Now, bear with me; what I'm about to open with will sound completely nonsensical. In fact, as you read what follows on, my explanation, you'll be so stumped as to where it fits in you'll actually forget about it. But later on I'll say something, innocuous in the context of the explanation, but this, suddenly, lightbulb-over-the-head will come back to you. And a sense of dread too, more than likely.

The thing I will say is this: generally I am not in the habit of bugging my friends' belongings.

The story, then, is as follows.

We were watching Adler's Twitter followers. Not forty minutes after the drugs could have worn off, here's a brand new account with no details and following only my own darling Whiphand. So, with Sherlock's continued interest in her confirmed, and I heard that text alert she set up for herself, we packed her off to play the long tease far from me. It seemed too much trouble even to have her in London, where she might be stopped or spotted, where the red-tops would still be after her. I didn't want him getting any excuse to go after her before I wanted him too.

She's stashed in a country pile I've been keeping out of the red for a year or two now. They don't ask where the money comes from and in return I get to use it for visiting associates, the occasional prisoner and very occasional weekends away. Rest assured, Adler is being kept very much as a holidaymaker, not somebody who has annoyed me. It's expensive, yeah, but totally worth it.

The things I do for my Holmeses…

Of course, she's still going about her business. Not at my country pile, thank you very much… But when she's travelling she lets me know where she's going. At first I thought it was only because she wanted me to send her protection with her. But there's a night in November, I get a message through:

Bored in Egypt. Help?

- Text Holmes

Already did. Getting really very hungry.

- Try the mashi hamam

You're not a gentleman

Which felt like about the right place to leave that conversation. I'll admit, it bothered me for a while, why she'd say something like that, a personal interaction. What would she have done if I'd said, 'Yeah, alright, you're only young once' and jumped on a plane? It bothered me. And I thought of everything, from the lowest sort of blackmail ('So', I imagined her purring across an otherwise faultless dinner, 'where are we on the Holmes job?') to the lowest sort of humanity (and I won't tell you what I could half-hear her purring on that one. Trying to forget…)

It was in that last possibility that I found the answer. That and her inestimably handy online presence again.

The internet's great. I'm sure I've told you that before. But it really is. See, people say too much, and then they try to cover up by holding back the telltale details. But what they don't say tells you just as much.

There was no Kate anymore. No Juliet. No Mirielle. All out of girlfriends, only leaving her private hotel for work. Irene was lonely. She texted me because she was all by her sole and singular and the only thing she wanted was still a ways away. And that is a hard, hard life to lead, and I knew that. I know that. I know it very well.

I was on my own too. And feeling a little bit… uninspired, might be the word. Moving out to the Richmond place had had its advantages; I could breathe again, for one thing, without that terrible mustard-gas burn in my lungs. The headaches had stopped. But Sebastian wasn't making it out very often. I'd put him on a job and he'd come to talk it over and he'd come back when it was finished, but that was mostly it. Just business. There's a farmer just outside York, or there was, who had absolutely nothing to do with domestic terrorism and the old-style fertilizer bomb, but I told Moran he did, and now the man's dead. Because I was on my own.

So, like a gentleman would, and I am reliably informed that the devil is, in fact, a gentleman, I took Adler to dinner last night. In Barcelona, so she wouldn't be recognized and nobody would be watching. Is that better or worse, from the female perspective? I could rephrase it, I suppose. I could make it a bit less 'hid her out of the country' and a bit more 'went to great lengths to respect her privacy'. Which one of those would even be false?

And please, hold all potential gushing over what a lovely person I clearly am at heart until you hear the best bit – in order that she might fully enjoy said evening of social oasis in those long desert months, unpunctuated otherwise but by texts that received no answers, I forbade her from discussing business, mine or hers.

