Sherlock

"We've got him," Donovan is saying. Down the phone, this is, thank God. Glad she's not really here. "For real this time, we've really, really got him. We have his name. Description and home address and everything."

Do we? Oh, well, jolly good show, good for us. Bloody clever we must be and all. I wonder why she's using the royal-We? I mean, I don't know all these things, so who's we? Unless it's her and all those other useless, drunken, emotional cripples which are supposed to be protecting the bloody capital. She couldn't mean them, could she? What do they have?

Ooh, I should not have answered my phone in this shape.

"Hello? Sherlock?"

"I'm still here." Still aware of that, still wishing to God I wasn't. Still very much bloody here. "So what's this name we have now, then?"

"Carl Hedegaard." She begins to tell me a long story. Because she was the one who had discredited the statement of 'eyewitness' Emilia (the one who didn't witness anything), nobody was willing to listen to her when she brought them the lead on the lion comment. Without Lestrade around to feed it through, Sally took it upon herself to solve the problem of these incidents. Which are, when you think of it, serial mass murders and you'd think the police would want them stopped but neverthebloodyless…

Donovan went back to the hotel, on a hunch. She showed the receptionist the distinctive, heavy key-ring. And the woman recognized it immediately. She, apparently, is not a lion. She's a unicorn.

Donovan really shouldn't be saying things like that to me right now. I could swear she just told me the receptionist is a unicorn.

This unicorn that works the desk down in Knightsbridge recognized the lion. And was able, from that, to remember a guest who checked in the night before the murders, who was indeed a lion. (Really. I could swear this is what she's saying. Usually I avoid the worst of this hallucinatory nonsense. Maybe it's because I've been off it for so long, but it's hitting me tonight. Suddenly there are lions and unicorns running around all over London, apparently… Really?) The receptionist-unicorn was able to provide a description of this lion-guest.

Then I am informed that the official London chapter of the lions was able to provide her all other information based on the description, leading her to the lion known as Carl Hedegaard.

That's when I have to stop her. "A chapter of lions? The Lions have unionized? For… for better quality wildebeest when they're on benefits? I… What?"

"Oh," she says, realizing she probably should have started with this. "Lions and unicorns. It's something to do with a TV program, a science-fiction thing. They're two different factions or something? We found him through the London chapter of the fanclub. I was reading up on it, but it really doesn't matter. Do you even get it when I tell you? We've got him. It all adds up."

"…What can you prove? Some sad, Scandinavian bastard watches too much TV, needs a life?"

She takes too long about replying. So long, in fact, that I'm starting to look at the phone, thinking I might have hung up on her, or maybe time is just creeping, the way it will sometimes when one is dancing merrily along the brink of unconsciousness and not caring if one falls in or not. "Sally? Hel-lo?"

"…Where are you?" Good question. Very good question. Still here, I know that much. Here is not an established doss, because I'm not going back to one of those, nor is it home, because Mycroft was at home. As much as I can tell from my immediate surroundings, here is a dark corner with a concrete floor and walls so damp they're weeping. But aside from that, no, sorry, Sally, dear, you've got me there. I raise my hands. You win, on that one. "Where are you and is it anything to do with the reason Lestrade still isn't answering his phone?"

Oh, she thinks we're both off getting pissed somewhere. She thinks I went to help him and ended up falling off the wagon right into the gutter next to him. She's part right. Actually, in an abstract sort of way, she's nearly all right. She is alright, actually, Donovan, she'll do well, if she keeps pushing herself, because she's alright, but… How did I get onto this? I love forgetting. Love not knowing. It's always such a fresh feeling, every time. Sets me laughing. Small, at first, controllable, but control's not really my strong point just now. It grows and grows until I can't hold it anymore and it breaks out.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, you're like children," Donovan mutters. Her voice is getting away from the phone, starting to hang up.

"Wait," I manage, when I can breathe. "Wait, wait, Sally, wait. Wait. If they arrest him now they only have two days to make it stick. You know all this. And if they don't then they have to let him go and somebody's going to get him away after that and then he's gone again, and that's twice the Met have made a mess of it so-"

But I laughed, and now she doesn't want to listen to me anymore. One mistake, remember? I said it before, one mistake and it's all bloody over. "Yeah, well, the people here seem to think we've got enough to move on. And since here is one place you're definitely not, I'd say they know a bit better than you."

That makes me laugh again. This time she hangs up.

It's not fair. She can't persecute me for being here. Staying off the skag didn't make sense anymore. I can't be expected to pursue life courses that don't make sense. That would be an impossible imposition on me. I had to be here, anyway; this is the only explanation I can give Mycroft to cover up my long absence that he'll believe. Especially when he wakes up and finds his money returned to him. And it's only tomorrow morning, sick to dying because of tonight, that I'll be able to ask him what that was even about.

If the Met want to fuck it all up all over again, they can be my bloody guest. I had wanted to think Donovan was smarter than this. I'm surprised at how far she was able to get, and then not to be able to take it to the conclusion. But who knows? Maybe some extraordinary stroke of luck will crash down upon them like a lightning bolt. It has to strike somewhere, I suppose, and it's not striking here. And here is one place Sally Donovan very clearly is not.

