For this chapter only, I've raised the rating to M because some people may find the final section of this instalment upsetting. I know I did!

Also, there's a bit of bad language but all totally justified in the context.

Chapter Seven

Sherlock checked his phone for the time – ten past two. It wouldn't be dark for a couple more hours at least and, despite still wearing his Belstaff and scarf, he was feeling the chill of this ancient mausoleum. He didn't want to go home. 221B was still little more than a shell, the sitting room at least. Just a chair and a big empty space. Where else could he go? Molly was at work and, anyway, probably best to avoid turning to her at the moment. She had done more than her fair share of Sherlock-minding duties just lately…

Clicking on his Notes app, he thumbed down until he found John's work schedule. Ah, yes! Dr Watson was on his day off. He texted immediately.

Are you home?

The answer came back almost straight away.

Yes. Baking biscuits with Rosie. Coming over?

On my way, Sherlock replied.

Carefully rewrapping the on-loan laptop and hard drive, he put them back inside the canvas tote then went round the tomb extinguishing candles until he reached the door, which he opened before dousing the last one. He exited the building, locked up and headed deeper into the cemetery, away from the main entrance. If he was being followed, it would give him time to clock his tail and take evasive action. If he was being tracked, there was no CCTV inside the cemetery itself, so he could be out the other side and onto a bus before the watchers clocked him. And, a bonus, the direct bus route to John's house left from just outside the rear cemetery gate.

Timing his journey to the second, Sherlock exited the cemetery just as his bus hove into view. He hopped on board, swiped his Oyster Card and took a rearward facing seat on the lower deck. Usually when using public transport, Sherlock would pass the time browsing Twitter on his phone, scanning for anything out of the ordinary that might be a potential case. Not today. He had more than enough to keep him occupied for the time being. So, instead, he looked out of the window, just in time to see a dishevelled-looking young man come racing out of the cemetery gate, skid to a halt on the pavement and look up and down the road before throwing up his hands in dismay. Sherlock smiled to himself. One of Mycroft's minions would not be getting his bonus this month.

ooOoo

When John opened his front door to Sherlock's knock, Rosie – sitting in the crook of her Daddy's elbow – squealed with delight and reached out in Sherlock's direction.

'Hello, Rosie!' Sherlock exclaimed, taking the child into his arms and giving her a big hug.

'Sorry about the flour,' said John, standing aside to allow Sherlock to enter the flat. 'But don't send me the dry-cleaning bill.'

'Mmmmm, something smells nice!' declared Sherlock, licking his lips, theatrically. 'Are those for me?' he asked Rosie, pointing to the freshly baked biscuits cooling on the kitchen work top.

'Wosie's bitsits,' the toddler replied, with the blatant honesty that all toddlers possess.

'What?' Sherlock exclaimed, pouting like a diva. 'You can't eat them all, Rosie Watson! Your belly will burst!' and he poked Rosie's little round tummy with one long finger then mimed an explosion, with suitable vocal sound effects, to gales of laughter from the little girl.

'Come here, madam, let's get you cleaned up,' John intervened, taking the child back and heading for the bathroom, with Rosie giggling over his shoulder as Sherlock pretended to gather up all the biscuits and stuff them into his mouth. By the time father and daughter returned, Sherlock had removed his coat, brushed most of the loose flour from it and hung it on the coat stand in the corner of the sitting room, placing the canvas tote on the floor in the entrance hall. John was impressed to note that he'd also put the kettle on. Wonders would never cease!

Placing Rosie in her lobster pot play pen, surrounded by an eclectic collection of toys - some educational and some purely for entertainment - John set about brewing two mugs of tea then he and Sherlock sat at the kitchen table from where they could watch Rosie play.

'So, what's new?' John asked.

'This,' Sherlock replied, handing him the report on Mycroft.

As John took it and began to read, Sherlock tracked his friend's thought processes with interest as they morph from 'Hmmm?' through 'What?' and 'No way!' then 'Jesus!' to 'What the fuck!' at which point John looked across at him, shaking his head in utter disbelief.

'My god!' he exclaimed.

'Yes,' Sherlock concurred. 'Oh Em Gee.'

'What are you planning to do with this?' John asked.

'I haven't decided,' replied Sherlock, taking the document back, refolding it and slipping it back in the inside pocket of his jacket. 'If push comes to shove, I might need to use it for leverage but, hopefully, that won't be necessary.'

