CHAPTER 7: SHERLOCK SELECTS HIS KNIGHT

TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2015

Sally Donovan knew she had a jealous streak. She was possessive of her rank as a detective sergeant, her specially assigned cases, and her personal life. Her mother and father called her protective, like when she had sicked the dog on her uncle's first post-divorce girlfriend, not because Sally disliked the woman, exactly (though she did find it categorically difficult to bond with other women), but because this intruding stranger was keeping her uncle away from Sunday dinners and after-school football in the park. It wasn't protectiveness at all, but downright, unadulterated jealousy.

It was an aspect of her personality she despised and so tried to smother, particularly after her affair with Anderson, about which she was deeply embarrassed. She was determined never again to play the role of 'the other woman', or to expect that anyone—any man, especially—owed her any of his time or attention. Inevitably, she would fail to receive it, and the bitterness and self-deprecation would begin to roil and froth. She would look after herself and demand nothing of anyone.

However.

She had grown accustomed to Thomas Dryers' evening text messages, the ones she responded to with curt glibness or exaggerated disinterest, but which she never ignored. They had been out on what might be called a date only twice: the first because he had weaselled a favour out of her by playing on her guilty conscience for (mildly put) accusing him of treason. It had been awkward, given that her arm had been in plaster and she had to consent to his cutting her steak into bite-size chunks on her behalf. The second date had been a mistake altogether when, after a long night of paperwork at the Yard, it had happened that she glanced up and saw that it was just the two of them left in the room. After mutual confessions of hunger, they ended up at a twenty-four hour café where they shared a stale pork pie and cold chips, and chatted long into the night.

Since then, it had been text messages every night, with Dryers angling for another date and Donovan hedging, not sure what she wanted at all.

But when no text lit up her phone in the evening, and then into the night, she felt the all-too-familiar and unwelcome sensation of jealousy begin to peck away at her. She sat at home on the sofa watching telly, her phone on the armrest, screen up, and pretended she wasn't waiting for it to buzz. It never did. Had he given up? Had she dangled him too long? Was she relieved by the silence, or disappointed? God, she was behaving like an adolescent moron.

At half eleven, she started to ready for bed and was halfway through brushing her teeth when she threw the toothbrush down, marched to the phone, and sent off a quick text of her own:

Don't forget, Lestrade moved
the debriefing to 8 sharp.

Pathetic. Dryers didn't need the reminder; it was just an excuse to nudge him.

He didn't nudge back.

She smashed a hand to the wall to turn off the lights before crawling into bed. When she couldn't get comfortable, she punched the pillow and rolled onto her side, then the other side, then her back, staring up at the black ceiling.

At one in the morning, she threw the covers off and sat on the edge of the mattress, annoyed with Dryers, annoyed with herself, annoyed that she was annoyed. But something more than annoyance was niggling at the back of her mind. The thing was, it just wasn't like Dryers to play that kind of game. Oh, he played games, certainly. And some of them went to the tune of Come and Get Me. But the silent treatment just wasn't his style. And if his interest really had waned (the thought did something funny to her stomach), he wasn't the kind of bloke to be evasive and hope things just fizzled.

She was dedicating far too much brainwork to his motives. And Donovan prided herself on being forthright. So despite the late hour, she pulled the charger cable out of her phone and called.

This is Tom Dryers. I'm off doing better things. Leave a message at the beep, and maybe you can join me next time. Beep!

'Nob,' she muttered, ending the call.

She abandoned the bed and padded down her short hallway to the kitchen where she'd left her radio. She found the right channel and clicked the call button.

'Kim, this is Sgt Sally Donovan, do you copy?'

'Loud and clear, sergeant, what's your status?'

'Off the clock. I'm trying to reach Constable Thomas Dryers, badge number 02891, unresponsive. Do you have him on radio?'

'Attempting to contact Thomas Dryers. Stand by.'

Donovan waited.

A couple of minutes later, the radio crackled again. 'Sgt Donovan, come in.'

'I'm here.'

'Sergeant, that's a negative on Dryers. No response. Would you like me to issue a MISPER?'

She scraped her teeth along her bottom lip, thinking. 'No, dispatch, I'm en route to his flat. I'll verify his status within the hour. Over and out.'

