CHAPTER 10: WORK OF THE HIDDEN MENACE

SATURDAY–FRIDAY, JANUARY 10–16, 2015

The bullets they dug out of the ceiling were .476 calibre Enfields; two spent cartridges were found in the street. Ballistics experts down at the Yard agreed they must have come from an Enfield revolver. An antique, then.

'So not Moran,' said Mycroft.

'Not Moran,' said Sherlock.

Fingertips pressed together, he tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling's two new holes from where he stretched out in his chair. He'd already spent considerable time examining them, in addition to their trajectories through the window, and with the two paths together, he knew precisely where the shooter had been standing on the street when he looked up, saw Sherlock through the parted curtain, took aim, and fired.

Two shots: each spoke volumes. The first said the shooter wasn't an especially practised shot to begin with. He had missed. (He? Probably. Statistically.) It stood to reason that he had had very little by way of professional training, nor very extensive practice at firing a weapon. That, or he had been especially nervous. Despite being evidently homicidal, the shooter was likely unaccustomed to violent acts. To begin with, the gun itself suggested that the firearm was a family heirloom—it probably hadn't fired at anything in decades.

Nevertheless, the would-be killer had been the determined sort, and that's where the second shot had come from. Seeing that he had failed to take out his target with the first pull of the trigger, he'd made a second attempt. After all, he had come to Baker Street with the express purpose of finishing a very specific job. He might even believe he had succeeded. After all, as he had fired the second round, the target had collapsed.

And that's what Sherlock was now thinking about now—how, if John had not tackled him to the floorboards, he would have followed through with his impulse: to check the street for where the shot had come from. A suicidal instinct, sometimes, his compulsion to investigate. But then, there was John, whose own instincts had anticipated the second shot and thrown him inexorably into action. If not for John, Sherlock's blood and brains would even now be joined with the two bullets in marring Mrs Hudson's ceiling.

Every time he thought of this, his blood quickened in his veins, and he marvelled at John's capacity. Yet, at the same time, he quailed, for John, seeing the violin blasted apart, had in that instant believed Sherlock had been shot, and it nearly undid him.

'A hired hit, do you think?' suggested Lestrade.

'A deplorable hit man, if that was in fact the case,' said Mycroft, and Sherlock sensed his derision had less to do with the idea of an assassin and more to do with Lestrade's failure to recognise the folly in thinking that a hit man would use an Enfield revolver. A poor deduction. Mycroft didn't say this but continued with his sardonic humour. 'I do hope he wasn't paid up front.'

Lestrade pulled a face of disapproval at the levity with which Mycroft Holmes was treating an assassination attempt on his own blood. 'What I'm saying is, you're right, Moran didn't take the shot. But he might have instructed one of his people.'

'It wasn't Moran,' Sherlock repeated, leaning forward and looking at Lestrade like a teacher tired of repeating himself. 'It's not his style at all.'

'His style?'

'Look. If Moran wanted me dead, I'd be dead. He would have shot me himself in the basement of the convent and been done with it. But he's a sadist. And it's not just physical torture that excites him. He's a mental terrorist. It's psychological. Nothing thrills him more. A quick bullet to the brain would be too quick, too easy, even too clean for him. No, he'll build up to it, induce fear and paranoia, play his little game of psychological teasing, until something in here'—he tapped the side of his head—'snaps. Then he'll strike.'

'Cheers,' said Lestrade tiredly, falling back onto the sofa and conceding the point. 'Not Moran, then. Fine. Then it might have been just about anybody. Half of London would see you dead.'

'And the papers are working hard on the other half,' Mycroft concurred glibly.

He was referencing that morning's headliner in The Times: 'Vigilante makes failed attempt on life of recently acquitted malefactor Sherlock Holmes.' But The Times wasn't the only one painting his name in red and lauding the actions—however unsuccessful—of the unknown assailant. The Daily Telegraph called the shooter a 'would-be hero'; The Daily Star characterised him as a 'neighbourhood watchdog'; and Kitty Riley of The Sun went so far as to compare him to Claus von Stauffenberg, Violet Gibson, and the New York City Guardian Angels. All highly inaccurate comparisons, and Sherlock was especially unappreciative of being the dictators and violent criminals in Ms Riley's colourful analogies.

'It is London's loss,' she wrote, 'that we may never know the true identity of this dauntless seeker of retribution.'

Her words crowned the would-be killer with laurels and disguised her underlying petition to drop the search so that the unknown criminal might not face the hand of the law that would indict him with illegal possession of a firearm and attempted murder. Her call, however, was in vain. The police were taking the shooting seriously. Nevertheless, it still caused Sherlock to sneer at what she was trying to incite. As if the people still had the power to release Barabbas.

