Fic:So I'll Finish 1/3 Sherlock PG
Title: So I'll Finish part 1/3 (final version)
Author: Unsentimental Fool
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Rating: PG
Word count: 6800/21,100
Summary: When Sherlock accepts an invitation to enter a celebrity TV quiz it is of course unthinkable that he might not win. Hubris may be about to be his downfall.
Sherlock was not nervous, precisely, but he had not appreciated the unexpectedly long wait. When he was finally prompted to move he took a moment to run a slightly sweating hand through his curls and tug his jacket straight before he strode silently down the sound dampened corridor and through the heavy steel door into the darkness.
There was a spotlight on the deliberately grim face of his interrogator, another on the empty leather chair facing the man. Done for effect, and he had to admit it worked. Sherlock resisted the urge to look around the dim room. Look confident. Cocksure, John had said yesterday- was it only yesterday? He knew John was nearby, yards away in the dark, constrained to silence. Sherlock hadn't felt this alone since he'd returned to Baker Street a few months earlier.
John had been against this from the start.
"You're not a celebrity!"
Sherlock was mildly amused that the first line of attack should be lexicographical. He reached across the desk for his Oxford.
"A famous person, especially in entertainment or sport. The state of being well known. My public recognition is similar to that of a footballer or soap actor. I qualify as moderately famous."
"Notorious, perhaps," John countered.
"My reputation was comprehensively cleared. As you well know."
The introduction had been delivered to camera. Someone in the unseen audience coughed twice. The cue was delivered and Sherlock rose smoothly, walked steadily to the black leather seat.
"Your name?"
"Sherlock Holmes."
They'd rehearsed this several times. Totally unnecessary; it was the simplest of exchanges.
"Your occupation?"
"Consulting detective."
"Sherlock Holmes, you have..."
Humphrys had missed a line. Unprofessional.
"...two minutes on..."
He'd had an extensive dispute with the producers about his specialist subject. They'd unreasonably rejected "compositions of tobacco ash" as too narrow. Agreement had almost been reached on "major criminal conspiracies in the 21st century" until the BBC lawyers got wind of it. Finally they'd settled on "forensic chemistry from 1963 onwards".
"...the life and works of Professor James Moriarty."
There was a slight smile on Humphrys's face. Sherlock's mind was racing. A joke. He should have expected it. Christmas Special television show producers were prone to jests. He would be expected to play along in good humour.
"Starting... now."
"But why on earth do you want to do it?" John had returned yet again to the fray. This had been going on for days and it was increasingly irritating. "Reciting a few facts to order on television, competing against a few C list celebs... come on, Sherlock. That's not you."
"You're making assumptions. You could be making some coffee instead."
"I'm not the only one making assumptions, Sherlock. What if you lose? Have you even thought about that?"
"James Moriarty was christened in St Paul's Church, Ardmore, in the Republic of Ireland under what name?"
He was? How on earth did they know? "Pass."
"Moriarty broke into three London-based institutions in the space of half an hour. The Bank of England was one. Name the other two."
That was easy. "The Tower of London and Pentonville prison."
"Correct. How much was Richard Brook offered by the Sun newspaper for his story?"
Sherlock had no idea. Maybe it was time to find out if Humphrys did. "Fifty thousand pounds?"
"Five thousand pounds. Professor Moriarty's seminal paper entitled "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was published in which scientific journal in 2001?“
Five thousand? That was distinctly insulting. "Pass."
"What pattern was on the tea set used during the meeting in Baker Street directly after Moriarty's controversial acquittal?"
John Humphrys seemed entirely focused on the question cards in front of him. The audience was silent. The answers to these questions could not be found in the police's files. What was going on?
Another minute and a half. Collect more data before formulating a hypothesis.
"A map of the British Isles." That truncated description should be acceptable; the questions and answers so far were running a little behind the target timings.
"Correct."
The questions kept coming. Twenty one in total; Humphrys had kept it slow for an underperforming contestant. Six might be considered information in the public arena. Five related to interactions with Moriarty that Sherlock had considered private knowledge. The rest- who had set these questions, and, just as importantly, why?
"You passed on six questions. The transfer of funds from the Bank of England was made to Credit Suisse, the kidnapping took place in March 1997, the song referred to was "London Town", the body was removed from the rooftop by Sebastian Moran. "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was published in "Earth, Moon and Planets". And the name that James Moriarty was christened with? Patrick James Murtagh."
The question matter smiled warmly at him. "Sherlock Holmes. At the end of that round you have scored eleven points with five passes."
Sherlock's eyes were locked on John Humphrys. Data. Murtagh. Moran. So much more data, if it could be believed, and he had no idea what to do with it. Jim Moriarty was dead.
After a couple of seconds he remembered to nod acknowledgement and get to his feet. He broke with his instructions enough to cast a look around for John, somewhere in the audience, as he walked back to his chair. There, second row behind him and looking about twice as stunned as Sherlock felt. Sherlock sat with hands folded on his lap, his heart still beating a little faster than usual, and watched the next contestant take his place.
The young TV chef was quizzed on Eastern European cooking. His pronunciation was poor and his history worse; he had apparently never heard of Yugoslavia. Eight.
The rugby player succumbed to a bad attack of nerves and obtained only five points on some programme called Eastenders.
A retired cabinet minister tackled Church music without fear or hesitation but the subject was far broader than his research went. Ten points, no passes.
The final contestant was a TV actress; like all the others she was unknown to Sherlock. She had picked a manageable subject and done at least some homework; fifteen points and two passes on the life and works of Emily Bronte.
At the end of the first round Sherlock was in a poor second place. Of some equal significance was the evident fact that for everyone else the show was going exactly as rehearsed. At least three people on the set must know that his questions had been switched and none of them were saying anything. This wasn't an on-screen Christmas joke by the programme makers; it was something else entirely.
"Have you even seen the show?"
Sherlock had sighed inwardly at John's perseverance. This dispute was due to run for some time. He would be required to counter all the predictable objections, one by one. For a moment he was tempted just to retreat to his room but there was still a week until the recording. It was highly unlikely that he could avoid his flatmate for that long.
"Several times."
"Right. And did you happen to notice what sort of questions they ask?"
"The specialist subject round is trivial for anyone with an organised memory. The setters frequently take all the questions from a single reference work."
"Yeah. No problem. What about the general knowledge round, Sherlock? All the stuff you've deleted?
The second round went in reverse order. The footballer failed to conquer his stage fright and got another three points. The chef got a handful more. The ex-minister found his feet with a creditable fourteen and no passes. Sherlock walked towards the black chair again with fourteen needed and the actress still to go.
Could this be retrieved? So many of the questions were trivia, stuff he'd long since discarded as no use to him. His plan had been to pick up twenty three points or so in the first round, then apply rapid deductive reasoning to the unknowns. Together with the questions he did knew the answer to- usually about 5 to 7 per round - this should be enough not just to win the round but to get the thirty two points he needed. He hadn't reckoned on interference.
Thirty two was now out of the question, which made the entire exercise worse then futile from that point of view (data, though, Such unexpected data!), but dropping out now had few advantages either. Were there more surprises to come? Without knowing what the hell was going on he would simply have to do the best that he could, always an unappealing prospect.
First was the purposeless chat for the cameras to get through. John Humphrys was beaming at him, owl-like, from the podium. Was this the optimum point at which to challenge the man about the first round? Would that disrupt whatever might be planned for the second? He was acutely aware of the cameras on them, the silent audience. He would do it when the cameras were elsewhere; he directed a tight, get-on-with-it smile at Humphrys.
"Sherlock Holmes. What a year you've had. Surely you must be the only detective ever to have solved the case of your own murder?"
"Without researching the point I really couldn't say."
The man caught the hint of his glare, moved smoothly on. "Twelve in the first round, and twenty four to beat. Your general knowledge questions start... now."
"It's for a case." Pause. "It's not for a case."
Sherlock hadn't looked up from the paper he was skimming through. John was fond of these contradictory leaps of faith. "One of those is likely to be correct."
"It's not for a case." John sounded a little surer. "You would have told me. Besides, you keep complaining that you haven't any cases right now. And no case would need you to go on Celebrity Mastermind anyway."
Sherlock contemplated the matter for a couple of seconds and came up with three scenarios that would require just that. People had so little imagination.
"So if it's not work, it must be personal." John was narrowing his eyes at Sherlock. It looked rather ridiculous and he said so.