'This could get very dirty,' John declared, furrowing his brow. 'Are you sure you want to…' His sentence hung unfinished in the air.

'Want to what, John?' Sherlock prompted.

John sighed and shrugged his shoulders. 'Are you sure you want to side with one sibling against the other?'

'I'd rather not but…' Sherlock pursed his lips. 'Well, Eurus saved my life.'

'When did she?' John exclaimed. 'Oh, you mean at Sherrinford, when you called her bluff by pretending you would shoot yourself?'

'I wasn't bluffing,' Sherlock replied, chilling John's blood with the unwavering certainty of that admission. The doctor was momentarily tongue-tied but then tried another approach.

'Well, as you well know, I'd be the first to agree that Mycroft is a prat but the prat has saved your life on many occasions. From the drugs, I mean.'

'He thinks he has,' Sherlock huffed, indignantly.

'No, he really has,' John insisted.

Sherlock scowled but didn't bother to contradict.

'OK, so how did Eurus save you?' John prompted.

'Remember the day you and Mary came to the airport to see me off on my mission to Eastern Europe?'

'Of course! How could I forget?' John retorted. 'That's the day…'

'Those 'Miss me?' images suddenly popped up on every tv screen in the country,' Sherlock interrupted. 'It was no coincidence that they appeared just as I was flying off on my suicide mission…'

'Wait! Hold on…' John spluttered, very nearly choking on his tea. 'What's this about a 'suicide mission'? You never said anything about a suicide mission!'

'Oh, didn't I ever mention that? Must have slipped my mind…'

'Sherlock!' John exclaimed. 'Don't be a d…'

'Language, please. Children present,' Sherlock interjected. Then, with only a mildly irritable huff, he relented. 'The under-cover assignment to Eastern Europe would have proved fatal to me within approximately six months, by Mycroft's calculations,' he explained. 'And Mycroft is never wrong.'

'What? But, why?' John gasped. 'Why would Mycroft send his own brother to certain death?'

Sherlock gave his friend a sympathetic smile.

'Oh, John,' he sighed, shaking his head. He paused, deep in thought, but finally resolved to elaborate.

'MI6 had a problem with a number of ultra-right-wing activist groups, who were causing unrest in Eastern European countries, and Mycroft had a problem with his annoying little brother, who had just murdered someone in cold blood. He saw a way to kill two birds with one stone, no pun intended.'

John was gob-smacked. He couldn't even think of anything to say so Sherlock continued his explanation.

'Somehow, Eurus got wind – sorry, second pun, also not intended – of Mycroft's plan and so chose that precise moment to release the video clip that she'd had Moriarty make before he killed himself, knowing that this would force Mycroft to recall me. But she was nearly too late. The plane had already taken off…and I'd already taken a whopping great cocktail of God knows what…'

John grimaced at Sherlock's casual reference to the massive dose of Class A substances he'd consumed, practically under his brother's nose, immediately after boarding the plane.

'Well, you know,' said Sherlock, with a lopsided grin, 'when your numbers up, you may as well go out in style!'

John shook his head in exasperation. He never had and never would come to terms with his friend's laissez faire attitude to drug abuse but something occurred to him that, strangely, never had before.

'So where did you get those drugs from?' he asked.

'Emergency supply, John,' Sherlock winked, tapping the side of his nose with his index finger.

'No, seriously, Sherlock, where did you get them?'

Sherlock sighed like a petulant teenager but answered anyway.

'You know how Soviet spies were supposed to have kept a cyanide capsule inside a hollow tooth to bite on in an emergency?'

'You're not trying to tell me you had all that stuff inside your teeth!' John barked.

'No,' Sherlock replied, rolling his eyes. 'Inside my coat.'

John looked blank.

'In the lining of my coat,' Sherlock clarified. 'I always kept an emergency supply…well, not always, actually.' His demeanour took on a wistful quality. 'It started while I was away…you know…after my 'suicide'?' He paused, his expression reflecting some sort of internal tussle in progress, which one side clearly won because he carried on.

'Those few months you and I spent solving crimes together, before I 'went away',' the parentheses implied by his inflection, 'they were probably the happiest days of my life.'

John was so deeply touched by the candour with which his friend was exposing his vulnerability, he didn't even know what to say.

'And then it was gone, just like that, and I was on my own again.'

This confession was almost too hard to bear but, at the same time, John felt privileged to be a witness to it.

'So, that's when I started using again.'

