Sherlock

Far too accurate an analysis, it would seem.

I wake up still at the table, sore across the shoulders and neck. Grab for my phone before I realize the landline is ringing too. In the confusion, I answer both at once. "Hello?"

Lestrade in one ear, Mycroft in the other, "Sherlock, you were right."

Ah. Well, that's not a bad way to start the day, is it? "Was I?"

"It's happened again." They both said that. There's no need for me to differentiate. And Mycroft goes off on one about imperatives and the logistical, moral and infrastructural strain on the something so I hold the main phone away from me and hang on to the mobile. Lestrade's being much more interesting. "It's a real mess," he's admitting. "There's no mistaking it's the same murderer. We've had to let the other bloke go."

"Yes, well, I should think so."

Mycroft says, "Beg pardon?"

"Um… told you it was coming."

Lestrade says, "Yeah, alright, no need to rub it in."

"I'm not rubbing it in, but-"

Mycroft, confused, "I never said you were."

This is a farce, isn't it? It was alright when they were saying the same thing, that was just like getting the phone in stereo, but this is ridiculous. Let's think, how can do this without being rude… "Where?" I ask them both.

"Friday Hill."

"Right. Lestrade, I'm on my way. Mycroft… talk to Lestrade." I set the two phones down facing each other on the table and leave them to it. But by the time I've gone to get dressed I realize the one mistake I've made (forgivable, considering the circumstances) and rush back. Down both phones, "Is either of you sending a car, by any chance?" Of course now, when I need them, they've both gone. Taxi it is, then.

I hate pulling down a taxi on my own, and not just because there's nobody to split the fare. It's the time it takes, sat alone in that little box. Too much thinking time, too little in the way of distraction. This morning, it would be alright, I've got something to think about, but then there's the other thing I hate and hate more, which is the fact that it would appear to be required of all London taxi drivers to take some sort of a course in persistent, pointless, utterly inoffensive chatter, which does not help.

Oh, but there's one thing I'm not sure I'll ever tire of; getting a cab to stop right at the edge of a strand of police tape. The look on the driver's face, stopping to see if I walk on through it. It's a pitiful thing to find any pleasure in a crime scene, perhaps. But the more I see of them, the more I become convinced one really is better off finding all the pitiful pleasures one can. Or else, or so runs my deep suspicion, one ends up looking like Lestrade does this morning.

Same as before. I mean, I hate to use the word haggard…. Then again, he's made it very clear we do not count as friends, so what's to stop me? Yes, haggard, he's haggard, and as I approach him there are a few extra factors that weren't there in Knightsbridge. "Win anything?" I call. Just to remind him that he had picked up the wrong suspect and I could tell him on a glance that he was wrong. By his reaction, I'm still right.

"What do you mean 'win'?"

"What was it, poker?" For a moment he's a little too shocked to hate me. "Pad of your right thumb. Paper cut like that's very distinctive."

So, like so many do, he tries to brush it off, "No, as it happens. I won sod all."

But by now I'm standing next to him and something catches, something that surprises me too. A scent, scent attached to a memory I can't quite get at but a scent anyway and a scent that makes me to say to him, "But that doesn't mean you didn't get lucky."

He tugs at the collar of his coat like there's something there I might see. "Can we concentrate, please?"

"What was her name?"

"Do you know the shit I could get in over bringing you here?"

"I'm very flattered. What was her name?"

He clears his throat, content to ignore me. On the far side of the tape he points out three houses; number twenty-two and twenty-six on one side of the street, and twenty-five on the other. "Three houses, same as three hotel rooms. Seems to be a pattern."

"No," I tell him. "Just a time limit. If he'd felt it was safe he would have stayed here days and cleared the street. But I take it the rest is the same? The mattresses, the poses, the delay in finding the bodies."

"No delay. In fact the last one was still cooling when we got there."

"What happened?"

"Number twenty-six," Lestrade says, and leads off, towards the last house on the left. It takes us past the door of the one house not having the traditional white gazebo put up around the door. He sees me looking. "The lady who lives there is in Hong Kong on business."

"So he does his research. Somebody will have seen him. A stranger or a strange car."

