Sherlock was dissecting and examining human body parts in the lab at St Barts, something he normally really looked forward to, but today his mind wasn't entirely on the task at hand. He was preoccupied by the case of the suicides that had been happening all over London.
Three people, whose personal and professional histories didn't overlap in any way, had all committed suicide unexpectedly, in random places that they had no reason to be in, using the same rare drug. Their deaths had to be connected in some way, but he couldn't see how. He suspected that they weren't, in fact, suicides, they were murders, that someone they trusted had forced them to take the drug, but he couldn't see who.
All three had 'phoned a friend or loved one shortly before their deaths, sounding perfectly upbeat and cheery, saying they'd be over in two ticks, they were just getting a cab, but they'd never arrived.
Several days later, their bodies had been found dumped in cab ranks dotted round the city. There had been no marks on their bodies suggesting a struggle, no bruises to suggest they had been manhandled into a car. They must have got into the murderer's vehicle of their own volition.
Who could have abducted them with such ease? He felt sure that the answer was staring him in the face. What kind of a person could persuade you to get into their car without you suspecting anything at all?
Desperately seeking inspiration, he looked up at Molly's cork noticeboard on the wall, where she'd pinned cards with the numbers of a few local taxi firms amongst the numerous pictures of Toby, just in case she was working late and missed the last Tube. He stared out of the window at a string of black cabs cruising by. He glanced at the bookshelf, where someone had left a bunch of DVDs and CDs – Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, The Greatest Hits of Cab Calloway.
No, nothing was coming to mind.
His train of thought was interrupted by Mike Stamford entering the room with another man, someone he'd never seen before, a very conventional-looking bloke wearing a waxed jacket over a heavy beige jumper. They were chatting away about their days at medical school together, but Mike broke off, as soon as he spotted Holmes and went into introductory mode:
"Sherlock, this is John Watson. I was just telling him that you were looking for a flatmate…"
"Ah, Mike!" called Sherlock, bulldozing over the other man's sentence. "Lend me your 'phone, will you? I left mine in the mortuary."
"Sorry, mate, I can't. I left mine in the car," apologised the medical lecturer, sheepishly.
"Here, use mine."
The man in the Barbour handed him his mobile.
Sherlock looked taken aback for a moment, but nodded a brief thanks, before firing off a quick burst of text messages and returning the 'phone to its owner.
"So," he enquired, casually, "Paddington, Tooting or Denmark Hill?"
John looked at him quizzically. "I'm sorry…?"
The detective fixed him with his piercing stare. "Which is it – St Mary's, Paddington, St George's, Tooting or King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill?"
John held his gaze, determined not to be dominated. "What makes you think I'm a doctor?" he responded in a calm, yet steely tone.
"Of course you're a doctor! As soon as you came into the room, I heard you say to Mike that this place had changed a lot since your day. So you obviously trained at this medical school.
From the tremor in your hand and the nervous, skittish look on your face, I'm guessing you've recently resigned from a highly stressful job in a hospital in one of London's less salubrious areas. Problems, were there? Too many drugged-up patients threaten to bottle you?"
At that moment, Molly sashayed into the room, allegedly to write up and file an autopsy record, but obviously with the underlying intention of ogling Sherlock's bum.
John suddenly started to look a bit peaky and asked if Sherlock would mind if he sat down for a moment.
"Couldn't I be an Army doctor?" he suggested, hopefully, once he was seated. "For example, someone who had been highly topically invalided home from the war in Afghanistan?"
"My first thought was that you'd been in the Army," acknowledged Sherlock. "The ramrod posture, the waxed jacket, the frankly alarming shade of beige of the jumper you're wearing under it, all say 'posh military bloke'.
But then I considered your impoverishment. You're looking for a flatshare. That means you can't afford a flat of your own. That rules out a doctor who'd served in the Army – I mean, wouldn't they get, like, a pension? And you're a single man, with no family to support – if you'd served as an officer in the Army for ten or so years, drawn a regular salary, and never had to fork out on a mortgage, you'd have savings, substantial savings. Unless, of course, you had a stonking great cocaine habit, which, judging by the state of your nostrils, still perfectly intact, seems unlikely.
Of course, you could be a secret gambler, but how probable is that? You buy your jumpers at Marks and Spencer. And they're beige! You're obviously about as wild and impulsive as a chartered accountant.
No, the fact that you can't even find enough cash to rent a dodgy bedsit in Dollis Hill can only mean one thing – you have not just been invalided out of the Army after being wounded in Afghanistan, you must just be a jobbing NHS employee down on his luck."
John draws himself up to his full height, haughtily, as if about to refute Sherlock's accusation, but belatedly realises there's no point pretending. He shrugs, drops his shoulders and admits, "OK. You've got it in one. I worked on the frontline of the A & E department at St Mary's. I did a night shift for nearly four years until, finally, I went AWOL. I couldn't hack it anymore – the pain, the death, the human misery. Plus, of course, the drunks vomiting partially digested doner kebabs on my shoes and slackers only dialling 999 because they couldn't be arsed to get the Night Bus."
