The Quiet Man

Olly Olly Oxen Free

I’m surprised you’re willing to eat at all. Isn’t this a case? All these arrests, this Moran fellow? You never used to eat while you were working on a case. You’d starve yourself until you were nearing collapse, though you’d never show it. All those late night dinners after a case: remember those? Eating slows your brain, you said then. You can’t afford to slow down while on a case. Not while on a good one, anyway. Nothing lower than an eight.

This must be at least an eight. If anything is a ten, surely this is it.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if your brain has slowed down. It looks like you’ve got it all figured out anyway; you know who’s after you. This case is solved. Ready for me to write it up in my over-romanticised way, as you’d say. I’d start now if I knew the first thing about it.

Well, I know the first thing. The very first. I was there. But I don’t want to write about that. Too much blood. Not yours, though. Not yours. How was I supposed to know that? I wasn’t. It was a deception designed just for me.

Is there nothing left for you to figure out, then? Is that it, it’s all over? Waiting like this doesn’t require you to avoid digesting anything, I suppose. Because that’s all we’re doing. Waiting. Waiting for one the phones on the table to chirp, for all those computers to ping, for the telly to make some kind of announcement, for the radio buzzing in the background to do something. We’re only waiting here for the other shoe to drop. For Moran. What’s he going to do, wander in like Mrs Hudson? Hello there, Sherlock. Risen from the dead, have you? Let me reverse that bit of good fortune, shall I? Then we’ll leap into action.

Until then, we wait.

I should get my gun. I should have it with me. I brought the bullets. I’m ready.

You eat. You lift the fork to your mouth, put it on your tongue. It’s mesmerizing. You chew, you glance over at your collection of phones. Then at me. Eyebrow raised. Oh: I’m staring, aren’t I.

Well. What did you expect? What did you expect from me, Sherlock? Christ.

Okay: eat. I can eat. My stomach is in knots, but it’s dinner time. I’ll have dinner. With you. Here. 221b, in the kitchen, of all places. Like normal people.

At some point, if you stay here, if you don’t die again or find some other important task that captures your attention and requires you to lie to me and abandon me in agony like some sort of achingly loyal pet, if you stay put and live with me here you’ll probably turn the kitchen into a lab again. I never really minded that. Your microscope, your test tubes and pipettes, bottles of acids and bases, and that constant chemical smell, I didn’t mind any of it.

Did you have another kitchen lab somewhere, all this time? Because you weren’t dead, were you. This isn’t some kind of miracle resurrection, you were just hiding. From me. Not just from me: from Moriarty. From everyone. Hiding where?

Both eyebrows raised this time. You’re waiting. You’re waiting for my questions, is that it? Well. All right. Fine.

“So.” Always a good place to start. Spin the pasta on my fork: for once you’ve eaten more than I have. Take a deep breath. It’s just a conversation. It’s only questions. I have so many of them.

“Where’ve you been all this time?” And why did you lie to me?

You smile. This must have been what you were waiting for. My stomach is pulsing like a warning signal. No danger: there’s no danger in this. This is easy stuff, conversation. Talking. Right. I can do this.

Why am I terrified of your answer? Have I been so stupid all this time, you’ve been right under my nose and I missed it? You always said I was an idiot.