The people? Maybe not. But the media . . .

'Sherlock, are you listening to me?'

'Are you still here?'

Mycroft's frown lines grew more pronounced. 'I simply renewed my insistence, in light of last night's event, that you remove yourself to a place of safety, for the duration.'

Sherlock's hands fell down upon the armrests like bricks, and he cast his brother an accomplished look of utmost scorn. 'Leave London?'

'Of course leave London! Leave England! With a sadist having sworn vengeance against you and half the city calling for your blood, it's the most sensible course of action.'

'I won't run.'

'Why not? You have before.'

Lestrade winced, but Sherlock glared. 'I can't. You know what will happen if I do. Besides, my work is here.'

'What work, Sherlock? No, Greg, don't you leap to defend him. I know about your little arrangement. The one that thrusts John back into the house of horror just so my little brother gets to have another go at playing detective. What were either of you thinking?'

'It was my mistake, and I take full respons—' Lestrade began, but Sherlock seemed to have forgotten he was at all a part of the conversation and rode over him.

'I was thinking, Mycroft, that John wanted a hand in taking down the bastards that did this to him. It was his choice.'

'John's choices are questionable at best. He's not about to admit that this is all too much for him. If a child fears water because he nearly drowned in it, you do not throw him back into the sea and expect him to keep his chin above the surface, no matter how much he insists he can swim! You drive inland and take him to a psychiatrist.'

'What, kicking and screaming?'

'If need be.'

'Wonderful. Now you're going to play mum to him, too.'

'If need be. One of us has to, and lord knows it won't be you. You're not good for him, Sherlock.'

Sherlock pushed himself to his feet in one fluid motion. 'You need to leave,' he said. He turned his back on them both and faced the hearth. There, he occupied himself with the scroll from his shattered violin, the largest in-tact piece he had found. He had set it on the mantelpiece as a keepsake of sorts—the rest had found its way into the bin. He lifted it now and rolled it around in his hand. 'Both of you,' he said.

'Sherlock—' Lestrade protested.

'When John wakes up, I want you both gone.' He pocketed the scroll and made a brusque departure to his bedroom where he would be able to hear John better through the ceiling of his room.

Mycroft and Lestrade were left alone in the sitting room. An uncomfortable silence descended. Then:

'It's hard on him, too, you know,' said Lestrade.

Mycroft sighed, staring at the tip of a polished shoe at the end of one long leg, crossed over the other. 'You'll forgive me if I'm not feeling entirely sympathetic.'

'He's the one who almost died last night. Twice. I don't think he's had time to, you know, process that. Not in light of the, erm, aftermath.'

'You mean John.'

'Christ, Mycroft, the panic symptoms lasted for hours, and Sherlock said he'd been showing signs of high anxiety all day already. It was hardly helped by the team of police I had swarming the place, inside the flat, outside the flat. And each time I looked over into the kitchen, I saw John there, white as a corpse, unable to stop shaking, and looking to be on the verge of tears but refusing, I don't know, refusing to break. And not once, not for a second, did Sherlock leave his side. Normally, he'd be flying around the place like an agitated bat in a box, deducing this, insulting that, and I'd have to shout at him to stay out of our hair. But not last night. He stayed at John's side, keeping him calm, steadying him when he had to, filling and refilling his glass with water. The thirst just wouldn't go away. Neither man had slept for some twenty-four hours—Sherlock still hasn't—and John would be up even now if Sherlock hadn't finally made him swallow those Benzodiazepine tablets before literally walking him up the stairs to his room to put him to bed . . .'

'He should have been taken to hospital.'

'John doesn't feel safe in hospitals. He feels safe in this flat. Even after the bricks that have flown through the windows, the bullets, he feels safe here. Because Sherlock is here. When he gets into states like that, when he can't think in a straight line, when he can't remember why he's angry at him, he needs Sherlock near at hand.'

'You've been watching closely, haven't you, inspector?' It was a wry observation, not praise.

'You're the one who asked me to.' Lestrade stood, intent on respecting Sherlock's wishes that they leave. 'Don't forget: I'm with them more than you are, Mycroft. I've seen more than you have. An hour's observation doesn't compare.'

Over the course of the next seven nights, whenever he could manage to fall asleep, Sherlock dreamt of finding John in the freezer, kneeling over him, and pressing a scalpel into his flesh to add another ragged IOU to his already bloody back. Every night, he awoke in a cold sweat and with a racing heart, which he couldn't pacify until he crept to the sitting room with its now-boarded windows to ascertain whether John was all right.

