Jim

I like Mr Bruce, y'know. I want to take him home and just keep him in a corner spouting Diogenes-related facts for me, like a parrot. The trick of this is, he doesn't think he's giving me anything.

For instance, he'll say a thing like, "Underwood is the favourite to move up." If you're Mr Bruce, this is a clever thing to say, because you believe you're giving me nothing more than a piece of unimportant gossip about a hierarchy I have no direct relation to. This is because Mr Bruce is a grunt, and will never be anything more than a grunt, because he's not smart enough to be anything more than a grunt.

Underwood is the name of the man with the face like Cheesewire. The one I took for a top lieutenant right away, before I'd done any research. He's just got the look of the brass about him. Mr Bruce has just told me that there is a strict, regimental system in place, in which all these ambitious people vie for a better view, none of them thinking for the second that the higher you climb the more like you are to die if you fall.

Seriously. Probability of death or mortal injury goes up by five-to-ten per cent a floor. And that's out the windows of your office and all, no matter what the view is like.

All these ambitious people… I love other people's ambition. It makes my life so much easier. I already explained to you about Mr Bruce and his willingness to please. He's the prime example.

I don't want to know who's involved with Diogenes, or what their plans are. I don't need to know all that. I need to know real things. Helpful things. You don't fight against a Project or a Department; you fight against individuals. Like the sharp-faced Number One Seed, Clayton Underwood. Like Holmes, even if Moran is standing around thinking he should be a year under the sod. Like the excellently helpful, ever-so-accommodating Mr Bruce.

Well, he's starting to get a little bit edgy now. Things are going on a bit longer than he'd thought they might. See, he thinks he's being tracked. He wonders why Mycroft and co haven't swooped in to rescue him by now. Silly boy. The answer's all around him and he's just not listening. But I just can't stand the thought of him labouring under a false assumption. He might think they've just abandoned him. He might think they just don't like him. That he was reported lost and Holmes just shrugged his too-round shoulders and said, "Oh, well."

Nah, I can't be having that. Not when he's doing so well, playing so nicely. I have to help. I leave my seat to get over closer to him. I'm trying to be personal, y'know? So he doesn't think this is just cold, clinical interrogation, so he'll know I'm being genuine. "They're not coming." And I point up over our heads, guide his eyes with my own, as if we were looking to God. We're not. We're looking up at the underside of a motorway, remember? "Do you know what's passing up there? I mean, obviously, cars, lorries, vehicles of all assorted shapes and sizes, but go a step further. What's passing up there?" Mr Bruce isn't willing to guess. Still playing coy, still trying to hold on to as many cards as the poor prick thinks he has. "Sat-navs. There's more satellite activity concentrated over Britain's major roads than there is over council estates on a Pay-per-view boxing night. Tracing you here will take hours, if not days, if they can manage it at all. And as to your microphone, I could bellow your location right down it. The noise and the interference will more than cover it. So stop waiting for them. You get out of here when I say you get out of here."

He chews that one over for a while. There are already a few bumps and bruises on his face. Nothing serious, but they were Moran's little way of teaching him I don't like silence. Moran starts forward now, fist cocked, but I hold him off. Mr Bruce is just reassessing his situation. We can afford to give him a second. What he comes back with is, "You're not a go-between, are you? You're not a representative. You're him."

"Yes. I told y-"

"The mastermind-"

"I've started, so I'll finish – told you that. And I told you to pay attention too. Tell you what, as a goodwill gesture, what can I let you bring back to them? What can you haul to their door like a cat presenting a mutilated carcass… Hm… Thames Water. That was us. We were the fabrication, we were the leak, we were the ones that kept the press frothing for days thereafter. What else? There's a requisitions officer on an RAF base on the south coast that brings the arms in for us. His name is Darvill. Can you remember that?" He doesn't even want to nod, I've perplexed him so. Poor thing. I imagine it's the look abused children give the social worker… "Now. Tell me more about this powerplay that's going on. I mean, Underwood's the favourite, but who else is in the race?"

Over my shoulder, my phone goes off. Moran gets it on the first ring, drifts off into the dark corners, quietly getting rid of whoever it is.

Bruce is wasting time, with the usual rigmarole, the, 'I don't know' and 'I'm not at that level'. Of course, he's said that about everything so far. Seems to be just a matter of holding out until he talks his way through it all. Then he starts in, "It's not much of a race. Sulgrave wants Underwood for it and he's just waiting for him to prove himself."

