CHAPTER 13: JACK AND JILL

FEBRUARY 2015

Ralston Winters had been living on the street since he was fifteen years old, a senseless but scared boy without a thought for where he would lay his head or where his next meal would come from. He didn't consider that he'd never again sleep on a clean mattress or eat a shepherd's pie. He left home to escape his mother's abusive boyfriend, a mean drunk or a short-fused sober man, depending on the day. Though he loved his mother, he was tired of being the buffer between her and what's-his-name's meat-mallet fists. She wouldn't come with him, so he left on his own.

He'd gone back to the flat only once, three years later, when he was tired of scrounging meals from skips and snitching sweets and cigarettes from corner shops. But shame drove him home as much as anything, guilt at having broken his mother's heart. Even if she didn't want to see him, surely he'd get through the door and spend long enough inside to bum twenty quid off her, or even pinch a tenner from the jar of emergency cash she kept in the cupboard by the front door. But when he rang the bell, a stranger answered. His mum was gone, and nobody could tell him where to. For a couple of days, he looked for her around the neighbourhood. He talked to all the wrong people, evidently, and never learnt anything useful. Eventually, he just gave up. He never went looking again.

Ralston wasn't sure when it happened, exactly. The move from being just a wilfully dispossessed kid on the streets to becoming a homeless man, that is. Had it happened overnight? Or had he been walking that long, inevitable road from the start? Either way, he awoke one morning in Battersea Park from beneath a blanket of Camden Gazettes and East London Advertisers and realised that, as he planned his day around begging pence and pound off commuters at the entrances to the Piccadilly Line to buy himself a pack of smokes, he was a man crawling at the bugger-arse bottom of the food chain. He was a slug in the form of a human male. He sludged his way in and out of shelters, up and down soup lines, and always, always, he craved a cigarette.

Among his fellows—other society-evicted humans of London's underbelly—he had friends. Acquaintances. Well, someone to bum cigarettes off of, from time to time. In any case, there was a sense of camaraderie among the homeless, born of shared disappointments and unspoken pasts and the commonality that they were all gutter dwellers now. But beyond that, they had little to bind themselves together as a community. Still, he knew their faces, their names. He could always tell the hardened dry meat from the fresh. He could spot the smackheads, the benders, the slags, and even the shitehawk ex-military lot, usually at a glance.

Though there were no leaders among them, a few had risen to a level of gutter-nob prominence. There was Alfie, who played the guitar better than Eric Clapton (they said) and who brought in enough street-corner dosh to rent out a flat (or so the rumours went), if he'd had the mind to. There was Pippa, thirty years old and had been so for the last twenty years, known for her tattoos and tourist photo bombs—a right laugh, that one. Then there was Pete, one of the shitehawks, who had a knack for busting cash machines and hacking computers, though no one had seen him around lately. And, of course, the bloke sometimes called gaffer, though he was still a young man, maybe Ralston's age, the one who knew the Detective. Ewan. Everyone knew Ewan, and he knew nearly everyone. 'It's why I'm useful to him,' he'd been known to say, a gleam of pride in his eyes, a chest swollen with pride like a cock's. 'The Detective needs a bloke like me to work his magic.'

Ralston? He was no one. No one of consequence or someone to tell stories about. Having dropped out of school and having never held a job, he was without skills, without talents, and without ambition beyond the next fag. He was bloody worthless, which anyone could tell at a glance and a sniff.

But then he met her. Nette. Nettie. His Nettie. She was golden, like dark honey. Skin, hair, eyes. Beautiful. Like Ralston, Nette had left home as a kid. For a couple of years, she stayed with an aunt and some friends, but eventually she cut herself off from them all. But they didn't talk about those days, Ralston and Nette. They never talked about the way things were before the street life. There was no point. The point, really, was that they had found each other. It was rather like finding a twenty pound note in the gutter, or an unopened lager in a skip. A real find.

Unlike him, Nette was fearless, which she attributed to her having been bitten by a dog during her first summer sleeping in London parks. She had unwittingly come upon the mutt's stash of bones while picking for supper herself in an alleyway behind a pub, and the animal had gone berserk. It barked and bit and scratched before locking its jaws around her thigh, and it took three pub boys hitting the dog with broomsticks and whipping it in the face with rags before it backed off. She was taken to A&E and sorted out well enough, but she didn't tell anyone her name for fear that they would find her father and tell him where she was. As soon as she was able, she was back on the streets, moving slowly and with a limp, but moving all the same. She told anyone who would listen that she'd survived a dog attack and seemed pretty damn proud of that. Aint nothin can kick this ol girl, she often said, feeling life itself had been kicking her plenty up till then. By the time Ralston came to know her, the limp was just part of who she was. Tore up me muscles and then some, she told him. Aint never goin be right agin. He smiled and rubbed her leg through her coffee-stained jeans, though he suspected, from time to time, that she could have walked well enough, if she'd had a mind to, and that a lot of the real damage was in her head.

