CHAPTER 3: UNWARRANTED CONCLUSIONS

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2015

Sherlock's feet pounded the pavement, sending shocks of pain up through his knees and into his skull. He'd been running so long he could barely breathe anymore and his lungs ached as though on fire, but he dared not slow. He dodged men and women, left and right, figures as stationary and immobile as bollards, placed on in his path only to encumber him, and when he darted across the street, cars streaked by so closely they whipped against his coat and sent shivers across his skin. The pale morning light, filtered through a thin layer of gauzy cloud, stung his eyes as he cast them upwards, scouring the rooftops for a lone figure, a dark silhouette against the sky.

He found him on a precipice.

Sherlock's feet came to a sudden and jarring halt. In a panic, he patted his pockets—trouser, coat, breast—only to discover he didn't have his phone. Where had he left it? How was it possible he had left it! His phone was more than an accessory: it was a second brain, a second mouth, a third eye. Only once had he wilfully abandoned it, and never again. He would sooner leave behind his right hand than his phone.

Cupping his hands instead, he tilted his head to the wavering crag of white stone, and shouted. His words were lost in the blaring of a car horn. He shouted again, and the wind carried his voice away. Again, throat straining, he cried into the sky, but all the world had fallen deaf. All he could hear was the erratic rush of blood across his eardrums.

Look at me, he thought.

From far away (it felt like such a terrible distance), he saw John's head lower as though in slow motion. He felt, rather than saw, those pale blue eyes find him, and tether him. But Sherlock also felt the eye of a sniper, fixed not on him, but on John.

He couldn't warn him; there was no time, he had no means. But he had to save him. He had to. From the grave-cold pavement where he could stand no lower, Sherlock jumped.

But it was John who fell.

The sky was grey and the stone was white and John was shrouded in black—but he blazed like a falling star. Sherlock was blinded by searing white only moments before John's body reached the earth, and when it did, the impact in his bones drove him to his knees. Palms flat against the rough concrete, he trembled. His mouth formed the word John as he struggled to find his feet and move again. He pushed forward to cross the street, a gap a mile wide, but moved arrested, as though through water. His vision was clearing, but slowly. He's my friend, he said, his voice weak as though from long disuse, but there was no one to hear him. The street was empty, deserted—he was the only one to have witnessed John's fall.

But no. Not quite the only one.

He reached the edge of the pavement. Only a short distance away, John lay on his side, small and naked and broken as a fallen bird. The skin of his back was shredded, but he could make out one vicious inscription: the letters I O U sliced large and deep between the bony wings of his shoulder blades. And kneeling over him, the shadow of a man with a gleaming scalpel.

Devil, Sherlock said. His voice echoed and diminished.

Moriarty lifted his face. A white, slanted smile slashed across his dark countenance like a jack-o-lantern. He winked at Sherlock but returned his attention to John, to pet his cracked head with the backside of his fingers, the ones still holding the scalpel. Then Moriarty rolled him onto his back, revealing a tattered chest, bleeding freely. Sherlock saw that John was alive, but only just: beneath the translucent skin stretched across his sunken ribs, a glowing red heart beat faintly.

'Sherlock,' said Moriarty silkily, stroking John's face. 'Sherlock.'

Sherlock couldn't move, couldn't scream, could do nothing. He stood like a statue and felt just as cold.

Moriarty laughed, a dark chuckle deep inside his chest. 'This is how I burn you.'

Then he lifted the scalpel like a dagger. With devastating force, he drove it into John's heart.

Every muscled jumped, and Sherlock awoke with a gasp. His eyes flew open to blackness. For uncounted minutes, he lay still, trying to regain his breath. Gradually, his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and he recognised the faint glow of the streetlamps pushing through the curtained window. But his heart continued to race, and the pain in his chest refused to subside. It felt like something long and sharp was lodged there, an imagined something, he knew, and he didn't approve of this kind of imagination. It was illogical. Like the dream, the lingering feeling of being afraid when there was nothing to fear. Unfounded response. He was determined to think past it.

