"So how did it go, apologising to Angela?" John asked as he crossed the road with Charlene. She was telling him what had happened after their phone conversation the previous night.
"Actually, I didn't need to in the end. Mummy sorted her out. Mycroft and I heard her yelling at the phone." She smiled at the memory.
"So she's not going to 'bring dishonour on the name of Holmes' and all that then?" They turned a corner onto a bridge.
"She isn't."
"Well, that's good to know."
They walked in silence for a few metres, before Charlene heard running footsteps behind them. She turned to see someone grabbing John from behind and holding a knife near his throat. "Give me all your money!"
Charlene hesitated, and quickly analysed the situation. There was nobody else on the bridge, no witnesses. The attacker was male, and taller than John; but still quite young, only a teenager. The knife was a long switchblade, and the boy was waving it around wildly.
He repeated his demand. "Give me all your money, or your boyfriend gets it!"
"Just give it to him, Charlene," John urged.
"He's not my boyfriend. And you won't hurt him."
John relaxed slightly when he heard this, but his attacker just brought the knife closer. "Oh, yeah?"
"Oh, yeah," she said to him, then to John, "Vatican cameos."
The effect was immediate. The attacker slackened his hold in confusion at the unfamiliar words, and John dropped to the ground. Charlene reached over and grabbed the kid's collar, lifting his over John and pinning him to the railing of the bridge. John jumped up and grabbed the attacker's wildly waving wrist, causing him to lose his grip on the knife, which plummeted to the Thames below with a faint splash.
Charlene leaned over the attacker, looking silently menacing. "What's your name?" she demanded furiously.
"Si-Simon!" he choked out. "You-you wouldn't really drop me in, would you?"
"You tried to hurt someone I like. That is not a good position to be in," she said, punctuating the not by pulling him further off the ground so he was nearly sitting on the railing. "Don't think for one moment that I would be lenient on you. Would I, John?"
Simon cast fearful eyes over at John, who looked helpless. "I don't know, I don't know her that well, I-"
"John," Charlene interrupted, "would Sherlock do it?"
He opened his mouth to say no, of course not, but then a distant conversation filtered through his memory, related to him by Sherlock himself:
"And exactly how many times did he fall out the window?"
"Oh, it's all a bit of a blur, Detective Inspector. I lost count."
John looked up at Charlene, and saw nothing but steely resolve there. He turned back to Simon. "Yes. Yes, she would. Absolutely. So if I were you, I'd listen to her."
Simon looked back at Charlene, terror in his eyes. "Please don't 'urt me!" he squeaked. "I need the money, you see, an' I can't get it any other way, see."
Her eyes softened slightly. "You're homeless, aren't you?" He nodded quickly, and she set him down, albeit none too gently. "I wonder if you could help me with something. You see, back in New York there are a lot of homeless people. They all work together, sort of like a web, or a network. I was wondering, does such a thing exist here?" She kept one hand firmly on his shoulder.
"There is, for them wot pay the right price."
She slipped a coin into his hand. "Did you know Sherlock Holmes?" Simon nodded. "How about James Moriarty?"
"We 'ad to call 'im Richard Brook to 'is face, if we ever got to see 'im."
"So he normally got others to talk to you? Who were they?" Simon looked pointedly at her bag, and she sighed and pulled out a couple of notes, stuffing them into his hand.
It was as if she had turned on a switch. "Well, the main one is Seb Moran. Nasty feller, 'e'd kill yer as soon as look at yer. Then there was the snipers. They kept changin', reckon 'e 'ad 'em killed once they knew too much. And once or twice there was that woman as well."
"What woman?"
"Um, tall, thin, dark hair. Sexy woman, flash hooker of some sort."
"Irene Adler? The dominatrix?" John asked, surprised.
"That's 'er, all right."
"And they came to you for information?" Charlene inquired. Simon nodded. "What about?"
He grinned slyly. "Ah, that's confidential, innit? Never give away a customer's secrets, else they don't come back, see."
"But Moriarty's dead! Why does that still matter?"
"Aye, 'e's dead. But 'is people still ask us for things."
"Right." Charlene filed this away for later. "So, can I ask any homeless person in the city then?"
"Anyone that ain't wearing red." Simon grinned and twisted out of her grip, scampering away across the bridge. Charlene decided not to follow him.
John turned to her. "Thanks for that."
"Any time," she said distractedly. "Why do Moriarty's people still want information?"
"I don't know, but I think we'd better get home soon. It's going to-" large drops of water began to fall from the sky, picking up pace quickly, "-rain," John finished lamely.
Charlene looked up at the sky in frustration. "Why does it always end with us being caught in the rain?" she demanded, and John laughed, looking around for a taxi.
On the cab ride home, he told her about Sherlock's dealings with the homeless network, and how he would make 'investments' for information in the long term. She absorbed this information with interest, vowing to use the London Homeless Network as she had the one in New York.
o0o0o
At dinner that night, John had a thought. "How did you know about Vatican Cameos?"
"I hope you don't mind. I've had a week to look around the flat. It was fairly easy to find your notes about Vatican Cameos."
"Are you kidding? They were hiding in the prime-numbered pages of my Conan Doyle books!"
"Like I said, easy. Oh, and one doesn't count as a prime number, by the way. Why Conan Doyle?"
"I don't know, it just seemed…right, somehow. Have you read any of his books?"
"A couple, yes. I always thought he had very good characters. The sort of personalities that people will still have hundreds of years later."
John nodded in agreement. "But they often called each other by their first names, which I found confusing."
"Hey, we could try that! I call you Watson, and you call me Holmes. How about it?"
"Holmes and Watson…okay then. But just for this evening, okay?"
"Whatever you say, Watson." Charlene grinned.
John stood up and cleared away the plates. Charlene picked up a dish-towel, and they did the dishes together. "You know, you're getting better, Watson. The onions today were barely burned at all."
John poked his tongue out at Charlene, and she replied in kind. He splashed her with water from the sink, and she shrieked and whacked him with the towel.
"Stop it! We're acting like little kids," John said.
"You don't seem to be complaining."
"Yes, but we're not in…what do they call primary school in America again?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson."
John paused. "'My dear Watson'?"
"I don't know, it just seemed…right. Never mind."
They finished the dishes and sat on the couch together, sharing stories from their time in primary school, laughing and joking together as though they had known each other for years. Although, Charlene reflected, they'd only met a week earlier.
Across the street, the binoculars were lowered, the words written down. The man looked at the previous day's entry, the only one that differed from the rest.
'Target not sighted.'
He had to find out where the target had been the previous day, or his master would not be pleased.