In woodland just before sunrise, seven year old Henry Knight is running through the trees panting heavily. He is repeatedly looking behind him and having flashbacks to the terrible scene he has recently witnessed where a man was being attacked by someone – or something. The man was screaming and crying out in terror, scrabbling at the ground as he tried to get away from his attacker, which was growling and snarling ferociously. Henry runs on, trying to get away from the horror. After some time, he has cleared the trees and is out on moorland. He runs up an incline just as an elderly woman comes over the top of the rise. She is walking her dog. GRACE: Oh, hello. (Henry stops and looks at her, but his attention is mostly focused on her dog – some kind of spaniel which just stands there pretty much ignoring him.) GRACE: Are you all right? (Still Henry stares at the dog, whose features are mostly obscured in shadow due to the sun rising behind it.) GRACE: What is it, dear? Are you lost? (The dog pokes its nose towards him in a friendly way. Henry screams in utter terror.)
Twenty years later, the young boy’s screams are echoing in adult Henry’s ears. He looks around blankly as if he doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, then his face fills with horror when he realises that he is standing in the middle of a deep hollow in the woods. He starts to stumble away.
OPENING CREDITS.
BAKER STREET. The door to 221B slams closed on someone who has just gone inside, and the camera pans across to show two nodding dogs in the window of Speedy’s café. Upstairs in the flat, the living room door bursts open and Sherlock charges in, stopping just inside the room and slamming the end of a long pole down onto the ground. Sitting in his chair, John looks round and his eyes widen at the sight of his flatmate, who is wearing black trousers and a white shirt and whose arms, chest and face are covered with blood – far too much blood for it to be his own – and who is holding a harpoon. He looks round to John, breathing heavily. SHERLOCK: Well, that was tedious. JOHN: You went on the Tube like that?! SHERLOCK (irritated): None of the cabs would take me. (He walks out of the room.)
Later he is back in the room having cleaned himself up and changed into a clean shirt and trousers with one of his blue dressing gowns over the top. He is still carrying the harpoon and is pacing rapidly between the door and the window, looking round repeatedly at John who is sitting in his chair and flicking through the newspapers. SHERLOCK (impatiently): Nothing? JOHN: Military coup in Uganda. SHERLOCK: Hmm. (John chuckles in amusement when he sees something in one of the papers.) JOHN: Another photo of you with the, er ... (He points to a photograph of Sherlock wearing the deerstalker hat. Sherlock makes a disgusted noise. John moves on to another newspaper.) JOHN: Oh, um, Cabinet reshuffle. SHERLOCK (furious): Nothing of importance? (He slams the end of the harpoon onto the ground and roars with rage.) SHERLOCK: Oh, God! (He looks round at John intensely.) SHERLOCK: John, I need some. Get me some. JOHN (calmly): No. SHERLOCK (intensely): Get me some. JOHN (more loudly): No. (He points sternly at him.) Cold turkey, we agreed, no matter what. (Irritated, Sherlock leans the harpoon against the dining table.) JOHN: Anyway, you’ve paid everyone off, remember? No-one within a two mile radius’ll sell you any. SHERLOCK: Stupid idea. Whose idea was that? (John looks round at him and clears his throat pointedly. Sherlock looks towards the door.) SHERLOCK (shouting): Mrs Hudson! (He starts hurling paperwork off the table, desperately searching for what he needs.) JOHN: Look, Sherlock, you’re doing really well. Don’t give up now. SHERLOCK (frantically as he continues his search): Tell me where they are. Please. Tell me. (As John remains silent, Sherlock straightens up and then turns his most appealing puppy-dog eyes on him, hesitating before he speaks and almost forming the word a couple of times before actually speaking it.) SHERLOCK: Please. JOHN: Can’t help, sorry. SHERLOCK: I’ll let you know next week’s lottery numbers. (John chuckles.) SHERLOCK (exasperated): Oh, it was worth a try. (He looks around the room, then gets inspired and hurls himself to the floor in front of the fireplace. Unearthing a slipper from the pile of papers in front of the unlit fire, he holds it up and scrabbles about inside as Mrs Hudson arrives at the door and comes in.) MRS HUDSON: Ooh-ooh! SHERLOCK (rummaging about in the fireplace and speaking