'Oh, mate…' John growled, his voice coarsened by emotion.

But Sherlock shook his head and opened his hands in a gesture of acceptance.

'No regrets, John, it got me through!' he exclaimed, with a grin which quickly vanished to be replaced by an expression of deep sincerity. 'But I just wanted you to know that, during that time - the happy time - I never used. Not once.'

John nodded, several times, then cleared his throat.

'Thank you, Sherlock,' he said, 'I appreciate you telling me that.'

There was an awkward silence as both men processed the fall-out from Sherlock's soul-bearing revelations. Rosie, playing happily in her play pen, babbling away to herself and her toys, was mercifully oblivious to the emotionally charged force field surrounding the dining table.

John was the first to speak.

'So, your homicidal sister…'

'Not homicidal, John, remember?'

'…OK, sorry, so your not-homicidal sister saved you from being killed by your prat of a brother?'

'That's about the size of it, yes.'

'Bloody hell, mate, I thought I had problems with Harry but when it comes to dysfunctional families, you win the award of the year…no, the decade! Maybe even the bloody century!'

'Well, that's a bold statement, considering this century has barely even begun, but I accept the compliment. Now…' Sherlock was suddenly brisk and business-like, 'I need to be somewhere else so thanks for the tea.' He stood up, buttoning his jacket. 'I would say thank you for the biscuits, too, but since there were none forthcoming…'

'Oh, here, take some with you!' exclaimed John, going over to the kitchen counter and returning with four biscuits wrapped in a sheet of kitchen towel. 'Don't say I never give you anything.'

'Bye-bye, Rosie!' said Sherlock, pocketing the biscuits then swooping down to give his god-daughter a big fat kiss on top of her head. 'And remember, don't eat them all at once…' he added, miming the explosion again.

John, seeing him to the door, handed over the tote bag and quirked an eyebrow at the nature of its contents.

'I'll tell you when I know myself,' Sherlock assured him.

'OK, mate, take care of yourself,' said John.

'You, too. And Rosie,' Sherlock replied and strode away into the deepening gloom of twilight.

ooOoo

As Sherlock turned into Leinster Gardens, he scanned up and down the street to check if anyone was about. It was the time of day when people would be coming home from work and he had no desire to be spotted entering a building which didn't actually exist. Thankfully, there was no one around and he slipped inside what used to be No 23 without being observed. Once within and with the door firmly closed, he reached out in the pitch dark for the service board and found the switch for the main lighting with the ease of frequent repetition.

The ceiling-suspended illumination revealed a long thin strip of a room running the entire width of the former house but measuring only six feet across. At the far end sat the wheelchair he had utilised as a getaway vehicle when he absconded from the hospital after being shot by his best friend's wife and former CIA assassin, dearest Mary. The drip stand, with an empty morphine drip bag hanging from it, was still attached to the chair. Sherlock made his way down there and, taking the seat, began to unpack the electronic hardware from the tote. Once it was all connected up, plugged in and switched on, he tapped the keys to bring up the bank of video file icons. Craig had not exaggerated. There were hundreds of them.

Where to begin? he wondered. Should he start at the beginning or just go for something random – pot luck? He chose the latter. Centring the curser over an icon in the middle of the screen, he held his breath and clicked.

The grainy moving image, with colours muted over time to barely more than sepia, was hard to make out at first, especially in the harsh glare from the down-lighter directly above, and the absence of a sound track did nothing to assist but he suddenly recognised what he was looking at. This was one of his family's old home movies, the ones mostly shot by his father on an ancient 35 mm box camera he'd owned, back when they were kids; the films Mycroft kept, along with his collection of old black and white movies, in his private cinema at home. Sherlock and John had used one of those home movies to splice into the film Mycroft had chosen to watch the night they scared the pants off him to force him to fess up about Eurus.

So, what the hell were the Holmes family home movies doing digitised and hidden away in this top-secret file on Sherrinford's computer system?

So taken aback was Sherlock by this discovery that it took him a few moments to register exactly what it was he was seeing but then something caught his attention which brought the images into sharp focus. The scene was of a beach beside a body of water, with two young boys play-fencing with wooden swords and a little girl with pig-tails, wearing a pale blue dress and a beige coloured cardigan, playing with a toy aeroplane. This was the content of his recurring dream – not a dream at all, apparently, but a memory of this particular piece of film. The perspective was exactly the same - that of observer, not participant. And this memory had first resurfaced the morning after he spent the night walking the streets of London with fake Faith Smith.

