Jim

Moran appears at the door, at about quarter to ten. He's got his good blue shirt on and doesn't have that crowds-and-despair smell of Heathrow about him, so I'll presume he's been home in between times. And he's looking down at his phone, so I'll presume too he's had the same message I got. It says, and I quote directly –

Between the two of you, you boys have only one vice left to indulge. GPS me and complete the set, meet your perfect cop into the bargain. – DM. P.S. Jim, you'll actually be leaving the flat so do get dressed.

"Are you terrified by that 'vice' bit like I am?" Moran says.

I am not ashamed to say, "Little bit. She's going to answerphone too."

"I got her, about an hour ago. She said something about bartering for a wetsuit."

Isn't it funny how that happens? When something more terrifying suddenly enters the agenda, the rest of it doesn't seem so scary anymore. Suddenly, faced with the phrase, 'bartering for a wetsuit', I'm just raring to go.

I bring up the GPS system and set it tracking from my mobile. It's a great boon, this little program. American gent knocked it up for us, patched into an Australian weather satellite, of all things. We're fucked during meteor showers, but other than that, most useful. See, much like pets, or government dossiers full of sensitive information you definitely wouldn't want anybody photocopying and then tampering with and then sending to The Guardian, my associates are at their most annoying when they take off. This way, I can keep track of them.

Mark my words, couple of years and everybody's going to have this on their phones. Crime rates will drop as people stop reporting missing phones stolen to get a crime reference number so they can claim on the insurance. They probably won't make it as sensitive as this. That could get a bit scary, if you could track any phone to the building it's in.

…Must get Serge onto that, actually.

We're halfway to the ground floor when it bleeps. "Ah. Moran, you can put your Valium away."

"Not scary?"

"No, but don't let me get sat down in any poker games, alright?"

They call it The Vic, or to give it's full grand title the Grosvenor Victoria Casino. You'd know it if you saw it. Every movie made in London in the seventies had at least one scene set there. A bit old-fashioned, but a beautiful set of rooms. And very popular with the brass from the Met, and those hoping to one day become the brass. Good place to come hunting for a decent officer.

No sooner are Moran and I through the doors when my phone goes off. "Oh, would you look at that; the silent partner's decided to speak. Hello, dearest."

Danielle sings down the line at me, "I can see you." And she giggles, because she can see me looking around for her too. "I'm up on the one of the crow's nests. Met a lovely gent. He brought me up here, phoned his scuba-diving niece about the loan of a wetsuit and then, it's the strangest thing, but he fell fast asleep. First floor bar, boys. Get yourselves a drink and get a glance over at the third roulette table."

"Thank you." I turn to Moran and tell him, "Put your classy face on; lager's uncouth after nine-thirty."

And in precisely the disappointed teenager voice I was trying to warn him off, "Are we not getting chips?"

"Work first, then chips."

"I'm supposed to be indulging my last vice here. We're under orders."

"What's this 'we' business? I don't take orders and you certainly don't take orders from anybody but me."

"Well, alright, it's my last vice or I disappoint my eye-in-the-sky mate, alright?"

"Last vice? So it's true, you did swing the lead on that job so you could slope off and… fuck it, add your own euphemism here."

"What even is this work we're here for? I'm not aware of any work. It's clearly got nothing to do with me, so-"

"So why don't you go to the bar? This shouldn't take long. And then we'll get chips, and get Danielle to tell us if there's any blackjack tables that aren't being watched, alright?"

This, finally, seems to settle him a bit. Honestly, babysitting was never meant to feature in my job description. Even though there isn't really a description as such, I know that's not in it. But I suppose I shouldn't hold it against him, really. Anywhere he has to go without his gun, he's just not comfortable. I mean, he's the type, if he was here without me and my mathematical abilities, he'd stand himself at a roulette table and empty his British bank account on that most disgustingly random of games.

He'd think his chances were as good there as anywhere else and, because he'd think like that, he'd be absolutely right. That's how these places work. They depend on the fact that no human being can have perfect confidence in themselves every second of every day. If you did? Well then it might become miraculously possible for a creature with a heartbeat to beat the house.

So I wander to the edge of the bar, overlooking the gaming floor. And at the third roulette table I search myself out a Moran.

Oh, I've got him. Oh, at first glance, there he is, oh, the poor sod…

I ring up to Dani in her voyeur box. The first thing I hear is the fleshy thud of a punch and a groan. Almost hang up. "…Hello?"

"Sorry, he was coming round. Are you in position, can you see him?"

"You have selected if I'm not mistaken, out of that crowd, the prematurely grey gentleman who is trying to pass off three days stubble as an incipient beard. The one trying to impress by pretending he hasn't been up for days. With a wedding ring loosened, not because he's losing weight because he's not, but because he won't stop playing with it, in preparation for his probably imminent divorce."

God, I can hear her grinning, "Do you like him, Jim?"

"I want the details of everything up to his delicate, white-haired mother typed up and on my desk, soon as."

"S'done"

Sherlock

My latest experiment in craving management has been, if nothing else, the most comfortable to date. I've turned to what might be termed indoor clothes. The theory is if I'm not dressed to go out and suffering the usual lethargy, the combination of the two will be enough to stop me going out to score. It would seem to be working so far, but then I do still have this crime wave to work on. In terms of new business, it's quieted down quite a bit, but there are several things that still demand my attention.

