Becoming Sherlock - The Irregulars E-Book

Sarah J. Naughton

• Herausgeber: Storytel Original
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Becoming Sherlock
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 461

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Raymond Bannister is a wealthy man living a secure life, but the day that he receives a single slipper in an envelope his world falls apart. He seeks out a place in the bad part of town - is he looking for his own demise? He is found slashed down in a dirty alleyway. The crime and the crime scene are inexplicable to Lestrade, and he seeks the help of his new consultant detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. This beginning will lead us back in time, to India, and it will lead us to the strange origin of a group of children that call themselves the Irregulars. Is the answer to this case also the answer to the big question - who is Sherlock Holmes? Meanwhile the emotions between Missy Hudson and John Watson are stirring, as a certain Mary Morstan seeks the help of Sherlock. A mysterious and cruel new player has entered the London underworld, his signature is just the letter M.Follow the second instalment of the Becoming Sherlock series.

Leseprobe

Becoming Sherlock: The Irregulars

© Anthony Horowitz & Sarah J. Naughton 2024

Cover design: Åkestam & Holst

© Storytel Original 2024

www.storytel.com

ISBN 978-91-8067-363-1

Written by Sarah Naughton

From an idea by Anthony Horowitz

Chapter 1

White Spiders

Raymond notices the man as soon as he walks in. A great slab of meat and muscle, skin the colour of liquorice, polished to a gloss. He ambles to the bar and sits down on a stool at the end, making it creak under his (surely steroid-enhanced) weight. Beneath his black do-rag, perspiration beads his brow, glinting in the uplights that illuminate the spirit bottles. A grey training vest hangs loose over his pectorals, and through the baggy armholes, Raymond catches a glimpse of a bulging six-pack and gang scars, including the word ‘LOSS’ carved into his upper arm. This is an acronym for the tenets of one of the main London gangs: ‘Loyalty, Obedience, Silence and Strength.’ Raymond closes his eyes momentarily as he remembers the scars being explained to him from behind a perspex screen.

When he opens them, the man is leaning over the bar to attract the attention of the barman washing glasses in the sink. Raymond looks down at his own glass, which is almost in need of a refill.

‘Sorry, mate,’ the barman says to the man in the vest, wiping his hands on a grubby towel. ‘Didn’t see you there.’

But, as he heads over to serve him, Raymond reaches out to halt his progress. ‘I was first.’

The barman glances at his other customer, who nods graciously.

Raymond asks the barman for another shot of the throat-scouring hooch they make in the yard out back, then changes his mind and demands ale, then changes it back again. He does this three times over.

All the while, the man at the end of the bar waits patiently, paring his neat fingernails with a pocketknife.

Raymond will have to try another tack. ‘Tell me,’ he says loudly to the barman, now pouring the drink he has finally settled on. ‘When did you start serving farm animals?’

The man in the vest goes very still, then his head slowly tilts upwards.

The barman, too, has frozen, and the song playing on the jukebox chooses that moment to reach its conclusion. Silence falls across the bar, and Raymond can feel, behind his back, the attention of the other punters, scenting the new atmosphere like a shark scents blood.

Swivelling on his stool, Raymond addresses the man in the vest directly. ‘You look like one of those cows they used to pack with hormones to bulk them up … before they realised it gave us all cancer.’

The man blinks at him, the knife glinting in his palm.

‘You know what, mate,’ the barman says nervously, ‘I reckon you’ve probably had enough. Go home to your boyfriend, eh?’

Raymond turns on him. ‘Firstly, I have a wife. Secondly, I am in the middle of a conversation, so do you mind?’

He turns back to the man in the vest who is gazing at him with blank black eyes.

‘Seriously, though,’ Raymond enunciates carefully, ‘You look ridiculous.’

The man in the vest does not even rise from his stool, let alone throw a punch with one of those massive fists. He just watches impassively as Raymond is ejected from the bar by the barman and one of the burly security guards, who don’t even retaliate when he tries to headbutt them.

Raymond’s silk tie isn’t even disarranged; his Egyptian-cotton shirt is still tucked in, and barely a hair is out of place as he stands swaying in the cobbled alley. He has a double shadow, thrown by the full moon resting on the rooftops to the east and the lantern on the wall of the bar. As if he is not alone at all, but there are two people, standing very close.

He walked a long way tonight to end up south of the river, where the tanners and skinners ply their trade, where the air stinks and the waterways are so polluted even the rats won’t go near them. Not the place for a respectable businessman whose devoted wife waits for him in their grand Fulham mansion. Not the place for that man, no. But what of another, different man?

He tilts his head up to the moon. A smuggler’s moon. A moon inviting mischief from those who are young and stupid enough to be fearless. Those who imagine themselves impervious to harm, to change, to loss.

Strength, sacrifice, obedience.

Loyalty.

Something catches his eye: a chimney with a terracotta dragon curling around it, the coal smoke seeming to billow from its nostrils. He knows that chimney. He has run across that roof in the past, laughing like an idiot, as he was almost toppled from the apex by the clanking bag over his shoulder.

He looks around him. Yes, this place is familiar: the rooftops outlined against the sky, the stench of chemicals and ordure, the clink of distant hammers and the growl of sewing machines from those who must work through the night to put food on the table.

And then a thought occurs to him that makes the knotted cords around his chest loosen.

Yes. God, yes. That place will bring him the oblivion he so badly needs.

There are four alleyways leading from the court: two that lead north, back to civilisation, and two that lead south, deeper into the labyrinth of the Lambeth slums. He takes a few tentative steps down one of these. But no, this is too broad, too well lit. Perhaps it is the second. He turns to go back, and stops in his tracks.