Sherlock slapped down the laptop lid and closed his eyes. He needed a moment...

As dawn brakes over Jubilee Gardens, he sits on a riverside bench next to a woman he thinks is suicidal and bargains with her to hand over the gun in exchange for him taking her case. He then stands up, walks over to the parapet and hurls the gun far out into the river. Turning to the woman, he says,

'Taking your own life. Interesting expression – taking it from whom? Once it's over, it's not you who'll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.'

And then the visions begin.

The ground suddenly disappears from beneath his feet and he is looking down into the deep water lapping far below as he hovers in the air.

And the word 'SOMEONE', written in a woman's hand, and 'KILL SOMEONE' flash across his inner eye.

'You're not what I expected, you…' the woman says.

'SOMEONE' again. And he groans – with pain or distress? He's not quite sure.

'What? What am I?' he gasps, gripping tightly to the parapet, to keep himself from plummeting down into the water.

'Nicer,' she replies.

'Than who?'

'Anyone,' she says, at which point, he screams and falls to the ground and the sound of a child singing echoes inside his head…

'I who am lost, who will find me, deep down below…'

And images flood his mind, of a small boy in red trousers and an ochre sweater, wearing wellingtons and a pirate's hat, carrying a wooden sword and splashing through the eddies at the edge of a body of water, accompanied by a big red dog…

Sherlock's eyes snapped open as he felt a trickle of cold sweat run down his neck.

That was when it began, when he started to remember. Because somewhere, in the deep recesses of his subconscious, he recognised fake Faith as his sister, his long-lost sister.

Sherlock thought back to the deduction he had made when 'Faith' came to consult with him at 221B…

'Well, you've changed,' he said, looking at the image of Faith he'd just Googled on his phone.

Well, of course she'd changed! It wasn't even her! And, perhaps if he hadn't been so 'off his tits', at the time, he would have spotted that straight away. He certainly spotted a lot of other things.

'Oh, of course you don't own a car, you don't need one, do you, living in isolation, no human contact, no visitors.'

He had described Eurus's situation at Sherrinford to a tee. No wonder she looked so alarmed, as she asked, 'How do you know that?' She must have thought her cover was blown.

And then there were the scars…

'…with the angle of the scars on your left forearm, you know, under that sleeve you keep pulling down…I don't really need to check that the angle is consistent with self-harm, do I?'

Did Eurus really have such scars? If so, when did she acquire them? Was that the origin of the conversation Mycroft related about her cutting herself to 'see how my muscles worked'? Perhaps there lay the tiny grain of truth wrapped up inside the great, big lie – he still didn't believe that conversation had ever actually happened but the incident might have. Or was that just part of fake Faith's act, another ploy to draw him in?

There was so much to unpick before he finally got to the truth.

Sherlock shook his head and rubbed his face with both hands then reopened the laptop.

Closing the first file, he opened another and another… More home movies commemorating the main events that pepper the lives of all families – birthdays, holidays, picnics, days out. Was this all that was in here? If so, why all the secrecy?

Skipping over several more files, Sherlock chose another at random and…

The first thing to notice was the quality of the reproduction. No longer grainy or sepia in shade, these images were sharp and brightly coloured and this video had sound.

'Open it, Sherlock, open it!' he heard his mother's voice exclaiming, out of shot.

Sherlock was looking at his younger self, kneeling on the floor in the sitting room of his parents' cottage, the one they lived in now, the one the family had moved to after their previous home was gutted by fire…

He could not recall ever seeing this video before but he recognised the occasion. It was his tenth birthday and the parcel that his mother was urging him to open was, he remembered so clearly, his first chemistry set. And he also remembered why the images were so much sharper. His father had finally replaced the vintage cine camera for a state of the art – of its time – video camera.

But all these thoughts were peripheral to the main focus of his attention and that was Young Sherlock himself.

The child looked at the gift-wrapped box he'd just been given and then up at his parents, behind the camera. He wore a half smile that spoke of curiosity and anticipation but there was something missing.

'Open it, Sherlock,' his father urged, so he carefully unpicked the sticky tape that secured the wrapping paper, peeled off the sheet and placed it neatly to one side then removed the lid of the box to reveal its secrets – a chemistry set, complete with miniature microscope, test tubes in a wooden rack and a small selection of chemicals. Young Sherlock surveyed the contents of the box then looked up again, just past the camera.

