Part Two
The Game is Afoot
Sherlock insisted on being wheeled out into the garden before he would talk. Matron had wrapped his legs in a blanket, brooking no protest, and they had found a secluded spot with a bench. Lestrade provided cigarettes and a tot of rum each, but was the only one drinking.
"Has there been any indication that Moriarty is dropping other, more important things?" John asked quietly.
Sherlock shook his head. "Mycroft was very cagey about it when we spoke. If there is a leak in the war office he'd hardly want to broadcast it. But no, at present I think it may be safe to assume Moriarty is yet to–"
Lestrade cleared his throat pointedly, and they fell silent as a nurse approached.
"Mr Walterson, erm, there's a visitor for you."
The three men leant forwards, curious to see who their intruder was. The thought that it might be Moriarty darted through all their minds, and John wished longingly that he hadn't left his service revolver in the drawer of his bedside cabinet.
The nurse scurried away as the figure advanced through the greenery, a rolled up umbrella in hand.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Mycroft! What the deuce are you doing here?"
The elder Holmes brother swept aside the waxy leaved branch of a camellia that threatened to knock off his bowler hat, and smiled insincerely. "I am here to see that my little brother is convalescing well, as any sibling might."
"Sentiment doesn't suit you, Mycroft – even the pretence of it. Why are you here?"
Mycroft raised an eyebrow, but let the matter pass. "I received John's message this morning and came to see you directly. Anything transmitted via the telephone can be overheard, and codes can be broken." He dusted the bench with a fastidious flick of his handkerchief, and sat. "We are close to winning the war, Sherlock. There is an operation being planned – the Hundred Days Offensive. If any word of it gets out, if there is the slightest leak of our details, our armies will be crushed by the Alliance, and it may well mean the end of the free world as we know it."
"Then protect your information better."
Mycroft turned a gimlet eye upon his brother. "We need Moriarty dealt with. He is a concern we cannot have hanging over our heads when this plan is put into operation."
The two brothers stared at one another for a long time. "And what if I don't remember in time?"
"There can be no 'what ifs' in this, brother mine. You must remember."
"By when?"
"The end of the month. No later."
John's eyes widened. "But, Mycroft, it's not even a week until August! How can you possibly expect Sherlock to remember it all in a few days?"
Mycroft smiled tightly, genuinely. "Because he's Sherlock Holmes," he eyed his brother with a fierce expression that hinted at pride, "that's what he does." Then he sighed. "And if he doesn't, and if Moriarty does leak information to the Alliance, then may God have mercy on our souls, because the Germans certainly won't."
A heavy silence fell over them.
Mycroft stood, straightening his suit. "It may interest you to know that one Colonel Sebastian Moran was transferred to your ward last night under the alias of Private Shadwell Mohan."
The name darted through Sherlock's mind like a bullet shot from the rifle of that very man, precise and tearing its way to his memories, understanding burning up in its wake.
Mycroft turned to meet Sherlock's eye and received the faintest flicker of acknowledgement. "Make good use of the information." He turned to Lestrade and John. "I need hardly add that if a word of this is repeated beyond this meeting, you will live to regret doing so for a long time."
The pair nodded seriously, Lestrade swallowing a little.
They watched Mycroft depart, then turned back to Sherlock. The consulting detective was leaning back in the sun, his eyes closed, palms clasped beneath his chin. The last of the morphine had cleared his system in the night, and he had found one of his pipes in his bedside cabinet with a plug of tobacco. Neither pipe nor tobacco were ideally suited to his task, but they were better than cigarettes.
He lit up, puffing, John and Lestrade watching him.
"What did Mycroft mean, about that last bit?"
The rat-tat-tat of the gun – has the pilot gone mad? Turning to look, and Moran, Colonel Sebastian Moran at the end of a rifle. Shaved of his beard and moustache, but him all the same. Sherlock glanced at him, and smiled. "Moriarty knows I'm on the case. That man is clever – perhaps as clever as me, and even a master of crime will get bored. When I was shot down I was in the middle of setting a trap with myself as the bait. Clearly he anticipated me. He knows I'm here, and he will come. The very fact that I am still alive is proof. Sebastian Moran is his hired killer – one of the best shots in the army, until he was dishonourably discharged. He was the pilot that shot me down. Moriarty is setting up the board to play."
John and Lestrade started with dismay at the revelation.
"And whose says this Colonel Moran hasn't been told to just kill you?" Lestrade argued.
