ST ALDATE’S SCHOOL. Greg’s car drives into the grounds of the boarding school and pulls up outside the front entrance. Two police cars are already there and a woman is standing in front of one of them, leaning against the bonnet wearing a shock blanket around her shoulders and crying while a uniformed female police officer talks reassuringly to her. A man, probably a plain clothed police officer, is also talking to her but walks away as Greg, Sally and the boys get out of the car and approach. The woman blows her nose on her handkerchief. FEMALE POLICE OFFICER (comfortingly): It’s all right. LESTRADE (quietly to Sherlock): Miss Mackenzie, House Mistress. Go easy. (He stays back and lets Sherlock walk over to the woman on his own.) SHERLOCK: Miss Mackenzie, you’re in charge of pupil welfare, yet you left this place wide open last night. (His voice rises angrily.) What are you: an idiot, a drunk or a criminal? (He grabs the blanket and abruptly pulls it from around her shoulders. She gasps in fear as he glares furiously at her.) SHERLOCK (loudly): Now quickly, tell me! MISS MACKENZIE (tearfully and cringing in terror): All the doors and windows were properly bolted. No-one – not even me – went into their room last night. You have to believe me! (Sherlock’s demeanour instantly changes and he smiles reassuringly and gently takes hold of her shoulders.) SHERLOCK: I do. I just wanted you to speak quickly. (He looks at the nearby police officers as he turns and walks away.) SHERLOCK: Miss Mackenzie will need to breathe into a bag now. (She sobs in distress and the female police officer hurries over to comfort her. Shortly afterwards, inside the school, Sherlock leads the others into one of the dormitories.) JOHN: Six grand a term, you’d expect them to keep the kids safe for you. You said the other kids had all left on their holidays? (Sherlock has already looked in a cupboard beside one of the beds and now drops to his knees and peers under the bed.) LESTRADE: They were the only two sleeping on this floor. Absolutely no sign of a break-in. (Sherlock picks up a lacrosse stick lying on the floor and gets to his feet while looking at the stick closely. He briefly wields it as if using it as a weapon but then apparently decides it wasn’t used in that way and drops it to the floor.) LESTRADE: The intruder must have been hidden inside some place. (Sherlock goes over to a wooden trunk and opens the lid. Amongst the other items inside the trunk he finds a large brown envelope with a wax seal on the back which has already been broken as if someone has opened the envelope. Inside is a large hardback book. Carefully checking the envelope first, he then takes out the book and flips it over to look at the cover. The book is “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” He looks along the edges of the book and then riffles the pages quickly. Finding nothing of interest, he looks up.) SHERLOCK: Show me where the brother slept. (He is taken to another smaller dormitory and looks around, going to stand beside the only bed in the room which still has bedding on it. The bed is opposite the door, which has a frosted glass pane in it. He looks towards the door while gesturing down to the bed.) SHERLOCK: The boy sleeps there every night, gazing at the only light source outside in the corridor. He’d recognise every shape, every outline, the silhouette of everyone who came to the door. LESTRADE: Okay, so ... SHERLOCK: So someone approaches the door who he doesn’t recognise, an intruder. Maybe he can even see the outline of a weapon. (Leaving the other three inside the room, he goes outside the door and pulls it almost closed, then raises his hand and points his fingers as if they’re a gun, showing the others how it would be seen through the frosted glass. He pushes the door open and comes back into the room.) SHERLOCK: What would he do in the precious few seconds before they came into the room? How would he use them if not to cry out? (He walks around the bed, looking at the boy’s possessions.) SHERLOCK: This little boy; this particular little boy ... (he looks at the bedside table and points towards it) ... who reads all of those spy books. What would he do? JOHN: He’d leave a sign? (Sherlock starts sniffing noisily. He picks up a cricket bat leaning against the nearby cupboard and sniffs along both sides of it. Putting the bat down again he squats and sniffs around the bedside table, then reaches under the bed and picks up an almost empty glass bottle of linseed oil. He looks up.) SHERLOCK (sternly): Get Anderson.