Have to love these organizations; it's a foregone conclusion, but Underwood still has to send in his CV…

Just as I'm about to question that further, there's a hand on my shoulder. Moran with the phone. And it's important, or he wouldn't have done it. He wouldn't be standing there with his other hand behind him, on the handle of his gun. I excuse myself from Mr Bruce and get away from them, "Hello?"

"Mr Moriarty…" The Creep. I mean, not only does his voice fire through me like some slithering being all over again, but there's no way this can be good. Part of me is already welling up, thinking of poor Mr Bruce and… But let's let Creepy say his piece before we go making any rash decisions. "I am not angry that you left-" Well, that's a start, considering he's really no right to be. "I understand. I have been very disappointing to you."

"No." No, no, no, Carl, mate, nothing of the sort, perish the thought, oh God, please, perish the thought. Whatever you're thinking, you big doughy bastard, perish the fecking thought.

He insists, "I understand. But you will not be disappointed anymore. It will be an impressive thing, this time. You will have had to give me no help whatever."

Oh, Mr Bruce, we hardly knew ye. I'm looking over my shoulder at him.

He was never, ever leaving this place. Maybe they would have found his body in the end, but that's the only way. Feet-first, as my granny would have said. But he was good for so much more. Hours. Hours of casual violence and rapport-building, until he didn't know his own name anymore but he knew oh-so-much about Diogenes and I would know it all too and… Damn. One last stab (no pun intended) with Carl, "Now, did we not talk about you staying in today?"

"They will find me staying still as quickly as moving. Inspector Lestrade is not a careful man."

Oh, sweet prince of heaven, he's going after Dirty Harry, mother of God, oh, the looper, the basket case, the fruity Cheerio, I'm going to murder him. "Hold the line a second, would you, Carl?"

I turn my head to speak to Moran, but no, apparently he won't hold the line and, "You will see," he says. "You will see."

He hangs up and there's no need for anybody to hold the line. Me, looking at Bruce and sort of thinking we could just knock him out and leave him for later but… "Moran?" and I nod at Bruce. My Mr Bruce. To him, and I mean it very deeply, I say, "Sorry."

Sherlock

Between the hours of three and seven today I was in my bedroom, with all the bolts done up on the door, going over all my reasons for clean-living. Mycroft's note, the one he left with the violin at the very first, bears the print of my hand in pale sweat-stains. The instrument itself was very deliberately and firmly placed as far from me as possible, which when assessed mathematically within the dimensions of the flat, turned out to be the cupboard under the sink, next to the still-untouched morphine needle. It's not often cold, hard logistics comes back at you with irony. I didn't much appreciate it, if I'm honest.

And in my head, I was using words like health and future, words I've never believed in and words that never held any real power over me. Curled and shaking, back to the door, under a sheet to keep the outside out. It's the same every time. It's square one every time. And the farther you've gotten, the higher you've climbed out of that pit, the farther you fall back into it. It's harder every time.

Amongst all the words I have no faith in, I keep hearing, What's the point?, and having to fight it even though it's the only part of all of this that really sounds true.

So belief and resolve went to war and all I could do was sit there. It all went on inside me, in the seized and breaking cells, in the raw, collapsing synapses, and inside my head. I'm not part of it, it all just happens. I'm only the meat it acts out on. And every time, every time it's the same. For four hours, all I could do was sit there, with almost everything I've ever known dragging me out the door again.

I could laugh about it now, but do you know what kept me in there? Do you know what got me through the worst of it? You could guess, if you tried, but you won't, nobody does… It's another word. One more word that anchored me to that spot on the floor, that broke uncontrolled rage down into manageable frustration and tears.

Investigation.

That was the word. Like I said, I could laugh about it now. I could laugh about a lot of things, but it would be hard, cruel laughter. For instance, not all that long after sneaking out of one like a thieving junkie, I'm back in a hospital tonight. Could laugh about that. I could laugh about the fact that, a couple of days ago, I was asking myself a question about Carl Hedegaard's M.O.. Namely, the question of how he kept seven students asleep while he murdered and mounted six of them. There's only so quiet a man of his described-size and figure can be. Where that becomes a joke is the part where I'm shuddering and helpless and across town a police officer was getting the answer to that question first hand. Could laugh, yes, but it would be an awful, heart-breaking sort of laughter.

But I'll come to all that, won't I?

I've been saying that a lot, lately, actually. 'I'll come to that'. I've been saying it a lot at crime scenes. Little secondary questions I've been squaring away for later investigation. The trouble is, I haven't been coming to them. Things kept getting in the way. Like Mycroft would call or there'd be a development or I'd end up in hospital and I never came back to the question. It wasn't intentional. Maybe all the questions really were secondary. Peripheral. Maybe the answers wouldn't have made a difference. But I can't shake the feeling that maybe they would have, that this case could have been solved sooner and none of this would ever have come to pass. Maybe. They mightn't have made any difference at all. They certainly don't make a difference now.

