A few minutes down the road, we stop, panting heavily. "How long do you think it would it would have taken for a man to realise he still had a suitcase in his car." I eye dad, knowing that he already knows the answer, but is testing me.

"A man would take more time then a woman, because he wouldn't think of insignificant things such as that," I begin, and dad nods encouragingly. "I would say about five minutes away, by car."

"And where would you look if you had to dispose of a bulky item such as a suitcase?" He asks me, a smile creeping onto his face.

"A skip, most likely, but he'd need to be able to drive there. He'd look a bit strange walking down the street, wheeling a pink suitcase behind him - people would remember him. We need to find an alleyway which is large enough to fit a car through, which has a skip at the end of it. Is that enough to go on?" Dad smiles at me proudly.

"Your deducing is getting better - that is spot on." I smile back at him.

"You knew about Doctor Watsons sister, didn't you?" He asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Yea, some of the scratches on the screen were the shape of nails and the size of the fingerprints looked feminine."

"This is why it's always good to get a second opinion, remember that," he says, and we split off, both of us going in the opposite direction. I follow the road down for about two miles, which takes me about twenty minutes at a sprint. People look at me weirdly as I fly on pass, but I don't care. The bitter air bites at my neck, so I turn the collor up on my coat and tie my scarf tighter. The alleys down this road look fairly large, and you could easily drive a car through this gap. I take the alleyway at a walk - still out of puff from my last run. I've always done well at school in the races - when I can be bothered. School's all a waste of time in my opinion, as they don't teach you anything of proper use.

I know from the clothes the victim was wearing that the case would be pink. It's fairly obvious, once you mention it. In this skip, there is nothing remotely colourful, and there isn't much in any of the others either. After I've been searching for at least half an hour, I get a text.

I've got the case

We need some milk

SH

I roll my eyes at his short texts and the little tag at the bottom. It's a Holmes thing. It's better to not let dad do the shopping, otherwise he'll bring back all sorts of rubbish we don't need, and forget the essentials.

I backtrack a little and find myself going along the highstret in Brixton. A black car flies past me and I spot John sat with Lucinda, Mycroft's assistant and bodyguard, in his car.

Lucinda - or 'Anthea' as she calls herself now - was originally an assassin sent out to put an end to my uncle. However, as Mycroft tells it, he managed to persuade her to reconsider. She's who taught me to shoot.

Judging on the direction the car is heading and the route it's taking to get there, I work out that he's heading back to 221B now after diverting somewhere else - his old apartment. The driver doesn't stop to let me in, so I continue to walk to the corner shop at the end of the road.

After a short row with the check-out machine (it was actually quite long. It wouldn't accept my debit card and it insisted that I had an 'unexpected item in the bagging area' which turned out to be nothing more then my phone which incidently contains a tracking device and emergency detonator that Mycroft put into it when he thought I wasn't looking), I catch the cab home. I swing through the kitchen door to put the milk away, and I can hear dad and Doctor Watson disscussing something in the next room. I slide the door open, and gasp. Dad squats down on his armchair in front of Jennifer Wilsons case. His blazer is off, and his shirt sleeves are unbuttoned and pushed up his arms. On his arms are THREE nicotine patches.

"Sorry, what are we doing?" I hear John ask from inside the room. "Did I just text a murderer?! What good will that do?" As if on cue, his phone rings, and I head over to dad.

"Three patches?" I ask him, annoyed. "You're wearing three patches!"

"I know, Sophia." He sighs. "Look, I'm sorry, I'll take two off in a minute."

"Take them off now!" I hiss, as the phone continues to ring. "You promised you wouldn't touch them!"

"I was getting withdraws!" He hisses back. I let a tear slip down my face, then rub it away again quickly as dad goes back to talking to Doctor Watson as he looks over for help on what to do. "A few hours after his last victim, and now he receives a text that can only be from her. If somebody had just found that phone they'd ignore a text like that, but the murderer ..." Dad pauses for dramatic effect until the phone stops ringing, "... would panic." He flips the lid of the pink suitcase shut and stands up, walking over to his jacket on the other side of the room. Doctor Watson continues to look down at the phone, despite the fact that it's stopped ringing, until dad reaches the door.

"Have you talked to the police?" Doctor Watson asks, looking up at last.

"Four people are dead. There isn't time to talk to the police."

"So why are you talking to me?" Dad takes his coat from the hook behind the door and looks across to Watson, but he notices that there is something missing from our mantel piece.

"Mrs Hudson took my skull."

"So I'm basically filling in for your skull?"

"Relax," dad says as he swings his coat back on, "you're doing fine." Watson doesn't move. "Well?"

