Clarity, Confirmation

Clarity. John's proposal had been presented in too thought-through a form to have come out of the blue. Sherlock had known it at once, but said nothing until the next day.

"It didn't just cross your mind yesterday, did it?" he reopened the subject while they sat on the floor of the Hammersmith house John had lived in with Mary, sorting through stacks of books.

"Hmm? What?"

"Your generous offer to jump the fence for me."

"No. I'd been meaning to bring it up for a while," John readily admitted, looking through a pile of Henry James novels that were a mix of his and Mary's.

"Why?" Sherlock asked, reaching out to draw Rosie back from toddling head first into a tower of paperbacks.

"I gave it serious thought after Sherrinford, and after absorbing everything Mary had told me while she was with us and even when she'd left us," John said quietly, starting to put the James books into the "keep" box. "At the risk of sounding insufferably egomaniacal, I've accepted that you don't seem to do well without me for long. I care about you. So if any half-acceptable arrangement with me works to keep you from plunging into something self-destructive, then it works for me too."

"What makes you think I might be doing something self-destructive?" Sherlock questioned, setting Rosie on her feet by the sofa, away from sharp hardback corners.

"I may not be able to deduce things like you do, but I know you, Sherlock," John said. "You have someone on your mind. You had that look the whole time we were dealing with Irene Adler. And you had that same look when you were thinking about being with me – no, don't deny it – I never bought any of your 'married to my work' crap… oh God, I hope 'crap' doesn't turn out to be Rosie's first proper word… anyway, I know you contemplated an arrangement of convenience with me in the past. Now you've got that look again, but it's not directed at me any more. If it's someone who isn't safe for you, then I'd rather you were with me. Simple as that."

"Appallingly practical," Sherlock muttered.

"Do you expect me to do it with wine, roses and diamonds, Sherlock?"

"I don't expect you to do it at all. As I said yesterday, thanks, but arrangements of convenience aren't best for us. I no longer want to trap you in one, and you probably don't want to restrict me to one either. That book you're holding – The Golden Bowl – remember Charlotte? Trapped. And Amerigo? Trapped. Amerigo's ambiguous words to Maggie: 'I see nothing but you' – that was bleak. She'd left him with nothing else to see but herself. I'd never want that for us."

"I can't believe you've read this book," John laughed. "Isn't it all so meandering with its refusal to pin down what anything means or exactly what is happening in the characters' heads that it's the very sort of novel you would have blown up in the fireplace?"

"If you found it that bad, why are you putting it in the 'keep' box?" Sherlock countered.

"I didn't say I found it bad – I only thought you would. I liked it once I came to terms with its vagueness. And Mary liked the essence of it. Well, she did also say that she'd never waste time rereading it. But I'm still keeping it."

Sherlock knew that John's unspoken thoughts as he laid the book in the box were: "I'll reread it for her, even if she says she wouldn't have. I think she would have, one day. If she'd had more time."

They had moved past the stage when Sherlock constantly felt the need to atone for Mary's death and had to hold himself back from asking John to please just hit him again, kick him again – break his bones, even – if it would make him feel better. And John was progressing beyond the stage where he had been able to talk about Mary to anyone except Sherlock. At unpredictable intervals, the grief, guilt and anger would surface, but the pain was no longer searing, and they knew it would grow milder with time.

"What would it have been like, John, if we'd entered into an arrangement back when I could see nothing but you, and you were still looking around?" It was Sherlock's very first outright admission that he had once been romantically interested in John. The significance of the moment wasn't as overwhelming as he'd imagined.

John matched Sherlock's calmness by not making a big deal of it. He just thought about it while scooping Rosie into his lap when she walked unsteadily over from the sofa. His answer, when it came, was unvarnished and honest: "I'd have felt guilty all the time, knowing you were sexually and romantically attracted to me much more than I could be to you. My infatuation with your intellect wouldn't have been enough to balance it out, and it wouldn't have been fair to you in the long term."

"And now?"

"After going through what feels like every variation of hell with you, I appreciate you more as a human being and my best friend, and you're less blind to the worst failings in my character. Things seem more even," John said.

"I see."

"Would you have accepted my offer a few years ago? When things were much more uneven between us?"

"My initial reaction might have been yes," Sherlock said slowly. "Anything would have seemed better than nothing. But if I'd taken a moment to predict the eventual outcome, I would have seen that I would grow to resent always being the one who wanted more, the one always in danger of being deserted, the one with more to lose."

