"I'm sorry, who did you say you are?" The emergency doctor frowned at Sherlock, concerned.

"I didn't. Sherlock Holmes. This is my colleague Doctor John Watson."

John smiled and stood to shake the emergency doctor's hand. "Like I said, we're with DI Lestrade. Sherlock's a...specialist."

"Well, specialist or not, don't you think you're being a bit hasty?" The doctor was still frowning. "We've not even confirmed cause of death yet! I mean, people die of drug overdoses every day, and there's nothing obvious to indicate any foul play. We'll have to wait for a full post mortem, but it looks pretty straightforward to me."

Sherlock had turned back to the body and picked up his left arm. "That's because you're not looking properly. The left arm! Why do they always miss that?"

The emergency doctor looked offended. "I'm sorry, what do you mean? We didn't miss anything! There's an obvious track mark on the left arm where the drugs were injected. We've not found the needle, but that's not really our job."

Lestrade brought his hands up, soothing. "Please doctor, take no notice of him. I'm sure he wasn't slighting you or your team." He gave John a look that said control him, took the emergency doctor's arm, and began walking him towards the exit. "I've just got a few bits of paperwork for you to sort out for me."

As they walked away, John crouched down next to Sherlock and spoke in a low voice "Want to tell me what that was about? I think you nearly got us kicked out."

Sherlock looked mildly exasperated, "Even you can't see it? The mark is on his left arm."

"Yes, you mentioned that. And?"

"It's the banker all over again! He was left-handed, John. You didn't notice when we were watching television?" Sherlock looked at John who shrugged, blankly. "Well then, look at his shoelaces. It's obvious. And no left-handed person would inject themselves in the left arm. They'd be as likely to have an accident with the syringe as they would be to get any of the drugs into their system. "

"Well, maybe he got someone else to inject him."

"Oh come now John, you don't really believe that do you?" the detective looked at him askance, "With the paparazzi culture we have, someone whose career depended entirely on their spotless image would never put themselves in such a vulnerable position. And I think it highly unlikely he would choose to be so incredibly dim witted in the middle of a live program. He's clearly not a desperate junkie; for a start he's much too healthy. No malnutrition, no scarring, no jaundice. No, it's definitely murder."

Sherlock stood and began examining the area around the body, looking like a huge black crow in the brightly coloured studio. John followed, leaning in to whisper, "So...do you think it's got anything to do with...well...him?"

Sherlock stopped sifting through cushions and looked thoughtful for a moment, then resumed his search. "Could be, but it's hard to say. It's certainly attracted enough attention to satisfy his desire for an audience. On the other hand, maybe the victim just had enemies."

"Enemies?" John scoffed, "He worked in kid's TV for god's sake! How many enemies d'you think he had?"

Sherlock had worked his way around most of the set and stopped suddenly, holding a large pink stuffed rabbit in one gloved hand. In the place where it had been lying was a small syringe. "I'd say at least one."

A commotion at the door of the room interrupted their discussion. A young blonde woman broke free from the producer's grasp and ran to the body, falling to her knees beside it. "Jason! Oh god no...no!" Her face red and swollen from crying, she picked up the arm of the dead man and clasped it to her chest, keening. John looked away. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a young person die - he'd been an army doctor after all - but he wasn't used to seeing such overwhelming sorrow first hand.

His throat tightening with sympathetic grief, John turned to watch Sherlock. After a cursory glance at the sobbing woman, the detective had continued rummaging through the detritus of the crime scene. To John, it seemed like he had simply written the young woman and her grief off as irrelevant, unhelpful to his investigation, much the same as he had declared caring about Moriarty's victims to be a mistake. As John watched, Sherlock bent down and began rifling through the dead man's pockets.

John grabbed Sherlock's arm and pulled him to his feet. "What the bloody hell are you doing?"

"Well, I was checking to make sure I hadn't missed anything obvious amongst our victim's personal effects." Sherlock replied.

"Do you have to do that right now? I mean, it can't wait ten minutes until his grieving widow has had a chance to say goodbye?" John whispered, angrily.

"She's not his widow; girlfriend I'd say. Too young to be his mother; too overwrought to be a sibling. No ring, so not married or engaged, but clearly very attached to him from the frankly astonishing amounts of mucus involved..."

"For god's sake, Sherlock!" John interrupted him, "You're missing my point! It doesn't matter whether she's his girlfriend, his wife or Widow Twanky, she needs time to grieve! She doesn't need her last memory of him being you rummaging around in his clothes! Show some respect for the dead!"

