Major Pieces, Prologue: Initiative

Rating: PG-13 (for adult themes, not sex)

Pairings: Gen

Spoilers: Through The Great Game.

Warnings: Chapters 1 and 2 contain gory crime scenes. Trigger warnings for discussion of (off-screen) sexual assault and violence against women.

Special thanks to: [info]stellar_dust, my beyond awesome beta, who managed to be both insanely quick and tremendously helpful. Thanks also to everyone who listened to me natter (particularly [personal profile] melannen, that one night at Sarah's).

Summary: Sherlock knew that he could thoroughly rely upon John Watson's moral sense. And that's why he knew that Lestrade was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Prologue: Initiative

White, however, has the move, and the move in this case means the initiative, and the initiative, other things being equal, is an advantage. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

The case began with a movie.

Or more accurately, it began when John was shamelessly begging for one of the pies Mrs. Hudson had just baked. Sherlock was sitting in the corner, taking frequent breaks from an abnormal psychology text to shoot disgusted looks at John. But damn it, he was starving and hadn't enjoyed a proper meat pie since his mum died.

"Not your housekeeper, dear. Besides, they're nothing much, just trying to use up the last of that roast before it got dodgy. You wouldn't want them."

"They smell delicious," John wheedled. "It's not as if you were Mrs. Lovitt, I know I can trust your beef."

And that did it; she laughed and sent him away with two of the hand-size pies. It was a test of John's self-control, but he managed to eat only one and set the other in front of Sherlock, who actually ate several bites before he fell to digging out pieces of meat and teasing them apart with his fork. It was like eating with a child, honestly.

"Who's Mrs. Lovitt?" Sherlock asked, and John could see from the look in his eye that the question had been burning in him all afternoon. He had obviously heard the name and suspected some yet-undiscovered connection between his flatmate and his landlady.

John stopped licking the gravy off his fork and stared. "You mean you haven't seen- Of course you haven't."

So when there was another afternoon with no case and no work at the surgery and it was pissing rain again because they lived in bloody London, he told Sherlock, "Right, we're going to watch Sweeney Todd."

"What?" Sherlock was only half paying attention, perched on the sofa with John's laptop balanced on his knees.

"Film about an English serial killer. You'll like it."

"I doubt it," Sherlock said darkly, the hint of a sulk on the edge of his voice. John was used to this and ignored it, heading upstairs to get the DVD from his room.

"Sweeney Todd is a fictional English serial killer," Sherlock announced upon John's return. "That's why I hadn't heard of him." He sounded aggrieved, like he suspected John had tried to play a trick on him.

"How did you know that, then?"

"Googled it." Sherlock was busily typing again. John rolled his eyes and stacked a few of Sherlock's larger books on the coffee table to make a platform.

"Just try it, Sherlock. You liked Seven."

In his efforts to find something in popular culture that would derail Sherlock's burgeoning obsession with talk programs, John had begun showing him films about clever or unusual murders. He wondered a bit at what this plan said about his own sanity, but really anything was better than having to watch repeats of Jeremy Kyle in freeze frame so Sherlock could pinpoint "the exact moment at which she realizes he cheated on her, look John!"

"Ye-es," Sherlock conceded. "But that one with the pedantic cannibal was ridiculous." Sherlock also had not been impressed with Saw, but to be fair neither had John. He'd really liked Psycho, had spent an entire afternoon researching Ed Gein on the internet instead of shooting holes in the wall or whinging, and John had been planning to show him Zodiac next. But Sweeney Todd, come on.

John snapped his laptop out of Sherlock's hands and set it firmly on the book-platform. Sherlock made a protesting noise, but didn't stir toward his own laptop, which was half-hidden under the coffee table. "Well, what's it about then?" he said grudgingly. John had learned to hold these exercises in cinema appreciation on days when Sherlock had just come off a case and was therefore feeling sated and indulgent, not yet succumbing to boredom.

John thought for a moment. "It's like The Count of Monte Cristo, but with serial murder." Sherlock looked blank. "Alexandre Dumas? Didn't you ever study literature?"

"I did but-"

"I deleted it," they both said together. Sherlock frowned in annoyance.

John popped the DVD in the drive and clicked his way into the video player. "We're watching this," he said decisively. "Besides, it has Johnny Depp. Everyone likes Johnny Depp."

"I don't."

"Only because you don't know who he is." John clicked play and flopped onto the sofa next to Sherlock. Evidently it was a hit, because Sherlock was relatively quiet for the first thirty minutes or so. (Other than an agonized, "Oh god, it's a musical.") The restraint lasted until Judge Turpin showed up at Todd's barber shop, and Sherlock began ranting, "Why does no one in this ridiculous film recognize anyone else?" Sherlock's mobile went off at that point, and he ignored it while it rang four times, which was a clear sign that he had become interested in the film despite himself. Then John's mobile, upstairs in the bedroom, rang four times. Sherlock's mobile immediately went off again, and Sherlock scrabbled in the sofa cushions for it, because that was Lestrade's signal for Pick up the phone, you lazy sod.

John hit pause and closed the laptop while Sherlock answered, because he knew from experience that it would be less than five minutes before Sherlock was fully dressed and ready to whirl out the door on whatever case Lestrade had dug up.

"Ah," Sherlock sighed in bliss, pocketing his phone. "We have another serial murderer. A non-fictional one."

"Best put this away then," John said, sticking the DVD back in the case. "I expect you won't have time to look at it for a while."

Chapter 1: Opening Gambit

The main thing is to develop the pieces quickly. Get them into play as fast as you can. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

As per usual, by the time John had navigated the milling crowd and the police cordon, Sherlock had already bulled his way into the house where London's latest serial killer had been plying his trade. When John stepped into the blood-spattered bedroom, Sherlock was on one knee beside the dead woman, examining the soles of her feet with his magnifier. John ran his eyes over the corpse: she was naked, no jewelry even, and her face had been mutilated beyond all recognition. The formerly-ivory carpet was spongy with her blood and he could hear the underpadding squish beneath his trainers as he moved out of the doorway. Sherlock seemed oblivious as he moved on to examine the woman's calves.

Lestrade stood back against the far wall, hands in pockets, with an expression of unease plain on his face.

"So, death by exsanguination. What else have we got?" said John.

He could hear a string of late nights and grueling press conferences in Lestrade's answer. "Second death this week by spectacular bleeding, both with similar mutilation of the face, both found nude in their bedrooms, no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The first victim also had a series of cuts to her genitals, ah- internally."

John winced a bit, but Sherlock was of course unfazed. “Any signs of sexual assault?” Sherlock studied the woman's thighs and pelvis, and John hoped he was not about to dive in and check for himself. He could really do without that mental image.

“No, strangely.”

“Why strange?” asked John.

Lestrade opened his mouth to explain but Sherlock cut him off. “A focus on the genitalia usually suggests a killer in some way motivated by sex. But this- mutilation of the face and the interior of the vagina, but no sexual motive? Different. And, of course, fascinating.” Sherlock moved along to the woman's hands, much to John's relief.

“I wouldn't say we've ruled out a sexual motive yet,” Lestrade objected. “Our forensic psychologist-”

“Is an idiot. It's not about the sex, so let's move on.”

John flipped his little notebook out of his pocket. "Who is she, Lestrade?"

"Benjamina Potts," said detective answered.

"Wrong," Sherlock said absently, squinting at not-Benjamina's fingernails.

"Holmes, it's her room, she was dropped off here at seven last night-"

"Her room is a third floor walk-up in Bloomsbury. Unlike Miss Potts, she is a student. Literature. She waits tables at a bistro but she is still unable to pay her bills fully. She doesn't even own a computer." Sherlock managed to make his most obscure deductions sound routine, as if he was reading a menu. After long observation, John was convinced that he did this entirely on purpose, just to be irritating. "And you might as well give up on Potts' boyfriend. He couldn't possibly be the killer and he doesn't have anything useful to tell you."

"Where's Benjamina then?" Lestrade demanded.

"On her way to being victim number three, I shouldn't doubt," Sherlock said. He sounded spectacularly unconcerned, although that was hardly surprising to anyone.

"And who is this?" Lestrade pressed on.

"No idea. Go look for students recently reported missing from the Bloomsbury area. Take some fingerprints. Surely Anderson and his little drones must have training of some kind. John, come have a look."

John slipped on the pair of latex gloves Lestrade handed him, and approached the body himself. He dropped to a crouch on the opposite side from Sherlock, careful to keep his knees out of the blood. He lifted not-Benjamina's arm and felt it, then replaced it. He sniffed the air, then leaned closer to her body and sniffed again. "This body's too old."

"What do you mean?" Lestrade asked.

"She was dead before 7 pm last night."

Sherlock's eyes lit up. He bent over the woman's face, apparently not bothered by the horrific state of it, and inhaled deeply. "Putrefaction!" he declared, in a tone otherwise reserved for children on Christmas morning.

"And the rigor's wrong. Her body should be stiffer than this." John prodded her arm with his fingers, puzzled.

"What about the lividity?" Lestrade asked.

John fought the urge to giggle, as he expected Lestrade would not appreciate the humor. "What lividity? All her blood's on the floor." He touched her belly and her forehead with two fingers.

"Definitely dead more than a day," Sherlock said in a thoroughly self-satisfied tone, now examining the ruin of the woman's features from less than 6 inches away with his magnifier. "Excellent. I do like a creative murderer."

"So this really can't be Benjamina, her boyfriend drove her home from work last night. Her co-workers confirm it." Lestrade grimaced. "So where the hell is she?"

John pulled his glove off and touched the body again on arm, belly, and forehead with his bare fingers. "She's too cold, as well."

Sherlock ripped off his own gloves and felt her skin, looking utterly swept up. "Oh, of course," he said. "Cryopreservation."

"He froze her?" John said.

"Yes, then he thawed her and dumped the body here. He mistimed it, but he must have killed her several days ago- and not in this room, obviously, as that was prior to his abduction of Potts. John, look at these cuts." John bent over them obediently. "Very neat, precise."

"Yeah," John agreed. The wounds were thin, white slits, as if they'd been carved from a sheet of paper. "Definitely post-mortem." Pre-mortem incisions gaped and exposed more sub-surface tissue.

"Her elbow," Sherlock said. John understood the implication immediately and took hold of her arm again, looking in the crook of the elbow. Sherlock checked the other side. "Ah, here." He inspected a tiny pinprick using his magnifier. There was no shame in losing that race, Sherlock was an expert in locating needle marks and John really did not want to know why.

"Not to interrupt, " Lestrade said sarcastically. "But this is my crime scene, so if you don't mind-?"

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said, standing and flapping his hand irritably at the police detective. "First he injected her with a paralytic, then killed her by draining off her blood; the jugular vein is most common for that purpose but it was probably the axillary vein in this case-"

"Yup," John said, inspecting her left armpit and noting the incision where a tube had been inserted.

"That was done elsewhere," Sherlock went on smoothly. "Then the body was brought here, placed on the bed for the cutting and finally artfully arranged on the floor. The cuts were made with a series of at least seven different blades."

"Scalpels," John corrected, remembering what he'd seen in his earlier examination of the woman's face.

"How can you-"

Sherlock sublimated his annoyance at being interrupted by casting Lestrade a scornful look. "Dr. Watson was a surgeon, Inspector, try to keep up." John flinched at the was.

“The blood's all over here,” Lestrade objected, gesturing at the soaked carpet. “What makes you think he had her on the bed?”

Sherlock sighed heavily. “Do you think your superiors are ever slightly disappointed that they employ a detective so dense? I don't think, I see. The marks on her wrists are clearly from rope. Moreover the linens on that bed have not been slept in, and more tellingly they do not match the appalling duvet although every other aspect of this house has a truly horrific devotion to color and pattern coordination. Why would she launder her linens, then make the bed with a non-matching set? Obviously the killer himself remade the bed after he was through.”

"Wait a minute," John said. "If she was cut up on the bed, what is all this blood doing over here? Unless-" John saw Sherlock's mouth open and rushed to beat him to the reveal. "It's not her blood."

Sherlock looked elated. "Precisely," he said. "The blood came from Benjamina Potts, who is most definitely already dead. Which is the answer to the question you were about to ask me, Lestrade; you should realize by now that my deductions will reach the answer you need in the end, they always do."

"Well, usually," Lestrade said grudgingly.

"Always," John said with a grin.

Lestrade gave John a very hard look, and muttered something that sounded like, It must be catching. Then he sighed, clicked his pen, and pocketed it along with his notebook. “One more question, Holmes. If she was already dead when he mutilated her, why tie her up?”

“To keep her steady,” Sherlock said. “Particularly, to anchor her legs apart. The rope around her wrists was just to keep her body taut. I suspect it's tricky to carve someone up in quite that way when she's laying- well, like this.” He gestured at not-Benjamina, who was lying on her back with her legs neatly together.

“Or else he's just trying to be too fucking clever,” Lestrade said disgustedly.

"Additionally, the press's appellation 'the Low Street Butcher' is colorful but inaccurate. This man is an artist, not a butcher. He works in business, obviously, but his training was in sculpture. We'll need to see the reports and the photos from the first scene, as soon as possible." Sherlock pocketed his magnifier. "It will take me a minimum of one hour to identify the cord he used to tie her to the bed." He strode for the door, brushing past John. "Text me when you identify the student, or when you find Potts' body."

John hurried after, giving Lestrade another quick grin and a sheepish "'Bye" on his way out.

Just before they reached the front door, Sherlock turned back for a moment and shouted "Whichever comes first!" back at Lestrade. John pushed past and beat him to the corner, if just barely. Trying to stay ahead of anyone with legs that long was wasted effort, but John always found himself trying anyhow.

"Urgent engagement?" Sherlock asked. If it was possible to eye someone sarcastically, John would say that was what Sherlock was doing.

He shrugged. "Just wanted out of there. That place gave me the creeps."

"No it didn't. You're merely convinced it should. In fact you find yourself alarmed by Lestrade's reaction to your demeanor, which has become much more pragmatic over our time together," Sherlock said matter-of-factly.

John sighed. "I hope you realize that analyzing me relentlessly at the drop of a hat is not going to persuade me to fire my therapist."

"It should, I'm much better at it than she is." Then, in one of the 180 degree changes of subject to which Sherlock was prone, "When we get home and you realize you have to go to the shops for bread and milk, I need you to buy some rope."

"Okay..." The pin dropped. "You already figured out what rope it was? That's unbelievable." John thought for half a second about that statement and revised it. "No, not unbelievable. Or surprising at all, really. You probably keep a mental database of the best rope and twine for subduing kidnap victims. But still pretty amazing." Sherlock smirked slightly. "Wait, why did you tell Lestrade it would take an hour to identify the rope?"

"Because that is how long it will take you to go buy it." John sighed in resignation. "Don't fuss, I'll write it down for you."

He did, later in the day, but first they had to rush to the morgue at Bart's, only to be told that the first body had already been autopsied and released for burial. Then a mad dash to the scene of the first murder, where they double-teamed Rebecca Barstow's sister- John sympathized and Sherlock flirted- until Barstow's over-protective brother threw them off the property, and a pair of constables who had no idea who Sherlock and John were backed him up.

Another rush to the morgue, in time for the arrival of the student's body. That was followed by Sherlock putting on his best "normal bloke" smile, the one that made John vaguely uneasy, and persuading Molly to bump it up to the top of her to-do list. He put on such a convincing act that she let them stay in the room and watch. It apparently surprised Molly that both of them were capable of being so utterly detached about proceedings which sickened most people, but it didn't surprise John; they had both been desensitized by massive over-exposure to corpses.

The only part that was the slightest bit weird to John was watching Molly do the bit where she methodically examined the woman's vagina, finding and photographing a series of deep gashes carved from the labia almost all the way to the cervix. It was a strange thing for a doctor to feel shy about, but he had never been a fan of clinical (as opposed to recreational) examination of a woman's vagina. Still, watching Molly crunch through a woman's cartilage with an absurdly large knife was a picnic compared to what he'd seen in Afghanistan, and Sherlock was just weird. He'd probably seen his first autopsy at age five.

Sherlock's streak of social engineering successes came to a halt when they arrived at Lestrade's office to demand access to Barstow's house. Lestrade just leaned back in his chair and flipped his pen onto the desk. "Sorry, but you'll have to go through Dimmock for the Barstow scene." He did sound genuinely sorry, John thought, perhaps because of the constant low-grade hostility between the two detective inspectors. John suspected that the main source of the antagonism was actually Sherlock, or rather Sherlock's involvement in police work. Typically enough, Sherlock did not care in the slightest that his misbehavior was what kept the detectives at each others' throats.

"I thought this was your case, Lestrade." Well, except when the rivalry kept him from getting what he wanted. Then he cared plenty.

"It was Dimmock's," Lestrade said. "I was brought in when the second body was found and we realized they were connected."

"He's useless. Get rid of him," Sherlock snapped.

"God, I wish," Lestrade said. "But Dimmock has a friend in the Commander's office."

"One of the fringe benefits of my profession," Sherlock mused aloud to no one in particular, "is the lack of jockeying for promotion."

"Well, how nice for you," Lestrade said. "Go bother Dimmock, would you?"

So they did. It did not begin well.

"You ordered the crime scene cleaned up this morning?" Sherlock exploded.

The trouble was that the blind banker case had been a bad way to start a working relationship. Ending the case with the members of an international criminal conspiracy all dead or missing had made Dimmock look very stupid, and his resentment had combined with Sherlock's condescension and matured into a strong mutual dislike. John thought the whole thing fascinating to watch, like a nature special on lions. Or apes, some animal where the males were always posturing at each other. Only, usually animals were showing off for the females. Were there animals that battled this way out of sheer arrogant bloody-mindedness?

"You knew I had been called in to consult! Why didn't you preserve it?"

Dimmock inspected his nails, feigning boredom with Sherlock's outburst. "Because it was unnecessary. My forensics team had already processed the scene thoroughly."

"Damn your team! They probably missed everything of any significance!"

"I'm sorry, what did you read at uni, again?" Dimmock's voice was a parody of honest curiosity.

"Chemistry," Sherlock ground out between clenched teeth.

"Not forensic science? Hmm." Dimmock dropped his pretense of nonchalance and glared. "Holmes, Lestrade invited you in and I'll respect that because I respect him-"

"Liar," Sherlock said.

"But," Dimmock continued loudly, "You need to understand that this is not your personal playground. I'm happy to provide you with documentation and photographs upon which you can render your...expert opinion."

It was not Sherlock's first argument with Dimmock, but it was the first he lost so conclusively. If there had been any way to subvert Dimmock and get what he wanted anyway, Sherlock would have done it, but he could not un-sanitize the crime scene. Instead, they went home and he threw himself into an epic sulk complete with flouncing, couch-diving, and endless sniping comments about John's taste in jumpers and his extremely annoying habit of tapping his pinky on the shift key while he read his e-mail. John finally got fed up and went out for groceries and for Sherlock's bloody rope. Fortunately, it wasn't long after he returned that Lestrade came by with an envelope packed with evidence from the crime scene at Rebecca Barstow's house. There was nothing quite like pathology reports and gory photographs to pull Sherlock out of one of his moods.