The flat was silent, dark. Donovan knocked twice and rang the bell three times without response. But when she pulled out her phone to call, she heard it: a ringtone on the other side of the door. She pressed her ear to the door and listened as it carried on for twenty seconds and faded away.

She pounded on the door for the third time, insistently. 'Dryers!' Again, with a solid fist. 'Dryers!'

The door to the adjacent flat cracked open, and a woman poked her head out. 'Oi there, people are trying to sleep! I'll call the police on you!'

Donovan unclipped the badge from her belt and thrust it in the woman's direction. 'I am the police. Now get inside.'

The woman eeped and slammed her door.

'Shit,' she muttered under her breath. She pulled out a small torch, walked to the other side of the window, and tried to press the light through the blinds. After a few seconds' examination, she saw, on the floor, the unmistakable shadowy form of a body. 'Shit!' she said again. She pulled out her radio.

'Kim, I need an immediate dispatch and medical team sent to Henry Wise House on Vauxhaull Bridge Road, flat 11A. Officer down. Repeat, officer down.'

'Copy, sergeant, dispatch is on its way.'

Donovan returned to the door, wondering how she was going to break it down, wishing she had brought a gun, when she simply grasped the handle . . . and pushed. The door swung open. She rushed inside, hitting the nearest light she could find.

Dryers lay senseless on the rug, fully dressed in his police uniform, with no obvious signs of injury. A kitchen chair was set in the middle of the room. She reached down and checked Dryers for a pulse: it was strong, and she let out a great sigh of relief she hadn't known was in her.

'Dryers,' she said firmly. 'Dryers.' He was unresponsive.

She quickly checked the rest of the flat and found it clear; then she returned to the front room to wait for the ambulance. Her thumb was poised to call Lestrade when she spotted a torn foil packet on the floor, on the other side of the chair. Snatching a tissue from a nearby box, she carefully picked it up from the floor and read its label: Flunitrazepam.

She grinded her teeth. 'Oh, you son of a bitch.'

Red and blue lights flashed through the window.

Lestrade cancelled his early morning debriefing. Instead, he found himself at the hospital. Bart's, not St Mary's. And not to see Molly.

He was in a dour mood, the kind that made him uncharacteristically churlish and seeking a fight. On top of everything else—Mycroft's attack, scrubbed CCTV footage at the hospital, an out-of-commission consulting detective, the mess down at Belmarsh, and his horror of an ex-wife—he now had to deal with an idiot constable.

'I'm suspending him, the little shithead,' he spat when he met up with Donovan in the waiting room. She had stayed the night in the hospital, but when Dryers had woken, she claimed no interest in seeing him, let alone talking to him.

Her arms folded and her chin lifted. A hard glint of steel flashed in her eyes. 'What'd he say?'

'Self-administered. He bloody well admitted it. Said he was curious, said he got it off of some kids on the street, said he thought it would be harmless.'

'Will you book him?'

'I don't have a choice, do I? It's a Class C drug offence. Suspension is only the beginning of his problems. I'm sending a drug squad to his flat right this minute to strip it to its bones and look for anything else. And if I find something, just one illicit pill, he's sacked.'

She nodded sharply, but otherwise didn't move a muscle.

'So anyway, he's all yours,' Lestrade said tiredly. He threw a thumb over his shoulder. 'Have at him.' He would take some satisfaction in knowing that, no matter the dressing down he'd already given, Donovan would punch twice as hard.

But Donovan made an about face and powerwalked in the opposite direction, toward the exit.

'Donovan!' Lestrade called. 'He asked for you specifically!'

Feigning deafness, she didn't so much as look over her shoulder or lift an offensive finger. But she betrayed herself enough when she reached the door and threw it open with a bang. Then she disappeared.

Lestrade sighed. Perhaps she was right. They had jobs to do. Donovan needed to get to Baker Street, and Lestrade to Belmarsh. Thomas Dryers could go to hell.

Donovan was halfway through punching in her initials in Morse when she remembered there was no more need for it. Baker Street now had a security system to rival the Bank of England.

