The lift is taking forever. Mashing on the button doesn’t help, I know, but it certainly feels like it might. Come on, come on...
Is it out again? Are they repairing it, or something? There’s no sign. They wouldn’t shut it off early in the morning, would they? Not without a sign. People are off to work. There would be an outcry. But it’s stalled, it hasn’t moved in ages. What is it, stuck?
Bloody lift. Come on, hurry up, I’m already late.
Oh, there it goes. Thank god. Someone just holding the door open, no doubt. Bloody do-gooders. The rest of us are waiting.
It’s later in the morning than I’d hoped it would be. She’ll be up by now, she’ll be getting ready for work. She’ll have noticed that I’m gone, she might even have looked for me. I didn’t take my phone. She’ll wonder where I am; maybe she panicked and called the police. No: she wouldn’t, would she? She wouldn’t do that. She’d wait. She’d wait and worry, that’s what she’d do.
I didn’t think to leave a note. I’ve gone out for a walk in the morning before. She shouldn’t imagine the worst, not yet. When I go out in the mornings I generally tell her I’m leaving, though. Usually she knows where I am. I could have left my computer on and open to a blank page, as if I’d just stepped out to get some air and cope with some sort of writer’s block. She would have understood that. She would think it was only frustration, or insomnia, or both. That would have been a good idea, leaving the computer on. You would have thought of that. But I didn’t; I didn’t imagine I’d be this late.
An hour ago I could have slipped back into bed and Mary would just be waking up. She might never have noticed that I’d left, if I did it right. She’d never even know enough to ask me. She wouldn’t have heard the door close at three in the morning; she wouldn’t notice that I took my gun. She wouldn’t have seen the code solved on my desk; she wouldn’t have understood it, or tried to. She’s not like you: she wouldn’t take it all in in a moment and make sense of it. She won’t notice the grass stains on my jeans, either, or the flecks of blood on the cuffs of my jacket. She won’t deduce what it is that I’ve done.
She’ll certainly notice the blood on your face.
Oh. Right. I nearly forgot about that. My face.
Ouch. Best avoid touching it, it’s a bit sore. I can feel my pulse in it. I’m still bleeding. That bloke had a pretty good right hook. But nothing broken. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing.
I guess I could take the stairs. That’s a lot of stairs though. Twenty-five floors. The lift will be quicker, no matter how long it takes.
She could check the drawer and see if my gun is gone. But she won’t. It won’t occur to her. She doesn’t see me as the sort of person who walks around with a gun in public, she just doesn’t. Even though she knows about the gun, even though she’s read all the stories. That was a different man, to her. A fictional one. Someone I used to aspire to be. I thought so too, really. Now I’m not so sure.
Well, maybe she doesn’t really know about the gun, not really. I never admitted to shooting anyone in stories, or in the novel. I’m not an idiot.
Whatever gave you that idea?
Someone’s come in the front door; he’s got a dog. He was out walking his dog first thing in the morning: a perfectly ordinary activity. Makes sense. He looks familiar; I think I’ve seen him before. He’s new. He moved in recently, didn’t he? Yes. Twenty-fourth or twenty-third floor, we’ve shared the lift a couple of times, I think. He’s all in black. He looks military, or ex-military. Not like me, though: combat. The kind of quietly-muscled ones that are twice as heavy as they look. I know his type. Sniper, maybe. Unless I’m just being romantic.
Am I staring? I probably am. How rude. I’ll just smile, nod, the regular, we’re neighbours so I’ll be polite actions. Oh, thank god: saved by the lift doors. I’m not that good at small talk. Though now we’re stuck in a small room together. With his dog.
I could mention the weather if I have to.
He presses Twenty-four. Right: twenty-four. I remember. He lives on the floor below me. I’ve seen him, I’m sure. But not the dog. Maybe the dog is new.