Sherlock happily deduced that this victim did not belong at her crime scene either- "She's homeless, her body has been thoroughly washed, but look at the ground-in dirt at her wrists and ankles, look at the callouses on her feet"- that the wounds on the face were not similar to the second victims but absolutely identical, that the blood at the scene did not belong to the body and in fact probably belonged to Barstow (wherever she was), and that the killer had some familiarity with police procedure and forensics, as he had evidently taken great care in cleaning any traces of himself from the scene.

Lestrade was characteristically glum about this, but Sherlock was delighted. "It's usually the case with a true serial killer, rather than a spree killer. They're very careful, very particular, very aware of the pursuit. They want to taunt, they want to be clever. I love when they want to be clever, and this one isn't just pretending." He beamed happily.

"So glad you approve," Lestrade said. "You're an obsessively morbid git, you know that?"

"So's our killer," Sherlock said cheerfully. "And that's how I'll catch him. Well, that and the fact that I'm much cleverer than he is."

Lestrade was called back in to the Yard around one in the morning. John fell asleep at three with a toxicology report in his hand, and when he woke up Sherlock was still intent on the contents of the packet, which he had spread across the coffee table. John blearily dressed in fresh clothes and left for a day at the clinic around eight, and Sherlock didn't even glance up.

That evening, when John pounded up the steps and into the flat, Sherlock was still ensconced on the sofa, staring at crime scene photos. Only now he had tacked them up on the wall over the mantel to form a giant mural. The various decorations from the mantelpiece had been piled in a heap on the floor, but the skull was sitting neatly in John's chair, facing Sherlock. "I got curry," he said. Sherlock didn't reply or look away from his photos.

John set the bag of food on top of the papers on the coffee table and went to hang up his jacket. "You didn't answer your phone."

"I'm working."

"Well I didn't know if you wanted spicy or not, so I got vindaloo and butter chicken. I'll eat whichever you don't want." John dropped his mobile on the end table and rooted in the bag for forks.

"Eat both then, I'm working." Sherlock made a show of pushing the bag away and studying the report it had been resting on.

"Do you even remember when you ate last?" John said, knowing it was best to come sideways at these things.

"Tuesday morning," Sherlock said. "I haven't deleted that yet. You made eggs."

"And what is today?"

"Wednesday," he said distractedly, holding a blown-up photograph of a woman's forearm an inch from his face with one hand, and scratching the back of his head with the other.

"Sherlock, it's Thursday. Eat the damn curry." John thumped down the butter chicken in front of him, crammed the plastic fork into the hand holding the photo, and retreated to his chair. He set the skull gently on the end table. Sherlock scowled hugely, threw down the fork and photograph, and marched across to turn the skull exactly ten degrees anticlockwise, so that it faced him again. He flopped dramatically back onto the sofa.

"You're as bad as Mycroft with your mothering," Sherlock muttered. John knew that he considered this to be one of the more brutal insults in his arsenal. When it provoked no response, he added, "If you keep eating so much take-out, you'll soon be as fat as Mycroft as well."

John swallowed a mouthful of vindaloo. "My BMI is perfectly appropriate. And so is your brother's, since you brought it up. You, however, would need to gain at least a stone to be called underweight."

Sherlock pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I have an eating disorder," he announced.

"No you do not," John said instantly. "You just can't be arsed."

"That's your considered medical opinion, is it, doctor?"

"It's my considered medical opinion that if I walked out of here right now, you'd starve yourself to death out of sheer...bullheadedness," John retorted. "You ponce."

"Intransigence," Sherlock mumbled to his forearms.

"What?"

"The word you were looking for is 'intransigence.'" Sherlock suddenly sat up, seized the fork, and began poking resentfully at the chicken. After a moment he said, "I want the vindaloo."

John slowly counted ten and then swapped styrofoam containers with him. Sherlock started poking the vindaloo, but he did put some of it in his mouth this time, which was progress. John waited till Sherlock had a second forkful before asking, "Learn anything, then?"

"A bit," he said, chewing. "Both bodies have cellular damage caused by the formation of ice crystals. They were definitely frozen. However that also makes the time of death even murkier. We're estimating based on the windows of time when the victims disappeared. The killer is almost certainly killing them immediately."

John hmm'd a bit. "Did they identify the student's body yet?"

"No. The police have enough evidence though, it's just a matter of legwork. We do have a name for the first victim- Abigail Charner. She had an arrest record, mostly for trespassing and vagrancy, so her prints were on file." Sherlock chewed thoughtfully. "No one reported her missing. Unfortunate."

"Yeah, it's sad," John agreed. "I can't imagine nobody even noticing that I had gone."

"What?" Sherlock said, looking mystified. "Oh! Oh, no. Unfortunate because if we found someone who knew her, we could more easily determine when she was taken. Would give us more data on how the murderer is operating. I've put out some feelers." Sherlock pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and continued to eat with one hand while he fiddled with the buttons.

John was just returning from binning the empty food containers when Sherlock's mobile rang. After one look at his intent expression, John went to put on his jacket. He was at Sherlock's elbow holding his greatcoat when the man hung up and exclaimed John's name. Only a slight widening of the eyes betrayed Sherlock's surprise as he realized John was already next to him.

"I have deduced that Lestrade found Benjamina Potts' body," John said, smirking.

The momentary shock vanished from Sherlock's face, to be replaced by his customary aloofness. "Obviously," he said archly. "Shall we?"

"After you."

Chapter 2: Transposition

At times the way to win consists in attacking first on one side, then, granted greater mobility of the pieces, to transfer the attack quickly from one side to the other, breaking through before your opponent has been able to bring up sufficient forces to withstand the attack. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

They hopped out of the cab and entered the building, whose first floor hallway had been turned into a sort of mobile lab unit. Anderson was kneeling in the corner fiddling with camera film and lenses. Sherlock paused, rolling his eyes impatiently, while John pulled on a blue protective jumpsuit. "I don't want any bloodstains, Sherlock," he said. "I'll have to bin the trainers I wore yesterday."

"You need new trainers anyway."

"That's not the point. Besides which, I don't want Lestrade getting tired of me mucking up his scenes and kicking me out."

"You're with me, he can't kick you out." Sherlock sounded so damnably sure that it made John want to shake him. Donovan, suiting up next to John, just rolled her eyes.

Lestrade came in from the hall. "There you are." He was already wearing protective gear. "Come on then." As he led the way upstairs, he told them, "The body in Potts' house was actually Laurie Turner. A student, as you said. Looks like she went missing on Saturday. As soon as we got her address, we came here, and there was an identical crime scene in her bedroom."

"He switched the bodies?" John said.

"Yes," Sherlock said. "This is Potts, no question."

"Well excuse me if I question it," said Donovan. "Inspector?"

"Yeah," Lestrade agreed, and called, "Anderson, I need you to take prints from the body and send them ahead to the lab- but don't come up here till we're done." Anderson yelled something garbled back.

They arrived in the bedroom and had to stop as Sherlock paused in the doorway, scanning the room. Finally he stepped inside and the others could edge in around the walls, avoiding the enormous swath of blood-soaked carpet surrounding the corpse of Benjamina Potts. Two lab techs that John did not know were examining the bedposts, one lifting prints and one doing something with a pair of tweezers.

"Turner's blood, I take it," John said.

"Yes." Sherlock had no problem with stepping through the soiled carpet and bent down by the corpse to look closely at its injuries. "Same wounds to the face." Sherlock moved over to the woman's legs and carefully lifted her knees with his hands, spreading them apart. John couldn't resist the urge to flick his glance away. It was hardly his first sight of a woman's genitals, but Potts seemed oddly vulnerable. Perhaps it was the fact that she had so clearly been victimized that made her different, John wasn't sure.

"John, I need you to examine the interior of the vagina."

After all these months, John often allowed himself to think he'd seen how deep Sherlock's rabbit hole went, but he was inevitably mistaken. He didn't have trust issues, he had naivete issues. "Er. Why?" he stalled, as if he was seriously considering Sherlock's request. Some obscure sense of fair play required that he actually hear Sherlock's insane reason before he rejected it. One day, maybe there would even be a good reason.

"I need to know if the internal mutilation matches that on the first two victims. Obviously."

"Absolutely not," John said flatly. He'd giggle at crime scenes, and apologize for Sherlock to everyone and their mum, and spend his free time dogging Sherlock's heels with an illegal handgun in his waistband, but for God's sake he had to draw the line somewhere.

"I unfortunately have not had time to make an extensive study of-" Sherlock suddenly registered what John had said. "No? But you never say no." He looked, for lack of a better word, gobsmacked.

"I do," John insisted. "For example, when you asked last week if you could read my war diary." It was something John had expended significant effort on of late, trying to teach Sherlock to ask instead of simply prying into John's private business. They were now working on the part where Sherlock actually respected the boundaries John set, which was not going so well. Typically Sherlock did what he liked either way, and being denied permission simply added a hearty sulk to the proceedings. John tried to tell himself that they were getting closer to normal human behavior, but it could be discouraging at times.

"Well, yes, but that's down to your excessive notion of privacy, you never refuse to help me on a case."

"Forget it, Sherlock," John said. "Let Molly handle it. She examined Charner and Turner and you had no problem with her findings."

"Well you don't need to raise your voice, it's just tedious to wait," Sherlock said mildly. "You've never had a problem examining a corpse before." He'd released the woman's legs and stood up.

"I haven't raised my-" John noticed Sally Donovan giving him the eye. Okay, maybe he had. "I'm not performing a public gynecological exam on a dead woman, end of story," he said in a more moderate but still vehement tone.

"A public gynecological exam on a living woman would be better, I suppose?" Sherlock raised his eyebrow and put on his best 'You are being unbearably thick' voice. Which was a laugh, really, given the context. "I doubt the corpse is going to mind. Your always extraneous insistence on decorum lends nothing to the proceedings." In Sherlock's mouth, "decorum" sounded like a foul word.

As usual, Sherlock's tone, plus his calm and unshakeable belief that he was the only rational person on earth, made John question his own instincts. Really, wasn't Sherlock right? The poor woman was past knowing or caring what happened to her body; her family wasn't here to see. Was this really so different from studying a bullet wound or palpating a dead man's abdomen, both of which he'd done on a crime scene? As a thought experiment, John considered slipping on a disposable glove and sliding his fingers into Benjamina's vagina right here in front of Sherlock, the London constabulary, and God.

No. No, that would not be happening.

"Wrong," he said to Sherlock.

Sherlock turned to take in the stunned faces of Lestrade, Donovan, and the two lab technicians. They shared an alarmed and baffled expression, as if a wild animal had just reared up on its hind legs and picked up a weapon.

Sherlock looked back at John, and suddenly he wore what John privately thought of as his Epiphany Face. "This is one of those “bit not good” things again, isn't it?"

"Jesus," Lestrade muttered. It actually did sound like a prayer.

"You- you-" Donovan's vocabulary continued to fail her. "You utter freak."

Sherlock ignored this, cocking his head at John and looking for an answer. John gave a tight, controlled nod, and Sherlock whirled back to the body as if John's response had freed him from a spell.

"Honestly, you people and your ridiculous hangups," he said irritably. "It's all about sex with you."

John and Lestrade exchanged looks and decided to ignore that. Donovan looked as if she were about to lose her temper.

John glanced back at the body, and something about the way the woman's leg lay where Sherlock had left it struck him like a bludgeon. He vividly remembered another body with one knee turned inward and the ankle turned out in that precise way. Ground around her soaked with blood. A thatch of pubic hair peeking from behind the edge of a burqa rucked up over her waist. Folds of fabric covering her arms and face.

For half a second he could hear the rattle of automatic weapons from the target house two doors down, smell the heavy battleground odor of sweat and spilled blood and shit. Please not here, and John closed his eyes for a moment and remembered to breathe. The sensation receded and John opened his eyes. Thank God, no accompanying panic attack, just your garden variety flashback.

John deliberately raked his gaze over the body, as if daring his traitorous brain to betray him again. He found himself fixating on the woman's face, even though it was impossible to recognize any human feature or expression there. Her family couldn't even have the dim comfort of seeing her for the last time, confirming for themselves that she was dead. It would be dental records and fingerprints, and that niggling sense of never quite knowing, deep in your gut, that she was actually dead. John knew what that felt like. He'd lost mates that way, at the epicenter of IEDs that didn't even leave you enough to bury. When you heard about it, after, it never felt quite real.

It was actually kind of astonishing, how little you had to go on without a face to read. Sherlock could look at a person's wedding ring and posture and know how they felt about their spouse, but most people (John included) would just look at the face. This was how a draped patient on the operating table became just an intellectual exercise, how a body on the battlefield became just a sack of meat. It was no wonder that a body without a face reminded him of a war crime.

"Oh," John breathed involuntarily.

"What is it?" Sherlock was staring at him, intent. No one else had even heard him.

"Nothing, it's nothing," John said. He could feel the tips of his ears turning a bit red. It wasn't like him to introspect this much when he was out on a case. Being trapped by his own memories made him feel weak.

"No it isn't," Sherlock insisted. "You just remembered something from Afghanistan. Something relevant to the case. What is it?"

John pinched the bridge of his nose. "Sherlock, do we really need to have the boundaries discussion again? Here?"

Usually if he rebelled, Sherlock could be persuaded to back off. But then, the things John chose not to share were usually not related to a case. Sherlock raised an eyebrow and glared. "John."

"In Afghanistan," John forced out. "Women- who had been raped. They usually- usually the perpetrator would cover their faces. It doesn't matter who they are or what they look like, you see."

"Why?" Lestrade asked intently.

"One lay is as good as another, I expect," Anderson speculated from the doorway. John whirled, he hadn't heard the man come up.

"Anderson, why did they hire you? I know it wasn't for your intelligence but evidently it wasn't for your charm, either." Sherlock's tone was almost bored.

For once the detectives sided with him. "Fuck's sake, does everyone on this case need to have a go at women?" Donovan snapped.

"Anderson, out," Lestrade said. "And don't come back till you grow some sense." He kicked the door shut. "I did tell him not to come up. You all heard me."

Sherlock was still looking fiercely at John. "Well?"

"In a war rape isn't about the victim, or about the rapist either, is it?" John said. "It's about the message."

"And what message is that, beyond the obvious?" Sherlock demanded.

"That he hates and fears women," Donovan said, looking Sherlock up and down in an extremely pointed way.

"I said beyond the obvious, Donovan, and shut up. I wasn't asking you."

John remembered his musing of a few moments ago, and said without thinking, "People are interchangeable sacks of meat."

"Bravo," Sherlock breathed. John's pleasure in that was worth the weird looks that Donovan and Lestrade were giving him.

"Our suspect is a soldier. Or more likely, ex-soldier," Sherlock said abruptly. "I initially said businessman; he's neat, well-dressed, precise. His weapon is a specialist one, and his work indicates artistry and patience. That means training. I said sculptor, because the other option was doctor but it's clear the suspect is currently not practicing medicine, or at least not surgery. With the current state of the profession a conscientious, skillful and patient doctor would find it near impossible to remain unemployed in his chosen field. Therefore businessman, therefore trained as a sculptor, not a doctor." Sherlock's eyes unfocused as he went into a sort of deductive trance, rattling off the words so rapidly that he didn't seem to find room between them to breathe. "I should have trusted my initial impression. He's a doctor, just not a very good one.

"He clearly sees people, or at least treats them, as interchangeable parts. An impossible viewpoint for a doctor, who knows exactly how variable human beings are. But the mutilation of the faces in concert with the switching of the bodies between crime scenes indicates that the attitude is not unconscious on his part, it is a deliberate message. Who is taught to dehumanize people in the specific context of death? Soldiers. They learn it as a dissociative defense mechanism, to prevent the NHS's therapy costs from becoming unnecessarily high."

"Thanks, Sherlock, very flattering," John said. "And he's an ex-soldier, because if he was active service there is no way he could get away from base long enough to do something this complicated. Got it."

"Former British Army," Sherlock agreed. "But he either failed to receive his Bachelor's of Medicine or finished at the bottom of his class, so we needn't limit ourselves to the medical corps."

"So it's not about sex then?" Lestrade asked.

Sherlock fisted his hands in his hair as if he were about to tear the curls from his head. "Of course it's not about the sex, haven't I told you that? His motives are simple, what's important now is his identity. Even you must surely grasp that."

"This has all the hallmarks of being a killer who is sexually stimulated by murder, by destroying women," Lestrade said stubbornly. John thought of the photos from the prior autopsies and was forced to agree.

"Nice that you've been swotting up, Lestrade, but remember this: none of the women have been raped!" Sherlock almost shouted. "There is absolutely no sign that the victims have been assaulted in a sexual way. Think, would you?" Sherlock ran his hands through his hair. "The location and nature of the injuries suggest misogyny as motive, but we've established that the murderer's thinking has gone well beyond that. Typically facial mutilation is performed by thrill killers or by those seeking a sense of power and control.

"The murderer is evidently not a typical thrill killer, because the level of planning and the interconnectedness of the murders show that these are not one-off events executed for pleasure. They are part of a concerted, long-range plan. Furthermore, the cuts on the bodies are absolutely perfect; his hand couldn't have shaken at all. A thrill killer gets excited, starts to hurry, makes mistakes he then has to correct.

"Power and control, then. Possible and consistent with the calm precision of the killer, but why in a murder committed to demonstrate power would the murderer not use rape? Even a common criminal instinctively realizes the natural value of rape as a perfect expression of dominance and control over the victim. Even though their motive is not lust, control killers usually sexually abuse their victims." Sherlock seemed prepared to keep going, but Donovan stopped him.

"I think," she said in a strangled voice, "That your definitions of 'rape' and 'sexual abuse' could stand some serious revision, freak."

John coughed slightly to draw Sherlock's attention. He had never seen a person spontaneously combust before, and he wasn't eager for Sally Donovan to be his first. "They really could, Sherlock," he said quietly.

To his relief, Sherlock immediately changed the subject.

"Start looking for possible suspects using the criteria I've given you," he said. "That should narrow it down. Hopefully Rebecca Barstow's body will turn up soon, that will be another chance to try to catch the killer making a mistake."

"Then you think there's no point trying to save her, she's already dead," Lestrade said.

"Yes, of course, the victims are killed well before he disposes of the bodies. She was probably dead an hour after she disappeared. No, what we're trying to prevent is the killer moving on to his next pair of victims. Serial killers rarely stop on their own, and never with a tally of only four corpses." Sherlock stripped off his latex gloves and began pulling on his leather ones. "The tricky part is that we could find her almost anywhere. I'd suggest checking the homeless shelters for a start, but I doubt you'll find her at one of those, they're too crowded for this man's liking. Coming, John?"