They were seen everywhere together. That was, they were hardly seen apart. And because not many knew their real names, they were often called Jack and Jill, which suited them both just fine.

He remembered the day the Detective died. Ralston hadn't been anywhere near Central London at the time, but word spread quickly enough. The man had gone crazy and jumped, they said, right off a hospital rooftop. Shot someone first, then just jumped. To Ralston, as to many, it came as a surprise. The Detective didn't seem the sort. But what did he know? He'd never met the man. Just knew the stories. Damn good stories, too, they said to one another. Too bad they weren't none of them true.

Ralston also remembered when those other stories began to circulate, the scary ones. Initially, they were fuzzy sorts of tales. A homeless woman attacked in a vacant multi storey, a vagrant man nabbed and beaten in Battersea Park. Nothing too unusual, at first. But more stories kept coming, and in time, the emerging details began to reveal sharp similarities. Not just attacks and beatings; these were rapes. By midwinter, every homeless person in every corner of London whispered of an attacker they all called the Slash Man, a monstrous-sized shadow of a sexual predator with claw-like fingernails. Like a bear, some said, and others, like a vampire. According to the reports, the creature was faceless, voiceless, and a cement mixture of frozen air and nightfall. He appears out of nowhere, the stories went, when you is alone, ravages you good and proper, like you'd expect of a hell-beast, and leave you a bloody, quivering, naked mess, to sort yourself out.

The Met looked into it, or so it was said, but no arrest was ever made, and by the time the weather turned and a warm breeze began to stir London again, the stories had petered out. Like a bad, confusing dream, Ralston more or less forgot about the whole affair. There were more pressing matters, like filling the belly and avoiding the coppers.

Spring passed, summer passed, and with autumn came rain and cold, like any other autumn in London, though perhaps with more of a bite in the air. Life was normal, and he and Nette were as happy as two homeless sods could be.

Then came rumour of the Detective's return from the dead, though initially Ralston dismissed them as mere ghost stories. The street dwellers loved to concoct mystery around such extraordinary figures, even the dead ones. Especially the dead ones. But then the papers began running the stories, printing the photographs, and even Nette swore she saw him one evening in Central London, getting out of a cab. Maybe it was true after all.

Not long after came the whispers of the Slash Man's simultaneous resurrection.

Then the murders.

Of a sudden, the Gaffer was dead.

An air of unrest had settled in the empty stomachs of the homeless men and women of London, and an unprecedented camaraderie grew among them. They huddled together, made pacts of solidarity and vows never to sleep alone. They told new stories now—about how the police were covering up the crimes, not solving them; about how Ewan had known too much and needed to be silenced; and about how the Slash Man and the Detective were one in the same and had been all along.

But he ignored them, all of them. He had his Nette, and she was all he needed, so bugger the Detective, the Slash Man, the ghost stories. They were none of them about him, after all.

Then, in early February of the next year, Ralston Winters was murdered.

The phone at the front desk rang twice before she set aside her emery board and picked up.

'Dr Thompson's office.' She blew the dust from her nail tips.

There was dead air on the other end of the line, and she was about to say hello again when she heard the slow intake of breath, so she waited. Then, 'Hello. Yes, I would like to schedule an appointment.'

She knew that tone. She'd heard it often enough in her capacity as a receptionist in this office. It was the recipe of reluctance: a generous serving of shame, light on the submission, mixed with a pinch of self-loathing. She felt a little self-loathing of her own, having become hardened to that tone.

'Are you one of Dr Thompson's current patients?'

'No, I—'

'I'm afraid Dr Thompson is not taking on any new patients for at least six more months, but I can refer you—'

'I'm not a new patient. I was seeing her before, it's just . . . I needed time.'

'All the same, sir, if you're not on the current list of patients, there's nothing I can do.'

'If you could just'—she heard him taking a steadying breath, and she knew that one, too; he was seconds away from either shouting or crying—'just ask her if she'd see me. Please.'

She sighed soundlessly, feeling the stirring of . . . what was that again? Oh yes, pity. It had been a while. In the end, it was the hard-spoken please that caused her to relent. She sighed. 'Let me put you on hold.'

'Thank you.'

'Your name, sir?'

'Watson. John Watson.'

