Sherlock

I have one clear memory of my brother displaying any sort of fear. It is, I believe, my first memory. Our father had just died. I remember nothing of him or of the black-clad rites that almost certainly followed. I remember a host of relations and supposed family friends, few of whom I had known before, fewer of whom I have ever seen since, descending on the house. They were all much, much sadder than I was. I affected greater sadness so as to match them, but their attentions became unbearable. And so it came to pass that I went looking for my brother, who no doubt had gotten as bored with all this hush and stillness as I had and had gone out to play. I brought the frog.

There was a frog. We built a habitat in a plastic microwave tub and left it next to the pond and it was the frog and it was ours. That's secondary. Don't know why I felt the need to… Anyway. Brought the frog.

Couldn't find Mycroft anywhere. Being small, my world was small, and I hadn't looked very far, I suppose. Got as far as the stone steps down from the terrace, sat myself down, took the frog out of his box and was playing with him. He wasn't croaking. I wanted him to because everybody in the house had been so quiet, but he wasn't. And then, me being small and having small hands, he got away from me, and was escaping, down the steps. If he got into the lawn he'd be camouflaged and I'd never catch him. I'd have lost the frog and even if I did find Mycroft he wouldn't want to play.

I chased it to the bottom step before I got it. Clapped between two hands, still and sticky and still not croaking. Actually I think that was near the end for the frog, you know…

But down there, on the other side of the pillar, hidden down the side of the steps behind the roses, I heard my brother crying. I think when I asked him why that was the first he knew I was even there. By the time he looked up his eyes were dry. Red, yes, and all the other traces, but dry, so I couldn't accuse him of anything. He started to repeat what Mother had already said, that Father wasn't sleeping and wasn't coming back. But I knew all that. I told him I'd brought the frog and I think that cheered him up.

I've never forgotten that sound, though. Before I saw him, before I ever knew it was him, before I was old enough to know it was a sound from far beyond even grief, even bereavement, there was just something wrong. You'd go to the wall to stop a sound like that.

That's what makes getting back to the flat such a long bloody saga. Every red light is another hateful barrier and, while I know I'm overreacting, while I know if he'd really wanted me picked up he could have had that done, it's long. It's difficult. And for some reason I just can't get Lestrade out of my head. It's nothing he's ever said or done. It's how I saw him this morning. Without even having spoken to him, it's… It's that image of him and his son. It's knowing what that boy had been through and knowing, somehow, that there was absolutely nothing going through either of their heads but relief.

They don't have a good relationship, y'know. Signs and signals, telltales in the conversation, the boy went to live in halls to get away from his father. But there, this morning, none of that made any difference and… and I can't get it out of my head.

Don't get me wrong; Mycroft's not crying when I get back to the flat. But he is afraid. The signs are the same as his anger and his frustration, any other emotion he can't quite get a handle on, but stronger. Less controlled. And somewhere between my asking him not to and my arriving back here he's taken up pacing again.

The moment I come through the door he tells me, "You're not safe here."

So I close the door, now that I'm given a moment to do so, and tell him as calmly as I can, "I came here to recover. Nobody knows I live here except you and two Metropolitan police officers."

"It's enough," he insists. "Everybody knows the Met leaks like a sieve. Look at Thames Water."

"That was a hoax. It was on the cab radio coming over. No harm no foul."

"The harm comes when the rates are due to go up and people refuse to pay for contamination scares. It doesn't matter if it was real or not, the damage is done." Which is interesting. Not the Budget speculation, no, that's very, very boring, but the fact that he answered at all. I had meant to distract him by mentioning recent news, try to move him along from whatever he's hung up on. And he answered to it. He kept right on as though it were the same conversation. Either I'm getting much better at manipulating him or I'm missing the connection.

He looks sick; pale, grimacing as though his heart has fallen level with his stomach. "Your mastermind theory again, is that it?"

"Who poisoned you, Sherlock?"

Second time he's asked me that.

"Why? And for the love of God, sit down." My eyes hurt trying to follow him back and forth. Moving in behind the table I kick out the other chair for him and I swear, this goes no farther until he tells me everything. Admirable, isn't it, how calm I'm being? Only if something's gotten him this worked up there's probably something to be scared of, so I'm guessing I just don't have all the facts yet.