John had been so transfixed by Sherlock's rattling string of assumptions that he hadn't paused to think over what Sherlock was saying. Now that he was watching Lestrade jotting it down, it started to sink in. Army. Bachelor's of Medicine. RAMC. Jesus Christ. Donovan was giving him an extremely odd look just then, and John was out of the room so close on Sherlock's heels that he almost stepped on them.

He shed the protective suit in record time, with Sherlock's words curling in his chest and twisting into a hot, solid mass, constricting his airway. John caught up to Sherlock as he paused on the curb, and by that time he was so angry he felt ready to combust himself. He grabbed a coat sleeve and jerked, spinning Sherlock to face him. Sherlock gaped in astonishment for a second, then yanked his arm back so hard that he almost fell into the street.

Feeling slightly ashamed for momentarily forgetting Sherlock's aversion to touch, John immediately released his grip despite the powerful urge to grab the man and shake him violently. "What in the absolute bloody hell do you call that?"

Sherlock looked blank.

"Were you even listening to yourself in there? A doctor who's also ex-Army? What are you trying to do to me?" He loved Sherlock like a brother, he really did, but it was in those moments where he once again demonstrated not just a lack of sympathy but a complete unawareness for other people, particularly John, that he wondered why he even bothered.

Sherlock laughed easily. "Oh, is that all." He waved furiously at a cab.

"Is that- Sherlock!" Sherlock scrambled into the cab and John dove in after. "Dammit, Sherlock-"

"You are no murderer, John. Even Lestrade isn't that blind. You heard Donovan, if anyone on this case is likely to be accused of serial mutilation, it's me." He flashed John his tight little smile as if John was just thinking up excuses for him to show off. Look at me, I'm too clever for words. The prick. "You could easily imagine it as one of my experiments- post-exsanguination incision of the mucus membranes, perhaps."

John's stomach lurched. "Stop it. No I can't."

"A joke, John!" Sherlock cocked an eyebrow at him. "You know that." He sounded surprised, perhaps because John's sense of humor was normally as morbid as his. But somehow John couldn't laugh at the image of Sherlock-as-pigeonholed-sociopath just then.

"I know," John said. And he did know, with a rigid certainty, in the same way he knew that air was breathable. Sherlock was mad and brilliant and selfish, but he didn't cut people up for fun or to send messages or any other reason. He was vain and playing-at-being-crazy was the only form of self-deprecation he engaged in, because insinuations that he was a psychopath didn't matter to him. But they mattered to John, who bristled every time a copper said freak or psycho- because Sherlock's morality was confused, but it was there and it was blatantly obvious to anyone who bothered to look.

"You also didn't finish at the bottom of your class," Sherlock resumed. "Unlike our killer, you are a very good doctor."

"I'm a rubbish one with a hand tremor. That's why I'm not a surgeon now." John hadn't meant to sound so sulky, but he was thinking of Sherlock the other day, saying John was a surgeon, Inspector.

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. "You aren't well-dressed."

"Cheers, Sherlock."

"Most significantly, you do not view people as interchangeable parts. Or you would not waste as much time caring about them as you persist in doing."

John laughed a little. "This is probably the least flattering reassurance ever."

"You want me to lie?" Sherlock asked scornfully. "Or just dress up the truth for you? The truth is what it is."

John sighed. "Don't get in a strop over it. Look, I'm only pointing out that it's not on to suggest your flatmate is a serial killer."

"I despise repeating myself," Sherlock snapped. "The facts are the facts, regardless of how you feel about them. And the fact that you share certain traits with our murderer is suggestive of nothing." He flounced noticeably and looked pointedly out the window, turning his face away from John.

He totally understood Sherlock's point, really; the trouble was that Sherlock didn't understand his. John gave up and did what he so often did to resolve their arguments: changed the subject. "Look, while I'm thinking of it: a mate of mine is on leave this weekend and wants me to meet him for drinks."

"Ducky," said Sherlock to the window.

"Only I wanted to mention, because he's in Southampton-"

That got Sherlock's attention, and he immediately turned back to John. "But we have a case!"

"Well mostly you have a case. I've been helping at the crime scenes, but unless I've missed my guess, you're at the pacing-and-muttering stage of investigation, to which I am rarely allowed to contribute." In addition to pacing-and-muttering there was the occasional burst-of-shouting, and the case-related-mad-experiment, and of course playing-of-the-same-four-notes-on-the-violin-for-hours-at-a-stretch. John had learned that it was safer not to be around at such times. It wasn't as if Sherlock wouldn't text him when he needed someone to run off to another crime scene with him.

A pause. "You make me tea," Sherlock said tentatively, and John rolled his eyes.

"I haven't seen Tim in over a year. Excuse me if I don't throw him over just for the opportunity to serve you tea."

"You are vital to my work at this stage, John," Sherlock said seriously. "Stay."

Sherlock rarely bothered to ask for anything, much less suggest aloud that John was important. It was almost touching. "Well," he hedged. "I'll think about it." Sherlock relaxed back onto the seat for the rest of the ride home.

John was less touched a few hours later, when he woke in his sweat-soaked bed, shivering with panic. He checked the drawer of his desk and discovered to his vast irritation that his gun was gone.

An ordinary person might shuffle around searching for the damned thing, wondering if he had misplaced it; sometimes John envied that person, because he did not live with the biggest prat in creation. John could hear Sherlock pacing downstairs and wanted to confront him, but he was simply too exhausted for that. Instead he lay on his back counting his flatmate's annoying habits like sheep until his brain forgot to be tense and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, he found Sherlock sitting at the kitchen table, carefully inspecting his wrist with a comically large magnifying glass. He had rather alarming rope burns laddered up both his forearms. "Oh good, you're up," he said as John came in. "I require your assistance. I have run out of wrists."

John began to methodically make tea at Sherlock. "First, no," he said. "Second, also no. Third, where is my bloody handgun?"

"In a safe place," Sherlock said, removing a sliver of rope from his arm with a pair of tweezers and depositing it on a slide.

"No, it was in a safe place, in my desk. And now it is not." John was seething a bit, which he hated to do before breakfast, but there was no avoiding it in this flat, sometimes.

"Your desk is hardly very safe, John. It is a sadly obvious hiding place, in fact, as is the biscuit tin under your bed." Sherlock poked the slide under his microscope and began to fiddle with the knobs. "Really, you are almost asking for Lestrade to find it on one of his absurd 'drugs busts,' another one of which we can expect within the week. I have put it in a much safer place. Even you couldn't find it, and I know how good you are at finding things when I hide them."

"Well, perhaps you could simply tell me where it is. It's my gun, after all."

"No, I think it's a better test of the hiding place if you search for it," Sherlock said. "I don't see any reason you need to know where it is at present, anyway."

John took his mug out of the cupboard and set it down a bit harder than was necessary. "You wouldn't, because you have no concept of privacy," he snapped. "I like to know where my things are, Sherlock!" Which is true, actually, and has the additional benefit of being a less embarrassing retort than Sometimes when I wake up screaming I take it out and lie on the covers holding it and then I can fall back to sleep. Sherlock did not reply. "Right," John said, and marched upstairs with his tea.

When he returned fifteen minutes later, he had dressed, finished his tea, and packed a change of clothes in a small bag, which he set on the floor while he rinsed out his mug.

"Where are you going?" Sherlock asked, alert to the change in routine even if he still appeared to be utterly focused on the microscope.

"Southampton," John said. "I may stay the night."

"We agreed you weren't going," Sherlock said.

"No, you agreed that. I said I would think about it. And now I've thought about it, and I'm going." John slung the bag over his shoulder and cut Sherlock off as he opened his mouth. "Don't, just don't. I haven't the patience. When I get back, my gun had better be back in my desk." Disappointingly, Sherlock looked less threatened than he did intrigued. He was as hard to intimidate as a house cat.

Sherlock closed his mouth, scowled, and went back to his microscope. "It's not as if I need you," he said fiercely. "You'll be sorry when I solve this case without you."

"So will you," grumbled John as he went down the stairs.

Chapter 3: Check

Very often in a game a master only plays to cut off, so to speak, one of the pieces from the scene of actual conflict. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

By the time he arrived back at the flat on Saturday afternoon, John's irritation with Sherlock had largely cooled, or at least been displaced at his irritation that his old Army buddy had stood him up. At any rate, he felt ready to deal with the situation with Sherlock again. Which was all to the good, since his flatmate was still pacing and muttering, with a visible edge of frustration because the fourth body had not yet turned up. The edge had become sharper and sharper all afternoon, and by the late evening it could have cut an unwary passer-by in two.

John sipped his tea and watched Sherlock furiously bowing at his violin. John had heard him play beautifully, usually late at night when he thought John was asleep, but that was not what he was doing now. Now, he was coaxing a noise from the violin that closely resembled the wailings of a sackful of a cats in heat. That meant he was at an impasse, because he only played this badly when he was deeply focused on a case. John sincerely hoped they would wrap this one up soon; it would be nice to have some Vivaldi of an evening. Or even, dare he hope, some quiet.

Sherlock suddenly paused and shouted "It's open!" in response to something John had not heard. The door downstairs opened and a set of slow footsteps ascended the stairs.

"Sherlock, you need to stop leaving the door unlocked."

Sherlock gave him a wounded look. "It's Lestrade. Give me some credit, John." He was standing at the window, so John supposed he had to award him a point for that. And yet.

"You're lucky Mrs. Hudson is at her sister's, she would have fits if she knew. Just because you're too lazy to go open the door when someone knocks-"

John left off speaking as Lestrade entered the room. Something seemed off about the inspector- he had two settings normally, casual and business. But now he was neither alert nor relaxed. In fact, he seemed almost deflated, standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and an altogether too flat look on his face.

"Well?" Sherlock said. "You found the fourth body, I suppose. It's a bit late for it, I expected it would turn up yesterday, or perhaps this morning."

"We did find the fourth body," Lestrade said. "We have an arrest warrant."

"That was quick," John was saying at the same time Sherlock exclaimed, "But I haven't solved it yet!"

Lestrade smiled, a little sadly, gazing at the skull on the mantelpiece. "Believe it or not, Sherlock, the Met has occasionally been known to conduct a bit of investigation itself."

Sherlock opened his mouth to retort, then paused. "You've solved your biggest open case, but you're not pleased," he said. Lestrade refused eye contact. "Two cars pulled up behind yours. There are six officers in the hall downstairs, trying to be quiet and failing."

"I wanted to talk to you alone," Lestrade said.

Sherlock was suddenly very, very still. It was a danger sign that John responded to instinctively, stiffening his back and glancing from Sherlock's face to Lestrade's. "You can't be serious." Sherlock's voice was high, incredulous.

"What?" John said, levering himself out of his chair. "What's going on?"

"Unbelievable!" Sherlock thumped his violin onto the sofa and stalked barefoot over to Lestrade to poke him in the chest with the bow. Lestrade didn't remove his hands from his pockets. "This is by far the stupidest thing you have ever done in the entirety of your breathtakingly stupid career."

"It was me tonight, or Dimmock in the morning, Sherlock," Lestrade said quietly. "This is happening."

"I'm sorry, what is happening?" John demanded. This was infuriating, John just did not have the patience for guessing games and psychic showdowns tonight. Neither man took notice. "Hello!"

Sherlock pushed on the bow, then whipped it away as Lestrade's hand came up. "Detective Inspector Lestrade has come to arrest us. For the murders we have been investigating."

"Not you," Lestrade said. "Just John."

Sherlock took a step back. John fought the urge to giggle. He opened his mouth and spoke the first thought that popped into his head. "Good job I'm still dressed then, isn't it?" Sherlock was usually ready to answer John's gallows humor with a smirk, but this time his expression was pained, as if he'd just been gut-punched. Sherlock looking sick and shocked was somewhat terrifying, John discovered.

"You said it yourself, Sherlock," Lestrade said. "Soldier with medical training, knows his way around a scalpel. Not employed in his field. Seen as friendly and approachable, but few close friends. No successful long term relationships since uni. Familiar with police procedure and forensic science. Excessively morbid."

John had a feeling that his expression now mirrored Sherlock's.

"John did not commit these murders," Sherlock said flatly. "If you came to that conclusion, then you have interpreted my deductions incorrectly."

"It's not just your insight. We have DNA, and some significant circumstantial evidence." Lestrade was looking at Sherlock now, but he still wouldn't make eye contact with John.

"You've been withholding evidence from me?" John had never seen Sherlock astounded for this long at a stretch. Someone should be timing it. "Oh, you moron, if you hadn't let me theorize without half the facts, you would be standing in the sitting room of the real killer right now! Instead you're here, wasting your time on this."

"This is exactly why we didn't tell you about all our leads, Sherlock. You're biased, and they had to be examined independently. Which they have been."

"Examine them again," John said quietly.

"I did, believe me, I did. But then we found Rebecca Barstow's body. And we found your prints at the scene, John." Lestrade sighed. "They say," he added, looking directly at Sherlock, "That the best way to get on to a serial killer is to wait until he makes a mistake."

"When was the body found- no, when was it abandoned?" John asked. He kept his voice steady, even though his stomach had fallen through the floor and he thought he might be starting to panic.

"Friday night. The housekeeper found it Saturday morning; it wasn't there Friday morning."

"John and I have been together all weekend," Sherlock said immediately, cutting off John's reply. John opened his mouth to deny it, then questioned the wisdom of calling Sherlock a liar. But he could see from Lestrade's face that it didn't matter, the inspector already knew.

"No you haven't," he said.

"Sherlock- I appreciate that you are trying to help," John said through gritted teeth. Having Sherlock make him look even guiltier was such a spectacularly bad idea that you'd think that even that gangly idiot could see it. "But what you are doing- that, right there- is the opposite of helping." John turned back to Lestrade. "I wasn't in London on Friday," he said.

"John, stop. Stop right now." Sherlock's voice had risen slightly.

John ignored him. "I still have the ticket stubs and the booking confirmation. I was in Southampton until Saturday morning, supposed to be meeting a mate but his leave was canceled so I never saw him."

"I know," Lestrade said. "The body was found in Southampton."

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain, but John didn't need that to know he was well and truly buggered. They had a series of murders, the bodies all disposed of in London. Except for one, disposed of in a town 120 kilometers away where they could prove John had traveled at the appropriate time, with no one to vouch for his activity there. And if John had an alibi for the times of the murders, it would be Sherlock. They'd just had a sample of how well that would work out, when Lestrade knew for a fact that Sherlock would lie for John without compunction.

John collapsed backward into his chair, buried his head in his hands. This felt like an adrenaline crash. It felt like falling down a well. It felt like falling down a well, during an adrenaline crash, while drunk. He was dimly aware of Lestrade speaking again.

"We'll have to search the flat as well."

"Now?" Sherlock asked, sounding slightly lost. He hadn't sounded lost when Lestrade had turned the place out for drugs, he'd sounded angry.

"Now, yes. Because I know if there is evidence, and I give you a chance, there won't be evidence anymore."

"I'm not the one who's been concealing evidence," Sherlock said, a shadow of a snarl in his voice. But he didn't deny Lestrade's words.

"It was this, or arrest John at work tomorrow, while my people were here searching the flat. I was trying to be kind." And he was, he really was, John could see that. That's what killed him, that Lestrade, who he'd thought was a friend, or at least something close to it, was trying to be his friend at the same time he was accusing him of four brutal, psychotic murders.

"Spare us your kindness." It was definitely a snarl. "How are you going to know what exactly constitutes evidence? Everything suspicious in this flat is mine."

"Most of it, anyway," Lestrade agreed. "And I hope for the laboratory's sake that there's not too much of it at present, because any human remains are going to have to be seized and tested."

"This is ridiculous," Sherlock barked. "Of all the short-sighted, thick-headed, asinine-"

"If you're going to hit me, then hit me," Lestrade said.

"Why? Would that make you feel better, Inspector?" John looked up and saw that Sherlock was seriously invading Lestrade's personal space, and did in fact look about ready to throw a punch. Lestrade had squared his jaw and was looking unflinchingly up- one always had to look up- at Sherlock.

"Stop it, Sherlock," John said sharply.

"John-"

"Not helping." John stood up. It felt like moving underwater, everything was distant and unreal. "Lestrade was right. This is happening." He finally caught the inspector's eye, and nodded. "Let's get this over with."

Lestrade nodded soberly and removed his hands from his pockets, finally. The right one clutched his handcuffs. "I can show you the warrant, if you like. I do have one."

"I know." John turned and stuck out his wrists behind him. "I still trust you, for some reason." He started to laugh, but cut off as the effort almost choked him. As Lestrade cinched the cuffs around his wrists, John glanced at Sherlock and mouthed Gun. Sherlock nodded once, a quick jerk of his chin. So Sherlock hadn't put his gun back in the desk as requested. He never thought he'd be grateful to Sherlock for ignoring him, but thank Christ for small mercies.

Lestrade took his shoulder and steered him to the doorway, then hesitated. "They'll probably remand him to Brixton or Belmarsh," he said. "I'll try to make sure it's Brixton."

Sherlock's expression was thunderous. John could almost hear his teeth grinding all the way across the room. John tried to think of something significant to say, something dramatic like you'd see in the sort of film this whole case had turned into. But at the end, the only thing he could think to say was, "Sherlock, for God's sake don't do anything stupid."

Lestrade guided him down the stairs- surprisingly hard to do, cuffed, he felt entirely unbalanced- and past a squad of officers, half of them carrying forensic team gear and bio hazard containers. They watched in surprise as Lestrade shepherded a diminutive, subdued, accused serial murderer out to his car. "Cor, that wasn't half easy!" one exclaimed.

"Shut your ugly face, Barnes!" Lestrade snapped, making the walls shiver with the force of his door-slamming exit.

* * *

Sherlock liked being angry. It was easy- everyone was always so stupid, making mistakes and misunderstanding him and simply not being able to keep up. Slowing down to their speed frustrated him, which made him angrier. And venting that anger could be almost interesting, if he had nothing else to keep his attention occupied. So he raced ahead of Lestrade, and berated him, and bullied him, and even if it wasn't solving the problem it felt good. If he stayed angry he didn't have to think about just how much it had hurt when he heard Lestrade say Just John. When he thought Lestrade was there to arrest them both, that was infuriating, but understandable because Sherlock knew it was easy for people to misunderstand his objectivity and interpret it as amorality. And he knew that John could get dragged into these things by accident. The sociopath's accomplice was not always an easy role. But for Lestrade to think that John, just John was the killer- that was inconceivable.