"Well what?" Doctor Watson asks, looking confused.

"Well, you could just sit there and watch telly."

"What, you want me to come with you?"

"I like company when I go out, and I think better when I talk aloud. The skull just attracts attention, so does talking to Sophia when she's spouting her own conclusion."

"I am here, you know!" I say, trying to cover up for my worry over my dad. Doctor Watson smiles for a second.

"Problem?" Dad asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah, Sergeant Donovan." John says and I groan. What's she said now? Dad looks away in annoyence.

"What about her?"

"She said ... You two get off on this. You enjoy it."

"And I said 'dangerous', and here you are," dad says coolly then strides out of the room and I follow.

"Patches!" I sing in his ear. I'm a little shorter then him, but I'm slowly catching up. He frowns at me, but takes them out.

It takes Doctor Watson a little while to catch up with us, and we walk down the street together.

"Where are we going?" Doctor Watson asks.

"Northumberland Street's a five-minute walk from here."

"You think he's stupid enough to go there?" Dad and I smile expectantly. John doesn't understand the logic of a serial killer.

"No – I think he's brilliant enough. I love the brilliant ones. They're always so desperate to get caught."

"Why?"

"Appreciation! Applause! At long last the spotlight. That's the frailty of genius, John: it needs an audience." John looks pointedly at us.

"Yeah." I laugh, now recovered from the patch scare. Dad ignores the remark and spins around to study the road and the pavement surrounding it.

"This is his hunting ground, right here in the heart of the city. Now that we know his victims were abducted, that changes everything. Because all of his victims disappeared from busy streets, crowded places, but nobody saw them go." Dad clamps his hands to either side of his head. "Think! Who do we trust, even though we don't know them? Who passes unnoticed wherever they go? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?" I can think of a few, though they'd need narrowing down. Public transport and shops. Transport is my most likely conclusion at the moment.

"Dunno. Who?" John asks, and dad shruggs.

"Haven't the faintest. Hungry?" Dad lowers his hands and leads us into Angelos small resturant at the top of Northumberland Street. Billy gestures us to a reseved table, and winks at me. I know a little while back that he had a thing for me, but it seems he's got over that now.

"Thank you, Billy," dad says as he slides his coat off and sits into the booth at the front of the shop. I slide in beside him and take my own coat off as Billy takes the reserved sign off of the table and dad turns around to look out of the window. John sits down on the other side of the table, his back to the window whilst he takes his jacket off. Dad nods to a building down the road. "Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Keep your eyes on it."

"He isn't just gonna ring the doorbell, though, is he? He'd need to be mad."

"He has killed four people," dad points out.

" ... Okay." John is saved by Angelos arriveral, who seems extremley pleased to see us.

"Sherlock." Angelo says, shaking hands with dad. "Sophia, it's lovely to see you again. Anything on the menu, whatever you want, free," he says, laying a few menus out. "On the house, for you two and for your date, Sherlock."

"Do you want to eat?" Dad asks John, ignoring Angelo's remark. I look down at my lap, embarrassed about the mistake that everyone seems to be making.

"I'm not his date," John says to Angelo.

"This man got me off a murder charge." Angelo tells John, avoiding the 'date' subject.

"This is Angelo," dad introduces, as Angelo reaches his hand to John and they shake. "Three years ago I successfully proved to Lestrade at the time of a particularly vicious triple murder that Angelo was in a completely different part of town, house-breaking."

"He cleared my name." Angelo tells John.

"I cleared it a bit. Anything happening opposite?" Dad ask, looking outside.

"Nothing," Angelo says, before looking to John again. "But for this man, I'd have gone to prison."

"You did go to prison," dad points out, but Angelo ignores him.

"I'll get a candle for the table. It's more romantic."

"I'm not his date!" John yells after him, indignantly, as dad puts his menu back onto the table and looks across to John.

"You may as well eat. We might have a long wait," dad says as Angelo comes back with a small glass cup containing a lit tea-light. He goes again, but not before giving John a thumbs up.

"Thanks!" John yells, tetchily.

"Sophia, do you want anything?" Dad asks me, and I raise my eyebrows at him. He knows I never eat whilst I'm on a case - I'm like him. "You need to eat something today - you haven't eaten for days."

"I'll have something later!" I insist, and he leaves it. John orders some food, but dad and I just stare out of the window and across the road - looking for anything out of the ordinary.

"People don't have arch-enemies," announces John, out of the blue. It takes a minute for dad to realise he's spoken, and finally looks around.

"I'm sorry?"

"In real life. There are no arch-enemies in real life. Doesn't happen." Good luck explaining that to dad - he's already looking out of the window again.