In the centre of the court stands a solitary child. In a white sailor suit and straw boater, he looks as if he has wandered here from one of the smarter houses north of the river. His pale hair falls in angelic ringlets around his plump cheeks, but Raymond can’t tell if he’s crying because his eyes are hidden by the shadow of the boater.

Raymond bends and addresses him gently. ‘Are you lost, child?’

The boy’s rosebud mouth curls into a smile. ‘I could say the same for you, mister.’

Raymond straightens sharply. From the boy’s voice, he is much older than he appears – his height perhaps only stunted by malnutrition.

‘Where you tryin’ to get to? For a quid, I’ll take you there.’

Raymond clears his throat, blinking. ‘You wouldn’t know the place. Go on home to your mother.’

‘Try me.’

He feels another rush of guilt. Has he come so low that he is prepared to ask such a thing of a child? But children in these parts are not like normal children. They grow up faster, their innocence long gone by the time they start school. If they start school. Most are drawn into the miserable little cottage industries of their parents, wearing out their eyes with midnight tailoring, or their lungs chimney-sweeping. Jane and her friends are always trying to raise money for the disadvantaged children of the city. Well, perhaps this is his opportunity to do his bit for one of them.

‘The Yellow River,’ he says softly.

‘Follow me.’

The boy skips off down the second alley, his oversized hobnailed boots tapping on the cobbles.

They pass down labyrinthine passages, splashing through puddles dyed yellow and green with chemicals. The boy’s legs work at an infernal speed, and Raymond is soon breathless from exerting himself in the polluted air. Then, on the other side of a particularly dilapidated, moon-washed court, he sees the dragon chimney again. He stops.

‘Do you actually know where you’re going?’

The boy turns, tipping his head back to allow the moonlight to penetrate beneath the brim of the boater. Raymond starts back. His huge eyes are completely white, the pupil a black star burning in the centre.

‘Just round this corner.’

His voice, so old for his years, echoes off the tumbledown walls as he raises a white hand to beckon, then turns and runs into the mouth of yet another passageway.

Raymond goes after him. The oxygen of exertion has gone to his head, and, for a second or so, he feels a sense of euphoria: the exhilaration of danger, the thrill of the chase, still familiar after all these years. But soon enough the fist closes around his heart again. He has lived with it so long now, expecting time to weaken its grip, but that was the folly and hubris of youth. Age weakens you. The burdens you carried with ease when you were young become heavier, and the package that arrived today finally tipped the balance.

Halfway down the alley, he becomes aware that the boy’s ghostly shape is no longer moving up ahead.

He stops.

The child has led him into a narrow passage between ruined tenements, deserted and silent. It is testament to the condition of the place that even with London’s homelessness crisis, no one has chosen to bed down here. The windows are empty of glass, and the walls are collapsing. It is bitterly cold and, with only a narrow gap for the moon’s light to penetrate, almost pitch-dark. The only sounds are distant sirens and the keening of the wind through the ruins.

He turns in a circle, disorientated, then notices the slot of paler darkness that must be the way he came in. He is about to set off when he hears a clicking sound, harsh and insectile. Cockroaches, perhaps, though the sound would suggest something far larger. But it’s too dark to see more than the pale gleam of his brogues. He cries out. Something resembling a huge pale spider is crawling from a window’s black eye socket in front of him. He spins round to run in the opposite direction, but another spider crawls from the aperture up ahead. Not spiders, but street robbers – the most vicious kind, to be operating in these desperate environs. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He is trapped.

The spiders are creeping towards him down the alley, and the diffuse moonlight picks out flashes of makeshift weapons. But what chance would a broken bottle have against a .22 calibre handgun? He has been carrying a loaded gun around with him for years. London is a dangerous place, and men of his stature need to be careful. At least, that’s what he told his friends and colleagues. The real reason was that he was hoping one day to be drunk enough or bold enough to use it on himself. He never has. Now, perhaps, he doesn’t need to.

Taking the gun from his pocket, he aims at the shadowy figures before him and cocks the safety catch. They freeze, perhaps expecting a shouted threat or warning. Instead, he squeezes the trigger.

Shrill cries and the scuffling of feet are cut off by the ear-splitting blast. But, as the ricocheting echoes subside, they leave no moans of agony, only the pitter-patter of dust falling like rain onto the cobbles. The insectile clicking, that he now realises is some kind of strange language, starts up again, but the rage and panic need no translation. They think he has made an error with his aim. They will not give him the chance to make another.

The spiders swarm forwards.

As he lies on his stomach in the darkness, scarlet mingling with the yellows and greens of the chemical puddles, Raymond thinks how peaceful it is to rest here under the moon. If there was a debt to be paid, he has now, finally, paid it.

It’s nine o’clock, and all’s well.

And that can’t be said of London very often these days.

Perhaps it’s only that the day shift of troublemakers has clocked out and the night shift has yet to clock in, but a definite sense of peace has settled over the benighted metropolis, fine and fragile as gossamer.

The sky is clear, and a full moon casts glitter-ball sparkles on the river, where a few barges shunt up and down. The cries of the lightermen are uncharacteristically muted, respectful of their shrouded and carefully stacked loads. The dead are on their way to the large burial ground on the Isle of Dogs – appropriately enough, seeing it was dog flu (or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 376) that claimed them. Cremations have long been illegal, since combustion requires a great deal of precious fuel and only exacerbates the city’s pollution problems. But many ignore the directives – too many for the likes of George Lestrade to penalise – instead lighting their own pyres to honour the dead.

From the roof of St Thomas’, Missy Hudson can see little pockets of orange glow, all the way from the hills of Hampstead in the north to the large open spaces of Clapham in the south. There are fewer this week than last, and the atmosphere is no longer thick with the reek of them. After a month, the virus seems finally to be burning itself out.