"I do, Inspector. Moriarty is simply manoeuvring his pieces into position. And we must too. He is close to being ready, and he will come. It is merely a matter of when. I need to meet all of the hospital staff and patients, I need to eliminate them from my investigation, and I need to be ready before he comes."
John and Lestrade exchanged a long look. Sherlock was either brilliant or insane. Probably both.
Lestrade sighed deeply, downing the rest of the rum. "God knows I'm going to regret this," he muttered, "but I'm in."
John nodded firmly. "And I am as well."
Sherlock grinned. "Let's catch ourselves a master criminal."
They got up, Lestrade pushing Sherlock's wheelchair, and John marching alongside. His canes remained forgotten by the bench.
The staff interviews did not take long. Under the guise of getting lost, or asking after food, they made their way round the various nurses, doctors, and patients. Most Sherlock did not even deign to speak to, analysing and discounting them within a minute and moving onto the next, his glee mounting as his skills continued to return. Those that they did speak to often ended up being affronted, with Lestrade quickly wheeling Sherlock away as John apologised and cited Sherlock's accident as the cause of his rudeness.
By lunch time they had spoken to everyone except the mysterious Doctor Murtagh, and the unmasked Colonel Moran, who appeared to remain in his comatose condition. Sherlock had stared at him for a long while, waiting perhaps for a break in his façade, but there was little to be discerned beneath the bandages covering his face apart from a single closed eye.
Matron had been able to shed a little light on the doctor, however, Sherlock showing an unexpected ability to charm the woman over tiny glasses of sherry in her office.
"How well do you know Doctor Murtagh?" Sherlock asked ingenuously, pouring a generous measure of sherry into Matron's glass.
"Oh, Jacob? He arrived with you, don't you remember? He's a doctor at the cottage hospital you were first brought to. He found you when you first crashed – absolutely devoted to your recovery."
Sherlock frowned, glancing over at John and Lestrade. Not normal. But if it's Moriarty, what's he playing at being so obvious? Does the man want to be caught?
"He's a very nice man," Matron continued, more than a little tipsy now. "He's the one who got me this sherry, you know." She slopped a little over the rim of the glass and giggled. "Said he was going to see about some herbs for me to use on my bad hip while he's out today," she patted the offending joint, "kind man. Cold eyes though."
Cold heart. "Thank you, Matron," Sherlock gave her hand a pat.
Out in the corridor, the trio conferred.
"Are you sure you don't just remember him from when he found you?" Lestrade asked for the second time. "You would have been delirious at the time, remember."
Sherlock's gaze was adamant. "It's not that. He doesn't add up. There's something wrong about him – left of centre. The eyes, the dog hair, the marriage. Coming all this way to follow a single patient he has no connection to. No doctor shows that kind of care for no reason – and especially not in wartime." He shook his head. "Let's go."
"Murtagh is still suspicious," John said determinedly. "Even if he really is just a country doctor who really is concerned for Sherlock, he spent a strange amount of time watching over Sherlock when he was unconscious. He as most anxious to be there when you woke up."
Sherlock frowned, thinking, then turned to John. "Do you have access to a gun?"
John frowned. "Yes. I have my service revolver in my bedside cabinet. Why do you ask?"
"It can be good to have a gun around." He rattled the wicker of the wheelchair imperiously. "Back to the ward, Lestrade."
Sherlock spent the rest of the day craning his neck every time the door opened, eager to speak to Murtagh the moment he returned. John and Lestrade tried distracting him, but were more often than not repulsed with orders to keep eyes out for the doctor and to watch Moran in the event that he woke up.
The day ticked past until the nurses came to put the blackouts up. Supper was served and cleared away, and in the darkness John and Lestrade reconciled themselves to furthering their investigations the next day, anxiously crossing off one of their four days left until August.
Sherlock was not so easily satisfied, however, and lay awake, eyes on the ceiling as the breathing of his companions across the ward slowed as they fell asleep.
He waited an extra half hour to ensure they were asleep, before dragging himself upright.
Lestrade had left the wheelchair next to his bed, and with a bit of difficulty he managed to manoeuvre himself over the edge and onto the seat with minimum creaking from the wickerwork, pushing himself determinedly up the ward and out the door towards Murtagh's office. They had tried the door earlier in the day, only to find it locked, and breaking in hadn't been an option in daylight. Something would be there. Something had to be there.
He had filched various items from the hospital during their interviews, anticipating their need, and he tackled the lock, wiggling and twisting until the tumblers eventually fell into place, and the door swung open.