He sits. Looks glad to do so. He's needed it and not wanted to. I know the feeling. Sometimes just sitting down is like admitting defeat, giving up. Giving up can feel very good under the right circumstances. "It all adds up. First you go around making enquiries, when it was just an idea. News works its way back to the top and then that's it. Here they come and after us this time. The idea is for us to be anonymous, so that this doesn't happen, so that they don't see us coming, and now somebody is making enquiries, putting it together-"

"You've lost me," I tell him. I know this is about his work. That's about all I've been able to glean. Something to do with the people who employ him and the nature of that employment. Something to do with a secret about to be discovered. But I shouldn't have stopped him. I stopped him and he has remembered himself. What he can and can't tell me, where all the security hazards are. He's thinking about it now and I run the risk of hearing nothing more. "Mycroft, if I've had something to do with this I deserve to know. If I'm involved in it now, I deserve to know." And I am his brother and he is afraid and I deserve to bloody know. It is unfamiliar, but instinctual, basic. He's just never needed me to understand before.

He sighs, and would like to empty out his soul and tell me everything. But all he says out loud, "Sherlock, my name is on the Secrets Act."

"So's mine," I remind him. England had an African dictator bumped last year and I found out about it, naturally they made me sign the act. It makes no difference, legally. One secret is very much separate to another. It's not a club that we're both in and so we can chat away. But that's not what I was telling him and he gets that.

"There is, as part of the governance of this country, a very small group…"

Jim

Fourteen of the bastards, that's all it is. I stood before this country like the conductor of a fecking orchestra and we made beautiful music, me and all those good, good people, and now just fourteen, hardly a percent of a percent of a percent, are breaking my skull open. I've had time, you see, to go over them all, to give them the same treatment I'd already given Holmes. I've rearranged the hierarchy a little bit based on age and experience.

For instance, the big grumpy one is still at the top. I'm still calling him Grumpy, but his name is Sulgrave. He's seventy-two and before he dropped off the face of recordable Earth, he was an army general. Much decorated. Did a lot for the Forces both while he was in it, and later on when he was behind a desk. A great man, by all accounts. Should have been given a knighthood and put out to pasture long ago, and for all I know he was, because records end twenty years ago.

Flamingo woman's name is Marishka Olenska. Eastern bloc spy master who defected while the Cold War was still just frosting over, while defecting was still a sensible move. That's all I know on her.

I traded out Cheesewire Face for a former inter-bank financier. It's turning out that Holmes, our own dear overgrown public schoolboy Mycroft, really is the runt of the litter.

There is nothing, zero, to connect these people, except maybe possibly this 'Diogenes' business.

Speaking of, there's a tentative knock at the office door. Danielle creeps in with her hands held up and my mobile in one of them. "I know, I know, I was told to get out. When you think about it, I did get out, and now I'm back in-"

"Still busy, go away."

"Yeah, but you've been busy for eight hours and from the groaning and throwing things-"

"Watch yourself."

"-I wondered if you didn't want something to eat, or a cup of tea, or another light on, maybe?" I'm not answering that. That wheedling, worried, we-need-to-talk-about-Jim voice she does, I'm not answering. "Yeah, I too am bored of hearing me say shit like that; take the hint. Also you have a message."

"Well, is it important?"

"I don't know, I can't make sense of it. Which is weird, because it's from Seb, and he's not usually so obtuse…" Still looking at my new and most mysterious of adversaries, I put my hand out. She crosses the room and, before she puts the phone into my hand, takes it between her fingertips and cleans it on her skirt. It's still warm when she gives it to me, but I appreciate the token effort anyway.

Message from Moran. Says, "Xsqueezehim or Xkwisit Corpse?"

"…That is a bit clever, isn't it?" Danielle hums assent. "Is that worrying?" She shrugs. I hand her back the phone. "The first one. Just copy it and send that back."

She's not taking the phone. I'm just holding it out there. You know when you're just holding something out there because your arm gets sore when you hold it out straight like that. Arms are heavy things, even on their own. "Peter Lorre's misconceptions aside, not your secretary."