It's funny (another thing I could laugh at), but Mycroft called this afternoon. Luckily I had my phone with me inside the sheet. Thinking of Mies, actually, and her parting comment. It's just typical behaviour, pure-criminal-classes, abandoning a sick man on a Tube platform with just a hint, the promise of knowledge without the satisfaction of actually having it. That's why I answered so quickly. If I'd taken the time to even see who was calling I probably wouldn't have answered at all.

"Where did you go?" he wanted to ask.

Magical mystery tour with the woman you couldn't catch. "Oh, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. How did your man make out?"

"We've lost him."

"They took him?"

"Actually, no, so far as we can tell. A vehicle left the scene, but was found to contain only empty beer barrels."

A shame. And a mystery too, but not a difficult one. I thought back, to where the van was parked, to the man loading the barrels. To struggling with Mies and the noises that were going on when I couldn't see. "Sewers," I said, because I knew the answer. "Check if there's a manhole in the alley."

"Yes, I knew you'd followed that far."

"Well, with Lestrade giving back your little inducement, I thought I'd better find a new case."

"Did he tell you that? That I'd paid him to keep you involved with the murder investigation?"

"He didn't need to, Mycroft, it was all very plain."

He hesitated then, and I thought about that hesitation for a long time. Decided in the end it was just that I'd caught him out. For once in his life he couldn't think of anything to say. That's my deduction, anyway. Glad am I to have brought it about…

That was all the discussion I had with my brother. Well, he had to go and send someone to check the sewer, didn't he? Mycroft had business to attend to, and left me to my quiet, selfish illness.

Selfish. I've said this before, in the positive and the negative, it's selfish. It's just going into myself and curling in the darkest corner and thinking about nothing else. It's selfish. God, I've talked about this in the positive, haven't I? I've longed for this selfishness. Just when I thought I couldn't disgust myself anymore, there it bloody is, a new low, another step back, from square one to square zero, and here I am now…

Here's what was happening in the world outside of me between the hours of three and seven. Lestrade took Donovan with him to speak to Carl Hedegaard's mother in her own home. An exercise in pointlessness, if you ask me; it's clear he broke away from her and has been glad not to see her in a long time. If you couldn't read that from his flat, you shouldn't be a professional investigator. But they went, anyway.

Then, under the pretext of seeing his family, Lestrade left the manhunt to officers who have dealt with this sort of thing before. You know, like he's wanted to from the beginning. He didn't go to see his family. He went home. He tossed up between black coffee and the same approach as yesterday. I don't actually know which won out. He's here and smells of both. The alcohol smell is slightly stale, though, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt.

What he didn't know is that he had been followed from Mrs Hedegaard's home, by a six-year-old Renault Clio in an attractive powder blue; the same car that picked Hedegaard up last night when he was evading capture. Why would he know? Why would he notice? That mind-set you get into, where all you want to do is get away, how could he even be looking?

Lestrade was sitting at his kitchen table, where I found him before. Carl Hedegaard was outside. He very simply sat on the back step and, with a small spray canister and a standard length of plastic straw, fired a concentrated dose of cycloalkane anaesthetic through into the kitchen. The dose wasn't enough to suffocate or absolutely incapacitate, but Lestrade made no move to stop Hedegaard when he then decided to enter.

It's good, actually, clever; the liquid is volatile, turns very quickly into a gas which disperses too widely to have more than the faintest sweet scent. It works through the body quickly too, in these low doses. Standard toxicology would never have caught it.

Somebody has to really query the use of rare agents for them to do more detailed tox-screens at autopsy. Somebody.

What Hedegaard wasn't counting on was that Lestrade, for all his faults, is a good man. Donovan wasn't all that far behind him when she realized he probably wasn't going to see his family. And given my utter failure yesterday, this time she decided to go herself.

She walked in in the middle of all this. Tried bravely to make the arrest herself. For her troubles, Hedegaard fractured her skull against the corner of the worktop. Then, as the drugged Lestrade fell out of his chair trying to help her, he panicked, and took off.

That's why I'm in a hospital. That's why Lestrade is here, with a worse hangover than before, but otherwise not too bad. And between us, still unconscious and no one can say yet if that will be for long, Sally Donovan. That's why I could laugh, but it wouldn't be good laughter.

"Don't let them forget about her just because she's out," I tell him. "She was right about Hedegaard going home."