Cupping her hands around her mug of tea, she breathes deeply, inhaling the night air that is as fresh as London gets. The nurses rarely get time for breaks (Sherlock would deduce this at once from the fact that the Jammie Dodgers in the break-room cupboard are all stale), but tonight all her patients are stable. The oxygen tanks are full, and there haven’t been any recent power cuts that would oblige the nurses to sit by the beds of the sickest, manually respirating them.

Navigating at ground level, you can get lost in the lunatic chaos of London, but from up here there’s a rationality to the layout of the streets and roads that suggests someone sensible might actually be in charge. It’s a soothing thought, even if completely fanciful. Others must crave the sense of calm up here because the roof is scattered with cigarette butts and cardboard coffee cups.

A Chinese lantern drifts up into the night sky to be lost among the stars. A new soul taking its place in the firmament. She smiles. Clearly she’s in a romantic mood tonight. Or maybe it’s simply happiness. It’s been so long, she’d forgotten what that felt like.

For the past few years – even before Finn’s death, when loving him just brought torment – she would grind through each day then collapse into bed to give her the strength to endure the next, with no thought of the future and certainly no expectation that it might be enjoyable. Now she finds herself looking forward to things. Like getting home tonight to have dinner with John and Sherlock.

She wonders if John will cook mutton curry, as he promised. Her mouth pricks at the thought of the spiced meat melting on her tongue. Before her lodgers burst into her life, she existed on tins and jars, but it’s as if her tastebuds have come to life along with the rest of her. John told her how he bartered his shoes with an ancient Afghan widow to obtain the recipe for the curry. She smiles again, remembering how he described the old woman beaming and patting his cheek like an affectionate grandmother, but she’d added an extra ingredient to the recipe that would have meant an agonising death had the interpreter not spotted it.

John’s a born storyteller. The way he recounts the tale of the Red Circle, you would think it had all been an enormous adventure rather than simply terrifying. That she lived beside those monsters for years, oblivious to the outrages that were being committed under her own roof, still makes Missy shiver.

She has never thought of herself as a shrinking victim, but having John and Sherlock in the house definitely makes her sleep better. She no longer has bad dreams or jerks awake at the slightest nocturnal noise. That’s another of John’s qualities. He makes you feel safe.

And he makes you laugh. And he’s intelligent. And compassionate.

How did it take her so long to see those qualities?

She smiles again.

Sherlock, that’s how.

People like Sherlock – and Finn – overshadow everything else. Their personalities are whirlwinds that snatch you up and toss you around, and, in Finn’s case, hurl you down again, leaving you with broken bones and haematomas. Sherlock is a force of nature. But, just as Missy facilitated Finn, doing the boring stuff like earning money and putting food on the table so that he could be his wild, free, exciting self, John is the foil to Sherlock’s jewel, the solid band of gold that holds him in place and lets him shine.

Sherlock doesn’t seem to realise how much he needs John.

Perhaps she needs him too.

She swallows hard. Not this again.

No. She’s letting her mind run away with her. This train of thought started with her looking forward to supper. She’s not in love. She just likes mutton curry.

And that will depend on whether John has had the time to go shopping, of course. His consultancy has expanded exponentially since he helped the diabetic man in Victoria station. Now there are patients waiting outside 221b before breakfast. Missy was supposed to be assisting him, but she hasn’t been able to leave the hospital: although now that the flu outbreak seems to have calmed down perhaps they can think about it again. Then she and John will spend all day together …

Oh, for goodness’ sake, woman.

She turns, hearing footsteps coming up the steps behind her. It’s Beth, a young nurse, barely out of her teens, hard-working and compassionate but rather inexperienced. Her freckled face is etched with concern as she scans the rooftop, her eyes taking a while to adjust to the darkness. When she finally spots Missy, she hurries across to her.

‘I know you’re on your break, but we’ve got a problem.’

Yep, the peace is definitely over.

Knocking back the dregs of her tea, Missy follows Beth back down the steps.

The hospital pharmacy is accessed via security pass through two heavy metal doors, and the public-facing dispensing counter is separated from the waiting room by bulletproof glass. In these straitened times, genuine medication (as opposed to black-market drugs, which are often cut with toxic ingredients) is an extremely valuable commodity, and at least three of the pharmacists have been held up at gunpoint and forced to hand over their supplies of opiates.

The stockroom is lined with cabinets of labelled plastic drawers: painkillers, anticoagulants, steroids, analgesics. On one of the labels, ‘antibiotics’ has been scribbled out and replaced with ‘sugar pills’. When all else fails, the placebo effect can still work miracles.

Melvin, the present incumbent, is a dry, fastidious little man with a shock of black hair and small, sharp features. He stands in the centre of the room, master of his fiefdom, arms folded, mouth puckered with irritation.

‘She still won’t leave?’ Beth asks.

‘If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times, there’s no point shouting at me, it’s not my fault. Everyone else went home when I told them we were out, but not her. I’m not setting foot out there until she’s been escorted off the premises by security. Bloody nutcase.’

‘I thought you might be able to calm her down,’ Beth says to Missy, ‘before that was necessary.’

On the way down here, the young nurse explained how this month’s supplies of some of the hospital’s most important medications still haven’t turned up. Anything could have happened (and usually did). The ship transporting the goods from the city-sized factories in Africa could have sunk in one of the freak storms that make navigating the Atlantic so perilous. Or perhaps the criminal fraternities that control the London docks decided that black-market supplies needed bolstering. Or maybe the delivery guy realised that selling the contents of his van would be far more lucrative than the pittance he earns for driving it.

‘She’s demanding to know when she’d be able to get some. But how should I know?’

He’s right. How are any of them supposed to know, when the supply chains for such valuable commodities are so unreliable and riven with corruption? It’s a miracle the hospital can operate at all.

