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Chapter Text

On his first day in the civil service someone had drawn Tim aside and said, "Watch out for Mycroft Holmes; he's the most dangerous man you will ever meet."

The part of himself which was - and always would be - a geeky fanboy muttered inwardly, "Unless I am brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord" but the part of him that was really exceptionally competent and only very occasionally allowed himself a private moment took note of the information, and he had carefully avoided Mycroft Holmes and his ill-defined responsibilities and all-pervasive aura of power.

And now it was his job to take bad news to Mycroft Holmes.

The door opened before he could stretch out his hand to tap on it - cheap theatre, but effective - and Holmes did not look up as he entered.

"I'm afraid I've bad news from the FO, sir," Tim said, once it became apparent that, if he chose to wait for an acknowledgement before speaking, he would have solved the question of where to spend Christmas. "The Foreign Secretary's research assistant, sir."

"Ah! As in: 'Tell the PM, not to worry, this one's guaranteed 100% Straighty MacStraight with a side order of special bonus heterosexuality. Less gay than a rugby league team from Wakefield on an 18-30 holiday'? Post-It note, I gather. Attached to his vetting file for the job. But you wouldn't know anything about that, of course."

Tim tried to repress his instinctive, betraying twitch. How the hell had Holmes known that?

"So. Not as straight as we were assured he was?" Holmes still seemed intent on the papers on his desk-top.

Tim licked suddenly parched lips. "More so, if anything. Unfortunately. Sir."

"Ah. Interesting. And how did his - hypertrophied heterosexuality - manifest itself?"

"The South Manchester bye-election. Apparently, someone on the hustings observed him and the Foreign Secretary together and - um - said something uncalled for. And he seems to have taken it rather badly."

Holmes did look up, then; his expression expectedly sharp.

"Do I understand this young man found public speculation on his sexual inclinations intolerable? And he wants to make a career in politics?"

Tim's hand was unexpectedly steady as he pushed the file across the tooled-leather desk. "I think, sir, you'll see from this that the question of his political ambitions is now somewhat moot. Regrettably."

Holmes skimmed it through, once. His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. He flipped up the lid of the laptop computer on the corner of his desk and typed in a URL. Although the security shielding on the screen prevented Tim from seeing what he was reading, the expression of dawning horror - like a siamese cat that had just been caught beneath an overturned glue pot - spoke volumes.

"Dear God! Do I understand that he walked straight off into the bar of some hotel on Portland Street, intent on demonstrating in spades just how inaccurate the comment had been, allowed himself to be entangled by a designing American blogger and is now featuring on the Internet as 'Whitehall Hottie XXX'?"

Tim gulped. "I suggest you click on the next page, sir. The Tumblr format can be a bit difficult to follow, but I think you'll find that you have - quite literally - not heard the half of it."

Holmes followed his suggestion. His lips pursed. The he began to read out loud, in a tone which suggested it was a physical effort to force the words past his lips.

"Under that tightly buttoned British exterior - God, how do British guys manage to make formal business wear look so darned hot? - Whitehall Hottie XXX turns out to quite the chatterbox in the sack. The cutest thing ever was seeing his little guilty look when he realised how adorably indiscreet he'd been about his boss and all the other Cabinet bigwigs - Mrs Clegg, you're one lucky, lucky lady, that's all I'm saying. Quite a coup for a little girl from LA, to have broken her bed and the Official Secrets Act in her first week in the country! Still, a girl's got to take care of herself in these post-Wikileaks times, and I don't want my Mancunian adventure to be cut short by getting locked in the Tower of London. Just as a precaution, I lifted a USB drive from Whitehall Hottie XXX's pocket as he gave me a farewell snog - that's what they call kisses in these parts - and I've left it somewhere safe with instructions to release it in case anything happens to me. So bring it on, Mr Bond!"

He looked up. "Dear God, I thought the FO had learned their lesson about USB sticks after the Bruce-Partington fiasco. So what's on this one?"

Tim leant across the desk and lowered his voice. Holmes shut his eyes for a moment, and then exhaled. The expression on his face as he opened his eyes again made Tim mentally revoke his earlier reservation. "Even if I am brought alive before the Dark Lord."

"What are you planning to do, sir?"

Holmes smiled. "It seems our amateur Mata Hari has a penchant for tightly-buttoned British men in suits. I propose to send her one. And may God have mercy on what passes for her soul."

.......

"No. Absolutely not. Not when hell freezes over and Michael Gove takes up ice-dancing with Ann Widdecombe. No. Do I make myself adequately clear?"

"Admirably. Nevertheless, you are going to do it. This is a matter of national security, and you are not a man who refuses the necessary. You needn't worry, I'll forbid the banns myself if it comes to it."

"Oh, bloody hell! Can't you get one of your goons to do it? At least they own suits."

"You won't be on your own. Sherlock's going too. You'll need a wingman."

Sherlock's mug of tea shattered on the kitchen floor.

Anthea looked up from her Blackberry. "Your first fitting is in thirty minutes," she said.

.......

I wouldn't want to give the impression that Mycroft Holmes can order me about. Still, when he came down to Gloucestershire, bearing wild smoked salmon and gammon in a pale green shopping bag, it became rapidly obvious that he needed a very special operative to oversee a mission which, against his better judgment (but possibly with the expectation of settling some long-held scores) he had entrusted to his brother Sherlock.

Not that I have anything against Sherlock: in fact, for a human, he is commendably quick of mind and fleet of foot. But Sherlock here was meant to act as the sidekick to his excellent friend Dr Watson - a man of resounding soundness on the subject of smoked herring - and if there's one thing Sherlock doesn't take naturally to, it's a subordinate position. A subordinate position while his best friend attempted to entrap a female who, if anything I'd read of her so far was an indication, could at any moment break into mystical talk of the Southern Californian variety.

After a short negotiation on the subject of Dover Sole (and the occasional sushi), I therefore agreed to the indignity of a cat carrier for the journey, before settling in an enviable designer loft posing - that sushi would be EARNED - as "my neighbour's pretty kitty."

Chapter Text

I've finally met my neighbour across the landing in the apartment block! Makes me feel like Mrs Bennett announcing that Netherfield Hall is let at last, though at least Bingley wasn't gay which – a single girl's luck on this point being the same both sides of the Atlantic – my neighbour Sherringford pretty definitely is.

Sherringford! Pretty unbelievable name, huh? Sounds as if it ought to come with a stately manor house and peacocks on the terrace and the ghost of Anne Boleyn, wouldn't you think? Well, when I say the guy attached to the name is all that and more you'll see why my spotting this month's copy of the Advocate in his magazine rack, to say nothing of all the product in his bathroom when I sneaked a peek (Jesus, I'll swear this guy must even tint his eyelashes, and people have claimed I'm high maintenance) had me considering throwing myself in the Ship Canal. Only for a few minutes though, because after all, a girl setting out to find true love in a strange land needs a soul-mate to confide in, but one with the guts to tell it like it is.

And I think we are going to be soul-mates, truly; especially after I'd rescued his lost cat – oh, and Toby's the cutest thing on four paws you ever saw.

It happened like this...

......

"Where are we going?" Tim asked the driver of the black car which had arrived to collect him, unexpectedly, from the office that evening.

"Bit of a turn-up for the book, Cook's batting in the Ashes," the driver responded. "Shame about Collingwood, though."

Tim took the hint. They second-guessed the selectors until the driver dropped him on a West London street, a typical early nineteenth century terrace of white stucco fronts and black-painted doors, most of the houses now broken up into multiple occupancy.

"You want number 221A," the driver said helpfully. He fished down beside his seat. "And you're to give this to Mrs Hudson. Mr Holmes's compliments."

The Berry Bros bag he handed out to Tim contained – as Tim's cautious peek revealed – a bottle of Armagnac which seemed to have been laid down under the Third Republic.

He rang; the bell was answered by a woman of approximately the same vintage as the Armagnac. She reminded Tim powerfully of his own grandmother. Given his grandmother had been last heard from running a charter boat in the Caribbean in partnership with the retired proprietor of a successful chain of Amsterdam coffee shops, a man some thirty years her junior, he found the resemblance less reassuring than one might imagine.

She cooed enthusiastically at him. "Ah, you'll be Mycroft's new young man. He texted to say you were on your way. Come on in; the others are all here already."

New young man? He forced the implications of that firmly back behind a bland, official, all-purpose smile. "You'll be Mrs Hudson? He asked me to give you this."

He handed over the Armagnac. She beamed. "Such a sweet boy. I keep telling him he shouldn't, but he insists. Anyway, what can I get you? By the way, just a hint. Harry's mixing the cocktails, and she's got into a bit of a state about John, so don't be shy about asking for extra mixer if they come out a bit stronger than you were expecting."

"Actually, is there any chance of a glass of white wine?"

He followed Mrs Hudson into a kitchen where two young women were already sitting, one of them tapping away at a computer screen and the other wielding a cocktail shaker. The latter looked up as Tim entered. Her flushed face and slightly slurred diction suggested she'd been sampling her own mixes for some time.

"Oh. You must be Mycroft's new dogsbody, mustn't you? Well, you can try telling your fucking boss I don't give a monkey's about the so-called national interest; if that sodding Californian harpy gets her fucking fake talons into my baby brother, I'm coming round to his office and I'm going to twist his fucking goolies off."

"Harry!" the woman at the computer said in a reproving tone. "It's not – I'm sorry, I don't think I know your name – mine's Sarah – "

"It's Tim, dear," Mrs Hudson said from the doorway.

"Anyway, Harry, it's not Tim's fault. John volunteered. Anyway, Sherlock will kill her if she tries anything."

"Popcorn, anyone?" Another young woman put her head round the door. She was carrying two large paper bags, which she put on the table with a great deal of rustling. "It seemed appropriate. I can't believe the freak's met someone even freakier than he is."

Tim blinked helplessly. His smartphone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket, and looked at the text on the screen.

WELCOME TO LIVE-BLOG THURSDAYS. TONIGHT, DIRECT FROM MANCHESTER. HAVE FUN. MYCROFT

......

There had been a certain amount of trouble with the set-up. He had refused point-blank to go with the pseudo-intellectual setting that Mycroft had favoured. ("There are many things I would do for my country – there are many things I have done for it – but reading Hardy in a bar on Canal Street is not going to be one of them"). They had decided in the end to engineer a chance meeting. He hoped Sherlock's acting skills were up to it. He hoped his own were. Or, more likely, that boundless self-absorption would cover up any slips that they might make.

John checked his watch one more time, then headed round the corner into Chorlton Street.

Major Watson had not been unaware of the effect of a well-cut uniform on a body in halfway good shape. After months in M&S jumpers, the high-street equivalent of full camouflage, John was surprised to find that the suit – a uniform of a different kind – appeared to be having something of the same effect. By the time he was half-way down the street, he'd attracted a number of admiring glances, and two whistles. Thus, his confusion was not entirely feigned when he found himself quite literally walking into a familiar tall figure arm-in-arm with an intense-looking woman in – he couldn't help but notice – an almost gynaecologically short skirt.

“I'm so sorry,” he spluttered, attempting to pick himself up from the tangle of limbs and umbrellas on the pavement. “My fault entirely. Are you alright, Miss, errr, Miss...”

He was still apologising when a strong, wiry arm reached down to haul him to his feet. “Not at all, not at all.” Pale eyes stared into his own, widened a little – rather obviously, John thought. A pale hand smoothed down the lapel on his jacket. “You've had a nasty shock. You must allow us to buy you a drink.”

Woo! Adventures in bed-buying!

No – I haven't succeeded in my quest within my first month in Manchester. But I had a foretaste of what furniture shopping as a couple feels like – that sympathetic assistant in John Lewis's store out at Handforth Green certainly assumed me and Incredibly Cute Trauma Specialist were an item – and, hey, I could get used to that.

But that's leaping ahead. At about three am this morning I came the closest I've been so far to throwing in the towel. I'd told myself I knew I'd have times like this – when the cliff-face above me looked like more than any human could be expected to climb – but this was the first time I'd actually experienced what it felt like.

It was Sherringford who pulled me out of it – shows why every girl needs a gay guy confidante in the flat next door. Specially one who's even more of a night owl than me. I wouldn't have dreamed of knocking on his door at that time if I hadn't been sure he was awake – and alone. He's a musician – though judging by his clothes and the rent for the apartments in this block, he has to be a trust fund baby – and he'd been playing Cole Porter on the violin all evening. To be honest, that might have contributed to my mood – there's only so many times a single girl can hear "So Nice to Come Home To" without it getting to her.

