The Quiet Man

The Man Who Didn't Know

Anyway, I have access to your accounts. You’re not paying the rent anymore either.

I suppose she was never much of a business woman to start with, renting the place out to someone like you. She knew what you were like. It’d be hard not to know. She knew you. Before I did, back before. You might have been even worse then. With a drug habit and no one to keep an eye on you. Was there someone keeping an eye on you? Like I did?

“I saw your story in The Strand,” she says. Oh. Right. Of course she did. All her friends probably brought her copies immediately when they saw that there was a Sherlock Holmes story in it. Awkward: if it were someone else, writing stories about you, blithely publishing them for the world to see, leaving them for me to run into by accident in a shop, I’d hunt that bloke down and punch him in the face. No question. That was thoughtless of me. I should have warned her. “It’s a wonderful story, John! Congratulations!”

She doesn’t seem upset. She seems pleased. I didn’t think she’d read The Strand. It’s my first real publication: one of your stories, Sherlock. I liked that story, "The Gloria Scott." I’m telling all your stories, even then ones from before I knew you. The stories you told me on rainy days; bribery and codes. Secret lovers and murder. Everyone loves those.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe in you. They still love your stories. They want to publish one a month. I just signed the contract. Maybe they want the controversy, I don’t know. They’ll strike while the iron is hot, I suppose. Bit of crime fiction from The Man Who Was Lied To, Companion To The Psychopath, The Man Who Didn’t Know. The public appetite for me and my stories hasn’t gone off. Not yet, anyway. Bit of a surprise to me.

“It was an old story,” I tell her. “They approached me. You know, because of the news, I guess.”

“It’s nice to read your writing again,” she says. “I’m glad you’ve gone back to it. I’ve missed it.” She’s a bit wistful, I think. She misses him too. Of course she does. “He jumped right off the page, John. It was like he was back for a minute.”

I swallow hard. I don’t really want to talk about you.

She pats my hand again. “He’d have liked that.”

I put the bag in the cab along with her, and she looks at me with eyes I can only describe as pleading.

“You’re welcome back any time,” she says. “You know that.”

I try and smile at her. There’s just nothing more I can say. The driver starts the engine, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

You can tell when someone’s looking at you. You can feel it. As if their eyes actually caress you. You never believed that, you thought it was funny I thought so. A man’s gaze isn’t a physical thing, you’d say to me. It’s not something you can feel. But I can. I turn my head to see who’s staring at me.

Up the road a bit, a man in a long coat. The cab drives off, and there’s a rumble of thunder. And a man in a long coat, watching me. Hands in his pockets, collar up, curly hair. Dark hair. A slim silhouette at the end of the street. He turns on his heel, and his coat flares out behind him.

Sherlock.

Is that you?

It hits me everywhere at once; like a clapper hitting the inside of a bell, one glance up the road and my entire body is ringing. Sherlock. Oh my god. It’s you.

How can that be?

It doesn’t matter.

I run. I run as fast as I can; I saw you. Sherlock, wait. Wait for me.

Utter delight and terror must run along the same nerve endings: they feel so close to the same thing.

A dark coat, curly hair: I wrote about you and you came back. Did you see it, I dedicated it to you. “For S.” And I felt, at the time, like maybe it was the only way to say anything to you. A dedication, one little line under the title. Did you see it? Did that make you come back?

First I’m going to hug you, and then I’m going to pummel you.

Run. How can this road suddenly be so long? I can hear my breath in my ears, I can’t hear the traffic, I can’t hear anything else. My breath, and my voice. Sherlock, Sherlock. An incantation. You came back.

Your bloodied face, that pool of blood. My eyes are watering. How can this be? I don’t care, I don’t care. Sherlock, wait for me.

It’s a busy street; lots of people. Lots of dark coats. Men, women, prams. A wolfhound on a leash. A man delivering parcels. Dark coat, curly hair. Where? There. Down a side street. Run.

“Sherlock!”

You don’t turn. You don’t look back at me. You keep walking, as if I don’t exist. As if I’m the one who fell, I’m the one who hit the pavement and died. The imaginary one, locked into a terrible alternate reality where you don’t exist anymore.

“Sherlock, you bastard!”

You turn, and I’m ready to tackle you to the ground, but no. A beard, glasses, short face.

No.

It’s not you.

Someone who only looks like you from a distance, from behind, and is glaring at me like I’m mad and possibly dangerous.

I stop short. I feel like my lungs have been pulled out.

“Sorry,” I manage. “Thought you were someone else.”

He glares at me, nods, and then walks away.