They let her up, but she found them both on their feet, John zipping a jacket and Sherlock by the window, already in his coat, studying the street. He must have seen her come up and fumble with the buzzer.

'We're heading out,' he informed her without bothering to turn around. 'If this is to do with a case—'

'It's to do with your case. As ever. But you're free to go, Holmes. It's Watson I need to talk to.'

Sherlock slowly rotated from the window to regard her with an air of surprise. As if anything to do with John Watson had nothing to do with him!

'Regarding?'

'It's about Bill Murray.' John's hands fell from the zip. 'Isn't it?'

Donovan gave a curt nod. 'We've initiated a nondisclosed manhunt to police agencies throughout the country, and Lestrade's assigned me as primary. I'm here to gather more information.'

'A manhunt,' Sherlock repeated, casting a side-long glance at John.

'You think he's a criminal,' said John tightly. 'Like Moran.'

'We're trying to establish his connection to Moran with something more substantial than that photograph. But he's gone underground. His wife hasn't seen him in months.'

'Then are you sure he's even still alive?' Sherlock asked.

In her periphery, John stiffened and looked to the door.

'He's alive,' she said. 'He still makes contact with his wife, from time to time. But she doesn't know how to find him.'

'Do we have to do this now?' John asked impatiently. 'We're on our way . . . out.'

Sherlock frowned, and Donovan shook her head. Sympathetic, their intent to visit Sherlock's brother. Reasonable, the suggestion that Murray might be dead. But neither sympathy nor reasonable objection had priority over the task at hand. 'You'll appreciate, I'm sure, that ferreting out Murray is already long overdue.'

Conceding, though not happily, John slowly began to remove his coat.

Sherlock casually unwound the scarf from his neck. 'Then you might want to start by interrogating the man who has refused to name him.'

Digging her hands into her jacket pockets, she shook her head. 'Stubbins is done talking. He's dead.'

John froze, halfway out of his sleeves.

'How?' Sherlock demanded.

'Belmarsh corrections officers found him dead in the showers. Toothbrush whittled down to a shiv was found in a drain. He bled out before he was discovered.'

'When?'

'Just a few hours ago.'

Slowly, John rotated away from her, and from Sherlock, apparently shocked by the news.

'Who—?' Sherlock persisted.

'No witnesses. No suspects. Yet. No particular motive, either. Stubbins wasn't a known target of any gangs or prisoners.'

'He was a target in an attack last autumn.'

'We know.'

'I should—'

'We're looking at all angles,' she continued. 'Meanwhile, we have other irons in the fire, so to speak. And we never know just how time sensitive these things are, do we? Therefore.' She nodded to John. 'We need to talk.'

'I'll meet you there, Sherlock,' said John.

'I'll stay.'

'There's no need,' Donovan began.

'Of course there is. You'll miss something.'

She scoffed, grossly affronted. Lestrade might put up with such casual insults, but Donovan sure as hell didn't have to. 'Excuse me?'

'Sherlock, you should be with Mycroft,' said John, to ease the tension.

Quite unexpectedly, Sherlock went from placid to enraged in the blink of an eye. 'Mycroft is a vegetable!' He punched a closed fist down by his side. 'I don't know why we were even bothering to go in the first place!' He balled his scarf and threw it aside; it landed in the ashes of the hearth.

John winced, and Donovan cringed, and in the ensuing quiet, Sherlock, who seemed to sense he had crossed some sort of line, took a harsh breath and sigh. But he didn't appear any calmer when he said next: 'Tea, sergeant.'

'No, thank you,' she murmured.

'Water then. Sit.'

And he stomped off toward the kitchen.

John looked at her apologetically and extended a hand to his own armchair, which Donovan knew perfectly well was his, so often she had been in the flat. So she ignored the hand and pulled a chair from the table. Soon, Sherlock returned with a pitcher of water and three tumblers, and he proceeded to pour.

'You may commence at any time,' he said thinly as he passed her the glass.

Fighting against the impulse to snap at him that she knew damn well how to do her job, she accepted the glass and took a small sip. Sherlock settled himself in his own chair and crossed a leg over.

'Let's start with the last time you spoke to Bill Murray.'

'Wrong.'

'Holmes, I swear to God . . .'