Anyway, he couldn't have been sweeter to me and it was his idea to tell me to put the quest on hold for 24 hours, and he'd take me for cocktails in the Village in the evening. Where, as luck would have it, we bumped into Incredibly Cute Trauma Specialist. Literally bumped into him – the poor guy went sprawling. Of course, Sherringford offered to buy him a drink by way of apology. You should have seen the guy's face when he spotted the rainbow flag above Coyotes. Turned out he was new in town – he's a visiting lecturer in advanced trauma and wound care at the Medical School – and he hadn't even realized he was in the gay district! Sherringford realized instantly he'd dropped a brick, and we ended up – after a short walk through Piccadilly Gardens and down Market Street – in this incredible Victorian relic with original green glazed tiles on the walls and a wine-list the size of the Gutenberg bible. Much more Incredibly Cute Trauma Specialist's scene – kind of traditional but still quirky.

And after that one thing led to another.

......

"Oh, that'll be Sherlock skyping in," Mrs Hudson said as the computer screen changed. "Just click on the answer button, will you dear?"

Tim blinked as Harry muscled past to within six inches at the screen, leaned forward and screamed, "YOU LET THAT BLOODY HARPY BUY A BED WITH MY BROTHER!!!"

Sarah and Sally looked at each other, shrugged, and stepped forward in unison, grasping Harry firmly under the armpits.

"Come and lie down," Sarah suggested. "You'll feel much better about it in the morning. Well, once you stop feeling as if a terminally ill giraffe had decided to choose your mouth as its final resting place."

"FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM NOT DRUNK. I AM JUST VERY, VERY UPSET."

"Actually," the man in the Skype window said dispassionately, "I think Harry is more upset than she's drunk. Quite a bit of both, though. Try giving her two pints of sparkling mineral water and half a tin of anchovies; it'll help with the rehydration. And, Harry, I am just as bothered about the bed-buying bit as you are. She shamelessly traded on the fact that both the John Lewis's in Manchester are in out of town locations with no decent public transport links. And John is currently in possession – courtesy of my bloody brother – of a Mercedes CLS 320 Grande Edition."

......

Tobermory made his entrance just as Sherlock was snapping shut the lid of the laptop.

"Something of a waste of taxpayers' money, that car, wouldn't you say?"

"He's capable of having shelled out himself for the rental," Sherlock said darkly. "Where were you? If it's sushi you want, I can order out. You really don't need to spend your days around the ground floor restaurant's dustbins."

"Temper, temper," warned the cat. "I've never seen you this wound up. Don't you trust Major Watson to see this to the desired end?"

"Define 'desired end'," Sherlock grumbled. "Really, I could break into her flat in five minutes, find this USB stick and end this charade."

"Well, what makes you think Mycroft's usual posse couldn't? I know they're not you, but surely that woman can't have thought of an unguessable hiding place?"

"Sellotaped inside the trapdoor to her bathtub's plumbing," Sherlock said. "Unfortunately, she's an American used to working from home. She has backed it up on Google Docs."

.......

Ooooh, dodged a bullet there.

So, on the way back from John Lewis, the Incredibly Cute Trauma Specialist asked me how I'd come to be without a bed. Well, I couldn't tell him that, could I? On the other hand, that sounded pretty flirty to me. So I thought I'd take the bull by the horns instead, and asked him if he'd like to come up and try out the new bed with me. Of course, I knew straight away I'd put my foot in it. He went bright pink all over – adorable, really – and nearly drove the car into a lamppost. I guess Brits just aren't used to us up-front American girls. Must remember to take things a bit more slowly.

So, I asked him up for a drink anyway – I couldn't quite hear what he said in response – it sounded like "To see your collection of stamps?", but it couldn't have been, could it? Anyway, cut a long story short, he came!

Could he be The One? Seriously, who knows? But MCR has thrown us together, and I think, I really do, that perhaps this is Fate.

......

I had thought Sherlock was being unnecessarily neurotic, calling "unexpectedly" on our neighbour just before she was due to depart on Operation Handforth Green and holding her door ajar while he interrogated her about whether she needed him to pick up anything for her from the corner shop and giving her an inordinately fussy tutorial on the difference between continuous springs, posture springs and pocketed springs, while I slipped unnoticed past and concealed myself in the bathroom until she had departed.

However, while Stanley might have been mildly chuffed to encounter Livingstone, Cortez a trifle pleased with the view from Darien and Xenophon and his ten thousand broken out into a spontaneous chorus of "We do like to be beside the sea-side" on encountering the Black Sea, their reactions paled into insignificance when, at a crucial moment following their return from John Lewis's, I chose to announce my presence in the flat with a plaintive "miaoul". In fact, John clasped me to his manly bosom, whispering, "Beam me up Scotty and there's a blue-fin tuna platter in it for you" into my ears under the guise of making soothing noises.

Which may have backfired a little, because the sight of a grown, attractive, apparently well-heeled and unquestionably heterosexual single man making a besotted idiot of himself over a cat in distress would have been enough to turn the head of a much less Linda-Blairite woman than we were dealing with.
All was looking lost when, mercifully, John's phone beeped; the sound it uses to announce an appointment rather than an incoming call or text message (being around Sherlock rubs off, even on a cat).

He looked down at it, grabbed his coat, and dashed for the door. "I'm most awfully sorry," he said, "but my sister's favourite author's doing a signing session at the Waterstone's on Deansgate. It's Harry's birthday coming up – I have to get down there."

"Well, what are we waiting for? We can easily get a cab on Whitworth Street," That Woman responded. I saw John cast me a look of despair, but what could I do? At least the taxi would have a third party present and the scrummage of an autograph session in a large bookshop might afford him other escape routes.

Besides, I had a strong suspicion who had just chosen to take a hand in the game, and I am not a cat to ignore which side my Aga is warmed.

If J. was looking for Good Copy I, who was I to stand in her way?

......

"John, darling, how adorable of you to drop by!" She leaped up from the table, narrowly avoiding sending a pile of hardbacks flying, and drew him into an enthusiastic embrace, "And how are you settling in? But I'll find that all out at your dinner party on Saturday, of course. Darling of you to invite Sandy and Nicky, too; you've no idea how dreary it is for the pair of them, looking at each other from either end of a thirty foot mahogany dining table when they've no guests at the Castle; Nicky's been reduced to serving quail's eggs with a ping-pong bat at Sandy just to relieve the boredom. I really couldn't have left them on their own, even though it's been an age since I've seen you; you're looking much healthier than you did at the investiture but then, the lighting at Buck House would make anyone look like an Arbroath smoky. Anyway, lovely to see you, but duty calls."

......

URGENT. DID MYCROFT LEAVE ANY WHISKY IN THAT SHAG PAD OF YOURS? MINE'S A TRIPLE.

"You can't be seen entering my flat under any circumstances. At this time of night it takes twelve minutes 17.35 seconds to get from Whitworth Street to Didsbury and my driver can be here in four minutes. The house whisky supplies are in the downstairs cloakroom. Mine is a Springbank 17 y.o but I recommend the Prince's Feathers Islay Special Edition. Don't drink the place dry in the next half hour – being the Gay Best Friend's no bed of roses either."

Chapter Text

Twelve hours later, Sherlock was proving by actual experiment that the time-honoured role of the Gay Best Friend was indeed far from a bed of roses. True, the silk-clad chaise longue in Cocu was not actively uncomfortable, and the customers provided enough material for deduction about their private lives (buying it for his mistress; thinks her husband has a mistress; hen party; new boyfriend; ill-judged birthday present; passive aggressive anniversary gesture; secret cross-dresser) to both keep him occupied and confirm all his most cynical suspicions about life a deux. He had also worked out 15 different ways in which the contents of the shop could be utilised to commit murder, two of which would be probably be unsolvable without the involvement of an intellect to equal his own. But every so often, the velvet curtain would swish aside, and he would be recalled to what, for the moment, seemed to be his world.

"No. Definitely not. This is a quiet dinner party in Didsbury, not a dramatic reconstruction of a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec. Ostrich-trimmed corsets are right out."

"Awwww. Not even that discreet little orangey-pink one?"

"Especially not "Madam Peaches Presents"."

"I guess, since one of the other guests is a lady romance novelist in her seventies you think maybe I should tone down the raunch, huh?"

"Trust me, it isn't her delicate sensibilities I'm trying to protect.”

“So, what do you suggest? You didn't like a single thing in Harvey Nicks, or Selfridges, and you refused even to go into that cute little shop three roads down.”

“They were playing Andre Rieu. No, there's only one place for it. Bitches.”

“What?”

..,

Half an hour later, he looked up from his phone as she emerged from behind yet another curtain in Rags to Bitches. His eyes travelled assessingly from the full, flowing skirt over the fitted waistline and neatly tailored shoulders.

“Better. Much better. There's just one thing you're forgetting. It is a British dinner party, after all. This is from me ”

He swept a generously-sized cashmere shawl round her shoulders, draping it to cover what flesh remained visible.

“Why, Sherringford, how sweet!”

He came up to stand beside her as she stood preening in the mirror, and dropped a light kiss on her cheek.

“Gooseflesh, darling. Such a bad look.”

......

"Should you be here?"

"She has, inevitably, gone to get something waxed. I managed to convince her that the only place in the whole of Manchester that understood the concept was out in Wilmslow, and told her to mention my name. And then I suggested the staff would want to know all about her blog, so it should take her at least two and a half hours for her to explain herself, never mind actually get the job done. And since I can't keep anything remotely worthwhile in my flat to occupy myself in case she pokes her surgically-lifted nose in places where it shouldn't be, I thought I might as well be bored with you as bored on my own."

"I'm deeply grateful."

"You should be. Weren't you going to make some tea?"

John vanished into the kitchen, his next comments punctuated by the familiar sounds of cupboards opening and closing and the kettle boiling.

“I thought you said you’d persuaded her into something that wouldn’t frighten the horses. So why does she need a…”

The kitchen sounds stopped abruptly.

“Oh. Fuck.”

“Precisely.”

“Sherlock, you’re not helping here.”

"Incidentally, the man from Evans has just dropped off a wooden crate with three live lobsters wrapped in seaweed and wet newspaper in the porch. Do you think that's advisable?"

"It's a bid to keep her out of the kitchen if she arrives early."

"Seriously, John? You can't have read the bit of the blog about the South African mercenary. If you think witnessing you demonstrating your ice-cold executioner side on three helpless crustaceans is going to be a turn-off, I suggest you think again."

"At least it gives me a cast-iron excuse to have a sharpened skewer on hand."

......

By now, Tim was not surprised to see the car waiting for him when he emerged from the office that evening. There was a brief moment of alarm when it headed south across Westminster Bridge, and another when it turned towards Vauxhall. Surely not. But the car drove on past the fortress-like MI6 building, and eventually drew up alongside its own twin on the windswept tarmac of the Battersea helipad.

Mycroft Holmes emerged from his own car to stand waiting under the whirring blades of the helicopter.

“I need a man on the ground. Someone who understands all the implications of what's on that USB drive, and who will tell me what's really going on. You're a historian, visiting the archives – that should allow you to start a few leads on storing records, if you have to. Keep your ears open, and your mouth, as far as possible, shut.”

“I understand, sir. But under the circumstances, wouldn't it be better to go yourself?”

“I can't be seen to be involved. Besides, there's a dinner party. Plays hell with the diet.”

He gestured behind him, and his driver emerged from the car with a briefcase, which he handed to Tim.

“Some reading for the flight. I trust I don't need to tell you not to let it fall into the wrong hands.”

“No sir. Should I eat it after I've read it?” Tim asked before he could stop himself. He thought Mycroft smirked, but perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

He remembered that smirk five minutes later, as the dark ribbon of the Thames was falling away beneath him and he slid open the locks on the case. It contained seven single-sheet biographies, each headed by a single name, a guide to the John Ryland library, and a copy of Riders.

.......

The side-street was overhung with mature trees; the houses were ample, detached, with big gardens. The house to which Tim had been directed was gabled and turreted in an architectural style which been current when the Bastables were still hunting for treasure in the Lewisham Road.

John Watson - instantly recognisable from the photograph clipped to the biography – opened the door.

"Oh," John said, "I've just picked up a phone message about you. Tom, is it?"

"Tim. Ah, I'll be your cousin for this evening."

"Mycroft," John muttered venomously. "Just when you think the situation couldn't possibly get more over-complicated he has to add his own little baroque touch. This dinner party has already got two guests about whom I know nothing whatsoever except that they're called Nicky and Sandy and apparently have a very large dining-room table and a very low boredom threshold; one guest about whom I know a lot too much who thinks we may be married on the astral plane, a fourth guest whose cat is currently on loan to my flatmate for a little light espionage and now you show up trying to pose as a member of a family none of whom you know from Adam."

"Actually," Tim said, "I met your sister on Thursday."

John's face froze. "How was she?" he enquired in a voice utterly devoid of expression.

"I - ah - think she's very worried about you." The skin between his shoulder-blades crawled with tension.

John sighed. "Um. Well, if you're going to be a member of the family, even if only for the evening, you'd better know Harry doesn't set about worrying in a particularly constructive manner."

"I know." At John's surprised look Tim raised his still bandaged hand. "She bit me." He paused for a moment. "In all fairness, I was trying to force-feed her an anchovy at the time."