And every night, John slept fitfully, his own unspoken dreams adding their own torment to his midnight hours. If they seemed bad enough, Sherlock woke him with lights and noises, never touches; if they were mild but persistent, he tried to alter them by inserting his own voice and calming narrative until John's limbs stopped writhing and his face smoothed out and his breathing settled; otherwise, he just stayed close, waiting for John to awaken on his own, allowing him to get every precious minute of sleep his exhausted mind and body demanded.

But it was that first night—the night following the shooting, after all the police and Mycroft had gone, and quiet was restored to 221B—that kept weighing on Sherlock's mind.

He himself had not slept in nearly two days, and he could feel the fatigue wearing on his mental faculties. There was so much to think about, and he was having trouble keeping things compartmentalised—the hunt for Moran, the first murder, the second murder, the shooting, John, bloody Mycroft—and properly ordered. Four hours, he thought, would be enough to refresh things. So after John had fallen asleep once again on the sofa (it still perplexed Sherlock why he preferred it to his own bed) and without the aid of sleeping tablets, Sherlock undressed and fell straightway into bed. One minute later, he was fast asleep and dreaming of the freezer . . .

He awoke feeling nauseous, overheated, and shaky. Knowing he was unlikely to fall back to sleep, he sat up, turned on the bedside lamp, and groaned into his hands, trying to dispel the gruesome images that still swam before his face. He needed to clear his head at least a little before rising to check on John.

But it was while he sat there, with his back against the headboard, knees drawn up, and fingers fisting his curls, that there came the low, slow creak of the door. He lifted his head. Through the yawning doorway, John entered, limping, because instead of his cane he held the first-aid kit in his hands. He shuffled forward on shoeless feet, head cocked to one side, eyes downcast and glassy. Sherlock had seen this from John once before, and he added anxiety to his nausea.

'John,' he said, voice barely above a whisper, 'are you awake?'

John didn't answer. He came to a stop at the foot of the bed and rested his weight on his good leg. Motionless now, like a video set to pause, he appeared to be staring at the duvet, but Sherlock was fairly certain that he wasn't seeing it at all. Seconds passed while John just stood there and Sherlock contemplated the best course of action. This wasn't like before. John didn't seem distressed, didn't seem to believe he was in peril, and, fortunately, he didn't have the gun on him this time to imperil Sherlock. (Sherlock had been sensible enough to hide it before the police arrived, but John wouldn't go to sleep without knowing it had been returned to its place beneath the sofa.)

So did Sherlock let this play out? Or help him back to bed? He hadn't told John about the last sleepwalking incident for fear that it would depress him further, and he didn't know how far John could sink before he was lost entirely to that black ocean.

Before he could reason through things, John seemed to reach a decision himself. He moved closer, sat himself on the edge of Sherlock's mattress, placed the kit at his side, and opened it. His hand began to rummage around in it, searching for something, but his eyes weren't even focused there; they were cast sidelong to the floor.

Sherlock straightened out his legs and inclined toward the kit, the better to see what John was doing. That's when John put a hand on his chest and pushed him back to the headboard. 'You were shot,' he said. 'Take it easy.'

His voice was thick, gruff, unused for several hours, but it carried with it a note of authority and the expectation of obedience, and Sherlock complied almost without thinking. Instead, he reflected on what he was witnessing. Perhaps this was a part of John's mind that still believed that Sherlock had indeed been shot.

But at the moment, he didn't seem too concerned about it. Instead, he lifted a digital thermometer from the kit and stuck it directly under Sherlock's tongue without bothering to press the button to turn it on.

Sherlock sat in dumbfounded fascination as John proceeded to check his vital signs and basic health with routine efficiency, despite being fast asleep. He took Sherlock's arm and lightly pressed two fingers into his wrist while watching the seconds tick by on a wristwatch he wasn't wearing, monitoring his pulse. When he was satisfied, he removed the thermometer and read the blank screen. There must have been an acceptable (though imaginary) number there, too, because he seemed content with what he saw and gave a little nod. He checked Sherlock for pupil dilation with a regular biro, not a pen light, and used the same biro for eye tracking. But he put the instruments aside to examine Sherlock's throat, two well-practised medical hands probing expertly, gently, beneath his jaw, checking for swelling.