'Start at the beginning, John. The first time you met Bill Murray.' He flashed a tight, fake smile at Donovan. 'It's the only logical place to start.'

John's eyes spoke his apologies once again as he conceded to Sherlock's request, not hers. But he seemed to be steeling himself, and his left hand was balled tightly in his lap. Then he began:

'I've known Bill for years, even before we served together in Afghanistan. But Bill and I, we travelled in different circles, so it was a wonder we met before deployment. I did training at Sandhurst, he went to Pirbright. They're only ten miles apart, but at the same time, when you're in training, it's like you're in a bubble, and the world beyond the perimeter of the camp didn't even exist. But sometimes, on the weekends, to escape the hell of training modules, the lads from both centres often met up in Frimley. There was a hospital there where we sometimes did rotations to keep our skills sharp, but more importantly, there was a pub. The Old Wheatsheaf. A bit posh for army boys, but as doctors and CMTs, we were tolerated well enough. That's where I met him. He'd come with his lads, I came with mine. And we got on. He even met Harry a few times because, well, when she found out we were frequenting a pub . . . Anyway, Bill was a laugh. And God, that's exactly what . . . That is, it was a time in my life when I needed a laugh. Anyway.'

He reached for his water and drank it half gone, and Donovan realised then that Sherlock hadn't brought water for her benefit at all. It was for John.

'Did he talk much about himself?' she asked. 'Family? Hobbies? Politics?'

'Back then? No. Really, we didn't know each other all that well. We were weekend mates, and all we talked about was sport and women. He had a girl waiting for him, like half the men there. That didn't stop him from chatting up every skirt that walked past the table, but as far as I knew, he was faithful to his girl. We'd both played rugby, once upon a time, and we both pretended to still care about the English Premiership. He'd mentioned that his dad had passed, so we had that in common, too. But really, we didn't get personal. We were there to relax and have a good time. Med-speak was forbidden, army concerns were left at the barracks, and personal matters weren't welcome at all. We were young, practically kids. We wouldn't have known how to talk about that kind of stuff anyway. Just seemed like a regular bloke, same as any.'

'Did he seem to take any interest in you, specifically?'

John shrugged. 'Like I said, we got on. I'd say we were fast friends, but there was nothing particularly, you know, remarkable about it.' His eyes met Sherlock's for a moment, then fell away as he returned his glass to the side table. 'Look. Bill's a good guy. Always was. Not malicious, not conniving, not—'

'What about easily manipulated?' asked Sherlock.

John's mouth opened, ready with a quick denial. But he closed it again.

'What?' Donovan pressed.

He shrugged, but it was the action of a man trying to convince himself more than anyone. 'We were soldiers. We followed orders, no questions asked. And you do that long enough, you stop even thinking the questions. You just do. Obedience is drilled into you from day one. If you call that being manipulated . . .'

'Trained to follow orders,' she repeated. 'Like those coming from, say, a colonel.'

John frowned. 'Chain of authority, Sally.' His voice hardened. 'And he is not a colonel. Not anymore. Moran was stripped of his title and authority when he defected.'

She wasn't convinced. 'Trained is trained. And loyalties shift.'

Again, John's eyes flitted to Sherlock, and away again just as quickly.

'Let's move ahead to—' She cut off when her phone went off in her pocket. She had forgotten to silence it and muttered a quick apology while she dug her hand into her jacket and extracted the mobile. Her gut twisted when she saw that it was an incoming call from Thomas Dryers. A tendril of anger flared up and she smashed her finger against the button to silence him. She put it on vibrate and shoved it back into her jacket pocket.

'Sorry. Moving on to when you were both deployed. Did you work closely together from the start?'