"Feed her an anchovy? What imbecile thought up that idea? My sister's a drunk, not a bloody penguin."

...

The doorbell rang just as John, his sleeves rolled up, was preparing to attack the first lobster.

"I'll get it," Tim said quickly. "Don't want the starter making a bid for freedom out of the back door."

"Much though I share the impulse," John said darkly. Tim grinned - he hoped reassuringly - and headed to the door.

His first thought on encountering the tiny brunette with the impossibly high heels in the porch was to wonder if they'd all been maligning her unnecessarily. After all, she could have had no idea of the value of what was on the memory stick and, so far as anyone could tell, any gossip that idiot Rodgers had managed to tell her about the Cabinet he'd made up out of whole cloth.

And then he shivered, recollecting Mycroft Holmes's face on that first morning in the office, and the tense, almost whispered words on the helipad.

"It's not the USB in her hands that we're worried about. It's who else might have it in their sights."

Confronted with the woman herself, Tim was struck by her air of not actually being on the same planet, despite her physical proximity. He'd had a girl-friend like that, once - Amelia's favourite, slightly bewildered mantra had been, "But darling, things like that don't happen to people like us." No-one could convince Amelia that anything truly bad could happen to her; Tim had never quite worked out whether it was because she didn't think of herself as truly real or whether she thought she was the only real one in a universe of phantoms.

Certainly Amelia would never have worried her own safety might be compromised by mentioning on the internet that she was in possession of hot Cabinet secrets; it looked like this one was much the same.

"Hi," he said cheerfully. "I'm John's cousin Tim. Come in and have a drink. John's just pithing lobsters in the kitchen."

......

Getting into the flat was a matter of seconds. For all the landlord's boasts about modern security and top class features, the door had yielded to a credit card and a little persuasion in less time than it would take the flat's legitimate tenant to use her keys. He hadn't even needed the picks. He'd memorised the position of her fingers on the alarm key-pad the first day he'd been here.

The interior of the flat scarcely presented any more excitement. Replacing the government standard-issue USB stick - hidden, he noted, without satisfaction, exactly where he had deduced it would be - was again, a matter of seconds. The MacBook Pro on the table yielded obediently to his second guess - S0ulmate. Moments later, he had the file on screen, and had replaced it with a set of exceptionally boring photos of a Civil Service retirement party, all vetted by Mycroft to ensure there was nothing of the least interest to the most paranoid of viewers. A quick sweep through the rest of the files revealed nothing more than a half-written screen play, a couple of blog entries, and a number of pictures scarcely more interesting than the ones he had just posted. Boring. He shut the laptop down, carefully returned the chair to its original position and turned to the rest of the flat.

They didn't need him for this job. Lestrade could have done it. Anderson could have done it. The flat contained little more than the bare minimum provided by the landlord – she was, after all, only expecting to be there for six months. Laptop. Clothes. Shoes – none of them particularly well suited to Manchester weather. Cosmetics – well, at least the mascara was waterproof. An ipod – taste in music utterly bland and unadventurous. More importantly, no documents stored on it. A Kindle. A few books. The Secret. Jude the Obscure. A Screenwriter's Guide. Wallpaper* guides to London and Paris. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Not her usual reading material. And the extremely rare New York 1886 edition at that. His eyebrows rose as he read the inscription on the flyleaf. Ruth and Eddie Frow.

Mycroft's going to have a fit.

For the first time since starting this ridiculous charade, he could feel his mind starting to work at full speed. He slipped the book into his pocket. Game on.

......

Tim's day job involved plenty of rubbing shoulders with famous people and, for that matter, with important people, who, he had learnt very early, were not at all the same thing, though the two groups sometimes overlapped. However, seeing that familiar mane of silver-tawny hair and wicked, laughing eyes across the dinner table he felt as tongue-tied and adrift as a teenage autograph hunter at the stage door.

She grinned cheerfully at him. "So you're John's cousin? Yet another of the devastatingly attractive Watson clan?"

The mischief in her eyes lit an answering spark in him. "Oh, it's John who's the international stud-muffin. As his sister Harry calls him."

Spluttering gasps came from beside him; John, apparently, choking on his wine. Tim patted him solicitously on the back and smiled at the novelist. "Actually, you know, if it hadn't been for the help I got from your books, I'd have led a sad and lonely life on the romantic front."

"You'll have a bloody sad and lonely old age if you don't get better at keeping your mouth shut," John hissed at him, emerging from the depth of his handkerchief. "As will my sodding sister."

"Oh, John, don't be so uptight. Quite apart from anything else, it's perfectly true." She winked at the blogger. "Wouldn't you agree? I think it's that air of concentrated power he radiates. Like the winter sun; low, but intense."

"Ah. You're saying I'm short. Look, I'm the anatomy specialist round here, and I can tell you five foot seven is a perfectly average height for a British man. I've no idea why people witter on about it, as if I were some sort of hobbit or something."

"I'm sure there's a really bad chat-up line in that," Tim murmured thoughtfully.

"I'm sure you'll have thought it up by the time we've got to pudding."

The novelist waved her hand at them. "Boys!" she said reprovingly. "Stop squabbling. Tim; I'm dying to know about you and my books. I do hope you haven't been naughty enough to take seduction tips from Rupert?"

"Only in absolute emergencies," Tim said demurely. Across the table Nicky – whom Tim had identified by a decidedly non-standard app on his Government issue smart phone as the Earl of Ribchester – let out a quick honk of laughter.

"Worked for me." He winked at his Countess – Sandy – who grinned back.

"Rubbish," she said. "I knew you were the one from the very start. I thought you'd feel more in charge if you thought you had a chase on your hands. But actually it was a drag-hunt from the very beginning."

"Gee, people actually go hunting in drag in this country?"

Four people around the dining room table looked open-mouthed. Tim waved his arm expansively.

"Well, it's not something that gets talked about openly. You know – 'the first rule of Drag Hunt –'"

"'- is that no-one talks about Drag Hunt'?" Her eyes were wide – absolutely transfixed on his face.

People this gullible shouldn't be let out without a minder.

He pushed back the tiny flicker of his conscience and nodded.

"It all started – well, there've been pockets of it here and there going back over a century, in fact there's a pretty overt reference to it in Somerville & Ross's The Irish R.M. - God alone knows why that wasn't caught by the editor - but it really picked up after the last Government brought in the Hunting Act 2004. Sort of part subversion, part sublimation, I suppose. But there's no thrill like clearing a five-barred gate side-saddle in a formal presentation gown, elbow-length gloves in glace kid and ostrich feathers. Or so I've been told."

He came to a halt and took a deep swallow of his wine. Across the table, the novelist lifted her own glass in salute.

"You’re a very dangerous man, Tim Watson."

"And you should just meet his boss," John muttered.

Now who needs a lesson in keeping his mouth shut?

John's eyes acknowledged as much.

"So, what exactly is it you do?" Sandy asked, as the awkward silence threatened to become prolonged.

"I'm a semiotician." That, fortunately, produced exactly the five-fold blank stare Mycroft's briefing note had assured him it would. He waved his hand. "I've been given a chance to examine the Oxyrhynchus Fragment – there's a hope I might be able to explode a rather dangerous theory about the age and provenance of the Gospel of John which is gaining a bit too much traction in those Dominionist circles who have always drawn upon unstated Gnostic traditions…"

He allowed his voice to tail off artistically. The blogger gulped.

"But that sounds fabulous. Obscure areas of research and ancient manuscripts and on-line conspiracies. Like Dan Brown writes it, but you're actually living it."

"Well, I've not had to fight off albino monks yet." Tim thought he'd managed precisely the right nonchalant tone with that.

"I'm sure it's only a matter of time," John said meaningfully. He rose to his feet and started gathering up starter plates. "Tim, could you give me a hand clearing?"

"Certainly. " He picked up the discarded lobster platter and gestured towards the door. "After you, shortarse."

John shrugged. "Don't think you can get a rise out of me that way. I've only ever had one regret about my height, and it's that it stopped me being a hooker once I got into the Sixth Form. "

He vanished towards the kitchen, his arms full of crockery.

Tim had never before regretted not opting for the vest-pocket stealth camera app for his phone, but he would dearly have loved to capture the blogger's expression for posterity. And he devoutly hoped Nicky didn't have a heart weakness, or judging by his purpling face as he suppressed a giggling fit, Sandy would be the Dowager Countess before they got to the coffee and liqueurs stage.

He beamed on the assembled company.

"Mine's an unusual family," he observed, and followed John to the kitchen.

Chapter Text

"Say, thanks for seeing me back to my flat. It’s those little things that make British men so special, you know. Hey, want to come in for coffee?"

For a moment, Tim was tempted. He’d learnt a lot during the taxi ride. And there was something about a woman who would believe literally anything that he told her that was irresistibly appealing. Better not. My boss would kill me. And that’s probably not a metaphor.

“I’d love to, but I’d better be getting back. Early start tomorrow. Thank you for a lovely evening, though.”

She stretched out her arms, but he managed to catch one of them as it made for his neck, and brought it to his lips instead. Too over the top? Well, he had just spent the evening in the company of a romantic novelist. Might as well make the most of it. He gave something which might have been the ghost of a bow and turned away down the hall.

He was halfway to the lift when he heard her scream.

......

"There was someone there. There was someone in my flat!"

Tim held her, sobbing and trembling, in his arms, stroking slowly down her back in an attempt to calm her, while his eyes took a rapid inventory.

Furtniture overturned , cushions ripped up and turned inside out, drawers emptied on the floor, curtains torn from the open window. The place looked like the aftermath of a drugs bust in every movie he'd ever seen.

"We've got to call the police," he said, eventually. "I'll do it, if you like. We don't have to stay here till they come, though. Do you know anyone else in the building?"

"There's - there's Sherringford," she managed. "My neighbour. But I - I think he's out."

"I'll call John. You can't sleep here, and he's got at least three spare rooms besides the one I'm sleeping in."

She gulped again, visibly trying to get a hold on herself. "Taxi's gone by now. There's a cab rank round the corner."

"Not from a rank. I'll order a minicab."

The phone number he called was not, in fact, that of a minicab company - though he expected it would, in due course, produce a demonstrably authentic Mancuian minicab - and the very fact of his having used it would, he knew, set into motion an entire vast mechanism of surveillance and protection. He thought he noticed the CCTV cameras mounted on the lamp-post on Sackville Street twitch in their direction as they exited the building.

Message received and understood

"I've told them we'll wait for the cab in TriBeCa," he said. "Thank God the Village never sleeps."

He spent the next ten minutes frantically phoning and texting John, but getting no response. He'd just have to hope that nothing more compromising than washing up was happening over in Didsbury.

......

"Don't think you can try to pretend," John said, his voice loud in the gloomy, enormous kitchen. "I know you're here. After all, I can see the tip of your confederate's tail twitching from behind the wellington boots by the garden door. You might as well come out. Take pride in what you are. The world's only consulting cat burglar. At least; the world's only consulting cat burglar who can be relied on to bring his own cat."

Both Tobermory and Sherlock emerged from the shadows at the same time.

John looked at the cat. "All lobster remains have your name on them." He gestured towards the platter on the draining board, then smiled at Sherlock.

"Have you been waiting long?"

His flatmate inclined his head in a slight gesture of acknowledgement. "Since just before the teeth-gritting anecdote involving the sweat-lodge ritual in the Mojave desert, her totem spirit animal and the astral plane. Trust me, if that woman has a totem animal, it's a lemming. Look at this."

He produced a battered hardback book from an inner pocket of his coat. John looked at it.

"Um. And?"

"Um? And?" Sherlock gestured eloquently. "I stole it from her flat earlier this evening."

"You did what? Isn't she going to notice?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Not before I replace it tomorrow morning, My fingerprints are legitimately all over the flat, I'm in and out all day, she's horrifically disorganised as regards books and CDs – even if she spots it's been misplaced all I need do is confess having picked it up to take a look and put it back in the wrong shelf. Anyway; it's not hers to begin with. Stolen property. But how she got hold of it; there's the interesting question."

Sherlock's eyes were narrowing; the pace of his voice picked up. John recognised the symptoms. He grasped his flatmate around his narrow, bony wrists, pulling him closer to the kitchen table. "Not eaten, have you? Since when? Actually, forget that. Doesn't matter. There's a good dollop of the chocolate coffee refrigerator slice left. Neck that, and then tell me about the book. You'll thank me for the energy, when we're both dashing round Manchester."

Sherlock flopped down at the kitchen table and allowed John to fish the remains of the pudding from the fridge, turf it into a bowl and hand it to him. Tobermory, meanwhile, scoured the lobster carcases. Only when both of them seemed satisfied did John return to the attack.

"So. Book."

Sherlock did what John had privately catalogued as "that cat thing" with his face. Tobermory had just assumed a precisely similar expression.

