The Quiet Man

Necessary Precautions

You look nervous, standing there. What are you looking for? There’s nothing to see out there. Barely any cars, no people. We’re safe in here. Too safe, I reckon; it’s putting you on edge. You’re holding your chin, your index finger is tracing your upper lip. Over and over. You’re waiting for something to happen. I’m not sure what. I’m not sure you know.

You used to tell me things. You’d tell me things all the time, long trains of details that result in a brilliant deduction, or didn’t. You’d talk when you were sifting through the details in your head, the useful and useless ones, before you could tell the difference. You’d tell me things even when I didn’t ask, even when you didn’t have any answers and I wasn’t all that interested. You’d just talk. For hours. You’d talk to me whether I was there or not.

You don’t do that anymore. Not by default, anyway. Well: three years is a long time. I haven’t been around to talk to. You’re used to being on your own now, aren’t you. You’ve been alone, surrounded by phones, in places that weren’t home.

You’ve been lonely, haven’t you. I’m sure of it. Maybe you didn’t even realise it. It’s only sentiment. Sure: meaningless sentiment, isn’t that right? No one to talk to. A skull, maybe. Or talk to the walls. Not quite as satisfying, though. Not quite. You’ve grown quiet.

You can unlearn that. You did once.

Maybe I can prod you back into it. Talk to me, Sherlock. What is it? “What’s out there?”

I think I’ve startled you. You look at me, then back at the street again. “Van.”

Yes. There’s not much else. Just someone’s van. That’s not very interesting, is it? Why stare at it?

“He threatened you, you know.” You say it without looking at me. You’re speaking into the window, as if I’m out there, on the pavement still. “To get to me.”

Did he? Well, he’d have done anything to get to you. He’d done it before, with semtex and snipers. We were close, he could see that. We were so close, it was probably only a matter of time before we ended up in bed together. Well, we did end up in bed together, from time to time. We did last night, even. But not like that. In time, maybe, we would have.

He threatened me three years ago, did he? To get to you? He wanted to play with you, toy with you, he wanted you to help him not feel so bored. Did it work?

I guess it did. You played his game. You did what he wanted. You died.

Is that why you did it? Because he threatened me? No: you wouldn’t do this all for me. You did it to destroy him. Well: him, and his network. To put an end to it. That’s why you did it. He wouldn’t have left you alone otherwise, isn’t that right? It would have gone on forever. He was fascinated with you. Obsessed.

“He was obsessed with you.” I’d say he was in love with you, infatuated at least, but that would be supposing a capacity for emotion that probably wasn’t there. I think nearly everyone who meets you falls in love with you, on some level. Molly Hooper certainly did. Irene Adler did, by all accounts. Most of your clients come to admire you more often than not. Lestrade was beyond flattering at the funeral. And then there’s me. There’s always me.

He was obsessed with you, so you pretended to die. But you didn’t kill him after all. He did it himself. Thinking you’d have to die as well, isn’t that right? He wanted to die with you. Some kind of unwilling suicide pact. That must have been the pinnacle of his life, then: to beat you, and then to die with you. To take you with him, his most prized possession. He was quite mad, wasn’t he. Quite mad. He died thinking he’d beaten you, that he’d got to keep you.