Before you venture any further, there needs to be a word of warning. Contained within these pages is a dark journey into the human psyche, inspired and influenced by real-life individuals who have done unspeakable things to other human beings. Some very morally ambiguous philosophical concepts are explored, and scenes of extremely violent death are described. That being said, I hope this gives you food for thought as well as some heart-rending moments.

The story will be divided into six larger parts. When the part changes, the point-of-view character changes.

The parts are as follows:

PART ONE: JULIAN

PART TWO: JOHN

PART THREE: JULIAN

PART FOUR: JOHN

PART FIVE: JULIAN

PART SIX: SHERLOCK

Timeline: during season 2.

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PART ONE: JULIAN

Chapter 1: Linkage

"But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us."

- from "Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk" by Sir Thomas Browne

"DI Lestrade?" I inquire while peering into the man's office. He raises his head from the stack of papers he's holding. The DI has a bit of a five-o-clock shadow, framed by the bags under his eyes. Standard Metropolitan police look of a depressed workaholic divorcee.

He doesn't smile but looks amicable enough that I dare enter his cluttered office.

"Not really, but I've been meaning to have a word with you anyway. Come in, close the door," Lestrade says as he leans back in his chair, looking pained as though he's got a crick in his neck. He probably does.

I sit down in the chair placed in front of his desk without being invited to do so. I only realize this afterwards, having gotten used to the less hierarchical atmosphere in the States during the two years I've just spent there.

"How are you settling in?", Lestrade inquires, sounding like he genuinely cares about the answer. I decide I like him. For now. His team seems to think he's a good boss.

"Fine," I reply hastily, wanting to move on to what I actually came here to tell him.

I realize I probably first need to let him go through whatever issue he's been planning to discuss with me.

"Good, good. Look, I know that starting from the bottom rung is tough and that you want to get into homicide but Missing Persons is actually quite a decent first placement-"

"I know it is."

He looks indignant. "As I was saying, it's a very decent placement for someone just starting out. Many of their cases move onto SCIT eventually. I think that with some patience, some hard work and holding onto that bloody irritating enthusiasm of yours will definitely get you into the Murder Investigations Team roster eventually."

I raise my brow. It sounds like there's a 'but' in there somewhere.

"But," Lestrade continues and I inhale sharply, "Pulling ridiculous publicity stunts to get career leverage is not the way to go about it."

I swallow and meet his gaze. "I didn't pull a 'publicity stunt'."

Lestrade sighs. "I know it was you who gave the press that anonymous hint that those muggings-slash-killings could be related. I get it, you want to make a show of what you learned in that goodwill exchange."

"The FBI does not do goodwill exchanges. I am a double citizen, which allowed me to do an International Criminal Investigation Analysis Fellowship first, and then go through their entire two-year Behavioral Sciences programme."

Lestrade looks if not impressed, then at least discouraged enough not to continue scolding me. "All right. I still need to remind you that inciting the press about nonexistant serial killers is not going to help us catch anyone."

I disagree. It's definitely going to help us catch someone, if the link is there. "Proper linkage analysis could have sunk Dennis Rader a lot earlier," I point out.

The DI peers into an empty plastic coffee cup and drops it into the bin under his desk. "You'd probably say that about Jack The Ripper, too."

I raise a brow. "The linkage wasn't the problem with Jack. Lack of forensics back in the day probably was the big issue."

Lestrade cocks his head in what seems like partial agreement. "I'm willing to let this slide, assuming that you'll toe the line in the future. I know media is all the hoohaa in the States where they use all sorts of neat little press tricks to lure in serial killers, but trust me, that isn't going to fly here. You must have some experience yourself of media frenzy from Birmingham."

I worked as a sergeant in the violent crimes unit of the Birmingham police force for several years. I got recruited to the Met after a couple of high-profile cases that left me yearning for more training and bigger challenges. The Met was looking to send someone to the States, and with my Eagle-adorned passport I was deemed a good fit.

It was a challenge to leave before having even properly settled into New Scotland Yard. During the years I was away I'd been long forgotten, and when I returned there wasn't much enthusiasm for what I was bringing back with me in terms of new ideas and knowledge. Even my instructors at Quantico had made some gentle jibes at the conservative nature of the English bobby, which had irritated me back then. Nowadays it all seemed to ring annoyingly true.

"Anyway. What was it that you wanted to talk about, Alex?" he asks.

"Julian," I correct, and the DI looks genuinely embarrassed.

I've been told by several former Birmingham colleagues that my first name is not a proper cop's name. It's a poet's name, a violinist's name or a teacher's name, but not a cop's name. They didn't like that someone with a gentle name like that could solve their cases for them, utilizing modern ideas instead of old-fashioned legwork and oafish gruffness. Thank fuck I got out of there.

I dig out a map of London from my pocket and carefully spread it onto Lestrade's desk. He moves a couple of piles of papers on top of a filing cabinet to make some space.

He then seems to take in the dots and crosses I've drawn on the map with coloured felt-tip pens. "What's this then?" He asks.

I lean my palms on his desk. "I know you don't believe me on the muggings being connected. Fair enough. I just wanted to show you something, something I realized after trying to organize some cold case files."

"You've marked down most of the more peripheral boroughs," he remarks and I nod, hoping to look encouraging but not annoyingly enthusiastic.

