A moment later, they were out onto the street again. "Didn't we have any luggage?" asked John.

"No," answered Colin, absentmindedly as they crossed the road, "You just ushered me out the flat into a cab and off we went."

He suddenly looked back at John, "I'm sorry – I'd better not tell you anything until you remember."

Colin led John through a couple of side streets and then out onto a busy main road. John heaved a sigh of relief. At least he knew where he was. A long stretch of buildings, ancient and modern, inter-dispersed and utterly dwarfed by a stream of traffic. Marylebone Road. Good old bad tempered, congested Marylebone Road. It was a small consolation for how he felt but it somehow made him feel more at ease and he was in desperate need of comfort. They stepped into the taxi. "The flat?" said John, "Is that where we're going now?"

"No," replied Colin, "We're going to yours."

John gave the address to the taxi driver with an added request from Colin to, "step on it." With that, they sped off and not long after, they were pulling up in front of the familiar black door of 221B Baker Street. As they alighted from the taxi, John sighed. "Ready to go in?" said Colin.

"I've got to," replied John, solemnly, "I've got to. But I'm somehow...scared." John felt the squeeze of Colin's hand.

"Go on," he urged, "I'm right behind you." He smiled a warm, comforting smile and John felt just a little better as he pushed open the, surprisingly unlocked, door.

"Mrs Hudson!" he called, "Mrs Hudson?" There was no reply. They stepped inside and John ran up the stairs.

"This one's mine," he said, as he pushed open the, yet again, unlocked door. Whilst he expected to find the flat in disarray, it was not in any such state. It was far from neat but that was nothing out of the ordinary and the rooms were in their usual stasis common to most all male environments.

"This place is a tip," remarked Colin, sniffing the air with distaste, "I'll look around, see if anyone's been here. You get changed into something clean."

At this, John smelled his jacket and promptly concurred with him. Colin began to wander around, examining objects here and there. John wandered into the bedroom and opened his chest of drawers. Everything was as usual – T-shirts arranged haphazardly, an odd pair of socks, a misplaced tie.

"No one's been in this place for weeks," called Colin from the other room, "The food's all gone stale and everything's dusty."

That wouldn't make a change, John chuckled inwardly. But his laughter was short lived as he remembered the horrific scene in the hotel bathroom. I left him there, he thought, I left him there. His mind filled with worrying thoughts. Had the body been found yet? What would they have done with it? A picture formed in his mind – of the cleaner who would find the body, screaming with horror; of the manager who would arrive, half dressed, and console the screaming cleaning woman; of the police sergeant who would try and questions her – without much success; of the receptionist who would report seeing 'a shifty man, wore a shabby jacket, obviously a junkie.' But worst of all was the image that formed now – a whole team of forensics examining Sherlock, poking at him, laying him out, taking samples. I left him, he repeated, and I left him with strangers.

He pulled out a T shirt and fresh pair of brown corduroy trousers. Keep going, he thought, don't think about it. But he found it hard not to think about it – he could scarcely believe what he'd seen. In his heart, he felt a great absence, a canyon of emptiness into which he saw himself falling. He's dead and I'm never going to see him again. He sat down on the bed and opened the top drawer of the desk next to it. Scattered papers, a dictionary, Whittaker's Almanac. His hand came upon a small book, tightly bound. He pulled it out. A faded card on the front indicated its purpose, "Photo Album," and he opened it and flicked through a few of the pages. A picture of him and Sherlock, sitting at Brighton Pier, looking down at a large dollop of ice cream which had seemingly just spilled onto John's jacket. Another photo of Sherlock and Mycroft in front of a plaque dedicated, "To Mr Sherlock Holmes, for services rendered." Another photo of John talking to Stamford at a medical convention with Sherlock staring jealously from the corner of the photo. Ghosts, sighed John, all ghosts.