BASKERVILLE. After many generic scenes of some of the scientific experiments being conducted at the facility, none of which your humble transcriber can be bothered to type out [buy the DVD and support your favourite production team!], Doctor Stapleton can be seen handling a fluffy white bunny inside a large clear plastic dome. At the entrance gates, the Land Rover approaches and stops. An armed security man goes over to Sherlock’s side while the dog handler and sniffer dog also approach. SECURITY GUARD: Afternoon, sir. If you could turn the engine off. (Sherlock hands over his ID pass and switches the car off.) SECURITY GUARD: Thank you. (As he goes over to the gate room to swipe the card and other soldiers check the vehicle over from the outside, Sherlock speaks quietly to John.) SHERLOCK: I need to see Major Barrymore as soon as we get inside. JOHN: Right. SHERLOCK: Which means you’ll have to start the search for the hound. JOHN: Okay. SHERLOCK: In the labs; Stapleton’s first. (The guard brings back the ID card and hands it over.) SHERLOCK (quietly to John): Could be dangerous. (John smiles momentarily. The gate slides open and Sherlock starts the car and drives onto the base.)
LATER. MAJOR BARRYMORE’S OFFICE. The major is talking snarkily to Sherlock. BARRYMORE: Oh, you know I’d love to. I’d love to give you unlimited access to this place. Why not?(!) SHERLOCK: It’s a simple enough request, Major. BARRYMORE: I’ve never heard of anything so bizarre. SHERLOCK: You’re to give me twenty-four hours. It’s what I’ve ... (he pauses momentarily) ... negotiated. BARRYMORE (sternly): Not a second more. I may have to comply with this order but I don’t have to like it. (He swings around to his computer on the desk behind him as Sherlock starts to leave the office.) BARRYMORE: I don’t know what you expect to find here anyway. SHERLOCK (turning back): Perhaps the truth. BARRYMORE (looking round again): About what? Oh, I see. The big coat should have told me. (Sherlock frowns.) BARRYMORE: You’re one of the conspiracy lot, aren’t you? (He grins as Sherlock rolls his eyes.) BARRYMORE: Well, then, go ahead, seek them out: the monsters, the death rays, the aliens. SHERLOCK (nonchalantly): Have you got any of those? (Now it’s Barrymore’s turn to roll his eyes.) SHERLOCK: Oh, just wondering. BARRYMORE (leaning forward secretively): A couple. Crash landed here in the sixties. (Sarcastically) We call them Abbott and Costello. (He straightens up and turns back to his computer.) BARRYMORE: Good luck, Mr Holmes.
HENRY’S HOUSE. Henry is in the sitting room holding a framed photograph of himself when he was about five years old standing in between his parents. As he sits clutching the photograph he gazes into the distance with a lost expression on his face but gradually exhaustion begins to claim him and his eyelids start to droop. Eventually his eyes close completely – and immediately the red glowing eyes of the hound flash in his mind. Gasping in horror, Henry opens his eyes again, and then wails in anguish. HENRY: Oh, God! (Sobbing, he clutches at his head and then buries his face in his hands and weeps in despair.)
BASKERVILLE. The lift doors open into the first lab that the boys visited but this time only John comes out of the elevator. Walking forward he sees that there are only two scientists in the room and even they are leaving through a side door. One of them turns off the main overhead lights as he goes, which leaves the room lit far more dimly by a few arc lights on stands which are dotted around, and by the screens of some computers. John looks around a little anxiously when he realises how spooky and quiet it is, then he walks towards a door at the far end of the lab, the door which Doctor Frankland came out of on the first occasion that they met him. He has a security pass in his pocket and he takes it out and swipes it through the reader, then pulls the door open and goes inside, having apparently ignored – or been too BAMF to care about – the handwritten notice stuck on the outside which reads:
KEEP OUT UNLESS YOU WANT A COLD!
