A/N - This chapter was deleted, rewritten, and uploaded. If you read it previously, a couple of the scenes are almost exactly the same, but one is very different, and moves the story in a different direction.

Thanks and love to Djinnifires and Hiddenhibernian for helping me bounce ideas, and extreme gratitude to anyone still holding in with me on this one. I promise I will finish this, and it will be worth it xx

Mornings in the Watson household were usually chaotic, and most of the chaos came from Charlie. She had recently decided that she wanted to hold her own spoon and feed herself, a situation that usually ended up with more food on her than in her.

"Charlotte, if you could possibly aim some of that porridge for your mouth, I'd be very grateful," John muttered, supervising the process with many an inward groan. So far it seemed likely that he was going to have to wash cereal out of her hair.

"Um!" she said jubilantly, spitting up a glob of lukewarm porridge down her chin.

John smiled, inwardly reproaching himself for being so grumpy with the best thing that had ever happened to him. "Oh, well," he said mildly, dabbing at her face with a flannel. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, at least – "

"NO! MUMMY!"

John didn't need to turn around to realise that Molly had just appeared in the kitchen doorway, half-dressed for work and searching out her first cup of coffee for the day. Charlie flung her arms above her head, upsetting the bowl of porridge and flicking the gooey spoon onto the floor. "Mummy!" she shrieked. "No!"

Charlie already knew five 'words': Mummy, Daddy, No, Um, and Ba, which could apparently mean anything from "oh, look, something interesting", to "bring me that toy immediately!"

"Oh, Charlie," Molly cooed, instantly melting.

John put his head in his hands for a second. This happened every single one of Molly's work-days. Charlie would see Molly in the process of getting ready to leave the house, knew that meant she was probably not going to be home for hours, and act like this was the end of the world. Her heartbroken tears would last until five minutes after Molly left, whereupon she apparently forgot her mother existed until she returned to her line of sight.

"Mummy has to go to work, Charlie-bear," Molly explained, letting Charlie blow sticky, porridge-y kisses all over her face and wipe grubby hands on her blouse. "I'll be home soon. You're going to spend the day with Daddy, won't that be fun?"

Before John could point out that it wasn't going to be much fun for either of them until Charlie calmed down, his mobile phone rang from the nearby kitchen counter. Frowning at the early hour of the call, he got up to it.

"Sherlock," he said, wandering into the front room so he could hear him better while Molly slipped into the seat he'd vacated and started smothering Charlie with kisses. "Not another murder?"

"Lestrade called," Sherlock said without any other kind of greeting. "Matthew's gone missing."

John took a second to register what he'd just heard. "Sorry," he said. "He's what?"

"Run away, judging from the items missing from his room and the absence of any signs of a second person on the scene."

"Jesus, what's Merivale going to say?"

"Merivale's opinion of Matthew is not my concern right now. Lestrade asked me to… see about matters."

"I'll come over -"

"No, you won't," Sherlock said inexorably. "We need Molly there for Thompson's autopsy this morning. How is Harry?"

John blinked and took a step back. "Still off the sauce," he replied immediately. "But you're right, we couldn't ask her to babysit today."

Involuntarily, he put one hand to his mouth and swiped at it nervously. How is Harry?

Years before, he and Sherlock had worked out a series of codes and cues to use in case of emergencies. Since Sherlock couldn't care less what Harry Watson did on a daily basis, but it was a plausible question for a stranger to overhear, how is Harry had become the code for I think I'm being followed. And since Sherlock was speaking in code, he thought the phone conversation was tapped, too. Any reference to "sauce", whether Harry was on or of it, was a signal that John copied and would not pursue it further.

Sherlock had to work alone this time.

"Get onto school and university syllabi today, John," Sherlock was saying down the line, jolting John back to the conversation at hand. Syllabi. Only Sherlock, and of course Mycroft, would come up with syllabi and not just fumble over syllabuses. "Find out if there are courses that teach both Macbeth and Richard III. I also need to know if those plays are currently running anywhere in London and if not, the last time they were."

"Okay." John tried not to grimace.

"Oh, also," Sherlock said. "Vanessa Thompson has agreed to be interviewed. I'm sending her over to you this morning."

~~o0o~~

When Lestrade had been forced to call around friends, family and colleagues that morning to confess that Matthew had got away from a room six feet away from his own, he'd expected nothing but a series of attacks on his parenting skills. And true, once Mark and Julie had turned up at the house, Mark had asked a few barbed questions about how exactly Matthew was able to leave without being noticed. But then he and Julie had left in Julie's car to conduct a search among several of Matthew's acquaintances, leaving Melissa and Hayley to do the rounds of the Lestrade family – primarily, Pam.