"The Condition of the Working Class in England. First English language edition; published 1886 in New York. Already out of print by 1892, according to Engels' preface to the next English language edition. Not a very likely book for an American woman of that class and type to own in any edition. Unlikely to be intended for assistance in her blogging activities, even though it also centres around a foreigner's impressions of Manchester. I imagine dead communists are box office poison. Anyway, it's the edition only a serious collector would have. And here, on the fly-leaf, are the names of those collectors. "

"Ruth and Eddie Frow? Who're they?"

"Who were they," Sherlock corrected. "Very famous Manchester Communists. Also, the founders of the unique labour movement archive now housed in the Working Class Movement Library. Which is where this book was stolen from. The back-up memory stick's somewhere near the place on the shelf where this book ought to be. It's our blogger's insurance for retrieving the stick in case whoever she was working with to conceal the memory stick falls under a bus. Which is far from implausible, once Mycroft finds out what Dr X has been up to."

"Dr X?"

"Oh, do use your brains. He's an academic, working on labour history, hence his choice of a hiding place. Not a full professor; anyone who can navigate promotion fights in a tough academic climate develops more sense of self-preservation than to get involved in a mess like this. He's living beyond his means – "

"Hang on, how do you deduce that?"

"Anyone hanging out with that woman on a prolonged basis is by definition living beyond his means. I've even started to get sardonic texts from Anthea about my expenses. Have you any idea what it costs for a slow comfortable screw up against the wall in Cloud 23?"

"Given it's a glass wall, I'd say the payments ought to go the other way," John murmured. "Might cause a bit of a traffic pile-up on Deansgate, though."

Sherlock ignored him.

"Anyway, given his financial problems, he's after the holy grail of an impoverished historian; a BBC 2 six part series and tie-in book deal. She's got media connections; he's got gravitas - match made in heaven. At least, until these shennaigans blow up in his face. Which, of course, is only a matter of time. Until 10.02 am tomorrow morning, to be precise. Library opens at ten; minute and a half to find the USB stick; thirty seconds to tell Mycroft I've got it and who hid it. Because there's no way Mycroft is going to tolerate someone of Dr X's political views having had access to what's on that stick."

"Because he's a communist?"

"Oh, don't be an idiot. Trendy young Marxist academics who hang out in fashionable cocktail bars and pull pseudo-intellectual young women on the strength of their ruthless deconstruction of the capitalist mythos went out with the dodo. He's studying labour history; not trying to make it. Mycroft wouldn't be nearly so worried if he believed Dr X was in the CP."

"So what are his political views?"

"Academic, based in Manchester, looking for a BBC series? He's a card-carrying member of the LibDems, of course."

......

John was just putting away the last of the glasses, watched by two identical smiles of feline self-satisfaction, when a car door slammed outside. Tim's voice, slightly raised, drifted through the open window.

"It's fine, I'm sure John's still up. Look, the light's on."

The bell rang. John waved frantically at the door into the garden. "Out! Toby, you too. Christ knows what she wants at this hour." He closed the kitchen door on them both, ignoring Toby's tart "I can guess," and headed out into the hall.

Tim's face was white and tense under the light in the porch. The blogger looked like a woman in shock, face swollen with crying. Her hand, when he reached out to draw her inside, was ice cold. His training kicked in automatically.

"Come through into the living room, it's warmest. I'll make some tea. What happened?"

"Burglary," Tim said brusquely. "Whoever did it looked to have practically torn the place apart. But – you know, Manchester on Friday nights. The police said they couldn't send anybody till tomorrow morning, and the place is in no fit state to sleep in. "

"Sleep? I don't think I'll ever sleep again." She shuddered dramatically and shrank closer to Tim's side.

"Hmmm. I can probably prescribe you something to help with that, if you like?"

It's not unethical. She really does look like she needs it.

He rummaged in the desk for his pen, tore a prescription form from the pad in his briefcase. "Is there anywhere we could get it filled at this time of night?"

"There's the all night chemist in St Peter's Square," said Tim. "Means going back into the city centre, though."

"Well, none of us are in a fit state to drive tonight, and I suppose you let your mini-cab go? Damn. We could be waiting an hour if we phoned another. Anywhere closer?"

"There's a Tesco Superstore on Parrs Wood Road. That's walkable – probably about a mile and a half."

"Great. Do you think you could..."

"Oh, no. Please, stay here," She was actually clinging to Tim's jacket now.

John nodded. "Fine, I'll go myself. Probably just as well, in case the duty pharmacist gets itchy about it being a London clinic address on the prescription. Tim, if you could just point me in the right direction?"

Five minutes later, he was heading down the road. A familiar tread fell into step beside him.

"I couldn't lip read, the distance I was from the windows, but she's clearly not faking her response to whatever happened to her after leaving here."

"What happened? You happened. I thought you said you were being subtle. Sounds like you left her flat looking like that drugs bust Lestrade ran after on us after the Whitechapel poitin incident."

"John, Lestrade himself wouldn't have been able to tell anyone had been in that flat after I left it. Whoever did this burglary, it wasn't me."

...

Just under an hour later, John let himself back into the house. Sherlock, still worrying away at the problem of the burglary, had melted away into the shadows of the garden, not without protest. Thirty seconds later, the door slammed open again.

“Sherlock. Get in here. Now.”

......

I have never understood human families; generally speaking, cats order matters so much more sensibly. Still, I had detected a certain amount of score-settling on Mycroft's part when he engaged his litter-mate on the current task, including a distinct if unstated air of "If you're so clever, work out what I'm not telling you".

Accordingly, I thought it prudent to be on paw while Tim offered tea and sympathy to the distraught blogger, even if for obvious reasons I had to remain out of sight. In any case, , the garden was distinctly damp and lacking in attractions, especially once John and Sherlock had set off on their trek to the supermarket. I re-entered the house by way of the smallest kitchen window, and made a stealthy approach to the living room.

"No, Tim, you don't understand! This wasn't a random break-in by some crack-head kids looking for something they could trade for their next hit. It was meant to send a message. I'm a target. I'm not safe."

"But do you have any idea what they could have been looking for?" Tim asked, kneeling by the side of the sofa and massaging her hands in a gesture in which I wished I could record and send to J. for research purposes (though Tim had probably got the idea from one of her less talented competitors in the romance novel department in the first place).

"Yes!" she sobbed dramatically. "It's another Watergate!"

That, of course, left me none the wiser. Fortunately, Tim seemed to think her explanation left a bit to be desired, too.

"Um, you mean you think you're the victim of a high-level Government conspiracy?"

His mingled tone of horror and disbelief really was particularly well done. In fact, if they handed out Oscars for "Best demonstration of bald-faced cheek by a public servant in the course of his duties" that performance would have been a very strong contender. And, as anyone familiar with my career will know, I'm a cat who's rubbed knees with the best in the business on that particular front.

"Of course I am!" she said passionately and, I had to concede, for once wholly accurately. Having followed her blog from the beginning, I started to fear the collapse of the space-time continuum must be at hand.

"Well, why? And do you think anyone else might be in danger too?"

Her hand went to her mouth. "Oh. My. God. I'd forgotten all about him. I need to make a phone call."

"Who to?" Tim asked.

"The academic guy. The one who hid the backup USB stick for me. That must have been what the bad guys were after. I don't know if they'll have found the original – I hid it in a pretty cunning place – but we agreed that if anything like this happened, I was to get in touch at once. Only I never thought – I thought he was getting his panties in a wad about Government surveillance because he's writing a book about spooks infiltrating British left-wing circles, and it's making him paranoid – "

"So you need to warn him he's next on the list to be burgled?" Tim really was sustaining his performance remarkably; I started to see why Mycroft Holmes thought of him as a young man worthy of his personal attention.

"Yeah, maybe, but he's not got the back-up at his flat -"

"Might the people who broke into your flat have discovered where he's actually hidden it?" Tim asked. "After all - um, if they are spooks, most likely they were able to hack into your computer."

She blinked and gulped. "Like I said, he's really freaky about security. He told me to put nothing in writing and definitely not on the computer. That's why we arranged the book code."

"The book code?" By this point, I thought, a trifle too much eagerness to find out what the hell was going on was starting to mar Tim's performance; understandable in a Civil Service high flyer about to plug one of the most potentially damaging leaks in history, but a bit on the cold-blooded side for a nice young man comforting a woman who'd been burgled, apparently by ruthless Government operatives. Fortunately, my critical faculties were considerably more finely tuned than hers.

She nodded, and wiped a hand across her tear-brimming eyes. Tim, on cue, fished out a linen handkerchief and handed it to her. She dabbed her eyes and looked gratefully up at him.

"He's hidden it in a crack in the shelves in the library he's researching in. He gave me the book which is supposed to sit on the shelf above it, so if ever I needed to get it back, and he wasn't around, all I'd have to do is go and find the right shelf and it'd lead me straight to the USB stick."

Tim's jaw dropped; possibly at anyone thinking a plan which involved this woman walking into a strange library and decoding its cataloguing system on sight could possibly be filed under anything other than "Catastrophe: waiting to happen."

"God, I hope the burglars didn't steal the book," he said. "Not that they'd know its value, but they looked to have given everything a pretty thorough going over. I'd better make sure we check it's there when we go back to talk to the police in the morning." He paused. "But it doesn't matter, I suppose – provided you know the title and the author, you'll be able to get to the right shelf just using the catalogue."

The pause which followed was just that fraction too long.

"You do know them, don't you?" he enquired.

She twisted her body awkwardly on the sofa. "I – um – we were running late – we were meeting this dreamy BBC exec for drinks in the Circle Club – he just thrust it into my hand and I put it on the shelf and I never thought to look at it again."

"And you can't remember anything about it? Size, weight, colour -?"

She shrugged, helplessly. "It was an old one, I remember that."

I heard him inhale. At that moment Tim's phone beeped; text message, clearly. From my position of concealment I could see him glance down at it, pause, and then drop the phone back into his pocket, the message unanswered. He got to his feet, walked across to the table, and picked up her handbag..

"Anyway, there's no point in putting your friend at risk an instant longer than you need. Better make that phone call." Either the strain was beginning to tell, or there had been something extraordinarily upsetting in the text he had just received. At any rate, his voice was not quite as even as it had been.

She fumbled with the clasp on the bag,. then clapped her hand to her mouth in sudden panic.

“The cellphone! He told me never to call him on the cell, the Government listening posts monitor the networks. He wouldn't even let me save the number into my phone. I had to write it down.”

“Well, have you got your address book with you?” Tim snapped. Definitely a man whose patience was close to breaking point. Not an unfamiliar response in people confronted with our blogger doing her "ditzy-yet-cute-girl-from-La-La-land" act, but more than a little unwarranted in these precise circumstances. My fur started to fluff up.

“I keep it in my purse. It helps me feel connected to people. Now, where did I store his name? D, d...Got it.”

I heard the flick of pages being turned, and the sound of Tim's feet crossing behind the sofa.

"John's phone's over here. No, don't move. I'll bring it round to you.”

......

Rain. Manchester rain. Manchester. The city whose prosperity came from its humidity. The Merc's windscreen wipers slicking back and forth, hypnotic, mesmerising. The dark, tree-hung expanse of the Southern Cemetery to his left, deserted but for the sleeping dead.

The lucky, lucky, dead.

The dull, sodden, oddly nauseating sound of that bronze ornament impacting on a human skull. Had he killed her? Ragged, harsh, gasping breaths when he left her. Left in the recovery position, in case she vomited before John got back.

John. Army doctor, familiar with contusions, concussions, violence.

John, a lone good man in a desert of cold, soulless, ambitious wraiths. (Brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord – Mycroft Holmes - better off dead. The lucky, lucky dead.). A good man to have as a cousin, even if only for an evening.

John would save him from being a killer if anyone could. Saving people. John's job description. Not his. Damning people, more like. Including himself. From here to eternity, baa, baa, baa.

Not a killer, not yet, not necessarily (concussion, bleeding in the brain, depressed fracture of the skull. Thirty minutes walk – make that forty – from the Parrs Wood Tesco to the north side of Lapwing Lane, hard by the Christie Hospital. No A&E at the Christie, of course. How long did brain damage take to kill someone? Still a chance).

Not a killer, not intentionally. Like Sukey, though she, too hadn't meant anything, hadn't intended to kill (manslaughter, runs in families? Like incest. Not that he and Sukey – except that one time and, even then, nothing had happened, not really. Things like that don't happen to people like us. Manslaughter and treason. What would Amelia say to that?)

Lights coming up. Red for danger - traffic cameras on the lights – no reason for anyone to be tracking the Merc, not yet, not until John got back and raised the alarm. Except, that phone call from Sackville Street? Everyone on high alert already. Yes, maybe. Still, analysis takes time, synthesis even longer. Should be OK for a bit.

Better be careful at the lights, anyway. God knows how much he'd had to drink, earlier. He held it well, always had, but still, well over the limit, anyway. Drive carefully, discreetly, sensibly. Like his life, really, and just as much of an act. No sense in giving a copper an excuse to pull you over. Another excuse. Official Secrets, treason, assault, drunk driving – doing time till next century.

