For the first three minutes of the car trip to New Scotland Yard, there was nothing but silence. Lestrade had relegated DC Draper to the back seat beside Julie, so that Matthew could sit beside him.

"Might actually get a parking spot at this time of an evening," he remarked casually over his shoulder, pulling down the sun visor and squinting into a sunset of flaming orange clouds. He glanced across at Matthew, who was staring almost unblinkingly at the shops and flats and people that zoomed by. Briefly, he let go of the wheel to pat his shoulder. "You've done nothing wrong," he said. "So you've got nothing to be ashamed about."

Except maybe that video. Lestrade set his jaw. Thanks to Sarah Draper in the back seat, he couldn't even give Matthew a lecture prepping him on how the bloody hell he was going to explain that to the investigators. Hopefully Julie had the good sense to shut up about it, at least with an officer in earshot. Julie was clever, but she wasn't familiar with the ins and outs of the law, and was prone to disconnections between her brain and mouth when upset.

"Is Mel coming?" Matthew asked, so low that his father could barely hear him over the sound of the engine.

Lestrade heard Julie fidget.

"Yeah," he said. "Right behind us, maybe five or ten minutes. She had some stuff at home to follow up with before she left."

And five or ten minutes, he reflected, would give Sherlock Holmes extra time to show up… and probably have one hell of a row with June Merivale. The woman who'd given them an escort to make sure they actually showed up at New Scotland Yard wouldn't be keen on allowing a civilian, no matter how well-known and respected, anywhere near her case.

I wonder how keen Bill and Laura will be to babysit like this when we've got three kids under the age of two, Molly thought grimly to herself, fumbling to put on her protective rubber boots prior to stepping into the morgue. She'd left Charlie, happy and sleepy, at the Murray's for the night. Their son Brynn was only seven months older than Charlie, and they'd said time and again that she was no trouble whenever they were both called out to work late at night and didn't want to bother Harry to babysit.

Now that the news was out – to Sherlock, anyway – there were quite a few people who needed to know before Bill and Laura, and the first of these was Sharon.

Professor Sharon Knowles had been promoted into the position of Acting Lab Director since Harding had been forced to step down in disgrace. For all of the administrative duties her promotion had given her, though, she was always a good sport about helping out where needed. Just then Molly needed an assistant, and Sharon was on hand, which settled it. She stepped in just as Molly was donning her scrubs.

"Evening," she said wryly. "I wish it were under better circumstances."

"So do I," Molly said. "I hate it when they're young, or, you know, died in a way that might have hurt. Um. Sharon, I do need to tell you some things before we start."

"Oh?" Sharon pulled her scrub-suit off the hook it rested on. "Fire away."

"Um. So you know I'm a little bit… involved? Well, it's a bit complicated, but this girl, she was the girlfriend of a friend's son. And, well, it looks like they think he was the one who did it."

"Okay." Sharon did not sound surprised; but then, Molly thought, why would she? She'd been "'involved" in quite a few of the corpses that came in and out of the morgue. "Did you know her?" she asked.

Molly shook her head.

"Do you know the son?" Sharon zipped up her suit and started searching around for a plastic cap to cover her abundance of red hair.

"Not very well." The last Molly had actually seen Matthew Lestrade had been at Mrs Hudson's funeral, and they hadn't spoken. She knew him mainly as a skulking teen who wandered in and out of the scene whenever she was over at Greg and Mel's.

"I didn't know either of them, so I think we can still let the science do the talking. Are you planning on going in there without gloves or something?" Sharon glanced down at Molly's bare hands. Or rather, her ungloved hands, since she was still wearing her engagement and wedding rings. Protocol demanded these be removed and locked away as part of her prep process before starting a post mortem, and she had never forgotten before.

"No," she said. "But, you still may not want me to do this, because um, I'm pregnant."

"Seriously?" Sharon raised an eyebrow.

Molly nodded. "Nearly twelve weeks now."

"Twelve weeks? Molly. You know you're supposed to check in as soon as you get a positive test and subscribe to The List of Things You're Not Allowed to Do."