almost sing-song): My secret supply. What have you done with my secret supply? MRS HUDSON: Eh? SHERLOCK: Cigarettes! What have you done with them? Where are they? MRS HUDSON: You know you never let me touch your things! (She looks around at the mess.) MRS HUDSON: Ooh, chance would be a fine thing. SHERLOCK (standing up and facing her): I thought you weren’t my housekeeper. MRS HUDSON: I’m not. (Making a frustrated noise, Sherlock stomps back over to the harpoon and picks it up again. Behind him, Mrs Hudson looks down at John who does the universal mime for offering someone a drink. She looks at Sherlock again.) MRS HUDSON: How about a nice cuppa, and perhaps you could put away your harpoon. SHERLOCK: I need something stronger than tea. Seven per cent stronger. (He glares out of the window, then turns back towards Mrs Hudson and aims the point of the harpoon at her. She flinches.) SHERLOCK: You’ve been to see Mr Chatterjee again. MRS HUDSON: Pardon? SHERLOCK (pointing with the harpoon’s tip): Sandwich shop. That’s a new dress, but there’s flour on the sleeve. You wouldn’t dress like that for baking. JOHN: Sherlock ... SHERLOCK: Thumbnail: tiny traces of foil. Been at the scratch cards again. We all know where that leads, don’t we? (He sniffs deeply as he finally stops aiming the harpoon at her.) SHERLOCK: Mmm: ‘Kasbah Nights.’ Pretty racy for first thing on a Monday morning, wouldn’t you agree? I’ve written a little blog on the identification of perfumes. It’s on the website – you should look it up. MRS HUDSON (exasperated): Please. SHERLOCK: I wouldn’t pin your hopes on that cruise with Mr Chatterjee. He’s got a wife in Doncaster (he adopts a south Yorkshire accent to say the town’s name) that nobody knows about. JOHN (angrily): Sherlock! SHERLOCK: Well, nobody except me. MRS HUDSON (upset): I don’t know what you’re talking about, I really don’t. (She storms out of the flat, slamming the living room door closed as she goes. Sherlock leaps over the back of his chair from behind it, then perches on the seat, wrapping his arms around his knees like a petulant child. John slams his newspaper down.) JOHN: What the bloody hell was all that about? SHERLOCK (rocking back and forth): You don’t understand. JOHN (sternly): Go after her and apologise. SHERLOCK (staring at him): Apologise? JOHN: Mmm-hmm. SHERLOCK (sighing): Oh, John, I envy you so much. (John hesitates, wondering whether to rise to the bait, but eventually asks.) JOHN: You envy me? SHERLOCK: Your mind: it’s so placid, straightforward, barely used. Mine’s like an engine, racing out of control; a rocket tearing itself to pieces trapped on the launch pad. (Loudly, frantically) I need a case! JOHN (equally loudly): You’ve just solved one! By harpooning a dead pig, apparently! (With an exasperated noise, Sherlock jumps up in the air and then lands in the seated position on the chair.) SHERLOCK: That was this morning! (He starts drumming the fingers of both hands on the arms of the chair while stomping his feet on the floor.) SHERLOCK: When’s the next one? JOHN: Nothing on the website? (Sherlock gets up and walks over to the table, collects his laptop and hands it to John, who looks at the message on there while Sherlock stomps over the window and narrates part of it.) SHERLOCK: “Dear Mr Sherlock Holmes. I can’t find Bluebell anywhere. Please please please can you help?” JOHN: Bluebell? SHERLOCK (irritated): A rabbit, John! JOHN: Oh. SHERLOCK (sarcastically): Ah, but there’s more! Before Bluebell disappeared, it turned luminous ... (He adopts a little girl’s voice for the next three words.) SHERLOCK: ... “like a fairy” according to little Kirsty; then the next morning, Bluebell was gone! Hutch still locked, no sign of a forced entry ... (He stops and his expression becomes more intense.) SHERLOCK: Ah! What am I saying? This is brilliant! Phone Lestrade. Tell him there’s an escaped rabbit. JOHN: Are you serious? SHERLOCK: It’s this, or Cluedo. JOHN: Ah, no! (He closes the laptop and gets up to put it back on the table.) JOHN: We are never playing that again! SHERLOCK: Why not? JOHN: Because it’s not actually possible for the victim to have done it, Sherlock, that’s why. SHERLOCK: Well, it was the only possible solution. JOHN (sitting down again): It’s not in the rules. SHERLOCK (furiously): Then the rules are wrong! (The doorbell rings. John thoughtfully holds up a finger as Sherlock looks towards the living room door.) JOHN: Single ring. SHERLOCK: Maximum pressure just under the half second. JOHN and SHERLOCK (simultaneously): Client.