When he was once again certain of his mental faculties, he pushed back the covers and sat on the edge of the mattress, elbows to knees, until a sharp pain across the back of his left hand drew him out of deep contemplation. He was scratching again. He balled his fingers into fists and reproached himself for the anxiety that persisted in the form of adrenaline in his system. Briefly he wondered: why always that dream? But he gave little credence to psychoanalysis and even less to dream interpretation. So he pushed the thought away, pushed the feelings down, down, and reached for his phone on the bedside table. Here the whole time, he thought, his inner voice scornful and annoyed.

The screen read 04.42. He knew he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep and didn't want to bother pretending. So he stood, grabbed his dressing gown from the hook on the bedroom door, and stepped out into the hallway. He weaved quietly through the kitchen and peeked into the sitting room—which was even brighter than his bedroom because, despite the curtains, the windows were larger and faced the street directly—to where John lay sleeping on the sofa.

It was where he had slept ever since returning to Baker Street, and Sherlock couldn't quite figure why. Thinking the stairs were a problem, what with his leg still healing and all, he offered to switch rooms and leave John the one on the first storey so he would have to negotiate only one flight. But the offer was declined and returned with firm indication that the sofa would be fine, for a couple of nights. Those couple of nights stretched into weeks, going on a month and a half, with no sign of change.

As always, John slept on his right side, favouring his left leg and facing out toward the room. He was never on his back anymore (the skin and deeper tissue had been too severely damaged and was still recovering), never faced inward toward the back of the sofa (because one does not sleep with his back to the enemy), and never, ever did he lie on his stomach (the position was far too vulnerable). Whether asleep or awake, his was a bearing of vigilance, and at night, John always slept like this: one arm hung over the side, fingertips nearly touching the grip of the pistol tucked just beneath the sofa, almost but not entirely out of sight; and the blanket was hitched up a little, exposing the toes of his socks, so that his feet would be free if he needed to move quickly and not be tangled up in the blanket.

Sherlock stood still for a long moment, watching him sleep, listening to his steady breathing, until he was entirely satisfied that the dream was not some sort of augury (not that such an idea wasn't pure twaddle—but he had to make sure). Five days had passed since John's last nocturnal attack, seven days since his last daytime terror—it was the longest stretch so far, and by this Sherlock was greatly encouraged. At the same time, he was becoming ever more anxious for the next one, not believing they were yet clear of them. But tonight, apparently, was not the night. He softly retreated, back down the hall, and closed himself into the bathroom.

The first thing he did was run his hands under cold water. He had drawn blood this time—not much, a deep scratch, a shallow cut, but it was bleeding all the same—and the surrounding skin was red and raw. Huffing out his breath with irritation, he turned the tap warmer and scrubbed his face. Clearly, the dream had upset him, and he despised not being able to rein in that particular emotion. He understood why some men took to drinking as a way to blot out these thoughts and alter such moods, but all he wanted was a cigarette, and desperately. Instead, he peeled off his clothes, let them fall where they landed, and stepped into the shower.

The shower was hot, but he wanted it hotter, and he kept twisting the knob by tiny increments until the heat was almost intolerable and his skin turned lobster red and the steam made his head swim. But he stood with his head beneath the spray, feeling the hot water flatten his curls and massage the tension from the muscles of his shoulders and back. It felt cleansing, almost, but no matter how long he stood there simmering, he couldn't shake the image of John dying on the ground outside of St Bart's, in the very spot he himself had once died.

When he couldn't take it anymore, this inaction, he twisted the knob hard to the right, killing the shower, and dried himself off with a towel. Then he redressed in his pyjamas, dressing gown, and slippers, flicked off the light switch, and stepped back into the darkened hallway. He noticed the soft lamplight now coming from the sitting room.