Time. Never enough time. How long to search an entire library? (The right library? Yes, must be. No-one working on infiltration of the trade union movement by MI5 faffs about with the John Rylands. The WCML or nothing.)

Perhaps it was just as well the academic had had been out; no car in his drive; most likely away for the weekend. Would Tim really have summoned up the nerve to torture him to extract the precise location of the memory stick? Perhaps, for Sukey. "NOTHING AT THE FLAT. THINK OF SOMETHING FAST OR YOU WON'T SEE YOUR SISTER FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS." Thank God the man had been out, making the question moot. One less crime on the list. No point searching the place, she'd made it clear there would have been nothing to find.

Nothing for it but the library.

Why couldn't that half-witted bimbo have remembered the name of the book? Half-witted? Fewer than that, now. Brain damage – concussion – bleeding in the brain.

Christ - let John get back to her in time. Only that. That and Sukey. Other than that, better off dead.

The lucky, lucky dead.

Chapter Text

John was kneeling on the floor beside the unconscious blogger, eyes fixed on her face, hands searching gently through her hair. Sherlock's eyes skimmed the room, passing over the patch of blood soaking into the hearthrug, and pausing on the sofa. He swooped, and came up with a mobile phone in his hand.

“Now that's suspicious.”

“What, more suspicious than the unconscious woman with the head injury bleeding on the floor?” John asked, without looking up.

“Hit on the head from behind with the paperweight by your left hand about fifteen minutes ago. Glancing blow. Unpremeditated crime of impulse. Anybody might have done that. I've been tempted to do it myself. What?”

"Not good, really," John said.

“No, the key thing is that this is a heavy-duty government issue phone. Tim's. If he'd been kidnapped, he'd have taken it if he could. Tucked into the cushions, so it couldn't have been lost in a struggle. Hidden, as best he could at short notice. Why?”

Sherlock was pacing up and down the room now, steepled fingers pressed to his lips. Abruptly, he swung round and stared at John.

“How did you know where to go for the pharmacy? I didn't see you use your phone.”

“Tim told me. Why? Does a knowledge of Manchester pharmacies make a man inherently suspect in your book?”

“Said he'd never been to Manchester before. He was lying. Stupid. Stupid . Why didn't I notice?”

“Why should you? He was lying from the moment he got through the door. So was I, come to that. So were you.”

“Different sort of lie. That one was unnecessary. So why do it? Why does it matter?”

On the floor, the blogger moaned. John turned back to her, voice pitched low and reassuring.

“Shhh. Don't try to move. You've had a nasty crack on the head. I think you'll be fine, but we've called an ambulance just in case. There's a couple of things I'd like to check, though, just to make sure you're alright. Can you see me quite clearly?”

Her gaze drifted away from John and focussed muzzily on the tall figure in the corner. She looked back at John again.

“Sherringford? Wha'?”

Sherlock flung himself dramatically on his knees at her side and took her hand in both of his.

“John called me when he found you. He thought you might want someone else here while we wait for the ambulance. Can you tell me what happened?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. John leaned forward sharply, reaching for the pulse at her neck. Then her eyes fluttered open again. “Tim. 'S Tim alrigh'?”

Their eyes met over her head.

...

“Unavailable. How the fuck can Mycroft be unavailable? I've spent my entire life being infuriated by his ubiquity. How can he have gone to ground now, when he might actually be some use?”

“Balmoral. Sorting out placement for the royal wedding. Not to be disturbed under any circumstances. So they tell me.”

“Please tell me this is your peculiar idea of a joke.”

“Not at all. I got through to Anthea. She was quite insistent. It was all I could do to persuade her to divert Tim's helicopter to get the casualty out of here to somewhere she can be properly scanned and monitored.”

Sherlock glanced through to the living room, at the too-still figure on the sofa, and pulled the kitchen door shut.

“So we have a civil servant gone rogue, a bunch of goons carrying out burglaries on behalf of an unknown principal, a missing USB stick that could put the country at war, and Mycroft is worrying about confetti? His sense of priorities always did range towards the rococo.”

"So, in your brother's absence, where do you suggest we start?"

“Well, you could start by looking for 'Drop Dead Gorgeous Professor of Labour Movement Infiltration,” suggested Toby, loping elegantly through the open window. “That young man who snaffled all the roast beef was quite vehement about it. Oh, and you might want to check his phone for the last text he received.”

Outside, the clatter of helicopter blades approached.

......

For about three hundred yards John wondered if Sherlock intended to run all the way from Didsbury to Salford. What was it, five miles? They'd done more in their time. Though not, for choice, after a lavish dinner party and an impromptu cranial examination.

Unexpectedly, Sherlock turned without slowing down, the impetus of his spin sending him leaping into the air. He slammed out his hand. A black cab ghosted past them and drew to a halt a few yards ahead. The yellow "For Hire" sign winked out as Sherlock wrenched the door open.

"That's a real superpower, you know," John said, as they flopped into the back seat.

"Engine noise unmistakable. This time of night, heading into town, most likely to be empty." Sherlock leaned forward. "Salford Crescent, opposite the University, thanks" and then slid the little glass partition shut, cutting their conversation off from the driver.

"I liked him," John said abruptly. Sherlock twisted his head sideways, regarding him steadily, without speaking.

"I did like him. What could have made him do it?"

Sherlock leaned forward, his fingers steepled against the bridge of his nose.

"Bribery, blackmail, coercion? Not the first; he's neither short-sighted nor greedy. He's got a first in PPE and yet doesn't seem even to have flirted with the idea of going into the City. Blackmail? What secrets would he have? Nothing revealed on vetting, either when he entered the Civil Service or on his most recent promotion. So it would have to have been either something Mycroft's people missed – possible, but unlikely – or something that happened very recently. What sort of blackmailable indiscretion can a cautious, ambitious young man commit these days, anyway? Especially with my brother's watchful eye on him."

He gave a brief, thoughtful "huff" of breath.

"Coercion. Much more interesting possibility. Pressure exerted on Tim by threats to someone close to him. First question; is there anyone for whom he would risk his career? Not a girl-friend, not given the insights into his seduction technique he decided to share over coffee."

"You mean, 'I always make a point of sending a copy of Polo and half a kilo of Charbonnel & Walker champagne truffles round to any girl I know who's going through a breakup'? He didn't say it was a seduction technique."

"Nevertheless. Of those within earshot, two women, three men and one cat knew exactly where he was coming from. If he isn't interested in the rebound shag, at least he knows that during some part of the time the woman concerned will inevitably spend whimpering to her closest female friends about how badly she's been treated, the mention of Tim's understanding and sensitivity is bound to come up. Safe assumption; his sex life comprises a series of uncomplicated, undemanding, mutually enjoyable, non-exclusive, relatively casual liaisons."

"Lucky sod," John muttered.

"So; if he's reacting to coercion it's being exercised against a relative. Younger than him. Almost certainly female. He's got a surprisingly protective streak towards women."

"Protective? She was out for ten minutes after we got back. God knows how long it was since he slugged her. That was a hard blow, Sherlock. She could have died."

"Indeed, if the first person to find her hadn't been likely to be an Army doctor, if she hadn't been carefully left in the recovery position, if there hadn't been a readily available helicopter able to be pressed into service as an air ambulance her chances really wouldn't have looked good. Suppose, for example, he'd hit her in the burgled flat. His chances of getting away with it would have been massively increased, but her survival odds would have been greatly reduced. Tell me, John; how many cold-blooded killers calculate like that? Even from your limited experience, surely the incongruities must be screaming to high heaven."

"Nevertheless, he did hit her."

"Immediately after receiving a text, according to Toby. A text which is conspicuously not visible on the Government issue mobile phone of which he was so keen to divest himself."

Sherlock pulled the phone from his coat pocket, and turned it over and over in his hand.

"Might have deleted it."

"Unlikely. Deleting it from the phone wouldn't delete it from the logs, and he knows it. Also, while you were helping the helicopter crew, I tried a little experiment. Texted it myself."

"You didn't, by any chance, deploy the words, MYCROFT IF YOU'RE MONITORING THIS GET OFF YOUR FAT ARSE AND MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL , did you?" John enquired.

"Irrelevant. The point is that Toby – whose hearing is exceptionally sensitive –"

"Can tell when a fridge door is opened from three flights up," John agreed.

"Toby was clear that the sound he heard when Tim received his text differed considerably in pitch to the one made by his official phone. Therefore Tim was deliberately carrying two phones this evening, one of them probably a pay-as-you go model purchased in cash."

"Oh, shit. Premeditation."

"Quite so. And, of course, the very fact of Tim's having acquired a second, private phone will have sent up the reddest of flags when it came to Mycroft's attention."

John didn't bother querying Sherlock's use of the term "when."

"So your brother suspected something? And set us up?"

"Yes to the first. As to the second - everything my brother does, when it involves me in any respect whatsoever, is calculated to send a message. And at the moment he's conspicuously doing nothing. So what message is that intended to send?"

He slumped against the cab window, staring out through the cab window into the neon blaze of Rusholme, through which they were passing.

"Give me his phone," John said. "I've had an idea. Something he said before dinner when I was apologising for my sister having bitten him. I want to have a look at his address book and his recent phone calls."

...

John had been in some odd places before, but standing on Sherlock's shoulders attempting to reach the bottom ladder of an iron fire escape in the early hours of a wet Salford morning was decidedly one of the odder ones. He wondered briefly if the whole thing was an exceptionally vivid dream – the lobsters' revenge, perhaps? But then the bottom ladder came down in a rush, and the pain of his skinned knuckles as he attempted to stop it clanging on the brickwork was all too real.

“I still don't see why we couldn't have gone in on the ground floor like Tim did,” he grumbled, once both of them were through the window Sherlock had forced at the top.

“Broken glass everywhere. He's only got to the next room – he'd have heard you coming over it. Anyway, I went back to my flat before I arrived at that dinner party of yours and looked up the catalogue and the floor plan. And if I'm right – and I am – that USB stick should be just about... here.”

Sherlock gave a quick breath of satisfaction as his fingers closed over the small, hard shape tucked into the back of the shelf. But his face, when he looked up, was still wearing the scowl of intense concentration that John privately considered Sherlock's 'thinking' face. It was, on the whole, infinitely less worrying than his 'bored' face, but there was still something deeply unsettling about it.

“Well, I think we can take our time over the rest of it now,” Sherlock said, unexpectedly. Sherlock in the middle of a case was normally a man possessed. John felt fairly possessed himself. Adrenalin could do that to a man. And thinking of adrenalin...

“Time? There's a man down there systematically pulling the library to bits.”

“Precisely. And he's going to be there for some hours yet.” Sherlock's smile was vulpine. “Don't you want to know the rest of it? You can go downstairs and keep an eye on him if it makes you any happier, but he's not going anywhere till he's found this.” He spun the USB stick in the air, flashily, then dropped it into his pocket. “If we go down the back stairs and round the corner, there's an MP's office on the ground floor that should have a halfway decent Internet connection.”

John looked at him in horror.

“Your career as a burglar is going to your head. First the flat, then the library, and now you want to break into some MPs office just to round off the evening? Most people just do the rounds of the clubs if they want a night on the edge. What's next, Scotland Yard?”

Sherlock's face was absolutely expressionless.

“You haven't. Please tell me you haven't.”

“Lestrade was annoying me. Anyway, it was ages ago. Look, we really can't do what I need to do in here. Library connections are inevitably Jurassic. And if you're worried about the look of the thing, remember my brother is ostentatiously ignoring us. If Mycroft's given me carte blanche, even he can't very well object if I use it.”

John was far from sure about this, but Sherlock was already halfway to the door, and there was nothing to do but follow. He caught Sherlock by the arm just as he was easing open the door to the landing.

“Sherlock?”

“What now?”

“Put the book back. And that first edition of Tom Paine's Commonsense.”

"Honestly, John, this archive was founded on the principle that all property is theft…"

"That's the attitude you always take to libraries. Not this time. We've committed enough crimes for one evening."

"Well, apart from nicking a shadow cabinet minister's private stash of Earl Grey tea-bags. We've got a long wait on our hands, after all."

......

Four thirty in the morning. A dismal hour. Two, perhaps three hours to go till daylight, if it was a grey morning. And still only two and a half rooms searched, of - how many? Better not think of that. Just keep going. Pull out the books, run a hand along the shelf, on to the next. At least he could ignore the rooms full of pamphlets and papers. His arms and back were aching now, throat and eyes itching with the dust, but no time to stop. Clear the shelf. Search. On to the next.

Tim didn't hear the door opening as the next armful of books was dropped to the ground. Only at the sound of footsteps crossing the floor did he swing round, to stand with his back pressed against the shelves. Sherlock was standing just inside the closed door, while John blocked the way to the window. He felt his face twist into a bitter approximation of a smile.

"Ah. The albino monks, I presume."

Sherlock ignored this, stalking forward until his tall figure seemed to block out all the light.

