Hello friends! Have a chapter and remember I absolutely love responses!

Sighing, John pushed his laptop across the coffee table toward Sherlock. "Sherlock, if I have to read one more thing on abacuses, I'm going to need my gun. In order to shoot my head." He let his arm sprawl across the wood, wanting to flop onto the table, but not wanting to look like an idiot.

Sherlock turned to him with a frown. "I shall endeavour to make certain you do not come within arm's reach of the weapon." She went back into her thinking pose, staring at the wall.

John's forehead creased. "How do you know where my gun is?" he asked, calmly, one hand clenching on the arm of his chair, controlled.

"Oh, please, John, I'm hardly going to shoot someone with it," Sherlock replied.

"All the same, how did you know?" John repeated, but relaxed a bit.

"You have trouble sleeping, of course you keep it close, but you wouldn't keep it under your pillow, too cliche, not to mention dangerous since you flail in your nightmares, thus it's most likely in the drawer of your side table," Sherlock said quickly. John gaped at her.

"That's brilliant."

Rolling her eyes, Sherlock looked up at the pinned-up web she'd made on John's wall. John hoped Mrs. Hudson wouldn't ask them to replace the drywall when they left. Knowing the way the Holmes family worked, Mycroft would probably pay for it anyway, but still.

"Are you ever going to move back into your own sitting room?" John asked when she didn't answer.

"No," was the clipped reply.

"Is that why you burned your sofa?" he joked, but she stayed silent.

Sherlock stepped forward, pretending to trace an invisible line between two pins, but John could see what was written on the placards and connecting them wouldn't make any sense - not even to Sherlock. There was simply no way the banker's shoes and abacuses had a connection.

"You did, didn't you?" he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head at the insanity of his life. "You set your sofa on fire 'cause you liked my side of the flat better. You know, you could have just asked me to switch sides with you."

"Dull," Sherlock said, and John grinned, letting go of his nose.

"Right, because it's much more interesting researching abacuses," he accused.

"It's abaci," she replied.

"Actually, it's both, according to my research. And as far as I can tell, there's nothing connecting abacuses to murders. Any luck on your end?" John leaned back, waiting for a stream of deductions.

"I've looked up any connection his particular bank could have to a crime syndicate or any money-related wrongdoing, but any potential avenues for connection are so far up in the system that there's no way they'd be useful for this particular murder. So it comes down to the only thing the murderer's left us; the abacus. I thought that perhaps the killer was leaving a message - abaci - traditionally abaci represent wealth - but that wouldn't make sense, everyone knows he's a banker, it would be a useless message. There's no code in the positioning of the beads either, I've tried every possible combination of letters and numbers and symbols and shapes as well as lowering my pride and sending a picture to Mycroft, who has emailed me back with these exact words: 'There's nothing there, Sherlock, why are you wasting my time', which means he had a crack at it himself and found it wanting, so that backs me up." She frowned at her phone on the coffee table as if had personally insulted her.

"Mycroft's good at cryptology?" John asked, and Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him.

"There's a 40-year-old unsolved murder in Australia that hangs on a couple lines of code. Or, at least, they think it's unsolved," was all she said, and John understood the implications.

"Right, right, Mycroft's good at everything. Does he ever get less creepy?" John asked with a shiver. He didn't want to know what Mycroft's reasons were for refraining from exposing what he knew. Hell, he didn't want to know Mycroft's reasons for anything, half the time.

"Of course not, John, he's my brother," Sherlock said dismissively. "So, abacus aside, I've looked through the file three times. Lestrade, unfortunately, was right; Anderson's incompetence has entirely bungled this case, the forensic report shows that there is absolutely no fingerprints, no odd fibres, no hair that cannot be accounted to dogs, cat and victim. Which is impossible according to the laws of forensic science themselves; a person always leaves a trace, that's the whole point of the science, but Anderson is an inexcusable waste of grey matter."

"So we know nothing about him? The murderer, I mean," John clarified, choosing to skip over the ranting-about-Anderson bit.

Sherlock looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, then clambered over the couch and crouched on it, her hands held in front of her face. "Oh, I wouldn't say that, John. We know some. We know he's tall, believes in what he does, isn't stupid, and is confident. He probably is quite popular among the ladies. Does well chatting them up in bars."

"Hey, hey, hey. You keep saying 'he'. Why is there no equal gender representation in our suspect pool?" John protested, and Sherlock grinned at him.

"Height, John, do keep up. Not to mention statistical evidence suggests our suspect is more likely to be a man." John stared at her for a moment.

"Right," John said, then stood up, hands at his sides. "I suppose height variation doesn't occur to you? Because I'm kind of living proof. Tea?"

"No. Sit. Look up any other symbolic attatchments to abaci," Sherlock ordered quickly, ignoring his point and pushing his laptop back toward him. John raised his eyebrow and gave her a look, then sighed.

"Abacuses," he said, but he pulled his laptop back and sat down, flicking the top open with a finger.