Not long afterwards, a recording of a documentary is playing on the TV. Sherlock has taken off the dressing gown and exchanged it for a jacket and is sitting in his chair. John has relocated to the dining table chair near Sherlock’s, and a man is sitting in John’s chair. The documentary footage shows scenes of Dartmoor. Sherlock instantly looks bored. PRESENTER (voiceover): Dartmoor. It’s always been a place of myth and legend, but is there something else lurking out here – something very real? (Footage of “Keep Out” signs.) PRESENTER (walking along a narrow road): Because Dartmoor’s also home to one of the government’s most secret of operations ... (Sherlock’s eyes flick repeatedly between the screen and the man in John’s chair as the footage shows a large sign saying:
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A RESTRICTED AREA BASKERVILLE
By this time Sherlock’s eyes are permanently fixed on the newcomer – who we now see is Henry Knight – as he watches the documentary anxiously.) PRESENTER (voiceover): ... the chemical and biological weapons research centre which is said to be even more sensitive than Porton Down. Since the end of the Second World War, there’ve been persistent stories about the Baskerville experiments: genetic mutations, animals grown for the battlefield. There are many who believe that within this compound, in the heart of this ancient wilderness, there are horrors beyond imagining. But the real question is: are all of them still inside? (The footage switches to an indoor scene where Henry is sitting in front of the camera talking to an offscreen interviewer. A caption at the bottom of the screen shows him as “Henry Knight, Grimpen resident”.) HENRY: I was just a kid. It-it was on the moor. (There’s a cutaway to a child’s drawing of a huge snarling dog with red eyes. The caption says, “Henry’s drawing (aged 9)”.) HENRY: It was dark, but I know what I saw. I know what killed my father. (Sighing, Sherlock picks up the remote control and switches off the footage.) SHERLOCK (to Henry): What did you see? HENRY: Oh. (He points to the television.) I ... I was just about to say. SHERLOCK: Yes, in a TV interview. I prefer to do my own editing. HENRY: Yes. Sorry, yes, of course. ’Scuse me. (He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a paper napkin and wipes his nose on it.) JOHN: In your own time. SHERLOCK: But quite quickly. (Henry lowers the napkin.) HENRY: Do you know Dartmoor, Mr Holmes? SHERLOCK: No. HENRY: It’s an amazing place. It’s like nowhere else. It’s sort of ... bleak but beautiful. SHERLOCK: Mmm, not interested. Moving on. HENRY: We used to go for walks, after my mum died, my dad and me. Every evening we’d go out onto the moor. SHERLOCK: Yes, good. Skipping to the night that your dad was violently killed. Where did that happen? (John’s eyes raise skywards at Sherlock’s insensitive question.) HENRY: There’s a place – it’s... it’s a sort of local landmark called Dewer’s Hollow. (He gazes at Sherlock who tilts his head at him as if to say, “And...?”) HENRY: That’s an ancient name for the Devil. SHERLOCK (quirking an eyebrow): So? JOHN: Did you see the Devil that night? (His face haunted with memories, Henry looks across to him and nods.) HENRY (in a whisper): Yes. (Flashback to Henry’s father screaming as he is pulled off his feet by something while young Henry watches in horror nearby.) HENRY (voiceover): It was huge. Coal-black fur, with red eyes. (In the flashback, Henry’s father finally falls silent. The creature growls savagely and young Henry turns and begins to scramble away.) HENRY (tearfully): It got him, tore at him, tore him apart. (Sherlock watches him intensely.) HENRY: I can’t remember anything else. They found me the next morning, just wandering on the moor. My dad’s body was never found. JOHN: Hmm. (He looks across to Sherlock.) Red eyes, coal-black fur, enormous: dog? Wolf? SHERLOCK: Or a genetic experiment. (He looks away, biting back a smile.) HENRY: Are you laughing at me, Mr