Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap.

- Psalms 69:22

After Lestrade had left John went to bed, sleeping until Molly woke him on her return from work. She had a hefty manila folder under one arm, which she handed over to him before he'd even got out of bed. "Sherlock's… well, you know, Sherlock's… file," she said. "Along with transcripts of the PM audio and, um. The photos they took."

Eager, John opened the file, and an 8x12 colour photograph slid out of it. He picked it up. It appeared to be of the right-hand side of a bruised, scraped male torso. He felt a sudden, sharp pain, as if he'd been hit in the back of the head.

"Thanks." He got up and kissed her. "What time is it?"

"Nearly half-past five. We have that dinner with Captain Moran…"

"Oh, God, I'd forgotten," he said in dismay. Trust himself to make arrangements for an awkward dinner with a near-stranger when what he really wanted to do was spend the evening examining every last inch of what he now thought of as 'Sherlock's file'. There had been something about that half-glimpsed photo that didn't seem right to him, a sense of seeing something out of place—as of an unfamiliar colour, or an angle that confused him. He had no idea what the issue was. It was just a bruised torso. Sherlock's bruised torso.

The lateness of Molly's shift at the hospital didn't leave either of them with much time to prepare for dinner with Sebastian Moran at seven, but John had as quick a shower as he could get away with, leaving Molly to commandeer the bathroom, and both were ready and in the car at the required time.

"Just remember," he said as he put his seatbelt on, "aim the projectile vomiting at the floor, not the salad bowl."

Molly, who had learned enough to now be armed with a sizeable bin bag hanging off the glovebox handle of the car, swallowed nervously. She was well put together in a navy dress that John had always liked, but underneath her makeup she looked pale and a little haggard. "I'm going to be so embarrassed if I throw up right at the dinner table," she said.

"Well, it'll make a great story to tell later. But seriously, you're feeling up to this?"

She nodded. "Sure," she said brightly. "Let's go."

Moran's place turned out to be a posh semi in Pimlico; far better than the Watsons could afford, even on their double doctor's-income. John felt a slight pang of envy as he escorted Molly up the front steps and under white Dorian columns to the front door, paneled in stained glass, and rapped with the knocker. There was a very long pause, and John had lifted his hand to knock again when there was a heavy tread on floorboards just outside the door. He put both hands to his side in time for the door to open, revealing Sebastian Moran.

He seemed different than either of John's previous memories of him, scrubbed clean, urban; he was closely shaved, the skin around his chin pink, as if he'd just stepped out of the bathroom to open the door. His high-end suit and open-collared shirt proclaimed casual money. John wondered, and not for the first time, what it was that Moran actually did for a living. He thought of Sherlock, with his impossible and confusing jumble of clothes. Silk shirts. Half a dozen suits that would have cost thousands. High-end Italian leather shoes… and a large collection of ratty t-shirts, tracks and threadbare dressing gowns. The suits had been for other people. Left to his own devices, in his own lonely bed, Sherlock didn't care what he wore. He had been above it all.

Moran seemed to not notice John's reticence, and enthusiastically beckoned them into the hall: a cold, floorboarded little vestibule that smelled of beeswax and pine shavings.

"Hi," John said, remembering his manners and nudging Molly forward. If she wasn't subtly coaxed into social interactions, she sometimes shrank into herself and forgot how to talk. On the other hand, she was convinced that he was some kind of master of social situations, an attitude that had always confused him. Mycroft had been the only person to spot it straight away, and say so—John might have known when and how to be affable to people he was introduced to, but he did not make or keep friends easily. Since Sherlock's death, the group of people he'd describe as 'friends' had been reduced to only five: Molly, Mike Stamford, Bill Murray, Greg Lestrade and Martha Hudson. The recent Hooper-Watson wedding had had only sixteen guests in all.

It did not seem likely that Sebastian Moran was going to join the small group John counted as friends. There was nothing amiss in his manner as he gave Molly's cheek a polite little peck, but John saw her tense up at the unexpected touch. "Hello," she said, her nerves making her brisk.

"Hello," he said, full of bonhomie. He led them through one of the archways off the hall and into a high-ceilinged sitting room. The walls were white, except for the far one, which was a vivid shade of purple. It set off the red sofa, the chrome and glass coffee tables, the brown-and-cream Afghan rug beneath it. In the opposite corner, an LP player on a stand was playing Puccini, the little trill of flutes floating across the room to them.

"We're a bit early," John said, forgetting to include the part where he was sorry for being so.

"No, not even." Moran waved one hand casually. "Dinner will be five minutes. Sorry, I've got to plate up—sit down, have a drink while you're waiting?"

The meal turned out to be excellent, some combination of roast chicken and sage with all the sides, served with a crisp pinot noir that it was a pity, John thought as he sipped it, that Molly was missing out on. Moran poured it liberally to both himself and John, chatting away about various issues, as if trying them on to see whether his guests would like one or the other. Over the main course, he segued between politics, history, art and music.

"So what is it you do?" John asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer. A house like this? Was he a movie star or something?

Moran looked around, as if aware of John's thoughts. "Inheritance," he said sheepishly. "Only child, and my father was a… well, never mind what he was, really. A wealthy man."