"Doesn't it? Sounds a bit dull."

"So who did I meet?" John asks, but dad ignores him. I'm guessing he's talking about Mycroft. Mycroft does like to by mysterious and dramatic.

"What do real people have, then, in their 'real lives'?"

"Friends; people they know; people they like; people they don't like ... Girlfriends, boyfriends ..." I take a gulp of water, trying to stop the emotions.

"Yes, well, as I was saying – dull," dad mutters, but his eyes tell a different story as he looks out of the window.

"You don't have a girlfriend, then?" John asks. This conversation is getting more and more awkward, and more upsetting for me.

"Girlfriend? No, not really my area." I realise how wrong that must sound to John, but he only means that he's married to his work.

"Mm," John says as he chews on his food, and it takes him a minute for the statment to sink in.

"Oh, right. D'you have a boyfriend?" He asks, looking up at me as if wondering how I'm possible. Dad looks around sharply. "Which is fine, by the way," Doctor Watson recovers quickly. This is extremley awkward, and I can see how much this is hurting dad.

"I know it's fine." John smiles, as if he's trying to reassure dad that he's not being judgemental. I don't know why he keeps going on about it.

"So you've got a boyfriend then?" John asks, certain he'll get a positive reply this time.

"No." Dad replys, his eyes still determinley fixed on the window so that he doesn't let any emotion slip. John continues to smile, but it's becoming more and more fixed and awkward.

"Right. Okay. You're unattached. Like me." He looks down at his plate, seemingly running out of things to say. I wish he would, this is hurting. I never suspected John of being homosexual, but it's certainly how he's coming across."Fine," he clears his throat, "Good."

John continues to eat, and dad turns to look at him suspiciously, as if trying to work out what he was meaning, but then he turns his attention back to the window again as another tear slips down my cheek. Tonight seems to be the night for memories. I'm going to have more nightmares again tonight, that's for certain. After a few seconds, dad seems to have registered Johns meaning and turns back to face him.

"John, um ... " He begins, awkwardly, "I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I'm flattered by your interest, I'm really not looking for any ..."

"No." John interrupts dads babbling and turns his head to clear his throat. "No, I'm not asking. No." He secures his gaze onto dads. "I'm just saying, it's all fine." Dad looks at him for a second, then nods.

"Good. Thank you." Dad turns his attention back to the street as John looks away with a bemused expression on his face. It is a possibility that he's homosexual as there have been cases of siblings all being gay, but the balance of probability seems to stack against it and it's a conclusion I didn't reach with him.

Dad used to think he was asexual before he met mum, but unlike what everyone else believes, he's actually demisexual meaning he has to have an intense emotional connection before even considering a sexual relationship. However, this often means he gets coined with the term 'bisexual' because he can get sexual urges with either sex.

A taxi pulls up outside the building that dad gestured to earlier, waking me from my thoughts and I notice nobody getting out or in. There is already a passenger inside, and he seems to be looking for someone, although he seems a little puzzled about why they've stopped. It almost confirms my theory earlier on public transport being the key to the murders, but before I can explain to dad, he nods to the window. "Look across the street," he demands. "Taxi." John twists around in his seat to look out of the window at the cab. "Stopped. Nobody getting in, and nobody getting out. Why a taxi?" He mutters to himself. "Oh, that's clever. Is it clever? Why is it clever?" I smile at him. I think he knows the answer, but the recent events are muddling up his logic.

"That's him?" John asks, stating the obvious as usual.

"Don't stare." Dad mutters to him, causing John to look around at us.

"You're staring, and so's Sophie"

"We can't all stare." Dad gets to his feet and I follow, throwing on my coat and scarf as I head for the door. He puts his coat on outside the door, his eyes still secured onto the taxi. The passenger continues to look around before he looks back at the resturant and at us. Dad and I hold our gaze with him before he turns back to face the front and the taxi pulls away. I immediately start to run after it, and narrowly avoid being hit by a car in the process. Dad and John vault over it, and I realise that Doctor Watson has left his cane back in the resturant. I run after it for a few yards before it dawns on me that it's impossible for me to catch up with it. Immediately, I recall the map of London to the front of my brain so that I can check the street maps. Dad and John stop beside me, one after the other.

"I've got the cab number." John informs us.

"Good for you." Dad says, bringing his hands up to his head as he also focuses on a mental map of London. I memorised the cab number when we were in the resturant, and there was no doubt dad did too.

"Right turn, one way, roadworks, traffic lights, bus lane, pedestrian crossing, left turn only, traffic lights." Dad says out loud and quickly. After working out the route the taxi will take, I lift my head and see a man unlocking a door to a building nearby. This will lead us to the roofs, and from there we can cut off the taxi from it's destination. Dad, obviously seeing the same opportunity as me, shoves the man out of the way before bolting into the building.

