There's a problem.

This, in itself, is not an event. There's always a problem. The simplest job in the world, there's going to be a problem. There's going to be an alarm that wasn't on the floorplan or somebody's going to talk to the wrong person or not do as they're told and get shot and all of these things will cause problems. I expect it. How dull would my life be if there were no problems and everything went hitchlessly from start to finish? I love problems. My favourite thing in the whole world is a big tangly problem to sit and work at. I get like a pig in shit. Ask Moran, he's seen it happen.

What I'm not used to, and what I don't like, and what makes me want to lock all concerned parties including myself in a small room full of gas jets where the only choice is between slowly suffocating or a certain somebody lighting a fag and we'll be done with it, is when I'm being told that the problem came from my end.

"I was," Adler claims, "woefully misinformed."

You'd be so proud of me; I am the picture of calm. You're stupid, so you'd be so proud of me. You'd be thinking, God he's doing well. Under the power of that sort of discourtesy, wow, what miracle from God is this, that he's not currently removing her face with wire wool? Maybe he's a worthwhile human being after all. Oh, you daft sod, you'd be so proud of me.

People who aren't thick are getting a bit worried. Moran, for instance, if I'm reading him right, is getting ready to jump between me and her if she steps any further over her mark. And that other bitch, who has been admitted to my presence again for reasons we'll come on to soon enough, she sees it too, but she's just watching. Maybe gauging whether she could risk mixing herself a drink. Don't ask how we found this out, but she likes nothing better than a martini with a splash of blood in it.

With a face like a Buddhist idol, I mildly echo, "Woefully misinformed?"

And rather than take both the hint and the opportunity that she might take this back, Adler nods her proud, arresting head and says, "Yes." And she gets this look on her face like a coach driver who's just gone past his turn, but he's not going to admit that to the passengers. Fine. Fair play to her. Once she's put it out there, we might as well just fire away and do this thing.

"Might I point out to you," I say, still the perfect Dalai Lama, "that by the very fact of your standing here, you are proven to be alive and well? And that the fact of your being alive and well, in turn, proves that the initial goal, i.e. to become an enormous arse-pain to one Mycroft Holmes, has been well and truly attained?"

See that? See how level and fair I'm being, putting that before her so she can make sense of it for herself? So she can back the fuck off before we just take her mobile off her and Moran takes her to see the undertakers? What they do is, they bury an illicit body in the bottom of a grave already dug. Next morning, there's a funeral, and then there's a totally legit corpse and six feet of earth on top of any dirty little secret. Adler doesn't know that, but she could be told.

She is, by the way, still dressed only in Holmes' coat. Holding on to it rather tightly. I'm not sure yet if that means anything, or if she's just developed some sense of propriety. From the way she plops herself down, square in the middle of my couch, and folds her legs where the coat parts, I'd say it probably means something. "You might well point it out," she says, "And I might well question it on every possible point."

'Alive and well', she says, was through no action of mine, and where was her so-called protection when the Americans landed in on her this afternoon? It was, she claims, only by her wits and Sherlock's (direct quote-) 'extraordinary perceptiveness' that she survived that.

I am as peaceful as the depths of the sea; "You were never in any real danger."

Adler is not peaceful. She's in turmoil for a few seconds while that sinks in and she unpicks the implications. Then she rages. "You knew about that?"

"The Americans work for us. The tall gentleman behind you, have you met Moran? Moran had them well briefed."

Moran chips in, "Why do you think they were going to shoot Watson first? Everybody knows you go for the woman first. I can't think of a single circumstance where-"

I interrupt, "Burma." Which would be absolutely correct and fine, only Danielle says it too, and in the same moment, and without looking at me.

"Alright, so Burma," Moran admits. "But we're not telling the Burma story. In short, you were well tipped-off, Miss Adler. The Americans are ours, don't worry about them."

And here, even in the midst of all this tension and unpleasantness, she has the grace to look worried and says quickly, "The gun in my safe, he got in the way, it was nothing to do with me-"

"Oh, we don't care about them. They're ours, but not in any sentimental, attached sort of way. Kill as many of them as you want. Now," and I reach over to the table for my coffee, because I feel like this whole bloody shadowplay might take a while. She'll ask all her questions and I'll answer them and she'll leave no better off than she arrived, except she might be dressed. There's nothing she can do. A session like this, I can force her to accept that. "You had more holes to poke in what a good day you were having?"

