Jim

I told Dani two hours because we have a stop to make on the way there. Little self-storage place. Moran keeps a locker no bigger than a domestic garage. 'Just bits and pieces,' he says. Then spends a good few minutes describing how Dani has two lockers in this country and a shipping container in the Czech Republic, not to mention a large artist's loft south of the river, and how these hold much more than bits-and-pieces, and if anybody ever breaks into the loft she'll have a hard time passing the gym equipment and practice safes off as art supplies and so on, so forth, blah-blah-woof, he just goes on. It's all a bit defensive. Methinks the hitman doth protest too much. Like maybe the contents of his lock-up might just go a bit beyond 'bits-and-pieces'.

There's also the fact that I have to wait in the car, and he opens the shutter no farther than he needs to to get in, and doesn't turn the light on until he's in there. Bless him, he's not a subtle lad. He puts the effort in, but the natural grace just isn't there.

Still, can't say too much about him; all he comes out with is one of those long, steel manhole keys. Exactly the tool for the task ahead of him, but I can't help but ask – "Why, just why, Moran, do you have that?"

"You know there's more to my job than rooftops and grassy knolls, don't you?"

"Sewers, apparently."

"It has been known."

I've offended him, I think. He has nothing more to say, at any rate. Things I have learned today; don't question why your mate keeps a manhole key about. Okay. I'm glad I learned that, because it's a bit counterintuitive, don't you think?

Danielle meets us at the door. It's not good for the appearance of normal life. You very rarely get shift-changes when people are just at home, in their everyday circumstances. We're already people who didn't belong in this flat until last night, and we're already trying to hide Carl. But she meets us at the door and I don't really feel like I can say anything against her.

There's a pizza box on the floor, just lying there. Extra-large. Dani won't touch pizza, not even on long nights, not even on fat days. That box is empty, and not a crumb, not a stringy, dried up bit of cheese hanging in the corner.

The living room door is closed. I look over because beyond it, in response to something happening on the too-loud television, there's a long rumble of cheerful, Scandinavian laughter. In response to this, Dani says, "Yeah, I don't think he's all that worried that the cops know who he is now." Her eyes are very wide. They stay that way. Even when she blinks, they go straight back to that, as if she's been staring at lights for a lot of hours. I hand her my coat to hang up and she runs her hands over the pockets. "I'm not being flippant anymore; are you armed?" Moran reaches past me to put a hand on her shoulder, trying to be comforting. She ignores him entirely, keeping her slightly maddened eyes on me. "With something lethal and which you can use with speed and a reasonable degree of comfort." Then reiterates, "I'm not being flippant anymore."

Moran gets hold of her other arm and pulls her with him, back to the door. Murmuring, "Come on, pet. You and me should be getting along. It's a nice plan. You'll like it. Nice bit of caper." Gradually, she allows herself to be taken with him, step by shuffling step. He puts her jacket, still bloody from last night, into her hand. That's enough of a trigger. Fast, like it might be taken from her, she grabs the Chinese good-luck charm from her wrist, turns on her heel and presses it into my hand.

I know she means it, because after a couple of seconds she realizes she's touching me and pulls away again. Over her head, Moran is shaking his, like she's just being melodramatic, like this is so typical, pure Danielle, just ignore it. But the print of her fingers on the heel of my hand starts to itch. She didn't mean to do that. That's how I know she meant it, and that's why I put the jade bead in my back pocket.

Then they're gone, the door closing behind them, leaving me there in the hallway. Through the living room door, the Creep laughs again. This time with his mouth full. It's a disturbing sort of a noise. I have to go in there now and surprise him. Like magic again. Scared secretary goes into hall, mildly aggravated boss comes back.

This isn't fair. Nobody asked me if I'm sure I'm sure, this time.

Sherlock

Mycroft, thus far, has taken the opposite tack to Lestrade. Rather than try to talk about the envelope he must have found when he woke up, rather than offer excuses and justifications where there are none, he is avoiding the topic entirely. Or maybe he's just got more on his mind.

He's had a couple of rather interesting phone calls. Which is part of the reason I haven't exactly been fighting a crippling need to mention the envelope either. We both know what happened. It's why he brought me here to help. It's why I'm helping.

Mycroft keeps small, respectable offices of indeterminate use in a small and very quiet street near Fleet Street. Today, they're being used as war rooms. I'm hanging in the corner behind his desk, trying to be unobtrusive. You see, I'm not the only one here. No, he's got quite the little cadre in attendance. Not wanting to be negative I haven't said anything, but I don't honestly think they're going to help.

Sitting near him, operating the call tracing equipment, this month's P.A. She is remarkable only in being like every other P.A. he's ever had. It's as if he has a factory somewhere, turning them out one after the discreet, brunette other. He also has two gentlemen. The way they hold themselves, they're military trained. One is deeply uncomfortable with this. Could be his first time out, or his first time out under the auspices of Mycroft's lot anyway. The other is more seasoned.

Again, not wishing to put a dampener on things, but I've just got this awful feeling that someone here isn't going to come out of this intact.