'Thank you, Mummy. Thank you, Daddy. It's wonderful,' he said.

Four years older than the Pirate version, this Sherlock still carried a little puppy fat and his mop of curly hair was very much in evidence but where was the happy, carefree child who had spent his days playing amongst the mock gravestones and splashing in the shallows of the lake? This was his birthday and he'd just been presented with perhaps his most favourite birthday present ever, his heart's desire, but where was the delight? Where was the unbridled joy?

Suddenly, adult Sherlock's eye was distracted by movement in the back of shot as a figure entered the room and crossed behind his young self. His breath caught in his throat as he recognised none other than seventeen-year-old Mycroft, who could not have looked more different from four years previously. He had undergone quite a growth spurt in the intervening period and was now his full adult height of six feet and one inch but he had also slimmed down, dramatically, and was as stick thin as the Mycroft of today. And he had already adopted his signature style of three-piece suits and Oxford shoes.

'Are you going to wish your little brother a happy birthday, Mycroft?' his mother's disembodied voice enquired.

Sherlock saw his brother glance at the birthday boy, raise an eyebrow and declare, archly, 'Felicitations, brother mine,' then sit down in a chair, cross one leg elegantly over the other and open a broad sheet newspaper, distancing himself decisively from everyone else in the room. At that point, young Sherlock picked up his birthday gift, climbed to his feet and walked out of shot, whereupon the video ended.

Sherlock closed the file and sat staring into space. Here was living proof of the legacy that Mycroft had spoken of.

'Sherlock was traumatised. Natural, I suppose. He was, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that, he was different. So changed. Never spoke of it again.'

He had just witnessed the destruction of his own innocence and he wasn't sure if he could continue this exercise just at the moment. But he knew he must. His sister's future depended on it.

He could really use a cigarette…or something stronger…but he'd made a vow – yes, another one! Clearly hadn't learned his lesson from the last time – not to throw away the beautiful gifts he was born with and betray the love of his friends. Those words had stung far more than the slaps across his face, that day in Molly's lab, which seemed a lifetime ago, now.

Perhaps something comforting might help. He reached inside his pocket and drew out the four biscuits, made with love by a father and his daughter and wrapped in kitchen towel for a friend. Sherlock bit off a chunk of biscuit and savoured the sharpness of the lemon, the sweetness of the sugar and the richness of the butter. Yes, it did help. A lot.

Having consumed all four biscuits and picked off as many crumbs as humanly possible, with a wet finger, from the front of his coat, Sherlock felt able to return to the video files. Perhaps he should be more methodical this time and start at the beginning.

He clicked on the very first file.

The production value of this offering immediately took a nosedive into grainy monochrome and, judging from the camera angle, this was CCTV footage from the early days of the technology. However, what it lacked in sharpness, it made up for in scope because the angle provided a fairly wide view of the scene and Sherlock recognised the venue at once. In general layout, it had not changed at all. A box-style bed, a cube for a chair and a cantilevered table top with matching bench. This was the special unit. Eurus's special unit, designed and built especially for her.

But there were some changes about the place. Against the far wall on the left, Sherlock could make out what looked like a large, Georgian dolls house. Didn't Eurus have one just like that, in her bedroom at Musgrave Hall? Yes. He could see it in his mind's eye. But this couldn't be that one, surely? It would have been destroyed in the fire that Eurus started in her room, wouldn't it? A replica, then, and an exact one. But what was it doing here? Did this mean what he thought it meant? He hardly dared even think it.

And there, beside the house, was an old-fashioned chalk board easel. Eurus had one of those, too. The visual memories triggered by these objects were flooding back. He tried to suppress them but that ship had well and truly sailed.

And, there, on the right, Sherlock spotted a large, vintage wooden Galloper rocking horse, with the classic features of open mouth, arched neck and chunky saddle, suspended in a solid wooden frame. What child would not want to ride such a beast? Regardless of how incongruous it was to find these objects in such a place as Sherrinford, this was clearly a child's space. That pretty much confirmed his worse fears. This hellhole was Young Eurus's childhood abode.

But where was the resident?

Sherlock scanned the grey image for evidence of life and there... There was a movement on the bed and he focused on that spot.

A little girl in pigtails, dressed in a plain pale smock top and cut off bottoms – not unlike what adult Eurus wore every time he visited her – was lying on the bed, hugging a soft toy - a doll or a teddy. She was tiny, not that much bigger than Rosie. And now Sherlock recognised the noise that he'd been hearing since this video clip began. It was tinny and distorted by the out-dated security microphones but it was unmistakeably the sound of a child crying.