Sherlock stood still, giving John a cold look. "I wasn't aware that proving this man had been murdered, finding his killer, and bringing them to justice was disrespectful. Thank you for educating me on that point, John. Clearly I should prostrate myself in a show of faux sympathy with a grief I do not feel. I'm sure that it would not be a waste of valuable time while our murderer is still at large."

John swallowed. Nodded. "Fine, you've made your point. I still think your timing could use some work, but I'm sorry for saying you were disrespectful." He sighed and said roughly, "Sherlock, is there anything else we need to do here?"

"Not right now." Moving to the exit, Sherlock stopped briefly to speak to DI Lestrade, finishing with, "I need a list of everyone who was working in this studio. And a copy of the post mortem report. Text me if there are any developments. Come on, John."

John caught up to Sherlock outside. Shoving his hands into his pocket, he took a deep breath of cold air. He stopped, something having suddenly occurred to him. "I just realised. You knew there was something wrong. Right before that girl found the body, you said 'Wait, that's wrong.' What did you see?"

Sherlock smiled, grimly. "His feet. They weren't angled correctly. If you were waiting in anticipation of being 'found' as part of some inane children's entertainment show, you wouldn't be sprawled flat on your back on the floor. It was obvious the man was at least unconscious if not worse. Now, come on John."

-o0o-

Several hours later, they met DI Lestrade in his office at Scotland Yard. The room was dominated by a large desk, currently covered in papers. Lestrade sat behind it, while John sat on the small sofa in the corner, determined to remain unobtrusive. Sherlock wandered around the room, poking things and reading whatever documents the DI had left lying around.

Lestrade cleared his throat to get the lanky detective's attention. "I got the information you wanted, Sherlock, but I'm not sure how useful it will be. There were no guests on set, and everyone who was working on the show has a pretty solid alibi. I mean, they were either on camera or in sight of someone the entire time. A show like that doesn't exactly have a massive crew, you know?" He sifted through the large stack of files on his desk and handed Sherlock a slim manila folder. "This is the list of cast and crew, and a copy of the sign in sheet. There's no extra names there, and everyone who'd signed in to the studio was still present when we got there. As far as I can see, there's no one unaccounted for."

Sherlock flicked through the folder he had been given. "Then you're missing something. Someone in that studio administered those drugs. Do we have a toxicological report yet?"

Lestrade handed him another piece of paper. "It was what they call a speedball. Mixture of cocaine and heroin, supposed to give a bigger high." He sat back in his chair and sighed. "It's also one of the more dangerously stupid things a person can inject into themselves. Cocaine's a stimulant, but the coke high wears off before the heroin does, and heroin's a depressant, so when they start to come down, they stop breathing." He shook his head. "Not a nice way to die."

"From what I gather, Detective Inspector, niceness is rarely seen as relevant when one is committing murder."

"All right Sherlock, keep your hair on. Anyway, if there's nothing else you need from me right now I have to confer with Anderson and his team." Lestrade pulled his jacket on and walked to the door. "Feel free to use my office. I know you will anyway. Just don't antagonise my staff any more than you have to, okay?"

With that, he left the room, allowing the door to swing closed behind him.

-o0o-

John yawned and looked out of the Detective Inspector's floor-to-ceiling windows. It had been dusk when they arrived but now the sky was black, the stars made invisible by the ever present glow from the city lights. Checking his watch he looked around. Sherlock paced the room, muttering to himself, as he had done for the last few hours.

John waved the papers in his hand at Sherlock, "According to this, Jason Verne was some kind of a health nut. He went to the gym four or five times a week, he was vegetarian, only drank bottled water. He was also an anti-drugs spokesperson after one of his best friends in school died of a drug overdose when they were sixteen." John looked up, "It's like whoever killed him wanted to make him look as bad as possible. I'm surprised he wasn't found face down in a pile of bacon sandwiches."

Sherlock stopped pacing and grabbed John's shoulder. "Say that again."

"What, bacon sandwiches?"

Sherlock frowned, his train of thought derailed. "Is now really the time for humour, John?"

"Sorry. Bit hypocritical of me anyway. It's just, we've been looking through this stuff for hours, and we're no closer to any answers." John yawned again. "I know you can manage without sleep, but I'm only human. After the last time I promised Sarah I'd never sleep through a clinic again, and I am meant to be covering at the surgery tomorrow morning."

"Oh, fine." Sherlock pouted. "We can go. Bring the folder with you. And you're making the tea."

-o0o-

A/N - I owe a debt of thanks to a good friend of mine in RL who helped me get out of the corner I wrote myself into and gave me some pointers on pacing through this chapter. Unfortunately for him he doesn't read so he won't know I've thanked him :D As before, all advice/comments welcome!