The Quiet Man

Around the Sun

There’s nobody here. As far as I can tell. Well: I’m early, granted. It’s still dark, the message said dawn, after all. It’s barely four. I have to be patient.

I’ve hardly slept at all, but I don’t feel it. This is like those nights we spent running all over London, hiding in alleys, firing bullets at shadows: those nights we were on the brink of something big, on the edge of an explosion. Not just on the edge: we’d be dangling over the edge and hanging on with one hand, more often than not. Laughing. Alive only by the skin of our teeth. It’s exhilarating. It’s better than caffeine, it’s better than sleep.

I feel fantastic.

Mary would kill me if she knew.

She doesn’t have to find out. I’ll come back early, I’ll tell her I was out for a walk, thinking. Thinking about how this web of crimes fits into my next story, that’s the only thing she’ll accept. That will solve everything; my early morning, the wall, the way I’ve been so distant lately. I’ve worked it out: I said I would tell the story about Moriarty, how we met him the first time, Jim from IT to the showdown at the pool, the first series of hostages, the Van Buren supernova. I wanted to call it Around the Sun, because you deleted basic astronomy, and also because my own life came to revolve around you. But my editors don’t like that. They want me to call it The Great Game.

As if it was a game! It was a game to you, at first. But then you stopped thinking of it that way; it got serious. He threatened me. I think you were genuinely afraid of him, by the end. Moriarty: he started out as someone brilliant like you, someone diverting, someone you could play a game with. He became someone who stole your life away from you; not even you wanted to play with that much fire, in the end. You gave up, you let him win that round. The Great Game. I don’t like it, but I don’t have all that much control over titles. I guess we’ll see.

That story has a sequel now, that’s all. Moriarty’s rise, and then his fall. It makes narrative sense, I think. I can tie it all back to him, even if it’s fictional. I have to fictionalize large parts of it anyway; this time I’ll create most of it out of hope and fantasy. I can construct a kind of sense out of all of this, that’s what my wall has helped me to do. Even the coded message in the paper: I’ll tell Mary it’s from a sympathetic friend. Someone on the force, maybe. Someone who wants to help me out, help me make a story out of it. It could be from a fan of Sherlock’s, someone nearly as bright as he was, who waded into the mess of details to direct me. I’ll tell her I worked it all out, she’ll be pleased. She’ll go into work and tell my editor that I had a breakthrough, and then everyone can have a good day. Everyone will be happy.

My gun is scraping the small of my back and it may be the best thing I’ve ever felt. It’s loaded; I’m ready. What’s going to happen here? I can’t even imagine.

It’s just a little street. It’s a cul-de-sac; the entrance is also the exit. It curls around off the high street, and turns back again toward it, it’s quiet. It’s a little outpost of suburbia, a row of houses separated by a little over a foot each in places, built in the seventies. Nothing special, nothing dangerous, surely.

Well: you would have seen something here, I’m sure of it. Any set of walls can hide something terrible, can’t it. Or someone terrible. But there are no lights switched on; all the bedroom windows are dark. All the sitting rooms are vacant, the tellies are off. No blue glow. It’s silent and still. All the neighbourhood dogs are curled up on beds, asleep. They can’t hear me on the pavement outside. There’s one cat sitting in a garden, staring at me; its eyes glow from the dim light of the streetlamps, but it doesn’t warn anyone.

Anyone could be watching in the darkness, John. They could all be lined up at their windows, peering out at you.

I don’t think so. Not here. They’ve got satellite dishes. They have Volvos in their drives, and there are car seats in the back. Baby on Board, Greenpeace decals on the windows. Not here. Not these people.