Molly was already well familiar with the list of what were more professionally called Activity Restrictions to be cross-checked with her obstetrician. No heavy lifting, and there was now an entire list of substances she was no longer allowed to play with, gloves and masks be damned, just in case.

"I know," she said. "I haven't done anything that I'm not supposed to, though. I remember when I was having Charlie, my doctor said I was all right with autopsies as long as I didn't do any heavy lifting and there was no danger of, you know, contact poison or something."

Sharon sighed. "Okay," she said. "I'm not going to banish you to paperwork just yet, but you really should have said something ages ago. Let's get this poor kid done, and then we'll go through all that business. Also, congratulations."

"It's a perfectly reasonable request, Inspector," Sherlock Holmes remarked, taking his gloves off and laying them in his lap. "My role in assisting the police has been signed off by Commissioner Hale himself."

So this is the annoying prat Greg Lestrade loves so much, June Merivale reflected to herself, observing him from the other side of her desk.

For it was obvious Lestrade loved him, as fiercely and protectively as he loved his own children. Anyone who doubted it clearly hadn't been there during the Paul Doherty case; hadn't been there the day he'd called up every senior detective he knew and begged them for help getting the kidnapped Holmes back safe and sound. They'd not seen the state he'd been in that night, even booting a suspect, which he'd never been known to do before. They didn't know how, after Holmes had been recovered alive but seriously injured, he'd almost immediately applied for two weeks of leave so he could stay near him while he recovered. Payroll had granted it to him, despite the fact that he had two other active cases open at the time, and that sort of leave was really only reserved for incidents involving a detective's immediate family.

Greg Lestrade just wasn't the sort of person to unofficially co-opt Sherlock Holmes into his immediate family, just because he was clever and could solve cases faster than anyone else. There had to be other reasons, though Merivale had no idea what those reasons could be. By all accounts, Sherlock Holmes was an obnoxious, tactless dickhead.

He was also undoubtedly well-dressed, clever, and good-looking. And just now, seated across the desk from her, he was also calm and composed, the very essence of good breeding. A memory flashed through her of the last time she'd seen him, lying semi-conscious in the road the night he'd been kidnapped and recovered. Lestrade had draped his coat over him as he lay shivering and bleeding on the bitumen.

"I've still got the right to refuse your help, such as it is," she reminded him frostily. "The contract allows you to work with the Met; it doesn't give you permission to crash any investigation you please." She flipped the first page of the paperwork in front of her and pretended to examine it. "Also," she remarked, "I don't believe I've been given a contract for John Watson."

Sherlock huffed, kicking at the floor in a way that reminded Merivale of her eldest son, Christopher, at his most impossible. "He's entirely trustworthy," he said through gritted teeth. "And on his way. His profession demands regular police checks, if that's any help to you."

"Be that as it may –"

"Oh, for God's sake." Sherlock rolled his eyes. "If you know nothing about me, Inspector, then you ought to be paying more attention. Over the past ten years, I have solved forty-two major cases for the Metropolitan Police. And I was assisted throughout by John Watson in twenty of those cases. His contributions are a matter of public record, and so is the fact that since my contract came into place, he has continued to assist me with the full knowledge of upper command, and without restriction. Now to save us both time, just tell me, are you going to force my hand into putting in a call to Commissioner Hale?"

For the next few seconds, Merivale sat deep in thought.

"You know how this works, Holmes," she said finally, putting the contract papers down on the desk. "I've had multiple reports about you, all saying the same thing – you like to think you're above the rules. You aren't. If you risk this investigation or prejudice any potential trial by telling Greg Lestrade, or any of his family, any restricted information, I will have you in court so fast your head will spin. You're not going to be Lestrade's little man-on-the-inside on this one. You will be assisting me, not him. And you will be signing legalities to that effect."

"Yes."

"Any mouth, any difficulty, the slightest thing to irritate me, and I will throw you and John Watson off this case. Is that clear?"

"Quite clear – " A furtive knock on the door behind him cut him off. When bidden to do so, John opened it a few inches.