It was barely five in the morning, but John was awake, sitting on the edge of the sofa but with his head in his hands. The blanket was half twisted around his waist, half fallen to the floor. Sherlock moved silently, so John must have felt him come into the room, because he lifted his head to see him. His eyes were still squinting, not quite accustomed to the light.

'Good morning,' Sherlock said, coming into the room.

'Mm,' John replied.

'I wake you?'

John shrugged, so yes, he had. 'Did you even bother to sleep?'

Sherlock didn't want to voice the dream, so he forced a casual tone and offered a shrug of his own. 'A bit,' he said. 'If you want to catch another hour or two, I'll just take my laptop—'

'No, I'm awake now.'

'Breakfast?'

'No.'

Sherlock frowned but turned away to hide it. He lifted his phone from the pocket of his dressing gown and settled himself into his armchair to scroll through the early morning news reports. From the corner of his eye, he watched John push himself to his feet and tug on his sleeves to cover his wrists. He didn't bother with the cane, not for simply crossing a room, but his left leg moved stiffly and caused him to limp all the same. He joined Sherlock, sitting across from him in his own armchair. For a while, nothing was said; all Sherlock heard were the passing engines of early commuters and his own thumbs tapping. The silence might have been companionable, as it had once been, if not for something unspoken between them, an unidentifiable stiffness in the air. Sherlock wished John would pick up a book or even yesterday's paper, or maybe rethink his answer about breakfast, but he just sat there, thinking about godknowswhat as he stared past Sherlock's left ear at the curtained windows and rubbed his leg. After a few minutes, Sherlock realised he was scrolling so quickly that he wasn't even processing the titles of the articles. He was distracted by the lack of distraction, which was John.

'You're bored.'

Caught off his guard, Sherlock looked up sharply but didn't reply. So John continued.

'With this.' He waved a hand in a way that might have indicated the flat but also could have meant the two of them.

'No . . .' he began.

'I get it. I do. I saw how you were with the West End case. You were, I don't know, on fire again.'

He didn't know about on fire. The case had been embarrassingly simple, once Sherlock had noted the smudge in the chorus boy's bronze facial makeup, which indicated fingertips but couldn't have been his own because of the placement/size/lack of makeup on the victim's own fingertips, makeup that he matched to a smudge on the handle of the deep walk-in wardrobe stuffed with dozens upon dozens of costumes, all on hangers and pressed front to back like sardines in can, all but for a short row of 1920s' flapper girl dresses hanging off askew wires, above which was a narrow trapdoor that the production manager swore she had never known existed, a door that led to a crawlspace into which the murderer—a Ms Erin Forrester, fellow chorus member—had gotten herself stuck nine hours before while trying to flee (well, crawl away from) the scene of the crime. In her hand she still held the murder weapon: a prop sceptre, made of ash, like a baseball bat, and stained with blood.

Yes, simple, but he had loved every moment of it, from snapping on the latex gloves, to deducing that the boy had a side job selling fish at Borough Market, to feeling Sally Donovan's eyes burning into the back of his head. It was the little things. But what he had loved above all was that John had been standing just off to the side, watching his every move, listening to his every word, and chiming in now and again with a question ('Fish?' and 'How do you know?' and 'Is there no other way into the room?'), and even answering Sherlock's rhetorical questions when no one else would ('Because there's no makeup on the fingertips.') It felt like it had before: like they were the only ones in the room and the mystery was theirs alone to solve, like Sherlock's job was to impress and John's was to be impressed, and they were both performing admirably. Sherlock was having such fun at this dearly loved but long-missed game that he had even let out an exclamation of victory upon discovering Ms Forrester at the end of the beam on the torch Lestrade passed to him as he poked his head up and into the crawlspace, a resounding 'Ah-ha!', to which Ms Forrester had answered, 'Shit.'

But as they were leaving the scene and passing out of the Queen's Theatre, when it was just the two of them alone again, Sherlock's swollen euphoria had been instantly deflated when upon asking, 'What do you reckon, John? The Case of the Bloody Sceptre? Chorus Girl in the Crawlspace?', John had only grinned, falsely and fleetingly, and said nothing at all.