John shifted in bed, frowning. Hushed voices came to him from across the ward, muddling him and mixing into disturbed dreams through which Nazis and criminal masterminds ran, chased by Sherlock through flickering scenery like a rotating pantomime backdrop. Bombs rained from the sky, blowing craters into the countryside and aeroplanes ploughed furrows large enough for cottages into meadows, and Sherlock ran through it all, unscathed until a faceless figure loomed – Moriarty – and then Sherlock was falling, and all he could do was watch.
"They haven't had a chance to speak to me yet, but they're observant – something's got them on alert," the gravelly brogue helped John surface from the nightmare, shaking his head to clear it. A voice as rough as that was sobering, and very much the stuff of reality. He very much hoped Sherlock hadn't decided to interrogate Moran now that he seemed to be awake.
"…Holmes a threat?" the quiet Irish voice was vaguely familiar, and unexpected.
John's ears pricked up at the mention of Sherlock's name. He blinked his eyes harder, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes and the dreams from his mind, reaching for a glass of water. A shadow shifted at the end of the ward, and he paused.
"Not yet," replied the first.
John strained his ears and eyes. With the blackouts up it was like trying to see the bottom of a vat of tar. Doubtless Sherlock would have known who they were – if only he could wake him without drawing the attention of the other two…
"And his friends?" the smoother voice had the overture of a sneer.
"They've been busy. Investigating."
"Keep watching them. I want no loose ends. If they start getting close, you have your orders."
"Yes, sir. No loose ends."
John squinted across the ward to Sherlock's bed. A tiny chink where the bottom of the blackout fitted against the mullion windows let in the faintest sliver of moonlight, just enough for him to see that the bed was empty.
His heartbeat increasing, John turned his attention back to the other end of the ward where the voices seemed to have stopped. Light footsteps and the creak and click of a door closing came to him, and then the slither of sheets as Moran lay back in bed.
Where was Sherlock? Was he embroiled with Moriarty already? No, he couldn't be. The quiet Irish voice had to be the crime lord. But did that mean Doctor Murtagh was innocent?
Even more disturbed now than he had been when he awoke, John settled back into his pillows as silently as possible. It would not do for Moran to know that he had heard the exchange between him and his mysterious visitor.
In Murtagh's office, Sherlock gasped, surfacing from the flood of memories returned to him.
He stared down at the photograph sitting on the desk of the bare office. It was an innocuous object, to some, a black and white photograph, with a man standing to either side of the woman in the centre. Sherlock knew that but for the greyscale of the image, her lips would be scarlet. The Woman. She knew what people liked – she had known what the commander to her right liked, and whether by seductive persuasion or underhand blackmail with photographs Sherlock knew would be scandalous to a damning degree, he had been Moriarty's way into the RAF with his dummy bombs. To Irene's left and a little behind her, one large hand resting on her shoulder, was Colonel Moran. Present ostensibly as her protection, but really as her minder.
The discovery had been a blow at the time, and was no less so now. He had hoped Irene might have extracted herself from Moriarty's clutches, but it seemed that his webs were not so easy to throw off. His faculties and memories fully restored to him now, Sherlock cast his eyes about the room, clearing the dust from his mind.
Murtagh – or Moriarty as he now knew him to be – had imprinted little of himself on the room. He had left some few items which further confirmed the contrariness of his alias; nothing that would alert the average observer, but which to Sherlock were as plain as a note. They did not interest Sherlock, however.
The photograph had not been the only thing left for him. A single piece of paper that had been folded down the middle stood upright like a place card in the middle of the desk with the words 'I Owe You'. The letters had been written so that they tumbled down the page, and Sherlock knew it was Moriarty's first move in the game. It was time for him to make a return.
"Mr Holmes, how are we feeling today?"
Sherlock gazed implacably over his breakfast at Doctor Murtagh. "More mobile." It was true, levering himself back into bed after concluding his search, he had regained a little feeling in his legs – enough to move his toes, though it had done him little good.
"Ah yes, Matron told me you had made some friends," Murtagh smiled indulgently at him as one would a precocious child. "You were getting under everyone's feet in my absence." The cold glitter in his eyes belied the sweetened tone.
"Yes, wheelchairs are marvellous contraptions, provided you have someone to push you." Sherlock glanced over at Lestrade. The inspector was watching the exchange covertly over his toast. John was still asleep. "I've been regaining some of my memory, too," he added blandly, eyes fixed on Murtagh's.
