Jim

Danielle insisted on going home first. Rather than just go for the meet and get it over with, rather than put me out of my misery, she is wilfully prolonging it. "Grace Kelly," she said, when I asked what excuse she was using for this cruelty. I think I'm supposed to know what that means. I have some dim memory, her being arch, talking about how you can't go to the finale looking less than your best. Then, "Anyway, you need to go and get me paper copies of anything he might ask to see."

Which is true, so far as it goes, but he probably won't ask. Mycroft this is. Oh, God, I wish I could be there to see it. His face when the lights come on and everything is suddenly, perfectly, clear to him, flashing lights and dancing girls, how could he have missed it… I wish I could tell him myself, instead of having to use a proxy like this. Wish I could be somebody else, just for half an hour, and him and me could just chat. I'd get him to open his shirt and show him the scar where I've stitched him up, and then I'd tell him how I did it.

It's tempting, y'know. I could go. He doesn't know I'm me, if you catch my drift. I could play the part of any other Dani, someone in my thrall, gone to do the talking and no more than this. It's so tempting. Just that little bit too dangerous, though. The Creep was just too close a call. Be foolish not to take that seriously. But I can daydream it.

This is one job, if she tells me 'it went well', I'll let Danielle just leave it there. I'll keep the memory blank, and fill it in the way I want, the way I would have done it.

I can dream I walk in myself, as myself, as my very best of selves. Dream he's sat down, and I stand in front of him, open arms. I say to him, "Y'know that Big Bad Wolf you've been out hunting? Well, here I stand." He'd make some move against me. Probably not do anything himself, probably. He'd begin whatever gesture is meant to call down all the king's horses and men. I'd say, "Not the best idea you've ever had." Somewhere in that conversation, I would get the chance to tell him, direct, word-for-word (I ring Danielle at home to make sure this most important phrase gets in there), "There is no longer anything you can do about it."

Ah, but enough of this mental wandering. I have work to do, remember? Paper copies, too incriminating to have had on hand until now, have to be done up. I don't think he'll ask for them, but it's right, absolutely right, to be ready with them, just in case.

Anyway, they'll help me explain things to Moran. Bless him, he's insisting now. There's been trust up until this point, that the time would come and everything would be clear to him. I think if he sees the print-outs appearing he'll get the picture right and quick. It's like that last piece of evidence in a very bad detective story. There's always a little twist, a little something you had no way of guessing or spotting, but once it's put to you? The murderer might as well turn blue and start to glow.

I show you too, if you want. Show, not tell, isn't that what they say?

I ring Dani again, "Don't forget and tell him how he can cover up."

"You can't write me a script," is the snarky reply, "I have no way of getting one to Holmes." At least we've moved on from the backchat in the car. Nothing that hasn't been said or heard before. Actually, ironic enough, it was that conversation again, the one we had before, about what she was supposed to say. And now I'm telling her and…

But y'know what, I'm too damned bloody chipper to be pissed off, old bean. And that's as genuine and as rare as it sounds so anyone who would take advantage had best do it now.

So here it comes. I'll show you the evidence, all of it, and you will tell me your conclusions. It's important for you-the-jury to note that I absolutely will not attest to the veracity of any of this evidence. Just like real court. By the time something is placed in front of a jury, by the time it can be called Exhibit-Whatever, it's already supposed to have been checked out and found to be a fact. You-the-jury are to treat everything put before you as one-hundred-per-cent bona fide. It's called 'evidence' for a reason. It's evident.

Exhibit A, just spooling out now, is some records. They've come from the mobile network providers, and are the kind of thing you need a police warrant to even request. But we couldn't be bothered requesting them, that can take weeks. I had a mate of Moran's, a forger he met doing currency out in the Afghan provinces, knock these up the last couple of days. Good job he's done and all, complete with cover letters from O2 and Virgin certifying that they have fulfilled a request from the Met and every bloody thing. Look at them, they're perfect. How could you not buy this?

These records record to the last detail the text messages exchanged between two mobiles. The first is registered to one Jonathan Darcy. Who was a soldier. Now, unfortunately, he's dead, but that doesn't much matter. I'm not sure anyone's going to get the chance to look all that closely at this. The second phone is registered to one Mycroft Holmes. He's never used it before a couple of days ago. It was in a safe at his office until I had it nicked. Again, that doesn't matter.

What matters is I have two pages here of cryptic and yet somehow… unequivocal messages exchanged, in which Holmes most patently, oh, for all to read and know the truth, arranges for Darcy to kill one Clayton Underwood (the Third.)

Are you getting it? There's a glimmer behind Moran's eyes. You should be getting it. Actually, from that, you should already have guessed.

If you're still confused, look away now, because it's only going to get worse. The next part isn't really related. Exhibit B is actually a very kind sort of Exhibit. Not so much evidence, as an offering.

Mycroft will get it, when it's explained to him. He'll either storm off in a huff and come crawling back later, or he'll look sensibly at what he's got and begin to bargain. If he takes the brave latter option, we have this to give him.

Exhibit B begins with a contract, in which Clayton Underwood (the Third) agrees to pay a considerable monthly sum to Joe Soap (or, to give him his proper name, James Phelps, currently missing) in order that his computer might be used as a server-mirror for classified business. The banking registers go back years.

Get it? You should sort of be getting it now.

Sherlock

The sandwich shop at the corner of my street is understandably closed, for the time being. Something to do with all the staff suffering major psychological trauma. That's why I'm twenty minutes away, waiting on a bench at the top of Primrose Hill. This is a cooler, greyer morning than last time. It suits the situation better. It's a good time, too. After the morning joggers, before the mothers with buggies when the nurseries let out. Quiet, and still, and just the threat that last night's rain is about return with a vengeance.