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she brushed it off as quintessentially British. It was a common enough name. He might as well have given his name as John Smith. 'Hold please, Mr Watson.' She hit the hold button on the phone, stood, and walked to the closed door of office. The last patient of the day had left ten minutes ago, and Dr Thompson was likely finishing up her notes. She knocked lightly and let herself in.

'Yes, what is it?'

'I know you're not taking on new patients right now—'

'No new patients, Naomi, like I said.' Dr Thompson didn't lift her head but busily continued to annotate her latest session in her electronic files with rapid clicking of the keys. 'I'm full up at the moment, you know that.'

'I know, but I've just got a call from a former patient of yours. John Watson?'

Dr Thompson's fingers stilled on keyboard.

'He seems keen. I know it's not policy, but I felt like I ought to check with you—'

'Is he on hold?'

'Line one.'

Dr Thompson spun her chair to the phone and in the same motion lifted the receiver and hit the button to take the phone off hold. Naomi stared in surprise.

'John? Yes, this is Ella. Hello.' There was a loud pause in the room as the man on the other end of the phone spoke. 'Yes, it has been a long time, but that's fine, that's just—' Another pause. 'John, there's no need to apologise. None at all. Of course I can see you.' Her eyes snapped to Naomi, staring her down pointedly as she said, 'Can you come in tomorrow, say, eleven o'clock?'

'Dr Thompson, you have an appointment with Phyllis Cooper at elev—'

Dr Thompson covered the mouthpiece with a hand and hissed, 'Cancel it.' Then, back into the phone, 'Lovely, John. I'll see you tomorrow, then. Goodbye.'

'Who—?'

'That'll do, Naomi. Thank you. Schedule the appointment and contact Phyllis. Then you may leave early today.'

Naomi closed the door, her curiosity piqued. She returned to the desk computer and was on the cusp of making a quick revision of files in search of John Watson's name and history. Those records wouldn't have much information on him besides the date of his last appointment, but at least she would know how long it had been since he was in. In the end, though, she just typed his name into an online search engine. She was confused to see that her first hits brought up in greater prominence the name Sherlock Holmes, the shady detective who had faked his own death and got away with murder on a technicality, or so she understood. She'd not been following the story terribly closely, but it was hard not to know some of the details. But what did he have to do with . . . ?

She clicked on the first link, read two lines about the St Mary's Abductions, and said aloud to herself, 'Well, shit.'

Ella stood at the door to meet him when he arrived, punctual as he always had been. He was using a cane again, but that didn't dispel the military bearing. He had always donned that, as if walking into her office meant he was entering a battlefield, and he had to put on the proper armour. Only once had she ever seen him without the soldier's mask, and that was the first time he had returned to her after a long absence, shortly after Sherlock Holmes had died. On that day, he had come not as a soldier, but as a man. Just a man.

Today, he wore the soldier again, though there was something different, less certain about the way he carried it. As if it didn't fit quite right anymore, like it wasn't his own.

'John,' she said warmly, extending a hand. He shook it and smiled tightly. It wasn't a real smile—the lips pursed in a straight line and drew up a little, but no light reached his eyes. She knew better than to say she was glad to see him again. 'Make yourself comfortable,' she said instead.

When he had cleared the doorway, she set the lock and watched as he quickly took in the room again, everything from the windows with their parted curtains to the notebook lying open on her desk. Though it had been some three years since she had last seen him, she had made few changes and knew he would find it a familiar space. Most patients found that comforting. With John, though, it was always hard to tell where he derived comfort.

He took the initiative to close the curtains. She made no comment but turned on another lamp.

'My leg really did take a bullet this time around,' he said as he seated himself in the provided chair. 'If you were wondering. Thought it was time I earned this cane.'

Opening with a joke? It was a grim joke, but it wasn't a bad sign. She sat in her own chair, angled towards his, and crossed one leg over the other. For now, she left her notebook aside.

'Glad you didn't spring for the wheelchair,' she replied with a smile.

'I would've done, but the stairs, you see . . .'

'Wise.'

They lapsed into silence. John rubbed his leg with one hand and stared at the other in his lap, which was balled into a fist. She considered how best to begin. There were some patients you just had to sit back and listen to, and the challenge was corralling the conversation into a fertile pasture. Then there were others that seemed like dead engines, but give them a jumpstart and their mouths ran like well-greased motors. John was neither. He had never been one for saying much at all, and every sentence had to be coaxed. What he held back never exploded in bursts of anger or frustration; he never broke down and cried; he never gave more than he was asked to give. Except for returning to her. He'd done that twice now.