"So." John repeated, ignoring his comment. "Personal. I bet it's a childhood thing. No..." and Sherlock could almost hear the cogs grinding round, oh so slowly, "I bet it's a brother thing. It is, isn't it?"
He flipped open his laptop. Sherlock started counting seconds, silently. And kept counting, long past the fifteen that he'd mentally allowed. What was the man doing? It was a trivial enough Google search.
The seconds stretched to a minute. Sherlock got bored waiting. "1990. He lost in the third round."
John looked at him over the screen. "1990? How old was he? Six?"
"Seventeen."
"Right. So you're going to prove that you're smarter than a teenager? It's a bit petty, isn't it?
"I didn't ask your opinion." He swept the paper up and retreated to his bedroom to finish it without further interruptions.
The general knowledge questions were precisely as expected. Sherlock got ten right and came third.
The lights went up as the producer thanked the audience. Behind her Humphrys was getting ready to leave. The cameras were finally off. Sherlock strode across the floor, careless of the hallowed format, rested his arms on the pulpit, eye to eye with his interlocutor. The man looked moderately shamefaced, Sherlock noted, Interesting.
“Who told you to switch the questions?”
“Ah. I believe it was your agent’s idea. You’ll really have to talk to Eleanor- the producer. I was only told about it this morning. Obviously I’m terribly sorry if it caused any embarrassment. We assumed you’d know….” He tailed off.
“Who set the questions?”
“One of our normal people, I think. Eleanor will know. Really, you are going to have to talk to her. I just read them out.”
He tried a deprecating smile which Sherlock ignored. “You changed your introduction. Messing with the format. Introducing gimmicks. Didn’t you even protest? “
“Well, yes, I did, as it happens.” Humphrys pulled himself up a little taller. “I was told that your agent had been promised that things would be done this way. Some mention of a forthcoming autobiography? I was very unimpressed, but at the end of the day what could I do? It wasn’t negotiable, I was told.”
That had the ring of truth about it. Pressure, somewhere along the line. Sherlock would have to work backwards. The producer, next.
He cornered her, literally, as the last of the audience were leaving. She clearly didn’t want to speak to him at all, but he had her boxed and she couldn’t get past him. Humphrys had merely been embarrassed that something he’d fronted hadn’t turned out well. This woman-Eleanor- knew that she’d done something wrong. So why had she done it?
He straightened up, deliberately looming over her, his voice harsh. “Who told you to switch the questions?”
“I can’t talk to you right now, Mr Holmes.”
“Rubbish. Who told you? “Voice deepening, “They’ve been blackmailing you, haven’t they? If you won’t answer I’ll have to ask your staff, and your boss. Who was it?”
She crumbled, visibly. “Please be quiet! It was only your agent. He just wanted an exciting show. I tried to tell him, but…”
“I don’t have an agent.” Sherlock said, flatly. “Try again.”
That did surprise her. “But that’s who he said he was. From that agency with the funny name. Hubris something. Look, I’ll talk to you later. In my office. Not here.”
A small crowd was starting to gather around them, with John hovering on the outskirts, looking worried.
“I’ll wait.” He had no intention of letting her out of his sight. The questions had claimed to know Moriarty’s real identity; he needed to know what was going on.
Half an hour later he and John were sitting in Eleanor’s office looking at a crisp red and black business card with “Hubris Unrestrained” and a telephone number.
“What was his name?”
“John.” She frowned, looked across at John. “John Watson. I thought it was you. The papers said you two were… well, friends.”
“He used my name? Cheeky bastard! Did he look like me?”
“I never met him. The card was delivered and after that he rang.”
“What did he sound like?” Sherlock asked.
“A bit scary, to be honest.” The blackmail had been something so minor- some expense claims that were probably legitimate- that Sherlock was surprised that she hadn’t just told him to go to hell. But if he’d been intimidating that might make the difference.
“Who set the questions?”
“Abby Squire- she’s one of our regulars. I’ve got her expenses claim form.” Eleanor called up a form on her computer. “Here.”
Under “materials purchased” there were three books from Amazon- all autobiographies of Jim Moriarty. Sherlock was certain that none of them existed. He took note of the address on the form. Abby Squire was next on his list. He took the card with him when he left.
As they came out of the BBC building a long silver car drew up and the passenger door opened.
“Sherlock.” Mycroft’s voice was crisp. Sherlock contemplated walking straight past, but his brother would no doubt be persistent. He sighed, audibly, and climbed in.
“Well done.” Mycroft said. “That was a remarkable performance. You must be very proud. What on earth made you think showing off like that was a good idea?”
Sherlock ignored him, spoke to John, squashed up next to him,
"What did you think of the questions?"
His flatmate shrugged. "Well, I knew the answers to a couple, which was more than I would have done with forensic chemistry. But I thought you'd get more questions about Moriarty right than that. Your score was a bit... surprising... I guess."
"Embarrassing, John means to say." Mycroft added. "You were made to look both ignorant and fatuous. One can't dine out, so to speak, on the whole brilliant detective versus evil nemesis story for months and then fail to even recall the man's name without generating a certain amount of ridicule."
"I did not fail to remember it," Sherlock was acerbic. "I did not know it, and not did you or anyone else."
"Apparently John Humphrys did." John said. "What did he say? Patrick James something?"
"Murtagh."
"Was he right?"
"It will be relatively easy to verify.”
“No,” Mycroft’s voice was sharp. “Twenty three apparent clues handed to you in public- on camera!- surely you wouldn’t be so stupid as to follow them up? Whatever his name was once, Jim Moriarty is dead. There's no crime scene here; just an attempt to lure you on a chase using your pride and curiosity. Walk away, Sherlock."
"And then what? Someone who can corrupt this flagship of propriety- what else might they do to get my attention?" He glanced involuntarily at John, endangered once already to force his hand. To have it happen again would be intolerable. "I have no choice."
"You have a choice." His brother's tone was low in warning. "This arrogance, to think that you are the only person who can keep him from harm, is what they are counting on. Do nothing. I can close this down."
"And Moriarty?"
"Is gone. His name doesn't matter, Sherlock. His history is irrelevant. They'll have you chasing shadows down the pathway to your destruction. Leave this to me. I'll make sure your performance is quietly forgotten. That's all that's needed."
"Sherlock." John reached out a hand to touch his, a rare gesture. "I think your brother may be right this time. This is obviously a set up. Last time…well, last time you nearly died, remember? Maybe you should ignore this, do something else instead."
“You think this…Hubris…can outwit me?”
“Moriarty did. Nearly did.” John amended, hastily off Sherlock’s glare.
“Jim Moriarty is dead. Whoever set this up has overreached himself. He used your name.”
John pressed the tips of his fingers into his eye sockets, looked up. “Sherlock. Please. Let Mycroft deal with this. Forget about it. I have a really bad feeling about this Hubris, whoever he is.”
“A really bad feeling? What sort of deduction is that?”
“A soldier’s one. Please, Sherlock. Just forget about the whole thing.”
The argument continued most of the way to Baker Street. Sherlock’s final concession was grudging and ill-tempered. Hubris had ruined his carefully staged performance, and the questions had stirred a curiosity that could not simply be quashed. The tea-set - surely that had to come from Moriarty himself. Who had he told before he died? And Murtagh- was that really Moriarty? But John and Mycroft were united, determined, and persistent. To investigate was to follow the trail that Hubris had laid, and Hubris could be assumed to have malevolent intentions.
“Deal with it, then,” he said, eventually. “Just don’t screw it up, Mycroft.”
“You can trust me not to do so.”
Beside him he felt John’s tension ease.
Back in the flat Sherlock refused John’s conciliatory offer of coffee and food, and retreated to his bedroom to sulk. The day had not gone as planned, at all. That tea-set. And Sebastian Moran- now that was a name he had come across from his investigations into Moriarty’s network. The man had been elusive; he had worked as an assassin for Jim, but his fellows had been reluctant to reveal even what little they did know about him. Gambling and shooting tigers; the only firm rumours Sherlock had been able to pick up. Yet Hubris knew his name. Who the hell was Hubris? What did he want, apart from to embarrass Sherlock on television and show off his own knowledge of Moriarty’s operations?
And Sherlock was supposed not to care. Impossible.
He curled up on his bed, his thoughts racing around the various bits of information offered. He might be unwise to act but no-one could stop him thinking.
His phone beeped, interrupting his thoughts. A number not in his address book; he glanced at it, recognising the number instantly from the card. Hubris. He sat up straight, opened the text.