John broke the rules, but not like Sherlock, who thought them pointless, or Moriarty, who knew them pointless. Most people hid their ignorance by pretending that all the rules were equally important and never to be broken, and it was hard for Sherlock to know which rules were actually important. Lestrade was not like that, and that's why he was by far Sherlock's favorite of the Met's dull, honest detectives and equally dull corrupt ones. Because there were times Sherlock could almost respect Lestrade, like when he asked Sherlock So is John's gun registered? and Sherlock replied What gun? and Lestrade simply gave him a calculating look and a slow nod and never brought it up again. But John was like that all the time. He followed the rules when they were important and broke them when they weren't, and even if Sherlock didn't always follow his lead it was because he chose not to, not because he couldn't tell from John's example what was right. Sherlock knew that he could thoroughly rely upon John Watson's moral sense. He knew that John Watson, who shot killers and wrapped his explosive-laden arms around madmen and constantly made Sherlock tea, was the best and most honest man that he had ever known.

And that's why he knew that Lestrade was wrong, wrong, wrong.

He savored his rage, prolonged it, and when John turned his back to Lestrade and gave up, Sherlock stoked it up white-hot until he almost choked on it. But it couldn't last. By the time he had watched Lestrade's car drive away with John inside, it was down to embers. And as he crouched on the back of the sofa watching the cream of New Scotland Yard's crime scene investigators ransacking his flat, he felt cold and dull and empty. He watched impassively while they rifled through his papers and peered at his experiments, and carefully bagged up anything that had once been human and carried it away along with John's laptop and his papers and his beige jumper with the bloodstain on the sleeve. He could have told them they were wasting their time, that the blood was Sherlock's, but vindictively did not. Let them waste their time, as they seemed to enjoy it so.

He stayed on his perch and tried to think, to put his admirable talents to work on the task of finding what he had missed and how he could track down the real killer. But all he could see was John dropping into his chair with a look of shock, John being guided from the sitting room in handcuffs, John sitting in an interview room at the Yard waiting for them to ask him questions, and Lestrade would do it himself even though he'd been up for 26 consecutive hours now because he felt guilty and didn't want to leave John alone with Dimmock. And John, honest trusting John, would nod seriously when they cautioned him and try to answer their questions anyway because God help him he knew he didn't do it and he believed constables were good and would help him. He didn't know how a detective, even a halfway-decent one like Lestrade, could twist you up in knots and make your innocence sound like guilt. Sherlock had seen them do it, he had been on the receiving end of it, and even when he had been high as anything their efforts to make Sherlock crack were simply laughable but John was not as clever and he would not realize that the detectives did not want to help, they just wanted to set the noose in front of him and watch him step into it and hang himself.

Sherlock viciously dragged his hands through his hair, trying to scrub the images out of his head, but then he thought of John at Brixton or God at Belmarsh, that was for category A prisoners, that's where Moriarty would go if they caught him, they called it the UK's Guantanamo Bay and whatever John believed he knew enough about current events to know what that meant. He thought of John living in a cell, with no surgery and no excitement and no Sherlock withering and slowly dying inside until he was just as dull and broken and boring as every other idiot on earth and the thought was just unbearable beyond words.

Sherlock realized that he had begun to hyperventilate.

He made a conscious effort to get his breathing back under control, and managed it. He realized that his limbs were stiff, that the police were long gone and it was well into the small hours. He neatly laid the bow and violin back in the case and shut it. Then he walked to his room, removed his dressing gown and pajamas, and carefully, calmly put on shirt and trousers and jacket, shoes and coat and scarf. He removed the false back panel from the third shelf of the right-hand bookcase, took out John's handgun, and checked and loaded it, then put it in his pocket.

He remembered to lock the door behind him when he went out.

Sherlock wasn't sure where he meant to go, which was unusual in itself. He simply found himself walking, until he fetched up against Hyde Park. The gates were shut, of course, it had just gone three o'clock, but he propped himself up against the outer wall and paused to think. He was still not sure why he had walked here on auto-pilot, but he knew where to go next: New Scotland Yard.

His head cleared a little. Of course. Lestrade would be with John asking questions, or reviewing what was seized from the flat. He would still be attempting kindness and would stay with John when the custody officer talked to him, might even arrange to transport him to magistrate's court for the initial hearing himself. He would be nowhere near his office, which would contain the case file- the full case file, the one he hadn't shown Sherlock, the one that contained all the vital, withheld pieces of evidence Sherlock needed to begin to solve this case properly. Which apparently was down to him, as usual. He needed a stratagem. The constables working the case would have doubtless been warned against him, and he did not have many friends there to begin with, which would make it difficult to ingratiate himself to someone enough to gain legitimate access to the detective's offices.

Sherlock was considering whether to bluff through the front desk officer by feigning tears or by a calm, businesslike insistence that he was late to a meeting with Lestrade when he felt his phone vibrate. He dimly recalled turning off the ringer earlier, whilst he was playing the violin and kept being interrupted by calls from that dull man who wanted Sherlock to go take pictures proving his wife was sleeping with her employer. Ridiculous. Sherlock had worked it out in thirty seconds, but there was no amount of money that could induce him to scrabble around trying to prove himself to idiots. He extracted the phone from his pocket now and glanced at the screen.

Mycroft. That was all he needed. He tapped "Ignore with text" and thumbed "Busy. Ring back later. Or never. Latter preferred. SH" The call disconnected and Sherlock allowed a moment to pass for Mycroft to digest that.

The display lit up and the phone vibrated once more. "Fuck off," Sherlock texted. Another moment before the phone whirred briefly in his hand.

Message received

There's no need to be uncivil.

To: Mycroft

It's three am Mycroft, why are you up? Get a bit peckish? SH

Message received

I am awake for the same reason you are: your consummate recklessness.

To: Mycroft

Put the crisps away and sod off back to bed. I'm busy. SH

Message received

I don't know which depresses me more, your gutter mouth or your foolishness.

To: Mycroft

BUSY. SH

Message received

Are you really planning to barge into the Yard with a loaded gun in your pocket? If your goal is to end in a cell alongside Dr. Watson's, you are making an admirable start.

Sherlock hissed between his teeth and resisted the urge to dash the phone to the ground.

To: Mycroft

If you're so concerned about the situation then do something useful and get him out. SH

Message received

Daring prison escapes are not in my repertoire, I'm afraid.

Sherlock's hands shook as he furiously punched in his response.

To: Mycroft

You're a fat, lazy spider, Mycroft. You sit in the center of your web and you never trouble yourself to move until the threads have stopped vibrating. SH

Message received

Your metaphors are wretched.

To: Mycroft

FUCK OFF.

Message received

Go home, Sherlock. You are not helping Dr. Watson or yourself right now.

To: Mycroft

As if you care.

Message received

You'll find that I care a great deal. Anything I've ever done in regard to you or the doctor has been out of concern for your welfare.

Message received

Go home, Sherlock.

Message received

There will be a copy of DI Lestrade's case file there by the time you arrive. It will be complete.

To: Mycroft

If you attempt to distract me from this case I will break into your tasteless neoclassicist bedroom and force feed you crisps until you cry. SH

Message received

Heaven forfend.

Sherlock snapped his phone shut and tapped it on his thigh while he thought. Mycroft would certainly lie and make false promises in order to persuade Sherlock to do what he wanted. However, Mycroft always chose the easiest route to Sherlock's compliance, because he was a lazy git. Knowing Mycroft, it was simple to deduce whether Mycroft would think it easier to send some of his minions to retrieve Lestrade's case file from under the Met's nose, or to lie to Sherlock and then be required to find an alternate plan in twenty minutes' time when Sherlock realized the ruse. Mycroft despised wrangling with Sherlock, but there was nothing easier for him than retrieving anything from any office related to the government. Ergo, Mycroft was in all likelihood telling the truth.

Sherlock stood up from the wall and strode back toward Baker Street, significantly faster than before. Plotting his subterfuge and getting angry at Mycroft had sharpened him up considerably, and his mind was back on business as he walked. Obviously he needed to discover the identity of the killer. Another murder would serve as an admirable piece of evidence that John was innocent, but the murders occurred only in pairs and there was no way of knowing if another pair was forthcoming. Further, the proof would not be absolute, as the police might interpret another killing as an indication of an accomplice at work. Currently he did not have any direct evidence of John's innocence to hand. So, he would find and deliver the real killer to the Yard and John would be released.

Lestrade's disastrous misinterpretation of the evidence was cause for reevaluation. Sherlock rapidly reviewed his deductions about the murderer, made from the scenes and the bodies. No, there was no indication that he had been wrong. He was still looking for an ex-soldier with medical training, then. He seethed with irritation at the Met. Surely the army had discharged others besides John! Really, he was aghast at the short-sided obviousness of the assumption that John was responsible. More facts, that was what he needed first. They had not had the advantage of Sherlock when they were piecing together the forensic evidence. Once he apprised himself of the missing facts that Lestrade had kept from him, the solution would be obvious, Sherlock knew.

When he unlocked the front door and climbed the steps to the sitting room, he found a stack of three cardboard file boxes forming a neat pyramid in the center of the room. Sherlock glanced about but could not see how Mycroft's people had managed to break into and out of the locked flat. No matter, he had work and was willing to overlook it for the moment. He shoved the coffee table up against the sofa and roughly kicked stacks of books aside to form a clear space on the floor. Then he began to go through the files.

Crime scene photographs, coroner's reports, Lestrade and Dimmock's early crime scene writeups, witness statements from the victims' families and friends, all were heaped onto the couch. These he had already seen. He was halfway through the second box and beginning to itch with frustration when he began to find new information. An interview with one of Benjamina Potts' neighbors, who described a man she had seen hanging about before Laurie Turner's body had been left in Potts' home. Sherlock remembered the neighbor, a fat, dour Irishman who was reticent but seemed to be telling the truth when he did speak. Sherlock recalled reading the statement as well, which was largely unhelpful even in its description of the man he'd seen: a short man with dirty blonde hair and a dark jacket. What was new to Sherlock was that someone had slashed through that part of the statement with a yellow marker pen.

Sherlock slowed his crawl through the documents and soon found another report with spots of bright yellow highlighting, this one a forensics report from the Potts house indicating that one John Watson's DNA had been located on one of the bedposts. He found the property submissions sheets and the scene report and checked the times: the samples had been taken not during the initial scene processing, but later that day, after Sherlock had visited the scene and informed Lestrade that the woman was mutilated on the bed and not on the floor. They must have gone back over the bed at that point. Sherlock found a series of property receipts that bore out the theory. He remembered that Lestrade had met them already garbed in the blue protective jumpsuit. Sherlock never wore them. John usually did, but on that day the forensics officer in charge had been on the curb taking a phone call when their taxi pulled up, so there was no one to offer John a suit when they stepped into the foyer of the house, and they hurried up to the bedroom unchallenged. John had not touched any furniture, but it was quite possible that his DNA had contaminated the scene nonetheless.

Lestrade would have known that too; a follow-up report from him explained the presence of John's DNA in exactly that way, in fact. But clearly, that was when he'd begun to deceive Sherlock.

He'd been allowed to inspect Laurie Turner's flat, but he hadn't been told that before his arrival, they had found and bagged fibers embedded in her bedposts and in Benjamina Potts' wrists. Now Sherlock found a report on the fiber analysis from forensics matching the two sets of fibers and identifying them as being the same synthetic material, carrying traces of DNA from Potts. Paper-clipped to it was a report from DI Dimmock describing visits to a series of local hardware stores which allowed him to determine which was likely the brand of rope used by the killer. Of course, Sherlock had reached this conclusion himself days earlier and with less effort, but what with the information not providing any particular lead to the killer at that point, Sherlock had not seen fit to mention the matter to Lestrade. A second report from Dimmock indicated that one of the hardware stores he visited was frequented by a short blonde man identified as one John Watson, and the manager of the store was more than happy to provide a series of computerized receipts from the customer's recent purchases. Sherlock shuffled through the papers and found a receipt showing John's purchase, the evening before Potts' body was found, of the exact type of rope in question. He vividly remembered scratching the specifications for the rope on the bottom of John's shopping list, and felt like being sick.

At that point in the case file, John suddenly became more prominent. There were records on his military service and discharge, his CV, records of his employment at the surgery, a recent report from his therapist. Sherlock gave it a quick read; nothing he didn't already know, and nothing blatantly untrue, although the conclusions were suspect. Someone had highlighted portions of it with yellow, however. "Fascination with violent death." "Difficulty readjusting to civilian life." "Destructive tendencies." "Inability to form intimate relationships?" "Rule out: depersonalization disorder, bipolar affective disorder." There were records detailing his work schedule and his shopping habits. Reports on the ASBO he had received while helping Sherlock with the smuggling case. There was a forensic psychologist's rather juvenile report describing the killer in broad terms and referring frequently to the significance of his obsession with women's genitalia. Sherlock grimaced. Despite his repeated assurances that the genital mutilation was incidental, the Yard apparently had convinced itself that the murderer was primarily motivated by sexual impulse.

Sherlock still knew that was not the point of the murders. The point was, as John had said, that people are interchangeable. It couldn't possibly be any clearer. But who was sending this message, and why? Sherlock flung down the psychologist's report and ran his hand through his hair, hissing his frustration. His body was even more exhausted than it had been when Lestrade arrived to arrest John, and he felt a craving for nicotine gnawing at the edges of his attention. He leapt up, snatched the box of nicotine patches off the mantel and pressed two of them to his forearm, then dropped cross-legged back amidst the piles of documents.

Slower, now, the police investigation unwound through the reports and memoranda. Emails between Lestrade and Dimmock, bickering over John's guilt and Sherlock's potential involvement. A cutting report from one of Lestrade's superiors, threatening to remove him from the investigation. A report tracking John's trip to Southampton, and the final damning fingerprint comparison that identified John Watson's fingerprints inside the room where they found Rebecca Barstow. A copy of the arrest warrant. You are hereby required to arrest the person and bring the person before an Appropriate Judge as soon as practicable.

Ah. Sherlock crossed the room to the window and jerked open the curtain. Mid-morning sunlight streamed in. He had been at the tedious business of sorting the documents for hours, and a quick look at his mobile told him that it was nearing 8:30. They would still be questioning John. The police court did not have the authority to grant bail on a murder charge, but he would still have to appear there to be officially remanded into custody and given a time to appear before the Crown Court for a real hearing. Getting there could take days, and Sherlock keenly felt his inability to manage the proceedings. He fired off a rapid text message, trusting his earlier suspicion that Lestrade would have stayed with John through the night.

To: G Lestrade

Sleep well? SH

The wait was less than ten seconds.

Message received

Didn't go to bed.

To: G Lestrade

Good. Magistrates court opens at 9. SH

Message received

I know when the bloody court opens. Do your own job and I'll do mine.

Sherlock felt strangely reassured to know he had been right about Lestrade. He had arrested John and to a great degree believed he was guilty. But the man was extremely conflicted. All one had to do was read his reports to see his doubts. Sherlock knew that Lestrade could easily be won to John's side, when Sherlock could produce the appropriate proofs. In the meantime, Lestrade would help John navigate the legal system to the extent he could do so without endangering the case or his job. Sherlock bent back to his review of the documents with new vigor. He retrieved the mobile quickly when it indicated a new text from Mycroft at 9:07.

Message received

Dr. Watson remanded to Brixton. His solicitor will file the application for bail within 10 mins. Hearing at 8:30 tomorrow.

To: Mycroft

BUSY. SH

Message received

You're welcome.

Lestrade's own message was less than two minutes behind.

Message received

Brixton.

Sherlock thumbed down to Lestrade's number and dialed. The inspector picked up on the first ring. "Your case is absurd. The DNA evidence is nothing more than cross-contamination."

Lestrade sounded tired, even over the phone. "How did you- never mind. It doesn't really matter at this point how you know that."

"John bought the rope after Turner was found but before Potts was. The same rope was used on Turner. One purchase of rope would have been sufficient, why would he go back to buy more?" Sherlock didn't pause to give Lestrade a chance to respond. "In any case, it's irrelevant, because John bought that rope at my request. I determined the type of rope based on the scene in Potts' house and wished to confirm my deduction."

"Really? And you'll back that up with what, exactly?" A few beats, while Sherlock thought of nothing to say. "Sherlock, you have to do better than that."

"Your case is a mess. John will have the best barrister in London-" Mycroft would ensure it, if he did not want Sherlock to haunt his every waking moment forever- "and he will destroy you in court."

Lestrade's laugh was hollow. "He's welcome to try. But John is going to be in the dock, and if you can't find someone to put in his place..." His voice trailed off.

"John is innocent, Lestrade," Sherlock forced through gritted teeth.

"Prove it." Lestrade hung up.

Chapter 4: Midgame

One must attempt to increase whatever weakness there may be in the opponent's position; or, if there is none, one or more must be created. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

Sherlock thought about the likely dates and times of the murders and the crime scenes, projected from the forensic evidence. He knew where John had been when the body was recovered in Southampton, but he could not clearly recall John's location, for example, on Tuesday at 7 pm. He knew where he himself had been, but the rest was just trivia after all. The best thing was to ask John. But John would not be available until at least tomorrow, so he had to use more indirect methods.

There must be a diary. Sherlock had not seen him with one, but he knew John had a very visual memory; he always wrote down his grocery list, even when it was only two or three items, he carried a pocket notebook to make notes at crime scenes, and when he made an appointment, he always wrote down the date and time on a slip of paper and put it in his pocket. Besides which, he was a doctor, and Sherlock had yet to meet a doctor who did not keep an appointment diary.

Sherlock ransacked John's room thoroughly and efficiently, removing everything from every drawer. The police had already done it, of course, but they were not nearly so efficient. Besides which, even half-mad with frustration Sherlock had been aware of what they took and he hadn't seen anything resembling a diary. The only documents they had taken were receipts and some computer printouts, which logically must be the confirmatory evidence for the rope purchase and the trip to Southampton.

He went back to the sitting room and found his coat. He put John's gun back in its hiding place, just in case the police turned up again. Obviously if the diary was not here, John must keep it at the surgery. Sarah would be working and she would give it to him. Then he would track down Lestrade. He needed John's laptop and he needed to see the fourth crime scene, the one they foolishly hadn't let him in on. It would be cold by now, but it could be made to reveal something

Sherlock made his first stop at the surgery, flinging banknotes at the cabbie and ordering him to wait. Retrieving the diary shouldn't take more than a few minutes if he did it properly. He had no time to get dragged into an extended conversation about John's situation, so it was best not to mention it to Sarah. He would simply ask, and if Sarah asked him for an explanation he would say that John was sick and had asked him to stop in and pick up the diary. He knew how to lie convincingly and was very good at sounding put-upon.

Luckily Sarah was already at the reception when he went in, which would save him several minutes. "Ah, Sarah, good." Sherlock swept grandly up to the desk. "John has some personal items that he keeps here; I'll need to see them."

Sarah, usually so easy-going and cooperative, surprisingly did not respond. Sherlock glanced quickly: flushed cheeks, lips pressed tightly together. Angry. Reddened eyes, a very slight trace of smudging at the corner of the left eye. Crying, this morning, long enough ago that she'd had time to examine herself in a mirror and reapply her makeup, recent enough that her cheeks were still red and her anger had not faded.

"The police have already been here," Sherlock said. Another thing he would have to get from Lestrade, which he might not want to give. Even though it was irrelevant evidence to Lestrade, because it could only provide alibis for John, he would want to question John about the diary.