But then, she'd never worked with him long enough to find out whether there was a toggle to flip that she just hadn't found yet, one that would get him to share what she wasn't directly petitioning. The first time he was a patient of hers, it was because the Army had mandated that he see a therapist in order to deal with his post-traumatic stress and keep receiving his pension. Given that she specialised in trauma therapy and had a particular focus on ex-soldiers, her name had been on a short list of recommendations. But he didn't have to choose her, and she had often wondered how he had landed in her office. He had stopped coming after a short four weeks, however, about the time he had moved into a flatshare with the now notorious Sherlock Holmes. The second time, he had come on his own, eighteen months later, when the same Sherlock Holmes (were there any others?) had committed suicide. Ella, who followed the news more closely than she let on, was sorry John had been tangled up in that mess. He came back only because he didn't know what else to do with his grief, and he hadn't kept on more than a few sessions. He hadn't really desired healing, either time.

She wasn't yet sure if this time was different. In fact, she wasn't quite sure why he had come back at all.

'Let's talk about why you're here,' she said after the silence had drawn on long enough.

He nodded, a gesture of agreement, not an acceptance of the implied invitation to begin talking. She would have to be more direct.

'What happened, John?'

He raised his eyes to her. Guarded, reluctant, but resolved.

She wouldn't bring up the St Mary's Abductions herself. She knew everything the papers said about it, as she had been following the story since before it was even called the St Mary's abductions, ever since mid-October when she had first heard that her former patient John Watson had gone missing. The more details that came out, the more sickened she felt. Not that there were a lot of details, but the words kidnapping and torture and even sadism had been used more than once, though what was meant by 'torture' was never defined. In fact, there had been speculation in editorials and on message boards that reports of abuse had been exaggerated, that there hadn't been any real torture. She believed it, though. Seeing John now, just the sunken, haunted look of him, she couldn't help but believe it. It would be John's choice, however, whether to open that door and lead her through it. Until and unless he did, she would not reach beyond her purview. Already, she was beginning to wonder whether she would need to recommend him to a different therapist with more specialised foci and experience in this realm. PTSD in soldiers returning from the battlefield was one thing. Ten days in a dungeon with a sadist? Well, that was another.

'I've been . . .' he started. He touched his forehead, half shielding his face while he collected his thoughts. He started again. 'I've not been well.' He swallowed. His eyes skittered to a small refrigerator against the wall where he knew she had once kept small bottles of water. 'I have these . . . nightmares. Hallucinations. I see things that aren't there, hear things no one else hears. I can't make them stop.'

'Nightmares and hallucinations,' she repeated to make sure these were the words he meant. At his nod, she asked, 'You experience these things both asleep and awake?'

'Yes.'

'How often?'

'Lately, every night. Most days.'

'What do you dream about?'

'Lots of things,' he said in a whisper.

She would have to nudge a little more. She had spent the evening revising her notes from their past sessions to refresh her memory. 'Like before? Do you still dream about the war?'

'Sometimes.'

'But not always?'

'Not often. Not anymore. There are . . . worse things.'

She judged that it was too early to peel back that layer of skin, so she gently steered it away. 'Why have the dreams brought you here?'

'They're bad. They're only getting worse. And I'm afraid of what I might do.'

'What might you do?'

His hand flexed and clenched in his lap. 'Hurt someone.'

'Have you?'

He let out a long breath. 'I woke up one morning, and my hand was stinging like I'd punched a wall. Thought maybe I had, you know? Swung my fist while I was asleep or something. I don't always sleep . . . restfully. But then I saw Sherlock. Side of his face was all swelled up, bruised, like he'd been punched. He hadn't gone to bed like that.'

'Did he say what happened?'

'Said he'd been to the bakery for scones early that morning and that some tosser on the street had taken exception to his face. It's what he wanted me to believe. And it wasn't implausible, given the . . . state of things. How people take to him. But that bruise was hours old. And what he didn't know was how badly my hand was hurting. It was my left hand, too. When I throw a punch, it's usually with my right. But it was my left. And it was the right side of his face. He doesn't think I can, but I know how to put two and two together.' He scrubbed his chin, frustrated. 'He helps me, sometimes, when he can see I'm having another one. A bad dream, that is. But he knows better than to touch me. If he did, if he tried to hold me down or something, that might explain why I lashed out at him. I don't know why he wouldn't tell me, though.' His eyes were hidden behind the hand again. 'It must have been pretty awful.'

'Did you tell him all this?'

'We don't talk about . . . things like that.'

'And is this incident what brought you in today?'

He shook his head tightly, a miniscule movement, and when his hand fell away, his face was mournful. 'I almost killed him,' he said without breath. 'I thought he was someone else, and I almost . . .' He couldn't say it again.

'Who did you think he was?'

He shook his head again unwillingly.

'John.'

