Anderson ↠ BBC Sherlock

act one; eight

Clara relaxed. That meant there was only one document that she would have to destroy. "Do you really think you have a leak?" she asked. "I think they're probably just framing someone. It'd be a great diversion, right? You'd be looking in all the wrong places, and it would eventually build rifts between colleagues. To be frank, sir, it's what I would do."

He stares. "It's what you would do," he repeated, slowly. Lestrade wasn't suspicious — not yet — but he was close. Maybe. She still hadn't quite determined how smart he was.

"Of course," Clara said. "I'm not a criminal, but that doesn't mean I can't think like one. If I was Marni, I would do whatever it took to make you look somewhere else. Handwriting is very easy to mimic— I'd probably even do that, too."

"But there's no way of knowing that we would even notice that the handwriting is familiar," said Lestrade.

Clara shrugged. "Probability."

"What?" he asked.

"Marni didn't need to know that someone would notice. She just needed to know that we might," said Clara. "Listen, I'm not— I'm not a maths genius.  In fact, I almost failed it in grade school. But listen, okay? There's only two ways for this to go. Either we notice, or we don't. Either we end up doing exactly what we're doing, or it's just a waste of her time. It's fifty/fifty. And even if nothing happened, even if we didn't notice, she still learned something about us— that we're unobservant, and suck at our jobs."

"I get that it's a logic thing, or— or whatever, okay? But she was a nobody before this. And now she's pulling these grand plans?" he shook his head. "I don't get it."

"Okay, but she's not. Marni is smart, that much is obvious, but so is James Moriarty and Sebastian Moran," Clara told him. "She's not doing this by herself, Lestrade."

Just like that, something clicked for Lestrade. "We've been searching for one person. Moran, then Marni. As if they're two completely separate people. But they're not. Everything they've done, either of them, all of them— it's not just one person doing it, it's three. If we want to actually catch them, we need to figure out who is doing what."

"Does this mean you don't think that any of your employees are at fault?" asked Clara.

"You've convinced me," he said, and laughed. He looked relieved. "I'm going to let John finish with the signatures, though. It's keeping his mind off of Sherlock."

"Oh," she said, and it sounded hollow even to her. "That's smart."

Sooner or later, Watson would come across her signature. He'd have to, and there would be no denying the similarities. Clara didn't know what he would do, when he figured it out, but she was worried. They weren't close— it would be easy for him to immediately go to Lestrade or another department member and get her arrested. There was a chance, though, that he might confront her first. They'd gotten to know each other a bit during short visits to the hospital. Was it enough?

She didn't know.

And if Clara didn't know what was going to happen, then she had a problem. A problem that she needed to solve.

She only had one option: Clara needed to get rid of the evidence.

Leaving Lestrade behind, she made her way over to the office Watson had locked himself up in. The room was small, and cramped. There was barely enough space for one person, let alone another one. Clara didn't enter, and instead hovered just outside the door.

"Hi," she said, and he looked up. Clara pointed towards the stack of papers. "How far along are you?"

"Uh, hey," he replied. Watson stood, and grabbed his woolen coat. "Sorry, I'd love to chat, but I've got to go back to the hospital and check on Sherlock."