Jim

There's somebody in the flat when I get home. Not moving about or making noise, but they're there. That way you can just feel somebody being present. Remembering how this day started, feeling like years ago it's been so long since, I reach for the steel bar behind the coat stand. Pure paranoia, of course. Moran was with me when I met the Creep and I didn't even go straight home after that. Anyway, he had to open the restaurant this morning, didn't he? It's pure paranoia, but I fetch the bar out anyway, before I go any farther than the door. Doesn't have to be the Creep, after all, could be anybody.

Jesus, it really could be…

Or it could be Moran, giving me a heart attack, fuck's sake. Sitting in my flat, eating my food, this time of night. "Alright, Jim?" God, I almost keep hold of the bar to do him in with. It strikes me now we need some sort of signal. We've always needed it, and we've been remiss not to spot that. I'm not talking a red carnation left on the hall table or anything elaborate. Just some little sign so that I know anybody in the flat is somebody who is sanctioned to be in the flat.

"Bit edgy there, mate," Moran says, eyeing the bar in my hand. Says it like it's not even his fault. "Something happen?"

"I didn't know who you were, that's all."

"Yeah, but who else was it going to be? What I'm asking is what made you even think-"

I tell him, "It could be anybody."

"Ah, c'm-"

"It could be anybody, Moran, and half the time I don't even think about it." But as I'm speaking he's pointing past me, making me turn my head to find his jacket is hanging right there next to me on the coat stand. Which is fair enough, but he doesn't always wear it and he doesn't always hang it up. It's still an issue, and he's treating it like… And I reached for a steel bar, didn't I, when his snooker cue case is sitting right there. Silly me. There are pieces in that case, not of a cue, and I can put them together in decent time. "Okay, marginally more important question, why did you have your rifle with you today, in public, in our city where we live?"

He disappears down the hall, towards the kitchen, mumbling, "Never even took it out."

"You couldn't lie if your life depended on it. Worse, you couldn't lie if my life depended on it."

"Took it to have the sight realigned."

"Don't think just because you use jargon I'm not exactly familiar with I can't still hear that you're lying."

"It was only for show." And now we're getting a bit closer to the truth. Not all the way there, though; he still won't look at me. In fact, even though we're already surrounded by the mess he managed to leave just making himself a sandwich (should have got the Creep to sort me out with a business account), Moran sticks his head in the fridge rather than make eye contact. Ducking down to a lower shelf, he bends, and I realize the rifle's not all he had on him. His handgun, the special occasion handgun, the one with the painted saint on the handle, all tacky, Mexicali gangland style, that's stuck in the back of his jeans.

"Moran, you're a walking arsenal, now-"

Him, persecuted and enraged, starts bawling, "I was only following-!"

"Use the word 'orders'. Use it. I dare you."

And yeah, even Moran can understand that wouldn't be a good idea. Not when the person who should give him orders is the one trying to find out what the hell is going on. He calms down, goes all miserable, moping like a kid who has made a mistake too many and knows he's screwed now. He sits down and bites sulking into his sandwich. With his mouth full, "Dani said you agreed to trust her."

I try to be as kind and benevolent as possible, given the circumstances. He's been used, and left in this awkward position, and so I owe it to him to treat him with some little feeling. I sit opposite, leaning in like some simpering twat from planned-parenting, and tell him as gently as I can, "That was before I knew it involved the Travelling Firearms Show. Now talk. Just between you and me."

Obviously I've already had my ideas about this masterful over-arching plan. I just want confirmation. My own people to be straight with me. We need to have a meeting about this, I think. About marking out when one or any of us is in someone else's home, and about what's gone on today. And I need to have a quiet, private word with Miss Plan B about the all the sneaky support work.

Happily, on this one occasion, before it gets dangerous, the plan was relatively sound. Moran rambles and goes off on epic tangent sagas of justification for it all, so I'll strip it back and give you the facts. Danielle, as she already admitted, was worried about how I would have come across to the creep. ('Don't get us wrong,' Moran adds, with that lovely plural to protect himself, 'we know you're terrifying, but other people just need told sometimes, y'know?') Her plan then, playing off said-murdering basket-case's recent initiation, was to make it look like he really had stepped into the middle of something. And remember, when I took notes on him, it was very obvious that he liked that sort of idea, that delusional glamour. Psychologically, it was already totally sound.

So she made her tailored appearance while he was working and, I imagine, muttered just enough cryptic references to give him the idea, and then had Moran very simply follow him, with the case in one hand, with the other gun in his waistband. He followed the entire day, allowed himself to be seen once or twice, and found the whole thing very satisfying.

This time, they're getting away with it.

Sherlock

There's somebody in the flat when I get home. He's made himself coffee and looks really quite comfortable at the little table by the window. Or as close to comfortable as he ever looks anyway. "Really, Mycroft, one more time and this becomes breaking and entering."