I wish I was in a better mood. Sometime before this is over I have to do this again and really take the time to enjoy it. I hate to say it, but somebody I used to think I knew was right; there's great fun to be had, when you're in control of somebody like Miss Adler. All those years of saying Frog and watching people jump, and saying 'Lick my boots, scum' and not getting punched in the face, they've left her with this aggravated sense of entitlement which is wondrous pleasurable to dismantle. But I'm not in a better mood. As you're probably beginning to imagine, it's taking pretty much everything I've got to stay sat down.

Maybe somebody sitting behind me on a high stool and with a sneaky cameraphone is getting a picture of that look on her face for me to enjoy later on. Maybe not.

"I'll give you your point about Mycroft," is how she puts it. Awful good of her, that. I get a point. Like they're not all my points and they're not all airtight. I should have CCTV in here. I could come back tonight and watch her clawing for some scrap of what she thinks is hers. "Where I really must protest, however, is in what I was told about the younger Holmes."

Oh.

Dani wouldn't have… Nah. Bitch she may be, but she has a degree of respect for human life. Well, so long as it's her own, she does. Nah. No, she wouldn't have tried to… Nah, no way. And the biggest mistake I could possibly make right now is to condescend to even think the word 'sabotage', because once I've thought it it's practically true and… Oops.

Oh, dear, now it's a fact.

"Oi, poison!" I call over my shoulder, beckoning Miss Mies down from her perch. "Get over here and defend yourself." It's the fastest she's come, the least backchat I've had, since before the Greenwich job. She doesn't look at me when she sits down, but I lean round, so I know I'm in the corner of her eye, so I know she sees a shadow saying, "Do a decent job of defending yourself." I hope she can hear me clearly. If she misses any of the intonation, that might actually sound like a hopeful, encouraging thing to say. Adler's a better pupil; she catches it right away. Knows that something has happened, though not what, and she won't be a bright-eyed bunny if she thinks she's been caught in some sort of personal crossfire. And that's one complaint I would not hold against her, not for a second.

With her newfound lack of respect for me, it costs Mies nothing to spark up a fag and ignore me entirely. She looks right across at Adler, gesturing with a trail of smoke, "You were not misinformed."

"Oh, no? I explicitly recall the recommendation to shock him-"

"Yeah," Dani says, grimly smiling, "I did not, however, tell you to take all your clothes off now, did I? You know, for all your supposed class you're about as subtle as a dose of the clap, Irene. But then that's maybe not your fault. What could you know about seduction? Your clients usually just ring up and make an appointment, don't they?"

A bit vicious, that, but then nothing surprises me anymore. And all the riposte Adler has is, "You'd know."

"Curiosity killed, love. Cat's got nine lives for calling your number. All I'm really saying is that you couldn't have made yourself more obvious-"

"You said he had to be able to read me."

"And what's there to be read?" says Danielle, and the cigarette hand trails vile blue smoke up and down Adler's barely clad form. They discuss this one for a while, every physical details. I'll crush it down a bit. Not to be sexist, but just in case there's any men in the audience. Even Moran, and beneath that death-before-surrender exterior flutters the heart of a true friend of Dorothy, was falling asleep. Adler's argument is that everything that needed to be learned of her could have been learned from her stone-set, mirror-black hair, her makeup, her stance and a pair of much-described high heels she seems to have dispensed with somewhere.

Danielle's argument is a quick Google Image search on her phone. And in apparently every picture ever taken of our own dear Whiphand, all of these things are present.

"What were you telling him," is how she phrases it, "That he didn't already know?"

I must say, she's defending herself rather well, so far. I'm sure if Adler was arguing back I'd find it easier to side with her. I can think of lots of things she could say, whether they were true or not. But she's not saying any of them, and in my experience, that means she is faced with a truth she doesn't like. People do that. I hate it, myself; they'll lie and lie and lie a thousand ways. Then, as soon as you put the truth in front of them, rather than just keep lying and help themselves out, they forget how to talk. They make noises, their mouths flap, like aliens mimicking the processes of human speech, but they don't say anything useful anymore.