Sherlock sat rigidly throughout but allowed John to perform his vocation. It was the most at ease he had seen him since the latest crime scene, and he was afraid to upset this state of calm. True, it was strange, and not a little unnerving. John had doctored him before, through minor injuries and a few illnesses barely worth remembering, but that had been then, and, of course, John had been fully conscious. Now, Sherlock couldn't tell where John believed he was, or when.

Maybe he could find out.

'Doctor,' he said, his voice a study in serenity.

'You're doing fine, soldier. Just rest.' He lowered his hands from Sherlock's throat.

Soldier? Afghanistan, then. Again. 'You said I was shot. Where?'

John pointed to his own left shoulder, gingerly placing his fingers on the spot right over his own old scar. 'You're lucky it missed your heart,' he said. 'Let's have a look.'

Sherlock, though not normally slow on the uptake, took a moment before he realised that John wanted to see the non-existent wound his shoulder. Then he laughed a little uncomfortably. 'You won't be asking me to turn my head and cough any time soon, will you?'

'What?'

'Nothing.'

'Your shoulder, captain.'

Captain? Who, exactly, did John believe he was treating? Taking a deep breath, Sherlock relented and pulled his t-shirt over his head. While he disrobed, John pulled out his stethoscope and settled the tubing around his neck. Then he removed large, square plasters and disinfectant cream from the kit.

John scooted up on the mattress, the better to reach Sherlock's shoulder and treat the invisible wound. While he rubbed antibiotic into the bare, unbroken skin, he said, 'A clean wound. Straight through. The flesh will heal.'

'Good,' said Sherlock, though apprehensively. John's fingers warmed the cool cream as he rubbed a circle into Sherlock's shoulder. 'Nothing to worry about, then.'

'No. It'll still hurt like hell. That never goes away. It just . . . shifts. In one way or another, you'll always feel like you've been shot through the heart.'

The sudden desire to end this seized Sherlock. He wanted to tell John to stop, to shake him awake and end this unparalysed nightmare. But he couldn't. A window was opened into John's mind, one normally bolted closed with fogged glass in the pane. Sherlock didn't want to pry, but to peer, to understand a little more clearly what John wouldn't or couldn't express while awake.

While he formulated his questions, John taped the square plaster over the imagined wound. His fingers were dexterous, efficient, but also mindful of the supposed pain such a wound could cause, and so they were also kind.

'Where does it shift to, doctor?' Sherlock asked softly. 'What hurts?'

For the first time since entering the bedroom, John's body completely stilled; his hands froze against Sherlock's shoulder; his eyes unfocused and his lids drooped. Sherlock watched him with mounting disquiet until, at last, John sat back, unwound the stethoscope from around his neck, and settled the ear tips in his ears. He placed the cold diaphragm over Sherlock's right breast—against the sternal border and second intercostal space—the perfect place for listening to one's heartbeat. Sherlock held his breath.

'There it goes,' said John, his voice low and dark. 'Still, it goes. Thump. Thump.' Then his eyes rose and met Sherlock's straight on for the first time that night. Their focus was sharp, cutting, hateful; they weren't John's eyes at all. 'What for, Johnny boy?' he asked. 'How's it doing that? I thought we had torn it out of you.'

Sherlock felt his blood run cold. Instinctively, he recoiled, shifted away, meaning to leave the bed on the other side and find his feet. But before he could move very far at all, John's right hand, still bandaged from the damage of the shattered mirror, shot out, seized him around the throat, and slammed his head back against the headboard. 'Stupid little fuck,' he snarled. His fingers squeezed, nails sinking into the skin as he compressed Sherlock's windpipe with vicious intent. Sherlock's legs kicked out—a response to pain, to lack of air—and overturned the kit, which spilt its contents onto bed and floor. He grabbed John's arm to try and break his hold. But at the defensive touch, John cocked his left fist and smashed it into the side of Sherlock's head.

His throat released, Sherlock fell sideways to the mattress, gasping for breath, his head ringing with the exploding sting of the blow. He rolled to his knees, preparing to rise and defend himself, if it came to it, but when he lifted his head, he saw the door hanging open again, and John was gone.

'Shit,' he gasped. He scrambled out of the bed and clawed his way back into his t-shirt even as he ran through the door.

He skidded to a stop the instant he entered the dark sitting room—John was on the floor, on his knees and elbows, rocking backward and forward with a jolting rhythm. Sherlock hit the light by the door, but the rhythm didn't stop, and with the room illuminated, he saw that John was pressing his wrists together, and his fingers were tensed like claws. His head was bowed low and hidden between his arms, but he could hear a choking, stifled cry in his throat.