Of course, there's still one jogger. His day off work, I suppose. There's one mother already, with a pram; the child is too young for a nanny, maybe? It doesn't need one anyway, it's not real. It's a soft toy under a blanket. I doubt she's a mother. These intelligence types are rarely family-oriented. That jogger's been stretching out two benches along for the last ten minutes.

There's only one human being I can see who is going about honest work honestly, and that's the man opening the ice cream stand.

Oh, and there's Mies. Hard to say where she falls. She comes at her own pace, up the path, watching me get larger, I suppose, without self-consciousness. Like any other day, she is well-dressed, and well-made up, casually pristine. So what?, I suppose. What else is there to say?

She sits down next to me, lights a cigarette and offers me the pack. Says, "Do you know how many men I let summon me the way you have this morning?"

"Oh, I wouldn't like to guess."

A wry smile, an elbow in my ribs. I need to score and I'm not in the mood. "Not very many."

"So why me?"

"Because I like you. Now what did you want to see me for?"

"You know who killed Hedegaard."

"Do I? Best kept secret, then…"

"That's what you told Underwood."

That surprises her. Brings her head quickly round towards me. But I had expected more of a reaction. I don't look at her, but the sensation of her eyes rolling, head to toe, it's more like she's gauging me than that she's shocked. Or she's afraid. That was my immediate reading, that something had scared her, deeply, beyond the level of simple deception and self-preservation. But I don't see how that fits in. That's a fear you only feel for someone else. You have to care about them before you can fear for them. So I don't really see how that fits in.

I tell her, hoping that honesty will earn honest in return, "I don't give a fuck about Underwood. I just want to know who killed Hedegaard."

"I don't know. I was meant to meet him at the same time as Underwood. I was just the guide."

"You're lying."

"Yes, darling, and please just let me."

"Nobody else is ever going to ask you who killed Hedegaard and I need to know."

"Why?"

Stupid question. Because he's dead, that's why. Because I do. I got him. I got Hedegaard. Whatever way you cut it, without me that would never have happened. I got him and before anybody could ask him that same stupid, idiot question, somebody killed him. That stupid question, the one she's using to imply that none of this really matters, is the only one that mattered at all with him, and the one he's been put beyond answering. Why? Because of why.

But I didn't say that out loud. I'm almost certain it sounds better in my head. Nevertheless, I should have, because she takes my hesitation as an invitation to go on talking herself. Says softly, "You're torturing yourself." And then that awful motion, too familiar to be disconcerting and not enough to be a comfort, her hand passing my eyes, moving hair from my forehead. Her fingernail's grown back, been filed off smooth again. Not cutting anybody this time. I grab it away from me by the wrist. She only repeats, "You're torturing yourself."

"No. I'm being tortured. From every possible angle."

Softer still, maybe I'm not even meant to hear it, "Have you tried not caring?"

Funny, it's a piece of advice I've been getting a lot lately. From people, that is, who don't assume I'm already that far gone. I'm starting to resent it. And to resent even more the fact that I'm adjusting to it. Being told to stop caring is starting to feel like a good thing, just because it implies that I care at all. I hate this, all of it.

"Okay then, something easier. Something people other than me might ask. There's… There's another name. Hedegaard said it. A name… Man's name. A man, specifically, with a secretary."

Her hand settles over mine, the lipstick end of her cigarette just brushing my knuckles. "Take your time, why don't you?"

Not half as kind as it sounds. Between the lines she mutters, It's clear you've been very high since then.

Worse yet, the only response I have is that I would quite literally kill or die to be as high as that just now.

There's a name, the name of a man, and it was… "Moriarty. Tell me about that." Mies doesn't answer. I have to look round this time. Her brow is furrowed. A second later she looks back at me, shaking her head as if she's given it real thought and come up blank. "Please, no deceit. I can't take that much more of it."

"Really. I went to school with a Julie Moriarty but, though I haven't seen her in te-… eight years, I'm pretty sure she's not now a man with a secretary. I can look into it, if you want. Who's he supposed to be?"

"Scaramanga." Oh, yes, I couldn't remember the only thing Hedegaard got the chance to give up, but a name she mumbled weeks ago, of that's easy, yes… there's logic in this, alright…

"Oh, that little theory. I'd forgotten all about it, if I'm honest. I told you, there's nothing to it."

"And then you stabbed me in the neck and left me for dead."

Sighing, not even trying, "I was on a lot of painkillers." And as she says that, she starts to stand up. Looking past me, at the approaching woman with pram. Just out strolling, for what appearance is worth. But Mies shouts to her, "Relax, love, I'm coming quietly this time." Turns her head towards her shoulder and tells the now-shoe-tying jogger, "That goes for you and all." Her pose is almost casual; holding her cigarette up by her face, her other hand hanging on the shoulder. But it's designed to show her defenceless and unarmed, just waiting for them. The eyes, however, those are on me again. "Did you know about this? Just tell me. I'm looking at you and I can't be sure; did you know they were coming for me this time?"

And why should I be the only one telling the truth? Mycroft's coming now. It's been declared safe for him, I suppose. He too saunters up at his own measured pace. Not so casual as she was, though. Trying too hard to make a point. Why should I be the only honest one in the world?

"No," I say, just as he reaches her.

Mies' hand swings out and sharply back. Or, put simply, she slaps him. Backhand, so hard the crack of it is deadened in the prolonged flesh contact. The jogger moves in to pull her back, but the hand is hanging again, empty and harmless. Mycroft raises one to hold him off. Mies says, "I take it you know what that was for."

I don't like how quickly he says yes.