It was a website address; a personal picture upload, apparently. It might be nothing of the sort. Sherlock typed the address carefully into his laptop, it being considerably better protected from malware than his phone, and pressed send.
A photo of a hand. Caucasian, male, in his twenties. The thumb was outward, the forefinger upwards, the other three curled into the palm. Sherlock frowned at it. Hubris’s hand? Someone else’s? The photo space seemed to belong to some young US girl; her blog mainly consisted of complaints about high school. The photo had been uploaded over two years previously.
He put the image back into a search, found dozens of identical copies. Each one was tagged the same. “Loser”.
Hubris had sent him an L sign. For loser. Nothing more clever, nothing more sophisticated than that. It was enough. Sherlock slammed his hands down on the laptop keys, grabbed his phone. His hands were shaking slightly as he typed,
I will find you
SH
He got no reply.
Sherlock had determined to investigate the Hubris incident without letting John know he was doing so. He had no desire to have the arguments over, and he was aware that his response to the text might be described as over-emotional.
Local newspapers provided information about the burglary of Abby Squire’s house directly after she had provided the Mastermind questions. Sherlock hacked into her Amazon account, found no record of the purchase of the biographies of Moriarty, though he was sure that she thought that she’d bought them from there. Hubris had managed to place them with her and remove them again without suspicion. The man, or woman, was good.
The questions that she’d selected from them, and the answers, were now on his laptop, each with their own notes. Rather than chase all twenty three at once he’d decided to concentrate on five answers both representative and intriguing.
Patrick Murtagh. He’d traced the birth records and junior school registration, got no further. The boy hadn’t been registered with any local high school. Sherlock needed to go to Northern Ireland to investigate in person.
Sebastian Moran. Who had supposedly removed the body from the rooftop. Very few people knew that there had been such a body; it had disappeared before the police arrived and hadn’t formed part of Sherlock’s narrative when he returned. Somehow he had to trace the elusive Moran and question him.
The tea set. How had Hubris known about the tea set? Had Moriarty talked, and if so to whom?
The payment that the Sun was going to make to Brook. Sherlock suspected that any reference to Brook was likely to be significant.
“Dynamics of an Asteroid”. Why on earth would Moriarty have written a scientific paper? He’d found apparently genuine articles citing it, but the archives of the journal in which it was supposedly published weren’t online. His request for a paper copy was apparently languishing with the publisher’s assistant.
Sherlock had got no further by the time that Mycroft visited, two days after the show was recorded. He looked around the flat suspiciously, hunting for signs that Sherlock was not keeping his word. Sherlock watched him, expressionless.
“I have arranged for your deeply unimpressive performance to be removed from the finished recording.”
“Thus sparing the family name, Mycroft. Fortunately I don’t need to bring myself to thank you since I’m well aware that you did it for your own purposes.”
“Arrogant and ungrateful as usual. Try to stay away from television in future. It’s not a medium that flatters you. And let this be an end to the matter.”
Sherlock snorted. "An end, when you still know nothing. Your singular lack of curiosity is why you'd make a dreadful detective.”
Mycroft stood up and straightened his jacket. "We went through this already. Moriarty is bait, Sherlock. Don’t be stupid.”
Sherlock was never stupid. He watched his brother leave without another word. His research into the questions over the next few days remained extremely careful and he got nowhere.
A week later they were eating an early dinner when John's phone rang. John balanced his tray on the sofa to answer it.
"Yes?"
A long pause. "Possibly." His eyes met Sherlock. "I can pass on a message."
Someone wanting Sherlock. John was a useful buffer at times like this.
The pause was longer and Sherlock could see John's jaw clenching. Getting angry. Sherlock considered taking the phone but John could be trusted to hand it over if it was critical. He ate another piece of spaghetti and waited.
"I'll tell him. Your number?" John scrawled it down, stabbing the paper hard, jabbed the off button without a civil sign-off.
"That," he said, cold and hard, "Was Kitty Riley. From the Sun on Sunday. Apparently they are running a story tomorrow about you pulling out of Celebrity Mastermind because your score was rubbish. They have video of your performance which they will be running on the website. They would like to give you the opportunity to comment."
The episode with Sherlock's part omitted was due to run the next day.
"It could just be someone from the BBC wanting to make money from the story." John suggested, into the silence. "Or even someone from the audience."
"No. The timing is perfect. It's Hubris."
"What are you going to do?"
Sherlock pressed his fingers together, thinking.
"Phone her back. Tell her we'll meet her in the Artful Dodger at eight pm and she can have her comment then."
The pub was Saturday night crowded, stools all taken, most of the patrons standing around with pints. Sherlock could pick out half a dozen journalists; the entrance to Wapping was a mere couple of hundred yards away. Riley was waiting for them with a half finished cocktail in her hand and a notebook in her designer bag. Her smile was glittering hard and triumphant.
Sherlock strode over to her, smiling. "Kitty. Let me buy you a drink before we start."
She was briefly thrown, recovered fast. "That's very kind of you. I thought that you didn't like journalists, Mr Holmes."
"I'm feeling particularly benign towards your profession this evening. I imagine it is the prospect of another significant lump sum from News International for doing no more than instructing my lawyer."
He turned away before she could answer and pushed his way to the bar to order another margharita for the woman and two pints of bitter. When he turned back it was to find that John had acquired a table through his usual arcane mix of pleasantness and solid presence.
Sherlock pushed the drink towards Kitty. "Consider that one on your employer. A hundred thousand pounds plus costs buys a great number of these."
She wasn't much shaken, unfortunately, by the reference to the previous libel case. "That's old news. We won't be intimidated, Mr Holmes. This story has legs and we are running with it tomorrow. Our lawyers have cleared it. If you want to sue, go ahead, but you'd do better to co-operate." She took the recorder from her bag. "An interview with you, suggesting maybe that it was all a bit of a joke- we could run with that, I imagine. Better for you than people thinking that maybe you're not as smart as all that- I guess that could be a bit of a handicap in the detective trade?"
John made a disgusted noise. "That's your offer? An interview with Sherlock and you'll run the story anyway?"
She leaned back, relaxed now. "Maybe you'd like to make a statement on the record, Dr Watson? What do you think of your friend's behaviour? I understand that you were at the studio when the programme was recorded; were you surprised when it wasn't broadcast? Or did you know that he'd suppressed it already? Pillow talk, perhaps?"
Sherlock raised a quick hand to silence John's inevitable outburst. "Would you like to know why the incident wasn't broadcast? The real reason?"
"Yes?" She was leaning forward now, eager to have something to twist against him, to make the story bigger.
"Tell me where you got your story, and I'll tell you."
A snort of disbelief. "A journalist never reveals their sources. Surely you know that, Mr Holmes."
Stupid woman. He put on his deliberately imposing voice. "Everything you say reveals something. Do you think you can talk to me and keep your secrets?"
To his surprise she laughed at him, putting down her ridiculous drink to point a finger. "Don't try to pretend you're all superior at me, Sherlock Holmes. I've seen the tape. Music, literature, politics, history, science, even your own cases- tell me, Mr Detective, is there anything you do know about?"
He sighed, theatrically. "I know that you ought to go easy on that drink. You haven't eaten anything all day; you're living beyond your means which is why you're desperate for the bonus for this story. A middling reporter's salary doesn't stretch to a cocaine habit."
He looked down to her shoes and back. "And that flat's far too expensive for one but your latest boyfriend walked out a couple of months ago and you're stuck with the rent till the lease is up. So you're buying your clothes from charity shops and skipping meals, and hoping no-one at work notices, because they're vultures when they spot something dying in the sun.
"Rubbish." She'd gone pale. "Liar. You're making it up!"
"That from a tabloid journalist!" Sherlock reached out to take her hand. "White powder under your fingernails. Saturday is the busiest day on a Sunday paper so you're not likely to be relaxing and kicking back with your friends. Cocaine today means a hurried dose in a toilet on your own. That's addiction, not recreation. Shall I carry on?"
"No." She was quieter now, a note of pleading. "Look, I can't pull the story. I can't! It's with the printers now. I can't change anything!"
Sherlock hid his brief surprise. He hadn't been exerting pressure, just showing her what he could do. But if she thought he would spill her secrets, he could use that.
"Hang on. What about Sherlock's comment?" John interjected. "You said you could print that."
"Not tomorrow. I was going to do a follow-up for Monday's Sun." She looked younger now, miserable. "The boss said I couldn't speak to you till after the print deadline, just in case you find some way to stop it."