He should have known better than to approach John from behind. It had been a lesson learnt early, not long after John returned to Baker Street. But Sherlock didn't think. Acting out of desperation, not reason, not even experience, he reached out for him, saying, 'God, John, wake up,' and laid a hand on the curve of his back. John screamed, twisted, and flung himself around so that he lay flat on the hardwood floor.

Sherlock sprang backward as if he had touched a hot coil and watched helplessly as John's arms drew in close, his joined wrists covering his face, which he turned aside as though to bury in the floorboards. 'Jesus no, Jesus no,' he panted, voice muffled, limbs quaking.

'Damn it, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, John,' said Sherlock. His voice quavered in fear for his friend. He swallowed it down and tried again. 'John, listen to me. It's Sherlock. Can you hear me, John?'

Several agonising seconds passed, during which John did nothing but tremble. Sherlock said his name again. Through the panting, Sherlock heard John reply, almost too quietly to be heard: 'Sherlock?'

'Yes. Yes, I'm—I'm here. And . . . and Mrs Hudson, too. We're both here. In our flat.'

Slowly, as if he were moving through water, John rolled to his side and curled into himself. 'The flat,' he echoed.

'Yes, John. You're home. You're safe.'

To his great relief, John's wrists drew apart on their own. He lay still, muscles softening and limbs limp. He was still asleep, and Sherlock feared that if he stayed as he was, the nightmare would reconfigure in his mind. So he needed to re-craft the dream in full, and move him off the floor—cold and hard like the freezer—and to the soft, familiar cushions of the sofa.

'It's safe here,' he repeated. He took a step closer and watched John's face for signs of stress. His brow was furrowed, his lips pulled down in a frown. Sherlock continued his narration. 'Safe. Warm. We started a fire in the hearth half an hour ago, and by now, the flames have eaten halfway through the log. So I add another. You . . . you are sitting in your chair, reading the paper. The Sunday Times, sports edition. Some twaddle about cricket.'

As he spoke, John's breathing deepened and the lines in his forehead smoothed out. Sherlock lowered himself to the floor, to one knee, and hesitated with a hand hovering over John's bony shoulder. 'Mrs Hudson's making us tea in the kitchen,' he continued. He gently, cautiously, placed the hand on John's arm at the elbow. There was a flinch, but next moment, John relaxed under the touch. 'You ask for biscuits, and she says not worry—she's brought those currant scones you like from the corner bakery. I promise not to eat the extra she always brings this time.'

'You better not,' John mumbled, quite seriously, though still fast asleep.

Sherlock couldn't help it: he laughed, a low rumble in his chest. 'I won't,' he said. Then he lifted John's arm, placed it around his own shoulders, and eased John up into a sitting position. Subconsciously, John gripped his arm at the bicep to support himself, and when Sherlock put an arm around his waist and lifted him to his feet, John followed without resistance.

'I'm playing my violin,' said Sherlock, guiding him to the sofa. 'Mrs Hudson is humming along. A little off pitch and behind the tempo, as usual. The fire is popping—it's the rapid oxidation, really, the resin trapped in the wood expanding as it heats, creating little pockets of gas ready to explode. It's what we get for burning pine—'

'You talk too much,' John mumbled.

Sherlock grinned as he lowered John onto the cushions. 'You're growing sleepy in your chair. So you decide to lie down, here on the sofa, and fall asleep.'

'What about the scones?' John asked, childlike, as he settled onto his side, sinking into the cushions. Sherlock cupped the side of his head and guided him back down to the pillow. Then he knelt and pulled a blanket over his shoulders.

'There will be a whole plate of them in the kitchen when you wake up.'

After that, John didn't ask any more questions. He sank into a deeper, more restful sleep. But Sherlock stayed where he knelt for a long time. He rested his hand on John's blanketed shoulder as though to hold him there, to keep him from drifting away from him, and he sat back on his heels, and bowed his head in relief, in enervation, in regret. As he listened to the sound of John's steadying breaths, he resolved to go out in the morning and buy half a dozen scones before John woke up, to invite Mrs Hudson to breakfast, and to lie his fool head off when John asked about the bruise already blooming beneath his bloodshot eye.

Sherlock and John weren't the only ones suffering bad dreams.

'How's work going?'

Lestrade cracked his neck and forced himself to settle back into the sofa. Today, he had decided before walking through the door, he would be amenable. Within reason. He would do whatever he had to in order to expedite Dr Quinton's signature of approval on a clean bill of mental health.

'Good. Things are good,' he said, telling himself to smile, to add a little uplift to his voice. The result was a pitch too high and a crooked mouth.