Not long afterwards the room has been darkened as much as possible by closing the wooden shutters over the windows. Sherlock shines an ultraviolet light onto the wall beside the boy’s bed where the words “HELP US” have been written on the wall, only now visible in the light. SHERLOCK: Linseed oil. ANDERSON: Not much use. Doesn’t lead us to the kidnapper. SHERLOCK: Brilliant, Anderson. ANDERSON: Really? SHERLOCK: Yes. Brilliant impression of an idiot. (He points downwards, shining the light close to the wooden floorboards.) SHERLOCK: The floor. (There are several sets of illuminated footprints of varying sizes leading towards the door. Sherlock slowly follows them.) JOHN: He made a trail for us! SHERLOCK: The boy was made to walk ahead of them. JOHN (looking at the shape of some of the smaller footprints): On, what, tiptoe? SHERLOCK: Indicates anxiety; a gun held to his head. (He walks slowly out into the corridor, which has also been blacked out, and follows the footsteps. Anderson walks beside him with another ultraviolet light.) SHERLOCK: The girl was pulled beside him, dragged sideways. He had his left arm cradled about her neck. (A few yards along the corridor the glowing footsteps stop.) ANDERSON: That’s the end of it. We don’t know where they went from here. (Sherlock stops. Anderson turns back to him.) ANDERSON: Tells us nothing after all. SHERLOCK: You’re right, Anderson – nothing. (He pauses for a moment, then takes a breath.) SHERLOCK (quick fire): Except his shoe size, his height, his gait, his walking pace. (He reaches to the closest window and tears down the blackout material that had been stuck across it. Daylight floods back into the corridor. Putting the light onto the window sill, he kneels down and takes his wallet of tools and a small lidded plastic Petri dish from his inside pocket. While the police go back towards the bedroom, he puts the dish on the floor, opens the wallet and chuckles contentedly. John squats down beside him.) JOHN: Having fun? SHERLOCK: Starting to. JOHN: Maybe don’t do the smiling. (Sherlock lifts his head.) JOHN: Kidnapped children? (Sherlock lowers his head again and concentrates on scraping some of the dried linseed oil and floor wax loose with a small scalpel and then using tweezers to pick up the loosened pieces and put them into the container.)
LONDON. Sherlock and John are in a taxi. JOHN: But how did he get past the CCTV? If all the doors were locked ... SHERLOCK: He walked in when they weren’t locked. JOHN: But a stranger can’t just walk into a school like that. SHERLOCK: Anyone can walk in anywhere if they pick the right moment. Yesterday – end of term, parents milling around, chauffeurs, staff. What’s one more stranger among that lot? (A flashback shows one of the school children outside the entrance being embraced by her mother. Other adults and children are all around, and one man walks alone up the steps towards the door.) SHERLOCK: He was waiting for them. All he had to do was find a place to hide.
ST BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL. Molly Hooper walks along a corridor, pulling her coat on. Just as she reaches the fire doors at the end of the corridor, Sherlock and John walk through them. SHERLOCK: Molly! MOLLY: Oh, hello. I’m just going out. SHERLOCK (putting his hands onto her shoulders and turning her back the way she just came): No you’re not. MOLLY: I’ve got a lunch date. SHERLOCK (putting a hand on her back to start her walking again): Cancel it. You’re having lunch with me. (Reaching into his coat pockets, he dramatically produces a bag of Quavers crisps from each pocket.) MOLLY: What? SHERLOCK (putting the crisps back into his pockets): Need your help. It’s one of your old boyfriends – we’re trying to track him down. He’s been a bit naughty! (Reaching the fire doors at the other end of the corridor, he turns and smiles back at Molly, who has stopped dead a few paces back. John also stops and stares at him.) JOHN: It’s Moriarty? SHERLOCK: Course it’s Moriarty. MOLLY: Er, Jim actually wasn’t even my boyfriend. We went out three times. I ended it. SHERLOCK: Yes, and then he stole the Crown Jewels, broke into the Bank of England and organised a prison break at Pentonville. For the sake of law and order, I suggest you avoid all future attempts at a relationship, Molly. (Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out and brandishes a bag of Quavers at her again, then continues on through the fire door. She stares after him in utter bewilderment.)
