'So he made contact?'

'Course, just like you said. Came to find me this morning.'

'And did he try to pay you off?'

'Yeah. Didn't take it though.'

'Why ever not?'

Billy shrugged, 'Didn't feel right did it, grassing up a mate.'

Sherlock sighed. 'While your loyalty is admirable - if misplaced, Billy, you're missing the point. I wanted you to talk to him, in fact I asked you to.' Sherlock winced as he tried to readjust himself in the bed. Turning down the morphine certainly made thinking a lot easier, but he was starting to realise that getting out of this bed was going to be a lot more difficult than he had initially contemplated.

'You should have taken the money, John can well afford it,' he continued. 'Although I have to confess, I am disappointed in his lack of ethics. Marriage has obviously eroded his principles somewhat. Nice outfit, by the way.'

'Feel as if I'm wearing bloody pyjamas. Why do people want to wear pyjamas during the day?' Bill Wiggins was attired in a set of theatre greens, purloined from the laundry trolley in the basement of the hospital, at Sherlock's instructions. He made an alarmingly convincing hospital cleaner in that uniform, as long as you didn't look too closely at his shoes. Sherlock hadn't fancied his chances of Billy being allowed onto the private ward in his usual clothing. His cleaning trolley, also acquired from the basement, was waiting in the corridor outside.

'Cheap and easy to launder at sixty degree, thus killing the majority of bacteria,' Sherlock said automatically. 'I presume he asked about the drugs?'

'Of course he did. It was all he was bloody interested in. Hasn't called the cops to grass us up yet though. Why is that?'

'And cut off his main source of information on me? I taught him better than that. So what did you tell him?'

'Kept it simple, didn't I, just like we agreed. Didn't give too much away, didn't want to make him suspicious. He's worried all right, though.'

'Good,' Sherlock said. 'Excellent in fact. You're proving extremely useful, Billy. Now what else have you got to tell me?'

'He didn't sleep much last night, judging by the bags under his eyes. He came by tube, not by car - had his Oyster card in his hand when he walked through the door, meaning that he was intending to go on somewhere else directly afterwards. Not to work, he wasn't smartly enough dressed for that.'

'What time did he leave you?' Sherlock asked.

'9.43 - by the wall clock in the caff. But that's 4 minutes slow, so 9.47.'

'And yet he still hasn't come to see me to express his displeasure and concern, probably in that order. Interesting. So where has he gone in the interim?'

'Barts,' Bill replied promptly. 'He went to your flat at Baker Street first, but now he's at Bart's.'

Sherlock turned to look at him sharply, wincing at the pain caused by the sudden movement. 'How do you know?'

'Followed him, didn't I? He went to see that bird in the lab - the pretty one.'

'Molly Hooper?'

'Yeah her. Didn't hear what they said though, couldn't hang about too much, couldn't risk being seen.'

'Never mind,' Sherlock said. 'The important thing is that we've achieved our aim of distracting John while we put out plans in place.'

'Not being funny,' Bill said, 'but this plan of yours...'

'What about it?'

'Well it sort of requires you to get out of that bed and climb out of the window, don't it? Only I don't see you being in any fit state to do that in the near future.'

'Ketamine,' Sherlock said, squeezing the bridge of his nose.'

'What?'

'Ketamine, Billy, I need you to get me some ketamine. Can you do that?'

'Course. you reckon that will help?'

Sherlock frowned at him, wrinkling his nose as if he'd somehow disappointed him. 'Think Billy, I thought that was one thing that you'd proved that you were good at. Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic. It removes the brain from the pain to the extent that you can amputate a person's leg while they're still awake and talking to you. It would certainly enable a man to get out of his bed and climb out of a window four days after major thoracic surgery.'

Billy looked dubious. 'Fine,' Sherlock said with a sigh. 'Not climb exactly. What time are they cleaning the windows tomorrow?'