The doctor's cloying manner flickered faintly. "Well that's excellent news! I was very worried when I found you that you might not remember anything at all."
Sherlock gave a disconcertingly wide smile. "Just as well I do. You'll be able to return to your usual duties at your own hospital."
"Oh no," Murtagh waggled a finger, "no, it wouldn't be right for me to leave before I knew you were safe to leave my care."
"Dedicated of you."
"It's an axiom of mine. I never leave a job unfinished. It's not tidy. Loose ends bother me."
Across the ward John catapulted upright in bed. "Sherlock!"
Sherlock shot a glare at Lestrade to shut the man up. "They bother me as well," he added, "especially when matters don't add up. Obvious problems attract attention. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Indeed. But there's always a way to tidy things and square them off."
John was refusing to be calmed by Lestrade behind Murtagh's back, hissing urgently at him in whispers too soft for Sherlock to make out. Reading his lips made the message clear, however. Got to tell Sherlock. Moran had a visitor last night. An Irish visitor. Moriarty's here, Lestrade! He's here! Sherlock's in danger! The pair of them turned to stare at Sherlock, Lestrade's expression a mixture of astonishment and fear, and John's urgent.
Sherlock nodded very slightly, turning his attention back to Murtagh. "I quite agree."
In the far corner of the ward, Moran was sitting up in bed. He was on a liquid ration as the bandages made anything else difficult to eat, and a supply of straws had been provided. His unobscured eye was sharp, however, and fixed on John's lips as he wrote out something in a little black book in his lap.
Doctor Murtagh shifted closer to Sherlock, an eagerness in his posture that he was unable to repress. "What is it that you can remember? At these early stages even the smallest details are important improvements."
Sherlock met his eyes, his own alight. "A fall."
After Murtagh had left, Lestrade nonchalantly wandered over to Moran's bed, a bottle of whiskey in his pocket. John made a beeline for Sherlock, who had lit up the entirety of the rest of Lestrade's cigarettes having run out of tobacco, his clasped palms beneath his chin as a thick blueish smog gathered about his head.
"Whatever you're planning, don't do it."
Sherlock raised an eyebrow at John's abruptness.
"I know you're planning something – something stupid probably, because that's what you're like – but I won't let you do it. Friends don't let each other do stupid things alone. So you'll have to bring me with you. And Lestrade. He's said so too. It's all of us, or none at all." John was breathing hard, serious and tense with emotion.
Sherlock sat up, fitting four cigarettes between the index and middle fingers of each hand, genuinely surprised at the outburst of sentiment. "John, just what do you think I'm about to do exactly?"
"Besides something stupid? I don't know exactly, but I know that face. You're plotting something – you're back, it's the face you made before you disappeared from Baker Street at the start of this fiasco."
Sherlock laid a calming hand on John's shoulder. "I'm trying to remember, John. I'm trying to guess what Moriarty will do supposing I did find out about him before the crash. You're my friend, John. Would I lie to you?"
"Yes. You do. Frequently."
Sherlock sighed impatiently, his sincerity interrupted. "Would I lie to you about this?"
John frowned at him. "If you remember – you tell us. And we'll go into battle side by side. You need us. Friends guard each other's backs from the enemy, and you can't take on Moriarty alone. It's not safe."
"And friends also give bad tempered grouches like you all their cigarettes," added Lestrade, coming up on the other side with a grin.
Sherlock glanced towards Moran's bed questioningly, but Lestrade anticipated him.
"I bribed Matron to wheel him out of the ward for a while. Nasty piece of work that man, but he could hardly stand up and protest without giving himself away."
Sherlock grinned. "I'll bet he loved that."
"Over the moon." Lestrade grinned, but his levity lasted only a moment. "Look, personally, I think you're bonkers taking on this Moriarty chap. But maybe that's because only you can do it; maybe only you are smart enough and stupid enough to be able to. But it doesn't mean you have to do it alone. If we can help – if we can stand by you, and do anything at all that might tip the balance, we'll be glad to risk our lives for the cause." He put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder. "You are a great man, although goodness knows you don't need your head to get any bigger, and I think, under all your snide comments and coldness, you're a good one too." He smiled.
John nodded. "So you see, you're not getting rid of us."
Sherlock stared at the two men standing on either side of his bed, knowingly giving their lives into his care, for once rendered speechless. He collected himself however, and rolled his eyes theatrically.