Anderson ↠ BBC Sherlock

act one; eight

As soon as she got back to the Yard, Lestrade was walking up to her, saying, "We have another lead."

Clara tried not to groan, but it slipped out anyways. "Gavin, just— I understand that you want to get to Moran, Marni, and Moriarty, but this is getting ridiculous. We just got back from a supposed lead, and guess what? It was useless. I'm sure whatever you found is just as big a waste of time as that was."

"For starters," said Lestrade, "I didn't find it. John Watson did."

"Watson," Clara said, "is at the hospital." She had been there with him only hours previous.

"Sherlock got better," he told her. "Well, barely. They've decided the chances of him dying are basically nonexistent, now. When John found out, the first thing he did was come here. He wanted to— I don't know, help or something. Prove to Sherlock that he wasn't incompetent. I don't know. But he found something."

"Which is...?" prompted Clara.

"The handwriting," he said. Lestrade held up a picture. For a long few seconds, Clara stared at the bright purple MARNI, and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. "Does it look familiar to you?"

Yes, thought Clara.

"No," she said, but didn't look away from the photograph. Clara had meant to disguise her handwriting, but she had been drunk, and had completely forgotten. If this got her caught— god, they'd be furious with her. She didn't dare think of how James might react. "Well, actually, it reminds me of yours, a little bit. The way you write your first name is awfully similar. The R's look identical."

"But I'm not Marni," said Lestrade.

"I didn't say you were," Clara told him. "It's just that they look similar, see? That doesn't mean anything. It looks like my handwriting as much as it does yours. Some people just write the same way. Take Holmes and Watson for example— their handwriting is practically identical. They could forge each other's signatures perfectly, or at least Holmes could. I don't think Watson would ever try."

"You don't get it, Clara," he said. "This is the handwriting of someone I know. Maybe Marni's just trying to frame one of us, just trying to make us panic, but— what if she's not? What if we have a leak, or god, what if we have Marni?"

"You said that the Yard having an informant was ridiculous," she said. Clara looked towards a clock. "That was not even ten minutes ago."

"I— overreacted," Lestrade admitted. "Probably because I was scared that you were right. But this is—" he shook his head. "I hope someone is just trying to make us panic, but they might not be. If we have a leak, then it needs to be dealt with."

"Is there any handwriting samples you could compare it to?" Clara asked, carefully. She needed to be very, very careful about what she said.

"No," he said. Lestrade paused, and reconsidered. "Well, yes, just not a lot. Most of our personnel records were destroyed in the explosions. Maybe that was part of their plan all along. The only things that survived were our files on criminals we've put away, and criminals we've spent years looking for— like Moriarty. All those files have signatures on them, so we still have those, just— I don't know if it's enough."

"That's it?" pressed Clara. She needed to know if he had anything with her signature.

"Oh, there's also the form that you signed so we could let you go interrogate Moran," he added. "That survived, too. The other one you signed— the one to explain your prints being on the corpse, back when we first met? That one got destroyed. You might have to sign another version of the paperwork at some point."