"Sorry," he said to Merivale as she got up and crossed the room to him. "They said at the desk to just knock on the door. Detective Inspector Merivale, is it? I think we've met – John Watson." He offered her his hand and, after a barely perceptible pause, she took it. "Hi. Are the Lestrades here yet?"

"Julie," Greg muttered as they crossed the carpark, with Matthew walking ahead of them with DC Draper. "We might have to wait a bit before he goes in, to get a lawyer on the case. I've called Pam Greer. She's good with this sort of thing. Got a nice touch with the younger ones." He remembered how gently she'd treated Adelaide Bartlett, even when the woman's sobbing hysterics had ripped through everyone else's nerves.

"Okay." Julie was looking down at her feet, picking her way across the level concrete.

"And also," he said, "he's got the right to another adult in there with him, too. It's pretty much the law that he has to have one."

She gave him a doubtful glance, but he thought he saw something a little playful in it. "Try not to kill someone, Greg," she said, in tones that implied please kill someone if you have to.

"No, I didn't mean me." He exhaled. "I want Mel to do it – for professional reasons," he insisted as she opened her mouth to protest. "I'm not playing favourites, and she's not in there as his mother. She's a forensic psychologist, and she's good at it. She knows Matthew pretty well, she knows how all this works, and she can keep her temper better than either of us can… " He suddenly held up one hand, signalling to Melissa, who was locking her car at the far end of the carpark. They both heard the distant bleep of central locking, and she he hailed him in return with one hand and hurried toward them.

"Such impractical shoes," Julie remarked guilelessly. "She'll trip over and break an ankle in those."

"What about those bloody platform things you used to wear?" he protested. "Your old man used to make you change them every single time I came over to take you out. Look, please," he said a little desperately, while Melissa was still out of earshot. "She's trying to help. Let her."

"Here we all are again," Sherlock remarked drily, pulling off his gloves and putting them down on the interview room table. He'd managed to convince Merivale that his usual method of work was direct questioning, and had permission to proceed with Matthew while she took a mainly supervisory role. She hadn't the faintest idea how to refer to him for the benefit of the audio recording as they settled in, so had defaulted to an embarrassed sounding, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.

"Matthew," Sherlock started. "When I first met you, you were, what, six years old?"

Matthew nodded.

"You need to talk, Matty," Melissa spoke up quietly from beside him. "For the recording. And just so we don't misunderstand you."

"Yes," he said, in a surprisingly clear voice.

"And you'll recall," Sherlock went on, "that it was early December, and you were telling me all about Santa Claus. And I told you Santa Claus was just a lie adults tell children to get them to behave at certain times of the year. You were upset. Your father was more upset. Do you remember what I told you after that?"

Matthew frowned, thinking hard for a few seconds. "No," he said.

"I likened telling the truth to the removal a sticking plaster. There are two main methods: ripping it off quickly, and easing it off slowly. I favour the quicker method, in both cases."

Matthew glanced uncertainly at John and then across at Melissa. "Okay," he said, clearing his throat. "But I don't really understand —"

"Ordinarily, the officers in an interview like this have a set method they use," Sherlock said, "depending on when and where they were trained, and how you react in response to it. Were this being conducted exclusively by detectives Merivale and Peters, they would probably spend a good hour or two coddling you, trying to make small talk, offering you tea and biscuits, lulling you into a false sense of trust before trying to make you contradict yourself and unravel your own story. I don't play those sort of games. Short, sharp truths. What were you doing with Celeste at Severndroog Castle yesterday?"

"You don't have to answer that," Pam told her client, just as Melissa glared daggers at Sherlock from across the table.

"No, you don't," Sherlock agreed. "Unless, of course, you'd like the forensics to prove you're withholding important evidence."

"Mr. Holmes –"

"Inspector Merivale, I have my methods," Sherlock insisted, holding one hand up to silence her. When she withdrew, he muttered, "I don't know how I'm expected to work with someone who is so utterly ignorant of me and my work."