Sherlock saw John's shoulders drop. It didn't matter what they printed. What mattered was finding Hubris.
"My offer still stands. Tell me about your source, and I'll give you the story for Monday's paper." The unspoken threat hung there.
She glanced around the pub at the other oblivious drinkers, nodded. "All right. I'll tell you everything I know."
What she knew was very little. The raw video footage of the whole show on BBC tapes had arrived anonymously from an unknown source two days previously together with edits showing Sherlock cut out of the show. It was a master tape- she’d had it verified by sources in the BBC. She had no idea who had sent her the bonanza, and she didn’t care.
“A master tape had to be someone from the production suite,” Sherlock suggested.
“Not necessarily. They had a bomb alert and the building was emptied while they were working on taking your bit out. Anyone could have walked in and taken it.”
“What sort of bomb alert?”
“IRA, I think.”
Sherlock shook his head. “The IRA aren’t active on the mainland.”
“Well, I don’t know. That’s what I was told.” She was obviously tired, hungry and irritable. He left it there, gave her the story for the next day. She didn’t believe him, but he knew she’d print it anyway.
“One last question. I want to know how much the Sun agreed to pay Richard Brook for his story." He carefully avoided looking at John.
"Oh!" She laughed at that, surprise and genuine amusement. "That was one of the questions! So much for your bloody deduction! You looked like an idiot, you know that? Fifty thousand pounds, you said! Not likely!"
"Just the answer, Ms Riley, and we’re done."
She shrugged. "What the show said. Five grand. He was a real pushover. I told him he'd make the rest when we serialised his diaries, if they were any good."
Sherlock didn't think she was lying. "Who knew about the five thousand?"
"Me. The features ed. Mohan might've had to authorise it- he's the editor. The finance office. No-one else on our side. Brook might have told someone. Oh, and it could have gone to Leveson by now."
"Who's Leveson?"
Her look changed to one of total derision. "The enquiry, of course. God, don't you know anything at all? Go on, get out. You've have your bloody question. I need to go home.."
She wasn't going to give him anything else without further pressure, and his hand wasn't strong. He had enough to be going on. An accurate answer. Now he had to work out how Hubris could have known.
“We need to talk, Sherlock.”
He had been expecting this; John had been quiet in the taxi home, looking out of the window while Sherlock read up on the Leveson enquiry on his phone. John would not approve of the story he’d given Kitty, nor of his asking about the Sun payment. This was going to be boring. Maybe he could just skip it. Sherlock opened his laptop, ignoring his partner.
“Come on, Sherlock. We do need to talk about Hubris. Surely you don’t want to just let him get away with this?”
He didn’t, but he hadn’t expected to hear that from John. Sherlock looked over the screen at him. “You and Mycroft told me to do just that.”
“Yes, well. That was before he did this. The press are going to be bloody awful, you know. They hate you anyway. That story you spun Riley- that’s a bit of damage control but it’s not enough. We need to find Hubris and stop him while you still have a reputation at all, or no-one’s going to hire you ever again.”
Loyal John. Sherlock was attacked and he came out fighting. “We do, and we will. We’re flying to Dublin tomorrow, in search of Patrick Murtagh.”
"I've got one."
Superfluous. Sherlock could see the folded tabloid in John's hand. "Here."
John glanced around. The airport concourse was sparsely populated on an early Sunday morning but far from empty. "Someone might recognise you."
"Several people have recognised me already," Sherlock pointed out. "Three have taken photos. It happens. Irrelevant." He had been equally unconcerned by the journalists doorstepping them as they left the flat. John had naturally been flustered but it hasn't been John's photo they were after.
"I don't think it would be wise to have anyone catch you looking at the paper. What Kitty didn't say was that they've put it on the front page. Why don't we catch this plane first?"
Sherlock couldn't really see how being photographed looking at the article could make any difference to anyone but the plane was ready for boarding anyway. They settled in the deserted first class section and John dropped the paper onto Sherlock’s lap,
"A dreadful pun." Sherlock poked a disdainful finger at that hat photo, surfaced yet again, under the headline DISASTERMIND! "Couldn't they think of a better?"
"Cone on, it's pretty good for the Sun. I can't believe they put it on the front page, though. You're hardly that famous, and it was only a quiz!"
"I took a large amount of money and a public apology from them. Proprietors and editors don't forget."
He read the couple of paragraphs under the headline, turned to the inside for the rest of the story which was illustrated by several stills from the recording, clearly picked for the briefly surprised and puzzled expressions that had apparently crossed his face.
"This confirms what we were told; the story appears to have come from the post production suite." Two small before and after photos illustrated how the removal of Sherlock from the shots of the grouped contestants had been achieved. The article promised video of 'ShowOff Sherlock's Biggest Blunders' on the website.
The paper and the website, with its gleefully nasty and misspelled Your View readers' postings on Sherlock's presumed shame took them most of the journey to peruse fully. Sherlock finally ripped the relevant pages off and folded them into his pocket, left the rest of the paper behind on the plane.
"That was a little anti-climatic." John tossed his passport onto the table. "No kidnapping, no mugging, no gun fights. The only violence was getting back through our front door.”
"Oh, I don't know." Sherlock slid onto the couch. "There was the knee-capping threat."
"I forgot about that one. Coffee?" From the kitchen.
"Please." Sherlock pulled the slim folder of papers from his bag, started to leaf through, looking for one in particular.
"So," The noise of the kettle in the background. John was standing at the door. "Was the charming gentleman with the enthusiasm for patellae one of Moriarty's?"
"No. Real IRA, like Patrick Murtagh's father." He'd found what he'd been looking for, stuck the photocopy up on the wall with blutack, Somewhere in the room...he started searching. Around here somewhere.
"That man was too young to know anything useful. The family disappeared right after the older Murtagh's death in the cocked-up bombing attempt. They almost certainly changed their surname, started over with a hefty lump sum in pension from the IRA. No-one in the organisation would have kept written records of where they went."
He'd found the photo of Moriarty on trial, stuck it up next to the one of the child, considered them both.
John called through from the kitchen. "So Moriarty's father was a terrorist martyr. That could explain a great deal."
"Only if this is Jim Moriarty."
"You think it's not?" John came to stand by him.
"I can't tell," Sherlock admitted. "Seven is so young an age, and faces change with puberty. The eyes look right, and the shape of the cheek bones. It could be."
The boy stared down at them from the school group photograph, clearly unsure whether or not to smile for the camera. He was a little shorter than most of his peers, his thick dark hair unruly.
"They disappeared when he was eight. If this was Jim Moriarty then we know little more than we did before. If it's not..." Sherlock shrugged. "A lead considerably less useful than it first appeared. I suspect we may find it's not the only one."
"Hubris playing games."
"Yes." He took a swig of the coffee. "While I'm jumping through his hoops what is he doing? I doubt that wild goose chases and press packs are all that he intends to plague me with."
He has expected no answer, just John's familiar worried frown.
"Never mind." He looked back at the photos. Needs must. "I know someone who might be able to confirm a match from these pictures."
That raised a smile. "Consulting an expert, Sherlock? I've never known you admit that anyone else could do something you couldn't!"
"This isn't just somebody else." He grimaced. "And it seems that there isn't any alternative. We'll go tomorrow."
A phone rang, sharp and shattering his concentration. His phone, on the arm of the couch. He ignored it.
A few minutes later the phone rang again. "Turn that off," he snapped at John .
John was frowning at the phone screen. It was still ringing. "Off!" Sherlock repeated.
“It says Hubris, Sherlock” John brought it over to him.
"Ah." Sherlock picked the phone up. "Yes."
"Enjoying your fifteen minutes of fame?"
The voice was male, smooth, accented for upper middle class London, but there were barely perceptible, slightly unnatural pauses between the words, and no background noise at all.
"How about using your real voice?" Sherlock countered. "After all, I may have no desire to trade remarks with a computer. You can hear me; that's hardly equitable."
The response came after a second’s delay. The man was typing into a speech program. "Let's not make this too easy, shall we?” Pause. “This is an asymmetric game.” Pause. ”You need to find out about me, but I know everything I need to about you, Sherlock Holmes."
Sherlock paused for half a second, thinking fast. "If this is asymmetric, what is your winning condition? What are you trying to achieve?"
“You'll know when I get there, I assure you."
"And if I refuse to play?"
An artificial laugh. "You were the one who chose to be a celebrity.” Pause. “You started this one, so I'll finish.” Pause. “It's all about dynamics, after all, isn't it?" And the phone went dead.
