ST BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL. Sherlock has brought the trainers to a lab and is putting on a pair of latex gloves while he looks closely at them. He picks them up, examines the laces carefully and peers at the shoes from all directions, then digs out dried mud from the treads in the soles and puts it into a dish. Putting the shoes down again, he looks at them thoughtfully.
Later, he is sitting at a bench looking into a microscope while, beside him, a computer screen shows that a scanner of some sort is running tests. John is wandering up and down on the other side of the bench. JOHN: So, who d’you suppose it was? (A phone trills a text alert.) SHERLOCK (absently, not reacting to the alert): Hmm? JOHN: The woman on the phone – the crying woman. SHERLOCK: Oh, she doesn’t matter. She’s just a hostage. No lead there. JOHN (exasperated): For God’s sake, I wasn’t thinking about leads. SHERLOCK: You’re not going to be much use to her. (He glances across to the scanner as it continues throwing up “NO MATCH” results, then looks back into the microscope.) JOHN: Are-are they trying to trace it, trace the call? SHERLOCK: The bomber’s too smart for that. (The same phone as before trills another text alert.) SHERLOCK: Pass me my phone. (John looks around the room.) JOHN: Where is it? SHERLOCK: Jacket. (John straightens up slowly, his entire body going rigid in disbelief and his eyes broadcasting the message “I am going to kill him.” Turning to his right, he marches stiffly around the table, slams one hand onto Sherlock’s shoulder and roughly pulls his jacket open with the other as he starts to rummage in his inside pocket.) SHERLOCK (angrily, still not looking up): Careful. (John just about holds onto his temper and pulls the phone out and looks at it.) JOHN: Text from your brother. SHERLOCK: Delete it. JOHN: Delete it? SHERLOCK: Missile plans are out of the country now. Nothing we can do about it. (John looks at the message again, which reads:
RE: BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS Any progress on Andrew West’s death? Mycroft
JOHN: Well, Mycroft thinks there is. He’s texted you eight times. Must be important. (Sherlock raises his head in exasperation.) SHERLOCK: Then why didn’t he cancel his dental appointment? JOHN (sighing tiredly): His what? SHERLOCK: Mycroft never texts if he can talk. Look, Andrew West stole the missile plans, tried to sell them, got his head smashed in for his pains. End of story. The only mystery is this: why is my brother so determined to bore me when somebody else is being so delightfully interesting? (He looks back into the microscope again.) JOHN (switching the phone off): Try and remember there’s a woman here who might die. SHERLOCK: What for? (He looks up at John.) SHERLOCK: This hospital’s full of people dying, Doctor. Why don’t you go and cry by their bedside and see what good it does them? (John looks away in disbelief. Unmoved, Sherlock looks back into the microscope but just then the computer beeps a result.) SHERLOCK (delighted): Ah! (He looks across to the screen which is flashing “SEARCH COMPLETE.” At the same moment Molly Hooper comes in the door.) MOLLY: Any luck? SHERLOCK (triumphantly): Oh, yes! (As Molly comes over to look at the screen, a man in his thirties, wearing slacks and a T-shirt, comes in the door and then stops apologetically.) JIM: Oh, sorry. I didn’t ... MOLLY: Jim! Hi! (Jim makes as if to leave the room but Molly stops him.) MOLLY: Come in! Come in! (Sherlock looks over at her briefly, running his eyes down her body and apparently making an instant deduction, then looks back into the microscope. Molly makes introductions as Jim closes the door and walks over to her.) MOLLY: Jim, this is Sherlock Holmes. JIM: Ah! (John turns towards them, and Molly looks at him blankly.) MOLLY (apologetically): And, uh ... sorry. JOHN: John Watson. Hi. JIM: Hi. (His eyes are locked on Sherlock’s back as he gazes at him admiringly. He speaks in a