"Danielle, answer Moran, get yourself down The Mango Tree and bring a bottle of wine on your way back, alright?"

"And you'll crawl out of this dark little office to eat with me, will you?"

"If the mood fucking takes me, now will just go about it?"

She bristles. But a second later she snatches the phone off me and lets me put my arm down. Dark and quiet, while she's sending the message, "There isn't a good enough shag in London to talk to me like that, and probably not in England."

"Hold out, love; you just haven't met him yet." She slings my phone down on the desk with a clatter, "Careful with that!" But she's halfway gone. Getting on like a child. All I wanted her to do was be useful, after all.

And then what do I do? I go back to staring at a load of pictures that don't even have stories attached to them and which I can't connect because I don't have any facts to string between them. When I can make it make sense, this gets me Mycroft Holmes, I can feel that. But it's just not happening for me. Yeah, useful old me, have I really been in here for eight hours? He's the runt and fuck, fuck's sake, I'm going to invent a phone that never rings… "Hello?"

"Pack," says Moran

"…That's not funny."

"That's why it's not a joke." Jesus, not again. "Got your message," he says, before I even need to ask. "Sat myself down to squeeze that prick, like a pimple, only as he's sitting there somebody pops him. I've got bits of that Xkwisit wanker on my t-shirt, mate."

"No, but hold on, because I'm not having another false alarm; that could be unrelated, or at least-"

At which moment the door gets slammed right back open and Dani charges in, "They're in the lobby, they're on their way up."

"Moran, stay on the line. You, what are you talking about?"

"Plainclothes. I think it's just police, but I could be wrong." By now she's back in the doorway she left not minutes ago. Along the way she picked up her overnight bag from the spare room, and is putting the papers from my desk in on top. Looking straight at me, not annoyed anymore, "What do you want to do?"

Not a clue, but I can't tell her that, can I… "What're the options?"

"Run, fight or… they're probably only police. You could try and play it here."

"Thought you weren't sure?"

"Yeah, but there's no way you're getting up the side of this building like I could and we'd really need Seb if you wanted to fight it so…" So no options then. She shrugs. No options, then.

Into the phone, "Moran, get back here, wouldn't worry too much about speed limits. Just out of interest, if you were going to set up to kill me-"

"Just get him to the living room window; I'll let you know when I'm in position."

Then he's gone and I put my mobile down. Nearly, anyway; I think half of it is on the table when Dani picks it up by the other half, drops it into her bag. Saying, "What else do you need me to save?"

I'm unplugging the work hard-drive from the computer again when I look at the bloody machine. "This is what they're coming for, isn't it?" The bloody connections. Internet's more trouble than it's worth. Everything leaves traces. I hand her the work, "Take that, go and get the laptop." Then, when she's gone, I do something utterly heartbreaking. Of course, you hope this day never comes, but a smart man has to be prepared for it anyway, and I have been. There is, mounted inside the casing, a small electromagnet, and I have the failsafes to activate it. And when it goes off, it'll fry absolutely everything in there. I'm told it's more than enough. I'm told it'll probably knock the telly out and all.

I set it up, tap that last key with my eyes shut. Oh, God, it crackles. I hear it die. It's like being the child that sits in the farm house while Uncle Clyde takes the old dog out the back and sends it home to Jesus, oh, dear God…

Before I can get properly into my mourning, Danielle's back in the room, grabbing the print-outs off the wall. "Keep those."

"Christ's sake. Anything else? Rubber ducky, favourite slippers?" But she folds them up, stuffs them in two bundles down next to the laptop. But to answer her question, no. There hasn't been time, since the rehearsal run last week, for anything incriminating to build up. I'm not sure it was an honest question anyway; she's not even looking at me, leaning out the window. "You're not actually climbing up the side of the building, are you?"

"No." She reaches left, and her hand comes back with a rope in it.

"Why have you got a line running down outside my flat? Isn't that a bit obvious?"

"It's behind the downspout. It's been there six months, so it couldn't be that bloody obvious." Stood on the window ledge, securing the bag on her shoulder, "I'll hear you if you shout."

"Hear me if I get shot and all. Go."

No sooner is the window frame hanging empty but there's a knock on the door.