He walks through the decontamination zone to the door at the far end and taps a finger on the glass window in the door. When nobody replies he pushes the door open and goes into a room which has a glass-walled section on the left hand side. There’s a glass-fronted cage inside the sealed section but there doesn’t appear to be anything inside. In front of him is a desk with equipment, folders, a phone and various other things on it, and above the desk are small plastic tubes coming out of the wall and dials which indicate that these tubes dispense various gases. John opens the door of a small cupboard set into the desk but finds nothing of interest and so continues looking around. On the right hand side of the room are large metal pipes which presumably also carry gases. One of them is leaking slightly. John peers around a little longer and then comes out of the room and goes back through the decontamination zone and into the lab. Just to his right is a large arc light on a stand. As John turns to his right to close the door behind him, the device lights up and nine bright bulbs shine straight into his eyes. He squinches his eyes shut and turns his head away, grimacing at the pain. JOHN: Oh, no! Jesus! Ow! (Opening his eyes a little, he squints and tries to see into the room. All the other lights in the room appear to have come on as well and – with his own vision blanked out by the arc lights – there’s a wall of whiteness all around him. Just then a loud insistent alarm begins to blare into the room. John groans and covers his ears, completely overwhelmed by the bright light, lack of vision and the noise. Grimacing, he starts to make his way across the lab towards the lift, holding his hand up in front of his eyes as the after-image of the arc lights keeps blanking out his vision. Finally reaching the other end of the lab, he pulls out the ID card and swipes it through the reader. It whines and tells him “ACCESS DENIED”. He stares in disbelief and swipes the card again but it whines and gives him the same message. Holding one hand to an ear while the alarm continues to blare, he tries once more.) JOHN: Come on. (The same whine and message is repeated. John glares at it in exasperation – and at that moment all the lights go out and the alarm drones into silence. The room is now under emergency lighting only, which is dark red and barely illuminates the area.) JOHN (under his breath): What the f...? (He scrabbles in his pocket for his flashlight and switches it on, although its beam isn’t very helpful against the continued after-image of the arc lights which is still affecting his retinas. He calls out.) JOHN: Hello? (He screws his eyes shut for a moment in a failed attempt to clear the after-images. As he opens his eyes again and peers through the bright dots, a shadow seems to flicker across the room some distance away. John blinks and looks around the room, the after-images still frustrating his ability to see anything clearly. He lowers his head into his hand and rubs his eyes for a few seconds, then raises his head again, realising how ominously quiet it now is in the lab. But that doesn’t last long, because something rattles to his right. He walks forward cautiously, looking a little anxiously at the row of large cages which he now realises are all covered with sheeting which obscures their contents. The rattle sounds again. John walks slowly to the first of the cages, turning once to check behind him, then grabs hold of the sheeting and pulls it back to show that the first cage is empty. Pulling the sheet back down again, he walks to the next cage as something clinks near the lift doors. He swings around to look and shines his torch in that direction but can see nothing. He turns again and grabs the sheet over the second cage, tossing that back. Again the cage is empty, and the door is open. He moves on to the third cage and throws back the sheet. The monkey inside hurls itself at him, screaming as it grabs at the bars. John drops the sheet and stumbles back several paces, breathing heavily. He walks to the final cage and looks at it, then slowly his gaze is pulled down to the bottom of the bars where the sheeting has been pushed back a little. The door of the cage is slightly ajar and the bottom of it has been bent back by something which must be incredibly strong. As John stares at the bent bars in disbelief, a low savage growl sounds behind him. John spins around, his eyes going wide as he shines his flashlight around but he can see nothing. He sees the nearby door to the Cold Lab and walks briskly over to it, taking out his ID card and swiping it. The reader whines its ACCESS DENIED alert.) JOHN: No, come on, come on. (He swipes the card again. Again it refuses to open the door. He stares in anguish, then pulls his mobile out of his pocket while shining his light around the room. He hits the speed dial and holds the phone to his ear as it begins to ring out and continues to ring.) JOHN (under his breath): No, you ... Don’t be ridiculous, pick up. (Eventually he gives up and switches off the phone.) JOHN (in a whisper): Oh, dammit! (Putting the phone back in his pocket he looks across the room