casual London accent.) JIM: So you’re Sherlock Holmes. Molly’s told me all about you. You on one of your cases? (He walks closer to Sherlock, forcing John to step out of his way.) MOLLY: Jim works in I.T. upstairs. That’s how we met. Office romance. (She and Jim giggle. Sherlock glances briefly round at Jim before returning to look into the ’scope.) SHERLOCK: Gay. (Molly’s smile fades.) MOLLY: Sorry, what? (Sherlock raises his head as he realises what he’s just done.) SHERLOCK: Nothing. (He smiles round falsely at Jim.) Um, hey. JIM (smiling admiringly at him): Hey. (Lowering his hand, he knocks a metal dish off the edge of the table and scrambles to pick it up.) JIM (giggling nervously): Sorry! Sorry! (John turns away, face-palming, while Sherlock looks irritated. Jim puts the dish back on the table and then scratches his arm as he wanders back towards Molly.) JIM: Well, I’d better be off. I’ll see you at The Fox, ’bout six-ish? MOLLY: Yeah! (He stops beside her, putting a hand on her back, and looks back towards Sherlock.) JIM: ’Bye. MOLLY (softly): ’Bye. JIM (to Sherlock): It was nice to meet you. (Sherlock doesn’t respond, continuing to look into his microscope while Jim gazes wistfully at him. John breaks the embarrassing silence.) JOHN: You too. (Jim blinks at him, looking awkward, then turns and leaves the room. Molly waits until the door closes then turns to Sherlock.) MOLLY: What d’you mean, gay? We’re together. SHERLOCK (looking across to her): And domestic bliss must suit you, Molly. You’ve put on three pounds since I last saw you. MOLLY: Two and a half. SHERLOCK: Nuh, three. JOHN: Sherlock ... MOLLY (angrily): He’s not gay. Why d’you have to spoil ...? He’s not. SHERLOCK (snorting): With that level of personal grooming? JOHN: Because he puts a bit of product in his hair? I put product in my hair. SHERLOCK: You wash your hair. There’s a difference. No-no – tinted eyelashes; clear signs of taurine cream around the frown lines; those tired clubber’s eyes. Then there’s his underwear. MOLLY: His underwear? SHERLOCK: Visible above the waistline – very visible; very particular brand. (He reaches for the metal dish.) SHERLOCK: That, plus the extremely suggestive fact that he just left his number under this dish here ... (he shows her the card that Jim left under the dish) ... and I’d say you’d better break it off now and save yourself the pain. (Molly stares at him for a moment, then turns and runs out of the room. Sherlock looks startled by her reaction.) JOHN: Charming. Well done. SHERLOCK: Just saving her time. Isn’t that kinder? JOHN: “Kinder”? No, no, Sherlock. That wasn’t kind. (Looking fed up with the conversation, Sherlock puts down Jim’s card and then reaches over and moves one of the trainers on the desk closer to John.) SHERLOCK: Go on, then. JOHN: Mmm? SHERLOCK: You know what I do. Off you go. (He sits back and folds his arms expectantly. John makes incoherent negative noises and looks at his watch.) JOHN: No. SHERLOCK: Go on. JOHN: I’m not gonna stand here so you can humiliate me while I try and disseminate ... SHERLOCK (interrupting): An outside eye, a second opinion. It’s very useful to me. JOHN: Yeah, right(!) SHERLOCK: Really. (John turns back to him and the two of them have intense eyesex for several seconds. Eventually John nods unhappily because eyesex is all he’s going to get for the time being.) JOHN: Fine. (Clearing his throat, he picks up the shoe and looks at it and its partner lying on the table.) JOHN: I dunno – they’re just a pair of shoes. (He immediately corrects himself.) Trainers. SHERLOCK: Good. (He looks away and picks up his phone as John continues looking at the trainers.) JOHN: Umm ... they’re in good nick. I’d say they were pretty new ... except the sole has been well-worn, so the owner must have had them for a while. (Sherlock, who had started to look frustrated when John said they were new, breathes out a silent sigh of relief that his friend isn’t that stupid.) JOHN: Uh, they’re