"Yeah, they're starting the door-to-doors as we speak. But it's not an overly quiet area, there's a lot of through-traffic with the schools round here. It gets in the way." A good point. I think he's glad to have made a good point, like it gives him the sensation of winning something back. Maybe takes the refreshed smell of that perfume out of his nose. Not out of mine, though. Wish I knew what it meant. Probably nothing. It could just be popular, it could just be from the street. But…

Anyway, at the last house he leads me down the side, into the garden. There, the French doors are stuck ajar. They are stuck on the thing which would have been a major tip off the moment it was spotted.

Oh, dear God, no pun intended… It's a Dalmatian. Dead, with a bloodied pit in its skull the size of my fist.

"Sherlock, meet Horace."

This doesn't make sense. If the killer's been watching he would have known there was a dog. Looking at his work to date, the caution and the pride… No, he wouldn't have risked it. That's when I notice that Horace is losing his hair a little bit, just on the hackle. "Do you have a magnifier?" I ask Lestrade.

"…Why would I have-?"

"Then ask that forensic to lend me his glasses."

"He's not wearing-"

"They are in his pocket, now will you just ask?" Long, frustrating story short, the glasses are provided to me and I can get a proper look. It's a tiny little patch, not distressed enough to be mange. More important than mange anyway. I know what I'm looking for. Of all people, I ought to know what I'm looking for.

The hair makes it difficult, as do the raised, empty follicles where the others have been lost, but I find it in the end. A tiny puncture mark. That's all it takes.

The killer wasn't expecting Horace because Horace has been at the vet, probably for a few days. Based on that timeframe, one might reasonably expect that he was in some considerable degree of pain. It's hard to know without giving him a better going over and I'm not sure how forensics would feel about that. So when the time came for him to go home he would have been injected with something strong to keep him going for a while. Generally some sort of corticosteroid. And the family would have been warned that it can, in rare cases, marginally increase aggression. Growling, barking, that sort of thing…

That's how I know Horace was a good boy and was only trying to protect his owners. They, however, shouted downstairs for him to shut up rather than investigate the disturbance, and so it's been left to me to scratch behind his cold, bloodied ears.

Jim

Moran is taking his shift at running the business. It's not like leaving D… that other one, in charge. With Moran, I just give the simple instruction that anything that doesn't look important ought to be dismissed, and anything that looks scary to come and get me. It's about the extent of my people management skills and so far it's doing the job. It won't be for long, at any rate. I just need to get a read at this hasty dossier on last night's lucky winner. We have his business card and everything. It's a nice touch. It's probably all I'll pass on to the end user.

But me, for my own information, I'm going to sit here and read about a wife and two teenagers, no mother, elderly, infirm father only rarely visited, etcetera, so on and how you will.

Let me explain to you how this works. If you ever meet somebody who seems warm and friendly and is a great conversationalist, if they seem interested in you, and if you find yourself talking about the aspects of your life you don't generally give much thought to, be very wary.

For instance, you say the words, 'Not as often as I'd like', and that person is likely to be hearing, 'Fear of facing up to paternal mortality – terrorizing the kids could turn this into an even more powerful factor?'

The file is five A4 pages full of similarly enlightening notes. Honestly, some people, once you get them talking? I really don't mind people who are self-obsessed, so long as they're upfront about it. But when it's just somebody suddenly realizing that they themselves are a topic for conversation, getting all flattered, oh, God, it's disgusting. Very bloody beneficial, yeah, but I'm glad I sent somebody else to do it.

I'm adding my own thoughts in red pen (before I have this hard copy shredded. Can't have sensitive papers lying round the flat) when there's a knock at the door. Given Moran is in charge, I don't get up. It's a small, timid knock and it has to come again before he hears it. As he passes the back of the couch, I say to him, "Don't let that witch in. She's come for this-" The Thames Water memory stick with the email on it. I slide it out of my pocket and throw it to him. "-That's all she's getting."

Out of my sight, thank God, I hear him open the door and say, "Jim says just take this and go."

Beyond him, Dani laughs. Leans through and shouts to me, "It was only a bit of fun!"