She watched as he visibly steeled himself to speak. 'Da— One of the men who . . . killed Mary.'

'Who was Mary?' She knew. Of course she knew. But that wasn't the point of the question.

'My . . . my girlfriend.'

'So you attacked Sherlock because you thought he was this man, the one who killed your girlfriend, and you were . . . angry?'

This time when he shook his head no, he closed his eyes. 'Scared.' They opened.

'What of?' She needed to him say it.

He breathed carefully before answering. 'What he would want with me. Do to me. And if not to me . . .'

'Go on.'

'To him. Sherlock. I'm afraid of losing him. Again. And if I do, I'm afraid of what would happen next.'

'What do you mean?'

His left hand began to tremble, and he covered it with his right, casting his eyes to the ceiling. When his head came back down, he said, 'If I had killed him, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I would have ended it. Right then. I know it.'

'And the thought of dying . . .'

'It's not that. I'm not afraid to die. Not for myself. But if it had happened, like that'—his face screwed up—'Mrs Hudson would have been the one to find us. She would have come home, climbed those stairs, and seen . . .' He couldn't seem to finish the thought. 'I can't bear the thought of doing that to her. Or to Lestrade.'

She knew that name, too, from the papers. 'Who is Lestrade?'

'Someone who put everything on the line to save me. And then there's Molly. She works in the morgue at St Bart's, and might have been the one to . . .' He shook his head. 'How could I do that to them? After all they did to keep me alive, to keep Sherlock alive?'

'Sounds like a lot of people out there care about you.'

His eyes widened a little, as though stunned. Then blinking rapidly he looked away.

'Ella, I can't live like this,' he said. 'I'm scared all the time. If things keep going this way, I'll have to leave. And I can't. Not right now. So I need the dreams to stop, and I'll do whatever it takes. That's why I'm here.'

'You know we're going to have open that box—the reasons behind your fears. I'm going to ask you to talk about the hard things.'

'I know.'

'You can't overcome these fears or master your responses unless you confront them.'

'I know.'

'And it may take a while. Longer than you would like.'

'But I have to do this. If I'm ever going to feel even halfway in control of myself again, I have to do this. Don't I?'

But they didn't open the box that day. They needed to start in a place of control. So instead, they discussed his current physical health, diet, sleeping patterns, and exercise. She asked what medication he was on, when he last met with his doctors, and how long until his prescriptions ran out. They discussed a new anxiety medication she wanted to put him on, and the possibility of antipsychotics, if she determined that he needed them. Then together, they worked out what Ella called a therapeutic strategy for moving forward, a list of dos and do nots. He was to return to physical therapy, twice a week. He was to meet with her three times a week, at least in the beginning, and if he couldn't come in they would have their session over the phone. He promised to always come in. He was to avoid triggering stimuli as much as possible until he could work through them in the security of her own office. He was to repeat certain mantras to himself when he felt the first stirrings of panic, and before he went to sleep, and in the minutes after waking, and agree to whatever mental exercises she required of him in future. To all this, he agreed, but to the last point, he faltered:

'And finally,' she said, 'I want you to begin writing again.'

An unmistakable light of dread flashed in his eyes

'I'm not talking about a blog this time,' she said. 'This will be for you, and only you. In fact, you don't even have to keep it. Write on paper and burn the pages. Or type on your computer and delete the files. But you need to understand what happened to you, John. You need to get the bad memories out of the confines of your mind and into a space that you can encounter, calmly and rationally, with some distance. Putting it on the page will help you do just that.'

'I don't know . . .'

'Start small. Pick a memory you know you can handle. Find a tranquil space in the middle of the day, when you're wide awake, and write for only five minutes. When you're ready, work up to ten, to twenty. Write and rewrite the same memory, if that's what you need to do to face it. But you don't need to share it with anyone, not even me. I just need to know that you've done it. Then you'll be ready to talk about it.'

'You think this will help?'

'I know it will. Because John?'

She waited until his eyes locked onto hers.

'For you, writing is therapeutic. Writing is your way of ordering your world, of making sense of the absurd and appalling. It helped you before. And I promise you: It will help you again.'

Ralston awoke to the sound of whistling. It took him a moment to place the tune, what with his throbbing head, the dark, the disorientation. But it was as familiar to him as any child's nursery rhyme. 'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow, he thought, mentally matching the lyrics to the notes as they sank into his ears.

Where was he?