"Treason is a very serious crime, my brother tells me. To say nothing of murder."

Murder. God, no. No.

"... as I'm sure your sister could tell us," that inexorable voice continued. The room swam grey about him.

“Sit down before you fall down.” John's voice, harsh. “It won't help anything if you black out on us.”

He stumbled to a chair, forced himself to take another breath, to concentrate on what was in front of him. His own voice, when it came, was hoarse, hardly more than a whisper.

"What do you know about Sukey?"

“Your sister? Studied in Manchester, moved to America two years ago to take her master's at Syracuse. Took up with the wrong crowd, you thought. You called her regularly, twice a week. Then, two months ago, for three days, you were on the phone for three hours a day. Then nothing. A telling pattern, that. ” Sherlock skimmed a newspaper printout onto the table in front of him. The headline - “Hansforth heir in death crash drama” - was all too familiar. So, too, were the grainy photos accompanying it. “There was a man. Very young, very rich, and very, very drunk. Your sister was, apparently, driving him home. Wet night. Man stumbles out of a bar into the road right in front of them. Drugged to the eyes – drunk, too. Nothing anyone could have done; the bar bouncer supports your sister's story. Your sister in hospital overnight, desperately upset. Her passenger whisked off by his family to recuperate at their ranch in Montana. Police very understanding. She thought that was the end of the matter.

“Three days after the crash, you got a letter. No return address. And a sim card.”

“Not a letter. A photo,” he managed.

“A photo, of course. Not one of the ones in the paper. A photo of the dead man."

"He was –" Tim's tongue felt somehow thick in his mouth. That photo – Sukey, wearing very little indeed, hanging round the young man's neck, obviously caught mid-snog, a frat-house party, just the kind of thing he'd told her to avoid – "She knew him. More than knew. Hadn't told the police."

Sherlock's face seemed almost inhuman in its lack of expression. "You bought a phone, put the sim card in it. There was a message, recorded, a text... it doesn't matter. 'Do as we tell you, or your sister goes down.' You should have gone straight to Mycroft with it."

"Wasn't working for him them." No point in dwelling on that twenty-four hours during which he knew he had to take the whole thing to Carstairs, knew he wasn't going to. The last twenty-four hours during which he'd been, if only in theory, his own man.

"A meaningless quibble. Anyway, you sent your acceptance. And for two months, there was nothing to do. You started to hope there never would be. And then you got another text.”

He stopped, and looked at Tim expectantly. Tim stared back, silent. “The phone,” Sherlock repeated, holding out his hand.

Handing it over should have made a difference, one way or the other, but it didn't. What difference could it make to a murderer, anyway? The rest of it scarcely mattered, now. And Sherlock seemed to know everything already.

“Not quite everything,” said Sherlock – could the man really be a mindreader? There had been that file from the 70s... No. Concentrate. “But enough. Including some significant facts which seem to have escaped your rather limited attention. Did it never occur to you to ask whether your sister was actually driving that car?”

“She told the police...”

“Did you ask her?”

Tim shook his head.

“I thought as much. Not the kind to investigate when you can assume. Well, she wasn't. The pattern of bruising's all wrong, the grazes are wrong, the marks on the side of the car are wrong. Any competent police officer should have been able to tell that – contradiction in terms, of course. Neither was it an accident.”

Tim gaped at him.

“The victim was clearly pushed, probably by the bouncer. Position of the body, swerve marks on the road, not just a drunken stumble. Owed money to a gang, most likely. Unfortunate that the people responsible for the murder decided to take advantage of an additional opportunity when it offered, but hardly your sister's fault.”

Too much to take in. He concentrated on the one statement that had made an impression.

“But then, if she wasn't driving, why did she say she was? I don't understand.”

“Doubtless she had reasons of her own. You were right, to an extent. Sukey had got mixed up with some very unpleasant people. And if you hadn't high-handedly taken it on yourself to act in her own best interests without even asking what those interests were the situation would have passed. As it is, she is now in very considerable danger. Entirely by your doing.”

All for nothing, then? Worse than nothing. But he had to know...

“Danger?”

“Fortunately, I have been able to reduce that risk. With her permission, I might add. Which leaves me with just one problem. You. I have a – personal objection – to bringing the Government into this. And on this occasion, that includes the police.”

“But you have to do something about me.”

“Well, you're scarcely a threat now. Washed up. Cover blown – not that it was much of a cover in the first place – leverage gone, name gone, trust gone. Overall value to the Government, nil. I imagine there are rather a lot of people who'd like to have a word with you, but that's hardly my concern. So; you tell me. What should I do with you?”

A last, bitter spasm of mirth. Astonishing the power of cheap fiction.

“Traditionally, of course, the murderer is left to contemplate his sins with a bottle of whisky and a revolver.”

Sherlock's eyebrows rose. “Well, we have a library.” An expansive gesture swept the room. “What's left of it. And I believe I can oblige with the malt.” He produced a small flask from one pocket, and placed it squarely on the table in front of Tim. “Ah, John?”

His gaze held John's for several seconds. Reluctantly, John pulled out what looked like a Service-issue automatic from his waistband. He crossed the room and placed it beside the flask. John's hand lingered on the gun for a moment, his eyes still fixed on Sherlock; the unspoken communication between them clear as if they had shouted.

I hope you know what you're doing.

When don't I?

That steady look transferred now from Sherlock's face to Tim's own. There might even have been sympathy in it, though there was no pity. A grim nod, one professional to another. And a step back, into the shadows. A good man to have for a cousin, if only for an evening.

“Of course,” said Sherlock's voice, very precise, very soft, “This touching scenario lacks one vital element.”

"What?"

“There is no murderer.”

He turned on the spot, his coat swirling around them. John was barely half a pace behind.

The lock clicked shut behind them. Tim sat for what felt like a very long time, staring at the table.

...

Sherlock's fingers clamped painfully round John's upper arm. “Not yet. Wait.”

No sound from the other room. Then, suddenly, a shot.

The grip dropped instantly, but John was wrestling with the lock and through the door before Sherlock had moved. Inside, the room was empty. The flask had gone from the table. The gun was lying on the floor inside the window, which was wide open, its security lock shot off. In the early morning silence, footsteps could be heard running down the street and fading into the distance. John bent to pick the gun up, then slumped against the wall and started to laugh.

“My God. And I thought your brother was the melodramatic one.”

“They're all like that. I think it's something in the water at Whitehall.”

John didn't bother to dignify that with a response. After another moment, he hauled himself heavily to his feet, then stood leaning against the table while he checked the gun over. A sidelong glance.

“High-handedly taking it on yourself to act in her own best interests?” he murmured.

Sherlock gave him something that might have been the ghost of a grin.

Chapter Text

I had contemplated every alternative before I finally resorted to Sherlock's laptop (I had won the battle for log-on privileges when I pointed out that if we alternated our exposure to that woman's on-line ravings it would halve the chances of one or the other of us being forced to stab our eyes out with a spork. He had not, apparently, come across this phrase before – or had 'deleted it' as he somewhat pretentiously describes his short-term memory problems – and the ensuing research into the homicidal possibilities of plastic disposable cutlery fortunately distracted him for several hours from that blasted violin. It may be a Stradivarius, but to those of us of the feline persuasion it's nonetheless a gratuitous reminder of centuries of intestinal appropriation).

By then dawn had broken and Sherlock and John had not returned. Which, if John had taken a few obvious steps, such as laying in breakfast supplies somewhere a starving cat might reasonably get his paws on them, would not have worried me in the slightest. What is night for but wandering and fights, after all?

VOIP has made this cat's life considerably easier, I have to say. It took little more than a few nudges at keyboard and mouse-pad with my nose before Mycroft's face appeared on the screen before me, against a background of tartan wall-paper whose gloomy greens and blues and virulent stripes of red and yellow were not merely an aesthetic disaster but provoked the most unwelcome memories.

"Can't you tell the Windsors either that wallpaper goes or you do?"

"I fear the line has been used before. Without success. What can I do for you?"

"Could you arrange a visit from your minions? With catfood."

"Catfood?" He raised his eye-brows pointedly. "For you?"

"I am, after all, a cat. There seems to be a tolerable sort of little fishmongers in the neighbourhood. Their lobsters were more than passable. Perhaps a small sea bream? Or turbot? Or something freshwater. I gather tilapia is becoming increasingly available in this country."

"Ah, I see. Catfood. But not, I take it, catfish. I'll see what I can arrange. But, Toby, you know the drill. There's no such thing as a free tench. Information, please. What happened last night?"

I have always valued Mycroft for his listening skills, and, indeed, for his understanding that my cat's eye view of matters offered him the chance of an insight which would – for all the vaunted scope of his surveillance network – otherwise be unavailable to him. Also, he doesn't display (at least not to me; his brother and the good doctor are another matter) that tiresome human trait of determining in advance which matters in a narrative are or are not relevant and making annoying demands to "cut to the main point'.

Accordingly, he bore with only mild eye-rolling my account of our blogger's post-dinner parlour game. In the interests, allegedly, of tapping into the house's "authentic historic vibes" and "aiming to spiritually connect with Manchester's awesome Victorian energy" she'd demanded that everyone in turn read aloud a passage from the library copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles she'd produced from her bag. My suspicions that this was a species of audition were highlighted when she selected John as the first reader.

However, her plans were scuppered by John's discovery that some previous reader had annotated the selected scene with marginalia which John proceeded to read in counterpoint to the main text with a degree of sangfroid I could only consider truly super-beast: "Blood soaked through ceiling of lower room and dripping. From an alleged stab to the heart in bed??? Crime scene appearance could only have been produced had victim been inverted and suspended from ceiling before death caused by single swipe of honed surgical steel blade through all major blood vessels in manner characteristic of kosher/halal slaughterhouses. Also, probable massive intravenous injection of anti-coagulants immediately before death. All so-called eye-witness accounts blatantly contradictory. Most likely perpetrator; a highly influential, semi-crazed, physically powerful man with hostile views on religion. Why didn't the police interview the Marquess of Queensbury???"

Tim immediately struck up a chorus of "Justice for the Sandbourne One" while Nicky – acting, one presumes, on private sources in the Ribchester family archives – entertained us all with an extended digression into the sexual histories of various nineteenth-century members of the Douglas family, which (inter alia) comprehensively answered the question "the Earl of Rosebery and Lord Drumlanrig; did he give him one or not?" Which was not, I suspect, the kind of Victorian energy our blogger had had in mind.

"Tim seems to have considerable acting talent, given the level of strain he must have been under all evening," Mycroft observed contemplatively. "And – except in relation to his one blind spot – an admirably cool nerve."

"You sound as if you'll be sad to lose him," I said. No point in going on to describe the rest of the evening; the attack on the blogger had evidently been made known to him by his other sources.

He smiled. "No-one leaves my team except by mutual agreement. And I've yet to consent. Though he may need to be reassigned to a rather different branch of the Service. One in which ruthlessness, acting ability, charisma, steely nerves and a past that will prove to anyone who cares to enquire that he has been demonstrably compromised will be positive assets."

From somewhere behind his head I heard the sound of a knock on the door. I extended my nose to cut off the connection but his upraised hand forestalled me.

"No. It's only one of my assistants coming to report the results of the most recent twists in the game. You're entitled to listen in. But, ah, do bear in mind - "

"Cattham house rules?" I suggested.

His expression looked pained, but he nodded. He turned his head. "Come in!"

"Sorry, sir," the young man who entered said. "I hadn't realised you were on the – oh! Is that a video of your cat?"

On cue, I raised a paw and batted at the screen, while delivering myself of my most winsome miaow, before rolling over onto my back and wriggling.

"As you'll find, Gareth, if you have anything to do with the creatures, no-one should be presumptive enough to apply a possessive to a cat. Toby's currently in my brother's care. Though I'm far from sure he's grasped the essentials of keeping him properly fed – there are some urgent instructions I'll need you to relay to our Manchester operatives as soon as they've finished the wrap up at the Victoria Baths – I do hope nothing got damaged, there? There's been a lot of lottery money sunk into the restoration and I'd hate to be responsible for setting the work back."

Gareth smiled. "Our operatives tell us they've had more structural damage there from filming a single episode of Life on Mars. No; once they got the text from our inside man saying he'd secured the USB stick and setting up the rendezvous they walked neatly into the arms of our people with barely a shot fired. Though, sir, you may find yourself having a bit of an arm-wrestle for their custody. The Vauxhall boys are very interested in having a quiet word with them."

"So are our friends in Langley. Claimed they needed to have them rendered as a matter of urgency to a suitable third country for 'in-depth discussion and analysis'. After a short phone call, however, I persuaded them to compromise on Stevenage."

"Stevenage." Gareth's goldfish expression reminded me of my currently unbreakfasted state. I uttered a minatory yowl. Mycroft shook his head at me, very slightly, out of his assistant's line of sight.