'You need a case,' John said. Absentmindedly, he tugged again on the ends of his sleeves, though his wrists were well covered.

'I'm perfectly capable of keeping myself occupied,' said Sherlock, though he yearned for a case with the Yard. Oh, how he yearned for one. 'We've enough to be getting on with at the moment.'

'We've reached a stalemate,' said John, 'in what we can do from here.'

It was true. They had begun a little over two weeks ago, working together to learn all they could about Moriarty's network, but already they had exhausted all online and hacked resources. There were only so many times Sherlock could recite the extent of his travels abroad tracking them, so many times they could review what they knew from the comfort of 221B, and Moriarty's people were well hidden. Lestrade consistently assured them both that the Yard had things well in hand, and Mycroft was never slow to remind Sherlock what his first priority should be: helping John.

Sherlock thought he had been.

'It won't be long, though, I expect,' John continued placidly. 'The Yard is supposed to clear your name in just a few hours. A press conference, Lestrade said, announcing that all charges and suspicions have officially been dropped.'

'Thrilling news.'

'Your website will start getting proper hits again, soon enough.'

'Oh, but I've been enjoying the message board lighting up with strangers telling me to go to hell. Or Wales.'

'You'll have the excuse you need to get away from here.' He waved his hand vaguely again. 'For a bit.'

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. 'You'll come of course.'

'Yes,' said John, though he was abruptly looking away. 'Sometimes. Not always. I have this to look after'—he gestured to his leg—'and . . .' He motioned toward his head.

'John—'

'Tea and toast, I think,' said John. He grunted, rising to his feet, and this time he took the cane with him into the kitchen where he made tea, not toast.

Standing outside of 221B and hunching his shoulders against the cold, Lestrade tucked the file in his armpit and reached for the bell: two dashes and a dot, then one dot, a dash, and two more dots.

It had taken him longer than he cared to admit to learn to transmit his initials in Morse code. He had practiced for days—tapping the steering wheel as he drove, clicking the mouse as he worked at the computer, patting his own elbow while standing in a lift—before he had learnt the full alphabet, each letter in isolation. Now the initials GL came easily enough, but he'd be buggered if he had to recognise someone else's, or manage more than two letters at a time.

In his tactlessly sensible way, Sherlock had assured him that he was not expected to: 'At your age and level of intelligence, your proclivity for acquiring new skills has greatly diminished. Never you worry, detective inspector. This is for John's sake, and he already knows Morse. As do I. Obviously.'

Yes, it was for John's sake that the system had been devised. Lestrade had never seen it for himself, but according to Sherlock, in the short span of weeks since their reoccupation of their old flat, John had too often been unnerved by unannounced visitors. Well, unnerved was Lestrade's word. Sherlock had used vexed. Whatever the right word was, it caused John a good deal of anxiety every time the buzzer sounded. There had been the occasional well-wishers and celebrity-sniffers, but also reporters in swarms and, too frequently, the malcontent hell-bent on making sure Sherlock knew he was not welcome in their city and that he deserved to be behind bars. Two bricks had made their soaring way through the sitting room windows, the first at midnight, two days before Christmas, which caused John to go into one of the worst panic attacks he'd known since his arrival at Baker Street; and the second at midday, which had managed to knock into Sherlock's shoulder while he sat typing at his laptop. 'They just don't know you like I know you, love,' said Mrs Hudson to Sherlock as they worked side by side, scrubbing away a particularly nasty spray-painted word that had been left on her front door. Lestrade could still see the shadow of it.

The unwelcome visitors more or less stopped once Lestrade had put the place on twenty-four hour visible surveillance and used cops to drive away the reporters. However, because there had been no active threat made against the occupants, the Yard permitted only a three-day surveillance and then recommended to Sherlock and John that they hire a private firm to manage the security of the property. John had refused faster than Sherlock (the boys down at the Yard couldn't cease the mutterings about Watson's 'trust issues'), but Lestrade took matters into his own hands. After all, the Yard was not his sole employer these days.