very eighties – probably one of those retro designs. SHERLOCK: You’re on sparkling form. What else? JOHN: Well, they’re quite big, so a man’s. SHERLOCK: But ...? JOHN (looking at the insides of both shoes and the blue smudges at the sides): But there’s traces of a name inside in felt-tip. Adults don’t write their names inside their shoes, so these belonged to a kid. SHERLOCK (looking at him proudly): Excellent. What else? JOHN: Uh ... (he looks again at the shoe he’s holding, then puts it down) ... that’s it. SHERLOCK: That’s it? (John nods.) JOHN: How did I do? SHERLOCK: Well, John; really well. (He pauses momentarily.) SHERLOCK: I mean, you missed almost everything of importance, but, um, you know ... (He lifts his hand and slowly rotates his wrist to turn his palm up, his expression full of sarcasm. With a look of frustration, John picks up the trainer and gives it to him. Sherlock looks at it closely as he goes into deduction mode.) SHERLOCK: The owner loved these. Scrubbed them clean, whitened them where they got discoloured. Changed the laces three ... no, four times. (John puts his hands on the desk and lowers his head in despair.) SHERLOCK: Even so, there are traces of his flaky skin where his fingers have come into contact with them, so he suffered from eczema. Shoes are well-worn, more so on the inside, which means the owner had weak arches. British-made, twenty years old. JOHN (straightening up): Twenty years? SHERLOCK: They’re not retro – they’re original. (He shows John an image on his phone.) SHERLOCK: Limited edition: two blue stripes, nineteen eighty-nine. JOHN: But there’s still mud on them. They look new. SHERLOCK (looking at the trainer thoughtfully): Someone’s kept them that way. Quite a bit of mud caked on the soles. Analysis shows it’s from Sussex, with London mud overlaying it. JOHN: How do you know? SHERLOCK (nodding towards the computer screen): Pollen. Clear as a map reference to me. (Two dots are flashing on a map of Britain, one around the borders of East and West Sussex and the other to the south-east of London.) SHERLOCK: South of the river, too. So, the kid who owned these trainers came to London from Sussex twenty years ago and left them behind. JOHN: So what happened to him? SHERLOCK: Something bad. (He looks up at John.) SHERLOCK: He loved those shoes, remember. He’d never leave them filthy. Wouldn’t leave them go unless he had to. So: a child with big feet gets ... (He trails off, staring ahead of himself.) SHERLOCK (softly): Oh. (John looks across the lab, trying to see what his friend is looking at.) JOHN: What? SHERLOCK (softly): Carl Powers. JOHN: Sorry, who? SHERLOCK (still staring into the distance): Carl Powers, John. JOHN: What is it? SHERLOCK: It’s where I began.
Later, the boys are in the back of a taxi. SHERLOCK: Nineteen eighty-nine, a young kid – champion swimmer – came up from Brighton for a school sports tournament; drowned in the pool. Tragic accident. (He shows John the front page of a newspaper on his phone.) SHERLOCK: You wouldn’t remember it. Why should you? JOHN: But you remember. SHERLOCK: Yes. JOHN: Something fishy about it? SHERLOCK: Nobody thought so – nobody except me. I was only a kid myself. I read about it in the papers. JOHN: Started young, didn’t you? SHERLOCK: The boy, Carl Powers, had some kind of fit in the water, but by the time they got him out it was too late. But there was something wrong; something I couldn’t get out of my head. JOHN: What? SHERLOCK: His shoes. JOHN: What about them? SHERLOCK: They weren’t there. I made a fuss; I tried to get the police interested, but nobody seemed to think it was important. He’d left all the rest of his clothes in his locker, but there was no sign of his shoes ... (He leans down and picks up a bag containing the trainers.) SHERLOCK: ... until now.
SIX HOURS TO GO. As Sherlock sits in the back of the taxi holding the pink phone and lost in thought, the woman who rang him earlier sits in her car crying in despair.