Wow… you really can make things sound better with careful phrasing… I'm not comfortable with half-truth, though. So here's the unexpurgated version; I didn't want her asking anything I couldn't answer.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't… crime-block or anything. I knew exactly what needed to be done. Take one Sherlock, remove Woman, introduce Phone, probably do this when he's already weak and even more distanced from the ordinary world than usual, i.e. at Christmas. But the exact mechanics were eluding me, just then. It was fine. I wasn't worried. I still had three weeks until Christmas, Adler had been given 'Christmas' and because she had a date, she'd backed off. No pressure, no major time limit. It would come to me, it just hadn't yet. It was definitely going to come to me.

Still; I didn't want her asking about it, thinking I was useless.

Just a nice quiet evening, no business involved. Not so much to ask, I thought, and really she did very well. So did I. We both stuck to it. Well, nearly. We talked about Sherlock, a little bit. But that wasn't really business. That was just for fun. Of course it was just as dessert arrived to the table she chose to tell me what 'dinner' was her new euphemism for.

Then, "Are you blushing, James?"

"No, I no longer have reflexes. So tell me this, has he shown any signs of hunger?"

"Please. I'm depending on you for assurance he's even still alive."

"He is."

"Thank you."

She smiled, and it was maybe four minutes before we regressed totally to adolescents, and I felt comfortable, finally, to say, "Text him now."

Well up for it, in a heartbeat and an eyeblink, "What should I say? 'I've just eaten, let's have dinner'?"

"Do you not know it's rude to flirt with somebody you didn't come in with? And who isn't even in the country?"

"Who said anything about flirting? That was, is always, an out-and-out proposition."

"Then flirt," I said. "I can take the hit."

"Very brave." She took a moment to compose (both self and message), and then simply sends. "There. All done."

"What did it say?"

Adler pouted, put on a show; "That would be cheating." Then handed me her phone before I had to ask again.

Met somebody more fascinating than you. Kindly don't call this number again.

I knew better than to get all proud and egotistical. Well, okay, little bit. A totally moderate level of pride, and any egotism was of the very self-aware kind that doesn't really count. Now, if I had committed this to memory, taken it into my heart and carried it home with me and written it down in the back of the notebook I keep in the bedside drawer, then we'd be having problems, but none of that happened.

You'll have to forgive me; this true-false-half-true thing is getting to me. I do it every day, but I'm not sure I've ever sat back and looked at it before. It's just bizarre, how different you can make things sound and be saying exactly the same thing. It's really bugging me today…

For instance: okay, so I wrote it down. I wrote it down in the middle of the night because I woke up thinking about it.

Now that sounds filthy. But that's not what happened. It woke me up because I realized it was my only problem.

Christmas, I could do. The phone, I could have walked up and put that in his hand. The only thing giving me trouble was Adler herself; how to remove the woman so thoroughly from Holmes' life that he would never chase, and never even think, and make the phone the only thing there was. He was attached to her now. Whether he ever responded or not, she knew this, or she would never have dared send that text, to joke with him like that.

My only problem.

It's quite funny actually; it was late last night before I reached this conclusion. But it was right there and then in the restaurant that I actually solved it.

The evening was drawing in, and I was walking her back to her hotel, and I said, "You're flying back with me, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," she said. "I-Player just isn't the same as watching it live."

I didn't need to ask what she was talking about. We'd both heard about who'd be making a special guest appearance on Crimewatch, Thursday night.

And then she remembered something and said, with the casual invitation of three fine wines, "Oh, and come down to the country with me before you go back. I was packing for tonight and came across this awful blue wool number…"

It's a shame to admit it, but in the interests of absolute honesty, my immediate and unspoken reaction was 'It's not awful, it's Donna Karen and it's just made for a different body to yours'. But then I remembered myself, shook my head and told her, "I'm… no longer associated, with Miss Mies. Come up to the city, return it yourself."

"You think I'd be safe in the city?" she said. For a half a second, her hand edged in to hold my arm. It wasn't her fault she didn't understand when I stepped away.

I said, "Absolutely you will."

For her reassurance, for the sake of her well-hidden nerves, I went down to the country with her from Heathrow. And, though I am not generally in the habit of bugging my friends' belongings, Irene is only really the messenger. The sweater and jeans are borrowed, and don't belong to her, and therefore don't exactly count as a friend's belongings.