‘I told her maybe never,’ Melvin smirks, ‘if I have her barred from the hospital.’

‘I’ll speak to her,’ Missy says and passes through the inner door to the dispensing counter.

‘That’s her,’ Melvin calls through with high-pitched petulance. ‘In the corner.’

It takes Missy a moment to recognise the hunched figure on the plastic chair. Effie Lestrade is a fine and handsome woman and, despite her diminutive stature, a warrior queen when it comes to fighting for her son, Ollie – like so many of the mothers Missy comes across in the hospital. They only break when they lose their battles. Effie can be formidable, but tonight she looks like a shrunken old lady. After raiding the remaining meagre supplies of painkillers from the drawers, Missy goes out into the waiting room.

‘Mrs Lestrade?’

Effie looks up at her through damp strands of hair. ‘I’ve been coming every day for two weeks. He said there’d been some delays, but now he tells me it’s not coming at all. Ollie’s last tablet is tomorrow.’ Her voice rises. ‘Then what are we supposed to do? Without them he’ll be in agony.’

It’s at times like these that Missy really hates her job. She’s supposed to be able to help people, but increasingly these days comfort is the only treatment the London Health Service can provide. Crouching down, she takes Effie’s cold hands in her own and presses the painkillers into them. ‘These will manage his pain. And then I’m afraid it’s just a waiting game. We’ve got cancer patients who can’t access chemo drugs, heart patients who can’t get their antiplatelets. It’s a problem all over London.’

Effie stares at her dully. What does she care for the needs of strangers when her son is suffering?

‘And I’m sorry about Melvin,’ Missy mutters. ‘He’s a total —’ The epithet she uses for the pharmacist brings out a wan smile on Effie’s lips. ‘But I promise you, as soon as we know when we’re getting supplies, I will call you personally.’

‘But when, Missy? When?’

‘I’m so sorry.’ She holds Effie’s fierce amber gaze. Missy never shrinks from her patients’ pain, hiding away behind bulletproof glass or summoning security. They are entitled to their rage. If she is the cliff they must batter with the storm of their grief, then so be it.

But it’s not rage in Effie’s eyes: that has burnt out. Now there is only guilt. ‘I should have come before.’

‘There’s nothing you could have done. Go home, look after Ollie as well as you always do, and just …’ – she almost says pray, then she remembers that God abandoned her city long ago – ‘… hope.’

Effie’s expression changes again, her eyes taking on a cold glitter. ‘What kind of mother makes do with hope?’ She gets to her feet. Standing to her full height, she can be no more than five feet one or two, but her shadow in the low lantern light is huge on the wall behind her, as if her spirit has poured out of her body to fill the room. ‘If you can’t help him, then I’ll do it myself.’ Her gold eyes flash, and then she sweeps out of the room.

Melvin is peeping out from behind the inner door on the other side of the bulletproof glass, a satisfied smirk on his rodent features. Missy gets up and goes up to the counter. ‘Speak to one of my patients or their relatives like that again,’ she hisses, ‘and I will have you fired.’

It’s a hollow threat – she’s a middle-ranking nurse with no authority to make that kind of decision – but there must be something convincing in her tone because the pharmacist’s smirk vanishes and he scampers back through the door.

Glancing at the upside-down watch pinned to her tunic pocket, she sees that there are ten more minutes left of her break, but upon leaving the pharmacy she heads straight back up to the wards. Her patients need her.

Across London, the lantern of 221b burns brightly in expectation of the return of its mistress. John Watson paused his surgery in order to light it as soon as dusk started to fall, provoking impatient mutters from those who had been waiting several hours to see him.

In the absence of someone to manage his diary, he can only operate a walk-in surgery at present, and it’s standing room only downstairs in the waiting room that was once the chapel of the so-called Ne Nimium Mendicants. He really needs a secretary, but Missy is stuck at St Thomas’ with the flu outbreak, and to ask Sherlock would be a complete waste of time: he is far too busy ordering the carpenter around. Poor Bogdan should have finished the renovations that have turned 221 and the former lair of the Red Circle back into one house again, but Sherlock’s list goes on and on.

As he waits for his next patient to undress, John can hear his housemate outside in the hall, demanding Bogdan construct a ‘nightingale floor’ for him, whatever that is. Bogdan is promising to see to this as soon as he has rewired the telephone with a cord that will stretch to Sherlock’s room so that the phone can be brought up to him as required.

‘Ready, doctor,’ Mr Loscombe says from behind the curtain, in a voice a few notches higher than usual. The coal stevedore has arms as thick as John’s thighs and a back full of tattoos, but when John steps around to the other side of the curtain, the man is blushing like a schoolgirl.

John rubs his hands together briskly to warm them then plucks a pair of latex gloves from a box on the instruments trolley and pulls them on. ‘This won’t take a minute,’ he murmurs, moving close enough to carry out the procedure, without an uncomfortable level of proximity. Both men studiously avert their gazes from one another’s faces.

‘Cough for me, please.’

Mr Loscombe does so. Then three things happen at once.

There is a bang is like a thermonuclear bomb going off.

John’s hand gives an involuntary squeeze.

The stevedore yelps.

‘Mr Loscombe, I am so sorry,’ John splutters, appalled. ‘Really I⁠—’

Another bang, shaking the walls and making the shelf of glass medicine bottles titter.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ John says. ‘You can get your trousers back on.’

Coming out from behind the curtain, John strips off his gloves, strides to the door and yanks it open. On the other side of the landing, Sherlock is swinging back an enormous mallet, apparently about to hurl it at the doors of his own consulting rooms.

‘Sherlock!’

Sherlock turns, mid-swing.