Damn it, Adler. You're turning into such a fecking disappointment. I hope you know I wanted so much more for us…

"Then what about the 'case-talk'?!" she spits, with the desperation of somebody knowing this is her very last chance. "Didn't you tell me not to be the smartest person in the room? Shall I tell you how he reacted to that, to the simple admission that I knew less than I him, shall I tell you exactly what he said?" Oh dear, love. Never admit to knowing something word for word. No, never tell the opposition that something has scarred you so deeply as to be permanently engrained on your mind. But it has, and she's admitted, and she tells, "You cater to the whims of the pathetic and take your clothes off to make an impression – stop boring me and think."

Danielle, looking puzzled, her face a mockery of it, "Look at yourself honestly and tell me what you found so objectionable?"

Adler seethes, gets all puffed up and this time Moran's the one looking like he might have time to fetch popcorn if he's quick. But before this can turn catfight, I shift around, as close as I can get to standing between them without getting up. "Alright, enough of this. Enough. Danielle, you haven't moved your change of clothes out yet, have you?"

Grudgingly, "No."

"Go and leave something out for Miss Adler." I'm sick of telling you how much I hate every look she throws at me, so I can only assume you're sick of hearing it. I won't bother this time. She goes, thank God. Moran follows her. Have a word with him about that after this is over…

Which leaves just me and Miss Adler.

I say, "And your mobile is still in your possession."

"Yes."

"As is Holmes', I'll bet, in one of those pockets. Show me that."

"No." Oh, not you too, Reenie, don't tell me you're catching a case of the Nos too… "I don't see what good it does you, or what that's got to do with you."

And now you're sat out there being really, really thick, aren't you? You're sat out there thinking, oh, now she's gone and done it. Murder time now, and there's poor Dani and Seb tucked away in another room, with not vodka nor Malteasers between them and missing it all. You thick bastards…

Adler, usually the one who does the humiliating, has been humiliated. She needs to go out of here with some small victory. Crushing her entirely wouldn't serve me anymore than her former pride.

And maybe she's right. Maybe Holmes' phone would be… I don't know. Cheating, maybe.

Just testing, checking if we can move on from this, I tell her, "Return the coat, next. Then you need to stay in touch with him. Even if he doesn't respond. This is key. Amuse him. Whether he admits it or not."

Down the hall I hear a door open and gesture for her to go, oh please God go, and get herself dressed.

She must pass them in the hall, but there isn't a word said. And it's Moran who appears first. Looking grim, looking hateful. That's alright; he's only had Mies's side of the story, and we've heartily established she's a lying, manipulative cow. I'll tell him the truth later on and he'll understand. But like I said, he comes in first, and when Danielle comes in she hangs back near the kitchen, like she might just stay out of the way, hide until the worst is over. But that's not going to happen.

"Take off, Danielle." She looks at me, blank, as if she only just caught my voice. "You heard. I don't want you anywhere near this again."

With a shrug, "Fine. I'll stay off it. I'll get Cannes back on, shall I? Get out of the country for a while?"

"You misunderstand, angel. I don't want you anywhere near this. All of this. Us. Any use of the word 'us', in fact, no longer includes you. 'Take off' as in leave, as in never come back, as in arrivaderci, adieu. So long, farewell, auf weidersehn, pet, goodbye so soon and isn't this a crime..." Don't underestimate how difficult this is for me to say.

She panics. Goes on the defensive, walks right up to me and all on fire and the big wet lip stuck out like that could ever dream of working and says, "You need me."

"I don't think so. I reckon Adler can manage well enough herself."

"I'm not talking about the Adler job."

"Don't be arrogant, Danielle. You've nothing to back it up with."

She looks, then, not at me but at Moran. And tells him, "I'm sorry. I can't deal with this." She turns on her heel. She wants to leave, of her own accord. She wants to make it as though I'm not throwing her out. Yeah, well, she's not Adler. She doesn't need a victory to see her off and she's not going to get one either. I follow her, step for step, block the living room door when she steps in to get that fecking coat of hers. I stand a second too long, though, before letting her out. And there at her twisted height, the darkest insult she can think of on her way out the door, she puts her cigarette hand up to the side of my face, and briefly presses her lips to the other.

"Get out," I say. And I'll keep saying it until she gets the message.

By the time she's at the door, Adler is dressed. Has come out to see what's going on. And Danielle, ignoring me again, looks past me and tells her, "Holmes has the attention span of the average toddler. Constant contact isn't enough. He forgets Watson from time to time and the man lives there. You need to find a way to stay on his mind, something he can't ignore." Shrugs again, "Just a tip."

Then the door closes behind her.