determinedly.) JOHN (softly): Right. (Trying to shine his torch in all directions at once and making his way cautiously around all the workstations and islands, he hurries as quickly as he can towards the side door through which the scientists left earlier. As he goes, the distinctive sound of claws on floor tiles skitters across the room.) JOHN (under his breath): Oh sh... (Ducking low, he hurries to the door and takes out his card again.) JOHN (in a whisper): Okay ... (As he reaches towards the card reader, the claws trot across the floor to his right, and then something snarls. John turns and stares, breathing heavily, as there are more sounds nearby – claws on the floor tiles, equipment being pushed aside, and then a deep ominous growl. John shoves the card back into his pocket and then claps his hand over his mouth to dampen his own panicked breathing while the growl rumbles on. As the growl finally falls silent, John makes a break for it and races across the room, running towards the cages and pulling open the door of one of the empty ones before scrambling inside, slamming the door shut and bolting it and then reaching through the bars and pulling the sheet down over the cage. Elsewhere in the lab, the whatever-it-is snarls as John retreats from the door and squats down against the side bars, wrapping his hand around his mouth again and trying not to sob as the creature growls again. Suddenly John’s phone starts to ring. Gasping, he scrabbles in his pocket to retrieve it. He answers it on the second ring and holds it up towards his mouth. He keeps his voice as soft as he possibly can but even at such a low volume his terror is evident.) JOHN (softly): It’s here. It’s in here with me. SHERLOCK (over phone): Where are you? JOHN (softly): Get me out, Sherlock. You have got to get me out. The big lab: the first lab that we saw. (He breathes heavily. Outside, the creature growls. John whines loudly in terror and claps his hand over his mouth again.) SHERLOCK (over phone): John? John? JOHN (lowering his hand and keeping his voice no more than a whisper): Now, Sherlock. Please. SHERLOCK (over phone): All right, I’ll find you. Keep talking. JOHN (softly): I can’t. It’ll hear me. SHERLOCK (over phone): Keep talking. What are you seeing? (Throughout the conversation John has been peering through the small gap in the sheeting but the room is so dimly lit that he hasn’t been able to see anything.) SHERLOCK (over phone): John? (The creature snarls again.) JOHN (softly): Yes, I’m here. SHERLOCK (insistently, over phone): What can you see? (Getting onto his knees, John crawls closer to the gap in the sheeting, trying to keep his terrified breathing under control.) JOHN (softly): I don’t know. I don’t know, but I can hear it, though. (The creature growls loudly.) JOHN (softly, terrified): Did you hear that? SHERLOCK (over phone): Stay calm, stay calm. Can you see it? (John peers into the gloom.) SHERLOCK (over phone): Can you see it? JOHN (quietly): No. I can... (He trails off, then slowly straightens up, retreats backwards and sits back against the side bars while his face fills with absolute horror.) JOHN (in a whisper): I can see it. (He stares ahead of himself, his eyes full of dread as a shadow begins to move on the other side of the sheeting.) JOHN (flatly): It’s here. (The shadow moves closer as the creature growls once more.) JOHN (flatly): It’s here. (The shadow moves closer ... and then the sheeting is tugged upwards and the lights come on in the lab at the same moment that Sherlock’s face appears on the other side of the cage, looking down anxiously at John as he pulls open the door and goes inside.) SHERLOCK (worriedly): Are you all right? (John’s eyes widen in utter bewilderment as Sherlock bends down to him and puts a hand onto his shoulder.) SHERLOCK: John ... JOHN: Jesus Christ ... (He grabs the bars and pulls himself to his feet, hurrying out of the cage and stuffing his phone away as he turns back to his friend.) JOHN (still breathless and panic-stricken): It was the hound, Sherlock. It was here. I swear it, Sherlock. It must ... (He looks around the lab which – now fully illuminated – shows that there’s nowhere that a large monster can be hiding.) JOHN: It must ... (His voice becomes high-pitched.) JOHN: Did ... did ... did you see it? You must have! (Sherlock holds out a placatory hand towards him.) SHERLOCK: It’s all right. It’s okay now. JOHN (high-pitched, frantic and hysterical): NO IT’S NOT! IT’S NOT OKAY! I saw it. I was wrong! (Sherlock shrugs while John breathes heavily.) SHERLOCK: Well, let’s not jump to conclusions. JOHN: What? SHERLOCK: What did you see? JOHN: I told you: I saw the hound. SHERLOCK: Huge; red eyes? JOHN: Yes. SHERLOCK: Glowing? JOHN: Yeah. SHERLOCK: No. JOHN: What? SHERLOCK: I made up the bit about glowing. You saw what you expected to see because I told you. You have been drugged. We have all been drugged. JOHN: Drugged? SHERLOCK: Can you walk? JOHN (his voice shaky): ’Course I can walk. SHERLOCK: Come on, then. It’s time to lay this ghost. (He turns and heads for the door. Still trying to catch his breath, John looks around the lab again, then stumbles after Sherlock.)