221B. Sherlock has shut himself in the kitchen and is sitting at the table with the trainers nearby – still in the bag – while he looks through photographs and printouts of newspaper reports of Carl Powers’ death from 1989. In the living room, on the other side of the closed doors, John is pacing back and forth. He stops and slides open one of the doors. JOHN: Can I help? (Sherlock doesn’t react to him at all.) JOHN: I want to help. There’s only five hours left. (His phone sounds a text alert. He gets the phone from his trouser pocket and looks at the message. It reads:
Any developments? Mycroft Holmes
JOHN: It’s your brother. He’s texting me now. (He frowns.) JOHN: How does he know my number? SHERLOCK (thoughtfully): Must be a root canal. (Putting his phone away, John comes into the kitchen.) JOHN: Look, he did say ‘national importance.’ (Sherlock snorts, not looking up from his research.) SHERLOCK: How quaint. JOHN: What is? SHERLOCK: You are. Queen and country. JOHN (sternly): You can’t just ignore it. SHERLOCK: I’m not ignoring it. Putting my best man onto it right now. JOHN: Right. Good. (He folds his arms and nods in satisfaction, then looks at Sherlock in puzzlement.) JOHN: Who’s that?
Some time later John, wearing a jacket and tie, is sitting in a chair opposite a desk in a large, rather intimidating office. He looks anxiously at his watch as if he has been waiting there for some time. The door opens and Mycroft walks in, reading a report. MYCROFT: John. How nice. I was hoping you wouldn’t be long. (John politely stands up as Mycroft walks across to the desk, still looking at the report.) MYCROFT: How can I help you? (He walks straight past John and puts the report down on the desk, imperiously waving a hand in John’s direction to signify that he can sit down again.) JOHN: Thank you. (He sits.) Um, well, I was wanting to ... um, your brother sent me to collect more facts about the stolen plans, the missile plans. (Mycroft looks over his shoulder and smiles at him.) MYCROFT: Did he? JOHN: Yes. (He smiles back a little nervously as Mycroft turns towards him and leans back against the desk.) JOHN: He’s investigating now. (Mycroft put his hand to the right side of his mouth as if he is in pain.) JOHN: He’s, er, investigating away. (Lowering his hand again, Mycroft smiles as if he doesn’t believe a word of it.) JOHN: Um, I just wondered what else you can tell me about the dead man. MYCROFT: Uh, twenty-seven; a clerk at Vauxhall Cross – er, MI6. He was involved in the Bruce-Partington Programme in a minor capacity. Security checks A-OK; no known terrorist affiliations or sympathies ... (Cutaway flashback to Andrew West sitting on a sofa with a young blonde woman. She snuggles into his shoulder, unaware that he is looking very worried.) MYCROFT: Last seen by his fiancée at ten thirty yesterday evening. (In the flashback, Westie is now standing at the window looking out into the night.) WESTIE: Lucy, love, I’ve gotta go out. I’ve gotta see someone. (He hurries out of the room. Lucy calls after him.) LUCY: Westie! (Brief flashback of Westie’s dead body lying beside the railway track.) JOHN: Right. He was found at Battersea, yes? So he got on the train. MYCROFT: No. JOHN: What? MYCROFT: He had an Oyster card ... (Grimacing, he raises his hand to his mouth again. John frowns as he begins to realise that Sherlock may have been right about Mycroft having had a root canal filling to one of his teeth.) MYCROFT: ... but it hadn’t been used. JOHN: Must have bought a ticket. MYCROFT (lowering his hand): There was no ticket on the body. JOHN: Then ... MYCROFT: Then how did he end up with a bashed-in brain on the tracks at Battersea? That is the question – the one I was rather hoping Sherlock would provide an answer to. How’s he getting on? JOHN: He-he’s fine, yes. Oh, and-and it is going ... very well. It’s, um, you know – he’s completely focussed on it. (He grins at Mycroft unconvincingly.)
THREE HOURS TO GO. Darkness has fallen and the woman still sits in the car and sobs.