"And now?" John echoed Sherlock's question from a moment ago.

"Right now, if it isn't desperately wanted or needed by either of us, let's not settle for it as a might-as-well option."

"Fair enough. But remember – if you're about to make a daft decision on whoever's put that look on your face, I still want you to talk to me first."

"Noted."

"Where's that pile of Ruth Rendell mysteries I don't want any more?" John wondered. "It's not in the box for Oxfam…"

Sherlock continued sorting the books and alternately playing with Rosie as she walked, crawled and rolled about while pondering what his conversation with John had helped him to clarify. His conclusion: He couldn't do this to Mycroft – he couldn't do to him what John was offering to do to Sherlock. It wouldn't be fair.

Naturally, it was accepted that an elder sibling might care much more for a younger one, and many family relationships were heavily unequal. But it wasn't right between partners. Although Mycroft had borne the one-sidedness in the years when he had compelled himself to regard Sherlock as no more than his brother, it would be wrong to deprive him of a more equitable relationship now. Sherlock wanted better for him.

He never wanted Mycroft to arrive at a point where he might be driven to echo Annabella's words to Giovanni: "Do not betray me to your mirth or hate; / Love me, or kill me, brother."

"You should talk to Mycroft too," John murmured, with uncanny timing.

"What about?" he asked, keeping his face neutral, because John couldn't possibly know about them.

"As and when you're about to go for something irretrievably foolish, at least make a passing mention of it to your brother," John advised. "He may mock you mercilessly, or perhaps shackle you and toss you into a padded cell, but at least you'll have his perspective – which nearly always tries to keep you more or less physically and mentally intact. And that's a good thing, in case you've forgotten."

"Hmm."

"Give me your hand."

"What?"

"You heard me, genius. Don't make me repeat myself."

His left arm was wrapped around Rosie, so Sherlock extended his right hand. John took it in both of his own, and held Sherlock's gaze. Immediately, Sherlock saw what John was doing, because he himself had done the very same thing to Irene Adler at Christmas four years ago. And doctor that he was, John had unerringly found his pulse and was scrutinising his eyes.

"Warm and steady," John commented, a smile touching the corners of his eyes.

That rang a bell. Sherlock did a swift search of the storehouses of his memory, bearing in mind that he and John were at present going through books and had just mentioned literary works, so the context they were in had very likely prompted a reference for John to echo. That meant he should narrow his search to… ah… got it. "Could you be more obvious, Mr Rochester?"

John chuckled. "Well done, Jane." Still holding Sherlock's hand, he then went on to remark: "This is truly a change, though. Your body, at last, is backing up what you've been telling me in words."

"What's changed?"

"The way you look at me, the way your pulse doesn't jump quite so strongly any more when we're in physical contact."

"You do recall, don't you, John, that nearly every time we've been in physical contact, it's also been because we were in mortal danger?" Sherlock asked, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

"Yes, but there have been tamer occasions. Don't think I never noticed your pulse racing. I was just…"

"Too polite to mention it?" he asked, readjusting a squirming Rosie against his left hip when he felt a trail of her drool seeping into his shirt.

"Yup," John grinned. "So things really have changed because of this mysterious someone on your mind?"

Sherlock answered carefully: "I would say that things have changed because I recently recalled something from many years ago that I'd forgotten for a long time. I remembered what it was like to be truly loved by someone in every possible way. I remembered what it was like to mean the world to that person. Having remembered it, I could no longer compromise by accepting anything less."

"Someone from your past loved you that much, and you forgot?"

"I forgot many things of importance."

"Like having a sister."

"What can I say? I have a peculiar mind."

"Want to talk about this person who loved you so much that I can no longer match up, with my uncommitted half-love?" John asked gently.

"I can't. Not yet. Perhaps not ever, because in many ways, this isn't just my own secret to keep – it affects someone else. But essentially, what this person gave me and did for me and felt for me – it's that or nothing for me now. Anything else would pale in comparison."

"Do you still know this person? Or have you found a substitute? Or are you bringing him to life in your mind and interacting with him there? I assume it's a he, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong."

Sherlock was forced to be vague in his reply: "Let's say it's a he. Even if I did still know him, I imagine he wouldn't be the same person he used to be. I can't say that I've found a substitute, in that sense, but I do have someone in mind."