In a small room full of cages, Doctor Stapleton is examing a fluffy white rabbit on a metal table. She looks up when Sherlock comes through the door, followed by John. STAPLETON: Oh. Back again? What’s on your mind this time? SHERLOCK: Murder, Doctor Stapleton. Refined, cold-blooded murder. (He reaches back and turns off the light switch by the door. The limited lighting coming from the window at the end of the room is just enough to show that the rabbit is brightly glowing green. Sherlock turns the lights back on again.) SHERLOCK: Will you tell little Kirsty what happened to Bluebell or shall I? (He smiles unpleasantly at her. She sighs.) STAPLETON: Okay. What do you want? SHERLOCK: Can I borrow your microscope?
LATER. In a larger lab, Sherlock has taken off his coat and is sitting at a bench and gazing into a microscope. Unhappy with what he’s seeing, he turns away from the ’scope and crushes something which looks crystalline into smaller pieces with a little hammer. Time passes and he varies between sitting with his back to the microscope, his hands folded in the prayer position in front of him as he thinks, or gazing into the ’scope, or scribbling chemical formulae onto the desk with different coloured marker pens. Nearby, John sits on a stool with his head propped on his hand, gazing blankly into space. Doctor Stapleton is standing near him. STAPLETON: Are you sure you’re okay? (John looks up at her, blinking.) STAPLETON: You look very peaky. JOHN: No, I’m all right. STAPLETON: It was the GFP gene from a jellyfish, in case you’re interested. JOHN: What? STAPLETON: In the rabbits. JOHN: Mmm, right, yes. STAPLETON (proudly): Aequoria Victoria, if you really want to know. (John looks up at her.) JOHN: Why? STAPLETON: Why not? We don’t ask questions like that here. It isn’t done. (A short distance from them, Sherlock looks increasingly irritated as he picks up another slide and puts it under the microscope.) STAPLETON: There was a mix-up, anyway. My daughter ended up with one of the lab specimens, so poor Bluebell had to go. JOHN (cynically): Your compassion’s overwhelming. STAPLETON (mockingly): I know. I hate myself sometimes. JOHN: So, come on then. You can trust me – I’m a doctor. What else have you got hidden away up here? (Exasperated, Sherlock takes out the slide again. Stapleton sighs.) STAPLETON: Listen: if you can imagine it, someone is probably doing it somewhere. Of course they are. (Sherlock is staring intently at his latest slide, then his eyes slide across to a nearby read-out on a screen.) JOHN: And cloning? STAPLETON: Yes, of course. Dolly the Sheep, remember? JOHN: Human cloning? STAPLETON: Why not? JOHN: What about animals? Not sheep ... big animals. STAPLETON: Size isn’t a problem, not at all. The only limits are ethics and the law, and both those things can be ... very flexible. But not here – not at Baskerville. (Furious, Sherlock stands up, snatches the latest slide out from under the ’scope and hurls it against the nearest wall.) SHERLOCK (livid): It’s not there! JOHN: Jesus! SHERLOCK: Nothing there! Doesn’t make any sense. STAPLETON: What were you expecting to find? SHERLOCK (pacing): A drug, of course. There has to be a drug – a hallucinogenic or a deliriant of some kind. There’s no trace of anything in the sugar. JOHN: Sugar? SHERLOCK: The sugar, yes. It’s a simple process of elimination. I saw the hound – saw it as my imagination expected me to see it: a genetically engineered monster. But I knew I couldn’t believe the evidence of my own eyes, so there were seven possible reasons for it, the most possible being narcotics. Henry Knight – he saw it too but you didn’t, John. You didn’t see it. Now, we have eaten and drunk exactly the same things since we got to Grimpen apart from one thing: you don’t take sugar in your coffee. JOHN: I see. So ... SHERLOCK: I took it from Henry’s kitchen – his sugar. (He glares down at the microscope.) It’s perfectly all right. JOHN: But maybe it’s not a drug. SHERLOCK: No, it has to be a drug. (He has sat on the stool with