Almost from the moment the interview room door had shut behind them, Greg Lestrade had been pacing around the waiting room like a captive lion. Constable Brian Claymont was on desk duty and caught his eye every now and again, offering him a timid, polite smile, and Lestrade had found himself smiling back out of habit. Oh, don't mind me. I'm just here on personal business. You know how it is when your kids get accused of murdering people. Difficult little bastards they can be in their teens, am I right? Claymont was one of Alec McDonald's boys, though Lestrade knew him by sight as decent and hard-working. On his fifth aimless tour around the room, he finally stopped at Claymont's desk.

"Sorry," he said, shuffling. "I usually get coffee from the back tea room up there, but I don't have an access pass right now. Is there anywhere else…?"

Claymont got out of his chair, upbeat and alert. "End of the hall and to your left, sir," he said, pointing. "But a word of caution, it's a vending machine and the coffee that comes out of it is a right horror. I can get Hensley to make you some and bring it out. For your missus as well?"

Lestrade flinched. "The ex."

"Okay," Claymont said, pulling a wry face. "For the ex as well?"

"Both white, one sugar," he muttered. "Thanks, Brian."

"Just start from the beginning," Sherlock said calmly, and beside him, Merivale sighed in what sounded like relief. This was, at least, a little closer to standard police procedure than expecting an immediate tell-all. "Try to restrict things to what is relevant."

Matthew cleared his throat. "We went out on the train," he muttered. "Got off about twenty to three, I think it was. We walked across Shepherdleas Wood."

"Did you walk straight across?" John asked, scribbling idly on the notebook he'd pulled out of one pocket. "Or did you stop somewhere on the way?"

"Stopped on the way." Matthew looked down at his hands. "Um. I wanted to read some lines with her, for the play."

"Macbeth?"

Matthew nodded. Then, as Melissa nudged him again, he said, "Yes, for Macbeth."

"Which part were you rehearsing with her?" John asked, scribbling away again.

"Act, uh. Act five, mostly."

"Act five." Sherlock glanced at Melissa. "'And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death'?"

"Yes," Matthew said, confused but eager to cooperate. "Yeah, that's part of this soliloquy in act five. I always have trouble with that part. Celeste was just there to hold the book and give me a nudge if I forgot anything."

"Just there?" John challenged him good-naturedly. "I think that might be stretching it, mate. Nice romantic kind of spot, down there."

Matthew shrugged. "I suppose so," he said.

"And I'd have thought you'd taken your camera, or your sketchbook, or something," John went on guilelessly. "God knows I would, if I were any good at that kind of thing. Just a thought. So what time did you get to the castle?"

"About… half-four."

"And you broke in, I imagine," Sherlock said smilelessly.

Matthew's gaze wandered to Merivale, who leaned back in her chair, massaging her temples. Sherlock Holmes might have been some sort of observational genius, but he had no idea in the world how to give a sane interview. "You're not going to be punished for breaking and entering," she said. "Because we don't care about that right now. We only want to find out what happened to Celeste, so we really do need you to tell the truth."

Matthew looked down at his hands, still smudged with fingerprint ink and traces of graphite from the dragon motif he'd been working on earlier. "I broke a couple of the boards off one window," he mumbled. "We weren't going to break anything, we just wanted to get out of the wind – "

"So you're asking us to believe that you were in an abandoned, semi-secluded building with your girlfriend for approximately three and a half hours, reading Shakespeare together, and doing nothing else," Sherlock remarked with contempt.

"No, we were –"

"Don't answer that," Pam Greer broke in, but it was too late; her admonishment hadn't quite drowned out the rest of Matthew's sentence.

Melissa put her face in her hands for a second, then put one hand on his shoulder, giving it a light pat.

"Where?" John asked calmly after the silence had run its course. "I mean, where exactly."

"The wood. The castle."

"Both the wood and the castle?"

Matthew nodded. "But that's okay, isn't it?" he asked, looking from Pam to Melissa and back. "That's not illegal. I left her there just before eight o'clock to get the train back…"

"That's hardly gentlemanly of you," Sherlock commented. "Why didn't she get the train back with you?"

"I don't know," Matthew insisted, looking again to Melissa for help; but her expression remained pleasant and neutral. "I didn't know I was supposed to ask!"

