Once again John had taken up residence in one of the numerous rooms, this time to take care of the wound in his side. With utmost care he had cleaned the cut and even stitched up himself before covering it to keep it clean. He had been ready to fall asleep right then and there but decided to move once again. He knew he had left a trail of blood that led to this room. Before he left the room, he came up with an idea.

Inside his backpack he kept a multitude of small odds and ends, including some thread. He tied a stretch of the thread between two metal buckets he placed left and right of the opening of the room. Charlie wouldn't trip and fall but if one of his legs pressed to the thread, the buckets would move and make some noise, alerting John to his location. On a second thought John turned over two chairs, positioning them in a fashion to make it look like he had set up a trap. If Charlie hurt himself, all the better but all John wanted to accomplish was to distract the mad man from the fact that his prey would be close enough to hear when the buckets were knocked over.

Leaving the room, he tracked back the way he had come from, turned left at the next junction and kept walking until he discovered a room which apparently had been used for a sleeping room. For a moment he considered climbing onto one of the bunk-beds but instead he hid underneath one. Curling up, John huddled into his jacket and tried to rest without actually falling asleep.

Several times he had to remind himself that the darkness was as much to Charlie's disadvantage as it was to his own and that the situation couldn't be compared to Baskerville. Nevertheless, he had problems trying to relax for panic kept bubbling up inside of him, sending tremors through his body. Sooner or later the constant tension would take its toll. It did keep him alert but would exhaust him in the long run.

Ever so often he nodded off, his body demanding to rest. John guessed it would be morning when an audio-system came to live, startling him enough that he knocked his head against the bottom of the bed.

First an acoustic signal was audible and moments later something that sounded like a proximity effect before an actual voice could be heard.

"Hello, Doctor John, are you still out there?" The question was followed by a crackling noise that quickly turned out to be Charlie's laughter, terribly distorted by the loudspeaker.

"Listen, Doctor John, I composed a poem just for you.

John, who had involuntarily ducked further under the bed when the audio system had come to life, stood up with determination. His posture was stiff and his fingers curled into fists. He was mad at himself for letting that mad man's behaviour getting so very much under his skin but listened with trepidation to the patter of Charlie's disembodied voice over the loud-speaker.

"Doctor John, will soon be gone,

In a shower of blood,

He stepped in a bunker,

In the dark to hunker,

And never was seen again."

John knew the nursery-rhyme of Doctor Foster. It had never made much sense to him. The rhyme Charlie had turned it into, unfortunately, made sense in a quite grizzly way.

All of a sudden John felt something snap inside himself. He was done being the prey. Now he would go out, set a trap and if necessary kill the madman who was hunting him. He was tired, he wanted to find a way out of the bunker and go home. Remembering the corridor he had encountered when he had come in, a plan began to form in John's mind.

oOo

"I need to see the crime scene and I want you to retrieve the text John sent me," Sherlock said.

Greg shook his head while trying to concentrate on the traffic. The cold remedy he had taken an hour ago had cleared his sinuses but if anything his head felt fuzzier than before.

"Try customer service of your phone-company. You know as well as I do that the service provider won't do anything without a court order if Scotland Yard is asking."

"Customer service is incapable to do anything. First it takes hours to get an actual person to talk to you and then whoever it is you're talking to, is beyond incompetent," Sherlock ranted.

"True." Greg coughed. "Why don't you talk to Mycroft? If you apologize nicely he'll surely help you."

"Why should I apologize? You told him to leave the ambulance too."

Stopping at a traffic-light the DI smirked. "Right. May I remind you, that you're the one who's desperate for answers only your brother can provide?" Greg pulled a small container from his pocket and, without looking at the label, took two more capsules for his cold, knocking them down with cold coffee that tasted quite disgusting.

Sherlock wondered why the DI would take a cold-remedy whose name ended with 'nite' during daytime but he kept his mouth shut. He had more important things on his mind.

"I'm going to have a look at the files in your office and you go and see my brother," he suggested eventually.

"Why should I? Besides, as you pointed out, I threw him out as much as you did so I doubt he's going to react any better if I go and ask him for the text John sent you."

A corner of Sherlock's mouth curled slightly. "He likes you."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know why. Probably some sort of presumptuous do-gooder syndrome towards the mentally challenged, he usually keeps hidden."

"Oi, careful, Sherlock. I'm not that mentally challenged. If you want my help, stop insulting me."

The Consulting Detective produced a sound which, providing a healthy dose of good-will from the listener, could be translated into an apology.

"Right," Greg grumbled.

"A bit of grovelling goes a long with my brother."

"I haven't agreed to seeing him yet," Greg replied, knowing he would do it anyway.

When Greg stopped in front of NSY's main entrance he turned to Sherlock. "All right. Try to be civil with Sally and please don't kill each other. I already have enough work piling on my desk."

He watched the lanky Detective hurry inside the building before he was negotiating the car back into the traffic-flow, heading towards Whitehall.

oOo

John was down on his knees, carefully feeling around the open shaft in the floor. He had listened for several minutes and once he came to the conclusion that he was really alone, he held his torch at arm's length inside the shaft and switched it on. A metal ladder attached to the wall led down to a lower level. John guessed it ten to twelve feet down. Enough for a man to get seriously hurt if he fell down.

He switched off the torch and began crawling around the corridor left and right of the opening. He had walked past it when the emergency light had been switched on. For about fifteen minutes he first crawled and eventually walked around carefully. He was trying to form an image in his mind he felt he could rely on for his plan was to lure Charlie here, hoping the man would attack and fall down the shaft. He would rather have tried talking to the man to cooperate with him but he knew that would never work. The man was crazy and couldn't be treated like a normal person.

Now he had to locate Charlie, offer himself as bait and make the man run into his trap.