'Stressful?'

'Well, that's the nature of the job, isn't it.'

Dr Quinton readjusted the spectacles on his nose. 'I've been following the news. The murder of a second homeless man. Ghastly stuff.'

'Mm.'

'How's the investigation going?'

Lestrade's head quirked to the side. 'You know I can't talk about that.'

'No, of course not. I know that. So let me put it another way: How are you coping?'

'I'm a homicide detective. This isn't my first case, doctor. I've been doing this sort of thing my whole career. I'm coping just fine.'

'Yes, but with a double murder of the nature of—'

'Serial murder,' Lestrade corrected. 'The victims were not killed together, as during a double or triple murder, a spree. There was a cooling-off period between the two temporally separated events. We call that serial murder.'

'And how many serial murderers have you dealt with during your career, detective inspector?'

'Enough.'

'How many have you caught?'

Lestrade straightened a little. 'All but one.'

'Good record.'

'Not good enough.'

'Ah. There it is again.'

With a swift glance at the clock, Lestrade asked, 'There's what again?'

'The self-derision. A couple of weeks ago, you called yourself a bungling copper. Do you remember?' Lestrade offered only a shallow nod of acknowledgement, not liking at all where this was going. Dr Quinton continued, 'Do you feel the same today?'

'Let's get one thing clear: I never called myself that. Not really.'

'But is it how you feel?'

Rather than answer that directly, he said, 'I'm a damn good copper.'

'Your record would support that.'

'It's true.'

'All right. And I'm sure you excel in each of the very many aspects of your work. Not only working crime scenes and examining dead bodies, but dealing with the live people, too. Criminals. Victims and their families. Superiors, subordinates, and colleagues. Tell me about your relationship with Mr Holmes.'

Lestrade's pleasant demeanour was slipping: he scowled and looked irritably out the window.

'What do you say, Greg? We can continue to have these silent sessions, me asking the same questions over and over again, you finding new ways to evade answering. Or we can get at the heart of things, maybe even work through the anxieties that are affecting your work, your sleep, your relationships, so you can start to feel in control of your life again. After all, isn't that why you're here?'

'Why I'm here?' Yes, the amenable mood had been snuffed out like candle. 'I'm here because you won't sign off on the damn form.'

'Why does that upset you?'

'Why? Because I shouldn't be here in the first place! I'm not the one who—' He caught himself, bit down on his tongue, pinched the bridge of his nose, and squeezed his eyes closed.

Dr Quinton didn't let it go. He inclined his body forward, an arm across his knee. 'Who what?' Lestrade shook his head, furious. 'Greg? Who what?'

It erupted out of him like volcano. 'I'm not the one who was raped and mutilated for ten days in some godforsaken underground abattoir! I'm not the one who spent more than three years as a dead man. I'm not the one being shot at in my own home because an entire city hates me. And I'm not the one who watched the woman I love murdered before my eyes. I have no business being here, feeling so unbalanced, feeling devastated, feeling like my world is spinning out of my control or might explode at any second. No right.'

Dr Quinton eased himself back into his chair. 'I see.'

'Do you? Because it doesn't make a shit bit of sense to me.'

'You're comparing your trauma to others' and have decided that its severity, well, doesn't compare.'

'It doesn't. It can't even be called trauma.'

'Okay. We won't call it that. For now. We'll just ignore the fact that you were shot . . .'

'That was hardly a—'

'. . . and that you saw your boss get taken out by sniper fire mere moments after you were forced to arrest him . . .'

'It's the job—'

'. . . while you were still holding onto his arm, no less . . .'

'I've dealt with that—'

'. . . and that you'd been betrayed by those you trusted, those you relied on to do your job right . . .'

'We were never close—'

'. . . and that someone you cared about, who you believed to be three-years dead, was suddenly alive . . .'

'A shock, not trauma—'

'. . . and that you received first-hand evidence of the brutal treatment, the unimaginable torture, of a friend . . .'

Lestrade had stopped talking; his throat was closing in on itself.

'. . . all within the space of about a week. Okay. We won't call it trauma. So do we call it?'

Lestrade tried to clear his throat and squeaked instead. He swallowed it down, wrinkled his buzzing nose, licked his lips, wiped fingers across his dampening forehead. When he thought he could manage speaking again, he cleared his throat, this time successfully, but still could only manage a whisper. 'Week from hell,' he said.

'Sounds ruddy awful.'

'Mm.'

