It was a nice day. The sky was almost clear from clouds and the weather was as good as you could expect in London at this time of the year. John Watson was walking in Russel Square Park, a walking stick in his right hand to support his leg, clicking rhythmically on the pavement.
"John?" a man exclaimed but John didn't seem to have heard him. "John Watson?"
John turned around, surprised. Who could possibly be calling him? A chubby man with brown hair, glasses, a beige coat and a hideous multicoloured tie, apparently. The man put his brown suitcase and newspaper in one hand to present himself.
"Stamford," he said. "Mike Stamford. We were at Bart's together."
"Yes, sorry, yes. Mike. Hello, hi, " John said uncomfortably as they shook hands, finally remembering the man. He had lost the habit of casual conversation.
"Yes, I know, I got fat," Mike joked with a bi g smile. "I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at. What happened?"
"I got shot," John stated. Bad sleeping patterns weren't doing any good to his social skills.
"Are you still at Bart's then?" John asked once they were both seated on a bench, coffee in hand. His question seemed to ease the tension he had created before. Mike nodded.
"Teaching now. Bright young things that we used to be. God I hate them," he said, making both of them laugh. John massaged his leg. "What about you? Just staying in town 'til you get sorted?"
"Can't afford London on an army pension," John said without looking at his friend.
"And you couldn't bare to be anywhere else," Mike deduced without loosing his smile. "That's not the John Watson I know."
"Yeah, I'm not the John Watson…" John muttered, still avoiding to look at his friend and clenching his fist on his leg. That was the reason why he had avoided most of his past friends since his return. He wasn't the person they knew, like he had just said, and he wasn't ready to be that person again. Sadly, it was only making him even more isolated. There were days when he wouldn't talk at all.
"Couldn't Harry help?" Mike wondered with a sight. John snorted.
"Yeah, like that's gonna happen."
"I don't know… Get a flatshare or something?" Mike thought out loud. This made John chuckle a bit. He rose his eyes and looked at the other man.
"Come one, who would want me for a flatmate?" It was Mike's turn to chuckle. "What?" John asked, offended.
"You're the second person to say that to me today," Mike answered.
"Who was the first?"
A young man, probably in his thirties, was standing in the mortuary at Bart's. His black curly hair, dark scarf and long black coat were contrasting with his pale skin and blue eyes.
He opened the mortuary bag on the table before him and sniffed. "How fresh?" he asked with a deep voice.
"Just in," a woman answered, walking around him. There was just the two of them in the room. "Sixty-seven, natural causes. Used to work here. I knew him! He was nice." She was younger than the man, but not much. Her brown hair was fastened in a ponytail and she was wearing a white blouse over her clothes.
"Fine. We'll start with the ridding crop," the man said with a smile.
The next minutes were spent hitting the body at different angles. The woman was looking at him from the corridor, grimacing each time the crop hit the body.
"So, bad day, was it?" she asked with a small forced laugh a while later, once he had finished with his experiment.
"I need to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes," the man said, ignoring her and writing into a note-book. "A man's alibi depends on it. Text me."
She gulped and danced on her feet, unsure of her next move. "Listen, I was wondering," she eventually started. The man took a deep breath at her words, as if he already knew what was coming. "Maybe later, when you're finished—" He rose his head, barely hiding his exasperation, and his eyes met her face.
"You're wearing lipstick," he cut her with a frown. "You weren't wearing lipstick before." The woman looked pleased with herself.
"I refreshed it a bit," she explained while trying not to smile too brightly. He looked at her a few more seconds and went back to his notes.
"Sorry, you were saying?" he said, leaving the lipstick subject behind.
"I was wondering if you wanted to have coffee," she continued with a renewed confidence.
"Black, two sugars please, I'll be upstairs," he answered with a nod.
"Okay," she whispered with a small voice once he had left the room. Her plan had poorly failed.
The same tall man was in what looked like a laboratory. He had taken off his coat and scarf but didn't have any white blouse while manipulating the instruments with extreme precision. Someone knocked on the door. He didn't answer.