It’s a very well behaved dog. What is that, a pit bull? I won’t ask to pat him. He looks like he could take my lungs out with those jaws. Who keeps a dog like that? Law enforcement? Criminals? Men with something to prove? Men who like powerful dogs. Could be anyone, I guess. It could be his girlfriend’s dog. Or his boyfriend’s. His mother’s. Who knows.
“You all right?” he asks me. He looks a little concerned. He touches his face. Right: My face, he wants to know what happened to me. It must be swelling up; it’s enough to get perfect strangers to ask me about it. That’s not going to go over well with Mary, is it.
“Fine,” I tell him. God, what do I say? I don’t have a story ready for this. “There was a misunderstanding.” That’s vague enough, isn’t it? He doesn’t need a song and dance; I don’t have anything to prove to him. Let him think I got into a fight over something; I’m stronger than I look, too. I don’t have to give him any details. I’m not expected to explain myself to strangers. Mary is another story. What am I going to tell her? What will she believe?
I fell? No. This isn’t the kind of injury you get from a fall. Mugged. Right, yeah. Someone tried to mug me, and I refused to give him my wallet, so he lunged at me and punched me in the face, and I punched him back, and that was the end of it. I just need a cup of tea, I’ll be fine. I’ll act a little shaken up.
That will do. I’m certain it will.
She’ll tell me to stop wandering around in the wee hours of the morning. She’ll tell me, again, that I should see a doctor about my insomnia. And I’ll agree, and that will be the end of it. Maybe I’ll even make an appointment. I won’t go, though. I know why I can’t sleep.
There’s a notice taped up on the wall; what’s this? Evacuation. What? Five different flats, twenty-fourth, twenty-sixth floor. Yesterday. Evacuations?
“Why are they evacuating flats?” I ask him, pointing to the flyer. The twenty-fourth is his floor. He’ll know.
He pauses for a second. “Bedbugs.”
Bedbugs? One of those flats is right above Mary’s. One of them is directly below. “They haven’t checked our flat, did they check yours?”
“Yeah,” he says. His dog sits down and leans against his legs. “A few days ago. Nothing in mine, thank god.”
“Huh.” No one’s come by Mary’s, I’m certain. Other than nipping out to get a paper, I’ve been home for days.
“Nothing to worry about, I’m sure,” he says.
“I haven’t noticed anything.” But then, I haven’t been looking. I’ll have to ask Mary. I wonder if she knows about this. She’s a bit paranoid about bedbugs, she had them once years ago. She’ll turn the whole flat upside down with the suggestion. I could bring it up if I need to change the subject. That will work.
He pulls on the lead and the dog sits up, instantly alert.
“That’s a very well-behaved dog you have there,” I tell him. The door is about to open; it’s his floor. Mentioning it won’t start a conversation. I’m just being polite. Neighbourly. Normal.
“Thanks,” he says. The doors open. “Good morning.” He smiles and walks out. The dog is much like the man; quietly muscled, quietly dangerous, sauntering out of the lift with a swing of his hips. They both walk as if they’ve heard gunfire. The doors shut again; I can’t tell which flat is his.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not investigating him. I don’t need to know all his secrets. He’s only a neighbour.
It’s quiet on the twenty-fifth floor. There are no police standing around the door to Mary’s flat, that’s something, at least. I was just out for a walk. I left a couple of hours ago, I was just walking around, thinking, I wasn’t paying attention, and suddenly there I was being mugged. What did he look like? I don’t know. He was wearing a cap, he had some kind of puffy jacket on. Trainers. He wanted my ipod. I wanted my wallet. He didn’t get either of them. That’s what I’ll tell her.
The door is open; did she unlock it, looking into the hallway for me, or did I leave it unlocked?
She’s standing in the kitchen, looking lost. She turns as I open the door, her face covered with concern. Not anger, just concern.
Somehow I thought she would be angry, as if I had cheated on her. I sort of feel like I did. I feel like she should be able to see it written all over me. But she can’t. She can’t.