"MI6 were, as ever, a tougher nut to crack. They held out for Hitchen for quite some time. Still, all agreed as between friends and allies. And the others. Ah, about our inside man -?"

"Nothing heard. I hope he got away clean. It must have taken a hell of a nerve to play a game like that and not risk blowing his cover. I'd like to shake his hand."

"A pleasure I'm afraid will have to be postponed. The Hansforth empire is nothing if not well-connected. For Tim's own safety, the story that they turned him rogue and he's been playing his own hand will have to stand, at least until we have a crack at the sharks above these – minnows. And now, some further instructions –"

His hand on Gareth's shoulder, his voice at the low, confidential level suitable for exchanging Government secrets, they moved out of range of the microphone pickup.

......

As a child she had always adored this moment. The plane, poised at the end of the runway, for one intense moment resting, perfectly still after its long taxiing from the stand; the great engines thundering; the almost unbearable anticipation of the imminent acceleration into the unknown.

After that, when one pushed up the blind, once above the cloud-layer, one would be in paradise.

Or Wonderland. The last eight hours, since receiving Tim's text, had certainly had more than a touch of the rabbit-hole about them.

Tim's text. Not a joke, despite the inevitable spike of suspicion on receiving it. Tim, after all, was said to be the master of the elaborate prank, the multi-layered stunt. So his school and university friends had always told her ("Naked to Edinburgh, in the luggage rack – that would have been boring. No; when the groom woke up he was in the Kyles of Lochalsh. With a penguin on a diamante lead attached to his ankle. And getting rather peckish. Literally.") He'd never tried any on her, not even brought her in on them.

Further evidence (If I needed any) that he regarded her as too young, too fragile, too delicate, too broken to be treated as a person, as a friend, as an equal.

ALL IS KNOWN. FLEE AT ONCE.

Not quite the words he'd used and no chance of checking; that SIM card was in the sanitary bin of a cubicle in the ladies' loos of Lester B. Pearson International Airport and she pitied the spook who tried to retrieve it.

Near enough, though. Close enough for Government work. She suppressed a giggle which had more than a hint of hysteria about it and found she was clutching the arm of the seat. The stewardess, passing through the cabin to check seat-belts, shot her a practised, reassuring smile.

She thinks I'm a nervous flyer. If she only knew. It's grounds that scare me, not heights.

CAR BUSINESS MUCH MORE SERIOUS THAN ORIGINALLY THOUGHT.

Tim would never have used that for a joke, not that horrible moment when she'd realised they couldn't stop, William wouldn't stop; the resounding thud – so much louder than she could possibly have imagined – the sheer nastiness of the broken body in the road.

HANSFORTH FAMILY ABOUT TO THROW YOU TO WOLVES. LEAVE NOW. TELL NO-ONE. TORONTO AIRPORT, BUY NEW SIM FROM MACHINE. CALL NUMBER I'LL TEXT YOU. SHERLOCK HOLMES. MY BOSS'S BROTHER. TRUST HIM.

And that had to be a first, too. She couldn't remember Tim ever considering any man not a blood relative (and not many of those) trustworthy before. Not where she was concerned.

An odd way to introduce him too. (Had Tim expected her not to Google? www.scienceofdeduction.com. Interesting. Unexpected.)

Enough, anyway, to convince her to follow the directions Tim had given her (half-terrified, half-thrilled), crossing the border via Thousand Islands Bridge in a gale of wind, the sleepy border guard amused and indulgent ("Hope he's worth the drive, whoever he is.") when she'd extended her passport in trembling hands, wondering if word had, despite her precautions, run ahead of her.

The plane shuddered, flung itself forward. Her heart twisted within her, joy mingling with terror, the old, old delightful, impossible tightrope walk ("Danger or terminal boredom, which would you choose?" The man with the unexpected, velvet-warm voice had had her at his opening line. Even before he'd added, casually, "I know you weren't driving that night. So why say you were? Not for money, not for sex – you must have known you could have better any night of the week. You usually did. Wanted to be the one in charge, the protective one, for a change? Yes; I can see that. I have an older brother too.")

The headlong pelt down the runway, the twist into the air, the pressure, the relief of pressure, the seat-belt sign beeping off, the conventional servility of the cabin crew (“Give me your passport number and I'll book the e-ticket," he had promised. And delivered. Business-class. Not a joke, emphatically, then.)

"I'd love a cava, thanks." (Bubbles prickling the nostrils; not as daring, not as keen as other pleasures, other desires. Did the man with the black velvet voice understand that, too? She rather thought he might.)

Sleep, briefly. Over the Greenland ice-cap, the broad Atlantic wastes. The young sun of Spain drifted into her, turned her bones to liquid gold in the dawn-light.

Freedom.

If only they had not been alerted to her flight.

Whoever they were.

A cold, harsh day dawned over Europe.

No thugs or marshals with handcuffs met her at the airport in Barcelona. Instead, a text from Sherlock directed her to a boutique hotel near the Gaudi cathedral. Pre-paid, she discovered at the desk.

She tumbled into the Philippe Starck bed, feeling unexpectedly grateful for the kindness of strangers.

Chapter Text

Sherlock eyed the driver of the sleek, anonymous black car with disfavour.

“Mr Holmes said I was to take you wherever you wanted to go,” the driver repeated stubbornly. “Both of you.”

He and John exchanged glances.

“Thank you, we'll walk,” John said.

“And you can tell my brother it might not hurt to do the same himself, occasionally,” Sherlock added over his shoulder, as they walked off down the road. Somewhat to John's surprise, the car did not follow them. They walked in companionable silence for a while, John content to follow Sherlock's lead.

“Breakfast?” Sherlock asked eventually.

“Breakfast,” John agreed. “And coffee. A great deal of coffee. Which I will make, since you apparently never got the hang of when to stop putting the grounds in. Er - my place or yours?”

“Mine. There's rather a good deli on the ground floor, and they're fond of me in there.”

There was something inevitable about that, John reflected. The man was a walking compendium of favours done and favours owed.

“Got someone off an assault charge, did you?”

“Pointed out a problem with their cash register. Actually. Taxi!”

.....

They were making their way up the stairs (“Lift out of order. Again. It's a crime what the service charges are, given the utter lack of anything resembling service,” Sherlock observed) when they heard the clip of high heels coming up the stairs behind them. Sherlock instantly dropped both the bags he was carrying, careless of milk and eggs alike, and, to John's utter astonishment, swept him into a passionate - and surprisingly expert – embrace.

He was dimly aware of a squeak of dismay in the background, and of the footsteps speeding up and past them, but he had little attention to spare. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the moment.

“Sherlock?” he asked, when he could speak again. “What the hell was all that about? We established months ago that I'm straight and you're not interested, and then you push me up against a wall and make a pretty creditable attempt at snogging my face off. I mean, it's not that I didn't enjoy it, but...”

Sherlock propped both arms on the wall either side of John's head and bent his head slightly to look him in the eye. The long, lean body remained pressed against his own. His voice was breathy and amused, but incisive as ever.

“Heels that height at this hour of the morning? Obvious. Someone returning from a night out. Walk somewhat unsteady; could be hangover but given the smell of antiseptic preceding her by at least fifteen yards she's also spent her most recent hours in a hospital. Well, again, finishing the night in A&E isn't necessarily incompatible with a good night out –"

"You don't say," John murmured, rather breathlessly. "Candlelit meal, little light burglary, murderous assault by thugs, trauma surgery – "

"- but given the overall lack of other women on this floor and on the one above, and the fact that of the available candidates one wears ballet flats, one's recovering from a sprained ankle and is currently wearing one trainer and one man's sock and the last one's away on a field trip in Northern Iceland, that can only be our blogger."

John's medical instincts were outraged "They've got no business letting her out inside 24 hours."

"Because of the risk of bleeding into the brain?" Sherlock's voice sounded very sardonic. "I hardly think that's the greatest risk anyone's taken recently."

"Sherlock – "

"Mycroft's people are competent. If she's been released from their safe-keeping, then they must have judged it safe for her. Or, more to the point, safer for them. Which brings us back to the snogging. After that little demonstration last night – both your reading Hardy –"

"Well, mostly Hardy.-"

"A vastly improved version in which the logical contradictions in the original were ruthlessly exposed. And your doing the heroic doctor bit – it's quite clear she's got you earmarked as a leading contender to be The One. Best to make it clear you're out of the running. Unambiguously. She's going to be out again any second to make sure she wasn't hallucinating her earlier glimpse, by the way.”

Above them, a door opened. John gulped.

“Sherlock? I never thought I'd say this, but – kiss me again.”

......

They made it – just – through the door to Sherlock's flat before collapsing in a giggling heap on the sofa.

"Oh. My. God. The expression on her face!"

Between gasps, Sherlock choked out, "You do realize that she's just hot-footed it back to her keyboard, so she can share with the whole of the internet her wild generalizations about the male population of Manchester and its sexual orientation?"

"But I'm from Chelmsford."

This, for some reason, seemed to strike Sherlock as the funniest thing yet. He croaked, "Chelmsford! Chelmsford 123!", turned over and chortled helplessly into the sofa cushions.

John pulled himself together first.

"Anyway. Breakfast. Eggs. Fried or scrambled?"

Sherlock stretched, lounging across the whole extent of the sofa. "Scrambled. But how come she got lobster and I get eggs?"

"You think I'd have risked inviting her for breakfast? Also, jealous, much?"

Sherlock wrinkled his surprisingly retroussé nose. "Rubbish. But I demand you explain your secret past as a Cordon Bleu cook, nonetheless."

John, finding himself unexpectedly flustered by the implied compliment, muttered, "You missed the bit where I told everyone that, then?"

"Evidently. Elucidate."

"Oh, it was Chloe's fault."

"Chloe." There was a speaking pause.

John, despite his underlying sense of being manipulated, felt moved to fill it. "Ex-girlfriend. Awful personality, I discovered, in the end – she'd have been a front-runner in the All-England Women's Condescension Championships – but she looked like a much taller version of Keira Knightley and her legs went all the way up to her neck."

"Really, John, given your objection to specimens of abnormal anatomy in the kitchen, you seem to be remarkably tolerant of them in the bedroom."

John moved over to the kitchen area and began breaking eggs briskly into a saucepan.

"Anyway, I started going out with her when I got my first house job at Bart's and she insisted on putting herself in charge of arrangements for the first – well, actually, only – holiday we had together. I fancied a beach in the Med, so she booked us onto a French Classic cookery course in Brittany."

"Where, of course, your dexterity with a knife, unflappability when confronted with instructions such as 'reserve the cock's blood to thicken the sauce' and command of filthy French slang caused you to bond instantly with the course staff, leaving Chloe high and dry. I see. And so, the disastrous holiday having left you without a girlfriend within a week of your return to London, you decided to turn your newly acquired skills into another weapon in your seducer's armoury. With any success?"

John turned the scrambled eggs out onto plates, sprinkled chopped coriander over them, and handed Sherlock his breakfast.

"And when you've finished that," he said warningly, "we're got unfinished business with our blogger. We can't, actually, just leave her in the lurch."

"Why on earth not? The woman's a dangerous half-wit; in one night she's managed to account for the careers of a civil service high flyer and a prominent history don, to say nothing of the collateral damage to the WCML and the Victoria Baths."

"I don't care, Sherlock. She is still having to cope with the aftermath of a violent break-in while, I suspect, having a headache like forty pile-drivers inside her skull. We have to go over and help her out, at least until Mycroft's minions posing as the SOC team show up. Manners demand it. I'll manage to gloss over the snogging business somehow; explain that I'd been fighting against it ever since I bumped into you on Minshull Street, say I'm sorry if I unintentionally led her along..."

"Leave the lying to me. I'm far better at it."

"Hm. Point of order. Last time you conveyed, 'Thanks, but no thanks' to a woman she rebounded straight into the arms of a crazed criminal mastermind."

"John, you scintillate, as ever! Insanely brilliant idea. It might even work!"

"No, that's too ruthless even for you. Actually, it's too ruthless even for Mycroft. And Toby's not getting a vote."

"What - you think even after all she's put everyone through, she still doesn't deserve that?"

"Actually, Sherlock - well, put it this way. You came in at around the coffee and truffles stage. But I had every course of that blasted dinner party, and, trust me, I don't think we dare take the risk of what Moriarty might end up doing if he's exposed to her for any length of time. And – you know the most worrying part about that scenario? God help me, I might actually end up sympathizing with him. "

......

Oh, Manchester. Manchester, Manchester. How could you do this to me? Or was it me – did I misread you from the start? I don't know where to begin. I feel bruised, and not just physically – though that too. Perhaps I was too codependent, too clingy, made my desires known too quickly. Or perhaps you just weren't ready for me. Well, it's over now. I won't pretend, it was good while it lasted, but long-term, there was nothing solid between us.

I should have known last night, of course. The signals were all there, but I guess I was ignoring them, because I wanted things to work out between us. You'd think living in LA for years would have honed a girl's gaydar to a fine point, but when I want to believe something... there's very little that can stand in my way. And I did, so much, want to believe.

