of course. Let's see now, what would he have called it…
Research.
Straightening the course of justice.
That was the thing; for someone so honest, frequently brutal, there was a lot of translating to do with him around. Nothing ever quite meant what it should. A lot of reading-between-the-lines. But all of this happened close to the end; I was used to it. Second nature. It had gotten so that I hardly heard the elegant half-lies, all the glossing-over. Like one fluent in another language, I heard only what would be useful to me. And if there is any one person in your life you've gotten to know well enough that you've reached that intrinsic understanding, be proud. Take great comfort from that. Because I do.
But, as I was saying, I can't remember exactly where he was that day, only that I was alone in the flat. Mrs Hudson had gone out too. The silence was settled, friendly. That feeling you get when you're in the right place, and nothing very bad could ever happen to you. It's strange, because when I think about it I know it was a wonderful sensation, but I hate it. Looking back on it, I hate it.
The day after I graduated was the first time Harry landed herself in hospital. It's that same idea, all over again. How could it feel like that, with everything that was just about to happen? Why couldn't the world have given me some sign that it was about to collapse? Storm clouds. Earthquakes. Anything.
Actually, no, that's not fair. I did get a warning. Not a proper, wrath-of-God warning that I could understand and pay attention to, but... yeah, a warning, nonetheless.
I've never told anybody about this before. I could never explain it. By turns I took it for a dream and a delusion or a story I made up because the blog was, if I'm honest, getting a bit slow. But I did…
I apologize if I sound shocked, but you have to understand, I'd all but forgotten about this. Put it so completely from my mind it was as if it had never happened. But it did, it did and I remember now.
Because it was quiet, because I had the place to myself, because I could, I had sat down to write up the Turner case… Reichenbach, the Reichenbach case, damn it, what harm can come of saying it… Sat down with tea, with music. Good afternoon ahead, all in all.
And a chatbox opened, down in the corner of the window. Which was strange, because if I'm going to speak to someone generally I just speak to them, and stranger still given I had no such program enabled. Still, there it was, and you can't argue with a thing when it's sitting in front of you.
I said that in front of Sherlock once. First he just looked at me. Maybe four seconds later we both collapsed laughing. And now, somehow I'm saying it again. Not sure I like that.
It opened because someone wanted to say – I wouldn't, if I were you.
Now, I'm not so easily taken in as all that. That could have been set-up to trigger when I began to type, it could have been long range, could have been anything. I needed to know whether I was in danger or not and so, rather than go directly to such staples as 'Who is this?' and 'What do you want?', I asked – Wouldn't what?
- Post to that bloody blog. Drinking tea. Curtain half pulled on the left-hand window.
In actual fact it was the window on the right. Which meant whoever it was could see the flat from outside. Under the table, I started to slide my phone out of my pocket. Quick as you like, excuses started coming through.
- That's an overreaction. I just want to talk.
Then, because one can only avoid the obvious for so long, I typed, - Who is this?
- Irrelevant, came the reply. - Ask the other one.
I hesitated. Naturally I did. Whoever I was talking to was, or was doing a damn good job of pretending to be, not only in my computer but in my head. Or, more probably, was somebody who knew the 'old staples' as well as I did, and all the expectations. I think the second possibility worried me more. – What do you want?
- Kindly cease-and-desist in your journalistic endeavours.
- You mean to say stop the blog?
- I mean to say.
- Who are you?
- Irrelevant, Doctor Watson. Ask the other, if you must.
- Why?
It's the strangest feeling, having a laser sight trained on you. It has no physical existence and yet you feel it. That dancing red light on the side of your head, you feel it. You close your eyes as if it were the bullet itself come early. How to explain it… It's like pressure. Heat. The cloying, crushing, overwhelming sensation of a sauna with a stuck door. I felt it.
My correspondent offered, - Because we're asking you to?
- I thought you just wanted to talk?
- We'd all rather do this civilly.