Holmes? SHERLOCK: Why, are you joking? HENRY: My dad was always going on about the things they were doing at Baskerville; about the type of monsters they were breeding there. People used to laugh at him. At least the TV people took me seriously. SHERLOCK: And, I assume, did wonders for Devon tourism. JOHN (uncomfortably): Yeah ... (In an attempt to stop Sherlock’s continuing sarcasm, he leans forward to Henry. Sherlock rolls his eyes when he realises what John is doing.) JOHN: Henry, whatever did happen to your father, it was twenty years ago. Why come to us now? (Henry sits forward, staring at Sherlock.) HENRY: I’m not sure you can help me, Mr Holmes, since you find it all so funny. (He stands up and walks around the chair, heading towards the door.) SHERLOCK: Because of what happened last night. JOHN: Why, what happened last night? (Henry turns back towards them.) HENRY: How ... how do you know? SHERLOCK: I didn’t know; I noticed. (John shuffles on his chair with an “Oh dear lord, here we go” expression on his face.) SHERLOCK (quick fire): You came up from Devon on the first available train this morning. You had a disappointing breakfast and a cup of black coffee. The girl in the seat across the aisle fancied you. Although you were initially keen, you’ve now changed your mind. You are, however, extremely anxious to have your first cigarette of the day. Sit down, Mr Knight, and do please smoke. I’d be delighted. (Henry stares at him, then glances across to John who averts his gaze and sighs. Hesitantly, Henry walks back to the chair and sits down, fishing in his jacket pocket.) HENRY: How on earth did you notice all that?! JOHN: It’s not important ... (But Sherlock’s already off.) SHERLOCK (looking at two small round white pieces of paper stuck to Henry’s coat): Punched-out holes where your ticket’s been checked ... JOHN: Not now, Sherlock. SHERLOCK: Oh please. I’ve been cooped up in here for ages. JOHN: You’re just showing off. SHERLOCK: Of course. I am a show-off. That’s what we do. (He turns his attention back to Henry and the napkin that he’s still holding.) SHERLOCK: The train napkin that you used to mop up the spilled coffee: the strength of the stain shows that you didn’t take milk. There are traces of ketchup on it and round your lips and on your sleeve. Cooked breakfast – or the nearest thing those trains can manage. Probably a sandwich. (Henry half-sobs, over-awed.) HENRY: How did you know it was disappointing? SHERLOCK: Is there any other type of breakfast on a train? The girl – female handwriting’s quite distinctive. Wrote her phone number down on the napkin. I can tell from the angle she wrote at that she was sat across from you on the other side of the aisle. Later – after she got off, I imagine – you used the napkin to mop up your spilled coffee, accidentally smudging the numbers. You’ve been over the last four digits yourself with another pen, so you wanted to keep the number. Just now, though, you used the napkin to blow your nose. Maybe you’re not that into her after all. Then there’s the nicotine stains on your fingers ... your shaking fingers. I know the signs. (His gaze becomes intense.) SHERLOCK: No chance to smoke one on the train; no time to roll one before you got a cab here. (He glances at his watch.) SHERLOCK: It’s just after nine fifteen. You’re desperate. The first train from Exeter to London leaves at five forty-six a.m. You got the first one possible, so something important must have happened last night. Am I wrong? (Henry stares at him in amazement, then draws in a shaky breath.) HENRY: No. (Sherlock smiles smugly. John takes a drink from his mug to hide his “oh bugger it” look.) HENRY (awestruck): You’re right. You’re completely, exactly right. Bloody hell, I heard you were quick. SHERLOCK: It’s my job. (He leans forward in his seat and glares at Henry intensely.) SHERLOCK: Now shut up and smoke. (John frowns towards him. As Henry takes out a roll-up and lights it, John consults the notes he’s taken so far.) JOHN: Um, Henry, your parents both died and you were, what, seven years old? (Henry is concentrating on taking his first drag on his cigarette. As he exhales his first lungful, Sherlock stands up and steps closer to him.) HENRY: I know. That ... my ... (He stops as Sherlock leans into the smoke drifting up from the cigarette and from Henry’s mouth and breathes in deeply and noisily through his nose. Having sucked up most of the smoke, he sits down again and breathes out, whining quietly in pleasure.) JOHN (trying hard to ignore him): That must be a ... quite a trauma. Have you ever thought that maybe you invented this story, this ... (Henry has exhaled another lungful of smoke and Sherlock dives in to noisily hoover up the smoke again. John pauses patiently until he sits down again.) JOHN: ... to account for it? (Henry drags his eyes away from Sherlock.) HENRY: That’s what Doctor Mortimer says. JOHN: Who? SHERLOCK: His therapist. HENRY (almost simultaneously): My therapist. SHERLOCK: Obviously. HENRY: Louise Mortimer. She’s the reason I came back to Dartmoor. She thinks I have to face my demons. SHERLOCK: And what happened when you went back to Dewer’s Hollow last night, Henry? You went there on the advice of your therapist and now you’re consulting a detective. What did you see that changed everything? HENRY: It’s a strange place, the Hollow. (He flashes back in his mind to when he was standing in the Hollow the previous night.) HENRY: Makes you feel so cold inside, so afraid. SHERLOCK (rolling his eyes): Yes, if I wanted poetry I’d read John’s emails to his girlfriends. Much funnier. (John sighs hard in an attempt to release the tension that might make him kill his flatmate.) SHERLOCK (to Henry): What did you see? HENRY: Footprints – on the exact spot where I saw my father torn apart. (Looking exasperated, Sherlock leans back in his seat.) JOHN: Man’s or a woman’s? HENRY: Neither. They were ... SHERLOCK (interrupting): Is that it? Nothing else. Footprints. Is that all? HENRY: Yes, but they were ... SHERLOCK (interrupting): No, sorry, Doctor Mortimer wins. Childhood trauma masked by an invented memory. Boring! Goodbye, Mr Knight. Thank you for smoking. HENRY: No, but what about the footprints? SHERLOCK: Oh, they’re probably paw prints; could be anything, therefore nothing. (He leans forward in his seat and flicks his fingers at Henry, gesturing him towards the door.) SHERLOCK: Off to Devon with you; have a cream tea on me. (Standing up and buttoning his jacket, he heads into the kitchen. Henry turns in his seat to look at him.) HENRY: Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound! (Sherlock stops dead in his tracks, then slowly turns and comes back to the kitchen doorway and stares down at Henry.) SHERLOCK: Say that again. HENRY: I found the footprints; they were ... SHERLOCK: No, no, no, your exact words. Repeat your exact words from a moment ago, exactly as you said them. (Henry thinks for a second, then slowly recites his words back to him.) HENRY: Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic ... hound. (Sherlock raises his head.) SHERLOCK: I’ll take the case. JOHN (startled): Sorry, what? (Sherlock adopts the prayer position in front of his mouth and begins to pace slowly across the living room.) SHERLOCK: Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It’s very promising. JOHN: No-no-no, sorry, what? A minute ago, footprints were boring; now they’re very promising? SHERLOCK (stopping): It’s nothing to do with footprints. As ever, John, you weren’t listening. Baskerville: ever heard of it? JOHN: Vaguely. It’s very hush-hush. SHERLOCK: Sounds like a good place to start. HENRY: Ah! You’ll come down, then? SHERLOCK: No, I can’t leave London at the moment. Far too busy. Don’t worry – putting my best man onto it. (He walks over to John and pats his shoulder.) SHERLOCK: Always rely on John to send me the relevant data, as he never understands a word of it himself. JOHN: What are you talking about, you’re busy? You don’t have a case! A