"Part 2"
Author: Unsentimental Fool
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Rating: PG
Word count: 6800/21,100
Summary: When Sherlock accepts an invitation to enter a celebrity TV quiz it is of course unthinkable that he might not win. Hubris may be about to be his downfall.
Sherlock was not nervous, precisely, but he had not appreciated the unexpectedly long wait. When he was finally prompted to move he took a moment to run a slightly sweating hand through his curls and tug his jacket straight before he strode silently down the sound dampened corridor and through the heavy steel door into the darkness.
There was a spotlight on the deliberately grim face of his interrogator, another on the empty leather chair facing the man. Done for effect, and he had to admit it worked. Sherlock resisted the urge to look around the dim room. Look confident. Cocksure, John had said yesterday- was it only yesterday? He knew John was nearby, yards away in the dark, constrained to silence. Sherlock hadn't felt this alone since he'd returned to Baker Street a few months earlier.
John had been against this from the start.
"You're not a celebrity!"
Sherlock was mildly amused that the first line of attack should be lexicographical. He reached across the desk for his Oxford.
"A famous person, especially in entertainment or sport. The state of being well known. My public recognition is similar to that of a footballer or soap actor. I qualify as moderately famous."
"Notorious, perhaps," John countered.
"My reputation was comprehensively cleared. As you well know."
The introduction had been delivered to camera. Someone in the unseen audience coughed twice. The cue was delivered and Sherlock rose smoothly, walked steadily to the black leather seat.
"Your name?"
"Sherlock Holmes."
They'd rehearsed this several times. Totally unnecessary; it was the simplest of exchanges.
"Your occupation?"
"Consulting detective."
"Sherlock Holmes, you have..."
Humphrys had missed a line. Unprofessional.
"...two minutes on..."
He'd had an extensive dispute with the producers about his specialist subject. They'd unreasonably rejected "compositions of tobacco ash" as too narrow. Agreement had almost been reached on "major criminal conspiracies in the 21st century" until the BBC lawyers got wind of it. Finally they'd settled on "forensic chemistry from 1963 onwards".
"...the life and works of Professor James Moriarty."
There was a slight smile on Humphrys's face. Sherlock's mind was racing. A joke. He should have expected it. Christmas Special television show producers were prone to jests. He would be expected to play along in good humour.
"Starting... now."
"But why on earth do you want to do it?" John had returned yet again to the fray. This had been going on for days and it was increasingly irritating. "Reciting a few facts to order on television, competing against a few C list celebs... come on, Sherlock. That's not you."
"You're making assumptions. You could be making some coffee instead."
"I'm not the only one making assumptions, Sherlock. What if you lose? Have you even thought about that?"
"James Moriarty was christened in St Paul's Church, Ardmore, in the Republic of Ireland under what name?"
He was? How on earth did they know? "Pass."
"Moriarty broke into three London-based institutions in the space of half an hour. The Bank of England was one. Name the other two."
That was easy. "The Tower of London and Pentonville prison."
"Correct. How much was Richard Brook offered by the Sun newspaper for his story?"
Sherlock had no idea. Maybe it was time to find out if Humphrys did. "Fifty thousand pounds?"
"Five thousand pounds. Professor Moriarty's seminal paper entitled "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was published in which scientific journal in 2001?“
Five thousand? That was distinctly insulting. "Pass."
"What pattern was on the tea set used during the meeting in Baker Street directly after Moriarty's controversial acquittal?"
John Humphrys seemed entirely focused on the question cards in front of him. The audience was silent. The answers to these questions could not be found in the police's files. What was going on?
Another minute and a half. Collect more data before formulating a hypothesis.
"A map of the British Isles." That truncated description should be acceptable; the questions and answers so far were running a little behind the target timings.
"Correct."
The questions kept coming. Twenty one in total; Humphrys had kept it slow for an underperforming contestant. Six might be considered information in the public arena. Five related to interactions with Moriarty that Sherlock had considered private knowledge. The rest- who had set these questions, and, just as importantly, why?
"You passed on six questions. The transfer of funds from the Bank of England was made to Credit Suisse, the kidnapping took place in March 1997, the song referred to was "London Town", the body was removed from the rooftop by Sebastian Moran. "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was published in "Earth, Moon and Planets". And the name that James Moriarty was christened with? Patrick James Murtagh."
The question matter smiled warmly at him. "Sherlock Holmes. At the end of that round you have scored eleven points with five passes."
Sherlock's eyes were locked on John Humphrys. Data. Murtagh. Moran. So much more data, if it could be believed, and he had no idea what to do with it. Jim Moriarty was dead.
After a couple of seconds he remembered to nod acknowledgement and get to his feet. He broke with his instructions enough to cast a look around for John, somewhere in the audience, as he walked back to his chair. There, second row behind him and looking about twice as stunned as Sherlock felt. Sherlock sat with hands folded on his lap, his heart still beating a little faster than usual, and watched the next contestant take his place.
The young TV chef was quizzed on Eastern European cooking. His pronunciation was poor and his history worse; he had apparently never heard of Yugoslavia. Eight.
The rugby player succumbed to a bad attack of nerves and obtained only five points on some programme called Eastenders.
A retired cabinet minister tackled Church music without fear or hesitation but the subject was far broader than his research went. Ten points, no passes.
The final contestant was a TV actress; like all the others she was unknown to Sherlock. She had picked a manageable subject and done at least some homework; fifteen points and two passes on the life and works of Emily Bronte.
At the end of the first round Sherlock was in a poor second place. Of some equal significance was the evident fact that for everyone else the show was going exactly as rehearsed. At least three people on the set must know that his questions had been switched and none of them were saying anything. This wasn't an on-screen Christmas joke by the programme makers; it was something else entirely.
"Have you even seen the show?"
Sherlock had sighed inwardly at John's perseverance. This dispute was due to run for some time. He would be required to counter all the predictable objections, one by one. For a moment he was tempted just to retreat to his room but there was still a week until the recording. It was highly unlikely that he could avoid his flatmate for that long.
"Several times."
"Right. And did you happen to notice what sort of questions they ask?"
"The specialist subject round is trivial for anyone with an organised memory. The setters frequently take all the questions from a single reference work."
"Yeah. No problem. What about the general knowledge round, Sherlock? All the stuff you've deleted?
The second round went in reverse order. The footballer failed to conquer his stage fright and got another three points. The chef got a handful more. The ex-minister found his feet with a creditable fourteen and no passes. Sherlock walked towards the black chair again with fourteen needed and the actress still to go.
Could this be retrieved? So many of the questions were trivia, stuff he'd long since discarded as no use to him. His plan had been to pick up twenty three points or so in the first round, then apply rapid deductive reasoning to the unknowns. Together with the questions he did knew the answer to- usually about 5 to 7 per round - this should be enough not just to win the round but to get the thirty two points he needed. He hadn't reckoned on interference.
Thirty two was now out of the question, which made the entire exercise worse then futile from that point of view (data, though, Such unexpected data!), but dropping out now had few advantages either. Were there more surprises to come? Without knowing what the hell was going on he would simply have to do the best that he could, always an unappealing prospect.
First was the purposeless chat for the cameras to get through. John Humphrys was beaming at him, owl-like, from the podium. Was this the optimum point at which to challenge the man about the first round? Would that disrupt whatever might be planned for the second? He was acutely aware of the cameras on them, the silent audience. He would do it when the cameras were elsewhere; he directed a tight, get-on-with-it smile at Humphrys.
"Sherlock Holmes. What a year you've had. Surely you must be the only detective ever to have solved the case of your own murder?"
"Without researching the point I really couldn't say."
The man caught the hint of his glare, moved smoothly on. "Twelve in the first round, and twenty four to beat. Your general knowledge questions start... now."
"It's for a case." Pause. "It's not for a case."
Sherlock hadn't looked up from the paper he was skimming through. John was fond of these contradictory leaps of faith. "One of those is likely to be correct."
"It's not for a case." John sounded a little surer. "You would have told me. Besides, you keep complaining that you haven't any cases right now. And no case would need you to go on Celebrity Mastermind anyway."
Sherlock contemplated the matter for a couple of seconds and came up with three scenarios that would require just that. People had so little imagination.
"So if it's not work, it must be personal." John was narrowing his eyes at Sherlock. It looked rather ridiculous and he said so.
"So." John repeated, ignoring his comment. "Personal. I bet it's a childhood thing. No..." and Sherlock could almost hear the cogs grinding round, oh so slowly, "I bet it's a brother thing. It is, isn't it?"