It has been a month since the business of the Red Circle was concluded so successfully (excepting for the unlucky Jonathan Blore), and Sherlock ought to look better for the rest and recuperation. He does not. If possible, he has become thinner – most meals are curtailed by his sudden departure from the table for some obscure reason or other – his neat hair has grown to an unkempt mop, and there is a wild look to his grey eyes. John has begun to find his housemate’s conversation – always a little abstracted – impossible to follow, jumping as he does from topic to arcane topic. It is as though, without something to focus on, all that mental energy is simply chasing its own tail, like a sparking Catherine wheel. The danger, as Missy pointed out, is that it might simply spin ever faster until it breaks into pieces. She is concerned about Sherlock, and John is too – when he’s not intensely irritated.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he hisses. ‘I’m trying to treat people in here!’

‘Testing my door.’

‘Testing it for what? Deafness?’

‘I asked Bogdan to construct a door that would withstand all but the most determined attempts at ingress. As you can see, he has followed my instructions very well. No one will gain entry without my permission.’

‘Unless they come through the window.’

‘Yes, well, I’m working on a chemical formula that will strengthen glass to withstand impacts of up to one hundred kilograms.’

‘Is that what the smell is?’

Sherlock had also demanded that Bogdan construct him a mini laboratory complete with gas taps and dissection table.

‘No, that’s probably the⁠—’

John holds up his hands. ‘I don’t even want to know. Just … would you please stop testing the door until my patients have gone?’

John returns to a wincing Mr Loscombe and informs him that he has a mild hernia, which can be fixed with very minor surgery. This will be at a reduced price since his testicles may be tender for the next couple of days.

John promised Missy mutton curry, and mutton curry she will have, though he spent a fortune trundling around London in a cab before finally finding a halal butcher on the Edgware Road with some supplies. He has spiced the meat and put it in the oven to roast when the front door opens and Missy calls out a hello.

Wiping his hand on the tea towel tucked into his waistband, he is uncorking a bottle of wine by the time she walks into the kitchen. The cold has brightened her eyes and pinked her cheeks. She inhales appreciatively. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this all day! The curry,’ she adds quickly.

‘Me too,’ John says, and a brief silence descends. Then they both speak at once.

‘How was the hospital?’

‘How was Sherlock?’

‘Amazingly quiet.’

‘A pain in the neck.’

They smile, their eyes meeting over the table that is already laid with the linen cloth and candles John bought with his first real pay packet. He hands her a glass of wine, and she demands a job, so he sets her to work making the raita, with a rather dubious yoghurt he picked up from a street stall by the butcher. The carton did not specify the milk’s provenance. He’s very much hoping it’s either cow, sheep or goat, but anything is possible these days.

Because she laughs as he recounts the tale of poor Mr Loscombe’s testicles, John decides to forgive Sherlock.

After the food is prepared, they sit down at the table. John lights the candles and refills the wine glasses. It’s a decent vintage, from a vineyard in Norway, and Missy is clearly enjoying it. This is his chance. He can segue the conversation naturally around to wine bars, mention that he has heard of a good one in Marylebone High Street – he hasn’t heard this; he’s researched it at length, asking all his patients who looked like they had a bit of money – and suggest perhaps they try it one night: how is Missy fixed for next week?

He takes a deep breath and opens his mouth.

Sherlock strides in. ‘We cannot possibly go on like this.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Missy says mildly.

‘We agreed that half the waiting room would be for Watson and half for my clients.’

‘Yes,’ John says. ‘And?’

‘Your patients were sprawling all over my half today. A child with molluscum was actually lying down across three seats! Do you know how contagious that is? I don’t want one of my clients catching it.’

‘I can see that would be a problem,’ John says, ‘if you had any clients.’

Missy frowns at him.

‘You are right, Watson.’ Striding past him, Sherlock pulls up the chair by the range. ‘There are indeed fewer victims of maliciously ingenious criminals that have eluded the police than there are toddlers with verrucas, but when they do make an appearance I’d rather they did not pick up said verrucas from my waiting room. What’s for dinner?’

‘Mutton curry,’ Missy says brightly. ‘Doesn’t it smell delicious?’

‘It smells,’ Sherlock scents the air, ‘like milk made from ground-up insect larvae. Which is perfectly comestible, but not my absolute favourite.’

‘You don’t have to eat it,’ John snaps, and gets up to serve.

He should have been annoyed at the interruption just at the critical moment, but what he actually feels is mild relief. It’s clear Missy enjoys his company. But she is kind to everyone. Perhaps she just feels sorry for him: poor John Watson with his scars and his dicky leg. She only took him in because he had nowhere else to go.

He lays the tomato salad on the table and surreptitiously scrapes the spider-milk raita into the bin.

And besides, how could John – dull, reliable, plain as a pikestaff – ever compare with the charismatic Finn Hudson? The debonair Irishman seems to haunt the place even now, thanks to the fact that Sherlock has been blithely helping himself to Finn’s clothes. Sometimes John sees Missy do a double take, as if she has had a flash of her long-lost love.

Courage, man, he thinks as he slides the chapattis from the frying pan onto a plate. Remember when you operated on a wounded female gunner in a jet with an engine shot off? You’ve got this.

Squeezing past Sherlock, he slides the curry out of the range, places it in the middle of the table and sits back down. When he takes off the lid, Missy inhales appreciatively and says, ‘Smells delicious!’

Ask her now, in front of Sherlock, then it won’t seem like a big deal at all: just a friend asking a friend for a friendly drink. Sherlock doesn’t like alcohol; otherwise, of course, he could come too.

As Missy starts serving up, he opens his mouth.

‘Doesn’t it just?’ Sherlock says. ‘Wouldn’t he make a wonderful husband?’

And with that the moment is ruined.

John bites grimly into a chapatti.

