Ch12

Sherlock arrived at Baker Street just before John. When John stepped in, Sherlock was already sitting in his armchair, wearing his night gown and pyjamas, twanging his violin and staring at the ceiling.
"Sherlock, are you home?" He heard John."Where else would I be? There's nothing interesting outside." John arrived at the top of the stairs. "If you ask, my trip was fine just ... I just really don't understand women." said John while he was searching something to eat. After a sigh he took on some water for tea. Sherlock rolled his eyes and murmured."I can imagine what you are talking about." "Did you say something? The water is boiling I can't hear you." shouted John from the kitchen. "Nothing" Sherlock answered loudly.

...

On the first couple of weeks Irene was checking her phone in every minute but she never got a text from him. Then she decided to start a new life and started a local school to become an interior designer. She really had the talent and soon she had her first clients. They were mostly British or Western European people newly moved there. Not that she needed the money, she could live an average life till death from her money, but she needed to do something to occupy her thoughts. However she always bought every newspaper which contained an article about him and his cases.

One day she read an article about Sherlock Holmes, it said he was a fake genius and had just faked a criminal mastermind called Moriarty to make himself famous beating him. "It's ridiculous." She said to herself. If somebody knew exactly how good he was in what he did she knew exactly. She threw that paper away, but there remained bad feelings about him and this article.

Next day she bought the papers with shaking hands and teary eyes. All of them had the front page about Sherlock Holmes and his suicide.

...

Sherlock was still in one of the unused rooms of St Bart's morgue. He had planned to stay there for two weeks till he would not be on the front page of every newspaper. Molly Hooper was the only one who knew everything about him and his death. She brought him food and clear clothes every day. When everything calmed down and Sherlock Holmes was not the most interesting news anymore he sneaked out at night and hid among the city's homeless people. He had some things to do in London before leaving. Moriarty's web's centre was there and he wanted to chart every details of it. But first of all he had to cut out the assassins who were threatening John, Mrs Hudson and Lastrade. Until that it was impossible for him to come back from the death.

He was like a ghost, nobody saw him he was always in the dark hiding in the shadow. He used his homeless network to follow every step of John, Mrs Hudson and Lastrade.
He knew that the assassins were told to stay on the targets for a while. Moriarty was always prepared for everything. He hunted down the killers with their own methods. The one who would have had to kill Mrs Hudson got electrocution, the one who was a stooge at the Scotland Yard, was shot during duty and the one who was after John fall down from a roof during his other work. It was all accidents of course or at least they looked like accidents.

The day when he finished everything in London he went to the cemetery to his own grave. He knew that John and Mrs Hudson would arrive in half an hour.

When he had been on the top of St Bart's he had told John to watch. He wanted John to know that he was just faking suicide. If he watched carefully one day he will figure it out that Sherlock was alive. But know his mind was occupied by grief and anger. Sherlock saw his friend standing next to his grave and he said a silent goodbye to him.

Then he went to his shelter and changed his look. He took on a short military like jacket, a white T-shirt, bright straight jeans and combed back his hair with gel. He took on some make up to make his face look less rectangle and took in brown contact lenses. He was unrecognisable he was good in that.
He took a photo of himself and changed it in his fake passport. It took a quite long time but in the end it was perfect.

He went to the airport and got in a plane headed to the only place he could go.

...

Two months had elapsed since Irene read the papers about his death. For weeks she was hoping that he somehow he would give her some life sign. But it was just the first part of grieving she knew it. She was lonelier than ever in her life.

One day at the moment she arrived at home her phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number.

I'm not dead. Let's have dinner. SH

The phone almost fell out from her hands and her legs got week. She closed her eyes and she said through her teeth. "You idiot. You bloody fool." She couldn't decide which emotion was stronger, happiness or anger. She took her phone and typed pretending that she wasn't surprised tough her fingers were shaking.

Don't do that again. IA

I won't. Jama Masjid is quite big. SH

Then she heard three knocks on her front door.

Thanks for reading this chapter. Reviews are really, really welcomed. Writing the next chapter my mood became quite emotional. You'll see it soon.