It was dark, and he felt he was most certainly indoors. Though, last he remembered, he had been in free air and open sky. He and Nette had managed to scrape together eight quid between them, so they had gone for a pint at Shepherd's Knoll, an old pub just a stone's throw from Regent's Park. Yes, that's right. Two lagers each and some pence to spare. Then what? They had left Shepherd's Knoll at half eleven, half-pissed and falling into one another but laughing all the same, and then . . . ? He remembered it vaguely, almost as if it hadn't happened at all and his imagination had concocted the scene. A blow to the back of his head. He hadn't seen it before it landed, and even if he'd had his wits about him, he wouldn't have seen a thing. Arm in arm, they had been strolling in and out of circles of lamplight, shadow then light, shadow then light, then just . . . shadow. And that was that.

But now, a whistling.

And someone crying, softly. A sniffling, a muffled whimper. It took another minute for his brain to work properly—his head pounded and dizziness made him want to sink closer to the ground—but when the whirling, hazy thoughts settled, he recognised three things: he was sitting on a concrete floor, his back against a cold wall with a bag over his head; his arms and legs were bound and his mouth was stuffed with a wad of fabric (maybe a sock—he realised he wasn't wearing either shoes or socks); and the voice of the crying woman belong to his Nettie.

He screamed into the gag and twisted his body, trying to move. The whistling stopped. And another blow fell.

For untold hours (stretching into days?) Ralston and Nette were treated like animals, abused, humiliated, and violated. They were stripped of every particle of clothing and left to shiver in the dark; they were attacked with fists and claws; they watched each other endure sexual degradation of the vilest sort. And never once did their lone tormenter speak. He didn't have to. They knew who he was—the Slash Man—and they knew they were dead.

Though they had given up God long ago on the premise that he had abandoned them first, they cried out to him now, pleading for death. For Ralston, the magnanimous arm of mercy was extended. After three days of torture, his skull was swiftly and without warning split in two with a cleaver. As for Nette, God failed to hear her pleas. The Slash Man took her apart piece by piece.

Sherlock stood on the wrong side of the glass. His back was rigid, his expression unchanging; he gave a good imitation of a statue, but for the persistent drumming of his fingers where he held his hands together behind his back, his only outward sign of agitation. To his side stood Sgt Donovan, back just as stiff but arms folded in front and foot tapping. Her irritation was more apparent, though her reasons were likely quite different. No officer of any rank would feign pleasure when charged with babysitting, Donovan least of all, and Sherlock was still not over his ire at being relegated to this side of the glass.

Still, in one thing they were united: their loathing of the woman now being escorted into the adjoining room.

Kitty Riley took a chair and sat erect, hands clasped on the table before her as if she were the one about to conduct the interview. When they left her alone, she cast a glance at the mirror, smiled self-assuredly, and resumed staring straight ahead. Once, she brushed her fringe out of her eyes and adjusted the collar of her Persian blue silk blouse; other than that, she remained dignified and still, waiting.

But the door to the observation room opened first, and Lestrade put his head in. 'My earpiece is in,' he said, 'but use the mic only if you have something important to say. And one at a time, yeah? If I get the both of you shouting at me at once I swear to god I'll throw the damn thing in the bin.' He backed up, half shut the door, but remembered something. He poked his head back in, 'And Sherlock. Seriously. Don't leave this room. Remember, you're here "on assignment", so don't do anything to jeopardise that allowance.' He gave a pointed look to Donovan to watch him, then another to Sherlock to behave, and at last exited.

'I'm not a child,' Sherlock muttered under his breath.

Donovan snorted but said nothing. She was still seething over the issue of the contracts and Lestrade's fancy interpretations.

Seconds later, Detective Inspector Lestrade strode into the interrogation room bearing a copy of that day's The Sun. There was no greeting, no preamble, no faux-playful I hope you're comfortable because you're going to be here a while. His demeanour had turned dark, quite unlike how Sherlock was accustomed to seeing him, and he got straight to it, threw the paper on the table in front of her, and said, 'Your source, Ms Riley. Now.'

She spread her hands to show them empty. 'Anonymous,' she replied.

'Enough of your bullshit. Those photographs were classified, and the property of New Scotland Yard, not to mention highly sensitive. So tell me. What are they doing being printed in vivid colour over three spreads of your goddamn paper?'

'Not his usual tack,' Donovan murmured.

Sherlock didn't respond, but he couldn't help but agree. This sort of behaviour, this sort of language, did not typically characterise the detective inspector, on or off the job. But he couldn't say he disapproved of the wrath boiling out of Lestrade now. His own reaction had not been far different when Mycroft had contacted him early that morning, a simple four-word text:

Seen today's Sun yet?

