Sherlock - The Game Is On!

The Lying Detective- Five

Chapter Five

Third POV

Someone squirts tomato ketchup onto a cardboard carton of chips. Sherlock and Faith stand under the awning of a fish and chips stand while the rain pours down. Not long afterwards they sit on the bench of a covered bus stop outside a church.

Sherlock holds the piece of paper, Faith had previously given him. The rain begins to ease up. "You see the fold in the middle? For the first few months you kept this hidden, folded inside a book." He looks at it closely. Beside him, Faith eats from the cone of chips in her hands. "Must have been a tightly packed shelf, going by the severity of the crease. So obviously you were keeping it hidden from someone living in the same house at a level of intimacy where privacy could not be assumed. Conclusion: relationship. Not any more, though."

He points to the top of the opened piece of paper. "There's a pinprick at the top of the paper. For the past few months it's been on open display on a wall. Conclusion: relationship is over. The paper's been exposed to steam and a variety of cooking smells... So it must have been on display in the kitchen." He lifts the paper to his nose and sniffs it. "Lots of different spices. You're suicidal, alone and strapped for cash, yet you're still cooking to impress. You're keen, then. The kitchen is the most public room in any house, but since any visitor could be expected to ask about a note like this, I have to assume you don't have any. You've isolated yourself."

"Amazing."

"I know."

"I meant the chips." Sherlock chuckles and looks at her, then looks away, his smile fading. He raises his eyes skywards at the sound of an approaching helicopter. He stands and walks forwards as the helicopter comes into view, its on-board camera looking down at him. He smiles upwards. "Let's go for a walk."

In a surveillance room, MI5's headquarters, a wall is full of screens showing CCTV footage of various areas of the city as well as the live footage from the helicopter. Two screens to the left of the others have street maps of the area east of Hyde Park, one in slightly tighter focus than the other and a red dot is flashing and bleeping on one of the maps.

A mobile phone shows a close-up of its active screen indicating an incoming call. The caller is identified as Mycroft.

John sits on the end of the bed, getting ready to go sleep whilst Mary brushes her teeth in the bathroom. "You should answer it." She trails on. "It's Mycroft." He states, turning his phone over. "Might be about Sherlock. We haven't heard from him." He sighs heavily to himself...

"How did you know my kitchen was tiny?" Faith asks. She and Sherlock walk along a street. The rain has stopped. "Look at the fading pattern on the paper. It's not much but it's enough to know your kitchen window faces east. Now, kitchen noticeboards..."

He walks a few paces into the road, looking up towards the Christmas lights strung across the street and draws a rectangle in the air. "By instinct we place them at eye level where there's natural light. Now look: the sun's only struck the bottom two thirds... But the line is straight, so that means we know the paper is facing the window."

He turns and walks a few paces away from the floating imaginary board. Pointing upwards at forty five degrees. "But because the top section is unaffected..." He gestures to the piece of paper. "He know the sunlight can only be entering the room at a steep angle. If the sunlight was able to penetrate the room when the sun was lower in the sky... Then the paper would be equally faded top to bottom. But no. It only makes it when the sun is at its zenith, so I'm betting that you live in a narrow street on the ground floor. Now, if steeply angled sunlight manages to hit eye level on the wall opposite the window, then what do we know about the room? The room's small." Faith smiles at him.

Overhead, the helicopter shines its spotlight down onto them. Faith looks up. "Oh." Sherlock also looks up at the chopper. "Big Brother is watching you!"

"Literally."

At MI5, Mycroft walks into the surveillance room, a grim look on his face. Lady Smallwood stands behind the computer desk. "We can keep tabs. You didn't have to come in."

"I was talking to the prime minister."

"Oh, I see." Mycroft looks to the screens, particularly at a camera watching Sherlock walking along a road. "What's he doing? Why's he just wandering about like a fool?"

"She's in ICU, Mycroft. He's probably still upset."

"Aren't we all?" Mycroft snapped rhetorically. Lady Smallwood turns to him. "You sound cross. Am I going to be taken away by security again?l

"I have, I think, apologised extensively."

"You haven't made it up to me."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Sex." Faith states randomly. Walking with her along Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus, Sherlock looks round to her. They each, carrying a can of energy drink. "I'm sorry?" He questions. "Sex. How did you know I wasn't... Getting any?"

"It's all about the blood." Sherlock gestures to the dried bloodstain on the paper. "This one comes from the very first night. You can see the pen marks over it. I think you discovered that pain stimulated your memory, so you tried it again later. I'm no expert, but I assume that since your lover failed to notice an increasing number of scars over a period of months, that the relationship was no longer intimate."

"How do you know he didn't notice?"

"Oh, well, because he would have done something about it." Sherlock shrugs off. "Would he?"

"Wouldn't he? Isn't that what you people do?" He counter questions. "Well, that's interesting."

"What is?"

"The way you think."

"Superbly?"

"Sweetly."

"I'm not sweet; I'm just high."

"Sherlock, I swear to God, even in your imagination, I'll still punch your lights out." Michelle's voice grumbles out, jealously.

Sherlock sharply inhales. "This way." He turns. "What? We just came that way."

"I know. It's a plan." He wanders back the way they just came. "What plan?" She questions him.

In the MI5 surveillance room, several agents start to laugh. Mycroft, with his phone raised to his ear, looks to the wall screens. "What is it? What now?"

"Sorry. Um, traced his route on the map." An agent answers. Mycroft and Lady Smallwood stare at the street map on the agent's computer screen. It shows in red the route that Sherlock has taken from the Marylebone area in a south-easterly direction down towards Piccadilly Circus. On several occasions Sherlock has disappeared from the surveillance and so the red lines are broken and only appear on certain roads and sections of road.

The left-hand side of the map is obscured by Mycroft's shoulder but the rest of the stronger red lines spell out:

F
  U
C
K

O
F F

Out on the street, Sherlock looks up to a nearby surveillance camera, smiles and raises his can of energy drink to it in salute before taking a swig from it.

Mycroft, with his phone raised to his ear again, sighs. "Is he with someone?"

"Not sure. We keep losing visual. Mostly we're tracking his phone."