So that's what I'm doing now, is waiting again. This time I'm listening to the rustle of a canvas bag, to the shuffle and engine noise of a brief cab ride, to high heels climbing the stairs to the third floor lofts of a mews near Camden Town. Listening to a door get knocked, and a dull sound of music beyond it. There's always music. It doesn't matter when you go over there, there's always music. I don't know how she can stand it sometimes…

Anyway, there's a sound of the door opening.

Then a voice I've done very well at not hearing. If there was a prize for cutting somebody out of your life, I have only just thrown it away. A voice saying, "Miss Adler," somewhere between surprise and disdain, "To what do I owe the dubious and unexpected pleasure?" A pause, a rustling, and then, "Oh, and won't you please come right on in?!

"I don't want to talk on the landing."

"And I don't want to talk, so we should be alright there." Sarky mare… At least it's not just me she thinks she can talk to that way.

Adler, with gravitas, with the utmost dignity, says, "I brought your clothes back, with my apologies; your trousers might be a little stretched."

"Mmh… You do have rather more in the arse-department than strictly necessary."

Oh, please God no, don't sit and bitch at each other, please, no. Just leave the clothes and go, Reenie, come on, love, hear a man's prayer why don't you, just plant the bug and get out of that fetid witch's hovel…

But she doesn't. No, she doesn't stop, doesn't just drop it and leave, which is all Mies really deserves. She drops the bag, I hear the thud, but she stays right where she is and says, sharp, loudly, "What do you want from me? And what have you gotten me into?"

Sorry, Irene, love, is that meaning me? When did the conversation get to be about me?

Danielle says, "Aren't you happy? It would be a shame if you weren't. Somebody ought to be."

Adler's old complaint, the one I had thought forgotten, "This is taking forever."

"But he's doing it right. Believe me, Miss Adler, you want it done right. No, darling, trust me, you are about the only person getting a good deal out of this-"

"You were the one who brought me in!" Adler cries.

I can't quite make sense of that, right away. Well, I know what I think it means, the first conclusion I jumped too, I know that, but… But let's just give the girls a second, maybe they'll explain themselves, hm? Maybe I don't have to go over there and start redecorating Dani's place with various parts of their anatomies. No. That first thing I thought, that couldn't be what's happening here. No, we'll just wait them out.

In answer to Adler's accusation, Danielle takes her time, composes herself. Then, "You were only ever a Plan B." Which could still mean anything. It really could. She says something else, soft and drowned in the music. Thank God I'm recording; roll it back, dial it up, scale down the background noise to catch; "If I'd known how much worse you would make things, I would have happily let them all blow each other to kingdom come at that damned swimming pool."

Perfect timing. Shatter the moment. And I could have sworn I turned my phone off, but then again, right before I left the flat there was a thief brushing down my jacket, wasn't there? A thief who, as I have since discovered, had her own plans for that evening. And such perfect timing, Miss Adler.

Oh dear God…

I reach for my mobile, and then decide against it. Tainted, traitorous little thing, I want a Galaxy anyway, maybe I'll change it tomorrow… No, I leave the recording running and go into the hall, to the landline. Moran picks up on the fourth or fifth ring.

"Hello?"

"Get out here. It's important. I wouldn't call if it wasn't." I've solved the problem, see? The problem was really solved last night, when Adler mentioned the clothes

And him, because he's loyal and he knows who he's dealing with and has some appreciation for that, he says, "Okay," and hangs up. Good lad, Moran. Useful, too…

I wander back down the hall and, rather than go in, rather than go back near it, I just stay in the doorway. And look over, listening to things that are very far away from me. Heel clicks, a slamming door. More rustling as the clothes are taken out of the bag and the sound gets clearer, and the rasp of a cigarette lighter, two and three times, fumbled in shaking hands.

And the sound, not entirely unpleasant, of that cancerous fecking bitch crying her blackened heart out over a man she can't have and who I am systematically, step-by-step destroying. It's the most satisfaction I've had in weeks.