Sarah sucked in a breath and glanced about at the patients seated around the room. She bit her lip. "My office," she said, then turned and walked briskly away, not waiting to see if Sherlock was going to follow.

The waste of time galled him, but he needed to be sure the police had taken the diary before he left, so he followed her into her office and shut the door. Sarah rounded on him. "Why are you here? John is in jail."

If the police had told her that, and she was this upset over it, that meant she knew everything. "I need to know his whereabouts at the time of the murders, but I can't speak to him, therefore I need his diary." Obviously.

"I'm not giving you anything." Sarah lifted her hand as if to rub her eyes, which were tearing up again, then snatched a tissue off her desk and dabbed them instead.

Sherlock switched tactics; if he couldn't play on her natural submission to shows of authority, he'd play on her empathy. Sherlock let his own eyes tear up, and blinked rapidly as if trying to keep from crying. He quivered his lower lip very slightly, very subtly. But Sarah only grew angrier.

"No. None of that, you great faker! I read John's blog, you know." Sherlock scowled and wiped his eyes clear with his thumbs. Damn John's blog! He had asked John not to put in that bit, but John took a perverse glee in forewarning people about Sherlock's methods. It was absurd, everyone else used their emotions to get things they wanted, why was it not good when Sherlock did it?

It puzzled Sherlock that Sarah was not helping. He had expected her to help, if only because she was a helping sort of person, and the fact that she knew about John's problem should only encourage it. But she was still angry and upset. She twisted the chain on her wrist, a birthday gift John had given her, for the fourth time since they entered the office, and Sherlock realized: overcompensating for feelings of guilt.

"You let the police take his things." Sherlock turned his back and threw up his hands. This whole trip had been a waste of time.

"John has no office, just a locker. I said they could search the locker but for anything else, they'd need a warrant.

"How civic-minded of you," Sherlock said sarcastically. "When did everyone suddenly come over all law-abiding?" He turned back to Sarah so he could glare at her properly.

She was giving him a considering look. "You're...not working with the police, are you."

"You really are astonishingly slow! I have no idea what John sees in you." She flinched. "Of course I'm not working with the police, they believe that they have proved John guilty. And now they have evidence that I need and they manifestly do not."

"The police don't have his diary."

"Oh, of course they do! John left it here, and for all their faults they're not nearly as gormless as you, they would have recognized it."

Sarah marched behind the desk, ripped a drawer open, and removed an item that she threw down on the surface so hard it almost bounced. "No. They. Don't." Sherlock stared at the little appointment book with the awful faux-leather cover. "He left it in one of the offices the other day and I picked it up for him, you wanker."

Sherlock grabbed the book, but Sarah slapped her hand down, pinning it to the desk. "Just know this, Sherlock Holmes," she said. "I am only doing this to help John. Not you. Because you are the biggest prick that I have ever met."

Sherlock saw no need to respond now that he had what he came for, and after a moment she lifted her hand and he whirled off, already flicking through the diary for the appropriate dates. Some constantly watching part of him demanded his attention as he walked out of the clinic, and he let himself be distracted from the diary long enough to notice one of Mycroft's ubiquitous black cars parked opposite.

Sherlock was distinctly annoyed. Mycroft was always exerting what he considered to be his elder brother prerogative, and sometimes it was almost fun to toy with his security details. But this was not an appropriate time for such amusements. Sherlock was not distracted yet, but Mycroft was treading on thin ice. Sherlock abruptly changed directions and walked back into the clinic. In the bathroom, he used water from the tap to plaster his curls to his head, pinched his cheeks to redden them, and bundled his distinctive coat into a reasonably sized parcel that he wrapped in a discarded grocery bag and tucked up under his shirt and jacket. When he left the clinic it was by the side entrance amidst a crowd, with a slouch and a hunchback and a gait significantly altered by dint of a small stone tucked into one of his shoes. He left the area in the most roundabout way possible, avoiding the most heavily-surveilled areas, and by the time he paused and bought a coffee to have an excuse to stand still and scan the crowds, he was sure that he had lost his tail. Still, he kept his persona as far as the Yard, where he removed the stone and coat and put himself in order before going up to see DI Lestrade

Lestrade was not there, but Dimmock was. Sherlock knew it was a waste of time to ask for access to the Southampton crime scene even before he spoke.

"I told you before, this is not your playground." Dimmock glared, and Sherlock wanted to punch him in his smug face. Even if this had not been a matter of John's life, it was incomprehensible to him, this elevating of emotional indulgence above the case.

"So you'll bar me from the scene, stop me from solving the case, to prove a point? Exercise your petty grudge?"

"The case is solved, Holmes!" Dimmock said. "We solved it, with your brilliant assistance. The killer is in jail. Well done.

"John is not the murderer!" This was a crucial point that Dimmock still did not see. Obviously the case was not solved, because the murderer was still free and would kill again. If nothing else that should be sufficient reason for Dimmock to stop treating the case as if it were over.

But the detective was looking down at his paperwork. "Don't bother going to the scene, either. There are constables guarding it and they have your photograph."

Sherlock slammed out of the office, already dialing Lestrade.

"Since when are your crime scenes closed to me?"

"Since you became a person of interest in a homicide investigation," Lestrade said immediately. "Don't do it, Sherlock. Dimmock would love to charge you as John's accomplice. Don't give him an excuse.

"I need access," Sherlock said. But he was already doing the cost-benefit analysis, and could see that the time wasted journeying to Southampton and attempting, perhaps futilely, to break past the police cordon would not be worth whatever evidence he could glean from a cold scene.

"You can't have it, not this time," Lestrade said.

"No, keep up, I need access to John's laptop."

"I can't give you his laptop, Sherlock, it's evidence. We had the conversation about evidence back at your flat, remember?" Oh yes, Lestrade's conviction that he would alter evidence to protect John. As if that was even relevant here, when John was completely innocent on the face of it

"How am I to solve this case without data?" Lestrade, at least, did not snap back that the case was already solved.

"All right. Look, I can't give you the laptop, but I can have one of our computer guys burn you a copy of the files."

"Inadequate, but it should suffice for the purpose," Sherlock said. He was already considering what he could learn from the files to bolster his knowledge of John's movements on the days in question.

"Fine. Good. I'll get someone on it and have it to you in the morning."

"Meet me at John's bail hearing," Sherlock said. Two birds with one stone. He could retrieve the data from Lestrade and verify John's emotional state at the same time. "8:30."

"Of course it's at- how did you know that?" Sherlock did not dignify that question with a response. "Never mind. All right, I'll see you there."

The security detail was waiting when he walked out of New Scotland Yard.

The rest of the day was as good as wasted. Sherlock tediously re-examined every scrap of data he had, trying to reassemble it all in a way that would lead him to a suspect. No good. His traitorous body dropped him into an exhausted sleep around six o'clock, and he woke at midnight, tense and edgy and furious at the case, Lestrade, Dimmock, everything. He was wearing two nicotine patches but it no longer felt like enough, so he went out to a shop and bought fifty pounds' worth of the highest-tar cigarettes he could find. He spent the night chain-smoking them in his room while he created a timeline for the case that took up half of one wall, writing directly on top of the paint with black marking pen.

By the time morning came and he redressed to go to the hearing, the nicotine had mellowed him to the point where he no longer felt he was about to shatter. He jogged up the steps of the courthouse, so focused on his target that he almost missed seeing Donovan tucked into a niche by the door. She was nursing a coffee and giving him a profoundly ugly look. He let his gaze shift away and made to pass without acknowledging her, but she was not content to be ignored today. She stepped sideways into his path, forcing him to either stop or bowl her over.

Donovan looked at Sherlock expectantly; he was at a complete loss as to what she intended him to do. Perhaps to tell her to move, she was blocking the door? Obvious. Dull.

"Hullo, freak," she finally said when it became clear he was going to stand there all day looking through her, blocked door or no.

Sherlock stared at her a moment, but nothing further was forthcoming. "Oh, what is it?" he finally snapped.

Her lip curled as DI Dimmock walked up from behind Sherlock. "Hello, Holmes," he said with false jollity. He shared the expression Sherlock was used to seeing on Donovan and Anderson, all disgust and barely concealed scorn. "You know," Dimmock said conversationally, "Lestrade says you're clear, but I'm still half-convinced you were in on this too, and just too damn clever to leave your scent."

This time, Sherlock chose to respond; he simply quirked his lips up into a smile, knowing this would deeply irritate them. "Is this supposed to be frightening? I am not sure what precisely you intend to threaten me with."

"Just stay out of our fucking case," Dimmock snapped. "Or it won't go well for you. Or for Watson."

Sherlock refused to be baited. This was absurd. He kept his face placid and simply raised an eyebrow.

Donovan threw him a disgusted look. "God, look at you. He's supposed to be your best friend and you don't even care."

Dimmock sneered. "He's probably just glad the suspicion's off him."

"It's a shame, too, because I had Watson pegged as twice the man he is."

"This is growing tiresome, sergeant. You are making me late." Sherlock infused boredom into his voice. It was a strategy that had served him well in dealing with bullying idiots, over the years. If you failed to be provoked, they eventually grew bored themselves.

"Here's what I'm wondering," Dimmock said. "Did Watson come back from the war a psycho, or was it living with Holmes that did it to him?"

Sherlock felt a sudden rage that took the form of physical action rather than a cutting remark. He turned his left shoulder to Donovan and simply walked through her, forcing her to the side of the doorway. "Oi!" she shouted after him, but no one pursued as he stalked to the metal detector, flung his phone and keys into the plastic bin, and walked through.

Lestrade was standing in the hall outside the courtroom. He had clearly slept sitting at his desk, and his suit was rather rumpled at this point, which meant he hadn't been home in perhaps three days; Lestrade kept a spare suit in his office, and the fact that he looked this ill-groomed meant that he had already changed into it the day before and was out of fresh things to wear. Sherlock brushed past Lestrade as if he wasn't there, and found a seat in the sparsely attended courtroom. Sherlock did not look at Lestrade as the detective settled down next to him.

Sherlock had barely arrived in time, and in a moment they were all rising as the judge entered the room. John appeared in the courtroom alongside an usher, like a conjuring trick because Sherlock hadn't seen him come in, and they seated him in the dock. Sherlock barely listened to the prosecutor droning on about the severity of the charges and John Watson's history of treatment for mental problems. It was nothing but noise, facts he already knew spun into a sort of John-shaped net. Instead Sherlock watched John himself, hungrily as if it had been far longer than a day and a half since they were last in a room together.

John was focused on the prosecutor who was speaking, his head tilted slightly to the side as he listened to the litany of abuse the man was heaping on him. He was calm, composed, obviously exhausted but alert and not showing any emotional reaction. He wore the same blue jeans and jumper he had been arrested in, and he looked thoroughly ordinary sitting there. It alarmed Sherlock and reassured him at the same time, John sitting there looking so John when the entire world was crashing down on his head.

John's expensive, newly-acquired solicitor stood up and made his own speech. John paid just as careful attention, at least until the solicitor mentioned his relationship with "respected police consultant Sherlock Holmes," and gestured at Sherlock in the audience. Damn Mycroft. The prosecutor choked a bit, because he was familiar with Sherlock's work and just how "respected" he was, and most of the courtroom turned to stare fish-eyed at him. Including John, whose normally perfect posture slackened as his face changed. Sherlock didn't have a chance to process the look John was giving him because at that moment Lestrade poked him in the side with his elbow.

He twisted in annoyance to escape the contact, turning his back on the dock, and Lestrade muttered, "Here," and held out a USB drive to him. Sherlock smiled slightly and accepted it. "You look like hell," Lestrade said, glancing him over.

"So do you," Sherlock said abruptly, because he did. Lestrade flinched slightly and didn't say anything more. When Sherlock looked back at the dock, John was giving him a guarded, appraising look that he couldn't quite interpret.

The judge nattered on, talking a lot of rubbish about public safety and the seriousness of the charges, parroting the prosecutor's words. Sherlock only parsed the words, "Application for bail denied. The prisoner is remanded into custody." The rest was irrelevant, and Sherlock stalked out of the courtroom and was in a taxi before they even had John out of the dock.

Two hours later, Sherlock slumped bonelessly in a plastic chair at Brixton prison, waiting for his name to be called. Tedious, tedious. The only bright spot was that the visitor's center staff knew him from visits to clients and prospective clients, and therefore spared him the cloying sympathy they usually showed to friends and family of prisoners. A young housewife with a baby on her hip settled herself next to Sherlock and he quickly tucked his elbows into his sides to avoid her brushing up against him. He tensed across the shoulders and mentally recited the list of times and dates he needed to question John about. He had the diary in his pocket but he knew they wouldn't allow him to take it into the visiting hall.

Sherlock relaxed marginally when his name was called and he saw Tony Alonso standing by the door, scanning the room. He'd seen Tony on many a visit, and unlike most of his fellow guards, the man didn't take pleasure in giving Sherlock a difficult time. Someone had referred Tony to Sherlock a few years ago when he was falsely accused of providing mobiles to prisoners. Sherlock had saved his job, and kept him sweet by feeding his addiction to the expensive Dominican cigars imported by another of his contacts.

"Come on then," Tony said with a smile. Familiarity meant a blessed lack of small talk as Tony ushered him through the metal detector, briskly and impersonally searched his clothing, and showed him the locker where he was required to leave his coat and scarf. Sherlock gave the locker a disgruntled look; he hadn't a pound coin on him. "Forgot?" Tony grinned, fed the locker out of his own pocket and gestured to the packet Sherlock held under his arm. "That to turn in? Let's see it."

Tony efficiently unwrapped the packet Mrs. Hudson had insistently pressed on Sherlock, examined the clothing inside by feeling in all the pockets and seams, and folded everything again in two minutes, forty-five seconds. Sherlock watched his hands admiringly; the man may have missed a good chance as a pickpocket, he was that deft.

"I'll see he gets it," Tony said. He flipped through the papers in his hand and frowned. "Huh. Sorry, Sherlock, closed visit only, I'm afraid."

Sherlock amped up his charm and put on an earnest expression. "Truly, Tony?" He put just the right mix of pleading and hurt in his voice. "You know I would never try to smuggle anything to a prisoner.

Tony looked ashamed, a testament to Sherlock's own deftness. "Governor's orders, I'm afraid. Your mate's an accused killer. And you...well." Tony is aware that Sherlock had been remanded twice on drug offenses, but it's not something they talk about. "Unless, the order says, you let us do a strip search-?"

"No," Sherlock said instantly. Humiliating. "Let's get on, then."

Tony walked him to the closed visits hall and pointed out the right chair, but Sherlock could already see John and strode away from Tony without further acknowledging him. On the other side of the partition, John was looking significantly more tense than he had in court. His shoulder muscles were tight and his jaw clenched. Sherlock examined him carefully, but couldn't see any signs of abuse; no indication of some incident since the hearing that might have alarmed or unsettled him.

"Where's Lestrade?" John said, his words clipped.

What did Lestrade have to do with anything? "Back at the Yard, I imagine," Sherlock said. "Lots to review."

"Had a busy morning, did you?

"Yes, quite." This was the small talk portion of the conversation, Sherlock supposed. If it had to be borne, he preferred to rush through it as quickly as possible and get to pertinent information. "Do you know the evidence against you?"

"Isn't that your job." It was a statement, not a question. John's angry, Sherlock suddenly realized. Well, not that unexpected. Trapped in here, charged with a series of heinous murders, nothing to do but wait. Small wonder if John was clawing at the walls to be out.

"They have a fingerprint inside the room where they found the fourth victim. And your DNA on Potts' bedpost." No doubt the police had thrown at least some of this at him during the questioning, but Sherlock confirmed it just the same.

"DNA-" Realization flashed across John's face. "Shit! I wasn't wearing a suit!" Sherlock had realized that ages ago, and thus wasn't interested in it now.

"Correct. The rest of the evidence is circumstantial."

But John was still stuck on the tangential. "That hardly seems fair. You never wear protective clothing to crime scenes, and the one time I don't-"

"John!" Sherlock snapped. "Let's try to stay focused, shall we?" John's face went passive again, but his jaw clenched. "Where did you go when your shift at the surgery ended last Monday?"

"To the pub down street from Sarah's flat. The Sickle, I think it was called. She was called back to the surgery for some kind of administrative disaster, but I stayed and had a few pints and watched the rest of the match." John recited the facts as if bored by them. "The police already asked me this about a hundred times, you know.

"Well I haven't," Sherlock said, and made a quick mental check mark. "Had you been to that pub before?"

"No."

"Football or rugby?"

"What?" The police obviously hadn't asked that question. "Uh- football."

"You take approximately twenty-three minutes to finish a pint while watching rugby and twenty-six while watching football," Sherlock explained. "So. In a strange pub with no one you know for seventy to ninety minutes at the time Potts was murdered."

John looked at him admiringly for a second. "Amazing. I never saw you watching me. How long when I'm just talking?"

"Twenty-seven," Sherlock said promptly. Why wouldn't he be watching John? He watched everything. "But you're more conscious of your speed and typically re-order after thirty-two minutes. Don't change the subject." John's face closed up again. "In any case, that matches your diary."

"You're testing me?"

"Memory is notoriously unreliable. It only makes sense to cross-check. Now. Wednesday morning, one am."

John gave him a nasty look. "I was having a walk, as you well know. A certain complete tosser started a row with me because I attempted to clean the flat a bit."

It had been a very important microbial experiment, but he had pointed that out on Wednesday, and the case was more important just now. Sherlock did not respond.

Instead, he took John through the probable day and time of each murder and each body disposal, out of order. John's answers matched with his diary and Sherlock's recollection on every point. Each time period had found him alone or at least out of the presence of anyone who knew him or was likely to remember him.

Sherlock rested his elbows on the table, and his chin on his steepled fingers. He only realized how long he had been quiet when John spoke. "Well? Aren't you going to ask me if I did it?"

Ah. So that's what his surliness was about. Sherlock shut his eyes to resist the urge to roll them impatiently. Sometimes he despaired of John, he really did. "What would the point of that be? I know you didn't."

"You never said so before," John said.

"I don't make meaningless social gestures," Sherlock said. "It's a waste of time to reassure people of what they already know."

John's features had shifted; the tension had dissipated, and he was looking closely at Sherlock's face. "You know I wasn't with you when the murders happened."

"Or when the bodies were disposed of. Yes, we've established that now." Always restating the obvious! Sherlock had inadvertently allowed himself to sound testy, and decided to try and correct it.

"All your deductions point to me."

"Superficially."

"And you don't have any evidence that I'm not the killer."

"I'm working on it."

"But you still believe I'm innocent."

"We've been over this." He gave up. He had a right to sound testy, why did John have to repeat everything back like an echo chamber?

"Sherlock Holmes, I think that is probably the most illogical, sentimental thing you have ever said to me."