Still, John tensed whenever the buzzer sounded—whatever he was doing, he stilled, held his breath, and clenched jaw and fists. It was the uncertainty of not knowing who might be on the other side of the door, even when that someone had phoned ahead. And so Sherlock proposed that they simply wouldn't answer an 'uncoded buzzer'. That code, as it turned out, was Morse. And only a select few were told of it.

GL: two dashes and a dot, then one dot, a dash, and two more dots. Why did his have to be so complicated? Molly's was two dashes followed by four dots. Sherlock's was even simpler: three dots, four dots. But he'd tap out his entire name, if he was asked to, if doing so would ease John's unremitting disquiet, even just a little.

Two seconds later, Sherlock buzzed him up.

He found John in his usual chair and Sherlock standing in the centre of the room, arms akimbo and staring at him as though Lestrade had stayed out past curfew and he was waiting for an explanation.

'Mind if I sit?' asked Lestrade, even as he dragged a chair from the desk. He positioned it to face the two armchairs and waited for Sherlock to take a seat himself.

'Press conference ended three hours ago,' said Sherlock mildly.

'I take it you've been reading all the reports online,' said Lestrade.

'And my inbox crashed.'

'Yes, well. Sally said a few things she shouldn't have.'

'Nothing I wouldn't have said myself.'

'Nevertheless, the reaction of the press—'

'Was exactly what I had anticipated. Never a more predictable lot, journalists. Until they have a compelling reason not to, they'll paint me as the blackest of villains, and his story picks up right where it left off. People love a good fairy tale.'

Lestrade didn't have to ask to whom he referred. 'The point,' he said, 'is that you're a free man. As far as Scotland Yard is concerned, anyway. And also, a live one. Congratulations. You are once again officially recognised as being alive.' He smirked. 'The paperwork, I tell you.'

He knew for a fact that processing that paperwork had been deliberately slowed by certain someones occupying unspecific positions in the British government, and for one simple reason: a dead man could not be charged.

Neither Sherlock nor John returned the smile.

'There's more,' said Sherlock.

'Pardon?'

'I expected you would come after the press conference was over, but you weren't there to begin with. All reports make it clear that Sgt Donovan was the Yard's sole representative. The conference ended three hours and twenty minutes ago. Whatever you've been doing in the meantime is the reason for your delay, and judging by the damp on the hem of your trousers and the mud you've left in our doorway, I'd say you've been enjoying some of this fine outdoor weather. Not a lot of mud between here and the Yard though. Furthermore, your hands are patchy with a mild rash—you never did take too well to latex. You've been at a crime scene.'

'Do you never stop?'

'You're also carrying a rather thick file of information, which you would have left in your car unless you intended to leave it here. It's nothing to do with the conference, not a file like that. What's more, you've deliberately avoided looking directly at John since the moment you crossed the threshold. This is to do with him.'

Now Lestrade did look at John, guiltily, but John was watching Sherlock, his eyes unreadable. But his fingers had curled around a knee.

'Tell us what has happened.'

Lestrade had been hoping to ease into this, to set the tone of calm and assume an air of confidence and authority. Sherlock didn't allow him any of that. As ever, he had waved his wand of deduction and left Lestrade in nothing but his briefs, and now it was either sit there looking like a fool or continue with the show and confess all he knew and then some.

He caught himself shifting in his chair and rubbing his nose while he thought of a place to start, so he stopped himself. Sherlock might not put much stock into psychology, but he had a rather sharp knack for interpreting human behaviour.

'A couple things, then,' he began, 'that you should know. But first, listen: we're working on it. The Yard is working on it. And we shouldn't jump to any unwarranted conclusions . . .'

'I'll decide what conclusions are warranted.'

