Jim
During all the waiting, the dark comes down around us. There's a comfort in it. There is for me, anyway. I never understood the fear of the dark, y'know. Even when I was just a kid. I've always preferred it. It wasn't until I heard it being explained to somebody else it made any sense. They were saying, it's not the dark that people are afraid of. It's what might be hiding in it. And then it all just clicked, why I like it better, why it suits me. Why, when the night draws in, I don't want the lights on.
When she can no longer see the magazine, Dani slumps, half-sleeping. I let her. She'll still hear the phone. I'll hear it.
Because we're out here in the suburbs, everything goes quiet outside. Once the kids are in bed nothing moves. Cars become an event, occasional. I suppose I can see why Moran likes it here. The slightest thing out of the ordinary, he'll notice it, fast as a finger-snap. Tonight there's nothing. Orange streetlights flaring up in the rain, that's all. Me, I prefer to be a few extra floors up. I like the distance, the perspective. Nothing at all to do with looking down on you all, I promise. Which reminds me, I need to add 'floor-to-ceiling windows' onto my Zoopla search. A good view, and as many angles on it as possible.
Of course, any view of London is a good view. Don't get me wrong, that's not me being all poetic about it. It's an ugly bloody place, most of the time. Parts of it, the parts you think of, are very picturesque, very chocolate box, but for the most part? All big cities look the same. They're all dives, and it's only the height of the buildings that changes. No it's just that any view of London is like that moment on The Price Is Right when the curtain goes back and all of a sudden there are fabulous prizes all over the stage.
I like to think there's a little more skill in what I do than was required of Brucie's average contestant, but the sentiment is the same.
Here's what you could win.
A car goes past, probably off to pick up kids or grab a loaf for the breakfasts, something normal and ridiculous, and the flash of the headlights through the window makes me flinch. Too much like the spotlight coming on on that 'lucky audience member' (yeah, like that was ever random). Makes me feel just a touch ill, for just a second, too much like the memory of that clench-jawed grin they were always wearing, the silly little wave, a fetid mix of falseness and nerves.
But if you want to claim your prizes…
Sherlock
Something's wrong. Lestrade brought me home. As a matter of fact, he practically threw me across the door, much in the manner cops throw robbers into cells on TV. But he's taken off now. I'm alone. No Mycroft. Please, don't think I expect him to have come to my aid, but after what Lestrade said in the car I thought I was being brought to him. I'm sitting looking over at the landline, somewhere between willing it to ring and daring myself to pick it up. It's not as if I want to talk to him. I was happy where I was, and probably safer. Mycroft's lot know where I live, so if they're being targeted then I was much better off across town in the unknown back bedroom of a derelict house. I wasn't even in my own mind, when I was there, how much safer can you get?
But nobody ever listens to me. Doesn't make any difference that I talk more sense high than most of them do on their very sharpest day. Idiots. Somebody ought to explain to them just how drunk Churchill would get, and how frequently. The opium use of major figures in world history is well documented. Drugs have been used for so long as the excuse of stupid people that there's a whole new fallacy sprung up – stupid people use drugs therefore all addicts are stupid. That's not logical. The basic tenets of logic would tell you that that's not logical.
Where is Mycroft? Somebody of Mycroft-comparable status was apparently murdered this morning. Now it's night. I'm being protected and Mycroft isn't here and hasn't been in touch.
Naturally I don't think Mycroft's been murdered. He hasn't. Naturally not. Because… Because he just hasn't. There are loads of factors that ought to be telling you Mycroft couldn't possibly have been shot like his colleague. You're just not looking for them. That's your own problem, nothing to do with me, and why should I help? I just happen to know for a fact he hasn't been murdered. The reason he's not here is not because he's on a morgue slab with a neat round hole in one side of the head and a blood-and-bone flower of an exit wound on the other, like those two officers, like Hedegaard, like the man who would have taken Mies by the river that day, like the one who was captured outside the Cathedral, like…
He hasn't. Look, I'll phone him and prove it. Just because you're being so dense that you can't see this, I'll prove it to you.
I lift up the phone, and dial, and wait. It rings. And I wait. And it rings, and I wait, and it rings, and rings, and rings.
Jim
Moran, because he's cruel, because he has presence and knows how to use it, stands over me until I sense him and jolt awake, swearing. Then, his job done, he retreats laughing and sits in the other armchair.