minute ago you were complaining ... SHERLOCK (interrupting): Bluebell, John! I’ve got Bluebell! The case of the vanishing, glow-in-the-dark rabbit! (He looks at Henry.) NATO’s in uproar. HENRY: Oh, sorry, no, you’re not coming, then? (Putting on a regretful expression, Sherlock shakes his head sadly. John groans.) JOHN: Okay. (He stands up while Sherlock smiles smugly.) Okay. (He walks over to the mantelpiece and picks up the skull, taking a packet of cigarettes from underneath it. Putting down the skull again, he turns and tosses the packet across to Sherlock, who catches it and then instantly tosses it over his shoulder.) SHERLOCK: I don’t need those any more. I’m going to Dartmoor. (He walks out of the living room.) SHERLOCK: You go on ahead, Henry. We’ll follow later. HENRY (scrambling to his feet): Er, sorry, so you are coming? (Sherlock turns and walks back into the room.) SHERLOCK: Twenty year old disappearance; a monstrous hound? I wouldn’t miss this for the world!
Later, John carries two large bags out onto the street, shuts the front door and walks over to Sherlock who is holding a taxi door open. Next door in Speedy’s, Mrs Hudson is shouting angrily at an unseen Mr Chatterjee. MRS HUDSON: ... cruise together. You had no intention of taking me on it ... (She throws something at the closed door. As it bounces heavily off the glass, John recoils.) JOHN: Oh! Looks like Mrs Hudson finally got to the wife in Doncaster. SHERLOCK: Mmm. Wait ’til she finds out about the one in Islamabad. (John sniggers and gets into the taxi. Sherlock follows him in.) SHERLOCK (to the driver): Paddington Station, please.
DARTMOOR. After many shots of the beautiful Devon scenery which your transcriber is delighted to sit back and watch while resting her aching fingers, we find our boys driving across the moors in a large black Land Rover jeep. Sherlock is driving ... and if they’re not playing “Yellow Car” I shall be most disappointed. Some time later, away from the road, Sherlock is standing dramatically skylined on a large stone outcrop while John stands at the foot of it consulting a map. He points ahead of himself at a large array of buildings in the distance. JOHN: There’s Baskerville. (He turns and points behind them. Sherlock turns to look.) JOHN: That’s Grimpen Village. (He turns and looks ahead of them again, checking the map for the name of the heavily wooded area to the left of the Baskerville complex.) JOHN: So that must be ... yeah, it’s Dewer’s Hollow. (Sherlock points to an area in between the complex and the Hollow.) SHERLOCK: What’s that? JOHN: Hmm? (He has binoculars on a strap around his neck and now he lifts them and looks more closely at the fencing and the warning signs.) JOHN: Minefield? Technically Baskerville’s an army base, so I guess they’ve always been keen to keep people out. SHERLOCK: Clearly.
Later, they drive into Grimpen Village and pull into the car park of the Cross Keys inn. They get out and walk towards the entrance of the pub, where a young man who is apparently a tour guide is talking to a group of tourists. FLETCHER: ... three times a day, tell your friends. Tell anyone! (The boys walk past the group and see that Fletcher is standing next to a large sign on which is painted a black image of a wolf-like creature with the words “BEWARE THE HOUND!!” above it.) FLETCHER (to the tourists): Don’t be strangers, and remember ... stay away from the moor at night if you value your lives! (Sherlock has been pulling his overcoat around him as he walks towards the pub, and now he pops the collar. John looks round at him pointedly.) SHERLOCK (trying and failing to look nonchalant): I’m cold. (The tourist group walks away from Fletcher. Once their backs are turned he puts on a large shaggy wolf’s-head mask. Sherlock and John walk into the pub, which has a blackboard outside advertising “Boutique Rooms & Vegetarian Cuisine.” Fletcher runs over to a couple of the nearby tourists and roars. They flinch and the woman shrieks in surprise.)