Shortly afterwards, wearing her lab coat, she pushes her way through the door into Sherlock’s favourite lab weighed down by the huge pile of books and files she is carrying. As she staggers into the room, Sherlock is sitting at the bench in front of a microscope. John is standing at the other side of the bench. SHERLOCK: Oil, John. (He opens the plastic Petri dish and takes out one of the samples with tweezers.) SHERLOCK: The oil in the kidnapper’s footprint – it’ll lead us to Moriarty. (He drops the sample into a test tube which has some liquid in the bottom. The fluid begins to fizz. He suctions up some of the liquid and drops it onto a slide.) SHERLOCK: All the chemical traces on his shoe have been preserved. The sole of the shoe is like a passport. If we’re lucky we can see everything that he’s been up to. (He looks at the slide under the microscope. Time passes and we see brief extracts of the work which he and Molly are doing. She puts on latex gloves.) SHERLOCK: I need that analysis. (Molly squeezes some liquid into a glass dish and applies some Litmus paper to it. The paper turns blue.) MOLLY: Alkaline. SHERLOCK: Thank you, John. MOLLY: Molly. SHERLOCK: Yes. (She turns away unhappily. Sherlock has found the first component in the mixture of items and makes a note of it:
1. Chalk
He takes another sample and dissolves it. The results reveal another item:
2. Asphalt
Dissolving another sample into a dish:
3. Brick Dust
And another sample dissolved and heated over a Bunsen burner:
4. Vegetation
Later, he has another sample on a slide and is looking at it in the microscope. He quietly murmurs to himself.) SHERLOCK (softly): I ... owe ... you. (He turns his head and looks at a nearby computer screen.) SHERLOCK: Glycerol molecule. (He sighs heavily as he struggles to identify the item, seeing it in his head as:
5. ?????
SHERLOCK: What are you? (He looks into the microscope again as Molly stands beside him typing onto a laptop.) MOLLY: What did you mean, “I owe you”? (John walks across the lab on the other side of the bench. Sherlock raises his eyes from the microscope and watches him crossing the room.) MOLLY: You said, “I owe you.” You were muttering it while you were working. SHERLOCK (looking into the ’scope again): Nothing. Mental note. (Molly looks at him.) MOLLY: You’re a bit like my dad. He’s dead. (She closes her eyes, embarrassed.) MOLLY: No, sorry. SHERLOCK: Molly, please don’t feel the need to make conversation. It’s really not your area. (Molly cringes but continues.) MOLLY: When he was ... dying, he was always cheerful; he was lovely – except when he thought no-one could see. I saw him once. He looked sad. SHERLOCK (sternly): Molly ... MOLLY: You look sad ... (she glances towards John) ... when you think he can’t see you. (Sherlock’s eyes lift from the microscope and drift towards John who is looking through papers on the other side of the lab some distance away, unaware of the conversation. Sherlock turns his head and looks at Molly.) MOLLY: Are you okay? (He opens his mouth but she interrupts before he can speak.) MOLLY: And don’t just say you are, because I know what that means, looking sad when you think no-one can see you. SHERLOCK: But you can see me. MOLLY: I don’t count. (Sherlock blinks and really looks at her, possibly for the first time since he has known her.) MOLLY: What I’m trying to say is that, if there’s anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me. (She flinches and looks away briefly.) MOLLY: No, I just mean ... I mean if there’s