Jim

Moran left, with the brief that a physical location for Underwood would be ideal, and that a phone number would do in a pinch.

It's a very strange; Underwood and I are utterly unacquainted. I have clapped eyes on only that one picture of him. I learned some very basic facts about his work from Mr Bruce (and could have had a lot more from the same source, but it doesn't do to be bitter about these things). The rest is just conjecture based on my own experience and the people he does business with. And yet I know everything I need to about him. I can go to work on him, happily, effectively, with a reasonable degree of certainty over the outcome.

You don't need to be best friends to know where the weak links are. Actually, I find it works a lot better if you stay as far away as possible. Find out what you need, be aware of anything that might balls it up for you. The rest can keep. It doesn't help. The people I know best, I can't think of anything I would ever do to them.

I'm talking, of course, about Moran. And about Dani, too, all arguments aside. I don't think it's anything to do with arguments, actually. I don't think it's anything to do with whether or not you like somebody, or what's between you, or what they've done. Really. It's just the getting-to-know. All that stuff, it clouds you up, and you find yourself thinking a thousand things all at once. When it comes to those two, I could stick the knife into any of a thousand vulnerable places, burn down a thousand things of irreplaceable value. But that's the point; that's not effective. Quantity, as it were, over quality. I know them well; just not enough to know which of a thousand cuts will kill.

But when you hardly know somebody at all, it's that one, single, most important, cornerstone little thing, that you're going to find out first.

And what was the first thing said to me about Clayton Underwood (Mark Three)?

Underwood is the favourite to move up. Not much of a race. Just waiting for him to prove himself. Mr Bruce said that. Have I told you about Mr Bruce? He was lovely. He's dead now. He didn't get to tell me an awful lot. I think he really wanted to, y'know…

Anyway, keep it simple. That's old advice, but there's a reason it has lasted.

Moran has yet to report back. Danielle's just watching the cop account she jimmied open. 'In case,' she says, 'they start to do anything except panic and cover.' They haven't, as of yet. We've been giggling at the frequency and quality of the updates appearing on the case file. They need to do this, apparently, so they can say it's an active investigation, a priority case, all those things they say on the news. Which you should also see; there's a sort of war going on between journalists, police and politicians over who can keep the straightest face, all of them trying to pretend they're not just glad the bastard got what was coming to him.

Somebody's going to say it. Moran has placed his stake on Boris Johnson; safe money, easy money. Dani was reaching straight for the PM himself, until she was told she's not allowed to help it happen, so now she's with Paxman. And they both looked at me with hate, eyes full of 'why didn't I think of that?', when I told them, told them, "Dirty Harry."

And I know what you're thinking; I should have better things to do than giggle at headless-chicken trevors and the nation's public figures playing that game where you're not allowed to laugh.

I don't, though. Not really. So often I find people do the bulk of the work themselves.

Danielle reaches behind to open the back door. Before she can light a cigarette, fill the place up with acrid smog, I try telling her, "You might want to go home and get pretty yourself."

"Might I? Where am I going?"

"Maybe nowhere, but if Moran can get a lock on Underwood, you'll have a meet, soon as."

"And what's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"…Nothing, really. Please don't smoke, though."

"Okay." Simple request, simple compliance. Why didn't we try this before? "Are you going to be shouting down my ear this meeting, or do I freewheel?"

"There'll be no trouble. I'll give you bullet points, if you want?"

"Most kind," and she takes her notebook from her handbag, passes it across the table.

Then from somewhere behind me, there's a thump, and a scrabbling noise. I have forgotten about the on-going mouse hunt, actually, but it sounds like it might be nearly over. Danielle gets up to go and check on it. While she's behind me, out of sight, I'm more able to say, "Anyway, shouldn't you be out there keeping my good name out of the gutter?"

"Bit late for that. Carl saw that well and truly muddied."

"Out there, then, keeping me from following it."