221B. Sherlock has moved to the side table in the kitchen and is looking into his microscope. Mrs Hudson comes in through the kitchen door with a tray containing a couple of mugs. As she puts them on the kitchen table, Sherlock looks up. SHERLOCK: Poison. MRS HUDSON: What you going on about? (Sherlock slams his hands down on the side table.) SHERLOCK: Clostridium botulinum! (Mrs Hudson cringes and flees the kitchen. Sherlock looks round at John as he comes in from the living room.) SHERLOCK: It’s one of the deadliest poisons on the planet! (John looks at him blankly.) SHERLOCK: Carl Powers! JOHN: Oh, wait, are you saying he was murdered? (Sherlock stands up and walks over to where he has hung up the laces from the trainers.) SHERLOCK: Remember the shoelaces? JOHN: Mmm. SHERLOCK: The boy suffered from eczema. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to introduce the poison into his medication. Two hours later he comes up to London, the poison takes effect, paralyses the muscles and he drowns. JOHN: What – how-how come the autopsy didn’t pick that up? SHERLOCK: It’s virtually undetectable. Nobody would have been looking for it. (He has walked around the table to where his computer notebook is lying. The page is open at the Forum of his own website, The Science of Deduction, and he now begins to type into the message box:
FOUND. Pair of trainers belonging to Carl Powers (1978-1989).
SHERLOCK (straightening up to point to the laces): But there were still tiny traces of it left inside the trainers from where he put the cream on his feet. (He bends down and continues to type:
Botulinum toxin still present. Apply 221b Baker St.
He sends the message and straightens up.) SHERLOCK: That’s why they had to go. JOHN: So how do we let the bomber know ... SHERLOCK: Get his attention ... JOHN: Mm-hm. SHERLOCK (looking at his watch): ... stop the clock. JOHN: The killer kept the shoes all these years. SHERLOCK: Yes. (He looks at John.) Meaning ... JOHN: He’s our bomber. (The pink phone rings on the side table. Sherlock hurries over to it and switches it on. In the car park, the woman sobs in anguish as she reads out the latest message from the pager.) WOMAN: Well done, you. Come and get me. SHERLOCK (loudly and clearly): Where are you? Tell us where you are.
Some time later the woman stares anxiously out of the car window as members of a bomb disposal team, dressed in protective padded clothing, make their way towards the car.
MORNING. NEW SCOTLAND YARD. The boys are in Lestrade’s office, Sherlock standing at the window with his hands raised in front of his mouth and his fingers tapping together. John is sitting opposite Lestrade at his desk. LESTRADE: She lives in Cornwall. Two men broke in wearing masks, forced her to drive to the car park and decked her out in enough explosives to take down a house. (He looks up at Sherlock as he walks over to the desk.) LESTRADE: Told her to phone you. She had to read out from this pager. (He puts the pager onto the desk in front of John, who picks it up to look at it.) SHERLOCK: And if she deviated by one word, the sniper would set her off. JOHN: Or if you hadn’t solved the case. SHERLOCK (walking back to the window and speaking softly, as if to himself): Oh. Elegant. (John raises his head and sighs in exasperation.) JOHN: “Elegant”? LESTRADE: But what was the point? Why would anyone do this? SHERLOCK: Oh – I can’t be the only person in the world that gets bored. (He flashes back in his mind to shooting holes in the wall a couple of days ago. Just then the pink phone beeps a message alert. John turns round to him as he activates the phone.) VOICE ALERT: You have one new message. (As Sherlock walks towards Lestrade’s desk, the phone sounds the Greenwich pips again, but this time there are three short pips and one long one.) JOHN: Four pips. SHERLOCK: First test passed, it would seem. Here’s the second. (He shows a new photograph to the others. It’s a close-up of a car with its driver’s door open and the number plate clearly visible. John and Lestrade get up to take a closer look, and outside in the main office a phone rings.) SHERLOCK: It’s abandoned, wouldn’t you say? LESTRADE: I’ll see if it’s been reported. (As he picks up his phone, Sergeant Donovan comes to the office holding another