his head buried in his hands. Now he lowers his hands a little but keeps his head bowed and his eyes closed.) SHERLOCK: But how did it get into our systems. How? (Slowly he begins to raise his head, still keeping his eyes closed.) SHERLOCK: There has to be something ... (The word ‘hound’ keeps drifting across his mind’s eye. He turns his head repeatedly as he tries to follow the words inside his head.) SHERLOCK: ... something ... ah, something ... (His eyes open.) SHERLOCK: ... something buried deep. (Taking a sharp breath through his nose, he turns and points imperiously at Stapleton.) SHERLOCK: Get out. STAPLETON: What? SHERLOCK: Get out. I need to go to my mind palace. (John sags on his seat with an “Oh, not again” look.) STAPLETON: Your what? (Sherlock has already turned his head away again and is staring ahead of himself. John gets off his stool and picks up his jacket.) JOHN: He’s not gonna be doing much talking for a while. We may as well go. (Sherlock is breathing deeply, focusing his thoughts. Stapleton follows John as he heads for the door.) STAPLETON: His what? JOHN: Oh, his mind palace. It’s a memory technique – a sort of mental map. You plot a map with a location – it doesn’t have to be a real place – and then you deposit memories there that ... Theoretically, you can never forget anything; all you have to do is find your way back to it. STAPLETON: So this imaginary location can be anything – a house or a street. JOHN: Yeah. STAPLETON: But he said “palace.” He said it was a palace. JOHN (looking back towards Sherlock for a moment): Yeah, well, he would, wouldn’t he? (He leads her out of the room. Sherlock gazes ahead of himself, his mind turned inwards as he walks through his memories unearthing everything he can recall in connection with the word “Liberty.” I could possibly do much better justice to describing the visual process that we watch, but if you want this transcript printed this side of the London Olympics, I need to get it finished and I may try to come back and improve this section in the future. While Sherlock accesses different examples of the word and finds them unsuitable, he physically flicks them away with his hands and pulls in new variations before brushing those aside. The word “hound” creeps into his mind and drifts across it as he temporarily gives up on “Liberty” and shifts to “In,” adding various letters onto the word to form new ones like “Inn,” “India,” “Ingolstadt” [and ‘Frankenstein’ fans sob] and “Indium atomic number = 49”. Flicking that line of thought away, he starts calling up images of large dogs, running through various breeds and temporarily being distracted by the image of Elvis Presley starting to sing “Hound Dog.” Irritated, he brushes that aside and tries to pull in all three words – Liberty, In, Hound – simultaneously and suddenly his eyes snap open and he jolts three times as if he’s being repeatedly struck by lightning as the words finally crash into place:
Liberty, Indiana H.O.U.N.D.
He sinks back on his seat for a moment, then stands up and heads out of the lab.)
NIGHT TIME. THE MOORS. The hound howls and Henry races across the grass, his pistol in one hand, terrified as the hound snarls behind him. Henry runs on, glancing back repeatedly as he hears his pursuer gaining on him. Two red glowing eyes loom out of the darkness each time he looks around, but now he suddenly seems to realise that he has a gun in his hand and he turns and fires towards the eyes. Glass shatters and Louise Mortimer screams and throws herself out of her chair in the sitting room of Henry’s house and cowers on the floor. Just beside her chair, the mirror on the wall has shattered under the impact of the bullet which Henry just fired into it. Sobbing and cowering, she looks up at Henry as he continues to aim at the mirror, his face blank, but now he comes back to himself and looks at the pistol in horror. HENRY: Oh my God. (Louise continues to sob.) HENRY: Oh my God. Oh my God. I am so ... I am so sorry. I am so sorry. (He turns and runs from the room.)