I don't know if she means to leave my question unanswered. Maybe we confused each other while we were equivocating. Or, most likely option, she gets caught up watching the protracted and brutal torture-murder of Simon the mouse. Certainly, when I turn, she's beaming with pride at the furrier of her favourite killers. Whatever the reason, she doesn't answer.

And me? I let it go. I know, I'm as shocked as you are, I swear. But that's what happens. I let it slide. It's almost like she gave me that opportunity and I took it.

We move on quickly, easily, and with a degree of respect and intelligence. The mouse's screaming seems to be focussing her. With that extra few seconds' thought, she anticipates what I'm writing down for her and says, "I can make him believe me. Don't doubt that; God knows I don't doubt it."

"But…?"

"But what if he asks me for proof?" So I add another bullet point on, right at the bottom. Additional dialogue, if you will, to supplement the script. The mouse is drowning out the sound of my writing anything down. She must think I'm purposefully ignoring her, making a point. "Your arrogance never fails to amaze, darling. Alexander would blush."

"Or is it my faith in you? You always jump to these conclusions, dear. Anyone would think I didn't like you." I can feel her smiling. And it's not just because the bloodied warrior is slinking out from under the cabinets to lap clean his death-stained cloak.

She's watching this ritual of righteous ablution when Moran calls. "Have you got good news?" I ask him.

"Yes."

"Then I can happily tell you you are officially mouseless."

"Oh, bless the whole mob of you… Well, I've got a number. I think it's office rather than personal, though."

Doesn't matter. Contact's contact. "Give it to me." I scrawl it down at the top of Dani's cheat-sheet, waving her back to the table. She can do it from here. She's already dialling while I'm exchanging farewells with Moran. But by the time I've hung up, she's done the same. "What? What's the matter?"

Dead casual, nothing to worry about, she shakes her head. "He's not in. It was an answering machine."

"Perfect!"

She rolls her eyes, reverting to form; "I'll just leave him my number, shall I, wait for him to call back?"

I reach over, and with my pen I tap that final point. She slowly smiles, getting it. It all starts to click, composing itself in her head, while she's calling again. "See? Arrogance, maybe, but not unjustified."

Her and her voice are known factors, a pair of puzzle pieces already on the table. Building around them. Mycroft is another piece. Ambition and conflict are pieces. Competition. Phone numbers are already a piece of it. What it says at the bottom of the page, making them all snap into place, Make it sound like Mycroft already knows all this.

Sherlock

Everything. It doesn't matter what I tell him. I'm testing out different lies, little variations on the story I tell each time. And my brother simply does not notice. The reason for this is that he already 'knows'. He has watched the CCTV from the police station, he has read the statements of the other witnesses, observed the utter cluelessness of those left clearing it up. And so he 'knows' everything.

Some honest advice; never believe that you know everything about anything. Because the essential fact you have missed will come out and dance in front of you naked but for a spinning bow-tie and some distressingly positioned sparklers and you won't even see it, because you don't believe it exists. Never believe you know everything about anything. You don't.

Of course, Mycroft is ticking all the boxes. What else could I ever expect from him? No, I'm not questioning whether or not he knows how many are dead and who they were and in what order it happened and the preliminary psychological profile of the probable vigilante responsible by heart. He definitely knows all that. He's told me twice as much as I've been able to tell him. I'm not questioning that at all.

So what, then, could he possibly be missing? If you have to ask me that you're as bad as he is.

He was not there. Mycroft was not standing in the corner of that secondary room, looking through the glass when the woman was shot. Injury to insult, after being asked if she was a secretary. Her subordinate didn't even have time to look at his killer. Mycroft was not pressed to the wall, looking into the hallway as DCI Hazell went out (God knows what was going through his patently-unarmed mind) to save the day and he got shot too. Mycroft didn't hear the sick, high-pitched bark of the psychiatrist's first laugh, before his mumbling started. The other two shots, nobody I was familiar with.