phone.) DONOVAN: Freak, it’s for you. (Sherlock walks over to the door and takes the phone from her. John sits down again and Sherlock walks out into the general office and raises the phone to his ear.) SHERLOCK: Hello? (The frightened voice of a young man comes over the phone.) YOUNG MAN: It’s okay that you’ve gone to the police. SHERLOCK: Who is this? Is this you again? YOUNG MAN: But don’t rely on them. (In Lestrade’s office, John looks round and sits up taller when he sees the look on Sherlock’s face.) YOUNG MAN: Clever you, guessing about Carl Powers. (We get a glimpse of the young man standing somewhere in a busy street, reading from a pager.) YOUNG MAN: I never liked him. (Sherlock looks round sharply at this. We see that the man is wearing a zipped-up jacket with wires sticking out from the bottom. The man fights his tears as he continues to read.) YOUNG MAN: Carl laughed at me, so I stopped him laughing. (John comes out of the office and walks closer to Sherlock, looking at him in concern.) SHERLOCK (into phone): And you’ve stolen another voice, I presume. YOUNG MAN: This is about you and me. (A bus noisily drives past him.) SHERLOCK: Who are you? (More traffic goes past.) SHERLOCK: What’s that noise? (The man looks down at the pager, still struggling not to weep.) YOUNG MAN: The sounds of life, Sherlock. (Finally we get a clear view of where the man is. He is standing on a large traffic island at Piccadilly Circus. Pedestrians are walking past him, taking no notice of a distressed tearful man, as is the wont of Londoners [I’m allowed to criticise – I’m a Londoner myself!]) YOUNG MAN (reading from the pager): But don’t worry ... (He looks down in tearful horror when he sees a red laser point on his jacket.) YOUNG MAN: ... I can soon fix that. (He cries briefly, then continues to read the pager message.) YOUNG MAN: You solved my last puzzle in nine hours. This time you have eight. (In the office, Lestrade is talking into the phone.) LESTRADE: Okay ... Great. (Putting the phone down, he heads towards the door.) LESTRADE: We’ve found it. (Sherlock’s phone has gone dead. He turns and follows Lestrade.)
Close to the river, the police have arrived at a large open space where the car was found. Forensics officers in protective clothing are working on the car as Lestrade leads Sherlock towards it. John and Sally Donovan are walking along behind them. LESTRADE (consulting some notes): The car was hired yesterday morning by an Ian Monkford. Banker of some kind; City boy. Paid in cash. (Sherlock looks closely as they pass a woman talking with a female police officer.) LESTRADE: Told his wife he was going away on a business trip, but he never arrived. (As Sherlock and Lestrade reach the passenger door of the car, Sally turns to John.) DONOVAN: You’re still hanging round him. JOHN: Yeah, well ... DONOVAN: Opposites attract, I suppose. JOHN: No, we’re not ... DONOVAN: You should get yourself a hobby – stamps, maybe. Model trains. Safer. (She goes to stand beside Lestrade while Sherlock leans into the car to look at a large amount of blood smeared over the island between the two front seats. He opens the glove box.) LESTRADE: Before you ask, yes, it’s Monkford’s blood. The DNA checks out. (Sherlock finds a business card in the glove box and takes it out. Closing the lid he straightens up.) SHERLOCK: No body. DONOVAN: Not yet. SHERLOCK (to Lestrade): Get a sample sent to the lab. (Lestrade nods and Sherlock walks away. Lestrade turns to Donovan and looks at her pointedly. She stares back at him indignantly but he holds the look and she grunts in exasperation and stomps away. Sherlock walks over to the woman who was talking with the police officer.) SHERLOCK: Mrs Monkford? (She turns to him tearfully.) MRS MONKFORD: Yes. (She looks at him and John, and sighs.) MRS MONKFORD: Sorry, but I’ve already spoken with two policemen. JOHN: No, we’re not from the police; we’re ... (Sherlock holds out his hand to her, his voice suddenly tearful and tremulous.) SHERLOCK: Sherlock Holmes. Very old friend of your husband’s. We, um ... (As she shakes his hand, he looks down as if fighting back his tears.) SHERLOCK: ... we grew up together. MRS MONKFORD: I’m sorry, who? I don’t think he ever mentioned you. SHERLOCK (still tearful): Oh, he must have done. This