"If it is indeed a he, then it's not Molly."

"No."

"She's someone who loves you in every possible way, though."

"I know. John, Molly will always mean more to me than I can adequately express to her. But her love isn't a realistic one rooted in the practical knowledge of how horrible I am to live with from hour to hour, or in the tedium of everyday life with a very human man who fails at many things in terrible ways. Hers is still the love of a woman idolising a man who seems perfect at one remove, but would never be able to give her the emotional affection she needs. You know what I'm like."

John gave a good-humoured smile laced around the edges with both sadness and exasperation as he said: "Oh yes, I know exactly what you're like. Well, I hope you know what you're doing. Molly would be good for you – you'd be terrible for her, but she'd be wonderful for you. So if it's not her, and you still can't talk to me about it, then I hope you'll make good decisions, whatever they are."

"Thank you, John."

Still holding Sherlock's hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed the backs of his fingers. It was a surprising gesture, but fitting, Jane Eyre-wise. That done, he let go, and they got back to sorting out stuff so John could take an objective look at the house before deciding whether to rent it out, keep it as it was so he would have an alternative home to raise Rosie in, or sell it and find another place when Rosie was a little older.

By late afternoon, with John's back aching, he announced that they had better leave the rest for tomorrow. They locked up, took a bus to the shops, got a takeaway from an Indian eatery Mary had liked, and rode the Tube back to Baker Street. They'd eaten and got Rosie fed and washed too, and were just settling down to some mindless telly when Sherlock's phone chimed with an incoming call from Lestrade.

"Tell me you have something half-decent for me, Lestrade," he said imperiously. "I spent the entire afternoon sorting through piles of dusty books for want of something better to do, and the three clients John and I saw in the morning came to us with puzzles so painfully dull, Rosie could have solved them. Paid well, though."

"Sherlock," Lestrade's voice was muted when it came over the line, which put him on immediate alert. "There's a hostage situation at the May Fair Hotel, with about sixty civilians under threat."

That very moment, the notification of an incoming text message chimed on Sherlock's phone, and he held the screen away from his ear just long enough to see that the sender was Anthea. He returned to the phone call from Lestrade, asking the DI: "Why are you calling me about this? Isn't your specialist firearms unit already there?"

He hoped for once that this would just turn out to be a pointless phone call prompted by Lestrade forgetting to use his brain, but he had an uneasy feeling about it.

"Our units are in place, Sherlock," Lestrade said gravely. "In fact, the whole area is just about overrun with what looks like every damn Home Office unit. It was a private dinner hosted by the Chinese ambassador – diplomats are among the hostages, and we're all dealing with the situation."

"Then what do you need me for?"

"I'm calling you partly because we may need you to puzzle out the most likely spots for the hostage-taker to have hidden the bombs she claims she's planted around the hotel. Or if she's even planted any. She could be lying."

"Okay," Sherlock said, still feeling on edge despite Lestrade having a legitimate reason for calling him.

He knew why when the DI uttered his next words: "But the main reason I'm calling you is that I think you should know: Mycroft is in there."

Confirmation. That morning had begun awkwardly for Mycroft. Lady Smallwood had looked at him strangely, thrice, during the highly classified meeting involving the most senior members of the Cabinet. And the cause of her odd looks wasn't the rather entertaining spectacle of Eldon Pennyfather and Bernard Walbrook receiving an off-the-record dressing-down by various parties, from the Prime Minister to the Secretary of Defence. They were getting a thorough skewering for Walbrook's role in the Sherrinford incident, and his and Pennyfather's foolishness years ago in lying about the Chinese treasures.

Although Mycroft had convinced the Cabinet not to open another official inquiry into the Sherrinford case beyond what they had already put Mycroft himself through in the immediate aftermath, it didn't stop the ministers in the know from figuratively meting out a flogging to Walbrook and reminding him, subtly and not so subtly, to leave operational matters to the people who actually knew how to manage them (in other words, Mycroft).

But none of that could possibly be the reason why Lady Smallwood had directed such intent looks at him. They didn't have one of their private transactions scheduled for today, so surely this wasn't her new idea of foreplay.

He found out when the meeting ended, and she walked with him to his JIC office. Once the door was closed and locked behind them, the awkwardness instantly increased in one sense while abating in another when she went straight to the point: "You have stubble burn on your face, Mycroft."