John shook his head. 'My roulement unit was deployed first, about six weeks before Bill's. I was with the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, first stationed at Camp Bastion in the Helmand province. This was 2006, and things were heating up. The Taliban attacks were becoming more violent, and the death toll was rising. Plenty of work for an army doctor, believe me. Thirty-nine of our troops died that year, the civilian count was in the hundreds, and it was only going to get worse. Every day, if we weren't in the infirmary, we were in the backs of Land Rovers to collect the casualties and treat them either on site or transport them back. Sometimes we were caught in the crossfires; sometime we had to administer emergency aid in the sand. I remember falling asleep with my ears still ringing with the punch of gunfire or the whistle of rocket launchers. I smelt of other men's blood even after showering. In that world, you either spend a lot of time thinking of loved ones back home, or you forget you ever had them. I was the kind to forget. It was easy. With my parents dead, I had no one to write me letters, drop the occasional email, send me birthday cards. Other men, for their wives' birthdays or their kids' first day of school, video chatted via satellite. I tried that, a few times. With Harry. But she never remembered we had set a date.

'That's when I met Bill again. Private Murray, as he was. End of 2007. At that time, he'd nearly completed his specialist trauma course and would become a lance corporal by January. I had the hour to call home, in the com room, but Harry wasn't answering her damn phone, so I was just sitting there, half listening, half not, to the conversation on the other side of the cubicle. Bloke talking to his girlfriend, laughing, teasing her about something or other, and in time, I realised that I recognised the voice. I'm surprised I didn't pin him sooner: his voice is quite distinct. It's not quite a lisp, just a thick tongue and a bonded retainer along his upper incisors. He used to joke that if he was ever blown to smithereens, they would identify him right away by those God-awful teeth. Anyway, he'd been reassigned to Camp Bastion because of our need for more CMTs, and that's when we started working together, in and out of the camp. Traumas and surgeries and the like.'

'What was your opinion of him?' Donovan asked. The phone buzzed in her pocket. She pretended she didn't notice.

'As a professional? I would have given him a strong recommendation. Highly competent in his field. Quick learner. Reliable. The kind of CMT you want to have at your right elbow, you know?'

'And aside from his professional capacity?'

'Again,' said John, 'I considered him a friend. I don't know what more I can say about that. Until I saw him in that photograph, I never had any reason to think anything else. Even now I'm not sure what to think. I know you want me to point to something murky in his past, something that says he's been untrustworthy, that he's been in league with the devil all along. You don't think I haven't been wracking my brain for days, trying to find something? Questioning everything he ever said or did, everything I ever knew about him? But still, still, I can't see Bill as the kind of man who would do me deliberate harm. Any man harm. One thing I know for certain: he saved my life. He saved me. He's the reason I'm alive today, right now, sitting in this flat, in this chair.' John stared meaningfully at Sherlock now, and this time his eyes didn't fall away. 'I don't forget a thing like that. I owe my life to any man who saves it.'

Holding her peace, Donovan sat as silent observer as the pair of them looked at each other, and if she weren't a natural sceptic, she would have assumed a kind of telepathy transpiring between them. It was communication on some level at least, and for a moment, just a moment, she envied whatever bond held those two men together. Holmes and Watson. A stranger pair she couldn't have named. And yet it made all the sense in the world.

It was Sherlock who broke the quiet.

'The truth of Bill Murray,' he said, his voice mellow but backlit by fire, 'will come to light only when we find him. That is the point of this interrogation, is it not, sergeant? So let's move on.'

Any envy of being the close compatriot of one Sherlock Holmes disappeared. Good lord, if she had to put up with that every day!

She controlled her face so as not to scowl. 'When were you invalided home, John?'

'October of 2009,' said John. 'Four days after I was shot, when it was safe to move me. I was in a military recovery ward for two weeks, here in London. That's when they told me I would not be returning to active service.'

'And Murray? When did he return?'

'Um,' said John, thinking. 'Late November, it would have been.'

'So soon after you?'

'Might have been early December.'

'Was he wounded in action?'

'No no, nothing like that,' said John. 'It was medical.' He cleared his throat. 'DVT.'

Sherlock's eyebrows lifted and he leant forward, elbows to knees. 'DVT,' he repeated.

'What's—?' Donovan started.

John cut her off, glaring at Sherlock 'Deep vein thrombosis. A blood clot. And I know what you're thinking, Sherlock.'

'What's he thinking?' Donovan asked, ears pricked and senses alert to the suspicious charge emanating from the amateur detective.