is ... this is horrible, isn’t it? (John looks away, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to keep his face neutral.) SHERLOCK: I mean, I just can’t believe it. I only saw him the other day. Same old Ian – not a care in the world. (He smiles tearfully at her.) MRS MONKFORD: Sorry, but my husband has been depressed for months. Who are you? (By now Sherlock has tears running down his cheeks.) SHERLOCK: Really strange that he hired a car. Why would he do that? It’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it? MRS MONKFORD: No, it isn’t. He forgot to renew the tax on the car, that’s all. SHERLOCK: Oh, well, that was Ian! That was Ian all over! MRS MONKFORD: No it wasn’t. (Instantly Sherlock’s fake persona drops and he looks at her intensely.) SHERLOCK: Wasn’t it? Interesting. (He turns and walks away. She glares after him as he heads for the police tape with John following. The female police office goes over to her.) MRS MONKFORD: Who was I talking to? JOHN (to Sherlock as they duck under the tape): Why did you lie to her? SHERLOCK (taking his gloves off to wipe the tears from under his eyes): People don’t like telling you things, but they love to contradict you. Past tense, did you notice? JOHN: Sorry, what? SHERLOCK: I referred to her husband in the past tense. She joined in. Bit premature – they’ve only just found the car. JOHN: You think she murdered her husband? SHERLOCK: Definitely not. That’s not a mistake a murderer would make. JOHN: I see. No, I don’t. What am I seeing? (As they walk past Donovan, she turns and calls out to John.) DONOVAN: Fishing! Try fishing! (John turns around and gives her an exasperated nod before following Sherlock again.) JOHN: Where now? SHERLOCK: Janus Cars. (He hands the business card to John.) SHERLOCK: Just found this in the glove compartment.
SIX HOURS TO GO.
JANUS CARS. Sherlock and John are in the office of the car hire company. John sits at the other side of the desk to the owner, taking notes while Sherlock looks out into the forecourt. EWERT: Can’t see how I can help you gentlemen. JOHN: Mr Monkford hired the car from you yesterday. EWERT: Yeah. Lovely motor. Mazda RX-8. Wouldn’t mind one of them myself! (Sherlock walks over to the other side of the desk so that he’s standing beside Ewert, then points into the forecourt.) SHERLOCK: Is that one? (Ewert turns his head to look and Sherlock immediately looks closely at the side of the man’s neck.) EWERT: No, they’re all Jags. Yeah, I can see you’re not a car man, eh? (Sherlock straightens up as Ewert looks round and smiles at John.) SHERLOCK: But, er, surely you can afford one – a Mazda, I mean? EWERT: Yeah, it’s a fair point. But you know how it is: it’s like working in a sweetshop. Once you start picking at the liquorice allsorts, when does it all stop, eh? (He starts scratching near the top of his left arm with his right hand. Sherlock looks at him for a moment, then turns away and heads around the room towards the other side of the desk.) JOHN: But you didn’t know Mr Monkford? EWERT: No, he was just a client. Came in here and hired one of my cars. No idea what happened to him. Poor sod. (Sherlock has reached the other side of the desk and stops.) SHERLOCK: Nice holiday, Mr Ewert? EWERT: Eh? SHERLOCK: You’ve been away, haven’t you? EWERT: Oh, the-the ... (He gestures towards his tanned face.) EWERT: No, it’s, er, sunbeds, I’m afraid, yeah. Too busy to get away. My wife would love it, though – bit of sun. SHERLOCK: Have you got any change for the cigarette machine? EWERT: What? SHERLOCK: Well, I noticed one on the way in and I haven’t got any change. (He offers Ewert a bank note.) SHERLOCK: I’m gasping. EWERT: Um, well ... (He reaches into his trouser pocket and takes out his wallet.) EWERT: Hmm. (He opens the wallet and looks inside.) EWERT: No, sorry. SHERLOCK: Oh well. Thank you very much for your time, Mr Ewert. (He turns and heads for the door.) SHERLOCK: You’ve been very helpful. Come on, John. (They leave the office and head back across the forecourt.) JOHN: I-I’ve got change if you still want to, uh ... SHERLOCK (patting his upper left arm): Nicotine patches, remember? I’m doing well. JOHN: So what was that all about? SHERLOCK: I needed to look inside his wallet. JOHN: Why? SHERLOCK: Mr Ewert’s a liar.