John wasn't as surprised by this as he otherwise might have been. Army officers were nearly always rich boys who'd gone to Sandhurst after graduating from whatever public school or high-tier university their parents had sent them to. It had only been his own defence-force pedigree that had opened the door for him into that world; even a middle-class, grammar-school boy wasn't welcome unless his father had been there before him.

Only child.

Wait … only child?

John stood up, a little light-headed, even though he'd only had two glasses of wine. "Sorry," he said. "Where's the…?"

"Oh." Moran pointed through to the hall. "Up the stairs, first door on your left."

With an apologetic glance at Molly, one he fought hard not to be an anxious one, John excused himself and went upstairs.

He found the bathroom where Moran had promised it would be. A brand new bathroom, as a matter of fact: chrome, marble. It looked like a showroom. After washing his hands, John splashed his face with the cold water. He would never have admitted it to Molly, who'd never spend a day of her upcoming maternity leave in peace if she knew, but his swing shifts had begun to tell on his nerves in a way they hadn't when he'd been fresh out of medical school.

Moran had just clearly said he was an only child. The only child of a rich man.

Why, then, had he just as clearly said he was visiting his sister when he'd shown up on the doorstep several days ago?

Determined to be fair, John tried to reason this out. Perhaps his sister was an adopted sister… but no, adopted and even foster sisters inherited from their parents, and their siblings didn't refer to themselves as only children. A half sister, the daughter of his mother and not his father? That must be it. But it seemed such a stupid thing for anyone to bother lying about… and he needed to get back downstairs before Moran got suspicious or, even worse, came upstairs to actually look for him. Molly was down there. Molly did not like Sebastian Moran, and she was probably right.

He'd reached out for the hand towel hanging off a chrome ring beside the sink when he felt, under his palm, something odd, scratchy. Turning it over, he found it was a John Lewis price tag.

Well, okay. It was no crime to buy new hand towels when you knew you were having guests over and then forget, for whatever reason, to take the tags off. Ordinarily, John thought to himself, he mightn't even pause at that, he'd just go back downstairs and continue with the night like a normal man and not the paranoid, safety-obsessed freak Harry was always telling him he was becoming. Just before the wedding, while preparations were still being made for the ceremony, she'd pointed out that he'd spent his first visit to the church he was to be married in looking around for potential evacuation routes in case there was a sudden disaster. But all because you were paranoid, that didn't mean…

He could still hear Moran downstairs, talking at an even, friendly pace. Molly's contributions to the conversation seemed to be minimal.

He sat down on the edge of the bath, thinking. There had been something… something not right about the house from the moment he and Molly had stepped into it. Beeswax. Pine shavings. It reminded him of Irene Adler's place. A place with virtually no furniture in it, because it was rented, and he'd later found out she'd only been there for three days before disappearing again. She'd had no permanent home, no fixed address; just moved about the place, shifting addresses when she'd made the place too hot to handle her. What if Sebastian Moran…

He reached over and flipped the edges of the bath towel hanging beside the shower. Another price tag. He let it go, stood up and edged the shower curtain aside. The curtain and shower recess were both bone dry.

Well… maybe Moran had bought new linen for the whole house and hadn't taken the labels off. Maybe he was one of those people who toweled the shower dry after he used it so mold couldn't grow. But all the same, John stood stock-still, unable to turn off the warning bells that were now going off in his head. Danger? What kind of danger? Nothing meaningful was coming through. It wasn't dangerous to have a dry shower or new towels.

All the same, he'd just decided to go downstairs, make his excuses and, if necessary, drag Molly into the car and get both of them home. The urge was so strong that he'd taken a step toward the door to open it when his phone rang. Exhaling, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID: Greg.

"Hi," he said down the line.

"Hi." Greg was at work, judging from the sounds around him: voices, the shriek of a radio. "Bad time?"

"Nope." John dug his fingertips into the corner of his eyes. "Great time. What's up?"

"Just got a call-out to a case, I was wondering if you could give me a hand with it?"

John's chest gave a strange thump. It had been over a year since Greg Lestrade had called his mobile and asked if he wanted to give him a hand with a case. "Sure," he said warily. "What kind of case?"

"Suspicious death."

"Not a murder?"

"Donovan's desperate to make it one, but I can't for the life of me figure how it could be. I told her I'd get you to have a look, see what you think."

"Not exactly my area of expertise, Greg."

"Anyway, it's a good one, you'll like it," Lestrade was saying, as if aware of what he'd just referred to and trying to appease him. "We're at a residential address in Enfield, along with the fire brigade."

"Sorry, with the what?"

"Told you you'd like it. They've just called us in. John, I've never seen anything like this in my life."

Hot adrenaline ran through John, a feeling he so rarely felt these days and sometimes craved as much as if he'd been Sherlock Holmes, tearing the living room to pieces in a moment of ill-judged cocaine withdrawal. Lestrade had seen all sorts of weird and wonderful crimes. He didn't say he'd never seen a thing before if he had.

"I'll come round," he said. "I'm with Molly at dinner with an old patient—"

"Well, Christ, don't give that up—"

"I'm bored solid and Molly just wants an excuse to go home so she can play with the kittens. Give me the address; I'll be there as soon as I can."