Sherlock - The Game Is On!

The Lying Detective- Two

Chapter Two

Third POV

A man in his fifties, wearing a white suit, stands on the balcony of a riverside building in the Southwark area, looking at the view. The balcony is many storeys above ground.

Shortly afterwards, the man has come off the balcony into a room which has floor-to-ceiling glass windows on three sides. He shakes hands with a white haired man and then walks over to one of the windows to look outside. There are several other people in the room chatting with each other around a large white oval table in the middle of the room.

In a cut-away shot, news footage is shown of the man, wearing a black tuxedo and coming down a grand staircase smiling and waving as cameras flash and reporters shout questions. The footage is captioned News 24/7 on the bottom left of the screen and on the right the man is identified as Culverton Smith and underneath his name, Entrepreneur/Philanthropist. He continues downstairs into the throng of reporters who continue to take photos and hold microphones towards him. He raises his hands to them, smiling as he continues onwards. "No, thank you, thank you."

In the glass walled room, Smith smiles to himself. Nearby a woman in her mid-thirties, with blonde shoulder length hair and wearing a large pair of glasses, walks across the room leaning heavily on a cane. She greets one of the men: "Hello." The man she's talking to turns one of the chairs to make it easier for her to sit down. Behind Smith, a woman approaches him: "Mr Smith?" He turns his head slightly towards her. "Whenever you're ready."

Smith turns and looks towards the table where everyone is now sitting down, still talking to each other.

Smith has now stopped to talk to the reporters. "Uh, the charity fun..."

In the riverside room, Smith turns to Cornelia. "Now, please." Raising her hand to a headset in her ear, she walks away across the room. "Bring them through."

At the end of a corridor outside the room, the door opens and a woman in a white nurse's uniform, cap and gloves and with a white mask over her nose and mouth walks through carrying a clipboard. She is followed by several other nurses, mostly female but at least one male, similarly attired. Each of them is wheeling a drug stand beside them. Inside the glass room we see clearly for the first time that there are six people seated around the table, three on each side.

Faith sits between two men on the left-hand side, and two men and a woman sit on the other side. Smith stands at the end of the table looking at them. "It's difficult having such good friends." He walks along the right-hand side of the table, putting a hand briefly on the shoulder of the two men as he passes. "Friends are people you want to share with. Friends and..." Reaching the other end of the table, he points towards Faith. "Family."

Outside the room, the nurses and their stands progress along the corridor.

"What's the very worst thing you can do to your very best friends?" He rubs her shoulders and then strokes her neck with one hand. She laughs a little nervously. The man sitting to her right speaks: "Something on your mind?"

"Yes, Ivan. Oh, yes." He pats Faith's shoulder and she tilts her head back and smiles at him. "Whatever you tell us stays in this room. I think I speak for everyone." The others chorus their agreement with comments of 'Of course' and 'Yeah'. Smith walks back to the head of the table and leans his arms on the back of the chair there. "Well? What is the worst thing you could do?l

Smith draws in a long breath through his nose. "Tell them your darkest secret." He narrows his eyes. "Because if you tell them and they decide they'd rather not know, you can't take it back. You can't unsay it." He smiles briefly. "Once you've opened your heart, you can't close it again." His friends look at him silently. After a moment he laughs raucously. The others laugh too as he flaps a hand at them. "I'm kidding!" He continues to laugh for a moment, then his smile drops. "Of course you can."