It's while they're discussing options (incorrect, slightly stupid options, but again, I'm not here to be a little black rain cloud. Actually, that raises a question, doesn't it…) that there's another phone call. Were the police like this, when Carl Hedegaard was making his intentions known to Lestrade? Gabbling and idiotic and then, at the ringing of the phone in question, suddenly stopped, suddenly mute and afraid of what they've all been waiting for. I'm glad they'd thrown me out by then. I don't even want to know…

The only reaction I find even mildly interesting is my brother's. Everybody else in the room thinks they know who's on the other end of that phone. Without even thinking about it, they know it's his contact, his new best friend. The one who's been hanging up on him all day. But Mycroft hovers a little longer, uncertain. Scratches that little place at the end of his eyebrow again, the way he will. The answer comes to me very clearly, even without the facts to back it up; he hasn't told his masters what's happening to him. He wants to bring this in by himself. He's afraid he'll be answering the phone to one of them.

He needn't be. I can read the number over his shoulder. Surprised, actually, she'd do it from her personal line, but that's it right there. I want to help him, I really do.

"Hello?" he says.

On loudspeaker, crackling through the equipment working on her location; "I'm going to tell you where to find me, so you don't need to bother with the Double-Oh bollocks, alright, love?" A very familiar voice. Sounding a little tired, but fearless, and none the worse for wear.

The P.A. keeps everything running, naturally. Mycroft breathes out before he replies. That's an old trick. It stretches the voice, levelling it out, removing any excess emotionality like wringing out a sponge. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I can't be bothered staying on the line for the three-to-five and I'll laugh at your attempts to keep me talking. And because I'm only down the road and honestly, I want this over and done with."

"You sound harried, Miss…?"

"You know exactly who you're talking to. What did I say about attempts to keep me on the line? Now listen to me. I'm in a bar across the park from St Paul's. You can't miss it; it's full of City arseholes kissing up to each other. I'll be here for the next ten minutes, no more. All I want is somebody to talk to. And don't ask me what about. You know that too."

And that's the end of the conversation, so far as she's concerned. She puts the phone down before the P.A.'s machinery has a chance to do its job. No choice but to trust the location she gave.

"That gives us two questions, sir," the veteran says to my brother. "Who is she, and what is it she wants to talk about?"

Mycroft carefully explains that she is interested primarily in action recently taken to pin down the criminal mastermind of lore and legend. He likes saying that; her very interest means that this is no longer a theory. Then says, "As to the first question, I have no idea." Which is a lie. It is quite glaringly a lie. He tips his head back, addressing me without looking at me. "Anything to offer on that?"

…Damn him.

Mycroft didn't bring me here to help. He brought me here to tell me he knows what I did.

"Not a voice I recognized." Which is a lie. Quite glaringly a lie. Mycroft knows that.

Jim

I needn't have worried about surprising Carl. He's been overjoyed to see me. "I knew," said he, "we would meet again. When I saw your secretary I knew you would come. If only," said he, "you'd come sooner. She is not like us, I think."

I cannot describe to you just exactly how close I came to asking him what the fuck he meant with this 'we' business. It was touch-and-go. That's something that very nearly happened. My saving grace? Danielle's long rant on the phone this morning. My ear still itched when he said that, so I had that to fall back on. What I said instead of giving away my absolute panic was, "I don't think you were as nice to her as you could have been. You'd be in custody now, if it wasn't for her."

Carl nodded. By the way, in case anyone was wondering, he's still a heavy-set, baby-faced monster of a man. He's wearing the torn jeans he was rescued in and an Alice Cooper t-shirt which is a size too small and five years too young for him. In that little living room, with the TV muted and the blinds shut, stuffing his face with crisps, it was about three minutes before my skin started creeping. And I absolutely meant to use the form of 'creep' there. Anyway, he nodded, sinking his head up and down off his bull-like chest, "Because you told her to. I thank you, because she was acting on your orders."

There's a logic in there somewhere, isn't there? I don't really know. Since I sat down with him it's like everything has… warped. It'll be truly awful when they get this guy, y'know. How many psychiatrists will he morally and emotionally cripple before they get a diagnosis?

And then Carl said a thing that stopped me dead, and has kept me stopped dead until this moment, as my mind has searched for reasons, for anything that might make it make sense, but I'm not getting anything.

All I can say, "Sorry, what?"

He swallows what he's chewing that he may enunciate more clearly, says more loudly, "What is next?"

Yeah, I thought that's what he said, and I'm still not getting anything. "Maybe best you just stay indoors for a bit. We can keep you here until-" But he's shaking his head, has been since I opened my mouth, just shaking his big bloody basketball of a head, "No? Not working for you?"

What else am I supposed to say? You're not sitting here; you don't know what it's like.

"I was on the television news," he says. "They will know me now, whatever I do. My time is short. Whatever remains to be done must be done soon."

