Hayley lay in the darkness, against the rise and fall of Jake's chest. Her knee-high stockings had slipped down and were digging into the back of her calves, and the waistline of her skirt had twisted around, but she'd taken neither of them off. Sometimes, she'd said to Jake just the week before, it was nicer to just lie there together.

"Do you know," she said at last, "I just realised. I don't even know Matty."

Jake shifted slightly.

"Oh, no, I don't mean I think he did it," she corrected herself. "But I didn't even know he and Celeste were like that. I didn't think he was like that."

"Like what?"

"Like this. Like you and me." She ran one of her fingertips across the buttons on Jake's shirt. "He's an artist," she murmured. "A writer. Got that book coming out next month. But I don't have a clue what goes on in his head. Deep thoughts, I suppose."

"I think some pretty deep thoughts go on in your own head," Jake said. But she shook her head, her blonde hair tickling at his mouth.

"Not like him," she said. "He's a genius."

"Do you mind?"

"Sorry?" She lifted her head, her dark eyes searching out his in the shadowy room. "Oh. No, I don't think so. I minded a bit when we were little, and he started getting the same marks in school as I did, two years further down the totem pole, the little swot. But like Mum says, you don't know what it's like to be in someone else's shoes. I sometimes don't think he likes being as clever as he is."

The crunch of car tyres in the drive and the bounce of headlights in her bedroom window proclaimed that either Dad or Mel, or both of them, had just come home. Reluctantly, Hayley got up so that Jake could. He fumbled around the carpet next to the bed for his shoes and slipped them on, then crossed the room and opened the door. The light from the landing almost blinded Hayley for a second as she followed him out and down the stairs to where her father had just put his wallet and keys down on the kitchen table. Before either of them could speak, Matthew brushed past her and on up the staircase, two at a time, in a heavy, clumping tread.

"Let him go, Hayley," Melissa said, a little flatly. She'd just taken her shoes off and padded into the kitchen, where they could hear her fumbling to fill the kettle. "You can talk to him tomorrow morning, okay? He needs a good night's sleep."

Hayley let out a held breath. At least they'd brought him home with them. She had never had to spend the night in a cell, but she didn't have to use much imagination to conclude it would be horrible.

"Dad," she ventured, "Jake's just going now."

Lestrade, who had watched Matthew go upstairs without speaking, snapped to attention. "Oh," he said distractedly, looking at Jake as if he had only just recognised him. "Sorry. I had no idea you were still here…"

"Just heading off now, sir," Jake mumbled, embarrassed.

"Well… maybe you might want to hang around for a bit longer." Melissa had just reappeared in the kitchen doorway and Lestrade looked across at her, as if silently asking for her help. "There's been some news on the case. I guess it involves you, too. They released Matthew overnight because they found a new body and had to rush off to secure the crime scene," he said slowly.

"Another murder?" Hayley blurted out, looking between Jake and her father. "Well, that means Matthew didn't do it, right? Because he was with us, and then the police…"

Lestrade shook his head. "Just had a call from Alan Peters – he reckons it happened before Celeste. One of ours, Jake. Bob Thompson."

"Thompson?" Jake blinked stupidly for a few seconds. "But that makes no sense – where's the link there, sir? I don't think Celeste Biondi's likely to have moved in the same circles as Bob Thompson."

"More's the point, I don't think Matthew ever met Thompson," Lestrade said wearily, sitting down on the sofa and putting his face in his hands for a second. "As far as I can see, the only person who knew both victims is me."

"Sir… are they… is the killer trying to get at you, then?" Jake glanced apprehensively at Hayley, who suddenly reached out and clutched at his hand. "Us?"

"Peters says it's too early to call that one." Lestrade exhaled. "But maybe. I'd ask Sherlock Holmes, but from the sounds of things, June Merivale just kicked him and John off the case."

It was an hour of waiting at 221B Baker Street before Sherlock and John heard the knock on the downstairs street door. Sherlock flew down the stairs to answer it and let in Anderson. He was now dressed in his ordinary clothes, and looking dishevelled but alert.

"And?" Sherlock demanded immediately, leading him up the stairs.

"And I don't think June Merivale was the right person to get offside," Anderson said, just as they reached the living-room door. "I wouldn't go anywhere near her for a couple of days. Give her time to cool off… John," he said pleasantly, as John stood up and held out his hand to greet him.

"Thanks for coming," John said politely, as if Anderson were a run-of-the-mill client who'd contacted them via his blog. "Tea? Coffee?"

"We don't have time for a tea party." Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Fingerprints?"