Lestrade let that one go. 'Yesterday . . .' Oh god, he was about to make himself sound so damned incompetent. '. . . yesterday, we discovered that some of the evidence recovered from . . . the convent . . . has gone missing.'

At last, John's head came around, though his lips remained a tight, straight line.

'Missing,' Sherlock repeated, his tone bordering on disgust.

'What evidence?' asked John softly.

Lestrade wanted to hang himself. 'Three items. Your . . . that is, a pair of pants. The'—he swallowed, catching himself before saying dog dish—'water bowl, and the, um, metal cilice.'

Sherlock shot to his feet. 'Damn it, Lestrade!'

'We're working on it, Sherlock! We'll find it, all of it. We'll find whoever took it. We'll make it right.'

With a scowl, Sherlock answered, 'I thought we agreed not to jump to unwarranted conclusions.' He stepped away from the chair and started pacing. 'The Yard hasn't done any of this right, so why would you start now?'

'That's entirely unfair!' Lestrade's voice boomed. He was now on his feet, too. 'I had ten officers working against me, people I had known for years, men I trusted, sabotaging my every move. Ten!'

'Eleven, evidently.' Sherlock snorted. 'At least.'

'We don't know that. No, Sherlock, don't look at me like that. We don't know that it was someone at the Yard.'

'Precedent, Lestrade, is a powerful indicator.'

'You work in facts. Facts. So let's talk facts. One: Stubbins told me nine out of ten. Pitts was the tenth. We have named all ten.'

'Two,' Sherlock countered, 'Everett Stubbins was a small man in a large organisation in which the players can't see each other. He knew nothing. Nothing important.'

'Three: he knew enough for them to try to shut him up.'

'Four: they didn't shut him up, and you've learnt nothing from him since they tried. Five: the evidence lockers are located in the Yard. Six: only Yard personnel have access to those lockers. It is highly unlikely that any outside individual could break into it without some inside help.'

'You could. You have.'

'Yes, but I'm me.'

'Look. I'm not saying it isn't someone at the Yard. Maybe it is, god forbid. But dammit, Sherlock, we are sensitive to the possibility, the very real possibility, of infiltration. And even if we've been buggered again, that does not make us incapable of handling this.'

'Who else knows?'

Lestrade released a huff of anger. 'Dryers discovered it. He told me, I told Gregson and Donovan.' He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck and turned slowly on the spot. 'Anderson knows, too.'

Sherlock sniffed. 'Of course he does. Donovan.'

'No,' said Lestrade. 'Kitty Riley.'

Silence fell over the room. Lestrade had just done the near impossible and rendered Sherlock Holmes speechless. Struggling to maintain a level tone, Lestrade proceeded to relate Donovan's story of what had transpired after the press conference when Ms Riley had cornered her outside the women's loo.

'I want to be there when you question her.'

'Not a good idea. She burns you in effigy every time she puts pen to paper. Let's not give her more fuel for the fire.'

'Oh please, what more can she do to me? I'll not just sit on my hands while she twiddles her thumbs and evades giving answers when she knows the identity of some bloody sod who pilfers instruments of torture!'

There was a sudden crash of glass. Both men jumped, then spun to look at John. Lestrade didn't need Sherlock's keenly deducing brain to work out what had just happened: John had gone for the water glass on the table beside his chair, but his hand had been shaking so badly he couldn't hold it. He knocked it clean off the table, and it shattered against the floorboards. Water spread in all directions.

'Jesus—' John said hoarsely. His face flushed, and he gripped one hand in the other to keep it from trembling. He was trying to get to his feet.

'No, no, it's fine, leave it,' said Sherlock, touching his shoulder with a light hand. He stepped over the puddle, angling for the kitchen.

'John, are you okay?' said Lestrade. 'I'll get you a new glass.'

'No. Don't.' John stood awkwardly over the broken glass, knees slightly bent as though he were about to walk away or fall back into the chair. But he did neither. He looked as though he didn't know what he should do.