'I want to remind you, Greg, that any one of those kinds of ordeals brings officers into my office all the time. When these things happen, it doesn't matter how strong we are—mentally, emotionally. We are human. Events like the ones you've experienced take their toll. They rattle us down to our bones. And we wish to God there was something we could have done to prevent it. But we can't change what has happened. So we punish ourselves, often without even meaning to. Some people stop eating. Others stop sleeping. Others begin to hate themselves or hurt themselves or cut themselves off from loved ones. And none of this is good. You know that. Up here'—he tapped his head—'you know that. But we can't always stop ourselves, not on our own. So we need outside help. I'm here to help you, Greg.'

Lestrade rubbed a hand under his nose and sniffed loudly. 'I know.'

'Good. But we have to work together. You have to start being honest with me, and you can't do that until you're honest with yourself. About everything. Your insecurities, your fears, your anger, even. Are you willing to do that?'

This wasn't going the way he had imagined. It took every ounce of willpower he still possessed, but in the end, he nodded his head.

'All right then. I want you to answer my next few questions honestly. Yes or no will do for now, all right?'

Again, he nodded, feeling defeated.

'Are you still having the dream?'

Sighing out a ragged breath, he answered with a thick throat. 'Yes.'

'Every night?'

'Most nights.'

'Why do you think you keep having the same dream?'

'Yes or no questions, doc.'

Dr Quinton nodded his concession. 'Do you blame yourself for what happened to Mary Morstan?'

Lestrade glared at Dr Quinton, but though his eyes burned, there was no fire there. Dr Quinton waited patiently for an answer.

'Yes.'

'Do you believe you are right in blaming yourself?'

Lestrade bowed his head and took long, stabilising breaths.

'Honesty, Greg, remember.'

His head came up. 'Yes. Yes, I am. Because . . .'

'Go on.'

'Because I should have known. Because I should have anticipated the danger to Mary. That was my job!' He ran a hand across his scratchy chin, feeling the guilt well up inside him like bile, and he was unable to stop it. 'I spent three days looking for John, three days, hacking computer files and talking to all the wrong people and working on a case that just didn't matter. And then Sherlock Holmes comes along, listens to me bumble on about dead ends and fruitless leads, and a mere twenty minutes later—' He slapped a hand down on the leather armrest so hard that Dr Quinton jumped a little in his seat. 'He knows. Just like that. Mary's a target. And we're fifteen minutes too late getting to her. My phone call is five minutes too late. Five fucking minutes.'

His heart was drumming in his chest, and he couldn't stand the sound of it, so he kept talking to drown it out. 'I didn't see her die, doc. That wasn't me—that was John. But I'm the one who could have saved her. And I didn't. I sat in her flat, and I talked with her, and I promised her, right before I walked out that door and left her all alone, that everything would be all right. She believed me; I could see it in her eyes. But I proved myself a liar in the end. So now I have to watch her throat get slit every night, to remind me of how I failed her and John. Every damn night.'

'Do you think John blames you?'

'No one knows what John Watson thinks these days.' He sighed at the instant recognition of something else that had been bothering him, deep down. 'John and I don't talk. Hell, I don't think even John and Sherlock talk. John's got his own demons to deal with.'

'Have you tried talking?'

'I wouldn't know what to say.'

'Do you want to talk to him?'

'Most days, I find it hard just to look at him. He always looks so damned sad all the time, and all I can think about is how I wronged him. But what else am I supposed to do? Pretend like nothing's wrong? Like nothing happened? Like we're still living in the days before Sherlock fell?'

'What do you think John deserves?'

'Better than what I'm giving him. But I don't know what to do.'

'Do you want his forgiveness?'

'I don't deserve—'

'But do you want it?'

Lestrade answered honestly. 'I don't want what I don't deserve.'

'All right. That's all right. For now. I think our way forward is clear. We need to deal with these feelings of guilt and self-blame. Until you are able to forgive yourself, the dreams won't stop.'

'But—'

'Guilt is a funny sort of animal, Greg. We think we can cage it, hide it away. But it's a hungry beast, and soon it starts eating at us from the inside out because we keep feeding it with our negative emotions, our worst memories, and self-doubt. But it can't be contained forever. Eventually, if we don't starve it, it will break free to harm us and our relationships with others.'

Molly, thought Lestrade. Already, it was affecting her, them, as he tried to keep her at arms' length but was unable to let her go. He wanted her too much.

'Tell me what you want.'

'I . . .' Lestrade floundered for a moment before answering. 'I don't want to feel like this anymore.'

'Then are you willing to work on this with me?' Dr Quinton asked.