"Oh, I–"

"You've hidden it well. But I've seen you at much closer quarters than the rest of the Cabinet has, and I can tell where you've dabbed on the concealer. Have you known him long, or was it just a terribly passionate one-off?"

Feeling slightly relieved that she had brought it up first, and not wanting to insult her intelligence by pretending to be unsure about the conditions of his arrangement with her, he came clean at once without naming names: "I've known him for a long time, but we were never on such terms before."

"Don't sound so hesitant," she responded tranquilly. "We've never been exclusive, nor have we pretended to be. You needn't ask my permission to see anybody else. It makes things simpler for me too. I'd been wondering how to broach the matter of an old boyfriend from my schooldays. He's got in touch with me, and has made it plain that he wants to pick up where we left off when we were young, foolish and too temperamental to stay together."

Lady Smallwood had always been rather hard for him to read – as he'd learnt when he'd first thought she had been the one to betray A.G.R.A. years ago. When he'd questioned her then, he had found it hard to tell if she was speaking the truth. But now that he knew her better, his observations suggested it was very likely that there was indeed another man in her life.

"I hope you remember him with as much fondness as he seems to remember you, Alicia," Mycroft said to her in warm tones, feeling almost shy about the fact that he genuinely wished her very well and wanted her to be happy.

"Alfie's lovely," she stated, giving him, in return, what appeared to be a genuine smile. "My family didn't think he was good enough to date me when we were teenagers, but most of them aren't around any more, so who cares what they would have thought?"

"Indeed."

"What about your man, then? Is he important enough to terminate our arrangement for, or would you rather keep things open, depending on how it goes with me and Alfie?"

"He is important to me," he confessed. "I don't know if the commitment is equal on both sides, but I would like to give it a good chance to develop. If things go well for you and your Alfie, let's put us on hold for now, shall we?"

"Let's do that. I'll keep you updated," she said, stepping up to him to give him a peck on the cheek. "You do have to attend the Chinese ambassador's private party this evening, don't you?"

"I do."

"I fear you'll be in for a dreadfully dull time, but try to enjoy yourself, Mycroft."

"I will, Alicia."

She walked out of his office, leaving him to continue wondering if she truly had an old first love who was back in her life, or if she had said so to pre-empt what she must have suspected might be a forthcoming suggestion from him to end their arrangement.

In truth, he didn't think Sherlock would object to his carrying on with Lady Smallwood. He'd known him to be jealous of John's lovers, but Mycroft had never been on his "jealousy radar", for want of a better term. In fact, he would probably be relieved that Mycroft had someone else to distract him, now that he had seen and weighed the burden of his love. Regardless of what his brother might think, however, suspending this aspect of his relationship with Lady Smallwood was probably wise – one less complication in his life would be a good thing, as long as that one less complication wasn't Sherlock.

Besides, Lady Smallwood was no Molly Hooper, who had tried to make herself move past Sherlock while never giving up hope in her heart, then crumbling when she found herself still stuck in the same spot. Alicia was a woman who knew how to move on. This meant she had far more sense than Molly. It also meant that she was eminently more sensible than Mycroft, who hadn't moved on in more than sixteen years.

For now, he set aside the troubling idea that he might possibly have less sense than even Molly Hooper, and spent the afternoon reading the weekly reports from MI6, MI5 and the CID.

Some disturbing signals from suspected would-be troublemakers were indicated in these submissions: suspicious travel patterns, private meetings with unsavoury foreign parties, and purchases of items that could conceivably be used to make bombs or firearms (but these days, anyone with a 3D printer, or the patience to trawl through a million instructional sites on the internet, could make weapons from just about anything, so it might mean nothing). One or two of these individuals also seemed to be getting close to unlikely people such as teenage girls from normal families, or random contract workers who were not known to have access to key locations or personnel.

It was always a challenge for Mycroft to trust that the reports submitted to him were accurate, and had not left out crucial details that could change the whole picture. He often found himself troubled by the awareness that if something was not submitted to him in a report, then he didn't know about it, and could do nothing to prevent it. How many large-scale crimes were being planned right now that he knew nothing of, because no one had said anything to the authorities?

Most of the details provided did not indicate major terrorist activity underway. They only seemed to add up to individual anarchists awaiting an opportunity to make a move. And the services knew what to do about such cases – continue monitoring the individuals closely, and shut down the suppliers or contacts that might enable them to enact mischief.