Sherlock returned with a hand broom and dustpan, a fistful of kitchen paper, and the rubbish bin. 'I broke a beaker just the other day, so I've had practice,' he said with a smile at John as he crouched down and began sopping up the water with the kitchen paper.

'I can clean it, Sherlock,' said John.

'I'm half done already.'

John took a wavering step away from the mess, and another until he had crossed the room and lowered himself onto the sofa. He looked unaccountably exhausted, and not a little . . . unnerved. Vexed came nowhere close. Lestrade didn't know if he could bear to finish saying what he had come here to say.

When Sherlock had finished cleaning and had removed all evidence of a mishap to the kitchen, he returned wearing an intentionally calmer demeanour; clearly, it wasn't for Lestrade's sake. He also bore another glass of water, which he delivered wordlessly to John, who took it in two hands and drank. Lestrade could hear his exhalations sounding in the glass as he was clearly trying to remain in control but looking furious with himself.

Giving John what privacy he could, Sherlock returned his attention to Lestrade, and when he spoke his voice was a deeper tone of bass. 'This crime scene you were at. Was it related to the missing evidence?'

Shaking his head, Lestrade said, 'There's no direct connection, from what we've gathered so far. But'—he glanced briefly at John, then away and spoke more softly—'now may not be the best time.'

'Who died?' John asked gruffly, his voice echoing in the glass raised to his lips.

Lestrade relented. 'A man. We've not identified him yet.'

'Where?' asked Sherlock.

'Lower Clapton.' He headed Sherlock off at the pass. 'Team's already cleared the site and the body's on its way to the morgue. There's nothing left to see.'

Sherlock raised a sceptical eyebrow at him but asked, 'How did he die?'

'Initial assessment suggests asphyxiation. I'm going to Bart's later for the full report.'

'We're waiting for the punch line, inspector.'

'It's not conclusive yet, but'—his eyes flitted once more to John, then to the floorboards—'I think our perp is Darren Hirsch.'

He waited for the second glass to fall. It didn't.

After a silent spell, Sherlock said methodically, 'The victim was sexually assaulted.'

'Yes.'

'He had distinct scratch marks on his sides and hips.'

'Yes.'

'There are signs he had been homeless.'

'Yes. All that, yes.'

'I want to see the body.'

'No.'

'Lestrade.'

Lestrade stood and began buttoning his coat, an indication that their conversation was over. 'I came here because you ought to know, and to put you on your guard. But I'm not involving you in this case. It's not an issue of pride, Sherlock,' he said in response to the look of affront, 'it's a matter of policy. You do not work for the Yard. And we don't consult . . . amateurs.' He shook his head, half in apology, half in self-derision. 'Things aren't what they once were, Sherlock. I'm sorry.'

'But you need—'

'I've brought you this,' said Lestrade, holding up the file for him to. 'I can't bring you onto cases anymore, but I also can't stop you from looking for them. So I'm trying to help out where I can.'

With that, he placed the file on top of the closed laptop on the desk, muttered another apology to John, and left.

Sherlock listened to his heavy footsteps travelling down the stairs, then he slowly crossed to the file, flipped it open, and scanned the first few pages. Mostly, it contained surveillance reports and intelligence on foreign spies and counter-government organisations abroad. Interesting. But perhaps not the most pressing matter at hand.

'He's given us this as a distraction,' he said.

'Yes,' said John, who was now standing behind him. He reached around, set down the glass, and grabbed the file from out of Sherlock's hands. 'I'll handle it. You go. Lestrade won't be there for a couple hours more. You'll have plenty of time to look at the body and wait for the report.'

'You don't want to come?'

'It's a big file. Might be something important. Best one of us got on it.'

He sat himself at the desk and opened the laptop to access his password-protected notes.

'I won't be long,' said Sherlock, grabbing his coat and scarf.

'Take your time.'

Sherlock stood a moment in the open doorway, but John was already engrossed in the file, his head slightly angled away. Right then, he thought, and closed the door firmly behind himself.