"All over everything, of course, and not just his own," Anderson replied. Not quite knowing where to sit, he remained standing near the doorway, clasping one elbow awkwardly with the other hand. "But you'd expect that, even if he'd just had visitors over recently. They're going to be run, but I don't think we'll get much use out of them."

"What about the wine?"

"There were two big cardboard casks in the fridge and one in the bin. Two were empty, and one was half-full."

"No prints on those, I suppose," Sherlock sighed.

"No. Now apparently, Thompson's got two young boys, eleven and nine years old -"

"Yes." Sherlock went into the kitchen and fumbled through the cutlery on the sink before locating the plug and putting it in. Then he twisted the right-hand tap on. "The photographs of them on the front hall stand were lovingly framed, but six months old," he said over his shoulder. "They don't live there, and he may have only seen them sporadically. And you didn't bother interviewing the ex-wife, I suppose."

"It's not my job to interview anybody," Anderson reminded him. "But I did see her with one of Merivale's constables before I left… Matheson, I think it was. Anyway, it'll take a couple of days at least to run the fingerprints, and they probably won't find anything significant about them. If I was going to go and drown someone in a sink, I'd use gloves."

"You'd be a bit stupid not to," John put in.

"Quite," Sherlock agreed, twisting the tap off and turning around. "This was a very pre-meditated crime. Anderson, lie down on the floor."

Anderson blinked. "Sorry, what?"

"You heard me perfectly. I need to recreate the crime scene as accurately as possible to get a good idea of exactly what happened when Thompson was murdered. John, give me a hand." With John's help, Sherlock dragged the kitchen table out, creating floorspace near the sink. "If we imagine this is Thompson's kitchen, with the window and sink in approximately the same place, Thompson was found, where?"

Anderson pointed to a spot on the floor near the stove. Sherlock looked impassively at him; with a sigh, he pulled up his trouser cuffs and dropped down onto the floor. "Why am I doing this?" he asked, shifting uncomfortably so that he was slumped against the cupboard doors.

"Stop talking," Sherlock said. "You're supposed to be dead. And your legs are all wrong."

"No, his legs were all wrong. I can't recreate a broken leg," Anderson protested, tucking one foot under himself in as close proximity as he could manage. "Is this honestly helping you, or are you just doing it for fun?"

"A bit of both. No, left arm wider… like that. Now, what do you think, John?"

"His ex-wife said there was no sign of a forced entry," John commented. "So he must have let his killer in. They drowned him in the sink, then pulled him back and just kind of threw him on the floor, which is where his ex-wife found him. The fall is probably what broke his leg, but I didn't get a good enough look at it to say for certain."

"He had a mild blow to the back of the head, like he hit it on something as he was thrown down. But he was probably dead or close to it at the time," Anderson said from the floor. "I found blood and a few hairs on the counter behind him. Can I get up now?"

"No," Sherlock said, dropping down on his haunches beside him. "I'm still looking."

"There's something I really don't understand," Anderson went on, staying obligingly in the position Sherlock had put him. "And that's how whoever killed Thompson managed to actually do it. You'd fight with everything you had not to go out like that. Yes, he was out of shape, but still reasonably young and in good enough health. But there was almost no sign of a struggle."

John frowned. "'Almost' no?"

"His fingernails had been recently broken," Sherlock explained briefly, getting up and stepping over to the sink. He patted the stainless steel lightly with his fingertips. "Okay, Anderson, stand over here," he said.

Anderson opened one eye, then both. He sat up and then got to his feet, looking justifiably suspicious. "Why?"

"I want to demonstrate something."

Hesitantly, Anderson took two steps toward the sink.

"For God's sake," Sherlock huffed. "I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to demonstrate just how easy it is to shove someone face-down into a filled sink without having to wrestle them into submission. Observe."

In one fluid movement, Sherlock kicked Anderson's legs out wide from underneath him; at the same time he grasped him by the hair and shoved him face-down into the filled sink.

"Jesus, Sherlock, let him go!" John exclaimed.

"Oh, relax, he's fine," Sherlock said, loosening his hold on Anderson's hair. The drenched man flailed for a grip on the kitchen counter, then slid down onto the floor beside, pushing his sopping hair out of his eyes. "You saw it, though. Kicking his legs backwards and pushing his head down immersed his mouth and nose immediately. His hands were preoccupied in keeping himself upright – he never attempted to defend himself against me. The sudden shock caused him to gasp while his head was under. Very easy."

"You could have just told us that," John remarked, pulling a dish towel off the oven rack and handing it to Anderson, still spluttering on the floor.