Julie sat with her head in her hands, staring at a random spot on the floor near her left shoe. Sinking back down into the chair two down from hers, Lestrade said and did nothing to break her solitude until Hensley had brought over a cardboard tray containing two cups and given it to him.

"Thank you," he told Hensley, who muttered something about it being no problem and then disappeared into the back office behind Claymont again. Gingerly balancing the tray of hot cups in one hand, Lestrade leaned over and touched Julie's shoulder with the other. "Coffee, Julie," he said blandly.

Julie looked up vaguely. "Sorry," she said, sitting up straighter. "Wool-gathering. Um. Yes. Thank you." She gingerly extricated the hot Styrofoam cup he held out to her from the tangle of his fingers, sipping it in silence. He cradled his in both hands, content to leave it be, until Julie broke the silence again.

"Are you really going to marry that little thing?" She was looking at the closed interview-room door, as if doing so for long enough would enable her to see through it.

Lestrade opened his mouth to give the first smart-arse reply to hand: are you really going to marry that insufferable bore? At the last minute, though, he stopped himself. He knew when Julie was being sarcastic, and this was not one of those times. Little thing had bordered on the affectionate. He cleared his throat. "Uh, yes," he said.

"She's very young."

"She's thirty, Julie." Thirty next March. "You were only twenty-two when we got married."

"You were twenty-two when we got married," she pointed out.

"Yeah, and I don't know what the bloody hell I was thinking."

Julie smiled, a little wistfully. "I don't know either, Greg."

"But I like flatter myself in thinking I might sort of know what I'm doing this time around," he said. "Even if I –"

Across the hall, a young PC in uniform hurried over and knocked on the interview-room door.

"What is it…?" Julie asked as he got to his feet.

"Don't know," he muttered. "But something's going on." Even the work experience kid knows you never knock on the door when the interview light's on. Not unless something's happened…

The interview room door swung open and Merivale emerged; the PC whispered a few words to her. She put her hand to her chin for a second, then spoke a few words to someone back in the interview room and shut the door behind her. She and the PC wandered away from the door, both talking in urgent, sharp-edged hush. Finally, she sent the PC scurrying and went back to the interview room, stridently shoving the door open and letting it fall into place behind her. Within half a minute she emerged again, followed by the others.

"Lestrade," she said, as he and Julie came over to see what was going on. "We're granting Matthew conditional release for tonight. The desk sergeant has paperwork that you and his mother need to fill out regarding the terms of his release, and I want you to bring him back at nine o'clock tomorrow morning for further questioning."

"Wait," Lestrade said. He glanced across at Mel and then at Sherlock, but neither of them betrayed anything of what had just happened. "Wait. What's going on?"

Merivale groaned. "You know that's confidential," she said, "you're on a strictly need-to-know basis just now. Take Matthew home, and all of you get a good night's sleep. Come on, Peters, we haven't got all night."

This was odd. No, this was wrong. Lestrade knew that if he had been in Merivale's position, he'd have spent hours interrogating every aspect of that kid's life, for as long as the law and the parents allowed him to. Matthew had only been in the interview room for about twenty minutes.

"Oh, Christ," he blurted out. "You've found –"

"I said leave it alone, Greg." Merivale rounded on him, attracting the attention of every officer in a radius of thirty feet. "You're not a detective," she said in much lower tones. "Not now, not here. You'll be told what you need to know and when you need to know it. In the meantime, stay clear of this, okay? I'll see you back here at nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

Lestrade looked at John, catching his gaze. He'd never ask John to betray the security of the case – but he didn't have to. John Watson was the most transparent person he'd ever met. Couldn't lie straight in bed. He gave a slight nod, perhaps an involuntary one.

Shit. They've found another one.

"Please, June," he said. "You're taking those two with you, right?"

June looked despairingly at Sherlock, who so far had miraculously said nothing. "If either of you contaminate the crime scene or the evidence, or piss me off in any other way, I will have you escorted from the crime scene and into a holding cell," she said sweetly. "Come on, then. Hurry up."