After a quick call to Donovan, Lestrade went to the office instead, where he found most of the usual suspects – Donovan, Halloran, Jones, Castelli, Patel, Murtagh, Dyer. There was a strange, chastened silence over the little crowd clustered around Donovan's desk as he came into the room and put his wallet and phone on the first flat surface available to him. He glanced up at the clock on the wall. About twenty minutes to nine. Only twenty minutes or so before Merivale had every likelihood of calling him and demanding to know why he hadn't brought Matthew back into the station for further questioning.

He opened his mouth to begin a briefing – starting, of necessity, with news of the murder of Bob Thompson. Then he shut his mouth again. Nothing audible had just come out of it.

Nothing audible emerged on his second or third attempts, either.

"Sir," Donovan said at last. "I've just been briefing everyone on the background to the situation, and brought us up to the morning's events. You can proceed with your orders from here."

He nodded to her, exhaling in relief. They know what happened. You don't have to explain yourself to them.

"Good," he heard himself say hoarsely, running his hand over his unshaven jaw. "Thanks. Um… okay."

Give an order. They want you to give an order.

The only problem was that Lestrade couldn't think of any orders to give. Donovan exchanged a look with Dyer.

"Okay," she said uncertainly. "Do you want me to – "

"Homeless shelters," he made himself say over the top of her. "Soup kitchens. Anywhere that… anywhere that homeless people would congregate, especially in wet weather. He hasn't touched his bank account for a couple of days. I don't know how much money he has on him right now, but it can't be much."

"And what about Sherlock Holmes, sir?" Dyer asked.

A warm flood of gratitude hit Lestrade as he realised, as if for the first time, that he had Sherlock Holmes in his corner. "He's on it," he said.

"I reckon he'll probably find him before anyone else, sir."

"Yeah, I hope so. Um. So Donovan, if you and Jones could try the shelter on the Malverton Road… it's the closest to our place. Work your way outwards…"

She nodded, and Lestrade sank into a nearby chair and quietly gave up. He could hear Donovan giving orders to Castelli and Patel to try Station Approach Road and Waterloo station, and Murtagh volunteering to do a bit of digging into CCTV surveillance close to the Lestrade residence. Dyer was already on the phone to one of the major cab companies, trying to ascertain whether any of their drivers had picked up a boy of Matthew's description between midnight and seven that morning…

"Greg?"

Lestrade turned to see Anderson standing in the hall doorway. He was still wearing his lab coat, so it was obvious that he'd just come up from one of the forensic labs.

"Anderson," he returned flatly, standing up and going to him. "How can I help?"

"I'm still running the results from Thompson's crime scene," Anderson said, just as if nothing odd had transpired since Thompson's murder. "No fingerprint matches, except for his own… but that's to be expected. The unidentified ones are probably those of his wife and children."

Lestrade nodded. "Okay. Anything else?"

"Actually, there is," Anderson said, lowering his voice, though he didn't seem in any great hurry to begin. "How certain are you that Matthew is innocent?" he finally asked.

Lestrade shot him a look could have flash-frozen a cup of coffee. "Certain," he said.

Anderson's gaze strayed behind Lestrade for a few seconds. "Certain enough to get this out of the way, before Merivale gets the same idea?"

Lestrade blinked, looking at the small glass cylinder and cotton swab Anderson had just put into his hand. "What's this?"

"It's a DNA test."

"No." Lestrade gave it back to him. "If you want my permission to rifle Matthew's room for samples, the answer is no, Anderson. Matthew's underage and he's missing. He can't consent to a DNA test in his absence. Show me a court order and we'll talk."

Anderson shook his head. "I didn't mean him. I meant you. Biological parents share enough DNA with their children that any partial matches will come up. If they don't, it's almost one hundred percent proof that Matthew was never in Thompson's kitchen. Were you ever at Thompson's house?"

Lestrade shook his head. "Not for a couple of years, anyway. But Celeste – "

"We know it was the same killer, don't we?"

Lestrade took the DNA kit back, crinkling the clear plastic bag between his fingertips and watching the fluorescent light above filter through it. "How long will it take to get a result?" he finally asked.

Anderson checked his watch. "A few hours, if I work at it," he said. "I can have it ready for you by the end of the day. The blood test will probably come back earlier than the mouth swab."