After dinner, as has become their usual habit, they sit down in the living room to read, Sherlock in the wingback chair, hogging all the heat from the fire, John and Missy at either ends of the sofa. John always takes the end by the window, shielding Missy from the cold draft that seeps through the sash. He is reading a biography about the man responsible for eradicating the HIV virus, but completely loses concentration when Missy absently slides her toes under his thighs for warmth. Though his fingers eventually become too cold to hold the book, he doesn’t move a muscle until she announces she’s going to bed.

Since the house has been opened up, and thanks to the efforts of Bogdan, there are now three good-sized bedrooms on the top floor, along with the bathroom and box room. He and Sherlock reside at the back of the house, though he had to fight to stop Sherlock claiming the front bedroom, with its view across Baker Street, which he insisted was necessary for his ‘work’. Missy sleeps there, considerably more peacefully than she used to. When they first moved in, John would hear her moving about well into the night, and when he himself jerked awake from a nightmare and got up to splash his face with water, he would see the lamp still burning under her door. This is happening less and less often now, and sometimes he himself will sleep through to morning, a luxury he never imagined he would enjoy again.

Lighting his lamp, he gets undressed and waits for Missy to finish in the bathroom.

Sherlock’s quick footsteps come up the stairs, but they pause on the first floor. He has gone back into his consulting room again. John isn’t sure whether he’s even going to bed these days.

Cleaning his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, John decides it was the right decision not to ask Missy out. Look at him. Short, scruffy-haired, face lined with sunburn and pocked with shrapnel scars. After Finn, how could he possibly be her type?

Returning to his room, he gets into bed and takes out the biography of the scientist again. Missy’s lamp is a faint line of amber under his door for a while, then it goes out and all is quiet but for the squeaking of the floorboards as Sherlock moves around downstairs.

He tries to concentrate, but the squeaking soon starts to get on his nerves. He finds himself reading the same page three times, and then the book jerks in his hands as the silence is shattered by a particularly loud squeal. There is a moment’s blissful quiet, then the violin starts up.

For goodness’ sake! It’s worse than the chanting of the Ne Nimium Mendicants. How is Missy going to sleep with that racket going on?

Getting up, he marches down to the first floor.

The light under Sherlock’s door flickers as he paces the room, sawing some dissonant melody that sets John’s teeth on edge. Of all the gifts to give a man like Sherlock … Why couldn’t Irene Adler have given him a set of watercolours?

He raises his fist, ready to pound on the door.

‘We must stop meeting like this.’

Missy is standing in a shaft of moonlight, wearing a nightshirt that skims her thighs. Fortunately, he is in the shadows so it’s too dark for her to see the flush that immediately ignites his face.

‘Unbelievable, isn’t he?’ he mutters.

‘He’s obviously got something on his mind.’

‘I think that’s just the problem. He hasn’t got anything on his mind. He’s like a bloody child. You have to entertain him or he just races around causing mayhem.’

Missy sits down on the bottom step, pulling her nightshirt over her knees. ‘Maybe it’s that business with Jonathan Blore. Those horrible things he said about Sherlock not deserving a name. I wonder what he meant by them.’

‘We’ll never know now.’

‘Yes.’ Missy sighs unhappily. ‘And that was so unlike him, wasn’t it? To act on impulse like that. I wonder if he was scared of the man.’

John has thought a great deal about this. The only emotion John has ever seen Sherlock display is fear, and then only twice. First at the Reichenbach flour mill when he uttered that strange word – ‘Moriarty’ – and then at Paddington Old Cemetery, when Jonathan Blore emerged from the shadows. Sherlock’s face went as white as the marble angels on the gravestones, and John could see that behind his eyes some horrific memory was playing itself out.

John knows what it is to carry out a summary execution. Once, in Afghanistan, a whole primary school was wiped out and blamed on John’s battalion because the shells that destroyed the building, and thirty children between four and seven years of age, were identified as British. But it was a false-flag attack. The weapons had been stolen months earlier by local men who were prepared to murder their neighbours’ children to turn them against the liberators.

They were no more liberators, of course, than their enemy were freedom fighters. They were all mercenaries, following the orders of the greatest mercenaries of all, to get their bloodstained hands on the last few sips of oil left in the desert.

When John’s company discovered the lair of the child murderers, they simply threw in a shell, and the base was obliterated; just as, when he and Sherlock finally discovered the lair of the Red Circle, Sherlock pressed the button that obliterated Blore and the Biogenesis train.

John will never blame Sherlock for that, but is it possible that Sherlock is blaming himself? Is that what this is about?

The volume of the music reaches its zenith and then tails off as Sherlock paces back the way he came.

‘I’ve got some earplugs upstairs,’ Missy says.

He was ready to break the damn instrument over Sherlock’s head, but Missy is only thinking of his well-being. She is a far better person than he is.

‘We should have finished the wine,’ she goes on ruefully. ‘I’d have been out like a light, and a brass band wouldn’t have woken me.’

And there, hidden in the friendly shadows of the stairwell, he finally plucks up the courage.

‘I heard there’s a good wine bar in Marylebone High Street, actually. I was thinking that maybe⁠—’

‘We should go,’ Missy says.

And there, it is done. John sinks back against the wall.

‘Sherlock hates booze, so it can be just the two of us.’

‘Yes,’ he murmurs.

They settle on the day, and a time, and then John becomes aware that they are both now whispering, because the desperate sawing of the violin has ceased.

‘Perhaps playing made him feel better,’ Missy murmurs. Then she gets up. ‘Right, see you in the morning.’

He averts his gaze as her long brown legs move through the patch of moonlight, and then she is gone.

The lamp still burns steadily under Sherlock’s door, but all is silent from within.

Under his breath, John almost – almost – thanks him.

Sherlock Holmes replaces the Stradivarius in its case, nestling it against the faded velvet before closing the lid and fastening the silver catches, leaving the violin to its peaceful slumbers.