John's sat back in his chair. His expression was very strange and not one Sherlock recalled having seen before. Sherlock paused a moment but could not think of a way to postpone the inevitable question. "Not good?" he asked. Illogical was bad, correct? Sentimental was also bad in the context of an investigation, he already knew. It meant clouded judgment and either overly quick or delayed decisions.

John's smiled, the broad, relaxed one that meant he was pleased; not disappointed then. "No. Actually, it's very, very good, Sherlock."

"Well. Not a single alibi," Sherlock said after a moment

John's smile faded. "Rotten luck, eh?"

"No!" Sherlock almost shouted as he slapped his hands down on the table before him. "No, no, no, no! Luck has nothing to do with it! With the exceptions we have just discussed, we have been in each other's company every evening for the past month."

"Oh god," John groaned. "We have, haven't we?"

"Think, won't you! Don't you see what that means?"

"That my social life is even more depressing than I thought?"

"The only way the murders could each coincide with a time when you were out alone was if they were planned that way." It's the first real break he'd had since John was arrested and it felt incredible, glorious, as the adrenaline and endorphins hit his bloodstream.

"You're saying...someone framed me?" For some reason, John did not look happy.

"Yes! Clearly!"

"Who?"

"I have no idea!" Sherlock leapt up so energetically that his chair was thrown back several feet. He grinned wildly. "The game is on, John!"

"Sherlock-" John was looking at him strangely. A second, entirely new expression in one day. For a moment Sherlock allowed himself to be transfixed by something other than the case. "Don't take this the wrong way. But don't come back here."

"We had to discuss your memory," Sherlock said. "It was for the case."

"With any other witness you would have gone on the diary, or my statement to the police. You were at the bail hearing, too."

"I had to get some data from Lestrade."

"And did that data prove useful? At all?"

“I am investigating." Sherlock couldn't help sounding a bit defensive. Surely John knew he was working on the case, that every minute he was thinking about the case, and that nothing he did right now was unrelated to the case.

"You're faffing about." John smiled again, but the tightness was back, and the smile did not reach his eyes. "I'm fine, Sherlock. I'm not having a good time here, yeah, and I'm worried about the fallout- I had to call Harry to tell her I was here, and ended up listening to twenty minutes of drunken sobbing- but I've had worse. Really. I don't need looking after."

Sherlock huffed a bit. As if he did not know that full well.

"If you want to make a meaningless social gesture, you could tell Lestrade to bring me some crosswords. I'm bored to death. Look at this!" John held up his left hand. It was trembling, very slightly.

Sherlock had not noticed, which made him furious. He clenched his hands so hard the nails bit into his palms. "John," he said in a low voice. "We'll solve this."

"No," John said firmly. "You'll solve it. I'll be waiting."

Chapter 5: Indirect Attack

The winning of a Pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

The laptop data was less than useless. Sherlock combed through every document and photograph and found nothing helpful. He was so uselessly irritated, and having no way to vent it put him at a loss. If John were here, he could complain at him until either John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in that fascinating way, or else he snapped back and then they had an invigorating row. He almost considered calling Dimmock so he could have someone to be bitingly sarcastic at, but it would not be the same, so instead he held the skull cradled in his hands and muttered complaints at it. It was not as satisfying, but he could at least imagine the empty grimace of its jaw was something like an expression of irritation.

There were no calls that day, only a couple of text messages from Lestrade, which Sherlock disregarded.

Message received

I need to take your statement

Message received

Fine, forget the statement. Tell me what you've found.

Finally Sherlock realized what had been missing from the laptop data: e-mail. Of course. John had an e-mail program installed but he hadn't found any archived mail, because John used an internet-based e-mail account. He scrolled through the files on the thumb drive and located the browser history data. There were multiple daily visits to a free e-mail site, the URL of which Sherlock typed into his own browser. The user name was easy, it was 'jwatson1' because John was nothing if not predictable when it came to his computer habits. The password was equally obvious: the original password from John's laptop, the one Sherlock had cracked so easily the very first week they lived together. The laptop password had been changed almost daily since, in an effort to keep Sherlock out, but as he had never felt a particular need to see John's e-mail, John had never taken precautions there. Predictable, but then predictability was very useful, if boring

Sherlock quickly skimmed the subject lines of the past week or two. A couple quick notes from Harry, a notice that John's credit card bill was ready for viewing online, some spam. The bulk of the mail consisted of letters from several of John's army comrades, with whom he evidently maintained a correspondence. The contacts were irregular and infrequent, suggesting that the soldiers were still in active deployments abroad and had only intermittent access to the internet. The contents of the e-mails bore this out: they of course did not mention any sensitive details, but there were frequent complaints about absent spouses and requests that John post particular brands of biscuit.

One of the more recent exchanges was with a "Tom Whitlock," who seemed to be the member of a unit to which John had once been temporarily attached, as they did not appear to have any friends in common. An e-mail sent the previous Wednesday talked about a period of leave, and arranged a time and place for a meeting in Southampton on Friday evening. The e-mail also stated casually that Whitlock had damaged his phone but that he still had his laptop and John could expect to hear from him that way if anything changed. Mid-afternoon Friday, a short e-mail explained that his leave had been unexpectedly canceled and apologized for the short notice.

Two phone calls later, Sherlock had learned that Lance Corporal Thomas A. Whitlock was reported killed in action over a month ago. A little more digging revealed that all the genuine e-mails from Whitlock were bounced through a British Army proxy server, whereas the e-mails sent after his death were not. Someone within the UK's borders had evidently hijacked Whitlock's e-mail account and was using it to send John e-mails. But what was really interesting was that the most recent e-mail was clearly written by a different person. The earlier messages were skillful imitations of Whitlock's writing style, whereas the Friday e-mail was terse and artless. The murders only started the previous week, but the setup had taken more than a month; someone was obviously playing an extremely long game. There had been no prior indication that the murderer had an accomplice, but this ruse suggested that someone else had set John up, with the murderer only stepping in to send the last crucial e-mail, which ensured John would stay overnight in Southampton without becoming suspicious.

Further, the Friday e-mail had only been sent through a single proxy. It was absurdly easy to trace the true IP address to an internet cafe in Lambeth. He left the flat in his characteristic clothing, grimly and efficiently shook off the minions following him, and ducked into a charity shop where he transformed himself into a totally different person. After all the effort, the cafe was almost a letdown, just another link in the chain: it was easy enough to establish a rapport with the bored woman minding the counter. In due time, she told him all about "Bri," a smart young businessman who worked with her sister-in-law, who dropped by once in a while but she hadn't spotted him in almost a week, and wasn't it too bad he didn't seem to fancy women. A few more minutes of gossip, and she gave Sherlock his address, which she had memorized when he handed her his ID to rent the computer for ten minutes on Friday.

When Sherlock stepped outside the cafe, he was being watched by Mycroftian security forces again. Now he was annoyed. Whatever Mycroft's intentions were, Sherlock had specifically warned him not distract Sherlock from the case, and that was absolutely what he was doing. It had to stop. Another text from Lestrade arrived just then, and Sherlock fired off a reply without thinking.

Message received

Stop ignoring me.

To: G Lestrade

27 Sawyer Ln. SH

Immediately after he sent the text, he realized the source of his Mycroft problem, and it was so obvious he could kick himself. The phone. He had deliberately disabled the gps function in this unit, in order to prevent unwarranted spying. However, Mycroft had Ofcom in his pocket and it would be no great hardship for him to utilize cell site tracking to triangulate Sherlock's position. In fact, given the number of cell sites in London, it would be criminally easy. Sherlock immediately changed direction and hailed a cab. He was going to take his mobile home and leave it there; it was irritating, but he was too close to the killer now to waste time on hacking, and he couldn't afford the risk that Mycroft's nonsense would distract his attention at a crucial moment. So he rode home, cursing bloody, bloody Mycroft and his insistence on bollocksing up investigations.

Sherlock did not really lose his temper, however, until he noticed the car pulling up to the curb outside the flat just as he got out of the cab. A black sedan with heavily tinted rear windows; it would be ubiquitous if Sherlock didn't recognize the driver as one of Mycroft's. Sherlock was meant to notice the car, of course, that was the point. Perhaps Mycroft was waiting in the car to swoop into the flat and pester him. Or perhaps it was his personal assistant instead, sending text after text about the expression on Sherlock's face as he turned and gave the car the two-finger salute before he went inside the flat.

He still intended to leave the phone, but the presence of the car called for a more specialized response. The first thing he did was raid John's nightstand for a box of condoms, then march to the bathroom, where he could be reasonably assured of privacy.

Sherlock had first twigged Mycroft's aversion to observing him in the loo while he was in his cocaine phase, and he took full advantage. Sherlock foiled Mycroft's attempts to keep him monitored at all times by masturbating in full view of the hidden cameras. At that point Mycroft had tactically withdrawn, and restricted himself thereafter to sending minions into the flat if Sherlock was in the loo more than fifteen minutes at a stretch. Equally as important as the privacy was the fact that 221B Baker Street's bathroom, to John's loud and consistent irritation, contained Sherlock's emergency backup supply of precursor chemicals.

Sherlock had always been interested in the more practical applications of chemistry. When he was 6, he'd accidentally set the toolshed on fire while researching spontaneous combustion of metallic elements as a method of arson (he'd decided it was too unpredictable to be useful). At age 8, he'd started selling stink bombs to his classmates; not only did this remedy a significant curtailment of his pocket money, it had taught him a number of useful lessons about olfaction and human nature (he had experimented with time-delay mechanisms, but his customers always forked them up). At 13, he had engaged in his first experiments with illicit drug use and began synthesizing methamphetamine, which made him sharper and stronger and more himself than he had ever been before (Mycroft had locked him in his room with a stack of medical journals, and when he had read about neurotoxicity he was so terrified by what he'd almost done that he never touched the stuff again). The summer before he entered uni at 17, he had been approached by a group of pseudo-anarchists who wanted him to weaponize hydrogen cyanide. He'd turned them down, because he didn't need the money and because they were idiots, but decided to create the poison anyway as an intellectual exercise (luckily Mycroft had caught him before the rest of the government did, and the whole thing had been successfully hushed up).

When he was 19, he'd resumed selling stink and smoke bombs with the encouragement of the students in his bio-organic chemistry tutorial. It was astonishing how much of a market for juvenilia there was amongst bored and usually inebriated students, and since Mycroft had found out about the exploding fetal pigs and persuaded Mummy to cut off his stipend, the money had come in handy. It was also rather nostalgic, and Sherlock found himself falling in love with low-concentration methanethiol all over again.

So when he needed something to annoy and distract Mycroft's minions, it was a matter of perhaps ten minutes to craft a truly noxious but ultimately harmless mixture of chemicals with a tendency to stick to organic materials.

He shed his phone in the bathroom, to be sure Mycroft would not immediately realize he had left it. There was one more stop, at the bookcase to retrieve John's handgun. He then left the flat at a brisk pace, hands in pockets, and headed directly toward the car. It did not move and Sherlock decided that this also had been intended. Mycroft was there after all then, using the car's very visible presence to lure Sherlock into an interminable lecture. Sure enough, as he approached within a few meters, the window began to roll down, reviewing an ever-wider slice of leather interior and a manicured hand resting on top of an umbrella. Perfect.

Sherlock pulled the condom-balloon from his pocket and viciously whipped it sideways into the car. As the balloon exploded against the interior of the opposite window, he cut a hard right and rolled over the boot, then ducked into an unmonitored alley as several security minions left their posts and converged on the car. Sherlock didn't need to see the aftermath; previous experimentation had given him a good understanding of the amount of splashback caused by a balloon which was twisted shut instead of knotted. In addition to being their own reward, his chemical efforts would ensure him several minutes free of Mycroft's surveillance. That was enough time to get well away before Mycroft realized that he had left his phone and attempted an alternate method of tracking. By then, Sherlock would be at the killer's flat.

Sherlock ran for perhaps a kilometer before he hailed a cab. As he settled inside, he couldn't help thinking, John would have enjoyed that. He would have chastised Sherlock and told him it was immature, but he would have run too, and laughed with Sherlock as they gasped for air. It was these empty moments in cabs that made it hardest to avoid thinking of John. Of course Sherlock still had cases where John wasn't there, where Sherlock worked alone and solved the case alone and it was fine; it was absurd to feel this ridiculous loneliness just because he knew John was in prison and not waiting at the flat for Sherlock to come home and tell him how the case went. It would be easy enough for him to pretend, to make himself feel normal, but Sherlock despised self-delusion. Somehow it was just different when he hadn't chosen to work alone.

No one was home at the killer's building and it had a deadbolt, so Sherlock had to force the door. It was rather inelegant, which he hated, but at least no one was watching, so the lack of finesse wouldn't cost him any of his examination time. The door to the flat itself was simple enough to pick, and Sherlock opened it onto a spare, neat space. The air of everything being just so, not a thing out of place, reminded Sherlock very strongly of John's room. It was probably something in the military mind, right next to the part responsible for tightly-made beds and precision haircuts.

He needed to focus his attention; the flat was an external hard drive overflowing with data, it could tell Sherlock everything there was to know about the killer, but if he tried to take it all in his own processors would overload and crash. So he grazed instead of feasting, opening drawers and cabinets but only really dipping in when he sensed something significant. The first thing he looked for was a name, because Lestrade would need to know. It turned out to be Brian Rufus.

Rufus was definitely an office worker, a soldier and a failed medical student. Interestingly, Sherlock learned he had been mistaken about Rufus being a poor student; the state of his textbooks told Sherlock that he had been an excellent one, conscientious and with an excellent memory. He had not even needed to consult his books before he began expertly practicing surgery and phlebotomy on his victims, even though he had left medical school two years ago.

The contents of his pornography collection were indicative of his profound dislike of women and his persistent failure to live up to a personal ideal of masculinity. Simple to deduce, almost boring, but it confirmed Sherlock's conclusion that the murders were not about sex. Rufus enjoyed hurting people, but was not sexually aroused by it. Interestingly, the data indicated two sets of hands in the murders; the genital mutilation had probably been Rufus' idea, but the main message of the killings had come from someone else.

No one had visited Rufus at his home in four to six months. His kitchen was well-stocked with beer, and a brief examination of his closet indicated a man who came straight home from work every day. No friends. No lovers, not in years, but there was an expensive woman's bracelet in the top drawer of the desk. Old girlfriend, likely an experiment with intimacy; a failed one, they were not close and he never would have given her such an expensive gift, so the bracelet wasn't something he retrieved when the relationship ended. The only way he would have it was if she was dead. It was very dirty and the clasp was beginning to rust, so not a memento, but kept close by and looked at often, so it meant something. A trophy, then. Rufus had definitely abused her, so it was possible her death was accidental, but the trophy suggested that the murder was intentional. Undoubtedly suspicion had fallen on Rufus, forcing him out of university and into a dull office job that was beneath his abilities. The timing was perfect.

Everything Sherlock had found supported his deductions and the vast differences between this man and John Watson. But he still hadn't answered the most important question: where did Rufus take his victims to kill them? It hadn't been their homes, and it wasn't in Rufus' flat. Nor would it be anywhere too nearby Sawyer Lane, given the careful way Rufus had cleaned the crime scenes of all traces of himself. Sherlock returned to the closet to peruse Rufus' shoes, all lined up in neat rows two by two. The trainers were the most likely, and he took them over to the desk lamp to examine the treads and the laces. Ah, there. Traces of grease on the laces, which Sherlock sniffed and studied, and traces of grime caught in the treads on the sole of the right shoe. Sherlock scraped some free with his fingernail and examined it in the light, then briefly touched his tongue to the filth.

Oh, Lambeth. Of course.

The e-mail Rufus sent to John while posing as Whitlock was written in a hurry from an internet cafe that was likely only a few streets from his body storage facility. He was in a rush because he had just loaded Barstow's body into his car and did not like to be away from it too long. He had sent the e-mail, gotten into the car, and driven to Southampton. Sherlock pulled up a mental map of the area surrounding the internet cafe he'd been to that morning, identified four possible locations that could accommodate a walk-in freezer and play host to a series of murders, and left Rufus' building at a run.

Finding the right place was just process of elimination then, the sort of dull lead-checking Sherlock usually left to the police. When he picked the lock on the third possibility and walked inside, though, he was deeply glad that he was there to see.

Oh, it was gorgeous. It was like fucking Guy Fawkes in his occipital lobes. Rufus' charnel house was a barren space with just an industrial sink, a walk-in freezer, a metal table with a row of empty liter jugs underneath, but just glancing at it gave Sherlock enough data to cross-check and confirm every deduction about the murderer's methods. And best of all, nothing was clean. It had all been inexpertly scrubbed with soap, and there were traces of blood everywhere. There was a bin with a small heap of clothes that did not include any gloves, so in all likelihood there were prints everywhere as well. Sherlock was extremely careful not to touch anything, but he was grinning uncontrollably because he was going to box this room up and give it to Lestrade like a Christmas gift and John would be out of prison by dinner.

Sherlock closed the door behind him when he left, ensuring that the lock engaged, then he crammed two straightened paper clips into the keyhole and broke off their ends. He would go directly home in a cab and text Lestrade, and the police could be here looking at proof of John's innocence in twenty minutes. Of course they still had to find the killer, but sooner or later he would return to his apartment, which showed no signs of flight.

Sherlock was just turning back from the door when a man swung into view around the corner. He had short, blonde hair and an undeniably military bearing, but Sherlock did not need to deduce any further because the man dropped the Tesco bags he was carrying and legged it back up the alley. Sherlock shot after him, gaining steadily despite Rufus' speed, and closed the distance even further when Rufus paused by a car parked on the high street, fumbling with keys. When he glanced up and saw how close Sherlock had come, Rufus' eyes widened and he dropped the keys, taking flight up the sidewalk once more. The street was not crowded, but Sherlock still had to push past several pedestrians as he plunged after Rufus into traffic on the cross street.

Sherlock was distracted momentarily by a small lorry clipping him on the shoulder with its side mirror. It spun him halfway around and disoriented him for just a moment, costing precious seconds that let Rufus extend his lead by some fifty meters. But as the killer reached the next intersection, a black car with heavily tinted windows sped past Sherlock, cornered sharply, and came to a squealing halt in the crosswalk in front of Rufus. The rear passenger doors slammed open before the scream of the tires had died, and two men in suits emerged, one from either side. The one on the side nearest Sherlock seized Rufus by the shirt and slung him bodily into the backseat, then got in after him. Sherlock charged the car, but the man on the far side produced a handgun from his jacket and fired at Sherlock over the roof of the car.

Sherlock flung himself behind a parked car and pulled John's gun from his pocket. The likelihood of hitting the man was low, given his cover, but it seemed the thing to do. He popped up and tried to take aim, but two quick shots pinged off a metal surface and Sherlock was forced to duck back behind the car. As he did so, a door slammed and tires squealed, and he leapt out of cover just as the car accelerated up the cross street away from him. Sherlock pointed his gun at one of the tires, but the car was going too fast and the risk of a ricochet striking an innocent bystander was too great. He couldn't help feeling that he'd allowed the car containing Rufus to escape. He became aware that he was being stared at, pointed at. A woman shrieked something about guns and he remembered that John's gun was still in his hand.