"And I suppose you're not going to want to do that here," Lestrade sighed, turning back to his team and holding up his hand to get Donovan's attention. "Stepping out for a couple of minutes," he said to her.

Donovan glanced at Anderson and then back at Lestrade, frowning. "Sir?"

"I'll be right back. You and Jones do what you have to do."

If Donovan made any response, Lestrade didn't hear it. He followed Anderson into the lift, head down. As he heard, rather than saw, the doors shut behind them, he was struck by the novelty of it: he'd just fled from his own team.

~~o0o~~

The rain, which had been only a fine mist up until now, started to come down in torrents as Sherlock made his way up North Gower Street toward Euston Square station. Homeless Network. Right every time. A particularly diligent and reliable Network member, Sam Nolan, had just texted that he'd sighted a kid matching the photograph Sherlock had sent him, wandering up and down the Jubilee line platform and looking completely at sea. He'd promised to keep Matthew where he was – by force, if he had to – until "Mr. Holmes" arrived to check the kid's identity for himself.

One problem, though, was the two plain-clothes officers posted in front of the Seven-Eleven store a few doors down. They were obviously on his track, having followed him not-so-subtly from Baker Street earlier that morning. He had no idea whether Merivale now knew that her prime suspect was on the run, but it seemed unlikely that anyone else would have him followed. The conversation with Anderson last night must have looked suspicious – or else the flat had been watched even then.

He stopped and lit a cigarette, unsure of what to do next, until he was finally saved by the sight of two of the Network – names escaped him just then – smoking near the doorstep of one of the flats across the street. He crossed the road to them.

"Mr. Holmes," one said cheerfully. He was a gap-toothed young man whose recreational habits made his twenty-four years look like forty-four. "All out, sorry."

"I'm not buying today." Sherlock pulled out his wallet. "But I have a job for you. Here's fifty. There's fifty more in it for you if you do it well. Behind me near the Seven-Eleven are two plain-clothes police officers. I need you to remove them."

Gap-tooth, as Sherlock mentally designated him, smiled at his companion, an unshaven man wearing his cap askew. "Reckon that can be done," he said.

"Good. Go and do it."

Sherlock, putting away his wallet, watched as the two of them made their way up the street in the direction of the officers, in step with one another and talking in low voices as they quickly made up a plan of action. It never failed to surprise him how eager the Network were to get up to these sort of gags, and Sherlock knew that it wasn't just the promise of a hundred pounds that did it. Everyone, he reflected to himself, gets bored sometimes.

The two men were nearly abreast of the two officers when abruptly, Gap-tooth pulled something off the coat of the other man and bolted toward the Crown and Anchor as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Hey!" the other yelled. "Hey, he got my wallet!"

He took off in pursuit, running directly in front of a blue Mazda that screeched to a halt half an inch shy of hitting him. Both officers hurried over, but before they could reach him he was off again. Gap-tooth, weaving neatly around a couple pushing a pram, disappeared into Drummond Street.

Once all four of them had disappeared from sight, Sherlock slipped into Tolmer's Square. Passing quickly behind the parked cars glistening with rain, he took the most convoluted, under-cover path possible to the train station.

~~o0o~~

Forty minutes later, Vanessa Thompson arrived at the Watson residence. She was not just by herself, but had her two sons in tow. The eldest boy was very like his mother – dark haired, with a full brow and pointed chin. But the younger, hiding behind a fringe of brown hair lighter than his brother's, was so much like his late father that John had a sudden flash memory of the bug-eyed, purple-tongued corpse on the kitchen floor and took a step back in surprise.

"Hello." Vanessa spoke steadily, if a little wearily, putting her hands on the youngest boy's shoulder. John recognised her instantly as the crying woman at the crime scene. Tall, with a careworn face and still-lovely brown eyes framed in black kohl.

"Hi." John juggled Charlie in his arms and reached out to shake Vanessa's hand. It was icy, but her handshake was firm. "John Watson. Vanessa?"

"Yes. Uh, these are my children. Robbie and Dean."

John ushered the family inside and reached out to shut the door behind them. As he followed them through the front passage and into the kitchen, he noted that neither of the children were acting as if they'd just lost their father. They seemed a little timid, but dry-eyed and calm.

"Do you boys want something to drink?" he asked awkwardly, glancing at Vanessa as he received a polite little chorus of no-thank-you.

Both spooked. And that was no surprise, John thought to himself. Their mother was clearly mentally elsewhere. By now, Charlie was struggling against him to be put down. He lowered her onto the floor.