DI Lestrade is the old fox of the department and the one I really need on my side if I want to get this thing off the ground. If Lestrade dismisses me as some overeager beginner I'm not going to get anywhere.

"These dots mark missing person reports of males between twenty to thirty five years of age between 1995 and 2010. There's at least thirteen of them. As you see they cluster on the outer areas of greater London. I've only included reports that were filed by close relatives and where the male did not belong to a vulnerable victim group such as drug user, prostitute or holder of a substantial criminal record. These are- were ordinary people, mostly middle class to upper class, healthy and in their prime, and with no reason to disappear."

"Go on."

"The crosses mark similar cases from 2005 onwards," I explain, and then let Lestrade mull it over.

He raises his head to look at me, clearly intrigued. "They're closer to midtown."

"There are eight cases from that time period, nearly all of them living within an hour's journey from Central London by car or Tube. Coincidence?"

"Interesting, but not exactly grounds for a task force -based investigation. These are missing persons. Anything could have happened to them. They could be dead, alive, fine or not fine - we don't even have a class of crime to assign them. And it's not exactly criminal to disappear - likely some of them have wanted to leave their old lives behind."

"They stop. The disappearances stop," I point out.

"When?"

"Four months before the first of these lethal muggings of thirtysomething, fit males in upscale suburbs happened."

"You think it's the same person who could be responsible for the disappearances? But why would they have started leaving their victims in plain sight? And if those missing persons were victims of muggings, too, then why haven't we been able to find any of their remains, if there are so many of them? Your run-of-the-mill street robber doesn't usually transport bodies elsewhere."

"That's exactly what I've been wondering-" I nod and try to explain further, but Lestrade cuts in.

"The murder weapons in the muggings vary, which speaks against a single suspect," he says. The most recent one had been nearly decapitated by the deep cuts across his throat, done with some sort of a knife. The first of the three had been stabbed neatly in the heart, the blade twisted around in a fan-like-motion that will have required a lot of manual dexterity and strenght since the killer would have had to practically spread a couple of ribs to achieve that sort of a carnage. The second victim's femoral artery had been slashed with what the pathologist thinks had been a scalpel of something similar.

"Not exactly." I want to tell Lestrade that modus operandi can change and that signatures are more stable than the choice of a murder weapon, but that would sound like lecturing and I'm sure he's actually already familiar with these ideas. "They could have just fancied a change, really. Or maybe they used what they had access to. Some killers even deliberately change their MO to throw police off track."

Lestrade's faint smile is lopsided and thoughtful.

"What I was trying to say before is what if the robbery part of it is a ruse, a smokescreen?" I suggest.

"What do you mean?"

"They were all killed with bladed weapons. The one that was practically impaled by some sort of a knife that had been sunk beyond the heart, nearly bisecting his spine. Way more force than is necessary for robbery. Overkill. The second one was missing an ear. The case investigators assumed it had been cut off in the heat of the defensive battle but where is it?"

"Still, to try and link them with a bunch of missing persons with no other evidence than circumstancial stuff about timing doesn't seem warranted. Besides, Sherlock hasn't said a word about a posibbility that the muggings are connected.

There's that name again, a name I've often heard mentioned in the Met after my return.

Sherlock Holmes.

A bit of a mythical figure, this freelance crime investigator DI Lestrade has unscrupulously made advantage of to beautify the unit statistics every time a case has his team baffled.

I haven't met Holmes, but I've seen his picture in some newspaper clippings. Frankly, it's a little offensive how they would consult outsiders when there's a lot of know-how inside the Met still largely untapped. There are good, young cops stuck in pointless cold case hell instead of being employed in higher-profile cases and Lestrade keeps parading an amateur around.

Young cops like me. Not that I'm bitter or anything. I'm not naive enough to assume they'd let me headline a Murder Investigation team fresh out of the provinces.

I have to admit I'm curious about this Holmes guy. If he's as good as they say, why is he not a proper cop, then? Why freelance? Some of the more unsavoury stories paint a picture of a man with a lack of social skills and more than a bit of a mean streak. Maybe he's too impulsive. Or has a criminal record. Or maybe he doesn't like authority figures all that much. These are all issues that would come up in an aptitude test.

"You've asked him about the muggings?" I enquire Lestrade.

"Yeah, we had him with us at the last scene. Seemed to think there wasn't anything special to it. He dismisses cases he judges to be boring."

"He thinks homicide is boring?" I ask, baffled.

"Some of it, yeah."

Lestrade's phone rings before he can explain further.

I listen quietly while he has a short conversation with some. Judging by his tone, one of our superiors is at the other end of the line. After the call ends, Lestrade types off a quick text. Then he slides the phone back into his pocket, yawning even though it's just only five in the afternoon. I wonder if he's an insomniac.

Lestrade regards me with an indecisive look. He then stands up, grabs his coat and smiles at me. "You got anything on?" he asks.

I shake my head. My unit director is at a meeting the rest of the day and what I have on my desk can wait. Cold cases from years past. They probably won't spoil if they wait for a few hours longer.

"If you want to meet Sherlock Holmes, grab your coat and meet me downstairs. A group of hunters have discovered a dozen or so corpses in a well in the Asterley Manor woodlands. Sure looks like the work of a serial killer. These are the sorts of things Sherlock excels at."