Mike Stamford entered, followed by John Watson. The man glanced at them before going back to his experiments.
"Well, bit different from my day," John said as he looked around. The room was full of electronic devices and scientific material such as microscopes.
"You have no idea," Mike chuckled.
"Mike, can I borrow your phone? There's no signal on mine," the man asked, not sparing another look at the new comers.
"What's wrong with the landline?" said Mike.
"I prefer to text," he answered.
"Sorry, it's in my coat."
John, who had stayed silent during the exchange, chose to be useful. "Er, here, use mine," he told the stranger, taking it out of his pocket.
"Oh," the man said. He looked at Mike quickly, as if wasn't sure whether John had really said that. "Thank you." He stood up and walked toward John.
"It's an old friend of mine, John Watson," Mike explained. John gave a fake smile as he handed his phone to the complete stranger. Said stranger took it swiftly and started to write.
"Afghanistan or Irak?" he asked without looking away from the phone, bringing a smug look on Mike's face.
John must have had misheard. "I'm sorry?" he said with a frown.
"Which one was it, Afghanistan or Irak?" the man repeated. He turned his grey-blue eyes to look at John. It had to be a joke. It was John's turn to glance at Mike as if to be sure that he wasn't dreaming. Mike, who was still smiling.
"Afghanistan," he finally answered, but the stranger was looking at the phone again. "Sorry, how did you—"
"Ah, Molly!" John was interrupted by the lady's entrance. She had a cup of coffee in her hand. "Coffee, thank you," the man continued. He gave the phone back to John, who made a face at being ignored but stayed silent — the army did have had a great impact on John's control over himself — and grasped Molly's coffee. "What happened to the lipstick?" he asked, a little disturbed.
"It wasn't working for me," Molly answered, embarrassed.
"Really? I thought it was a good improvement. Your mouth is too… small now," the man said without any tact, moving his hands as he talked. He walked back to the computer and took a sip from the cup.
"Okay," Molly squirted before exiting. The man didn't pay any attention to her.
"How do you feel about the violin?" he asked. Mike had his smug look again. John didn't like it.
"I'm sorry, what?" John asked once he had understood the question was directed to him.
"I play the violin when I'm thinking. Sometimes, I don't talk for days on and… Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should now the worst about each other." John wasn't understanding anything.
"Oh you… You told him about me?" he asked Mike who was playing with a tube of blood.
"Not a word," Mike assured.
"Than who said anything about flatmates?"
"I did," the stranger answered while putting his coat on. "Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now, here he is, after lunch, with an old friend clearly home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn't a difficult leap," he concluded, his hands elegantly wrapping a blue scarf around his neck.
"How did you know about Afghanistan?" John said, his paranoïa kicking in.
"Got my eyes on a nice little place in Central London," the stranger said, ignoring John again and collecting his stuff. "Together we should be able to afford it. We'll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o'clock. I'm sorry, gotta dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary." John blinked. Had he really said that? Was it really happening?
"Is that it?" he exclaimed just before his apparently future flatmate disappeared.
"Is that what?"
"We've only just met and we're gonna go and look at a flat," John said.
"Problem?" John smiled in disbelief. This man was surely kidding. But why wasn't Mike at least smiling too? Surely, this man couldn't be serious.
"We don't know a thing about each other, I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name," John explained nonetheless. The stranger lowered his head in a way that could look dangerous on someone less and looked at John straight in the eyes.
"I know you're an army doctor and you've been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you've got a brother who's worried about you but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve of him, possibly because he is an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out of his wife and I know that your therapist thinks your limps is psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid." At this poing, John fidgeted, embarrassed. His jaw clenched, his lips were pinched. "It's enough to begin with, don't you think?"
His tirade finished, he walked to the door. Despite the amount of things this tall, mysterious man knew about him, John didn't panic. He was more… intrigued than afraid.
"The name is Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street," the man added with a wink before disappearing into the corridor. "Afternoon."
John looked at Mike, at a lost of word. "Yes, he is always like that."