He nodded, reluctance and willingness tangled in one.

'Good. Let's establish some guiding principles, then, shall we? First: communication. In physical therapy, you exercise the body. In psychotherapy, we talk. Sometimes, that's exactly how we discover what is weighing us down. So that leads to the second principle: honesty, as we discussed before. And third: trust. You need to trust that I can help you, and I need to be able to trust that you're being honest with me. Even when it gets hard and I ask you to tell me about something you really don't want to talk about, we keep moving forward. Yes?'

'Fine.'

'Good. Then let's begin with something easy, something I think you've been lying to yourself about for some time.' Lestrade tensed. 'Let's talk about your feelings of resentment toward Sherlock Holmes.'

Lestrade walked out of Dr Quinton's office feeling exhausted, as though he could lie down, right there in the hallway, and be asleep before his eyelids had a chance to close.

But there was work to be done. There was always work to be done. And though he was pressing his team hard, stretching them to their limits with long hours and vague threats and unforgiving, unsympathetic responses to their failures, there was still more work to be done. Dryers and Milton headed the search and recovery team for the stolen evidence from the convent but were encountering only dead end after dead end, which led to Lestrade shouting at them as he demanded to know whether they had thought about investigating with their eyes open for a change. Reynolds and Cooper were charged with heading the Jefferies murder, and to work alongside Formisano and Yang, who headed the O'Harris murder and the hunt for Darren Hirsch. All they had accomplished so far, however, was tracking the origin of the hemlock, an herb that had been growing out of season and that was also uncommon to local florist shops. The flower did grow, however, in a greenhouse at Hanover College, not far from where O'Harris had last been seen. A lock had been busted, though no fingerprints had been found.

Then there was Donovan, whom he'd assigned to finding the sod who had fired the Enfield revolver through the window of 221B Baker Street. She attacked her assignment with vigour—perhaps to compensate for avoiding more than one jilted conversation with 221B's occupants—but her search was so far proving as fruitless as Dryers and Milton's.

The trail to finding Sebastian Moran had gone dry. The one leading to Irene Adler, non-existent. And Darren Hirsch was moving around London like a ghost: materialising, attacking, and vanishing without a trace. Well, not quite without a trace. At least they knew now that is was Darren Hirsch—the DNA results had come back positive at last.

And the one person on whom he had been relying above anyone else to help him solve it, all of it, whom he'd finally been sanctioned to consult with, had his attention divided in favour of something Lestrade couldn't possibly beg him to dismiss, no matter how dire things got.

But then, how dire would they get? Two murders was bad, but there wasn't any solid indication that there would be more. And all Lestrade needed was for Hirsch to make one mistake, or for one witness to give him just the right sliver of information that would lead to just the right circumstances for taking the bastard down. If they were lucky, he wouldn't need Sherlock at all.

He started off down the hallway toward the lifts where he punched the down button. While he waited, he considered taking an hour to drop in on Sherlock and John (to prove to Dr Quinton, if not to himself, that he felt no resentment), not for a consultation or to talk shop at all but just . . . to talk. As friends. But even as he thought it, he dismissed it as ludicrous. Sherlock wasn't the sort to just talk, like mates going out for a pint. If not crime, what the hell would they talk about?

The lift doors opened with a ding. Lestrade stepped in, hit the floor for his office, and at the very moment the doors closed behind him, his text alert sounded in the pocket of his suit coat. He sighed and fished for it, thinking of all the people he'd rather not talk to at the moment: Gregson, with another request for an update; Anderson, again begging to be reinstated on his investigation team; Mycroft, with another damned covert assignment; Sherlock, telling him there'd been another projectile attack on his windows . . . His heart rose a little, though, at the possibility of Molly, insisting on taking him to dinner and refusing to take any work-related excuses for an answer. He thought how he just might let her win, shuck off the myriad responsibilities that weighed him down, and take a few hours to be with her, just the two of them, not bothering about anything else at all . . .

He checked the lit-up screen: Watson.

And his breath stuck in his throat.

Because he knew it wasn't John. Because John never called him. And because John was programmed into his address book as John W now. This was an old number, from an old phone, a phone that was now, as far as he knew, in the hands of fugitive sadist. He had received messages from this number before, and they had each of them been . . . horrific.

He couldn't breathe. He could barely think. Something inside screamed at him not to open the message, to delete it, to pretend he had never received it to begin with. But already, his thumb was hovering over the screen to retrieve it. He knew he could do nothing else. Bracing, he opened the text.

'Oh god,' he said aloud, as the lift doors opened with a cheery ding.