But Sherlock is pinning him down with his icy, penetrating gaze, a twisted smile on his face. "I don't believe you, John. You say that it was the adrenalin and blood and violence that you couldn't cope with, and yet you've just watched me dissect a human eyeball underneath your nose while remaining as cool as a cucumber. But when Molly filled in a form and opened a filing cabinet you went white as a sheet, began to tremble like a blancmange and asked to sit down. It's not the violence and the bloodshed that you fear – you actually miss it. No, it's the paperwork!"
The blood drained from John's face. "Don't – say – that – word!" he hissed.
"What, PAPERWORK?" yelled Sherlock, cruelly.
John is covering his ears and cringing like a wounded puppy.
"I still have terrible nightmares," he whimpers. "I wake up in the middle of the night, screaming, because I've just had a flashback of completing a patient pressure sore risk assessment or filling in my annual appraisal form! Even the sight of a mere paperclip makes me break out into this silly and unconvincing limp. So thanks very much for bringing it all up again. That was really helpful. Not!"
John turns to go. He's just limped his way to the door when Sherlock, who has returned to staring down the barrel of the microscope, casually adds, "Oh, and there's one more thing…"
"What's that then?" asks John, his patience tested.
"You're a fictional character."
John laughs incredulously, shocked to his core.
"How could you…how could you POSSIBLY have known that?"
Sherlock grinned, smugly.
"Your 'phone."
John's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, as he did one of those angry little swallows he always does to show that he's indignant, and then asked, very shortly, very tightly, "My 'phone?"
"Yes," said Sherlock, airily," your 'phone. It has an inscription on it that says 'To Harry Watson, With All My Love, Clara xxx'."
"And?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Do you actually know anybody in real life who has an engraved mobile 'phone? Or who addresses their sexual partner by their full name? Or, indeed, anybody really called Clara? It was obviously a contrived plot device that had been shoehorned in. You might as well have come in here with a silver-plated toilet brush engraved, 'To Ms Harriet Watson, BSc, MBA, from your loving civil partner Alphonsia xxx'. That would have been about as naturalistic."
John shook his head in disbelief.
"You know Harry is a girl?" he asked, appalled. "That wasn't in the script!"
"Of course Harry's a girl!" snapped Sherlock, contemptuously. "A drama like this – aiming for a contemporary, edgy feel, on after the watershed – they'd want to slip a gay character in somewhere. But they wouldn't want to make them too prominent – might affect their ability to sell the series on to the US. Do very well in the US, BBC costume dramas, particularly popular in the Bible Belt. Wouldn't want to compromise that.
So, yes, offstage character, never seen, never mentioned again after episode 1 – perfect candidate for token lesbian. That way they can appear a bit funky and 'with it' AND avoid pissing off that annoying 'family values' man called Norman who keeps clogging up the BBC messageboards with hatespam."
John thought for a moment, before suggesting, tentatively, "I don't suppose they'd contemplate making US gay, would they? I mean, I can't help noticing that that Spencer Hart suit you're wearing (although there are other suits) is cut a bit tight around the buttocks..."
Sherlock scoffed, not even bothering to look up from the microscope.
"No chance!"
"No?" John cocked his head to one side, winsomely, the way he always does when he wants to look questioning.
"No," repeated Sherlock, emphatically. "Sure, there'll be tantalising undercurrents of homoeroticism, leading to an obligatory line in all press reviews about the wonderful on-screen chemistry between us, but they'll stop short of a full-blown romance. They'll play it safe and be careful not to overtly challenge the audience's heteronormative expectations.
I imagine that later in this episode they'll also throw in a completely unnecessary foxy female character, whose only purpose is for you to chat up, just to flag up you're heterosexual, and who'll then be written out entirely. And then they'll give you a girlfriend in episode 2, only to criminally underuse her and reduce her to a mere cheap mechanism for explaining why you're not in the flat with me when the plot demands you must be elsewhere."
"A bit like Brisbane in Neighbours?" John asked, warily, not feeling good about this.
"Exactly like Brisbane in Neighbours!"
"Oh, God!" John felt a little bit sick.
Then a thought occurred to him. You could tell that, because he did that little furrowed brow thing he usually does when a thought occurs to him.
"So you're not a fictional character, then?"
Sherlock looks deeply offended.
"Of course I'm not a fictional character!"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm ruddy sure! If I were fictional, there'd be some massive inconsistency in my character, like I'd make all these brilliant deductions on the basis of tiny, arcane clues, but then repeatedly miss something so glaringly obvious that the entire nation would be shouting 'It's the taxi driver, you moron!', while simultaneously throwing cushions at the telly…"
He broke off, staring at John in horror.
"Oh, bugger!"