He flipped open his laptop. Sherlock started counting seconds, silently. And kept counting, long past the fifteen that he'd mentally allowed. What was the man doing? It was a trivial enough Google search.
The seconds stretched to a minute. Sherlock got bored waiting. "1990. He lost in the third round."
John looked at him over the screen. "1990? How old was he? Six?"
"Seventeen."
"Right. So you're going to prove that you're smarter than a teenager? It's a bit petty, isn't it?
"I didn't ask your opinion." He swept the paper up and retreated to his bedroom to finish it without further interruptions.
The general knowledge questions were precisely as expected. Sherlock got ten right and came third.
The lights went up as the producer thanked the audience. Behind her Humphrys was getting ready to leave. The cameras were finally off. Sherlock strode across the floor, careless of the hallowed format, rested his arms on the pulpit, eye to eye with his interlocutor. The man looked moderately shamefaced, Sherlock noted, Interesting.
“Who told you to switch the questions?”
“Ah. I believe it was your agent’s idea. You’ll really have to talk to Eleanor- the producer. I was only told about it this morning. Obviously I’m terribly sorry if it caused any embarrassment. We assumed you’d know….” He tailed off.
“Who set the questions?”
“One of our normal people, I think. Eleanor will know. Really, you are going to have to talk to her. I just read them out.”
He tried a deprecating smile which Sherlock ignored. “You changed your introduction. Messing with the format. Introducing gimmicks. Didn’t you even protest? “
“Well, yes, I did, as it happens.” Humphrys pulled himself up a little taller. “I was told that your agent had been promised that things would be done this way. Some mention of a forthcoming autobiography? I was very unimpressed, but at the end of the day what could I do? It wasn’t negotiable, I was told.”
That had the ring of truth about it. Pressure, somewhere along the line. Sherlock would have to work backwards. The producer, next.
He cornered her, literally, as the last of the audience were leaving. She clearly didn’t want to speak to him at all, but he had her boxed and she couldn’t get past him. Humphrys had merely been embarrassed that something he’d fronted hadn’t turned out well. This woman-Eleanor- knew that she’d done something wrong. So why had she done it?
He straightened up, deliberately looming over her, his voice harsh. “Who told you to switch the questions?”
“I can’t talk to you right now, Mr Holmes.”
“Rubbish. Who told you? “Voice deepening, “They’ve been blackmailing you, haven’t they? If you won’t answer I’ll have to ask your staff, and your boss. Who was it?”
She crumbled, visibly. “Please be quiet! It was only your agent. He just wanted an exciting show. I tried to tell him, but…”
“I don’t have an agent.” Sherlock said, flatly. “Try again.”
That did surprise her. “But that’s who he said he was. From that agency with the funny name. Hubris something. Look, I’ll talk to you later. In my office. Not here.”
A small crowd was starting to gather around them, with John hovering on the outskirts, looking worried.
“I’ll wait.” He had no intention of letting her out of his sight. The questions had claimed to know Moriarty’s real identity; he needed to know what was going on.
Half an hour later he and John were sitting in Eleanor’s office looking at a crisp red and black business card with “Hubris Unrestrained” and a telephone number.
“What was his name?”
“John.” She frowned, looked across at John. “John Watson. I thought it was you. The papers said you two were… well, friends.”
“He used my name? Cheeky bastard! Did he look like me?”
“I never met him. The card was delivered and after that he rang.”
“What did he sound like?” Sherlock asked.
“A bit scary, to be honest.” The blackmail had been something so minor- some expense claims that were probably legitimate- that Sherlock was surprised that she hadn’t just told him to go to hell. But if he’d been intimidating that might make the difference.
“Who set the questions?”
“Abby Squire- she’s one of our regulars. I’ve got her expenses claim form.” Eleanor called up a form on her computer. “Here.”
Under “materials purchased” there were three books from Amazon- all autobiographies of Jim Moriarty. Sherlock was certain that none of them existed. He took note of the address on the form. Abby Squire was next on his list. He took the card with him when he left.
As they came out of the BBC building a long silver car drew up and the passenger door opened.
“Sherlock.” Mycroft’s voice was crisp. Sherlock contemplated walking straight past, but his brother would no doubt be persistent. He sighed, audibly, and climbed in.
“Well done.” Mycroft said. “That was a remarkable performance. You must be very proud. What on earth made you think showing off like that was a good idea?”
Sherlock ignored him, spoke to John, squashed up next to him,
"What did you think of the questions?"
His flatmate shrugged. "Well, I knew the answers to a couple, which was more than I would have done with forensic chemistry. But I thought you'd get more questions about Moriarty right than that. Your score was a bit... surprising... I guess."
"Embarrassing, John means to say." Mycroft added. "You were made to look both ignorant and fatuous. One can't dine out, so to speak, on the whole brilliant detective versus evil nemesis story for months and then fail to even recall the man's name without generating a certain amount of ridicule."
"I did not fail to remember it," Sherlock was acerbic. "I did not know it, and not did you or anyone else."
"Apparently John Humphrys did." John said. "What did he say? Patrick James something?"
"Murtagh."
"Was he right?"
"It will be relatively easy to verify.”
“No,” Mycroft’s voice was sharp. “Twenty three apparent clues handed to you in public- on camera!- surely you wouldn’t be so stupid as to follow them up? Whatever his name was once, Jim Moriarty is dead. There's no crime scene here; just an attempt to lure you on a chase using your pride and curiosity. Walk away, Sherlock."
"And then what? Someone who can corrupt this flagship of propriety- what else might they do to get my attention?" He glanced involuntarily at John, endangered once already to force his hand. To have it happen again would be intolerable. "I have no choice."
"You have a choice." His brother's tone was low in warning. "This arrogance, to think that you are the only person who can keep him from harm, is what they are counting on. Do nothing. I can close this down."
"And Moriarty?"
"Is gone. His name doesn't matter, Sherlock. His history is irrelevant. They'll have you chasing shadows down the pathway to your destruction. Leave this to me. I'll make sure your performance is quietly forgotten. That's all that's needed."
"Sherlock." John reached out a hand to touch his, a rare gesture. "I think your brother may be right this time. This is obviously a set up. Last time…well, last time you nearly died, remember? Maybe you should ignore this, do something else instead."
“You think this…Hubris…can outwit me?”
“Moriarty did. Nearly did.” John amended, hastily off Sherlock’s glare.
“Jim Moriarty is dead. Whoever set this up has overreached himself. He used your name.”
John pressed the tips of his fingers into his eye sockets, looked up. “Sherlock. Please. Let Mycroft deal with this. Forget about it. I have a really bad feeling about this Hubris, whoever he is.”
“A really bad feeling? What sort of deduction is that?”
“A soldier’s one. Please, Sherlock. Just forget about the whole thing.”
The argument continued most of the way to Baker Street. Sherlock’s final concession was grudging and ill-tempered. Hubris had ruined his carefully staged performance, and the questions had stirred a curiosity that could not simply be quashed. The tea-set - surely that had to come from Moriarty himself. Who had he told before he died? And Murtagh- was that really Moriarty? But John and Mycroft were united, determined, and persistent. To investigate was to follow the trail that Hubris had laid, and Hubris could be assumed to have malevolent intentions.
“Deal with it, then,” he said, eventually. “Just don’t screw it up, Mycroft.”
“You can trust me not to do so.”
Beside him he felt John’s tension ease.
Back in the flat Sherlock refused John’s conciliatory offer of coffee and food, and retreated to his bedroom to sulk. The day had not gone as planned, at all. That tea-set. And Sebastian Moran- now that was a name he had come across from his investigations into Moriarty’s network. The man had been elusive; he had worked as an assassin for Jim, but his fellows had been reluctant to reveal even what little they did know about him. Gambling and shooting tigers; the only firm rumours Sherlock had been able to pick up. Yet Hubris knew his name. Who the hell was Hubris? What did he want, apart from to embarrass Sherlock on television and show off his own knowledge of Moriarty’s operations?
And Sherlock was supposed not to care. Impossible.
He curled up on his bed, his thoughts racing around the various bits of information offered. He might be unwise to act but no-one could stop him thinking.
His phone beeped, interrupting his thoughts. A number not in his address book; he glanced at it, recognising the number instantly from the card. Hubris. He sat up straight, opened the text.