“John!” She walks toward me. Her shoes clap against the tile. That sound will always remind me of her; that assured walk, with shoes that make a hard, pointed sound against the floor. She is so centred in this place, and I am so transient. I shut the door behind me. “Oh my god, what happened to you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I tell her. She wraps her arm around me, her hand hovering over my eye. I can almost feel it, her hand: suddenly the left side of my face hurts. It pulses, it oozes, and it hurts. There are tears dripping out of my eye, which is close to sealed shut. I can feel the cut burning on the side of my face. I’m bleeding.
“What happened to you? Come here, sit down.” She leads me to the table, she wants me to sit, so I do.
“I nearly got mugged.” I wonder if that sounds truthful; people who lie tell you far too much too fast. That’s how it works: liars buy your belief with details. “I shouldn’t have been out so early in the morning. I just...” Remember: enough detail to give a picture, but not enough to make it sound like I’m desperate. “I couldn’t sleep.” I could learn to be a good liar, I think. I could learn. You’d always see through me, though, I bet. You would have.
“Oh my god, John,” she says. She believes it. It doesn’t even occur to her that I would lie like this. I feel guilty. Here I am trying to fool her; why? She’s looking at my face and she winces in sympathy; she’s imagining what it must feel like. It feels wonderful, Mary. It feels incredible. I caught him, he was twice my size. He could have shot me, he could have pounded my face into the ground, but I got him. Me. It was unbelievable. It was just what I needed. She wouldn’t understand. She doesn’t know me. “You poor thing!”
I didn’t let the medics in the ambulance do anything other than verify that nothing was broken. I don’t need their bandages or painkillers. I didn’t feel anything at the time. I felt fantastic. I felt alive; I haven’t truly felt alive in all the time you’ve been dead, Sherlock. I think some part of me must have died with you. You stole something from me. And you can’t ever give it back. But this morning I remembered what it used to be like. I can’t explain.
“He didn’t get anything,” I tell her. “I punched him back. Then he ran away.”
“I hope you really clocked him one,” Mary says. She puts her hand over mine. She’s worried about me. She’s not angry. She’s not going to ask me where I was, she didn’t notice how early I left. She doesn’t know I’ve got my gun pressed against my back. She’s only looking at my face, seeing the drying blood there. My eye is probably turning a spectacular variety of colours. There’s no anger on her face. Just concern, and love. Because she loves me.
“I’ll get the bandages,” Mary says. She gets up and goes into the kitchen. There’s a first aid kit in there. We used it once when I cut my finger with one of her monstrous kitchen knives. That was in the beginning, the third or fourth time I spent the night here with her. I covered the cut with gauze and applied pressure, and it hurt sharply for a moment or two. Then she kissed me. That was the first time it occurred to me that I could marry her, that I should; there was a bit of blood on my palm, on the worktop, and a few drops in the sink, my finger was aching and she was kissing me. She’s very beautiful, Mary is. And kind. She loves me.
The telly is on; the news. And then I see it: an aerial view of Denmead Street. The little gully where I found him. Serial Killer Apprehended, it says across the screen. I left before the media arrived, apparently. Lucky thing. They show him in the car, his head down, blood on his temple. They show the Met, all the cars, the van. Greg talking into a microphone. Some terrified neighbours in their dressing gowns.
Mycroft Holmes once told me that it was time to choose a side. At the time I thought he meant between you and him, because he was your archenemy. I thought that was the choice I had to make, but that’s not what he meant. He meant between you and the rest of the world. A normal life, with a woman like Mary, a flat like this, a career, or you. You with all the excitement you brought along with you, the danger, standing on the edge of a knife. I was so sure I would die protecting you. It seemed inevitable. But I couldn’t. You confused me again, Sherlock. You turn everything on its head, and after that nothing looked the same.
I made my choice then. I thought I could go back, live a normal life. Be the man Mary thinks I am, the one I’ve thought I would have been had it not been for you.
But I’m not sure I can anymore.
“I’ll get you some ice,” Mary says.