It's my own fault, falling asleep. That's probably a sign of weakness to the Good Soldier over there. Across the dark, soft because, by the way, it's only me he woke, her Highness has been allowed to snooze on, he says, "What was the dream, mate? You getting an itch scratched?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"'Higher, higher… Lower…"
"Moran, the next time you imitate my accent, you can consider it your contract terminated. I'm only letting you off because I thought there was some crude euphemism there."
"There was. You just don't have the filthy mind required to understand it."
Well, that's a thing I do quite well without. Why, then, does it annoy me he's telling me there's something I can't have and something I can't understand? Quite apart from anything, he's joking, so it doesn't make any odds, and they're things I don't want, so why do I get all tetchy and annoyed? "Where have you been, anyway?"
"Making arrangements." For a moment, it's as if that's all he has to say. Like he just expects me to get more out of that. I wait. "I've a few too many bodies on me of late, wouldn't you say? Best flee the country for a couple of weeks."
I could have done that for him. I should have. I'm the one who has, to use his rather elegant turn of phrase, put the bodies on him. Moran is owed, big time, and it wouldn't have been a problem. I could have done that. Or maybe I shouldn't need to. Is it irresponsible, giving him so much of the work he loves that he has to abscond? Was that a mistake?
Like I'm saying all this out loud, the voice comes back, "Stop worrying. I'm not worried."
"You would have said, wouldn't you? If it was too much to ask."
"No. Because you wouldn't pay any attention to that. I would have took off and left you a number for somebody in the same profession."
Oh. Well, that's… honest, I suppose. I think I'll just jump back to the bit where he said he wasn't worried and run with it. Knowing him, or so I tell myself, he just wants the holiday. He'll be sneaking off to Milan again. Naughty Moran, using an excuse that he knew would leave me questioning myself, and maybe very slightly, just on the corners, touched by guilt, all so he can take off and get his end away with impunity.
Yeah, that's a lot easier to take.
"Moran?"
"Yes?"
"While you're being all wise and open-"
"Now who's doing the crude innuendo?"
"-Why hasn't Holmes gotten in touch?"
He sighs. Moran actually sighs at me, damn him… "Have you considered for a second he might be shit-scared? He might not know what to do next."
I like his explanation a lot better than Danielle's. Start sliding away again. Moran's here now, Moran'll hear the phone. Be alright. I haven't made any mistakes or miscalculations. I know that. Just need to start trusting it, that's all.
Sherlock
I still don't believe Mycroft's been murdered. But the more I thought about it there are all these other things. I went outside, not for air or anything stupid, just to check he hadn't been run over by a bus on my street and me not even noticing. Called again. Couple more times, actually. Even if he doesn't answer a nurse might, or whoever's kidnapped him might. If I have to go after him, I will. You start thinking about it, all the things that could have happened, and you realize it's insane. Nothing's safe. Anything could happen. Parts of a satellite breaking up on re-entry could have been flung out of space and sheared off his head at Greenwich Park. Anything. Me, I have nothing. I'm here, alone, with no way of knowing anything. And I need more cigarettes. I know I came in here with half a pack and now there are none. But I can't leave, in case he calls back.
I just want him to pick up. I don't care if he talks, I don't care if he bellows down the phone at me, I don't care if he's in a brothel in Kathmandu, I just want him to answer.
It's not fair. If it was the other way round, he'd have eyes everywhere. Mycroft can locate me in under an hour almost any given day, he's proved this. I have no such recourse. What am I supposed to do, call him at the office?...
Actually, not a bad idea.
The landline's cordless. I take it off its dock and put it in my coat pocket. I can get more fags on my way down to Fleet Street. It's as simple as that. Either he'll be there, in the midst of terribly important war counsels that cannot be disturbed, or it'll be the last place he was and the clues will be there. There'll be a way to get in touch with someone who can find out.
I get as far as the corner of the street without incident. This, now that my eyes are open and I can see how easy it would be for a car to mount the kerb and take me out, for a bird to get trapped in an electric cable and bring it down in the rain and electrocute me, for a bike messenger to clip my arm and send me spiralling into the road in front of a bus, is a miracle in itself. But there, on the corner, I told you, anything can happen – I walk into someone else.
Nothing catastrophic happens, but that's just luck. I mumble my apology and try and breeze past. It could already be too late; I might have jolted him when we collided, and he's already dropped a cigarette butt into some fold of my coat, to smoulder and finally catch and it's raining, but I'll burn. I try to brush it off.
And hear, "Sherlock, what on earth are you doing?" Mycroft. There are answers I could give him, things I could say, there are a lot of things. I can't exactly talk, however. There in the street, because he's alive and I had thought otherwise, I put my arms around my brother.
He pushes me away, and repeats his question with more venom.