Hedegaard smiled. The whole time. From the first shot until almost the last. Throughout it all I thought, I was so sure, I thought I knew… The shooter had to have come for him. Hedegaard had to know this was his own slayer he was smiling at, didn't he? And maybe, in all the chaos and noise, I imagined it but… But there when it all but over, when the shooter turned back to the interview room, when the gun steadied on him… It looked to me as though his face was falling, as if regretting his decision not to run. I can't be certain, though. You never know everything about anything. Even if you were there, watching it happen, you never know everything. I shouldn't need to state that this is especially pertinent when people end up dead. You never know everything about people die because no matter how closely you watch, how nearby you might be standing, you simply were not there.

I wasn't thinking about this. In the hospital, next to Sally Donovan's bed, even when we were talking about the murderer and these new murders, I wasn't thinking about it. I am now. I am and I don't know that I can stop. I look back, and I don't see it like a video, but in snapshots, useless, blurry stills. The whole thing took less than forty seconds, so why shouldn't it be blurry, but still, still, I… I don't know that I can stop. I blink images, like a camera. Shades of gruesome, one body falling on top of another, two swelling pools of blood and the difference in colour where they met, all of it scored with echoes in a narrow hallway, with deafened chatter, with disjointed mumbling which has yet to stop.

And Mycroft just sits there and talks like he knows everything. How could he? How could he even dream it?

That's why I make little changes every time. I give Hazell different coloured ties and Hedegaard a different band on his t-shirt, move the small scar on the shooter's third finger around his hand. It doesn't matter. Nobody's really listening anymore.

I wasn't thinking about this. There was Donovan to worry about, and then Lestrade. Then there was getting them away. Now all at once I'm safe, and so far from safe it's a sick, sick joke.

In the midst of all this, there is a brief interval while Mycroft takes an urgent phone call. I blink like a camera and therefore I don't get it word-for-word. Just the tone of his voice changing, and from the corner of my eye the slackening or straightening of his posture to denote, in order;

'Oh, hello there, old friend.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'No, sorry, utterly ridiculous.'

'Since you put it like that…'

'Now look here, sir-'

And finally, most distractingly, defeat. That, I could question. In fact, when the phone is put down, I pipe up, "Sounded interesting, if nothing else." Hoping he'll throw me something, just something very small, something else to think about, that isn't the psychiatrist mumbling, the local constable curled under the dim glass, praying while he pissed himself.

Nothing happens.

Actually, he picks up the phone again, ready to make some calls of his own. "Mycroft?" Nothing. I'm not there, apparently. Not sure where I am, not definitely not there. Far, far away from there and everything. "Mycroft, please. A nod will do." I don't know who he's talking to now, but they have his full attention. I'm not there. I don't understand. I was a minute ago and now I'm not. "Oh, look," I try, staring past him out the window, "A pelican."

Nothing.

"Mycroft?" Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, like when the shots were fired and the gunman gone, and there was nothing, except the echo and the tinnitus, and the mumbling, the incessant bloody mumbling, which has yet to stop. "Mycroft, please. Please." And maybe there's a turn of his head? That could be a wave, maybe, or just a way he has of rubbing the top of his ear between thumb and forefinger sometimes, particularly if he's nervous, or he's done something wrong. "Mycroft?" I say, getting up. "Mycroft, I'm going to go now." Yes! Definitely a wave, definitely a turn of the head. Definitely. "I'm going to go now and score, alright?"

Nothing. And silence is as good as a positive, isn't it? Silence is an admission. Yes, little brother, off you go, knock yourself out. That can't be what he's saying. He doesn't hear. I said I was going, so he thinks I'm gone.

Is it as simple as that? Is it as simple as telling people something they'll believe? Like the psychiatrist, mumbling, who has yet to stop. Who was, perhaps, reciting something he learned once. Saying, "Though these behaviours may seem abnormal, indeed disturbing, to the outside observer, to the subject they are absolutely logical. Where delusions of grandeur are present they may even be thought of as moments of incredible genius. It is essential to analysis that action be understood from the point of view of the actor, from the moment of genesis and even before, in the subconscious triggers, the reasons, if you will. Whether or not those reasons are justifiable is often not so clear-cut as initially thought."

Foggy justification and a silent assent. That'll do.