Slumber that will, no doubt, evade its owner yet again tonight.

He gazes at his reflection in the foxed mirror above the mantelpiece, wide enough to show him the whole room without having to turn. Up until today, his thoughts had been occupied by planning the layout of his new consulting rooms, but now everything is arranged to his satisfaction. Directly behind him, before the door that leads out to the landing, is a crimson chaise longue, bought from a dealer who claimed it came from Buckingham Palace. This is where he will seat future clients. It is telling to watch how a person sits, and an armchair can be too constricting of movements: people must be given the space to communicate their discomforts and concealments.

From the same dealer, he purchased the chair beside him, wide and deep and covered in a plush emerald velvet that mutes any squeaks or rustles that might disturb his mental processes. The wall to the left of the fireplace is lined with bookshelves containing references books arranged in alphabetical order from Ash Identification to Zoroastrianism, periodicals from the various scientific journals he now has on order, back issues of the London Enquirer and a number of instruction manuals.

To the right is his filing cabinet, though the only papers currently filed there are under R – Red Circle and B – Bohemia, though this latter he sometimes shifts to A – Adler. (He has not yet decided which is the more important: the club, or its owner.) Propped on the cabinet is the sampler from the chapel of the Ne Nimium Mendicants, a souvenir of his first case. ‘Less is more.’ A philosophy of hardly earth-shattering originality. He should have known the moment he read it that this was not a genuine order.

Within handy reach of the cabinet is an antique writing desk complete with porcelain inkwell, for which he has made ink by mixing soot from the hearth with alcohol and egg yolk. He did this in the small laboratory constructed by Bogdan in the far corner, by the window where the light is best. It’s a rudimentary structure but enough to carry out basic chemistry, and a curtain can be pulled across when he has clients.

If the man in the mirror were to take his place on the chaise longue, then Sherlock Holmes would instantly deduce that he was suffering from serious mental unease. Wild hair, darting eyes, sunkenness around the cheeks and jaw, a sudden birdlike twitching of the head: this is a man with an unquiet mind.

Les Élémens by Jean-Féry Rebel, played at double its normal speed, did its job of drowning out the noise in his head, but if he plays on, his housemates will no doubt be back – to scold him or take his temperature or some such nonsense. He could hear them muttering to one another out on the landing, but thankfully they have now taken themselves back to bed. Despite Watson’s dicky leg, he had a slight spring in his step as he mounted the stairs back to his room. He must be happy about something.

Without the violin, the noise is back. Endless screeching questions, demanding answers.

Who was Jonathan Blore?

Why did he say Sherlock didn’t deserve a name?

What did Blore mean about getting him back where he belonged?

It was illogical to kill the man, of course, and lose the chance for answers. He defended his actions to Watson and Lestrade by saying that the world would be better off without Blore, but the truth is the act was driven by something far less rational. He is the Devil. That’s what he said to them afterwards. Ridiculous. The man was a human being, and now he is dead and can no longer inflict harm, so why is Sherlock still afraid?

Walking to the window, avoiding the floorboards that Bogdan engineered so well, he gazes out over the shadows of the garden. The fence dividing Missy’s jungle from the Mendicants’ perfectly symmetrical rectangle of lawns and topiary has been removed, and the gardens sit side by side. They are like the two halves of his own brain: the rational hemisphere, whose neat pathways he has always followed so diligently, and the wild jungle of basic primitive instinct, legacy of the monkeys we evolved from.

His rational mind is telling him exactly what he must do. Pursue the Biogenesis link. Use his powers of deduction to seek out the truth and bring it out into the light. Discover who Sherlock Holmes really is.

And yet his monkey brain chitters in terror at what he might find.

He thrusts his long fingers into his hair and pulls until it hurts, twisting his face into a grimace of pain. There is only one thing to do to quieten his mind.

Concealed on the windowsill behind the curtain are two chipped coffee mugs. He peers into one. The inch of mould in the bottom of the mug has reproduced, bubbling healthily and producing a fragrance like sour beer. It may have been this that Watson smelled earlier but fortunately decided not to interrogate him about. Tomorrow Sherlock will use his newly constructed laboratory – actually more of a distillery – to feed and ferment this genetically modified yeast, allowing him to produce a few precious millimetres of synthetic morphine.

He replaces it and picks up the second mug, which contains his prototype dose. The flavour is deeply unpleasant, and he winces as he tosses it back, but the effect is almost immediate. Drifting over to the chaise longue, he sinks down, his grey eyes filming over with relief as the monkeys finally fall silent.

Chapter 2

Birds and Bees

John wakes early, more refreshed and energised than he can remember. He shaves carefully, wetting and styling his hair, and checking for any stray nose or ear whiskers, before putting on his best work suit, which is a little snug around the middle now that he is off the whisky and soup diet of his pre-Baker Street days.

By the time Missy comes down, he has cooked a fine omelette, using up as much as he could from the overstocked fridge. Sherlock’s appetite not being what it was at present, they actually have to eat up food before it goes stale. Even more miraculous, they had to pour the remains of a bottle of red wine down the sink the other day as it had gone off before it could be finished. John’s rather proud of this. Life, it would seem, can be faced sober these days.

He and Missy dance around one another in the kitchen, inexplicably tongue-tied at first. But once they are back in their familiar positions at the table everything slots back into place, and conversation flows with ease again. Missy tells him about George Edalji’s new baby. John and Edalji were at medical school together, and while John was cutting his surgeon’s teeth on the battlefield, George ended up a consultant at St Thomas’. Missy’s eyes shine as she talks about how beautiful the baby is, smiling already at only four weeks, and John’s heart swells a little.