Flashback to Henry Knight’s father being grabbed by something in Dewer’s Hollow, and young Henry’s horrified face. In the present, adult Henry flinches, his eyes closed as he sits half reclined on a comfortable armchair. The flashbacks continue to haunt him until he opens his eyes and sighs. A woman is sitting a short distance away with a notebook and pen on her lap. HENRY: That part doesn’t change. MORTIMER: What does? (Henry runs his hands over his face.) HENRY: Oh, there’s something else. It-it’s a word. (Sighing heavily in concentration, he closes his eyes again and sees the word as if it is stitched or knitted into some fabric.) HENRY: “Liberty.” (He opens his eyes again.) MORTIMER: Liberty? HENRY (closing his eyes again): There’s another word. (He concentrates and sees the next word stitched in the fabric.) “In.” I-N. “Liberty In.” (He looks at his therapist.) What do you think it means? (She shakes her head. He sighs in frustration.)
CROSS KEYS INN. While Sherlock prowls around the interior of the pub, John is at the bar checking in. The manager and barman, Gary, hands him some keys. GARY: Eh, sorry we couldn’t do a double room for you boys. JOHN: That’s fine. We-we’re not ... (He looks at the smug knowing smile on Gary’s face and gives up.) JOHN (giving him some money for the drink he has just bought): There you go. GARY: Oh, ta. I’ll just get your change. JOHN: Ta. (As Gary goes to the till, John’s glance falls on a pile of receipts and invoices which have been punched onto a spike on the bar. He frowns when he sees that one is labelled “Undershaw Meat Supplies.” Quickly he reaches out and rips it from the spike, putting it into his pocket as Gary comes back with his change.) GARY: There you go. JOHN: I couldn’t help noticing on the map of the moor: a skull and crossbones. GARY: Oh that, aye. JOHN: Pirates?! GARY: Eh, no, no. The Great Grimpen Minefield, they call it. JOHN: Oh, right. GARY: It’s not what you think. It’s the Baskerville testing site. It’s been going for eighty-odd years. I’m not sure anyone really knows what’s there any more. (Nearby, Sherlock is still prowling around and now seems to find something of interest at one of the tables.) JOHN (to Gary): Explosives? GARY: Oh, not just explosives. Break into that place and – if you’re lucky – you just get blown up, so they say ... in case you’re planning on a nice wee stroll. (Sherlock loses interest in the table and wanders off again.) JOHN: Ta. I’ll remember. GARY: Aye. No, it buggers up tourism a bit, so thank God for the demon hound! (He chuckles, coming out from behind the bar presumably to clear some glasses.) Did you see that show, that documentary? JOHN: Quite recently, yeah. GARY: Aye. God bless Henry Knight and his monster from hell. JOHN: Ever seen it – the hound? GARY: Me? No. (He points out the door past Sherlock, where Fletcher is just outside the pub and talking on his phone.) GARY: Fletcher has. He runs the walks – the Monster Walks for the tourists, you know? He’s seen it. JOHN: That’s handy for trade. (Gary turns to a man who is clearly the inn’s cook who has just arrived behind the bar. Meanwhile Sherlock turns and follows Fletcher as he walks away from the doorway.) GARY: I’m just saying we’ve been rushed off our feet, Billy. BILLY: Yeah. Lots of monster-hunters. Doesn’t take much these days. One mention on Twitter and oomph. (He looks at Gary.) BILLY: We’re out of WKD. [Transcriber’s note: WKD is a brand of alcopop aimed at the trendy young – and mostly male – drinkers’ market.] GARY: All right. (He walks behind the bar again. Billy turns to John.) BILLY: What with the monster and that ruddy prison, I don’t know how we sleep nights. Do you, Gary? (Gary stops and puts a hand on his shoulder and looks at him affectionately.) GARY: Like a baby. BILLY: That’s not true. (He looks at John.) He’s a snorer. GARY (embarrassed, trying to shut him up): Hey, wheesht! BILLY (to John): Is yours a snorer? JOHN: ... Got any crisps?