Okay, you've guessed by now. Me and Incredibly Cute Trauma Specialist? Not going to happen. Came home this morning – and what a morning after the night before that was – and practically fell over him and Sherringford making out on the landing. They hadn't even managed to get through the front door. Kind of cute, but it doesn't do much for my self-esteem.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Last night, I went to my very first ultra-proper British dinner party. And very proper it was, too – there was even a real, live Earl. And his Countess. Who live in a castle. And a novelist, who's apparently quite well-known over here. I asked whether she'd ever tried to get any of her books optioned, sort of hinting subtly that a good screenwriter might be able to do a lot with them, but she didn't bite. Found out later I 'd broken one of the cardinal rules – mustn't talk business at dinner! So different from LA. Naughty screenwriter! ICTS's equally cute cousin told me later, so nice of him (Exceedingly cute, actually. And so considerate, in that hot British way. But way too young for me.) Anyway, John did all the cooking himself. And the food was divine. According to him because he'd been dragged on some sort of gourmet cooking course in the past, by an ex-girlfriend.

As if! I should have known. No straight man cooks like that.

I got rather giggly over the course of dinner (Gee, what is it with Brits and booze?), so in the end, Equally Cute Cousin saw me home. And that was where things really went off the rails. I'd been burgled! The flat looked like the aftermath of the Vanity Fair Oscars party, so he took me back to John's, where he was staying. Only, turns out the burglars hadn't gotten what they'd been after, and they followed us. And next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, with ICTS holding my hand and gazing into my eyes. No, not like that. If only! And then I was whisked off to hospital by helicopter (socialised medicine is obviously better than I thought), leaving him and Sherringford alone...

They both came round this morning to help me tidy up. John was terribly apologetic, and really rather adorable with it. Sherringford, regrettably, was less adorable. He was practically preening himself – but maybe that's the disappointment speaking. Seems like John fell hard for Sherringford the first time he saw him, and he's been trying to kid himself it was me ever since. I guess that's the trouble with growing up in a country like Britain where everyone's so uptight. They're just not in touch enough with their inner feelings. And for a man like ICTS, it's still a reach to admit that he's gay at all. So coming out to me was a pretty brave thing to do, really. I suppose. I'm glad I brought them together, really I am. If I can't find love myself, at least I can show other people the way. . Just call me Cupid! But where does that leave me? And my affair with Manchester?

I got confused by the name. Man-chester. So fitting, right? Only it turns out it is fitting, but not in the way that I thought. I was looking for a man but the men were looking for each other. I've been in the wrong place all along. I need to go back to my roots, start over from there. And since my ancestors are a few miles away, in Yorkshire, I think that's where I was being drawn to, if only I hadn't gotten distracted. Red roses for passion, sure, but white roses are forever. And that's what this quest is all about - forever.

So, as soon as I've posted this, I'm off to the railway booking site. And the first available train to Leeds.

Chapter Text

"Hello? Hi! Excuse me, but do you know a Marjorie Jameson?"

Servicing the winch had absorbed all Christine's attention. The girl on the quayside must have been trying to attract her notice for some time. Christine looked up, squinting against the sun.

"Marjorie Henderson as was? Yes, of course. Look, come aboard."

The girl made short work of the rusty, weed-hung ladder, dropping lightly onto the coach roof and moving aft with delicate care to avoid disturbing the winch's innards spread out on a towel on the cockpit seat.

"Thank goodness. Mrs Jameson said she thought your boat was a Nic 48, but she didn't seem all that sure. You must be Christine Dixon?" She extended a hand; fine-boned and narrow, but surprisingly firm when she shook. "Shusha Victor. But please call me Sue."

"Nice of you to look us up. And how is Marjorie? Is she starting to get over that terrible business with Julian?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean – that is, I don't actually know Mrs Jameson – I mean, she's sort of a friend of a friend – but she rang and said you were stuck in the Canaries looking for extra crew. Something about insurance?"

"Yes, worse luck. The policy insists on at least three people for the transatlantic leg. We've known plenty of people who've done it with just two – but when we rang up to get the policy changed the company dug its heels in and started making ludicrous comments about our ages and our having no qualifications. So, of course, Derek told them to Hell with all these stupid bits of paper, he'd done his first Fastnet in 1963 –"

"Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP?"

"Some of us bought the Beatles' first LP, young lady. In fact, the way the stock markets are going, it's probably the nearest thing I've got to a pension plan. But, yes, it did rather confirm the insurance company's view that we were a pair of mad old crinklies tottering recklessly to our graves.”

“So, about the crewing, then,” Sue said. “There's a couple of things I need to tell you.”

“Well, no need to rush things. Tell you what, I've had quite enough of this winch for the moment. Let's talk about it in a bit more comfort. Drink?"

"If you're having one," Sue said demurely.

"Never ship a lemonade man aboard a gin-and-tonic vessel," her father had always said. Regardless of the disembowelled winch and the other maintenance jobs on hand, Christine poured them each a good stiff one. Sue took an appreciative sip and curled up against the pushpit; her sudden relaxation made Christine realise how tense she must have been, before.

She really wants to sail with us. I wonder why?

Christine passed in mental review the parade of incompetents, self-important tossers and stoners (admittedly, it wasn't just for the sake of the cricket that they were planning to make their first land-fall in Barbados, but there was a time and a place for everything, and when trying to impress a cruising skipper with your competence emphatically wasn't it) who'd responded to their increasingly desperate postings on the crewsearch bulletin boards.

This one was, at least, clean, well-spoken and capable of distinguishing a Nic 48 from a bunch of other vessels of similar age and type. And she'd already survived an initial telephone call with Marjorie, who'd always been an excellent judge of character – with the exception, obviously, of Julian, but then that wasn't fair; they'd all been charmed by him.

As if by telepathy, at that moment Sue said tentatively, "Um – you mentioned 'that terrible business with Julian'. Not to be nosy, or anything, but – um – would it be fair to assume it involved someone dying rather unpleasantly?"

"You haven't heard of it? The tabloids seemed to be crawling over everywhere for months. After all, it isn't every day the Coastguard gets an anonymous tip-off that a sailing club's vice-commodore is about to leave port in the committee boat with a weighted sack full of dismembered human remains."

"Golly. Whose were they?"

"The commodore and his wife." Christine grimaced. "So much for Yachting Monthly, eh? They'd called it 'the friendliest club on the South Coast' two months before this all blew up."

She took a deep, reviving swallow of her gin. Neither she nor Derek were sailing club types; and the sailing clubs had returned the compliment. They hadn't, fortunately, known the people involved at all well. Apart, of course, from Marjorie. Despite the sun's heat she shivered, recalling that day in Winchester Crown Court's public gallery (friendliest club on the South Coast, my eye! Not one of the members had shown up to support either the Julian, the defendant, or his wife – who, not coincidentally, happened to be the chief witness for the prosecution).

"Poor Marjorie got caught right in the thick of it. The commodore and his wife were supposed to have gone on a long cruise for Ireland three days earlier – they'd all had a meal together the evening before they were due to leave, then Julian went down to the marina to help them load up their boat for the trip."

Christine grimaced. "They were never seen alive again. The police eventually found the boat on a pontoon up the Medina – of course, no-one bothered looking until the bodies turned up. Julian hadn't come home that night but, as we found out afterwards, Marjorie wasn't all that surprised. He'd had a girl on the side in Burslesdon for months."

"Only, the next day, she had to go into Southampton unexpectedly, and happened to glimpse Julian coming off the hi-speed ferry from Cowes in full oilies. And that got her thinking. And digging about at home, hacking into his computer, looking into his finances, the Club finances, that sort of thing. Getting more and more worried. But she daren't go to the police. As it turned out later, she'd already had – a bit too much experience of the police believing Julian, not her."

Sue leant forward across the cockpit, her eyes wide, her clear-skinned, unlined face nevertheless shadowed, haunted. Some trouble there, no doubt of it. Is she running away from some abusive man? Poor kid, if so.

"So what happened?" Sue asked.

"Oh, I discovered afterwards she'd found someone on the internet who could help her. Who believed her." Christine smiled a little, remembering the beautiful young man sitting beside her in the public gallery, favouring both Julian and his advocate with glances of such withering contempt ("And precisely which rock did you crawl out from?") that it more than once caused the defence to stumble in its attack. And watching him, after the jury had unanimously found Julian guilty, walking away with the Scotland Yard inspector who'd presented the case for the prosecution.

Sue leaned forward, murmuring something ("I would have done that" or, perhaps, "I should have done that") but at that moment the boat gave a slight lurch. Christine looked up to see Derek stepping from the ladder to the coach-roof, followed by a dark-haired, thin-faced young man in sawn off jeans, flip-flops and carrying a Kevlar duffle-bag.

"Chris! This young man here wants to sail with us. Grandmother runs a charter business out of English Harbour, Antigua. What do you think?"

"Oh, but –" She ground to an awkward halt. She could hardly tell Derek that the place was taken – not in front of both candidates, and not without having made sure he, too, thought he could get on with Sue for a month-long trip.

Sue saved her, looking up at the young man and grinning.

"So you did finally make it out here?" She turned to Christine. "May I introduce my brother Tim? I got sidetracked before I got round to mentioning him, but Mrs Jameson thought, if we did both manage to arrive before you had to leave, you might have space for the two of us. After all, it's not as if we'd mind hot-bunking; we've done it enough times. But – look – why don't we leave you to think about it? We'll be in Los Gatos, just at the top of the harbour. Don't feel you have to hurry about anything. After all, I haven't seen my big brother in ages. "

They did, after all, take some time. It included a Skype call to Marjorie ("Yes, of course. Nice girl. Friend of mine put us in touch. Some sort of tragedy. Car crash, I think, in the States. Someone died. Said it made her think, about who she really was and what she really wanted. Don't know a lot about the brother – Whitehall, I think. Or was it the City? Oxbridge, anyway. Supposed to be taking a career break – yes, I know. Redundant, I expect. Lot of it about. But you could do a lot worse.").

That had led to a second call, at Marjorie's instigation ("If it bothers you, I can let you have my friend's number – you'll perhaps remember him, from that ghastly business last year? I saw you two sitting next to each other. Anyway, he might be able to give you more details – I only know Sue to talk to.")

Christine had been amused to discover the beautiful young man possessed a voice even more enthralling than his looks. And, from what she'd seen in court, if there had been anything to know about Sue, he'd have known it. And it couldn't be too bad, since he'd suggested her in the first place. Marjorie, of course, had good reason to trust him, and – Julian always excepted – they both trusted her instincts.

So, if the conversation hadn't been as informative as she might have hoped – well, she wasn't going to blame a man for keeping a girl's confidence. After all, if Sue did come aboard, there was nothing like night watches for teasing out secrets. No doubt, it would turn out to be something and nothing; one learned with advancing age that the things one had agonized about so much in one's twenties dwindled into insignificance once viewed from the other end of the telescope.

So then, more gin and a good bit of arguing. Still, Christine never had any real doubt of the outcome. Nor, she suspected, did Derek. In less than three months the Caribbean would be in the heart of the hurricane season. After the next six weeks, outliers could not be ruled out. They should have left port a fortnight ago. Bugger overcautious insurance companies!

They walked into the little bar to see the brother and sister engaged in an intense discussion. They looked up; half-guilty, half-worried. But the essential openness of Sue's nature was still visible in her smile, no matter what secrets she had to hide, and any brother she was so glad to see couldn't be entirely a bad sort.

Derek looked at them both, and beamed. "Cava all round, I think. We sail tomorrow. I give you a toast: Serenity and all who sail in her."

......

Bizarre break-in baffles cops

Police are appealing to the public to come forward with information about a break-in at Manchester's Working Class Movement Library (WCML) last night, in which a gun was fired and the library vandalised.

The break-in appears to have taken place in the early hours of the morning. “There was a window broken when we came in, and a strong smell of gunpowder. The books were taken off the shelves and scattered around the floor. The mess is appalling,” said librarian Shirin Hirsch. “We do have several valuable volumes in the library, but as far as we can tell, nothing has been taken.”

Police are investigating the possibility that the burglars were disturbed before they could complete the robbery. Alternative theories include a student prank, a protest against library closures, and an attempt to remove compromising information about members of the previous Government.
Well-known consulting detective Sherlock Holmes told the MEN that the solution was “perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain,” but declined to give further details.

The investigating officer was unavailable for comment.

Train Passengers in Mass River Suicide Plunge

Leeds commuters are reeling in shock following a spontaneous mass suicide bid by some 10-15 men who, without warning, left Leeds Central Station and plunged into the icy River Aire nearby. CCTV footage shows all the men to have been in the vicinity of platforms 14, 15 or 16 or on the flybridge linking these platforms when the Transpennine Express arrived from Manchester. Within fifteen minutes all the men were in the river.

No connection between the men has been established and no motive for this tragic and bewildering sequence of events has been established.