It was a website address; a personal picture upload, apparently. It might be nothing of the sort. Sherlock typed the address carefully into his laptop, it being considerably better protected from malware than his phone, and pressed send.
A photo of a hand. Caucasian, male, in his twenties. The thumb was outward, the forefinger upwards, the other three curled into the palm. Sherlock frowned at it. Hubris’s hand? Someone else’s? The photo space seemed to belong to some young US girl; her blog mainly consisted of complaints about high school. The photo had been uploaded over two years previously.
He put the image back into a search, found dozens of identical copies. Each one was tagged the same. “Loser”.
Hubris had sent him an L sign. For loser. Nothing more clever, nothing more sophisticated than that. It was enough. Sherlock slammed his hands down on the laptop keys, grabbed his phone. His hands were shaking slightly as he typed,
I will find you
SH
He got no reply.
Sherlock had determined to investigate the Hubris incident without letting John know he was doing so. He had no desire to have the arguments over, and he was aware that his response to the text might be described as over-emotional.
Local newspapers provided information about the burglary of Abby Squire’s house directly after she had provided the Mastermind questions. Sherlock hacked into her Amazon account, found no record of the purchase of the biographies of Moriarty, though he was sure that she thought that she’d bought them from there. Hubris had managed to place them with her and remove them again without suspicion. The man, or woman, was good.
The questions that she’d selected from them, and the answers, were now on his laptop, each with their own notes. Rather than chase all twenty three at once he’d decided to concentrate on five answers both representative and intriguing.
Patrick Murtagh. He’d traced the birth records and junior school registration, got no further. The boy hadn’t been registered with any local high school. Sherlock needed to go to Northern Ireland to investigate in person.
Sebastian Moran. Who had supposedly removed the body from the rooftop. Very few people knew that there had been such a body; it had disappeared before the police arrived and hadn’t formed part of Sherlock’s narrative when he returned. Somehow he had to trace the elusive Moran and question him.
The tea set. How had Hubris known about the tea set? Had Moriarty talked, and if so to whom?
The payment that the Sun was going to make to Brook. Sherlock suspected that any reference to Brook was likely to be significant.
“Dynamics of an Asteroid”. Why on earth would Moriarty have written a scientific paper? He’d found apparently genuine articles citing it, but the archives of the journal in which it was supposedly published weren’t online. His request for a paper copy was apparently languishing with the publisher’s assistant.
Sherlock had got no further by the time that Mycroft visited, two days after the show was recorded. He looked around the flat suspiciously, hunting for signs that Sherlock was not keeping his word. Sherlock watched him, expressionless.
“I have arranged for your deeply unimpressive performance to be removed from the finished recording.”
“Thus sparing the family name, Mycroft. Fortunately I don’t need to bring myself to thank you since I’m well aware that you did it for your own purposes.”
“Arrogant and ungrateful as usual. Try to stay away from television in future. It’s not a medium that flatters you. And let this be an end to the matter.”
Sherlock snorted. "An end, when you still know nothing. Your singular lack of curiosity is why you'd make a dreadful detective.”
Mycroft stood up and straightened his jacket. "We went through this already. Moriarty is bait, Sherlock. Don’t be stupid.”
Sherlock was never stupid. He watched his brother leave without another word. His research into the questions over the next few days remained extremely careful and he got nowhere.
A week later they were eating an early dinner when John's phone rang. John balanced his tray on the sofa to answer it.
"Yes?"
A long pause. "Possibly." His eyes met Sherlock. "I can pass on a message."
Someone wanting Sherlock. John was a useful buffer at times like this.
The pause was longer and Sherlock could see John's jaw clenching. Getting angry. Sherlock considered taking the phone but John could be trusted to hand it over if it was critical. He ate another piece of spaghetti and waited.
"I'll tell him. Your number?" John scrawled it down, stabbing the paper hard, jabbed the off button without a civil sign-off.
"That," he said, cold and hard, "Was Kitty Riley. From the Sun on Sunday. Apparently they are running a story tomorrow about you pulling out of Celebrity Mastermind because your score was rubbish. They have video of your performance which they will be running on the website. They would like to give you the opportunity to comment."
The episode with Sherlock's part omitted was due to run the next day.
"It could just be someone from the BBC wanting to make money from the story." John suggested, into the silence. "Or even someone from the audience."
"No. The timing is perfect. It's Hubris."
"What are you going to do?"
Sherlock pressed his fingers together, thinking.
"Phone her back. Tell her we'll meet her in the Artful Dodger at eight pm and she can have her comment then."
The pub was Saturday night crowded, stools all taken, most of the patrons standing around with pints. Sherlock could pick out half a dozen journalists; the entrance to Wapping was a mere couple of hundred yards away. Riley was waiting for them with a half finished cocktail in her hand and a notebook in her designer bag. Her smile was glittering hard and triumphant.
Sherlock strode over to her, smiling. "Kitty. Let me buy you a drink before we start."
She was briefly thrown, recovered fast. "That's very kind of you. I thought that you didn't like journalists, Mr Holmes."
"I'm feeling particularly benign towards your profession this evening. I imagine it is the prospect of another significant lump sum from News International for doing no more than instructing my lawyer."
He turned away before she could answer and pushed his way to the bar to order another margharita for the woman and two pints of bitter. When he turned back it was to find that John had acquired a table through his usual arcane mix of pleasantness and solid presence.
Sherlock pushed the drink towards Kitty. "Consider that one on your employer. A hundred thousand pounds plus costs buys a great number of these."
She wasn't much shaken, unfortunately, by the reference to the previous libel case. "That's old news. We won't be intimidated, Mr Holmes. This story has legs and we are running with it tomorrow. Our lawyers have cleared it. If you want to sue, go ahead, but you'd do better to co-operate." She took the recorder from her bag. "An interview with you, suggesting maybe that it was all a bit of a joke- we could run with that, I imagine. Better for you than people thinking that maybe you're not as smart as all that- I guess that could be a bit of a handicap in the detective trade?"
John made a disgusted noise. "That's your offer? An interview with Sherlock and you'll run the story anyway?"
She leaned back, relaxed now. "Maybe you'd like to make a statement on the record, Dr Watson? What do you think of your friend's behaviour? I understand that you were at the studio when the programme was recorded; were you surprised when it wasn't broadcast? Or did you know that he'd suppressed it already? Pillow talk, perhaps?"
Sherlock raised a quick hand to silence John's inevitable outburst. "Would you like to know why the incident wasn't broadcast? The real reason?"
"Yes?" She was leaning forward now, eager to have something to twist against him, to make the story bigger.
"Tell me where you got your story, and I'll tell you."
A snort of disbelief. "A journalist never reveals their sources. Surely you know that, Mr Holmes."
Stupid woman. He put on his deliberately imposing voice. "Everything you say reveals something. Do you think you can talk to me and keep your secrets?"
To his surprise she laughed at him, putting down her ridiculous drink to point a finger. "Don't try to pretend you're all superior at me, Sherlock Holmes. I've seen the tape. Music, literature, politics, history, science, even your own cases- tell me, Mr Detective, is there anything you do know about?"
He sighed, theatrically. "I know that you ought to go easy on that drink. You haven't eaten anything all day; you're living beyond your means which is why you're desperate for the bonus for this story. A middling reporter's salary doesn't stretch to a cocaine habit."
He looked down to her shoes and back. "And that flat's far too expensive for one but your latest boyfriend walked out a couple of months ago and you're stuck with the rent till the lease is up. So you're buying your clothes from charity shops and skipping meals, and hoping no-one at work notices, because they're vultures when they spot something dying in the sun.
"Rubbish." She'd gone pale. "Liar. You're making it up!"
"That from a tabloid journalist!" Sherlock reached out to take her hand. "White powder under your fingernails. Saturday is the busiest day on a Sunday paper so you're not likely to be relaxing and kicking back with your friends. Cocaine today means a hurried dose in a toilet on your own. That's addiction, not recreation. Shall I carry on?"
"No." She was quieter now, a note of pleading. "Look, I can't pull the story. I can't! It's with the printers now. I can't change anything!"
Sherlock hid his brief surprise. He hadn't been exerting pressure, just showing her what he could do. But if she thought he would spill her secrets, he could use that.
"Hang on. What about Sherlock's comment?" John interjected. "You said you could print that."
"Not tomorrow. I was going to do a follow-up for Monday's Sun." She looked younger now, miserable. "The boss said I couldn't speak to you till after the print deadline, just in case you find some way to stop it."
Sherlock saw John's shoulders drop. It didn't matter what they printed. What mattered was finding Hubris.