"Oy!" The man yells as I run past him, and I hear John mutter an apology a he sails past. I take the stairs two at a time, whereas John stuggles to keep up behind me.

"Come on, John," dad calls as we climb the circular metal staircase, me hot on his heels. As we reach the top, dad runs over to another set of stairs which lead down the side of the building. I sprint after dad, my greatcoat flying out behind me. At the bottom of the steps, I vault over a rail and leap the gap in between the buildings. Without stopping, we run the length of the building before jumping another, bigger gap. I hear John stop behind me to look down at the fall he would take if he failed, and the gap between us grows bigger. "Come on, John. We're losing him!" Dad yells and I hear John land the other side safely. We run the length of the other buliding before flying down some more stairs and onto a ledge before we finally drop, one by one, into a darkened alleyway. In my head, I can sort of work out both the route we're taking and the one the taxi's taking, and in doing that, I can see our destination - it's not far from here. I can see we're closing in on the taxi as we swerve down numerous alleyways and finaly down the one that leads to D'Arblay Street. I speed up, but the taxi passes the end from the right. I hear dad let out an exclamation of anger from in front, and we continue running, turning right without breaking stride. "This way," dad shouts, but instinctivley, John turns left, after the taxi. "No, this way!"

"Sorry," John yells as he turns back around and heads back in the opposite direction, now following me. There is a new place that I've worked out we can intercept the taxi, and I think, at the speed we're doing, we'll succeed. We head down two more roads, through a side street and across a footpath before we finally reach the interception point at Wardour Street. Dad hurls himself across in front of the taxi and it screeches to a stop as he slams his hands into the bonnet of the car. I dig into my pocket to find Donovans I.D. badge and I flash it at the driver before joining dad at the right side of the cab.

"Police! Open her up!" Dad shouts, panting heavily as he opens the door. I groan as I take in the passengers appearance. He looks anxiously out at us and dad straightens up in exasperation as John catches up with us. "No," he sighs and leans down again to look at the passenger.

"Teeth, tan: what – Californian?" I look down at the luggage in front of the passenger. LAX to LHR. Los Angles International Airport to London Heathrow Airport, for those who didn't know. "L.A., Santa Monica. Just arrived." He straightens up again, grimacing.

"How can you possibly know that?" John pants.

"The luggage." John looks down at the label and dad turns back to the passenger. "It's probably your first trip to London, right, going by your final destination and the route the cabbie was taking you?"

"Sorry – are you guys the police?" The American asks, looking more confused then ever. Dad flashes his badge, and I copy.

"Yeah. Everything all right?" The passenger smiles, flashing his perfect white teeth.

"Yeah." I turn and walk away as dad pauses, considering how to finish the sentance. I can't help but glance at the cabbie. He looks at me, and winks. Instantly, I start making a deduction about him. He lives alone after his wife left with his kids but he still loves them. His clothes - at least three years old judging by how worn out they look, yet still laundered. He wants to keep up appearences, but isn't bothered with keeping up with the fashion. All in all, a fairly normal cabbie. The taxi driver smirks and shakes his head in dissapointment, turning his head back around to face the road.

"Welcome to London," I hear dad say before he walks away, leaving John staring blankly at the passenger for a moment.

"Er, any problems, just let us know." The man nods and John smiles, shutting the cab door. I join dads side as he taps a message to Angelo as John starts to walk over to us.

"Basically just a cab that happened to slow down," John mutters to us as dad pockets the phone.

"Basically," dad replies.

"Not the murderer."

"Not the murderer, no," dad replies, exasperated at his mistake.

"Wrong country, good alibi."

"As they go," dad says, as he switches the I.D. card from one hand to another.

"Hey, where - where did you get this? Here," John asks, reaching for the card. "Right," he says as he looks down at the card. "Detective Inspector Lestrade?"

"Yeah. I pickpocket him when he's annoying. Sophia has Dovovans, so you can keep that one, I've got plenty at the flat." John nods as he looks down the card again before lifting his head, chuckiling quietly.

"What?"

"Nothing, just: '"Welcome to London"'." I smirk at dads soft laugh and look down the road. A police officer has gone to see why the cab has stopped in the middle of the road, and the passenger is talking to him, and pointing down at us.

"Now we're in trouble." I say, nudging dad so that he looks down the road.

"Got your breath back?" Dad asks John.

"Ready when you are." We turn around and start running back to our flat before we get sent to prison for impersonating a police officer, again.