I've got the news on, over in the corner out of my way. They've noticed the fresh calm too. They're interviewing. A saccharine, ill-trained voice (yes, I'm still stuck on Channel 5) asks the question, "So, Chief Inspector, what do you think this means?"

"Well, we're hopeful that this lull might represent the early stages of a sort-of subsidence after the sudden-" I stop listening, because he's wrong.

No, what we're in isn't the beginnings of recovery, but the breathing space. The criminal equivalent of the gravedigger or gatekeeper scene in any given Shakespeare play. In between the murder and the lies, usually. Out there somewhere there's a bit of banter going on between minor players, and a lot of people sighing, shaking the tension out of their shoulders, ready to do it all again soon enough.

Oh, and please, don't call me a pessimist. Kindly don't call me a pessimist. There's nothing personal here. I am looking at facts and providing an analysis, no more or less.

And then a knock at the door. There's no panic this time, no confusion. It's Mycroft. Has to be. I shout through, "It's not bolted." The only thing I do in preparation from him, the only move I deign to make, is to pull my hood in close around my neck. No real reason, I don't think; it's just been a long time since he could have found me in pyjama bottoms and a sweatshirt.

A cursory glance and I know I needn't have worried. Mycroft's not at his best either. What on earth's the matter with the world, that everyone I meet seems to be well on their way to rock bottom? Or has the world always been this way? Maybe when I was down there myself I couldn't get an accurate idea of the speed they were falling at. Mycroft comes in, you see, with a wet overcoat and props his dripping umbrella behind the door. He knows he's a guest, so he tries to smile and make light, but one slick, smooth little segment of hair, just from the top of his head, has slipped forward from its optimum and trained position.

The stress shows in the dry skin beneath his eyes, and the slight damage at the corner of the right eyebrow, which he scratches sometimes without being aware of it. He's had no more than five hours sleep out of the last twenty-four. And these are far from being the ordinary day-to-day trials of his secretive position; this I know because the hand that holds his briefcase is white-knuckled, and the other is in his pocket to hide the fact that it is, in fact, a fist.

So despite my prior determination not to move, I stand up and go to the corner kitchen. "I'll make coffee."

And Mycroft, as if I needed any more proof than there is something deeply amiss, says, "Don't trouble yourself."

"…I'll make coffee. There's no hook, but you can hang your coat on the standard lamp; it doesn't work anyway." From the corner of my eye I see him appraise the offending fixture before he uses it for a coat stand. There's an awful second where it looks like he might simply charge out right now and find me a new and functional one. That's what really worries me. What's made Mycroft feel useless? He's come here, whether he admits it to not, to see me and say, 'There but for the grace of-'… I can't finish that with a straight face. You get the picture. Quite apart from finding that just a tad offensive, I've always considered my brother's continuing psychological turmoil to be one of my duties. About the only one I've ever enjoyed, actually, so when somebody is taking it away from me, I want to know.

Judging by how far along the kettle is, I've lasted maybe a minute and a half before I say, "Alright, so who is he?"

Well, that woke him up anyway. Standing like a shocked meerkat, "I beg your pardon?"

"Or she, but knowing what little I do about power structure of where I presume you nominally work, probably he. Whatever superior put their gender-ambivalent boot on top of your head – Mirror's right behind you by the way."

"Well, you're on fine form," he mutters sullenly. Fixes his hair, then comes to sit down.

"You're not going to tell me anything, are you?"

There are constrictions on him. That's what he always used to say when he came home for a weekend or just for dinner. He could only talk about certain aspects of what he did, because there are constrictions on him. One of them is the Official Secrets Act. Tonight, if you'll pardon the slightly maudlin tone, I rather feel his own pride is what's really holding him back. He sighs and with great restraint says, "What I thought I'd do, actually, was sit here, drink this coffee and ask you what you're working on. Now that we're in touch again I wanted to… to keep the lines of communication open, as it were."

He wants to know if I have anything he can fetch back his harsher masters. If I were in a worse mood, or if he'd been several hours earlier I had only just uncurled from being a small, seed-like coil beneath my duvet in staggering pains, I would tell him so, and in as many words. But he didn't come then, he's here now. I say, "Not an awful lot. Getting another look at the hotel killer."

"I thought they got him?"

"They took a very easy, possibly framed target into custody, if that's what you mean by 'got him'." There's a low, disgusted rattle in Mycroft's throat. "Well, that's what I said, but there's no talking to these people."

"I'm sorry to hear it," he says. Really does sound sorry, too.

"Don't be. They'll know all about it when it happens again." It's only because he doesn't reply I feel the need to look up at him. Usually it's only in the face of incredible cruelty or crudeness that Mycroft can be left speechless. And yet here it is before me, large and life. When I look up he's already staring at me. "What?"

"Please," he says, "Tell me you're not serious." As if I'd say a thing like that in jest… these days. "This city can't manage a lunatic like that, not now, not after everything that's been happening."

I wish there was something else I could say. He's right. But I'm just looking at the facts, after all, and presenting an analysis.

[A/N - to all daily readers - Belfast is currently under more snow than the last couple of winters combined and it's still coming down. My web connection is therefore a little bit patchy. I'll do my best to keep up the pace of posting, but if i can't make it, it's only the weather to blame.]