BASKERVILLE. Stapleton leads Sherlock and John along a corridor and uses her card to swipe them into the area leading to Major Barrymore’s office. As they go into the room, Sherlock points back to the door they just came through. SHERLOCK: John. JOHN: Yeah, I’m on it. (He turns back to keep an eye on the door while Stapleton goes over to sit down at a computer.) SHERLOCK: Project HOUND. Must have read about it and stored it away. An experiment in a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana. (He stands behind Stapleton while she types her User ID onto the computer, then adds her password. A request to “Enter Search String” comes up and she looks up at Sherlock who dictates the letters.) SHERLOCK: H, O, U, N, D. (She types in the letters and hits Enter. A message comes up saying “NO ACCESS. CIA Classified” and requesting an authorisation code.) STAPLETON: That’s as far as my access goes, I’m afraid. JOHN: Well, there must be an override and password. STAPLETON: I imagine so, but that’d be Major Barrymore’s. (Sherlock spins around and walks into Barrymore’s office.) SHERLOCK: Password, password, password. (Switching on the lights in the room he sits down at the desk.) SHERLOCK: He sat here when he thought it up. (Folding his hands in front of his mouth, he slowly spins a full circle on the chair, looking around the office as he goes. Stapleton comes to the doorway.) SHERLOCK: Describe him to me. STAPLETON: You’ve seen him. SHERLOCK: But describe him. STAPLETON: Er, he’s a bloody martinet, a throw-back, the sort of man they’d have sent into Suez. SHERLOCK: Good, excellent. Old-fashioned, traditionalist; not the sort that would use his children’s names as a password. (He gestures towards the children’s drawings pinned on the board above the desk.) He loves his job; proud of it and this is work-related, so what’s at eye level? (He rapidly scans around everything in the room without altering the angle of his eyes.) SHERLOCK (gesturing to the right): Books. (Pointing to the left) Jane’s Defence Weekly – bound copies. (He looks to the right again and at the subject matter of some of the books on the bookshelf.) Hannibal; Wellington; Rommel; Churchill’s “History of the English-Speaking Peoples” – all four volumes. (He stands up and looks at a bronze bust on a shelf.) SHERLOCK: Churchill – well, he’s fond of Churchill. (He looks back to the bookcases again.) Copy of “The Downing Street Years”; one, two, three, four, five separate biographies of Thatcher. (He looks down to a framed photograph on the desk of a man in uniform standing with his teenage son.) SHERLOCK: Mid 1980s at a guess. Father and son: Barrymore senior. (Looking at the uniform of the older man) Medals: Distinguished Service Order. (He looks around to John who has come to the office door.) JOHN: That date? I’d say Falklands veteran. SHERLOCK: Right. So Thatcher’s looking a more likely bet than Churchill. (He walks out of the office and heads back towards the computer.) STAPLETON (following him): So that’s the password? SHERLOCK: No. With a man like Major Barrymore, only first name terms would do. (Leaning down to the keyboard, he starts to type Margaret Thatcher’s first name into the “Auth code” box but stops when he reaches the penultimate letter. It’s possible that the password is limited to seven letters, or he may have already realised that it’s not the correct password. He narrows his eyes and deletes everything back to the first letter, then retypes it as “Maggie”. Looking into the screen and gritting his teeth ever so slightly, he hits Enter. The computer beeps happily and announces “OVERRIDE 300/421 ACCEPTED. Loading ...” John comes over from the door to look at the screen. After a slight pause information begins to stream across the screen as everything related to Project H.O.U.N.D. becomes available. Sherlock’s concentration becomes intense while he takes it all in, focusing on certain phrases like “extreme suggestibility,” “fear and stimulus,” “conditioned terror,” “aerosol dispersal.” A photograph comes up of the project team posing happily together and he identifies the five project leaders amongst the larger group: Elaine Dyson, Mary Uslowski, Rick Nader, Jack O’Mara and Leonard Hansen. Clearing the photo from the screen he rearranges the names into another order:
Leonard Hansen Jack O‘Mara Mary Uslowski Rick Nader Elaine Dyson
Standing beside him, Doctor Stapleton finally begins to understand.) STAPLETON: HOUND. (She stares in growing horror at the screen as more information from the project appears and words and phrases are highlighted such as “Paranoia,” “Severe frontal lobe damage,” “Blood-brain,” “Gross cranial trauma,” “Dangerous acceleration,” “Multiple homicide,” accompanied by photographs of some of the subjects of the project screaming insanely.) JOHN (softly): Jesus. SHERLOCK (still scanning the information as it flows across the screen): Project HOUND: a new deliriant drug which rendered its users incredibly suggestible. They wanted to use it as an anti-personnel weapon to totally disorientate the enemy using fear and stimulus; but they shut it down and hid it away in 1986. STAPLETON: Because of what it did to the subjects they tested it on. SHERLOCK: And what they did to others. Prolonged exposure drove them insane – made them almost uncontrollably aggressive. JOHN: So someone’s been doing it again – carrying on the experiments? SHERLOCK: Attempting to refine it, perhaps, for the last twenty years. STAPLETON: Who? (John nods at the screen, indicating the names of the project leaders.) JOHN: Those names mean anything to you? STAPLETON: No, not a thing. SHERLOCK (sighing): Five principal scientists, twenty years ago. (He pulls up the photograph of the team and begins zooming in on individuals within it. The closer footage shows that they are all wearing identical sweatshirts. Looming out of a diamond pattern in the centre of the sweatshirts is a large snarling wolf’s head and the legend “H.O.U.N.D.” is printed underneath. There is some smaller text underneath but it’s not yet clear what it says. Sherlock continues to zoom in and out of the photo to look more closely at the faces.) SHERLOCK: Maybe our friend’s somewhere in the back of the picture – someone who was old enough to be there at the time of the experiments in 1986 ... (He stops when he sees a face he recognises, and rolls his eyes a little as he realises the truth.) SHERLOCK: Maybe somebody who says “cell phone” because of time spent in America. You remember, John? JOHN: Mmm-hmm. (Brief flashback to Doctor Frankland giving a card to Sherlock and saying, “Here’s my, er, cell number.”) SHERLOCK: He gave us his number in case we needed him. STAPLETON (staring at the photo on the screen): Oh my God. Bob Frankland. But Bob doesn’t even work on ... I mean, he’s a virologist. This was chemical warfare. SHERLOCK: It’s where he started, though ... and he’s never lost the certainty, the obsession that that drug really could work. Nice of him to give us his number. (He reaches into his pocket and takes out Frankland’s card.) Let’s arrange a little meeting. (He walks away from the computer. John walks closer to it and looks at the last image – a very tight close-up of one of the sweatshirts. Stitched below the “H.O.U.N.D.” legend is the name of the American town and state where the project was based: “Liberty, In”. Just then John’s phone begins to ring. He digs it out of his pocket and frowns at the number on the screen, apparently not recognising it. He answers.) JOHN: Hello? (Initially the only sound he can hear is a woman crying.) JOHN: Who’s this? MORTIMER (over the phone): You’ve got to find Henry. (John looks round to Sherlock.) JOHN: It’s Louise Mortimer. (Into phone) Louise, what’s wrong? MORTIMER (tearfully): Henry was ... was remembering; then ... he tried ... (She gasps.) MORTIMER: He’s got a gun. He went for the gun and tried to ... JOHN: What? (She breaks down in tears again.) MORTIMER: He’s gone. You’ve got to stop him. I don’t know what he might do. JOHN: Where-where are you? MORTIMER: His house. I’m okay, I’m okay. JOHN: Right: stay there. We’ll get someone to you, okay? (Lowering his phone, he begins to text.) SHERLOCK: Henry? JOHN: He’s attacked her. SHERLOCK: Gone? JOHN: Mmm. SHERLOCK (hitting a speed dial on his own phone): There’s only one place he’ll go to: back to where it all started. (Into phone) Lestrade. Get to the Hollow. ... Dewer’s Hollow, now. And bring a gun.