Sherlock pocketed it and dashed back the way he had come; this time people didn't need to be pushed aside, they dove out of his way, and soon enough he was back where he had seen Rufus first. The spilled Tesco bags smelled of bleach; Rufus had come to clean up. But someone had taken him. Not rescued, but abducted. Why? It was now more important than ever that Sherlock get back to the flat and talk to Lestrade. The Yard was closer, but there was no guarantee that Lestrade would be there and Sherlock needed a detective who trusted him to examine the scene quickly, without a lot of posturing. He sharply regretted leaving the mobile at home. In future, he would have to acquire a secondary mobile phone in case of emergencies. Or perhaps a series of phones, which he could let Mycroft learn of, then give to customers at Speedy's in order to confuse his tracking efforts

The cabbie was dully uninterested in breaking the traffic laws in exchange for more money, so Sherlock sat fretting in the back of the cab as it pressed its way slowly, slowly through the evening commuters. The adrenaline was like a shot of espresso to his reasoning and as he considered what he had learned, his mind moved quicker and quicker and his thinking accelerated until every thought in the sequence seemed to be happening in the exact same moment.

The entire case was an equation that only looked like it ended with Rufus; in reality Rufus was simply the common denominator in the killings. The numerator was something Sherlock could only think of right now as Variable X. The trouble was that X was also the solution to the equation. Rufus performed the murders and added his own touches, but X planned them. Rufus wrote a last minute e-mail to keep John in Southampton, but X spent more than a month keeping a dead man alive in John's mind so that he would go to Southampton in the first place. Rufus kidnapped and killed and disposed of bodies, but he could not do all that and watch John Watson, so X was the one who made the calls that told Rufus John was out on his own and it was time to move. He strongly suspected that it was X's hand that placed DNA and fingerprint evidence pointing to John Watson in the appropriate places.

X was on top of every fraction and inside every set of brackets. And X was at the end of the equation, when Sherlock was on the cusp of solving it and X yanked Rufus into a car and sped away. But Sherlock was still close enough even without Rufus, he did have all the data, and he could solve for X. X was the campaign manager for a killer. A fifth columnist who played the long game. A psychopath who engineered a series of murders in order to send a message that the murders didn't matter in the slightest. A schemer who destroyed an ordinary man whose only unusual feature was his connection to Sherlock. The sudden abduction was the last integer slotting into place, and Sherlock felt the deductions cascading into one another like waterfalls until finally, at the bottom, they all merged into a single pool that gave X a name.

Moriarty.

Sherlock climbed the stairs to the flat two and three at a time. People said that anger warped and destroyed and distorted, but it only ever made Sherlock feel hard and calm and clear. Perhaps it was because he had expected this moment, perhaps even longed for it, ever since he'd staggered from the wreckage of the swimming pool. He'd known that Moriarty was not going to walk away from him. Counted on it, in fact. The only real surprise to Sherlock was that there had been no games, no puzzles, just Moriarty quickly and efficiently removing John from Sherlock's orbit. It seemed unlike him; Moriarty was hardly a man to shrink from murder, and it would probably have been a lot less trouble than all of this. So if removing John was not the point in itself, what was? Interchangeable corpses and interchangeable killers. What was Moriarty trying to tell him?

Back in the flat, the first thing Sherlock did was to fetch his mobile from the bathroom and check the missed messages and calls; it was sheer habit. The first was Mycroft's text, sent less than a minute after Sherlock's departure that afternoon.

Message received

That was childish, even for you.

Then there were a number of missed calls from Lestrade, followed by an increasingly frustrated series of text messages.

Message received

Burglary reported at Sawyer Lane. Was that you?

Message received

No evidence of anything other than recent consultive detecting. What am I meant to find here?

Message received

Gunshots fired in Lambeth high street, one of suspects tall, dark hair, posh greatcoat. ???

Message received

You'd better be dead in a skip because if you're not I'm going to murder you.

Message received

Text me back you stupid git.

Only as he glanced up did he really observe the flat properly and register that something was very different. His eyes snapped to the coffee table and the phone dropped to the carpet, completely forgotten. The table had been cleared of all the photos and reports and scribbled notes, which were nowhere in sight. Instead there was only a single business card, arranged face up in the exact center of the table. Sherlock leaned over and read without touching. The card belonged to Brian Rufus and listed him as a "debt recovery advisor" at Veihnult Riesen. Sherlock frantically dug his laptop out from under a mound of books. A few moments' googling informed him that Veihnult Riesen was an extremely profitable financial services firm with large offices in London. The address on the front page of their very slick website matched the address on the card on Sherlock's table.

He contemplated the card for a moment. A message, though the meaning was unclear. Sherlock half-expected to hear his phone ring, but of course that was ridiculous; that clearly was not the game being played this time. He reached out and flicked the card over. On the reverse, someone had printed four characters in block capitals with a cheap rollerball; too few for Sherlock to deduce anything about the handwriting. The card said simply: "11 PM."

Chapter 6: Endgame

[There are] enormous difficulties to be surmounted, even when there are hardly any pieces left, when playing against an adversary who knows how to use the resources at his disposal. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

Veihnult Riesen's headquarters consisted of a mid-sized office building fronting on a quiet street in outer London. It was a well-kept neighborhood, with street lights at frequent intervals and yellow "This area under closed circuit surveillance" signs everywhere, but at this hour no one was loitering on the street. The glass front door was covered by a dark curtain, as were the large windows to either side. The office appeared dark. Sherlock approached the front door warily and tugged the handle. Locked. He also noticed a security camera pointed directly at the door, its 'ready' light winking steadily. Obviously Moriarty would not put himself under the eye of a camera; there must be another entrance.

When he found the rear service, the door was slightly ajar. It did not suggest chance or burglary: the hasp was undamaged but marked by recent scratches from a padlock which had been removed. Obviously a person meticulous enough to take the padlock after opening the door would not leave it open by accident. Which meant the open door was intentional, a clear invitation. Sherlock took the gun out of his pocket and released the safety as he stepped inside, but he found only empty hallways full of doors to equally empty offices. The fluorescent lights along his route were all on. Of course, Sherlock had been invited; there would have been no sense in putting artificial roadblocks in his way to the meeting.

He could tell that he was heading to the front of the building and whatever public reception area Veihnult Riesen was equipped with. No doubt there would be marble and wood paneling; it seemed that sort of office, and his opponent had shown himself to be a man who valued not only appearance, but the sort of elaborate set pieces and reveals such a setting would suggest.

Therefore, Sherlock was not terribly surprised when he reached the well-lit, modern lobby and saw James Moriarty.

Moriarty was perched primly on the edge of the receptionist's desk, again dressed impeccably in a bespoke tailored suit and a ridiculously expensive pair of Gucci loafers. Sherlock's attention was drawn to Brian Rufus, who was seated in one of the stylish metal chairs along the side wall, to Moriarty's left. His hands were bound to the arms of the chair, his ankles to the legs. Beyond the seating area and the reception desk was an open space featuring a small fountain spilling water into a black marble basin and beyond that, the front door, surrounded by tall, curtained windows.

"Welcome!" Moriarty said. He truly did sound welcoming; one could almost be fooled into thinking he belonged here, that he was a businessman about to call a meeting of colleagues to order. But despite the appropriateness of his clothing, Sherlock thought that the man seemed as out of place here as he had at the pool, and there was still a certain half-wild look in his eye. Sherlock brought his arm up and leveled the gun at Moriarty, who appeared not to notice. "Have a seat. Can I offer you some coffee?"

Strangely, he did appear to have a brass-fitted coffee urn of the sort used for catering set up on the desk next to him, with a small selection of china cups and saucers. He gestured broadly, as if suggesting Sherlock sit on the large, blocky planter across from him. Sherlock slowed his steps as he came further into the room, wanting to continue examining details but unwilling to take his eyes from Moriarty. "I'll stand, thank you."

Moriarty slid a cup under the spigot and served himself coffee. He sipped daintily from the cup. "Lower the gun. It's bad manners to point a weapon at a man who's offering you a job."

"Looking to recruit more serial killers? I'd have thought you were all staffed up at present." Sherlock tilted his head in Rufus' direction without moving the gun. Something was wrong. The lobby was all open spaces and clean lighting, there were no rafters and the curtains covering the windows were very, very dark; there was nowhere to hide snipers here, but Moriarty was not armed and did not appear even slightly alarmed at having a gun waved at him.

"I may have an opening quite soon," Moriarty said brightly. Rufus made a sort of choking noise. "Hush," Moriarty said without looking, his voice like iron. Then the genial businessman was back. "But no, I think you've shown a certain...management potential."

The suggestion did not surprise Sherlock. The confrontation at the pool hadn't been about the threat, obviously, because that could easily have been accomplished without the risk of Moriarty exposing himself. And snipers aside, it had been a risk. No, Moriarty had been giving him an entirely different message by appearing in person, flirting, giving Sherlock "a glimpse, just a teensy glimpse" of what he was doing. It was an invitation. You can't stop me, but you can join me. Consulting detective and consulting criminal, two sides of the same coin. The message in his abduction of John had also been clear. He is a liability and he is beneath you. I am neither.

Moriarty had gotten his attention, but not his affection, for that little stunt. Perhaps he had not anticipated Sherlock's reaction, had assumed that Sherlock must logically agree with his characterization of John as his pet, as a mere amusement. But in fact that was not Sherlock's view of John at all, so when Moriarty had posed the unspoken question Will you join me? Sherlock hadn't bothered to give it any thought at all before he answered No. Moriarty was smart and he was interesting, but Sherlock did not like him.

"You've been so bored these past few months," Moriarty said, smiling. "I know you. You've been as bored as I have. No challenge at all, are they, those ordinary people with their ordinary problems?" Moriarty sipped his coffee again, and casually swung one ankle up over the opposite knee. Sherlock kept his silence, to prevent himself blurting out something obvious. "I was quite flattered when you called me brilliant. You wonder what it would be like, to work with someone as amoral and brilliant as yourself."

And Sherlock had wondered, of course. He couldn't not think about things. So he'd thought about it, if playing with Moriarty would be as interesting as playing against him had been. If planning an unsolvable crime would be more interesting than unraveling it. How novel, to never be bored, because the danger was constant. But when he began to think even semi-seriously about Moriarty's implicit offer, he fetched up with a bump against a single thought- John wouldn't like it -that made him discard the entire line of reasoning. He remembered the disgusted twist to John's mouth as he stood, strapped in Semtex, listening to Moriarty's boasting. He remembered the first time he'd had to take a second look at John's face to recognize the expression there, and John's acidic reply when he said in astonishment I've disappointed you. He knew John would tell him that even considering Moriarty's offer was far more than a bit not good, and somehow over the past few months, not disappointing John had become even more important than preventing himself from becoming bored.

"I'll pass," Sherlock said evenly. "What fun's the game if there's no one on the other side of the board?"

"Ah!" Moriarty breathed. "Well- we won't use their board." Another smile, showing teeth. "And we can rewrite the rules."

"You could always come play on my side."

Moriarty laughed, the response Sherlock expected. "Oh, you don't mean that. You'd be bored to tears. And so would I. And there's nothing we despise more than being bored." Moriarty drained the last of his coffee, and set cup and saucer neatly back beneath the spigot. He looked pointedly at the gun, still in Sherlock's hand. "Your arm is getting tired; how long do you think you can hold that thing up? Do put it down."

"I don't think so. I'm actually rather comfortable." Mentally comfortable, anyway. He was still waiting for the pin to drop, and he'd rather he had the option of putting a bullet in Moriarty when it did.

Moriarty's eyes barely flickered, but it was enough to remind Sherlock that he had his back to the door. He only managed to turn halfway towards it before something caught him a wicked blow on the ear. Sherlock's finger squeezed the trigger almost involuntarily, but his arm had swung up and the shot went wild, plowing a groove in expensive, cream-colored wallpaper. Then skilled fingers were pinching the nerves in his wrist- still bruised from that ultimately pointless experiment with the rope- while a meaty fist delivered heavy punches to his ribs. Sherlock twisted his side towards his attacker to present a smaller target. He wavered between flailing punches at the other man and trying to twist his wrist free, and did very poorly at both. With his hand pinioned and his back half-turned he could not get far enough away to properly box. His hand finally went numb and the gun was slapped from his loosened fingers; at the same time Sherlock was hooked by a foot behind his ankle and slammed hard to the floor. He clawed for the gun, but his opponent swiftly scooped it up and tossed it to Moriarty, who immediately pointed it at Sherlock.

"Wait in the hallway," Moriarty said without taking his eyes off Sherlock. "I never make a request more than twice," Moriarty said cheerfully. "Once people get in the habit of saying 'no' to you...Well, there's no getting anything done." The crazed something in his eyes drained down into his smile and his voice hardened again. "Have. A. Seat."

With some effort, Sherlock regained his feet and sat gingerly on the edge of the planter. Moriarty set the gun on the desk next to the china. Sherlock was closer to Moriarty than he had been, but they were still separated by more distance than a desperate leap could bridge, and Moriarty could have the gun in his hand before Sherlock reached him. He noticed that while he had been fighting the henchman, Moriarty had donned a pair of latex gloves, which he now adjusted by delicately plucking at the ends of the fingers.

"So, I take it you got my message? I hope I wasn't whispering too quietly." Moriarty resumed their earlier conversation as if the interlude with the gun had not happened.

"On the contrary, you practically shouted it." People are interchangeable sacks of meat. "But one for one is hardly statistically significant. There are just over seven million people in the greater London area." Sherlock gently pressed the side of his head, trying to gauge the severity of his wound, and winced. "There's bound to be some overlap."

"Hairsplitting!" Moriarty giggled. "The point is, there are seven million of them; there are only two of us."

There's only one of John, Sherlock wanted to say, but didn't, because that would sound absurd, and he could see where this was going.

"That lark at the pool was such a surprise, Sherlock!" Moriarty said. "And you know yourself how rarely anything in the mundane world surprises. You and your tame doctor, working together. Saving the day! Having a pet seemed to suit you so well, I thought I might like a little doggie of my very own." Moriarty smiled brightly and darted a glance at Rufus, who blanched. "It was lovely at first- he was so obedient and loyal- but then it got tedious, protecting him from the dog warden." Rufus stared at the floor, hunching his shoulders miserably. "So I thought, one dog's as good as another, isn't it?"

Sherlock grimaced, less at Moriarty's words than at his own cold rage. "He doesn't seem very loyal now."

"That's the trouble with dogs," Moriarty said. "In the end, they always disappoint you." Moriarty picked up the gun and toyed with it, tossing it lightly from hand to hand. "You should be thanking me. Though it didn't take much at all, really- a few skin cells, a fingerprint. And you practically finished the job."

"Shut up." There was no reason this should affect him. John's imprisonment was not an error, it was a frame-up.

"Sending him out to buy the rope? Perfect touch. One would almost think you welcomed my help."

"Shut up!" Sherlock didn't think he meant to shout that. He breathed deeply and tried to calm down. Everything had been engineered, even his own deductions. Not his responsibility, surely.

"Ooh, sore spot!" Moriarty smiled again. "Really think about the past few days. Isn't it faster, simpler, without him at your heels?" And Moriarty's wrongness brought Sherlock even more clarity, because once again, he had failed to read Sherlock's feelings about John. "Slowing you down? Making you vulnerable?" Aiding his work. Guarding his back

"I don't find this line of reasoning terribly persuasive," Sherlock said.

"Well, maybe I should make it easier for you." Moriarty hopped off the desk and strode over to Rufus, spinning a neighboring chair out of the way so that he could press the gun to the bound man's head.

"No," Sherlock said involuntarily. He had the links, the deductions, but he needed to put Rufus in Lestrade's hands or it wouldn't be enough to contradict the case against John.

“Yes." Moriarty jabbed Rufus with the gun and Sherlock flinched. "Beautiful." His voice gentled. "Even in this, they are interchangeable. It's as good as having your pet doctor here." Moriarty cocked the handgun. "Have you ever held a man's life in your hands?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, thinking of a hundred cases where only he could unlock an innocent man's alibi; but he knew that wasn't what the question meant.

"No!" Moriarty almost shouted, his calm amusement twisting into loathing for a fraction of a second. "Don't play at stupidity!" The smile was back, all teeth. "I mean really held it."

Sherlock saw the secondary trap, and oh but it was brilliant. He didn't have to fake the expression of fascination that he now put on. Almost as fascinating was the momentary break in Moriarty's self-control, and Sherlock was tempted to say something else dully obvious just to make the mask slip again. But Moriarty's knuckles were nearly white, and his reaction if Sherlock went off-script again might be unpredictable. "No," he answered instead, truthfully this time. But his voice was teasing, because he was back to playing the game. "I thought you didn't like to dirty your hands."

"Well, technically I'm dirtying yours." It was all laid before him like a chess problem: the few remaining pieces static on the board, and Moriarty holding a handgun covered with Sherlock's fingerprints. Even if he escaped a murder charge, the police would never listen to him again.

Sherlock's voice was perfectly level when he answered immediately, "You took my rook, so I take your pawn?" Really John was more a queen, at once the most flexible and least subtle piece on the board. Sherlock was the rook: moving further and more directly than any other chessman and at angles to most of them, so that only the queen could really move in parallel. But that would be giving entirely too much away. "Hardly sporting."

"We're not hobbyists," Moriarty said. "We're playing by tournament rules, now."

The lunatic wanted Sherlock to simply tip the board over and walk away with him, and it wasn't even tempting. It was clear Moriarty, despite being the only man he had ever met capable of understanding him, didn't understand him at all. Sherlock let himself reply "Genius," in that breathy voice Moriarty seemed to crave, because he was too good an actor to show his crushing disappointment. This was Moriarty's endgame. Given the position of the pieces, the best that Sherlock could realistically hope for was a draw. And if he let himself be outmaneuvered, the pawn was not going to be the only one to die.

But Sherlock had played a lot of chess, and he was very, very good at rook and pawn versus rook.

Sherlock prided himself on how smoothly he was able to unfold himself from his seat on the planter. His head was pulsing with pain from the wound and a wicked headache, and it was a serious effort to banish all hesitancy from his posture as he crossed the open space to Rufus' chair. He had never acted so well, or to such an audience. Moriarty stood with the muzzle of the gun pressed to Rufus' head, his body turned sideways to Sherlock.

Sherlock stopped and the gun was tilted slightly toward him, the gesture an obvious invitation. Slowly, deliberately, Sherlock reached out. Their forearms pressed against each other, expensive jackets catching a bit as Sherlock's palm cradled the opposite side of the handgun's grip. Moriarty's breath hitched very slightly as Sherlock's left trigger finger came to rest lightly on top of Moriarty's right.

