(Third Person View: )
At Sherlock’s grave, John gazes down at the headstone, his eyes haunted with memories and loss. Since we last saw him he has grown a moustache. As he continues to look at the grave, which has several bunches of flowers – some of them fading with age – at the base of the headstone, a woman steps to John’s side and takes his hand. He clasps it tightly.
SERBIA. NIGHT TIME
A man with long straggly hair was running through a forest. Above him, a helicopter was circling around, shining a searchlight into the trees while the crew watched their infrared camera, radioing instructions in Serbian to the ground crew. There was much shouting and running, but eventually the soldiers surrounded the man and aimed their rifles at him. He slumped to the ground, exhausted.
Some time later, in what may have been a bunker or an interrogation center, a soldier was guarding the entrance to a room. He had earphones in his ears playing loud music. Behind the closed door, the prisoner cried out as he is struck for the umpteenth time. Hearing the noise, the soldier took one of his ear buds out just as the prisoner was struck again and groaned. The soldier put his ear bud back in and turned away.
Inside the room, the torturer shouted repeatedly at the prisoner, who was naked from the waist up and whose arms were chained to opposite walls of the small room, forcing him to stay upright. The man was slumped forward as far as he could be, exhausted by the repeated blows. In a dark corner of the room another soldier, well wrapped against the cold and with a furry hat on his head, sat with his feet up on a small table and watched as the torturer paced across the room. He spoke in Serbian at all times.
“You broke in here for a reason,” the torturer taunted. He picked up a large metal pipe and walked towards the prisoner again, whose face couldn’t be seen through the long straggly hair which was falling across it.
“Just tell us why and you can sleep. Remember sleep?” He drew back the pipe over his shoulder and prepared to strike the prisoner but the man whispered something quietly. The torturer stopped, lowering the pipe and leaning forward.
“What?” He asked in an irritated tone. He reaches down and pulled the man’s head back by the hair, leaning closer as the prisoner continued to whisper. The soldier in the corner spoke.
“Well? What did he say?” the soldier asked, speaking in Serbian. Straightening up and releasing the prisoner’s head, the torturer looked down at him in puzzlement.
“He said that I used to work in the navy, where I had an unhappy love affair,” the torturer said, sounding rather confused. The soldier asked a one-word question. The prisoner continued to whisper and the torturer relayed his words to the other man.
“...that the electricity isn’t working in my bathroom; and that my wife is sleeping with our next door neighbour!” He reached down and pulled the prisoner’s head up by the hair again, asking a one-word question. The prisoner replied briefly and the man released his head. “The coffin maker!” He exclaimed. Once again he bent down to the prisoner, demanding more. The prisoner responded in a whisper.
“...and...” the prisoner began. He continued whispering, and then the torturer dropped his head and relayed the words to the soldier.
“If I go home now, I’ll catch them at it! I knew it! I knew there was something going on!” He stormed out of the room, leaving the prisoner slumped in his chains.
“So, my friend. Now it’s just you and me,” the soldier began, speaking in Serbian still. He took his feet off the table and stood up.
“You have no idea the trouble it took to find you.” He walked across the room to the prisoner, whose back was covered in blood and wounds from his beating. The soldier grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s hair and pulled his head up a little. Leaning close to the man’s ear, he spoke in English and in an accent that could only belong to Mycroft Holmes.
“Now listen to me. There’s an underground terrorist network active in London and a massive attack is imminent. Sorry, but the holiday is over, brother dear,” Mycroft said sternly. He released the prisoner’s head and straightened up.
“Back to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes.” Under the long hair draped across his face, Sherlock smiled.
In an Underground station, the doors of a Tube train closed and the train moved off. John sat inside.
Above ground, a black car with tinted rear windows headed through the streets.
The two journeys continued, while Mycroft sat in a dark-walled windowless office (although there was a skylight letting a little daylight in) looking through paperwork. The car pulled up outside the Diogenes Club, which contained this office.
BAKER STREET
John walked across the road towards 221. Two young boys come around the corner, one of them pushing a pushchair in front of him in which was a home-made ‘guy’ with an orange balloon for a head, with a face drawn on with marker pen. One of them called out the traditional plea to a passer-by. The woman shook her head as she walked past and the boys continued on, reaching John just before he gets to the front door. John rolled his eyes as they asked for a penny.
John looked round at them quizzically as they continued onwards; calling out their plea to everyone they see. He unlocked the front door and went inside.
Partway down the hall, he stopped, staring at Mrs. Hudson’s front door and breathing out an anxious breath. In his head he started to hear Sherlock’s violin playing Irene’s lament, and his head snapped up and he looked up the stairs as a snippet of an old conversation sounded inside his mind.
“That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,” John laughed, out of breath.
“And you invaded Afghanistan!” Sherlock replied, also out of breath.
John blinked, his face sad as the violin faded from his mind. Just then, Mrs. Hudson opened her door and came out, staring at John in surprise. He raised a hand in greeting, clearing his throat before walking towards her after a final glance up the stairs.
In Mycroft’s office, someone was reading the front page headline of a newspaper which read, “SKELETON MYSTERY”. The reader folded the newspaper down to reveal Mycroft sitting behind his desk a short distance away, reading a file.
“You have been busy, haven’t you?” Mycroft asked sarcastically. Sherlock was the one reading the paper, and he was reclined flat on his back in a chair while a man was shaving his face with a cut-throat razor. Sherlock’s hair had been cut back to its normal length and was currently wet and straight. He tossed the paper onto a nearby trolley.
“Quite the busy little bee,” Mycroft chuckled.
“Moriarty’s network – took me two years to dismantle it,” Sherlock said in his normal tone of voice.
“And you’re confident you have?” the elder Holmes questioned.
“The Serbian side was the last piece of the puzzle,” Sherlock confirmed.
“Yes. You got yourself in deep there...” He checked his report. “...with Baron Maupertuis. Quite a scheme.”
“Colossal.”
“Anyway, you’re safe now,” Mycroft told him, shutting the file.
“Hmm,” he replied in an almost sarcastic manner.
“A small ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss,” Mycroft said, almost sounding offended.
“What for?” Sherlock scoffed.
“For wading in,” Mycroft answered. Sherlock raised a hand to the barber to make him stop shaving him. The man stepped back a little.
“In case you’d forgotten, fieldwork is not my natural milieu,” he added. Grunting in pain, Sherlock sat up and looked at his brother angrily.
“‘Wading in’? You sat there and watched me being beaten to a pulp,” Sherlock snapped.
“I got you out,” his brother argued, frowning indignantly.
“No – I got me out. Why didn’t you intervene sooner?” the younger asked in irritation.
“Well, I couldn’t risk giving myself away, could I? It would have ruined everything,” Mycroft tried.
“You were enjoying it.”
“Nonsense.”
“Definitely enjoying it.”
“Listen: do you have any idea what it was like, Sherlock, going ‘under cover’, smuggling my way into their ranks like that? The noise; the people?” Mycroft asked, leaning forward at the beginning then sitting back again.
Sherlock painfully sunk back to lie down in the chair again. The barber resumed his work.
“I didn’t know you spoke Serbian,” Sherlock commented.
“I didn’t, but the language has a Slavic root, frequent Turkish and German loan words.” He shrugged. “Took me a couple of hours.”
“Hmm – you’re slipping.”
“Middle age, brother mine. Comes to us all,” Mycroft said, smiling tightly. The door opened and Anthea –or not-Anthea– held up a dark suit and white shirt on a hanger to show to Sherlock with a slight smile.