anything you need ... (She shakes her head.) MOLLY: It’s fine. (She turns away. Sherlock looks shaken.) SHERLOCK: What-what-what could I need from you? MOLLY (turning back to him): Nothing. (She shrugs.) I dunno. You could probably say thank you, actually. (She nods nervously but firmly. The side of Sherlock’s mouth twitches as if it doesn’t know how to say the words.) SHERLOCK (hesitantly): ... Thank you. (He frowns and turns his head away as if surprised that he has said it. Molly starts to walk towards the door.) MOLLY: I’m just gonna go and get some crisps. Do you want anything? (He starts to open his mouth but she turns back and beats him to it.) MOLLY: It’s okay, I know you don’t. SHERLOCK: Well, actually, maybe I’ll ... MOLLY: I know you don’t. (She turns and walks away, leaving the room. He watches her go, then gazes into the distance thoughtfully for a moment before looking back to his microscope. On the other side of the lab, ignorant of the conversation that has just taken place, John is looking through police photographs taken at the school. He finds one of the inside of the wooden trunk which shows the envelope with the wax seal, and another with a close-up of the seal.) JOHN: Sherlock. SHERLOCK: Hmm? JOHN: This envelope that was in her trunk. There’s another one. (He walks over to where he has put his jacket.) SHERLOCK: What? JOHN: On our doorstep. Found it today. (He gets the envelope out of his pocket and looks at it.) JOHN: Yes, and look at that. (He brings the envelope round the bench and gives it to Sherlock.) JOHN: Look at that. Exactly the same seal. (Sherlock reaches into the envelope and takes out some of the brown dust which we now see more clearly.) SHERLOCK: Breadcrumbs. JOHN: Uh-huh. It was there when I got back. SHERLOCK: A little trace of breadcrumbs; hardback copy of fairy tales. (His eyes widen.) SHERLOCK: Two children led into the forest by a wicked father follow a little trail of breadcrumbs. JOHN: That’s “Hansel and Gretel.” What sort of kidnapper leaves clues? SHERLOCK: The sort that likes to boast; the sort that thinks it’s all a game. He sat in our flat and he said these exact words to me ... (Jim’s voice overlays Sherlock’s as he relates the words.) SHERLOCK/JIM: All fairytales need a good old-fashioned villain. [Don’t go back and check – that’s not the ‘exact words’ that Jim said. He said “Every fairytale needs a good old-fashioned villain.” Please excuse your transcriber for a moment while she goes and slaps the scriptwriter ...] (Sherlock puts down the envelope and adjusts his microscope before starting to look into it again.) SHERLOCK: The fifth substance: it’s part of the tale. (He looks up again.) SHERLOCK: The witch’s house. JOHN: What? (In repeated cut-aways during the next few lines, the two kidnapped children are kneeling on a concrete floor somewhere, rapidly peeling the wrappers from sweets and eating them.) SHERLOCK: The glycerol molecule. (The final element in the sample becomes clear to him:
5. PGPR
SHERLOCK: PGPR! JOHN: What’s that? SHERLOCK (leaping to his feet): It’s used in making chocolate. (He hurries out of the lab while, in the cut-away, the children continue to scoff the sweets on the floor. The camera pulls back to show that they are in what looks like an abandoned factory or warehouse.)
SCOTLAND YARD. Greg hands a sheet of paper to Sherlock as he leads him and John into the department’s main office. LESTRADE: This fax arrived an hour ago. (There is a large handwritten note on the paper saying:
HURRY UP THEY’RE DYING!