In print and online, an article written by that growing pest Kitty Riley featured six full-size photographs of the inside of the kitchen of St Mary's Convent, evidence taken by the Metropolitan Police on the night John Watson had been found alive. Gregson's phone had been ringing off the hook all morning, and he was livid. He had been heard reaming out the editor-in-chief of The Sun (who had himself been dealing with a public outraged over the graphic nature of the photographs) from behind the closed door of his office, using language that made even the most hardened of officers cringe. Shortly thereafter, the photos had been pulled from the website and the newspapers recalled, but the damage had been done: They were out there, now, and some smart arses of the cyber universe, thinking themselves funny, were already at it, superimposing images of Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd, Gordon Ramsey holding a butcher's knife, and captions reading Bon Apetit! and Hell's Kitchen into the scene of blood and carnage and posting them to blogs and media sharing sites. They made Sherlock sick.

Fearing John would come across these unprepared, Sherlock told him what had happened.

'Don't go looking,' he had said in the end.

'Bad, are they?' John's tone was faux-casual, but he was doing that thing with his hand again: clenching it into a tight ball.

'Yes.'

John paused to breathe. Then: 'How did they get them?'

'A leak, apparently. Lestrade is bringing Kitty Riley in now. I'm going down to the Yard. Share a cab?' John had a physical therapy appointment within the hour and agreed. Neither spoke the relief each felt at that.

Now Kitty lifted her chin, adopting a tone of self-righteous superiority. 'The public deserves to know the truth about what happened down there. About the dangers associated with Sherlock Holmes. I wouldn't have to do this if the police weren't being so hush hush—'

'This is an ongoing investigation. Exposing evidence may seriously compromise the integrity of our progress, not to mention throw ordinary citizens into an unwarranted panic. That's why they were classified!'

'I didn't know they were classified,' Kitty Riley said coolly.

'Didn't bother to find out though, did you?' Lestrade rejoined. 'Is that how they teach investigative journalism these days? I do hope you've been sacked.'

'They wouldn't dream of it. I'm The Sun's best reporter. Because of me, The Sun is now the top-selling paper in Europe, three-months running. When I run a piece, print copies sell like corner fish and chips. Online, I get more shares and comments than any other journalist in Britain.'

Again, Donovan snorted, and Sherlock sneered.

'Don't be so quick to champion yourself,' said Lestrade. 'The Sun has always been in high circulation. And brighter stars than you get snuffed out every day. Your editor might think you're the shiniest toy right now, but believe me, Ms Riley, the public will stand for only so much sensationalism before they demand the truth of things. Remember Hillsborough? Yeah. You are the new Kelvin MacKenzie. You've been feeding the people nothing but lies for years now. Forget about your career; they'll call for you blood. Your legacy will be nothing more than a trail of fiction and slander and—'

Donovan snatched the mic up from the table. 'The case, Lestrade. The photographs. Her source.'

'You can't scare me into confessing anything. I've done nothing wrong. And if I were you, I'd be more concerned about the Yard's reputation, not mine. Solved any crimes lately? The four-month-old St Mary's Abductions trail gone cold, has it? Here's tip, a trail you've neglected to set your hounds on: Sherlock Holmes, notorious criminal mastermind and murderer. Ever thought to look into that one, Mr Lestrade?'

'Don't let her goad you,' Donovan said through gritted teeth; in any other universe, her glower would have shattered the glass between them.

'It's detective inspector, if you please,' said Lestrade, pulling back the chair and taking a seat. 'Now. Let's talk about those photographs.'

With an audible sigh of relief, Donovan set down the mic.

'Who is your source?'

'Three things, DI. One: I have dozens of sources, so I couldn't possibly know which one you mean. You'll have to be more specific. Two: The law protects me from revealing my sources. I'm kind of like a priest that way. I couldn't do my job if people thought I would expose them. And three'—she grinned, cat-like—'many of my sources are anonymous. I couldn't expose them, even if I wanted to.'

'You may come to find the limits of that law soon enough. If it comes out that you knew something, anything, that can be construed as your own knowledge and didn't come forward? Well then.' He shrugged carelessly. 'You might be indicted as a conspirator. The court doesn't look too favourably on conspirators, I'm afraid. Especially not ones tied to murder.'

Her lips closed over her teeth, but she kept right on smiling.

'Best you can do now is show some willingness to cooperate with the police. You don't have the greatest track record with that, but surely we can turn it around. Right a few wrongs.'

'Oh, I am righting wrongs. Your wrongs. I'm giving the people what they deserve, and that's the truth. A pathology expert examined those photographs, and you know what he told me? You read my report, didn't you? The amount of blood spilt in that kitchen? Too much for just two people. Even if one of them did bleed out, the other should have died too. So unless they were slaughtering pigs down there, which may explain the iron hooks dangling in the walk-in, the numbers just don't add up. This whole thing reeks of conspiracy, Mr Lestrade, but not on my end.'

