The Quiet Man

Thumbtack

It could be nothing. It’s just an arrest, not even an important one. It didn’t make the front page. There’s no press conference about this one. The story doesn’t come with a photo, even. Just a few paragraphs on newsprint. It’s an arrest, that’s it. That’s all. People do illegal things and get arrested. It happens every day. They get arrested for these kinds of crimes all the time, too: fraud, forgery, conspiracy. There’s a hint about possible murders in the distant past, nothing specific. No named victims. Just an arrest, reported like any other arrest.

But that name: I recognise that name. It’s eastern European, I only know how to pronounce it because Sherlock said it. Once. I remember. Ivan Milunić. He said it in passing, while draped over the sofa in his dressing gown, reading off a scrap of paper he handed to me a few minutes later.

“Pin it to the wall, would you? On the map, on Baker Street.”

I was in the kitchen making myself lunch when he said it; I was contemplating making lunch for him too, but I wasn’t sure he’d eat. I remember: I was standing in the kitchen, looking down at a plate, considering bring down a second from the cupboard. How I would make him a sandwich and a cup of tea. I remember wanting him to eat. I was worrying a little. He was so thin. He hadn’t eaten since early the day before. And then, like it was nothing, he told me this man was set to kill us. This man with the eastern European name. It was written in his handwriting on a scrap of paper. He’d torn it from somewhere. A name.

“Pin this to the wall, would you?” He held up the slip of paper with the name on it, waiting for me to retrieve it, the way I always do. Ivan Milunić.

His shirt was pulled up a bit, exposing his navel. I stared, I think. I stared, and I didn’t even notice that I did. I didn’t think about it. I just drank him in, unaware entirely. I remember too much about his stomach, though: his breath in and out, a bit of hair just under his waistband, a small, unexplained scratch down along his left hip. I remember all that: I must have stared. His eyes were shut. He didn’t notice. Well: I can’t say that. He might have noticed. He probably did. He didn’t care. He let me. He must have known.

I had just met a woman on the train, though I never told him that. He probably knew about that too, either from the way I walked up the stairs, or how I paused in the sitting room, or the way I’d buttoned my shirt. I don’t know how, but he’d know. She was pretty. She was nice. We flirted. She smiled at me; she told me her name. She gave me her number. I was thinking about her, the way her jacket fit against her waist, the way the nape of her neck smelled like strawberries. I never called her; why didn’t I? I got distracted. That was all. Someone was preparing to kill us; life suddenly got short. I forgot about her. I don’t remember her name anymore. I don’t even remember her face.

But just then, when he said it: I was making lunch, thinking about the nape of her neck, thinking about Sherlock’s thin frame and the fact that I could see his hip bones over the edge of his waist band. I could see his navel. Desire: it was all blended together. For her; him. I don’t think I noticed that, the blending of them. His hip bones, the nape of her neck, his stomach. I could see his breathing. I felt good. And in the middle of all that desire he said a name, lazily, with no concern at all, as if he frequently listed off the names of men who’d been hired to kills us.

“Pin it to the wall.”

Maybe it’s a very common name, I don’t know. But Ivan Milunić was arrested for fraud, forgery, and conspiracy yesterday. Conspiring to do what? Kill someone? Presumably. Who? Who this time?

If I’m right, he was part of Moriarty’s web. Or he was, years ago. Low-level: he was only some hired muscle. He had some obvious tattoos, scars; he was easy to recognise. Sherlock wasn’t concerned about him. He felt we could handle him. Nothing came of it, in the end.