Sherlock leant back again, and his fingertips joined together as he entered lecture-mode. 'Untreated, DVT is potentially fatal and grounds for an honourable discharge from the service. It's also notorious for being difficult to diagnose, often exhibiting few to zero symptoms, and accounting for the majority discharges based on documented but unproved medical complications.'

'You're saying he faked it?'

'No,' said John.

'Possibly,' said Sherlock.

'Sherlock.'

'He was a CMT, John. He would have known how to do it.'

Donovan nodded, intrigued by the theory. If Murray was indeed keeping an eye on John, even back then, he would need to find a way to get himself back to England to continue the job. The timing of his discharge was too suspicious, being so soon after John's. But that would have meant a connection to Moran from at least six years ago, and that just didn't make sense!

'How did you find out about his blood clot?' she asked.

'He told me,' said John, a little defensive now. 'He was in London and we met up for drinks, and he mentioned that he was taking blood thinners for the DVT. And one does not take blood thinners for non-symptoms!'

'Might have been lying,' Sherlock murmured.

'When was this?' asked Donovan.

'Uh, January, I guess. Mid to late Janu—'

'Thursday, January 28, 2010,' Sherlock rattled off, like a computer.

John huffed a short, bemused laugh. 'How would you know that?'

'You blogged about it. January 28, the day before your strange meeting with an arrogant, public school, though strangely likeable madman.' The corner of Sherlock's mouth drew up a tick.

'Got that thing memorised, do you?' John said, returning the grin.

'Filed away.'

'All right, boys, let's stay on track,' said Donovan.

John cleared his throat and conceded to the expert. 'Late January, then.'

'And how often did the two of you meet up? See him, or talk to him?'

'Three, maybe four times, whenever he happened to be in London. He got married, started his family, so he had plenty to be going on with. And once I'd moved to Baker Street, life got busy for me too. I was working at the surgery, and when I wasn't, there were Sherlock's cases. Bill and I, though, we kept in touch. Mostly through the blog, I guess. He invited me to visit him in Edgware once or twice, but I never made the time, and he never insisted. But I know he read the blog. He commented frequently.'

'During those three or four times, did he talk to you about any of his affairs?'

John started. 'His what?'

'Or perhaps mention any of the other women in his life, even just a name, someone he had a particular liking for or might go to if he were in trouble?'

'God no. I thought . . . He was happy with Fran. Jesus, I can't believe . . .'

For the third time, her phone buzzed insistently. Sherlock's eyebrow rose. 'Answer it, why don't you?'

'I'm working,' she snapped. 'Go on, John. Did Murray ever mention to you that he was struggling with PTSD?'

This seemed to surprise him, too. 'No. Shit, that is, I didn't know. I wouldn't doubt it, but I didn't know.'

'Why wouldn't you doubt it?'

'We were in a war, Sgt Donovan. The things we saw and did every day is enough to give any man nightmares.'

'How do you know Murray had PTSD?' asked Sherlock. 'And affairs?'

'His wife,' said Donovan. 'She seemed to know for certain about the infidelity, but the PTSD was never diagnosed, as far as she knows. She just suspected.' Why was she telling them this, as if they were part of her investigation? Berating herself, Donovan course-corrected. 'So the last time you had any contact with Murray was when?'

John took another drink. 'Not for years. Not since I last maintained the blog.'

'March 16, 2011,' Sherlock supplied. It was like he had studied for an exam. 'Incidentally, the same day Jim Moriarty hacked your blog.'

'March? Isn't that when—?' Donovan started, but her question was anticipated.

'When that spider broke into the Tower of London and stole the Crown Jewels? That was the 17th. Trial—and acquittal—was in April, and—'

'Your disappearing act was in June, yes, I remember,' said Donovan.

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow, but she couldn't tell whether he was insulted by her flippant characterisation of his faked suicide, or amused.

'What did he say? Bill Murray. In his final comment on your blog?'

John shrugged. 'Just some bad puns about the hound.'

'And since then? He hasn't left any comment on your last post? You know, the'—she searched for the most befitting word and could only settle on one—'tribute?'

Sombre, John shook his head no.

'No phone calls since last October, no emails, no post?'

'Nothing, Sally.'

'And since identifying Murray in the photograph last week, have you attempted to contact him?'