Jim

Danielle went out. Said she had to make a phone call and sloped off, sighing about how there used to be a payphone on every street corner. I told her she was giving her age away and she didn't so much as blink. Just sighed again how she wanted phone boxes back, how they were a loss to her profession, and to a way of life like ours. I watched her go, all the while scarcely seeming to notice that her feet were bare and grass-stained from Moran's overgrown back garden.

For a while, that's left me with Moran. He claims there's no work for him to do tonight. He will very simply be guarding his house until he knows we're alright here. When Dani comes back, he says, they'll take shifts.

"I can take a shift."

"Nah, mate. You're the boss." Kind way of saying leave this to people who know what they're looking for. But I'm not offended. I feel like I should be, or like I would have been not so very long ago. But I'm not. He's right; each job to those as are qualified for it. That's what he's here for.

But then he goes away, and I wish he was just here. Don't get me wrong, he's only up in the attic. It's converted, see, and with him being set right in the middle of a terrace, with a window on either end he can watch both angles. He picked this place because it's defensible. That's obviously not something that was going through my head when I was picking my sixth floor apartment with one decent exit.

While I don't know exactly what to be doing tonight, I'm probably not going to find the information I really need on Rightmove. Then again, it's a very safe website, having nothing to do with business, and I quite like the idea of just doing something safe right now. If I do find anywhere, I'll have to get opinions. Take Dani with me on the viewing, tell me what it would be like to break into. Send Moran along a day later, tell me if I can get shot too easy and should probably just leave it. I'll consult, when it comes to the next place. This could be good for me, y'know. It's not a fresh start. It's not like I've lost everything, burned it all away with a tiny electromagnet and dear Christ, I can still hear the crackle it made… No, it's not that at all, it's not. I'll get a new computer, a better computer. It's just an upgrade.

Yeah, there's a thought to make me feel better enough to start thinking again.

Until, that is, there's a sound of tiny claws behind the skirting at the radiator and I step up out of my chair. Go to the bottom of the stairs, "Moran, fuck's sake, did you know you have mice?"

He leaves his attic crow's nest, drops down to the landing like to tell me the bloody British are coming. Eyes wide, feral, "Did you actually see him, though? I only ever hear the fucker, did you see him?"

"No, just heard him."

"Jim, on my mother's grave, I will do anything up to and including sexual favours if you can present me with his cold furry body, because he's driving me mental."

"I did not need to hear that."

"Look, I'm just saying, if I come down out of the attic in the morning and you've hung, drawn and quartered him, mounted his beady-eyed head on a cocktail stick for a pike as a warning to others that would have followed-"

"You've thought about this."

"Oh, his name is Simon, but that only so it'll feel more personal when I dump his corpse."

This is a surreal conversation to be having, isn't it? Having been hounded out of house and home, this is… yeah, this is surreal.

It's about this time that Dani opens the door and walks in. Sees us discussing up and down the stairs and worries. "What's happened?"

"Vermin in the walls."

She shakes her head. Barely aware of talking, she says, "I'll bring Valentin round, he'll have them in an hour."

"Cheers, Dani," and he starts heaving himself back upstairs.

"Wait, hold on. I have to suffer the suggestion of sexual favours and all she gets is a simple 'thank you'?"

I've just mentioned sex. I've just mentioned being offered more than her for the same amount of work. And yet does she get all wound up? Does she start swearing and shouting the odds and bringing up the contentious topic of her ruined shoe and the foot that could have been shot off still wearing it? None of this. She has already drifted past. Maybe it's just getting late and she's just tired, but Dani's not all here.

I follow her, watch her hitch up next to the sink to fetch a bottle of vodka out of the cupboard. And then she just sits there holding it, looking dimly thoughtful.

About the same way I imagine I would talk to a sleepwalker, "Find a payphone?"

Take the bottle off her, watch her slowly nod. Then catch herself and say, "Well, no, actually. Found a corner shop, asked him where the nearest payphone was, asked him really nicely and he let me use his."

She's just sitting there, swinging her greenish feet, staring past me. I don't even know if it's good or bad thoughtful. So I pour her out a measure. "What do you want with this?"

"Straight's fine." I start to pick it up. "Double. C'mon, it's not like Seb would begrudge me."

"So what spooked you off your mobile all of a sudden?"

"Keep you safe here." Most of that first measure disappears in her first swig, so she rasps trying to speak again. "I… I think I might have a present for you."

Oh, so it was good-thoughtful. Well, that's a relief. I was starting to think she'd held on to that white flag. "Well, you can't say a thing like that and then just sit there. I want a present now."

She raises one uncertain hand, one finger raised, asking me just to give her a minute. I've never had such a confusing present, certainly not one confusing enough to perplex the giver. But from the looks of her this is going to take a while. So when another phone rings, mine this time, I feel safe enough to leave her drifting and answer it.

It's the work phone. It's Charlie, the woman who works the phones at Scotland Yard. Must be on the night shift. If she's looking for me to buy her breakfast she's got another thing coming. For one, I've got too much on, and for another if she's got information she'd better just give it up. I can only handle one hesitating mannequin at a time.

"Hello?"

"Remember you told us to look out for the Sleeping Beauty killer?"

"Yes."

"They've got him. They're setting up to grab him at dawn."

Shit. Any other bloody night… "Thank you for the warning. Usual fee." I hang up, snap my fingers in front of Dani's dreamy eyes so they focus. "And you're back in the room. We've got a problem."