However, the reports relating to British far-right extremists were a bit odd. Mycroft found himself scrutinising info about how four suspected far-right sympathisers under surveillance, none of which were known to be directly connected to one another, had been photographed over the past week with the same woman. She was a temp and contract odd-jobber named Cathy Hulme, who had no previous significant connection with extremists, and no criminal record.

The reports suggested that Hulme must be selling something – products, substances or information – that people out to stir up trouble might find useful. However, discreet investigations had uncovered nothing that the woman could possibly be providing. It was hard to tell if any items were being bought and sold, for most of the meetings took place in vehicles, where small packages could theoretically be exchanged and tucked away into bags or pockets.

Only one of the suspected sympathisers who had been in touch with her this past week had been found to have any sort of prior connection with her: Steve Rowe, a dog trainer, had a girlfriend who ran a temp staffing agency called Nifty Response – and this agency had Cathy Hulme on its books.

Mycroft made phone calls and asked to see the more detailed reports on the case. They arrived in his inbox within two minutes, and what he read in them did not disperse his gut sense that this was cause for concern.

"Anthea," he called through his office door, which was open at the moment as no visitors were expected.

"Yes, sir?" his trusty deputy appeared immediately, her eyes on her phone as usual. One day, he thought, she would find that it had been radioactively sealed to the palm of her hand.

"I need you to follow up on this case involving Cathy Hulme," he said. "Right now, if possible."

"The one that landed in your inbox ten minutes ago, sir?" she asked. "Yes, I've read it."

How she could get things done so swiftly and efficiently while staying permanently glued to whatever was so fascinating on her phone screen was a mystery even Mycroft had never solved to his complete satisfaction.

"I need the home services to keep a sharper eye on this woman. Something isn't right, and I have a feeling that it's not the 'not right' that the reports are telling me it is," he complained, realising only as the words emerged just how convoluted they were. But it hardly mattered – Anthea always understood what he was saying when he was in an irritable mood.

"You'd rather keep an eye on her than on the people she's selling whatever to?" Anthea clarified.

"Yes," Mycroft confirmed. "And get me better pictures of her – these shots are dismal. The photo from her identification documents – even the miserable thumbnail from the contract-job agencies – is lord knows how many years old, and the recent surveillance shots give no clear view of her features. Isn't there an angle from which she can be properly photographed without that cap or that curtain of dirty blonde hair obscuring everything above her chin?"

"Yes, sir. On it. If you intend to be at the Chinese ambassador's dinner on time, you will have to change into your dinner suit now, sir."

"I know," he sighed, making shooing motions at her. "Please close the door after you and don't come back in without knocking first, unless you want an eyeful of me in my pants."

"That would be nice," Anthea murmured as she left his office. As a parting revelation just before she closed the door, she added drolly: "I know some people who would pay very good money for pictures of you in your pants – in fact, Leonard from the Treasury has already offered me a price for any I can obtain. He'll pay much more if even the pants are gone from the pictures."

"Fire Leonard from the Treasury!" Mycroft ordered, but the door was already firmly shut.

He took his dinner suit out of the narrow cabinet-cum-wardrobe in the corner of the office, where he'd hung it this morning, and changed into it. He didn't want to go to this event, but he had a good relationship with Ambassador Luo, and it was best to keep the man particularly close and happy at this time as he'd provided so much help to them with Zhu Zheng's case and the items taken from Henry Carter's flat.

The guests this evening would be people who had been instrumental in the success of a recent publicity and fundraising drive that was tacitly (very tacitly) approved by the Chinese government. The funds raised had been channelled towards supporting animal-rights volunteers who were reaching out to people in remote parts of China in an effort to get communities on their side as they attempted to eradicate bear farms and the practice of killing domestic dogs for meat.

Mycroft hadn't given up much for that cause, he felt, but he had done his bit by bringing various interested (and wealthy) parties along to support Ambassador Luo, who'd been the guest of honour at the fundraiser. However, the little he had done had been perceived as a lot, and the ambassador had personally called him on the phone to follow up on the mailed invitation.

At the hotel, once dinner was underway, there was no sign that it would be anything other than a boring evening, as Lady Smallwood had predicted. Until he noticed that one of the servers three tables away from him – a petite woman of about 30, with brown hair pinned neatly back into a bun – was showing minuscule signs of nervousness that probably no one other than Mycroft or Sherlock (or Moriarty and Eurus) would have picked up.