I don't know what it was that made me so brave. Maybe the way they hadn't started with the gun. Maybe the fact that my phone was out on the desk from my last attempt and hadn't been shot to smithereens. Maybe the question mark on the end of the last attempt to fob me off. The question mark, I think. More than likely the question mark. It was kind; an invitation to ask again, to push harder.
I replied, - Then be civil. Give me one good reason.
- You're going to get Sherlock Holmes killed.
Good reason. Damn good reason. Really, really good reason. But that couldn't have been true, could it? That couldn't have even been possible. How could the blog have gotten him…? I never believed it. Not even for a second, not a flicker of doubt. I wasn't thinking hard enough.
- Sorry. Try again.
- What school gave you the doctorate?
There in the real world, unheard by my very rude virtual intruder, I might actually have stammered, "I beg your pardon?"
- I mean to say, this is really very basic. But perhaps you're too close to it.
- What are you talking about?
- Fine. Don't be a doctor. Be a Captain – think of it as war. You are the enemy. What do you constantly seek?
I found myself looking away from that little box for the first time since it appeared. Out over the blank space where I would have been typing in the quiet of an empty house if it hadn't. On the other side, where the posts gather up by month and list themselves and archive back into last year, cases and cases and cases. More than a year, almost a year and a half by then, in fact. And not just cases, not just detective work and methodology, but everything else in between. All the little facts that make it interesting.
The things people cling onto. Solar systems. Palace sheets. Death Frisbees. The things that make up a person.
I am the enemy. What do I constantly seek? Intelligence.
How long I sat looking over that list, I don't know. But it went on until my friendly warning siren decided I'd had enough time, that I must have reached the appropriate conclusion and tried to say their goodbyes.
- End it, Captain Watson.
- Wait.
The pause between my adding that and the reply was impossibly long.
- If I decide I don't want to answer this, I won't.
- If you were the enemy, you wouldn't tell me this. If you were a friend, you'd tell me to my face.
- I am a friend, was the cryptic response, but not of yours. And there was another pause then, as if he or she didn't quite know how much to say, as if they weighed their words very carefully before going on. All that I've already told you has taken me a while to remember and put together, and even now I couldn't swear that it's a word-for-word transcription. This next, I remember completely, perfectly, absolutely. – The blog is a bad idea because it offers too much information to the wrong people. The wrong person. Someone who is very capable of developing an obsession. Obsessions can be very destructive, for all the parties involved.
All very oblique, very careful, but I knew. Reading between the lines I knew, it knew it all already, saw it with such impossible clarity now that it had all been laid out for me that what came next was only a formality, confirmation.
- You're talking about Moriarty.
- You take care of your friend and I'll take care of mine.
The chatbox vanished, as suddenly as it had appeared. A moment later the heat and pressure of the rifle sight was gone too. The computer seemed perfectly fine. My tea was still hot. That's what I meant, what I told you; it was as if nothing had happened. Such a strange thing.
I thought of the police, of course I did, but what had really happened? I had no proof of the gun, no record of the conversation. And the outcome, well… Can you report someone for… for doing you a favour? I thought of the police and dismissed the thought. I thought of telling Sherlock too and… and dismissed the thought.
I didn't stop it. The blog, I mean. Maybe I was more careful, maybe I censored myself a little more. Mycroft wasn't happy about it. Couldn't figure out for the life of me why, but that was it; intelligence. I was everybody's best source.
Strange; I expected more guilt, relating all of this, thinking back on it. Even just for being able to put it from my mind. But there's no guilt. Maybe because it doesn't matter. None of it mattered. In the end, whoever that was on the other side, and me over here on mine, none of us got what we wanted. I suppose I'd be more guilty if they'd won.
I didn't know. When it started, when it was the cab driver, that case, top of that list on the left-hand side of the computer screen, the first one, when it started, I didn't know. I didn't know what I was doing. No knowledge, no guilt. No court in the world could convict me. No guilt. I didn't know. When it all kicked off, I didn't know.