"This is Charlie," he said, trying to elicit some sort of response from the family beyond the uncomfortable shuffling and nervous looks. "My daughter."

Charlie toddled over to Robbie, or tried to. She made it halfway across the living-room carpet before giving up and easing herself down a little too gracefully onto her well-padded behind.

Vanessa smiled wearily. "Dean used to do that," she said. "Not falling down, exactly. Just, had enough, sitting down."

"Dr. Watson?" Robbie ventured. "Could we please take Charlie outside to play?"

John glanced at Vanessa helplessly for a second. He hadn't expected her to bring the boys in the first place, and the discussion he'd planned couldn't take place in front of them. "Uh… okay," he said. "Just let me put shoes on her. And maybe stay under cover… the grass is wet, and she doesn't walk properly yet."

Once Charlie had her shoes on, he watched Robbie and Dean take her outside and shut the connecting glass doors between them.

"You haven't told them yet," he said immediately. It was not a question.

"No," Vanessa said, dry-eyed. "What am I meant to say to them?"

Through the glass doors, they could both see Dean sit down cross-legged in front of Charlie. She pointed at something in the garden with the clear expectation that he or Robbie would immediately get it for her.

"Yeah," John said. "I can see that. I'm sorry we have to ask questions about this so soon."

"Oh, go ahead," she said. "We were getting a divorce, you know."

"Yes. But that doesn't mean you wanted him dead."

She raised one eyebrow. "I certainly didn't kill him, if that's what you're implying," she snapped.

"No, that's not what I'm implying. But I do have to ask, do you know anyone who would kill him?"

"No."

"No enemies, then?"

"No. He was a happy, sociable drunk."

"Sounds like someone I know." John shifted in his chair. "Vanessa," he continued, "do you know anyone who goes to Highgate Wood School?"

She blinked in surprise. "No," she said. "No, we live in Camberwell. Robbie's going to Stockwell Park. Does…" She stopped for a second. "Is that where Greg Lestrade's son goes?"

"You've heard about that?"

"Everyone's heard about that," she said.

"Have you ever met Matthew Lestrade?"

"Not that I remember." She put her hand to her temple for a second, as if in pain. "Perhaps he was one of the kids running around at the staff Christmas party a few years ago, but I really wouldn't know. Why would he want to kill Bob, anyway?"

For a few seconds, the only sounds were of Charlie ordering "Ba!" to the boys outside and shrieking in delight at the unexpected attention.

"Did you notice anything odd when you went to the house last night?" John continued, retrieving his notepad and pencil from one pocket and flicking through a few pages of scribbles before taking a new one. "I mean," he said apologetically, "I mean, before you… uh. Before you came into the kitchen."

"Oh, I don't know," Vanessa sighed, putting her hand to her forehead again. John frowned. Severe headache? She didn't seem well, but that wasn't a surprise.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Didn't answer the door," she said, as if she hadn't heard his question. "I had a key, so I opened it and went in. Nothing in front… odd smell…" She shut her eyes. "I forget," she mumbled bleakly.

"Vanessa?" Alarmed, John reached across the table and gave her a short, sharp shake by one shoulder. Her head lolled forward a little, like a doll. "Vanessa, look at me… what's wrong?"

"Jus' tired," she slurred.

"Yeah, I'll bet." He tipped her chin up with one hand, gently lifting each eyelid with the other. "Did you take something before you got here, to help you sleep?"

Vanessa's response was non-committal. Before John could ask any more questions, he heard the glass sliding door open again. Robbie, wobbling slightly under Charlie's weight against his hip, crept in. Behind him, Dean was still hovering in the open doorway.

"Is Mum going to die?" Dean asked in a little voice.

"What? No," John snapped over his shoulder without thinking. "Of course not, why would you think something like that? Robbie, can you get my phone? On the counter." He waved vaguely at it, taking Vanessa's pulse with his other hand. A little sporadic, but strong enough. Robbie handed him the phone.

"Thanks," he said, dialling in 999. "Could you boys do me a big favour and wait out the front to show the ambulance which house they need to go to?"

"Can we take Charlie, too?"

"No, mate, she's too little." He looked down at her. She had just located Toby and was happily stroking his mottled fur, completely oblivious to the drama around her. "Don't leave the kerb, okay? Thanks. You've been a great help..."

The call dropped into emergency services, and he gave his full attention to the operator and his patient as the boys obediently filed out. Awkwardly pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder, he reached across the table and opened Vanessa's handbag.

She had made no attempt to hide the bottle of Zopiclone nestled between her wallet and phone.