The conversation with Janine was easier than John had expected. Easier - and more perplexing.

'Did that bastard friend of yours get engaged to me just to break into my boss's office?' she asked, as soon as John walked into the cubicle.

'Technically, I don't think that you actually got engaged,' John said, 'At least, I can't recall you saying yes.'

'Ah, but the papers won't know that, will they.'

'The papers? Janine, what are you going to do?'

'Oh, extract a little revenge I think. I haven't quite decided yet,' she said, still pressing an ice pack to the back of her head. 'Sweet Mother Mary, I've got no idea what I got hit with, but it felt like a crowbar.'

'Pistol butt, we think.'

'Oh, pistol butt. Classy. I suppose I should count myself lucky that he only hit me with it, then. Did they catch the guy?'

'Not yet, no. I take it you didn't get a good look at him?'

'I didn't even see him. I was walking towards the door to meet Sherlock. Next thing I remember I was waking up on the floor, and you were there. Wasn't you was it?'

'No, of course not!' John said indignantly.

'Ah - I'm only teasing, John. Trying to prove that my sense of humour has survived intact. Where is Sherlock, by the way? Too chicken to come and apologise himself? He does realise that he's almost certainly lost me my job?'

'He -' he looked up at Donovan, who had accompanied him back into the cubicle to see Janine, but she just shrugged. Damn, he had assumed that she would have told Janine what had happened.

'He got shot, Janine. By whoever attacked you, we assume.'

Janine went white and her free hand flew to her mouth. 'But he's okay, isn't he? I mean, he's going to be okay.'

'We - don't know,' John said quietly, wondering how many more times that evening he was going to have to have the same conversation. 'He's in surgery at the moment. It could go either way.'

'Well that's one hell of a way to stop someone being pissed off with you,' Janine muttered.

'Janine - about you and Sherlock -'

'Oh save it, John, I knew it wasn't real, I knew it wouldn't last. I was just curious to see how far he'd take it. I should have known that he had an ulterior motive. After all,' she gave John a wry smile, 'I'm not exactly his type am I?'

'Oddly enough, I don't have a clue what his type is,' John said.

'Don't your now,' Janine said, and she gave John a look which was half puzzled and half disbelieving. 'Ah, he's a funny one, your Sherlock Holmes, but he's certainly an experience that I'll never forget.'

'What do you mean?' John asked.

'Well that's for me to know and you to read in the papers isn't it?' she said, moving the ice pack off her head and wincing. 'Ouch. Well if you don't have any other questions for me, Sergeant Donavan, then I'm for my bed. Alone,' this last word pointedly directed at John. 'But then there's no real change there, is there?'

'Janine,' John said as she jumped down off the trolley and picked her bag up from the chair. 'What you said about the papers. You wouldn't really, would you?'

'Give my love to Mary,' she said as she walked out of the cubicle with a smirk.

'Don't say a word,' John said to Sally Donovan, as she opened her mouth to comment.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' she said - 'But-'

'Leave it, Sally,' Greg Lestrade said, pulling back the curtains on the cubicle. 'You wouldn't like John when he's angry - believe me, it's not a pretty sight.'

John opted to go with Greg to try and interview the security guard, but he could add little more than Janine. He too, had been taken by surprise, hit over the head by a heavy object from behind as he patrolled the office area. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. The intruder had entered like a ghost, leaving no sign of their presence.

'Fingerprints?' he asked Greg as they walked back into the interview room, which was temporarily empty. Anderson had gone back to the lab to help analyse the samples from the crime scene, and Sally was off on a search for more caffeine.

'Nothing,' he said. 'At least none that we can't track to people who should have been there - and you and Sherlock, of course.'

'DNA?'

'Not looking good. But there's something else, John, come and look at this.' He spun the computer round, so that John could see the computerised model of the crime scene.

'Look at where you found Sherlock,' he said. 'He didn't get shot at the door when he surprised the intruder, he walked all the way into the room. The intruder let him know that he was all the way inside the room. Now assuming that the intruder got there first, and was already threatening Magnussen, why would he have done that? If the intruder intended to shoot him, why not do it straight away? Why wait?'

'Well, you know Sherlock,' John said, with a forced smile. 'Always got the gift of the gab. He'd try to negotiate with the devil given half a chance.'

'But why would the shooter have let him? Why not just shoot him directly? And then why not shoot Magnussen too? It doesn't add up John.' Greg ran a hand through his cropped hair. 'Something more must have happened in that room. We just have to hope that Sherlock wakes up and is able to tell us.'