"I have never been kicked out of anywhere in all my adult life." Over the back of the sofa I can just about see her, just enough to see that something's different. It's her figure, under a long, heavy jumper and straight, shapeless jeans. "Having a fat day, dear?" But Danielle lifts the hem of the jumper to show off shiny black neoprene underneath. The wetsuit. I neither understand nor pretend to nor pretend to want to. I go back to my reading. "This is full of spelling mistakes, y'know, it's a very difficult thing to get through."

"Yes, well, contrary to popular belief, I am not a secretary and have no speed-typing training."

"Oh, trot along now, there's a good girl…"

It's not funny. I'm genuinely offended, so I don't know why she's laughing, because it's not funny. The sound of the door closing behind her is very nice, certainly, but it would be nicer if she'd act like she has some concept of shame. That's what it ought to be, you know, real, honest to goodness, go-to-church-and-confess-it shame. Danielle was the only one who could see that blackjack table on the cameras, she told me so herself. It couldn't have been the dealer who spotted me, either; I wasn't counting my own cards, but Moran's in the next seat. I was being nice, letting him win at gambling for once.

And then all of a sudden it's the tap on the shoulder and I've never been so humiliated in all my days.

No, that's not true. No, what was worse was waiting outside for Moran to realize what had happened and come and join me, the daft sod. Really did think he was onto a lucky streak. He was crushed. Crushed, and that overgrown child is laughing her way out to the reservoirs thinking it was all a great laugh. If I didn't have work to do, like a mature person, I'd be devising some equally gruesome revenge against her. But like I said, I don't have time.

I'll do that at the weekend.

See, things should have calmed down a bit by the weekend. I've let it. Stopped putting new stuff on, brought an end to some of the continuing works. I gave that bomber in Belfast up to his local constabulary. He was getting a bit big for his boots, talking about wars and revolutions and stuff. I can't afford for wars and revolutions to be kicking off right now. No, I'm going to let people relax for a couple of days, get their breath back.

And then?

Every job needs a title, a code to refer to it by. They're totally arbitrary, first word that comes into my head, usually. I'm thinking of calling this one 'Dirty Harry'. It's just a thought that makes me smile.

Not that the man detailed on these typo-ridden pages is any Harry Callahan. The word here, in bold and underlined and which I have gone on to box in in red, is 'Crutches'. Coffee gets him through the days. And for the evenings, as Dani learned when she went through his coat, there are small white pills. She's taped one to the page. I didn't recognize it but Moran says they're glucose. Says he wouldn't touch them with a lance. 'The heroin of sugar-rushes,' is how he put it, but that's unnecessarily poetic; I didn't write it down. Anyway, in addition to the everything-but-uppers approach, I'm told our target drinks too much, and as a result has lost sight of his limits, tends to drink and drink and then go from grave-side sober to trashed on a heartbeat, and that he gets really rather pleased with himself when he wins at cards.

Oh yeah, we're one iconic revolver away from a complete re-enactment… Well, at least he'll have to get off his deskbound arse for this one. Who knows, maybe he'll remember what police work is supposed to be about, give us a run for our money. I'm trying not to doubt it. I'm trying to have a little bit of faith; after all, this is my plan this time.

Moran comes through with the work phone, holding it out to me. "Peter Lorre," he says, very quietly.

I nod and take it from him. "Yes?"

"Excuse me, please, but why do they call me that? It's not my name." Hm… I flip the typed notes over and scribble on the back, contemporary. Under-educated?

"Code-words, friend," I tell him. "We had to have something to call you."

"Oh, of course." I write down, seeks glamour, exoticism. Then he tells me, "In the newspapers, they have called me now the Sleeping Beauty killer."

Vain. Non-native. Bet null and void.

"I wouldn't say that too loudly."

"Nobody can hear me here, thank you." Over-polite, terror of some authority figure? "Did you see? Did you see the new work? They found them quickly because of the dog, not me."

I haven't had the news on, but he doesn't need to know that. "I saw. It was good work. Listen, I'd like to meet y-"

"Oh, no, no, please, no-" Fear of confrontation. Recognition/anonymity – poor bastard.

"But I have a new challenge for you." Looking down at the red ink on the page, "I think you'll like it."