Sherlock's gut clenched, and he quickly accessed his internal memory files.

'Do you also believe the moon landing was a fake?' Lestrade said with a derisive laugh.

'Why won't John Watson talk to the press? The people want to hear his story, you know. But he ignores all my calls and emails.'

Sherlock frowned, momentarily distracted from his internal rummaging; he hadn't known Kitty Riley had tried contacting John at all.

'What's he hiding? Or, rather, why is he being silenced?'

'You forget who's interrogating who. You have illegally obtained confidential materials, which you have wilfully disseminated with wanton abandon. That's at least two charges right there. We're talking jail time.'

'A fine, at worst,' Kitty sighed. 'I've already spoken to legal counsel on the matter, before anything went to press. So here's the thing. I didn't seek out confidential materials. They were sent to my inbox, unsolicited. As a matter of rights of the press, any materials—sensitive or otherwise—handed over to a reporter, knowingly and without coercion, become the property of the news outlet, to do with as is we best see fit. Time to brush up on your property law, Mr Lestrade. I'm an innocent party.'

He was not derailed. 'So you received the photographs via email.'

'That's right.'

'What did it say?'

'Nothing. No text. Just the attachments. Not even a subject line.'

'From who?'

'A ghost account. I tried to reply, but . . .' She shrugged. 'My email bounced right back at me.'

'Just the one email?' asked Lestrade.

'Just the one.'

'And when did you receive it?'

'Midnight. Two nights ago.'

'Were you at home or the office?'

'Home.'

'Checking your personal email account? Or do you check your professional account when you're off the clock?'

'A good journalist always checks her professional account. She's always on the job—something you should know a thing or two about.'

'Answer the question.'

She brushed the fringe out of her eyes again. 'It came to my professional account.'

Sherlock snatched the mic up and hit the red button. 'How many photos? Ask her. More than the six they printed?'

He saw Lestrade grimace a little bit, indicating that he had intended to pursue a different line of questioning and that he didn't appreciate being jerked off track like that. Agitated, he pushed the chair back, stood, and started circling the table like a vulture.

'How many photos were attached to the email?'

For the first time, she did not have a ready retort.

'She's going to lie,' Donovan commented to him.

'And we're going to catch her at it,' said Sherlock, grinning deviously.

Lestrade came to a stop behind her. When she continued in silence, he leant in, one hand bracing himself up on the table, his mouth close to her ear.

'I believe I asked you a question, Ms Riley.' Sherlock saw her eyes drop to her interlaced fingers. 'The police took hundreds of photographs that night. How many were sent to you?'

Sherlock was getting excited. Mic in hand, he began pacing in what little space was available before the observation mirror. Donovan scowled.

'Six. Just the six. We printed them all.'

'You got her, Lestrade,' said Sherlock. Then he continued in rapid earnest. 'Open the paper. Ask her to point to the hooks she mentioned, the ones in the walk-in freezer. Make her show you.'

Lestrade reached for the copy of The Sun and pushed it toward Kitty Riley. 'Ms Riley,' he said, 'would you care to show me photograph of the walk-in freezer?'

She eyed him suspiciously, then opened the paper. The photograph in question was situated at the bottom of the right-hand side of the spread with the caption This utility-size freezer likely held the body of Mary S Morstan. The shot was taken from outside the freezer where the door hung open, and was angled toward the blood-streaked stainless steel floor. The upper half of the freezer was not visible.

'Well?' she said.

'You mentioned hooks,' said Lestrade. 'What hooks?'

Her eyes fell back to the photograph.

'I must be mistaken in my recollection,' she said, squaring her shoulders.

'Or,' he said, 'you're remembering another photograph you saw. The imagination doesn't just supply those kinds of details.'

'You'd be surprised.'

'I'll ask one more time. How many photographs were sent to you from this ghost account?'

She shifted in her seat and sat up straighter. 'I think we're done here, Mr Lestrade. I'd like to talk with my legal counsel now.'

He smiled menacingly back. 'Sgt Donovan,' he said loudly to the glass, 'I think we've heard enough to have reasonable suspicion of Ms Riley's criminal hindering of an investigation.' He placed his hands flat on the table and pushed himself up to standing. 'Let's get a warrant to confiscate her personal computer and search her home, shall we?'

Sherlock and Donovan smiled.

Jack and Jill were found together in a skip less than a mile downwind of Shepherd's Knoll. A paper note was fastened to Jack's closed lips with a safety pin. It read:

Ever drifting down the stream

And to Jill's lips, another:

Life, what is it but a dream?