"Yes." Moriarty's had tilted his head up and his breath, calm and even again, warmed the back of Sherlock's neck. Moriarty quickly reversed their grip, gently caressing Sherlock's finger with his own. Sherlock now gripped the trigger directly. Gooseflesh rose on his arms; he had not been this physically intimate with another human being since he was eight years old.

He wondered if Moriarty's heart was pounding as hard as his own.

"It's so easy, Sherlock," Moriarty murmured. His arm was tense, finger tight over Sherlock's; it would take Sherlock longer to overpower him than it would take Moriarty to squeeze. Rufus emitted another sob, which both of them ignored. Awful as it was, the act had improved his position; Sherlock had at least a chance to survive now, even if Rufus still did not.

In that perfect moment, Sherlock's mind was filled with nothing but immediate physical sensation. The warmth of the gun grip, the soft huff of Moriarty's breathing, the faint odor of aftershave and warm leather, the throbbing pain in his temple. Sherlock's mind had never been so empty, and it gave him a different kind of euphoria from the rush brought on by cases or cocaine. As they hung suspended, he wondered distantly if this was what it always felt like to stand on the cusp of murder.

He was adrift, and he had no plan. Why couldn't he seem to think past this instant?

He felt Moriarty's finger begin to tighten.

The door to the offices slammed open and into the wall, a double bang that sounded like thunder in the silent room. The moment shattered like a dropped glass and Sherlock's mind was suddenly moving whip-fast again as Moriarty's finger slackened. Sherlock jerked the gun towards him and Moriarty squeezed the trigger, but the distraction had been enough and the firing of the gun merely made another alteration to the office's decor.

There was nothing brilliant or calculating about the ensuing struggle between Sherlock and Moriarty. They grappled desperately for the gun, Sherlock's reach and wiry muscle against Moriarty's coiled strength and bulldog-like tenacity, until somehow Sherlock got Moriarty on his back on the receptionist's desk and was banging the bastard's right hand against it. The coffee urn and the china crashed to the floor when Moriarty tried to kick, and he got his teeth into the elbow that was in his face as Sherlock caught his wrist just right on the corner of the desk. They both shouted in pain and the gun went spinning off across the room.

Then it was more wrestling, both of them furious and panting and beyond words. Moriarty got his fists in Sherlock's shirt and managed to roll them off the desk, so that Sherlock landed on his back with both of their full weights. It drove the breath out of him, and kept him from getting his hands up fast enough to stop Moriarty from gripping his throat. Sherlock heaved for air and pried at the throttling hands and desperately hoped that his last sight in life wasn't going to be the wide-eyed, frenzied rage painted across Jim Moriarty's face.

His eyes had rolled back into his head and his hands were only plucking uselessly at Moriarty's when the chokehold suddenly disappeared and Moriarty rolled off him. Something large and solid slammed into Sherlock's left shoulder and made a sickening, audible crunch.

"FUCK!" roared a voice right on top of him. "Fucking- sorry! Sorry!" Not Moriarty's voice. Most of Sherlock's limited energy was going toward sucking great, painful gasps of oxygen into his lungs, but he managed to spare some to focus his eyes.

DI Lestrade was standing over him with the coffee urn hanging from his hands. He let it fall to the ground and shouted, "STOP, POLICE!" as he jumped over Sherlock's prone form and pelted past the reception desk towards the front door. Sherlock rolled up on his right side and could just see past the desk to the figure of Moriarty, leaning against the door onto the street and fumbling with the lock.

Moriarty got the lock open and disappeared through the door and Lestrade slammed through after him. Relative silence fell again; the only sounds were Rufus' halting whimpers and Sherlock's own raspy breathing. With an effort, Sherlock dragged himself to his feet with his right arm, using the desk as a crutch. Fortunately the adrenaline still surging through his system was dulling the pain in his body, although his headache was still hellish. He tried to make his body run towards the door, but after two steps he had to give it up as a bad job. He was certain that his clavicle was broken, and probably his scapula as well. He had damaged his own hand inadvertently during the struggle for the gun, it was throbbing and he couldn't seem to move the fingers properly, and his back was going to hurt like the devil. Besides which, his vision was still white around the edges and every labored breath felt like he was inhaling fire. He probed gently at his throat and decided that there probably wouldn't be any permanent damage to his larynx.

Rufus was safe enough at the moment, tied to his chair, so Sherlock went searching for the gun. With his heart still pounding and senses attenuated everything seemed to be moving unbearably slowly, and it felt like ages before Sherlock found John's handgun over by the fountain. He flipped the safety on, then grimaced in disgust when he found that at some point a massive gash had been torn through his coat, rendering the right-hand pocket useless. With his left hand unable to grip, he couldn't get the gun into his left coat pocket, so he crammed it awkwardly into his trouser pocket instead and did his best to smooth the jacket over it. He splashed his face with water from the cascade dropping into the marble basin, and it felt cool and lovely. Sherlock desperately wanted a drink, but he could smell the faint chemical tang of the water and didn't quite trust it.

Instead, he walked back over to the door that went deeper into the office, and noted that the doorknob had made a half-inch-deep indentation in the wall when it slammed open. Lying half into the room was the man who had disarmed Sherlock earlier. The man was thoroughly unconscious and Sherlock was pleased to note a blossoming bruise over his right eye and the blood dripping down his chin. Lestrade had evidently cost him his roman nose and several teeth. No one else was in the hallway, and there was no sound from the offices. If any other minions had been there, they had long since retreated.

He walked back into the lobby when he heard the front door again, to find Lestrade panting against the reception desk. "Lost him. Had a car. Can't run. Like I used to."

"No matter," Sherlock said, his voice barely a whisper. Hardly surprising that the Met couldn't bring down Moriarty, was it? And Lestrade had obviously put in a good effort despite being well past his prime. If only Sherlock had the wind to join the chase himself. "I'm sure your constables fared no better."

Lestrade looked up at him. "Just me." Sherlock blinked. Lestrade had come alone? Of course, his wits were wandering. There were no signs that Lestrade had brought help, it was just a foolish assumption. "That was the bomber? Moriarty?" Lestrade was regaining his breath somewhat, but Sherlock still hurt, and he just nodded in response. "This is the second time you've had to be bailed out, you know. You might consider calling me first, next time."

"If I had known he would be here, perhaps-" Sherlock rasped. But the adrenaline was fading and he suddenly felt too exhausted to bother finishing the lie.

"Stubborn sod." Lestrade's tone was almost affectionate. "Did you solve it? Tell me it wasn't Moriarty, we'll never get that into court."

Sherlock smiled faintly. "What do you think?"

"Did you solve it?" Lestrade said, more desperately.

Sherlock pointed with his good hand. "Brian Rufus. Go to 49 Lambeth Walk- that's where he stored his victims' bodies before disposing of them. The crime scenes were elegantly staged, but he left traces all over his bolthole." Sherlock's throat hurt even worse now, but he couldn't stop talking, not until Lestrade was convinced. "Ex-army, saw action in Iraq. Trained as a surgeon but sent down when he was suspected of murdering his girlfriend. Which he did, incidentally. No friends, no family, no lovers. He-"

"Oi, Sherlock," Lestrade said sharply, making a placating hand gesture. "That's enough, all right? You sound like hell." Lestrade glanced over at the thug in the doorway. "Hope he stays out a while, I had to use my cuffs on the man guarding the back door."

Sherlock thought about sitting back down on the planter and decided he'd really rather not. He dragged one of the visitor chairs well away from Rufus and sat on that instead, back to the wall. Much better. Lestrade was on his mobile, ordering an armed response team and what sounded like an excessive number of ambulances. He clicked the phone shut and gave Sherlock a severe look that he was more used to seeing on John. "I called you an ambulance," he said. "And you're going to hospital even if I have to bloody well hit you over the head with that coffee urn."

Sherlock ignored that. "Following me?" Sherlock asked. He couldn't think how else Lestrade could have made his way here.

"No. I...assumed you'd come to me when you found something." Lestrade looked embarrassed. "I guess I shouldn't have. I knew you were angry with me."

"Not angry." Sherlock closed his eyes wearily. He didn't have the energy for a conversation about emotions, not now. "So how?"

"Anonymous tip. A concerned citizen called me, said that you could use a hand." Lestrade dragged out a chair for himself and sat down with a sigh of relief, rubbing his thigh. Cramping muscle? No, Lestrade clearly exercised regularly, he'd already slowed his breathing to normal. Old football injury.

Sherlock noticed all that merely out of habit, while he wondered: Who told Lestrade? Who knew he was here? Moriarty, obviously. Couldn't have called himself, but he could have ordered it. Possible but it didn't fit with the rest of his plan; why were there guards on the doors if Moriarty had deliberately planned an interruption? Sherlock remembered the CCTV camera pointed at the front entrance and thought of a second possibility.

"What did he say, Lestrade?" Sherlock forced out. "His exact words."

Lestrade's eyes raked him. "Is it important?"

"Very." Just not for the reason Lestrade was thinking.

"He gave me the address and he said...Your consultant could use your assistance. He does insist on getting himself into these situations."

The inflection in Lestrade's voice was almost perfect and Sherlock half-chuckled. Mycroft. The interfering git. He moved to change the subject before Lestrade could ask any questions. "I suppose you'll be curious about the gun."

"What gun?" Lestrade's sounded perfectly innocent, and Sherlock almost snapped back an insult before he saw the corners of the detective inspector's mouth turning up very slightly.

"Ah. Quite." His heart rate was back to normal, and he felt almost peaceful in the afterglow. Solving a case always had that effect, even if the result had not been entirely satisfying. He might even sleep tonight, possibly.

Lestrade sighed. "I've broken more regulations today...I'll be lucky if they don't banish me to traffic enforcement."

"Chin up, detective inspector. You've caught a serial killer, after all. I'm sure you'll be the Yard's darling once word gets out of how your tireless efforts kept an innocent man out of prison.

"I didn't do any of that, and you know it." Lestrade's voice was so low and close to broken that it almost sounded like a growl.

"Your guilt is ridiculous," Sherlock said, irritation flaring. Honestly, the mental gymnastics people went to, clinging to their self-indulgent emotions. He'd had more than enough of that tonight.

"Who says I'm feeling guilty? I've done nothing but my job," Lestrade snapped. Even as he defended himself, his inflection sounded off. My job, said with utter disgust.

"You are John's friend but could not ignore strong indicators of his guilt. The conflict is obvious," Sherlock said. "Our professions force certain strictures on us. Yours requires you to sublimate your personal responsibilities to your professional ones. For example, that is why you are estranged from your teenaged children."

Lestrade slowly shook his head, but he let that pass. "And your profession requires you to attend midnight conferences with psychopaths." He scrubbed his hand over his face. "Christ, what a night."

"Someone needs to go to Lambeth immediately," Sherlock rasped. Lestrade seemed to think the work was over, which alarmed him. "Before Moriarty tries to cover his tracks."

"Not you," Lestrade said firmly. "You're going in an ambulance, I told you."

"I am not." Sherlock glared. He was exhausted and could use some painkillers, true, but some things were more important than personal comfort. This case was at the top of that list.

"I tell you what," Lestrade said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I'll write off yet another night of sleep and take care of the scene myself if you let me drive you to the hospital first." Sherlock opened his mouth to object, but Lestrade cut him off. "And we'll stop by Baker Street and you can put whatever's in your pocket back where it came from, because I suspect John is going to get home before you do." Sherlock snapped his mouth shut. It was not a terrible idea, at that. With the case solved, he could just about trust Lestrade not to muck up the crime scene. Besides which, John would have very strong feelings about guns being taken to hospital. There could be shouting. He liked the rows when he was bored, but he wasn't bored just now.

"Fine," Sherlock said, but he noted Lestrade's expression of satisfaction and made a mental note to seriously undermine him at the next possible opportunity.

After all, Moriarty had been right about one thing: you couldn't let people get too used to having their own way.

Epilogue: Draw

So long as there is no great advantage of material, even with a good position, a player, no matter how strong, cannot afford to relax his attention even for one move. -José Raúl Capablanca, Chess Fundamentals

John Watson couldn't seem to stop laughing, despite how wildly inappropriate it was at every juncture. He chuckled when the prosecutor informed the judge that he was dropping the charges, then shook John's hand and haltingly apologized. He giggled when Mrs. Hudson found him lounging in the doorway of 221B- his keys weren't in his pocket when he was arrested- and burst into tears. He sniggered when Lestrade shamefacedly described how he had- unintentionally! -belted Sherlock with a coffee urn. He howled when Sherlock objected to his morphine privileges being revoked and took revenge by deducing his surgeon's professional and sexual hangups in front of a flock of students and internists. It all seemed a bit backwards; shouldn't the mental breakdown happen when they charged you with murder, not when they cleared you?

When he wasn't just completely giddy with relief and the delight of being back in his own flat, he sometimes started to feel a touch guilty. He knew it was absurd, he was the one who had been in jail and was still being pointed at in the street by wide-eyed civilians, but after all he'd been sitting around bored out of his mind and perfectly safe, while Sherlock was running all over London risking his neck. He'd been expecting Moriarty's re-appearance every day since the pool, knew it was inevitable, but it was still a nasty shock to hear it was him behind the murders and the frame job. Hearing how Moriarty had again almost killed Sherlock made him furious. Whenever he looked at Sherlock's throat and saw the livid outlines of fingers there, he burned with a terrifyingly strong urge to crush and destroy. Perhaps that was how Sherlock had felt, ripping the explosives off him at the swimming pool.

The only thing more infuriating was Sherlock's refusal to repeat what Moriarty had said to him. He could and would describe the pattern of the wallpaper in Veihnult Riesen's offices, the angle at which Rufus had been positioned relative to the reception desk, the number of scuff marks on Moriarty's shoes, but he always glossed over the contents of the conversation. The doctors talked a lot about retrograde amnesia and the effects of psychological trauma. That was true for ordinary people, like Rufus- the man was in terror of Moriarty, he stood up at his own bail hearing and begged the judge to send him to the highest security prison they had- but when it came to Sherlock it was all bollocks. John knew that Sherlock just didn't want to talk about it. On his second night in hospital, someone had delivered an enormous, expensive flower arrangement to the front desk. Sherlock took one look at it and declared, "Moriarty," and Lestrade had to be talked out of calling for a bomb squad. He did insist on having the thing destroyed by the Yard, and Sherlock didn't protest, but he spent a long time staring at the card that had come with the flowers. When John asked what it said, he crumpled it and pretended not to hear.

John pried it out of Sherlock's hands when he passed into another morphine-induced slumber, but he still had no idea what Moriarty could have meant by "THAT WAS TWICE." Whatever else it meant, John was sure Moriarty wouldn't stay gone for long.

The final tally of Sherlock's injuries was: two broken fingers on his left hand, sprained left wrist, mild concussion (with a hematoma the size of a golf ball), extensive bruising across the back and chest, a severely bruised larynx, and of course three fractures in the left shoulder that required surgery to repair. Upon hearing this recital for the first time, John had looked solemnly across the chart at Sherlock and said, "Christ, you're hopeless. We'd best just take you out back and shoot you." Then he had giggled. Sherlock had also found it deeply funny, what with all the morphine he was on at the time. Lestrade was less amused, mostly because he still felt bad about the coffee urn. Donovan, sitting in the corner of the room going through photos of Sherlock's injuries, had actually smiled at John a tiny bit. She'd been behaving very strangely since he came home, particularly around Sherlock. When John said he hoped she and Anderson and the rest hadn't been too horrible while he was locked up, Sherlock had laughed scornfully and said of course not, so that was that, John supposed.

And now Sherlock had come home, because since the incident with the surgeon everyone had become wonderfully sympathetic to Sherlock's repeated requests for release. The internist who scuttled in with the discharge forms almost threw them at John; she hadn't witnessed the drama but gossip spread fast in a hospital. John had wheeled Sherlock, sitting stiff and dignified in the chair -because John had threatened to tear up the discharge papers if he argued about it- out to the curb and hailed a taxi. It was unnaturally quiet in the flat most of the time because Sherlock was still fairly loopy with co-dydramol, but John intended to enjoy the peace while it lasted; Sherlock unable to use one arm and under orders not to stress his back was going to be a nightmare.

It had been a long and trying day, and John was knackered; what he wanted most in all the world was a cup of tea and then his own bed. But he had a phone call to make, and he needed to make it while Sherlock was still asleep. As it was, he'd had to wait through a lengthy and rather garbled dissertation on forensic footwear evidence before the medication kicked in and Sherlock passed out face-down in an issue of The Lancet. There might not be another chance.

John found the mobile where he expected, in the pocket of Sherlock's coat, which had been flung over the back of one of the sitting room chairs. He paused for a few moments before he dialed, because this was a rather Sherlockian invasion of privacy. But he didn't have the number, and God knew Sherlock would never give it to him. He hit the call button.

"Dr. Watson."

John tried not to be surprised that the man knew it was him despite the fact that he was calling from Sherlock's phone, the fact that he hadn't even spoken yet. "Mycroft." He paused a moment. "Thanks. For the solicitor, I mean." John hadn't intended to say that at all, but it felt right. He had been brought up to be polite.

"You are very welcome." Mycroft sounded almost thoughtful. "I doubt my brother has even noticed, Dr. Watson, but you really are quite extraordinarily good for him."

John wasn't sure what to say to that, so he forged on as planned. "I talked to Lestrade. I figured out it was you that told him Sherlock was in trouble and, well." He paused, but there was silence on the other end of the line. "Sherlock knows too, obviously, but he won't ever say so. Um. So I guess I just wanted to say- thank you. For, you know. Saving him." John flushed, and in the even longer pause that followed thought that this was probably the stupidest thing he had ever tried to say: thanks for saving my lunatic best friend because I was in jail and couldn't do it myself.

"You know, John," Mycroft said, in the same moderate tones he always used. "I could say the same to you." The click as Mycroft hung up was barely audible.

John replaced the phone in Sherlock's pocket and made himself a cup of tea. It gave him plenty of time to think through what Mycroft had said. He thought about Sherlock Holmes, pursuing the case to its end, facing down Moriarty to keep John out of jail. He thought about his flatmate, taking time out from the case just to turn up at the prison and see he was all right. He thought about his friend, saying that even though there was no data supporting it he knew that John was innocent; looking startled and outraged that anyone could come to any other conclusion.

John didn't know about "saving" Sherlock; didn't know what that entailed, from Mycroft's perspective, other than refusing to move out and occasionally pushing him out of the path of a bullet. It felt wrong to be thanked just for sticking around, especially when it was not as if he'd done it out of complete altruism. (But how sick was John, that even when Sherlock's lifestyle had gotten him kidnapped, stabbed, choked, shot at, blown up, and now framed for murder, it hadn't even occurred to him to want to leave?) But if by sticking around with this mad, dangerous, brilliant ponce he had somehow improved the world, or even just a Sherlock-shaped corner of it, maybe he should take those thanks. He could think of it as a fringe benefit.