He gasped and clapped his hand to his mouth.

As he watched in horror, another sound impinged on his awareness. It was a man's voice, talking out of sight, but then he moved into camera range, viewed from behind, and Sherlock was shocked again. This man could have been Mycroft. It wasn't, of course - not if that was five-year-old Eurus weeping on the bed – but one could be forgiven for the error. Tall, thin, impeccably dressed, immaculately groomed, this could only be one person, Mycroft's guardian, mentor and, apparently, style guru, Uncle Rudi.

Sherlock had very few recollections of his uncle, who had died several years previously, and those he had were mostly of him making a predicable 'surprise' entrance, half way through every family occasion, dressed as a pantomime dame. It was his party piece – quite literally. As Mycroft had made clear, Uncle Rudi had no interest in Sherlock and the feeling was entirely mutual. In younger Sherlock's opinion, Rudi had been a fatuous arse and not worth his attention.

He was seeing him in a very different light, now.

'Come along, child, enough of this silliness,' said Rudi, strolling over to stand by the side of the bed.

'I want…my duh…daddy,' hiccupped Eurus and continued to sob.

'Well, I'm sorry, dear girl, but Daddy doesn't want you…'

'Noooo, noooo!' shrieked Eurus, springing up on the bed and fiercely confronting her goaler. 'My Daddy loves me! I want my Daddy! I want my Daddy now!' Then she threw herself back on the bed, distraught and sobbing.

Rudi sat down on the plain cube beside the bed and crossed one knee over the other, in the exact same manner in which Mycroft performed that manoeuvre a dozen times a day. All that was missing was the ubiquitous umbrella but Sherlock was in no doubt whatsoever there would be one somewhere nearby.

'You've been a very naughty girl, Eurus, and Daddy and Mummy don't want you anymore. That's why you must live here with me, now.'

'I don't want to live here. I want to go home,' the final word drawn out on a pitiful wail.

'Home? You don't have a home. You burnt it down, remember?'

The child's cries of despair were only intensified by that callous reminder and she covered her ears with her hands in a vain effort to shut out his words.

'Listen, Eurus, dear. Listen to Uncle Rudi,' he cooed, adopting a conciliatory tone and reaching out to gently stroke her head. 'Be a good little girl and help Uncle Rudi with a puzzle and I'll let you see Sherlock…'

'See Sherlock?' exclaimed Eurus, sitting up sharply, wearing a hopeful expression.

'Yes, see Sherlock. If you help me with a puzzle, I'll show you a film of Sherlock…'

'Noooo!' howled the little girl, clenching her fists and shaking her head, furiously. 'Not a film of Sherlock! I want to see real Sherlock! Let me see my brother!'

'Sherlock doesn't want to see you,' Rudi snapped, impatiently, peevishly. 'He never wants to see you ever again.'

'Why?' cried Eurus. 'I love Sherlock.'

'Well, he doesn't love you, not any more, not since you killed his best friend.'

Eurus slumped back against the pillow - crushed, defeated, defenceless.

'I didn't mean to,' she pleaded, in a small voice, 'and I'm very, very sorry. I won't ever do it again…'

'Well, if you really want to show me and Daddy and Sherlock…' Rudi added more emphasis with each successive name '.…just how sorry you are, you could help me with a little puzzle. Will you do that, Eurus dear?'

'Alright,' whispered Eurus and Rudi graced her with the most irksome self-satisfied smirk.

Sherlock slammed down the lid of the laptop and jumped to his feet, holding the device aloft, about to hurl it to the floor. By some gargantuan effort, he managed to rein himself in and, instead, placed the machine on the chair where he'd been sitting and paced down the length of the room. He was burning with anger, pure rage, at what he had witnessed, and all that pent-up emotion had to go somewhere so he slammed his fist into the wall and sucked in the pain through gritted teeth. Leaning his shoulder to the wall and nursing his sore hand, he exhaled a long groan.

This was child abuse, perpetrated by this man against his own sister's children. Rudi was a monster, beyond evil. And, worst of all, he had escaped retribution by dying before any of this came to light.

'May you rot in hell, you bastard!' Sherlock snarled, his eyes glittering in the harsh overhead light.

ooOoo

Well, now we know what's in the videos.