"I know," Sherlock said. "But demonstrating it made more of an impression. And was more fun."

"You nearly killed me," Anderson gasped.

"No." Sherlock looked down at him almost playfully for a second. "I can assure you that I don't nearly kill people. Hardly a pleasant experience, but then, we are talking about a murder technique. A few more seconds with your face underwater, and you might be in a different predicament."

John rolled his eyes, but any reprimand that might have come Sherlock's way was interrupted by the trill of his phone ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and read the incoming caller ID. Molly.

"Excuse me," he muttered, "I have to take this." He wandered up the hallway and through the open door to Sherlock's bedroom, sitting down on the bed as he answered. "Hello?"

"All finished." Molly sounded weary. "For now, anyway."

"Okay," he said. "I'm leaving Sherlock's sort of… now…" He glanced at his watch. "Might make it home before you do, depending on the cab service. And it was the fall that killed her?"

She hesitated for a second. "Yes," she finally said. "She… it wasn't just her face that was all bashed in. When we tried to move her, she…"

"I get the idea." Celeste had looked almost graceful as she lay in the grass at the crime scene, but John had good reason to know that fall victims sometimes literally fell apart when first responders tried to move them onto a stretcher or a trolley. "What about the… sexual activity that Anderson picked up on?"

"I can't tell you if she said 'yes' or not," Molly said. "But there are no signs on her of force or violence. No defensive scratches or bruising anywhere I could see, and nothing came up under her fingernails."

He blinked. "Nothing at all?" he repeated. "I would have thought that whoever killed her would have needed to use force to get her up on the roof to begin with. How the hell would they have managed otherwise?"

"I think I know the answer to that," she said. "Analysis of her stomach contents showed that she'd drank enough rum to get her drunk – maybe really drunk - if she'd lived long enough for it to have all hit her bloodstream. And it was spiked with enough Zopiclone that it might have killed her, if the fall hadn't."

It was a longstanding lover's quarrel between Greg Lestrade and his fiancée: he did not, ever, snore. But as she gently coaxed him awake, he was just in time to hear himself for a second or two.

Christ, he thought foggily. And she still wants to sleep next to me for the rest of her life?

"Greg?" she said. "Seven o'clock, my love. Up you get."

This time he opened his eyes, staring blankly out through the gauzy curtains of the north window for a few seconds. All was gloomy outside. Rain pattered on the roof above and dripped in heavy globs off the eaves. "Oh, hell," he muttered, rolling over and then forcing himself to sit up. "You know, for a second I was hoping what happened yesterday was going to turn out to be a nightmare."

"No such luck, I'm afraid." Melissa snaked her arm around his waist and planted a kiss on his back. "Should I come in with you again?" she asked gently.

He smiled and turned to her. "You'd better," he said. "I don't think either of us are going to make it through this without you."

"You'd both be fine without my help, I'm sure." She ran her finger lightly down his nose, then gave it a quick kiss. "I'm going for a shower – I'll make it quick."

"You never make it quick," he griped at her.

"I think you might be impressed with me this time," she said as she shut the en suite door behind herself. "You wake up Matthew and get all that organised."

"Breakfast?"

"Let's get something on the way," she said, her voice a little muffled as she pulled her nightie over her head. "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood for uninspiring toast this morning."

He smiled and got up, stifling a yawn into his hand and shuffling across to the bedroom door. There was nobody on the landing, but he could hear Hayley singing softly to herself as she made coffee in the downstairs kitchen. A draught of warm damp air and the scent of shampoo from the open bathroom door betrayed that she'd already been in, half an hour earlier than usual. Matthew's bedroom door was closed, and he crossed the hall and knocked on it.

"Matthew?" he ventured. "Up and at 'em. Seven o'clock."

He hadn't expected a salutation straight away, since one of Matthew's talents included being able to sleep for days on end if he was allowed to. But the silence from the other side of the door was nearly tangible. He knocked again, more loudly this time.

No answer. Hesitantly, he twisted the door handle and opened the door a crack, then wider as more of the room came into view. He found himself looking at Matthew's neatly made bed.

Not too much of a surprise. Since the age of seven, Matthew had done two things immediately on waking – made his bed and brushed his teeth, in that order. Lestrade clattered down the stairs to where Hayley was now sitting at the kitchen table, dressed for work and nursing her coffee.

"Where's your brother?" he asked her.

She raised her eyebrows and looked around, as if she expected to find him hiding behind the furniture. "I don't know," she said. "In his room, isn't he…?"