He scanned the guests, managers and other staff in the private room, and saw no cause for any of the people present to be the reason for the woman's unsettled micro-twitches. Something wasn't right with her.

He kept half an eye on the woman while continuing the dullest conversation imaginable with the leggy socialite on his left and the baroness on his right. When he managed to engineer the talk so that the two women began to directly exchange "Omigod, that exact same thing happened to me in the Maldives!" exclamations with each other, he excused himself with a hint that he just might need the loo, and left the dining room. Stationing himself outside one of the doors where his own security personnel were parked along with those of other diplomats and VIPs, he asked Luke, his PADP bodyguard for the evening, to hold the door ajar and keep an eye on the server.

Mycroft checked his phone and read a message from Anthea, which said that surveillance had lost track of Cathy Hulme this afternoon and were still attempting to locate her. However, one of the extremist suspects previously photographed with Hulme had been picked up by police today on a charge of getting into a scuffle with a neighbour, and when MI5 had asked the Yard to use this opportunity to try getting out of him what he might have been purchasing from Hulme, he'd just laughed and said the coppers could search him, his flat, his car, his girlfriend's flat and his mother's flat all they pleased – he'd been buying nothing he shouldn't have.

That was when something twigged in Mycroft's busy head, and he rang Anthea at once, saying to her the moment she answered: "Those unrelated suspects weren't converging on Cathy Hulme because she had something to sell. They'd been looked up separately by her because she wanted to buy something from them. Can I confirm that right now, surveillance still does not have eyes on her?"

"That is correct, sir. We're checking streetcam and security cam footage, but that always takes a while."

"Don't bother. I think I know where she is. Send a team to my location now. Something's underway."

Mycroft ended the call and spoke to Luke and two Chinese security men, giving them instructions to find a means of quietly and discreetly getting that server – whom he was very certain was Cathy Hulme, with her hair coloured and styled differently – out of the dining room. He also pulled one of the hotel banquet managers aside and asked him which agency had supplied the additional servers needed for this evening's party – and contract workers must have been engaged, because no hotel ever had enough permanent staff to work large events. He already knew what one of the manager's answers would be: the Nifty Response Staffing Agency.

Luke was still holding the door ajar and watching Hulme, while the Chinese security guys on the outside radioed their colleagues inside the dining room. Mycroft, Luke and the Chinese personnel outside then stepped back into the room to give the men inside visual cues as to which server they were targeting. Unfortunately, Hulme must have picked up on the tension in the body language of the bodyguards inside as they sidled towards her, because she herself suddenly tensed, snatched up a long, sharp ceramic knife from a platter that the staff had been carving the roast beef on, and lunged at Ambassador Luo.

Immediately, Mycroft knew that something else was going on other than the obvious, because her actions were so pointless, so far short of any hope of succeeding, and so clumsy that the attempted assault could be nothing other than… oh, fuck, it was a ploy.

As she was tackled to the floor by the ambassador's men and drew the attention of everyone by screaming like a banshee, biting and thrashing, Mycroft's brain worked furiously. The whole place – indeed, the whole hotel – would have been swept by Chinese, British and private security from roof to basement prior to this dinner. Every member of staff, including contract workers, would have been searched before being allowed entry. Even guests with larger-than-mini-clutch-sized bags would have gone through security checks. It was extremely unlikely that anyone could have succeeded in installing standard explosives or smuggling regular weapons into the hotel. So what was going to be used here? Because Hulme was definitely planning to use something against them. But what?

At the same time, his eyes frantically scanned the rest of the room – a difficult task, now that guests and staff were abuzz with confusion, moving around and all asking one another what was going on. It took him far too long to spot another server – a perfectly harmless-looking woman of about fifty – fiddling with the sound system in one corner, and clutching remote controls that looked like the ones used to work the smart lighting system, air conditioning and audio-visual system for the dining room.

At the very moment he spotted this older woman, and just before he could speak or point her out to Luke, Hulme suddenly fell completely still and silent in the hands of the bodyguards, lifted her head from the carpet, and spat out these cutting words: "Fell for it, you morons."

The older woman in the corner pressed a button on the sound system, and at once, everybody in the room was incapacitated by a horrifyingly loud, high-pitched and drawn-out squeal coming over the speakers at a frequency so damaging that it was impossible to do anything other than cover their ears and cringe.

