Sherlock was pacing around the living room, in his 'mind palace', a few days after Molly's passing. Me and Sherlock had made it our duty to solve this case and get whoever killed Molly to get sent down, while grieving the loss of our much loved friend at the same time. It was hard work. At random times, someone would talk about Molly, and me and Sherlock had to excuse ourselves before we broke down in front of the whole police team. Well, before I broke down. Sherlock was becoming more and more skilled at holding in his true emotions during the days of this case, but when we got home, when we went to bed, we'd just lie there. In each other's arms. Sherlock sobbing a little, me passing him a tissue and untangling our arms so that he could clean himself up from his tears and sniffling.
"This has to be the work of Moriarty, it has to be!" Sherlock was talking to himself again.
"Moriarty's dead, remember? Unless he faked his death too.." I reminded him, silently hoping he hadn't heard the sarcastic remark I had added on at the end.
Suddenly, his head was right in front of me, his body perfectly bent so that his head could be aligned to mine.
"Yes, of course he faked his death, because taking a gun to the roof of your mouth and pulling the trigger is an excellent way of faking your death. Of course he's not dead."
His expression went slightly cold, as he squinted his eyes and grimaced at his sarcasm. I shifted my back to make it straight in the chair, and Sherlock regained his original standing position. As he began to continue pacing, he explained his thoughts to me.
"Somebody is following in that spider of a man's footsteps, John. I expect that it's someone who was very close to Moriarty when he died, maybe a relative, a friend, a lover- but let's be honest, who would want a murdering consulting criminal as a lover?"
"Moran? They seemed pretty close?" I suggested.
Sherlock halted. He swivelled in his position to face me and looked puzzled.
"Moran?" he asked.
"Yes, Moran. Sebastian Moran?"
No reply.
"You remember him, right?"
He looked even more puzzled than before.
"Did the year-long 'holiday' leave you forgetting half the things you should've remembered?"
"No, John, it's just this one man. I can't seem to remember him. I may have erased him from my memory, if he was no longer necessary at the time of the incident on the hospital roof."
"It was as if he was Moriarty's accomplice. There's been a couple of incidents since your disappearance that has hit front page news, but the cases were never solved."
Sherlock's ears pricked up and he was suddenly interested, like a light bulb had flashed on in his head. "Continue," he insisted.
"With what?"
"Tell me about the cases, what they were like, why they weren't solved."
"Erm, okay. There was one woman in the first case, a man and a woman in the second, and I think there was a man in a third case. All shot in the back of the head, like Molly. They weren't solved because there were no leads, no witnesses, there was no evidence, the police had nothing at all to go by."
"Where this Moran man, John?"
"Not sure, I haven't heard about him in months. He must have moved or something. I can try looking for him on this-" I got up, moved towards the kitchen to retrieve my laptop from the kitchen table, and when I had sat back down, I placed it on my lap. I opened it up and turned it on, watching it spring to life with the touch of a button.
"And what if nothing suitable comes up?"
"Then we dig further. Look through policing records, check up on missing persons reports and stuff, we'll do anything we have to."
"You're thinking what I'm thinking aren't you?" Sherlock mumbled a little, then repeated it -with a grin growing on his face- so I could hear the words crystal clear.
"Depends on what you're thinking, Sherlock."
"I'm thinking that the cases you just described to me- very vaguely, I'll admit, but still useful- are linked to this Moran man's sudden disappearance. If he's trying to be like Moriarty, he knows all the tricks in the book, but he still hasn't got the confidence to be exactly like him. He'll strike when no one is around, he'll pounce on vulnerable people and just shoot them. He'll be extra careful not to leave any evidence, because at this point in his progress, he doesn't want to get arrested, he doesn't have the ability to be cunning and find a way out of there through threats or bribery, like Moriarty did in the court cases to make the jury plead him not guilty."
I was busy clicking away at my laptop, making notes, typing every word I could catch him saying.
"There's going to be no leads due to the lack of witnesses, lack of evidence, the list could go on forever but all these cases have victims shot in the back of the head. 4 times I'm presuming? Consistency may be key to this. We'll need to double check the facts with Lestrade, look it up in the archives. After the first three cases, he was too afraid of getting caught out, perhaps the police had made progress and almost caught him, but he fled before they could do anything more. And now he's back. He killed Molly in the exact same way as the others. But this one is going to be different, and you know why, John?"
I looked up from my computer screen, shook my head and awaited the answer, eager to write it down.
"It's not going to be left unsolved."
"Oh, like all the others were!"
"Nice to know you're catching up, John. We need to find this Sebastian Moran who has frankly disappeared from my memory."
"Maybe it's the Silence, Sherlock." I grinned.
Sherlock turned to me and gave me an unimpressed look. "You seriously need to stop watching that programme."
