Jim

It's something about refusing to take me seriously, but Dani's back to herself pretty sharpish. Maybe she thinks it's part of her calming thing she does. It's not calming me, it's driving me to a fucking rage. Worst of it is, she makes a good point, asking if the cops have anything concrete. If they don't, all we have to do is warn the Creep to deny everything and be his lift when they have to let him go. "We don't know what they have."

"Well, hold on, give me half an hour and I'll tap somebody-"

"Who, this time of night? And your cop is almost certainly either busy with me or him anyway. Anyway, we don't have half-an-hour spare, not if we have to get him out of there." Upstairs, Moran's heard the tones of discussion and is coming down from the attic again. Asking what's going on, who was on the phone, wanting caught up. "Cops are prepping to pick up the Creep." And Moran, because he's a clever boy and he knows what's good for him, just immediately starts reaching for car keys. "Yeah. See?" I say to Danielle, "Moran knows what's going on."

Like it's completely fresh to her, "You don't trust him an inch, do you?" There's a lovely moment, a very nerve-settling moment, where just over my shoulder I feel Moran pause, mid-motion, feel the hurt in his eyes until he realizes she wasn't talking about him.

It's enough of a pause to cover me hesitating. "Whether I trust him or not isn't the question. We're not in a position at the moment where he can get caught, it's as simple as that. One word wrong and the roof comes in on top of me, and you're standing awfully close to it all, Dani. Do you want to take that chance?"

Maybe it's unfair of me to think mentioning self-preservation is what makes her change tack, but I mentioned self-preservation and she changed tack. If it wasn't that she looks a little offended there wouldn't be a doubt in my mind. "Where do you need me?" she says.

That's all I really needed to hear, from either of them. "Moran, put those keys down. No known vehicles; you're taking the bike. Sling Green-toes here on the back and you're going to a long-stay car park straight down the road from here." I start booting up the laptop to get him an address and a bay number. "It's a blue Clio, most plain-Jane little car you ever saw in your days. Dani, you're taking it over to Mr Lorre's. Careful, because it'll be crawling with surveillance. Whatever you have to do, just don't be seen, but get him out. I'll text you with somewhere to take him. We must have one piece of clean property left in the city…" It's only when they nearly get stuck in the door together that they stop. Both lingering a second, turning back towards me. Neither of them wants to ask anything else, but I hear Danielle breathe in to do it and cut her off. "Yes, both of you. I'll be fine until you get back, Moran."

"Look, if you're not, if you even think, ring me."

"He's right, Jim; Carl's secondary. If you need to wake up in Paris that could still happen."

I get that address I was looking for. "You're only going as far as Shoreditch, Moran. Take you twenty minutes, tops. I'll be fine. Now, will you go?"

They know they don't have a choice anymore. The only stop is outside, where she gets him to knock the heel off her other shoe on the wall. She'll spend the whole ride down there crushing the soles against him while he tries to drive. Could have done that better in the car, I suppose, but I didn't want to give them any time to talk about me. God knows they'll probably still try.

It's not a question of whether or not I trust the Creep. He seemed like such a good idea at the time. Maybe I was over hasty, though. Maybe I wrote off the Security Services too quick, thinking they just could not pin me down. Holmes was an oversight, maybe. There's probably no point in dwelling on this. It's just I keep thinking of those transcripts we got, from him calling Dirty Harry? I keep thinking of him talking about his higher purpose. I don't really need the exposure anymore.

Ten minutes go by. I don't think I do anything except move an ashtray out onto the back step. Hate that fucking smell. And then another bloody phone goes off. Moran's poor neighbours will think we're having an international fecking missile crisis in here. Not that far wrong, I suppose. But it's not my phone, or any phone that should still be here. It's behind me, on the windowsill. Danielle's. That's where she dropped it when she came back from the garden murmuring about payphones. Moran calling it, so I'm presuming it's safe to answer.

Her voice, "Jim, it's only me-"

"-Just letting me know you forgot your mobile."

"Yeah. Seb's going to lend me his, so when you message about where to take him, it's this number."

"Understood." That's the other thing I was meant to be doing. I get to it, with the phone held against my shoulder. Covering up, "Bit sloppy, Miss Mies. Points off."

"Sloppy, darling? Me?" Smiling. Arch. What's she getting at? Was there a point to this? I get the feeling there might be, the way her voice drops dark and serious. In the background, I can hear her getting into the clean car, so I know we're not holding up tonight's urgent work either. "Listen," she says, "I still don't even know how wise it is to give you this but… My phone records. Last call in before this one. This is what I had to go out and check on but…"

"Spit it out, angel."

"It's Holmes' private line." A pause, a certainty in her tone, "Mycroft's private line." Sounds like she's correcting herself, somehow, but there's only Mycroft, you couldn't really mistake him, so I could be wrong. I could be wrong, and I don't even care because of what she just said to me.

"And you checked on this?"

"Yes."

"And it's correct?"

"A thousand years could go by, I'd know that voice."

"And you came by this information how?"

"Sources. I reached out, since you've been having so much trouble."

"When you're here in front of me, lie away, I can never tell. But over the phone you shouldn't even try it."

"Can you just tell me where I'm actually driving to?" Is it bad that I have to spend a couple of minutes pulling my own client's address out of police warrant filing? And it's worse, isn't it, that I can't even keep interrogating her while I do that? "Tonight would be wonderful, Jim."

"Don't push it. I'm not used to doing these things off the cuff. Got it." I give it over to her. Then tell her to get off the line, because I might need it.

"The phone number, can you do something with it?"

Can… Can I…? Did I just hear that? Swear the bitch forgets who she's talking to sometimes…

Sherlock

When I come round, there are four missed calls and no surprises.