"Yeah, well… Leave that one with me, for now. It wasn't the plan, but if that's how you feel-" I'll begin a constant and gentle campaign of fobbing off until I can have you safely arrested or erased…

"I appreciate -," he begins, and by the way, he's still watching the silent television over my shoulder. Teleshopping. Teeth-and-Tans trying to shift nose hair trimmers and compilation albums. Dani's chorus picks up in my head and I understand the true meaning for the very first time. But anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, he appreciates that I am trying to protect him. Me thinking to myself, if only you bloody knew, big lad. But he does not require my protection. Me thinking to myself, we'll agree to disagree on that one. Mr Hedegaard requires only my guidance and cooperation in successfully fulfilling my will.

This is the first conversation I've had in a long time where I've been thinking responses without saying them out loud. Unless I was letting somebody talk themselves into a hole, that comes up right and often, usually with Moran, but not like this. Nothing like this. Nobody's been like this in a great many years. So I myself am silent, but in my head it's getting pretty noisy. As well as all these things I'm not saying out loud, there's a low undercurrent starting to build up; get me out of here, get me out of here, get me out of here…

And something else as well. Something that hasn't even entered my head since… well, since even before the last time I was in a conversation where I didn't feel free to speak.

It's been a while, so I'm getting it wrong. But it is something along the lines of, Our Father, who aren't in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, Mary and Holy St Patrick, whatever the words are meant to be, please just let Moran call me and tell me he's got a beagle, or even something terrible like the spooks were onto them or he got shot, or that the influence of the cathedral revealed Danielle's true demonic form out in public and the whole thing had to be aborted, just something that I'll have to go and fix or deal with.

I'm not asking much. Any other day lately I can't keep the problems at bay. And naturally, of course, it's now that things have started to go swimmingly.

I am this close to taking that Chinese jinx out of my pocket and crushing it to dust under my heel.

Sherlock

I told Mycroft to send me. Told him to look at the two men across the desk from him objectively and tell me she wouldn't spot them coming at a mile. All their talk was about capture and questioning. Nobody had so much as mentioned talking. The moment one of those military types makes himself known, I told him, she'll be gone like yesterday.

Mycroft replied that I was not an option. I'm the only one here with any chance of getting information from her and I'm not an option. And we can't even talk about it openly, properly, because I'm not supposed to know a bloody thing.

Then, because of the time-limit she gave them, the decisions all seemed to be made. Don't even ask me what the decisions were. I must have stepped very briefly out of time and space, onto some other plane, because I missed it all. Just that suddenly they were all leaving, and as I moved to follow, Mycroft's hand held me back.

Very quietly, very privately, he said the following; "I am assuming, so that accusations of high treason might be avoided, that your misguided intention in this was to give me a means of contact with the opposing side. It is not the sort of contact I would have wished for and I think you know that. So Sherlock, forget what you know, forget this woman and walk away forgetting." He started to walk away himself then, only turning back to deliver this cruel afterthought; "Didn't you have a murderer you wanted to catch this morning?"

And he left me standing there.

But she was right, y'know, St Paul's is only just down the road. And of course, they'll use their ten minute timeframe wisely, setting a trap, calculating the angles. They'll be doing what they can to make her intended capture and extraction as quiet as possible in such a public place. That gave me just enough time to walk down here.

I don't waste time, the way they will have done, with the front of the building. She'll have access to the service entrance sorted out. She'll be sitting close by it. The moment one of Her Majesty's All Too Obvious Service shows his face, she'll bolt. So that's where I go to, the alley at the rear, where I have to stay tucked in behind the corner because a man with a baseball cap on is loading empty barrels into the back of a van. I watch, because he could be part of her exit plan, but there isn't time to do any more than watch.

It's within that same minute that the fire door is thrown open. Mies bursts into the alley. The barrels stop her, momentarily. Just long enough for her to see me, for her eyes to widen, face to close in confusion. The word 'what' forms on her lips, but there's no sound for it.

There's no sound, either, when I try to warn her, because for once I don't even try. I don't think she needs me to. Mycroft's man comes out right behind her, far too quickly, not wondering how he caught up with her so quickly, why she's not still moving.

The man in the baseball cap stops loading barrels, turns and grabs him. I, for my part, turn to run. I've put no more than two steps of space between myself and all of this, not even into plain sunlight, when a small, strong hand wraps my face. It's instinct that makes me struggle against her, rather than any calculated thought. There are noises behind us. It might just be barrels falling, but there's something heavier, a thud in amongst it all. I wish I could think, but a fingernail breaks at the corner of my left eye. The ragged remainder draws blood. Mies pushes her knee in behind mine, bringing me down to her level. With me off balance, she drags both of us in against the wall.

The van flies past in reverse. Three-point-turn at the end of the alley and it's gone. Not five seconds later a black Mercedes follows it and I know that everybody else is in there, and she's here, and I'm not supposed to be so nobody's looking. At best, they'll retrieve their man, and maybe catch the driver. At worst… At worst I'm not supposed to be here, so nobody will be looking.

She lets go of my face, but only so she can push it against the wall. "What are you doing here?"

"You wanted to talk," I tell her. "They didn't want to talk."