His chest swelled slowly with a long inhalation before he spoke. 'I've been busy.'

'Good. Don't.'

'Why not?' asked Sherlock mildly, like goading a schoolteacher.

'Like I said, he's gone underground. No one has seen him since January, and the last time he called his wife was in March. He doesn't know we've identified him in that photograph alongside Everett Stubbins, so he's likely ignorant that we've connected him to this case at all. We don't want to give him the heads up, do we?'

'When?' Sherlock pressed.

'When what?'

'When in March? What was the date?'

Donovan shook her head and closed her eyes, hating to give the answer. 'If Mrs Murray remembers it right, it morning of March the 8th. No one has heard from him since.'

'March 8,' John whispered.

'Bloody hell,' said Sherlock. 'What did he say!'

'Sounded to me like a farewell,' said Donovan.

'He's not—' But John's voice caught, and he couldn't continue. His trembling hand reached for the tumbler to the table, but he seemed to think twice and retreated, lest he slosh water over his lap.

'Exactly what efforts are being made to find him?' Sherlock asked tightly.

'Every effort. We've got eyes on his house twenty-four seven, and we're tracking all incoming calls, monitoring his credit cards, using facial recognition software with CCTV. We have eyes on the day nursery his oldest son attends, in case he tries to see his children. We've been to his last place of employment and interviewed colleagues and supervisors . . .' She trailed off, realising she was actively reporting her progress. Then she finished pathetically. 'We've got it covered, and Bill Murray is my number one priority. I'm going to ferret out this bastard.'

'You're making a mistake,' John whispered. His voice was strained with emotion, quavering as though out of fear but fuelled by anger. 'You think he's a criminal, but he's not. He can't be.'

'I hope that's true.' But Donovan knew her sad attempt at appeasing him rang hollow. 'But his name is embroiled in too much suspicion. I cannot imagine him an innocent in all of this.'

'He's missing, goddammit, like I was missing. Isn't it more likely he's being held against his will? What if they're hurting him, starving him, torturing him, like they did to me?'

'And letting him call home?' Donovan said dubiously, but Sherlock's challenge was more to the point.

'What for, John? What would be the point?'

'To get to me! To get to you! That's what all of this has been about, every bit of it! They're going after what few friends I have left.'

'You're not thinking rationally. Bill's involvement stretches back to last summer, at least. The photograph proves it. He went missing only last January.'

'That doesn't mean he was free. They may have been threatening him otherwise, making him . . . do things. Against his will. I can't believe he's complicit in any of it, I just can't.'

'Well, we won't know until we find him, will we?' said Donovan. 'Victim or not, we need to find him. On that, I'm sure we can agree.'

John glared, but through misty eyes. His conceding nod was curt at best.

'So like I said'—she rose to her feet—'don't make contact. But if he contacts you, for whatever reason, you'll tell me, won't you?'

'Yes,' said Sherlock, but he was looking at John, whose pale face made Donovan think maybe he was about to be sick. She should leave.

She was buttoning her jacket and had turned toward the door, about to offer a cursory thank you for the water, when Sherlock said, a little softly, 'John.'

Donovan turned back, thinking the conversation was still ongoing. Only, with the intensity of the stare Sherlock was directing at John, and the way John was looking back at him—head bowed and fists clenched, but looking back all the same—she realised that, as far as they both were concerned, she was no longer even in the room.

'Guilty or not, Murray will lead us to Moran. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes,' John said, or at least tried to. His breath struggled to bypass the thickness of his throat.

Donovan didn't—couldn't—understand it, whatever it was that made it work. Them. Their friendship, bond, co-dependency, whatever it was. She didn't understand how John made an insufferable Sherlock Holmes tolerable, or how Sherlock made a broken John Watson whole. It was incomprehensible, to her at least, why either of them would gravitate toward the other to begin with. At the start, they had seemed utterly incompatible. So why did they make sense now?

And it was with a stroke of horror that she realised she wanted . . . that. Well, whatever the hell it was they had. Not that she bought stock in the rumour mill down at the Yard about what they were, or ever had been. Nevertheless, it was something enviable, their partnership, and some version of it, she wanted for herself. She was tired of being, well, alone.