"Hardly," he says, "When I have a key." He does, too, he produces it from his pocket and holds it up where I can't see. Can't fail but see; the light catches on it and is flipped once or twice across my eyes. An accident, of course. He hasn't enough humour in him for it to be anything else. I don't think.

"Where did you get that?" A pause, just a moment of silence. "No, I can't believe I said that either. What are you doing here?"

Putting the key away, trying to look disinterested, but there's something else. Desperate energy goes in to affecting nonchalance. "Well, when one's only sibling answers the phone to a serial killer he predicted-"

"I didn't say anything. I didn't give anything away." Until just now, of course. Just now, I said all that too quickly and gave away everything.

"I don't intend to have you watched," he says, straight off. I'm grateful for that. Honest conversation, between two people on the same intellectual level, you can skip rounds and round of tentative questioning, of feeling-out, just skip to the next important answer. I'm glad, sometimes, of Mycroft. "That's why I came over myself. You seem unfazed." And there's a tremor as his brow decides whether or not to knit, trying to figure out whether he should be more or less worried.

I can't think how to reply to that. It wasn't a question, anyway, and doesn't need an answer, but I can't even think of what to say. I'm pouring a coffee for myself from the same pot and that kills a little time. It's not that I don't understand the phrase or what he's really asking underneath it, all of that is patently obvious. But something else is blocking it. Something more important, which must be said, and said now. I just can't work out how not to have it come out like childish whining.

What the hell; I'm the younger one, after all, and anyway, I've been traumatised by contact with a madman…

"You said I was sanctioned."

Mycroft, sounding almost surprised, "You are."

"Then why was I guided ever so gently out the door at Scotland Yard this afternoon?"

"Scotland Yard?" he laughs. Yes, laughs. It's alright, though; it's a harsh, bitter, derisive sort of noise, so it still fits. Just barely, but it still fits. "Because they've proven themselves ever so useful, thus far…"

"I can't do anything, for you or anybody, without that access, and-" But it's only at this point I turn around, and see him lifting his briefcase up onto the table. "Mycroft?"

"The rest of this," he says, "I will leave with you overnight. There is, however, one thing I'd like you to run an eye over now, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. A cursory look and a brief opinion, for the moment." It's all there. Photography for both scenes, lab reports, manifests of evidence gathered. And this he's handing to me now, two thin pages stapled together. A hastily-typed transcript, and not the same one I handed to Lestrade this morning. "He's been back in touch. I've marked the relevant section."

Probably not, but he's marked what he wants me to look at, certainly, with neat little stars of black ink.

Scanning the page, I keep seeing his name and ask, "How's Lestrade holding up?"

"…Beg pardon?"

Oh, dear, I've confused him now. "Never mind." I'll find out for myself after Mycroft is gone. I've got a good idea, anyway, based on what he wants me to read.

There's a line where Lestrade, obviously being fed his questions by the sort of psychology graduate who only ever used their degree to learn to bluff, asks the killer if there is anything he wants to say;

…about yourself, or your work? Anything you feel like we should know about you?

To which, and I'm a bit shocked because it really seems like Mycroft might have marked the right section after all, the killer replies;

There might have been. Once, there might have been. But I am too important now. I may not identify myself. My work is having higher purpose now.

What do you mean, 'higher purpose'?

You are higher purpose, Inspector.

And who was it gave you higher purpose? (And here it is painfully clear that he's been triggered by the analysts - ) God?

The typists here have made a point of noting a possible sound of laughter here before the call was terminated. Their words, not mine. I'd be staying away from words like 'terminated', if I was them. Feels a bit much like tempting fate.

Mycroft sees my eyes stop moving, knows I've finished reading. Says, "Standard delusions of grandeur, naturally," he says. But doesn't mean it. Waiting for me to contradict him. There's an idea in his head, but I'm the one that has to put the first words to it, confirm his suspicions.

"Standard," I say.

Mycroft deflates, just a little, just enough to let me know it really meant something to him. Of course it's not a standard delusion of grandeur. Standard-delusion-of-grandeur would have told all and without compunction, the moment he was asked. But I had to know how deep this went with him. He's not annoyed, so it's not a simple matter of wanting to be right. There's more than just his pride riding on this and I'm reminded very strongly of the last time he landed in on me, when he was low and had been stepped on.

"Of course, if you leave it all with me, I'll be able to give you a more considered opinion very soon."

The tone of my voice, I think he knows I don't believe there's anything standard about this, as a case. He offers, in conciliation, "Lestrade is still a viable contact for you. He knows now to be more wary of his department, but when it comes to the on-site work, and anything he can give you-" And he stops there, because I understand.