"My offer still stands. Tell me about your source, and I'll give you the story for Monday's paper." The unspoken threat hung there.
She glanced around the pub at the other oblivious drinkers, nodded. "All right. I'll tell you everything I know."
What she knew was very little. The raw video footage of the whole show on BBC tapes had arrived anonymously from an unknown source two days previously together with edits showing Sherlock cut out of the show. It was a master tape- she’d had it verified by sources in the BBC. She had no idea who had sent her the bonanza, and she didn’t care.
“A master tape had to be someone from the production suite,” Sherlock suggested.
“Not necessarily. They had a bomb alert and the building was emptied while they were working on taking your bit out. Anyone could have walked in and taken it.”
“What sort of bomb alert?”
“IRA, I think.”
Sherlock shook his head. “The IRA aren’t active on the mainland.”
“Well, I don’t know. That’s what I was told.” She was obviously tired, hungry and irritable. He left it there, gave her the story for the next day. She didn’t believe him, but he knew she’d print it anyway.
“One last question. I want to know how much the Sun agreed to pay Richard Brook for his story." He carefully avoided looking at John.
"Oh!" She laughed at that, surprise and genuine amusement. "That was one of the questions! So much for your bloody deduction! You looked like an idiot, you know that? Fifty thousand pounds, you said! Not likely!"
"Just the answer, Ms Riley, and we’re done."
She shrugged. "What the show said. Five grand. He was a real pushover. I told him he'd make the rest when we serialised his diaries, if they were any good."
Sherlock didn't think she was lying. "Who knew about the five thousand?"
"Me. The features ed. Mohan might've had to authorise it- he's the editor. The finance office. No-one else on our side. Brook might have told someone. Oh, and it could have gone to Leveson by now."
"Who's Leveson?"
Her look changed to one of total derision. "The enquiry, of course. God, don't you know anything at all? Go on, get out. You've have your bloody question. I need to go home.."
She wasn't going to give him anything else without further pressure, and his hand wasn't strong. He had enough to be going on. An accurate answer. Now he had to work out how Hubris could have known.
“We need to talk, Sherlock.”
He had been expecting this; John had been quiet in the taxi home, looking out of the window while Sherlock read up on the Leveson enquiry on his phone. John would not approve of the story he’d given Kitty, nor of his asking about the Sun payment. This was going to be boring. Maybe he could just skip it. Sherlock opened his laptop, ignoring his partner.
“Come on, Sherlock. We do need to talk about Hubris. Surely you don’t want to just let him get away with this?”
He didn’t, but he hadn’t expected to hear that from John. Sherlock looked over the screen at him. “You and Mycroft told me to do just that.”
“Yes, well. That was before he did this. The press are going to be bloody awful, you know. They hate you anyway. That story you spun Riley- that’s a bit of damage control but it’s not enough. We need to find Hubris and stop him while you still have a reputation at all, or no-one’s going to hire you ever again.”
Loyal John. Sherlock was attacked and he came out fighting. “We do, and we will. We’re flying to Dublin tomorrow, in search of Patrick Murtagh.”
"I've got one."
Superfluous. Sherlock could see the folded tabloid in John's hand. "Here."
John glanced around. The airport concourse was sparsely populated on an early Sunday morning but far from empty. "Someone might recognise you."
"Several people have recognised me already," Sherlock pointed out. "Three have taken photos. It happens. Irrelevant." He had been equally unconcerned by the journalists doorstepping them as they left the flat. John had naturally been flustered but it hasn't been John's photo they were after.
"I don't think it would be wise to have anyone catch you looking at the paper. What Kitty didn't say was that they've put it on the front page. Why don't we catch this plane first?"
Sherlock couldn't really see how being photographed looking at the article could make any difference to anyone but the plane was ready for boarding anyway. They settled in the deserted first class section and John dropped the paper onto Sherlock’s lap,
"A dreadful pun." Sherlock poked a disdainful finger at that hat photo, surfaced yet again, under the headline DISASTERMIND! "Couldn't they think of a better?"
"Cone on, it's pretty good for the Sun. I can't believe they put it on the front page, though. You're hardly that famous, and it was only a quiz!"
"I took a large amount of money and a public apology from them. Proprietors and editors don't forget."
He read the couple of paragraphs under the headline, turned to the inside for the rest of the story which was illustrated by several stills from the recording, clearly picked for the briefly surprised and puzzled expressions that had apparently crossed his face.
"This confirms what we were told; the story appears to have come from the post production suite." Two small before and after photos illustrated how the removal of Sherlock from the shots of the grouped contestants had been achieved. The article promised video of 'ShowOff Sherlock's Biggest Blunders' on the website.
The paper and the website, with its gleefully nasty and misspelled Your View readers' postings on Sherlock's presumed shame took them most of the journey to peruse fully. Sherlock finally ripped the relevant pages off and folded them into his pocket, left the rest of the paper behind on the plane.
"That was a little anti-climatic." John tossed his passport onto the table. "No kidnapping, no mugging, no gun fights. The only violence was getting back through our front door.”
"Oh, I don't know." Sherlock slid onto the couch. "There was the knee-capping threat."
"I forgot about that one. Coffee?" From the kitchen.
"Please." Sherlock pulled the slim folder of papers from his bag, started to leaf through, looking for one in particular.
"So," The noise of the kettle in the background. John was standing at the door. "Was the charming gentleman with the enthusiasm for patellae one of Moriarty's?"
"No. Real IRA, like Patrick Murtagh's father." He'd found what he'd been looking for, stuck the photocopy up on the wall with blutack, Somewhere in the room...he started searching. Around here somewhere.
"That man was too young to know anything useful. The family disappeared right after the older Murtagh's death in the cocked-up bombing attempt. They almost certainly changed their surname, started over with a hefty lump sum in pension from the IRA. No-one in the organisation would have kept written records of where they went."
He'd found the photo of Moriarty on trial, stuck it up next to the one of the child, considered them both.
John called through from the kitchen. "So Moriarty's father was a terrorist martyr. That could explain a great deal."
"Only if this is Jim Moriarty."
"You think it's not?" John came to stand by him.
"I can't tell," Sherlock admitted. "Seven is so young an age, and faces change with puberty. The eyes look right, and the shape of the cheek bones. It could be."
The boy stared down at them from the school group photograph, clearly unsure whether or not to smile for the camera. He was a little shorter than most of his peers, his thick dark hair unruly.
"They disappeared when he was eight. If this was Jim Moriarty then we know little more than we did before. If it's not..." Sherlock shrugged. "A lead considerably less useful than it first appeared. I suspect we may find it's not the only one."
"Hubris playing games."
"Yes." He took a swig of the coffee. "While I'm jumping through his hoops what is he doing? I doubt that wild goose chases and press packs are all that he intends to plague me with."
He has expected no answer, just John's familiar worried frown.
"Never mind." He looked back at the photos. Needs must. "I know someone who might be able to confirm a match from these pictures."
That raised a smile. "Consulting an expert, Sherlock? I've never known you admit that anyone else could do something you couldn't!"
"This isn't just somebody else." He grimaced. "And it seems that there isn't any alternative. We'll go tomorrow."
A phone rang, sharp and shattering his concentration. His phone, on the arm of the couch. He ignored it.
A few minutes later the phone rang again. "Turn that off," he snapped at John .
John was frowning at the phone screen. It was still ringing. "Off!" Sherlock repeated.
“It says Hubris, Sherlock” John brought it over to him.
"Ah." Sherlock picked the phone up. "Yes."
"Enjoying your fifteen minutes of fame?"
The voice was male, smooth, accented for upper middle class London, but there were barely perceptible, slightly unnatural pauses between the words, and no background noise at all.
"How about using your real voice?" Sherlock countered. "After all, I may have no desire to trade remarks with a computer. You can hear me; that's hardly equitable."
The response came after a second’s delay. The man was typing into a speech program. "Let's not make this too easy, shall we?” Pause. “This is an asymmetric game.” Pause. ”You need to find out about me, but I know everything I need to about you, Sherlock Holmes."
Sherlock paused for half a second, thinking fast. "If this is asymmetric, what is your winning condition? What are you trying to achieve?"
“You'll know when I get there, I assure you."
"And if I refuse to play?"
An artificial laugh. "You were the one who chose to be a celebrity.” Pause. “You started this one, so I'll finish.” Pause. “It's all about dynamics, after all, isn't it?" And the phone went dead.
"Part 2"