I see you.
I see you and you're an elegant bastard. Complete amateur, but elegant. The job you just disassembled (or, to adopt your parlance, the case you just solved) was six months' work. Took you what, six hours? That's good. I like that. Of course, all you have to do is rearrange existing pieces to form a cohesive story. The six months is the working and figuring, the designing of the pieces of perfectly fit and serve the purpose sparingly and…
Well, elegantly, I suppose.
I like that. And I like the fact that you seemed to appreciate that. You admired me. You didn't know that, but you did. You thought it was all the brainchild of that small-time crook I fed it to and you thought him very clever indeed. You thought him much greater than the common or garden bastard. Thank you. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. There's not an awful lot of room for recognition in this job, y'know? Not that that's what I'm in it for. I can live without praise and toadying, thank you very much. But now and again, every once in a while and from somebody who might, just might have the right to speak as an admirer, it's nice to hear a little tiny bit.
And so it is I've come to see you. You have, in the whole, horrible, fuzzy crowd, come into focus. A sharp featured face in the heaving dark mass of all those about us. I don't know yet if you'll stay that way. I've had false alarms before. People never quite turn out as interesting as you thought. Best not to get my hopes up.
But I'm here. I'm looking into it. Looking into you from the other side of black glass where you don't see me.
I see you and you're promising.
Not like the others. The others solve a case because mistakes were made or by accident or because somebody breaks and gives it up. But you, you put it all together from the scraps, the things that were never a concern. There's no chemical spray, no fancy lighting, no forensic technique. We're talking about the social and psychological equivalent of gunpowder residue. You see that. And that's promising, because that's the only thing I can't help but leave behind, and it's the one thing no one else can see.
Jesus Christ, mate, six months' work…
And the job went down fine. That the perpetrator was apprehended and will suffer in due course is no fault of mine. I was flawless. And I found you, didn't I?
Your name, and a horse's arse of a name it is, is Sherlock Holmes. Privileged upbringing, isolated. Possible undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder in addition to the obvious symptoms of sociopathology. So far, so Kipling. But keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you only gets you so far in law enforcement. I've got some decent coppers on the books already, ta.
No, where you get interesting, is in what comes after all the tutoring and the boarding schools. What happens when you go off your meds. Or, matter of fact, on to them. Now that's interesting. That's a perspective most don't have. You've been where so few go.
So few, I mean, with the balls to come back.
It's nice down there, isn't it? It's safe and warm and you don't have to know everything all the time. God, it's such a glorious feeling, when the world is a kind mystery again. It's like be a child, or stupid. It's only the very, very bravest of people who can come back from that feeling. Accept, as it were, the things we cannot change. Know that the world is big and cruel and that there are no mysteries.
There are no mysteries.
There are no mysteries, only strings that have been pulled beneath our notice. Only things which have been put in place before we got there. Links we do not yet understand. There are no mysteries, only more things yet to learn. That's the world. That's what you live in and the blind and the children and the stupid and broken and ignorant and afraid just do not look at it. Pretty much everybody just does not look at it. They don't want to.
I don't bloody want to, but once you've seen it what can you do? It's like watching a fecking car crash, you're going to look. It's horrible. It destroys you. It changes everything, but what else is there for me to do but look?
But this isn't about me. This is about you. Classically educated ex-London-junkie turned detective, now there's a tale to spin, no? There's a one-to-watch.
And I'm watching. I see you.
I followed you to the hospital. Love the girlfriend, by the way, very sweet. But then again you know that. You're a real master, y'know that? Charming old sod when you turn it on. Not in the cheesy, everyday, Clooneyish sense, but only in that you know exactly what to give and when to give it. You don't smile at her, because it is plain to see that that is the one thing she wants most in all the world.
Perhaps I'll get to know her better. You're closer to her than you like to think. It's between her and the landlady, and I know where I'll have more fun.
That's the other thing; can't stand the flat. Sorry. Wanted to get that out of the way. It's got that junkie-squat feel going, full of little stash-holes and… well, crap, really. I mean, take your little kitchen laboratory, for instance. How do you control any factor in any experiment in that fecking hole? There's a thing called Mr Muscle, mate, and honestly I'd give it a go. Might get you some better results.
I liked your butterflies.
Sorry, I feel like I have to say something nice when I've been raging for, like, twelve lines. Which is ridiculous, because you'll never read this. This was only ever committed to paper so that I could try and figure it out. Such a strange, horrible feeling. Like a splinter. You're a splinter. You're a thing buried in, and it stings, but it's easier to ignore than dig it out.
No, better metaphor – you are the answer at the back of the book. Because… I don't know, I can't explain it, but it's a better metaphor.
I see you. Everything else is a fog and I see you. Why is that?
I keep walking, here on the other side of the mirror. Do you know I'm here? Do you sense me? When you spoke to that lab-tech, did you feel me watching? When you got back to the flat did you know I'd been there? And if you didn't, then why the fuck not? Why is it that my presence, my particular way and movement and scent and rhythm didn't disturb your space one bit?
Do you know I'm here?
Hear me moving beyond the glass, feel my eyes on you and look around?
And what would be staring back at you when you looked?
I see you, Sherlock Holmes. I'll see you again. And I have a feeling, a new one I'm not too sure of and don't quite get, that someday you're going to see me. I'm going to want you to.
Not yet, though. Soon. But not yet.