This pleasant conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Sherlock, lumbering and heavy-lidded, his hair matted in clumps, his face pallid. Missy’s smile fades as he plonks himself down at the head of the table and stares blankly at the flames through the open door of the range. He looks dreadful.

‘John’s made a lovely omelette, Sherlock,’ she says. ‘Would you like some?’

‘Toast,’ he mutters, and Missy glances at John unhappily. Suppressing his irritation at Sherlock dampening the happy mood of the morning, John gets up and puts four more slices of bread in the toaster.

It’s a waste of time, because Sherlock takes only one, nibbling it distractedly while nursing a cup of sweet tea, like one of John’s fragile patients. These are already starting to gather on the street outside, looking at their watches, pacing or simply hugging themselves against the cold. The brass plaque on the wall clearly states that surgery opens at 9 a.m., but such is the queue that John generally begins work an hour earlier.

‘I’m not surprised you’re tired,’ Missy says as Sherlock drops the toast back onto the plate. ‘You were up so late last night.’

‘And you kept the rest of us up, too,’ John adds, ‘thanks to that bloody racket with the violin and the floorboards. You should get Bogdan to look at them.’

A spark finally appears in the grey eyes. ‘He already has. My nightingale floor is most effective, wouldn’t you say? Were anyone to attempt a nocturnal raid of my valuable papers, I would hear at once.’

‘Valuable papers?’ John smiles. ‘Such as?’

‘Such as the ones I will file after I solve Lestrade’s next case.’

‘What’s Lestrade got to do with any⁠—’

There is a knock on the front door.

‘Is that actually Lestrade?’ Missy says, her eyes wide.

‘I’ll go,’ John says. ‘Though I don’t see how you could tell it was him.’

‘Elementary, Watson.’ Sherlock sits back in his chair, a cheerful smugness colouring his hollow cheeks. ‘The footsteps up to the porch were brisk and authoritative, so that rules out any patients daring to knock an hour and a half before surgery opens, and yet there was only one set – not an official visit then. And the postal workers are on strike so that rules out an urgent delivery. Ergo, our friend from the Yard.’

Missy laughs. ‘Amazing.’

‘Plus I saw him walk past the window.’

John opens the door to the chief inspector.

‘Sorry to call so early,’ Lestrade says. ‘Wanted to catch you before you got too busy.’ He nods at the huddle of people gathered by the railings, their eyes fixed on John with fevered intensity.

‘Not at all. Come in,’ John says. It’s aimed at Lestrade, but a few of the group launch themselves at the open door. ‘Sorry,’ – he holds up his hands – ‘surgery opens at nine. I will see you all then.’ Guiltily, he closes the door and leads the policeman into the warm kitchen.

Missy’s face is a picture of distress. ‘I’m so sorry, George. I’ve had no more news about Ollie’s medication. I should have called you to let you know, but⁠—’

‘I’m actually here to speak to Sherlock about a case,’ Lestrade says. ‘But thank you.’

Missy looks relieved. ‘How is he?’

‘No problems so far, but it’s early days.’

‘Fingers crossed the drugs will arrive soon, and as soon as they do I’ll let you know. Now, I’ll leave you to it, if that’s okay.’ She rises and puts her plate in the sink. There was some expectation that Sherlock, as the least employed of the three of them, might undertake a few household chores during his unoccupied hours, but, of course, the plates and cutlery will remain there until John does them at lunchtime.

John walks her out to the door.

‘This case of Lestrade’s …’ She looks up at him as she buttons her coat. ‘You mustn’t let Sherlock handle it on his own.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be fine.’

‘He’s barely eating or sleeping. Without you to keep an eye on him, he’ll burn himself out and make himself ill again. Promise me you’ll look after him.’

John sighs. ‘I promise.’

‘Come on, John,’ Sherlock snaps when he returns to the kitchen. ‘Lestrade is a busy man.’

Letting this comment pass, John sits back down then immediately gets up again when he notices Sherlock has not offered the policeman a cup of tea. As he makes it, clattering the teaspoon against the mug a little louder than is strictly necessary, Lestrade embarks on his story.

Apparently, in the early hours of yesterday morning, the body of a forty-year-old man was discovered by a Lambeth warehouseman returning from his night shift. He had been savagely attacked and left to bleed to death in an alley. He had been identified as a Raymond Bannister, a wealthy businessman with a large home in Fulham, which he shared with his wife, Jane. The pair were members of various philanthropic associations and often attended the opera and the theatre as well as dinners and awards dos related to Bannister’s work in insurance-brokering.

‘I take it robbery was the motive,’ Sherlock says. ‘A man like that likely wore an expensive watch and carried cash.’

‘Indeed. He was stripped of both, and his mobile phone and even his shoes.’

‘I should say the case is solved then,’ John says, bringing Lestrade’s tea over. ‘No need for any clever deductions.’

‘Well, of course, we must find the murderers – the guy was well-connected and a generous donor to the Police Benevolent Fund, but …’

Sherlock leans across the table. ‘But what?’

‘Well, the thing I can’t understand is what Bannister was doing in the depths of Lambeth on a Tuesday evening in November.’

‘Perhaps he lost his way,’ John says.

‘He was a member of the Garrick Club, and yet it would seem that he spent the evening drinking rough moonshine in a seedy bar near the Elephant and Castle. He was thrown out for drunkenness, and from there it appears he wandered south, away from any transport routes home, ending up in the alley where he was stabbed to death. Now, normally a murder in this area wouldn’t be surprising. I don’t send my officers down there after dark, and in the daytime they always travel in threes. So, what was Bannister doing there?’

‘You have a clue,’ Sherlock says. ‘Show me.’

Only now does John notice the bulge in Lestrade’s jacket pocket, and from it the police officer removes a clear plastic evidence bag, placing it on the table beside Sherlock’s toast.

Inside is a slipper.