Lestrade called first. Lestrade can suffer. And, given how I left him yesterday, probably is suffering, quite intensely. Mycroft after him. Mycroft can suffer too. Maybe he'll have given Lestrade a ring in between times, and they're suffering together, like two hell-bound souls in the same circle, the very lowest, for conspirators and traitors. May they take comfort in the idea that, should the immediate and fiery end of the world come now and all atheism was proven a comforting fallacy in that moment, at least we'll all burn together. I'm not sure hell would allow for the fact that they drove me to it. The third call, though I am more inclined to answer it, also belongs to that dubious collective. Danielle is left to burn with her compatriots.

The only innocent in all of this is Sally Donovan. And I should probably ring her back anyway.

First I get back on my feet. The corner helps. The walls are rough enough that there's enough traction to brace myself, palm to palm, and sort of climb. Dizziness and nausea come easily, but pass very quickly. I beat gravity and they retreat. That's because this is all just the very early stages of the comedown. In terms of illness, this is actually the best I've felt in a while. Enjoy it while it lasts.

What? Because I said I'd stop complaining, said I'd stop thinking about it all the time? Yes, it was working. Then it stopped working, now I'm complaining again. Now I'm thinking about it. Can't help but think about it when it's happening again. Pretending is easy when there's nothing to be afraid of. But a worse moment in life than being stabbed is to see the knife and know it's coming. That's where I am. I'll complain about it if I bloody well want to.

But like I said, I have a call to make before it all comes down.

"Donovan, I-"

"'Bout time you got back to me."

"Your dawn raid, how'd it-?"

"He wasn't there. Cleared out. Must've been warned somehow."

She sounds so bitter. I can't blame her for it either. So much hard work, and such an opportunity for her to have been the officer who brought it to them. "…Damn."

"Lestrade said to ask you if you want to see his home."

"Is it safe?"

"Would he ask you if it wasn't?" He is asking. Lestrade said to ask. She's taking herself out of the equation. Donovan herself has nothing for me, is not on the phone except as Lestrade's go-between. She's angry, yes, she's upset, I understand that. But I haven't even had a chance to apologize. I'm trying to remember the words to do it with when she gets tired of waiting for an answer. She snaps an address at me and hangs up.

One mistake. Surely that's not what life is. I find it hard to believe I'm just discovering this, or that people made more allowances for me while I was… When I was explicitly and remorselessly an addict.

Can't really say while when I'm stood here with probably no more than an hour or two before the crash. Should get over there, before it kicks in.

Of course, Donovan was snapping, so all she had time to give me was the street. She keeps doing this to me. I'm getting wise to it, though. Pull down a cab and tell him it'll be the building with the police cars outside. His reaction, or lack thereof, would have amused me yesterday and this morning depresses me.

It's a tower block. Driver seems even less surprised when he sees that. Maybe it's just because all the sensations of my last lonely night were very, very good, but this morning seems tailor-made to bring me awfully low. All around me, the residents of this block are going about their business, headed off to work or out shopping. One young woman is slipping back in, eyeing the police officer at the door, skinny and holding herself and with sunken eyes. Her morning score is in one of her pockets. I don't need more than the first glance to know that.

There is no sign of Donovan. Lestrade is here, waiting at the railings. He sees me coming and starts towards me. As expected, he is chronically hungover, much worse off than me, and therefore has nothing left in him to notice my state. Well, his illness and his worry. Painted all over him. I watch him coming, that kicked-dog slant of apology in his features, see him open his mouth and all of a sudden I understand the way Donovan spoke to me.

I cut him off. Don't even know why I'm doing it, I just do. "Which flat?"

It stops him. Stops him dead, and he sinks as though punctured. Says quietly, "I'll take you up," and leads off. I stay just a half-step too far behind for him to keep talking to me. Where he gets me, clever bastard, is on the stairwell, where the landing turns him round and places him right next to me, if an ironic step above. "Listen, about yesterday-"

No. Don't want to listen. Just don't want to hear it mentioned, even. "You were pissed," I tell him. Move a little quicker, get a couple of steps ahead. He'll stop me when we get there. "Let's leave it at that."

I keep climbing. He doesn't move. Says louder, "Your brother's only looking out for you, y'know. There was no malice in it." How to tell him, how to say it, that this is what disgusts me more than anything. This is the pity and charity which had been so blessedly missing from my recovery thus far and look what it is, and how, how to tell him that… I keep climbing. "It's the next landing," he calls, hopelessly. "Donovan's already up there."

Wonderful.

She doesn't look at me. She looks at the wall opposite her. "Scenes of crime," she says, by way of greeting, "are tied up on that other case, the one I was telling you about. Remember?" No, actually, but that's what she's waiting for. I'll get it off Lestrade afterward. He'll be so chuffed I'm even speaking to him he'll tell me everything. People can be so easy that way. Or, like Donovan right now, they can be very, very difficult indeed.

"Listen," I start, and before I've realized what I'm saying, "About last night-"

She shrugs. "You were pissed." Not quite. "Way I look at it, at least you were wrong."

"Wrong?"

"We would have had to get him before we could be forced to let him go." She's leaning on the wall in the hallway. She's just here, so far as I can tell, to make sure nobody crosses the tape. Given very few killers murder at home, that's the only real crime gone on here. She sees me hesitating, folds her arms and nods me on. Go on in, get out of her sight, go and look. "Probably nothing in there you don't know already, right?" She looks down. There's a fresh cigarette between my fingers, I don't even know when I took it out. "But you can't light that."

I turn it back into my hand. But before I step inside I try, just try, a half-step back towards her. Try telling her, "You do know none of this was your fault? You've done more than anybody else on this case by a mile-"

"Except for you, right?" She nods me on again. This time I don't feel I have a choice.