Quite unwittingly, she thought of Dryers, and as she did, the phone yet again vibrated against her hip. Furious, she squeezed it through the fabric to shut it up.

Abruptly, Sherlock rose to his feet. 'Thank you, Sgt Donovan, that will be all. Give the impatient caller in your pocket my regards.'

'Curious, isn't it, John?'

Sherlock watched Donovan stride away from the front door, glance once at her phone, and ram it back into her pocket without taking or making a call. Behind him, John was reaching again for his coat, but Sherlock made no move to do the same.

John made an inquisitive hum.

'Less than a week after Bill Murray is identified, Everett Stubbins, the one man we know can give us information about him, ends up dead before he can be questioned. Let us think. Why should such a thing happen? How many of us knew Murray was the man in the photograph?'

There was a long pause. Slowly, Sherlock rotated from the window. John stood stock still, face blank, eyes cast downward at his shoes.

'There was me and you, Lestrade and Molly—'

'Lestrade would have told the Yarders,' said John.

'Yes.'

John shifted his weight, lifted his head. A small light of defiance shone in his eyes.

'Perhaps another spy,' Sherlock suggested mildly.

John quirked his head. 'Perhaps Stubbins just got unlucky.'

'Pity.'

'Yes.'

Another long pause followed as Sherlock waited for John to contribute something greater to the conversation. A little more concern, a touch more horror, or something more specific. But there was nothing. Instead, John said, 'We should get to going . . .'

'Mycroft isn't going anywhere,' Sherlock said shortly. 'You and I. We have work to do, wouldn't you say?'

'What work?'

'Bill Murray. We're going to find him.'

At last, John's expression broke, revealing exasperation. 'We just promised Donovan—'

'I said that only to appease her and circumvent a pointless row. In fact, let's make this a game. First one to Murray wins.'

'Sherlock. This isn't a game.'

'Oh come now, John, I should think you would jump at the opportunity. You think Murray's above reproach? Let's find him first and verify it for ourselves, before London's finest get the wrong idea and haul him away with flashing lights. What do you say?'

John pursed his lips and half turned away to hide his expression, but Sherlock didn't need to see it to know what was really behind his objection. He was afraid to find Murray and discover that he was not, in fact, above reproach. But if that were the case, then didn't John deserve to be the one to know it first?

'Please, John. I can do this. I can find him.'

'Why does it have to be you?' John asked. His throat was tightening again.

'Because I haven't—' He stopped, not quite knowing what he was trying to say, or rather, how to say it. 'I haven't had a win for a long, long time. But I can solve this one. Please. Come with me. Let's solve it together.'

The cool flint melted from John's eyes, transforming into the soft grey Sherlock had grown to rely on. 'We sure could use a win,' he said.

'So you'll come with me.'

'Of course. Of course I will.' He nodded, not for Sherlock's sake, but for his own. 'Let's go find Bill.'

'Are you sure you want to do that?'

Sherlock's eyes lifted from the board, only to see a sinister grin and two black eyes staring him down. Pointedly, he lifted his finger from the white knight, his turn completed.

Moriarty tsked. 'Risky, Sherlock, quite, quite risky. Foolhardy, even, exposing your knight like that.'

'I don't think so.'

'Ooh. Rather cocky today, aren't we?' Moriarty leant back and stretched out his legs, elbows bent and hands behind his head serving as a headrest. 'I like cocky-you. Hubris, is what it is. You know what that leads to, don't you?' He tipped his head back and whistled a high-pitched note, which gradually descended a sliding scale as his head slowly fell forward.

'Not this time,' said Sherlock, before Moriarty could reach the end.

'The wheel turns. Nothing is ever new.'

'The last domino doesn't have to fall. I can stop it.'

'You're not a hero. And he's not ready.'

'He's stronger than you know.'

'A wildcard. He's gone rogue.'

'I'll join him.'

'You don't control his fate, sweetheart.'

'I should never have tried.'

Moriarty smiled his devilish smile. 'You're kidding yourself. You do know that. He'll end in disaster, Sherlock. He always does.'

Sherlock leant into the table and fixed Moriarty with an unwavering glare. 'Not this time.'