Only Hulme and the older woman – Mycroft belatedly realised they must have been wearing deep-set ear plugs – were moving fast, easily and freely. From his hunched position, fingers pressing the tragus of each ear hard over his ear canals to block out the sound, he saw Hulme lift a revolver from one of the Chinese bodyguards who had been restraining her only two seconds ago, and Mycroft groaned internally – foreign ambassadors based in Britain were not supposed to have armed security, but some of them always sneaked one or two weapons through.

Although the man braved the high-frequency noise for a few seconds to try to get his revolver back from her, he wasn't fast enough to stop her from holding the revolver to Ambassador Luo's head. Hulme then slipped her other arm around the ambassador's throat and forced him backwards with her into a corner of the room, where the walls would be behind her while the ambassador was her human shield from the front.

At the same time, the older woman who was her accomplice operated the computerised systems through the remote and a smartphone she was holding, and Mycroft saw that guests and staff who were trying to shoulder the doors to get out of the room were unable to do so, because they were now locked.

Then the projector that was part of the room's audio-visual systems flashed a series of stark messages peppered with typographical errors onto the projector screen that had scrolled down against one wall:

"DONT TRY TO LEAVE THIS ROOM OR STOP US"

"TRY ANYTHING AGAINST US,OUR FRIEND OUTSIDE PUMPS THIS ROOM FULL OF NICE TOXINS FOR YOU TO INHALE"

"IT WON'T KILL YOU IMMEDIATELY, BUT ENOUGHH OF IT WILL KILL YOU EVENTUALY AND PAINFULLY"

"YEAH IT WILL KILL US TOO EVENTUALY BUT WE DONT CARE ANYMORE"

"TRY ANYTHING FUNNY, THE AMBASADOR DIES ON THE SPOT"

"WE'VE RIGGED THE REST OF THE HOTEL WITH BOMBS TOO."

"WE'LL LET YOU GO ONCE THE AMBASADOR AND YOU IMPORTANT FOLKS DO THE RIGHT THING"

"WHATS THE RIGHT THING?"

"THE RIGHT THING IS TO PUT TO DEATH THE CHINESE PIG WHO CAME INTO THIS COUNTRY AND MURDERED MY FIANCE AND NELLIE'S SON"

"I MISS MY FIANCE"

"NELLIE MISSES HER SON"

"MY FIANCE WAS HENRY CARTER"

"HENRY HAD HIS THROAT SLIT BY A CHINESE PIG WHO JUST WALKED INTO OUR COUNTRY AND DID WHATEVER HE LIKED AND IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL"

"WE'LL LET YOU GO ONCE THE PIG IS DEAD"

Luke and the other PADP officer stationed at the room had uncovered one ear each, raised a shoulder to protect that ear, and struggled with one hand to retrieve the ear protectors in one of their pouches. It took them a minute to put in their earplugs, then they drew their Glocks, one aimed at what little could be seen of Hulme behind the ambassador, the other at the older woman who was presumably Henry Carter's mother.

At once, the screeching sound coming over the speakers was cut off, and in the abrupt silence that fell, Hulme shouted out from behind Ambassador Luo: "Go a'ead. Shoot Nellie if you like – she don't care, cos she's already dying, in't she? Or try to shoot me if y'like. But th' moment you shoot Nellie or me – tha's if you don't hit th' ambassador first – I'll pull my trigger – don't think I don't know how t' use this – and our friend will release the toxins into this room. Wanta inhale it? Wanta find out what it'll do to you all? Go a'ead, then. Shoot us if you like."

Mycroft thought through the scenario fast and concluded that there was no way for him to be absolutely certain that Hulme and her associates had not pre-planted a toxin ready for dispersal in the ventilation, sprinkler, air-freshening or other systems in the room. He simply could not be sure that it hadn't somehow been done. And as they didn't know what the toxin was, he couldn't risk exposing every person in this room to it.

The two PADP officers glanced at Mycroft for his orders while exchanging, under their breaths, radio communications with their team members who'd been stationed at the hotel entrance all evening. Mycroft shook his head discreetly at them. The conclusion from both Mycroft and their fellow officers was apparently along the same lines, for both officers lowered their pistols.

Now, it was time to negotiate with Cathy Hulme for their lives.

Note: I've gone with the theory that Elizabeth is the name Lady Smallwood uses for formal and professional purposes, but Alicia is the name used privately by people who know her better.