Sherlock hands the note to John.) LESTRADE: What have you got for us? SHERLOCK: Need to find a place in the city where all five of these things intersect. (He hands a piece of paper to Greg, who reads it aloud.) LESTRADE: Chalk, asphalt, brick dust, vegetation ... What the hell is this? Chocolate? SHERLOCK: I think we’re looking for a disused sweet factory. LESTRADE: We need to narrow that down. A sweet factory with asphalt? SHERLOCK: No. No-no-no. Too general. Need something more specific. Chalk; chalky clay – that’s a far thinner band of geology. (He calls up a map of London in his head, overlaying it with the names of the towns, then begins zooming in and out of various areas.) LESTRADE: Brick dust? SHERLOCK: Building site. Bricks from the 1950s. LESTRADE (rubbing his face in despair): There’s thousands of building sites in London. (Sherlock looks exasperated at the distraction.) SHERLOCK: I’ve got people out looking. LESTRADE: So have I. SHERLOCK: Homeless network – faster than the police. (He smiles snidely.) Far more relaxed about taking bribes. (Sitting at a nearby desk, Anderson looks up and rolls his eyes. Sherlock’s phone trills a text alert, followed by several more alerts. He brandishes his phone triumphantly at Greg while the messages continue to pour in. Smiling smugly, he lifts the phone up high and calls up his mental London map in front of him, flicking his eyes across to the phone to look at each photograph and then transfer it to the map. One of the photos, a close-up shot of some purple flowers, attracts his particular attention.) SHERLOCK: John. (He holds the phone out to show him the picture.) SHERLOCK: Rhododendron ponticum. It matches. (He goes back to the mental map and scans around it to the only places in London where such a plant grows, then finds the one place which contains the other elements as well.) SHERLOCK: Addlestone. LESTRADE: What? SHERLOCK: There’s a mile of disused factories between the river and the park. It matches everything. (He turns and hurries out of the office with John in hot pursuit. Greg turns to his team.) LESTRADE: Right, come on. (Sally hesitates.) LESTRADE: Come on! (She jumps up and hurries after him.)
ADDLESTONE. Several police cars race to a disused factory and the police officers, together with Sherlock and John, run inside the dark building. Everyone switches on flashlights and Sally coordinates the police as they start to search in all directions. DONOVAN: You, look over there. Look everywhere. Okay, spread out, please. Spread out. (Greg leads another team, including Sherlock and John, into another part of the factory. Greg directs his officers.) LESTRADE (softly): Look in there. Quietly. Quietly. (As they make their way deeper into the factory, Sherlock finds a large number of empty sweet wrappers scattered on the floor around a candle on a plate. Sherlock touches the wick of the candle.) SHERLOCK: This was alight moments ago. (He calls out loudly.) SHERLOCK: They’re still here. (The search continues all around.) SHERLOCK: Sweet wrappers. What’s he been feeding you? (He picks up one of the wrappers and looks at it more closely.) SHERLOCK: Hansel and Gretel. (He holds the wrapper closer to the beam of his flashlight and sniffs the paper before touching the tip of his tongue to it and grimacing. He looks at the wrapper in startled realisation of what he has just tasted.) SHERLOCK: Mercury. LESTRADE: What? SHERLOCK: The papers: they’re painted with mercury. (John groans.) SHERLOCK: Lethal. The more of the stuff they ate ... JOHN: It was killing them. SHERLOCK: But it’s not enough to kill them on its own. Taken in large enough quantities, eventually it would kill them. (The police continue searching the building but Sherlock is now locked onto his thoughts about Moriarty.) SHERLOCK: He didn’t need to be there for the execution. Murder by remote control. He could be a thousand miles away. (Nearby, Sally sees something in the light of her torch. She moves closer and sees a little girl sitting on the ground with her brother’s head in her lap. His eyes are closed. The girl looks around at Sally.) SHERLOCK (softly, to himself): The hungrier they got, the more they ate ... the faster they died. (He grins.) SHERLOCK: Neat. JOHN (reprovingly): Sherlock. DONOVAN (calling out): Over here! (Everyone runs in the direction of her voice. Sally and other officers reach down to the children.) DONOVAN: I’ve got you. Don’t worry.
SCOTLAND YARD. Sherlock is pacing outside an office while John sits nearby. The door to the office opens and Sally and Greg come out. DONOVAN (sarcastically to Sherlock): Right, then. The professionals have finished. If the amateurs wanna go in and have their turn ... (John stands up and walks over to the others. Greg looks seriously at Sherlock.) LESTRADE: Now, remember, she’s in shock and she’s just seven years old, so anything you can do to ... SHERLOCK: ... not be myself. LESTRADE: Yeah. Might be helpful. (Sherlock looks round to John and, doing everything but roll his eyes, reaches up and unpops the collar of his coat, folding it down flat before leading John and the others into the office. The little girl is sitting at a table looking down into her lap. A female liaison officer is sitting beside her stroking her arm reassuringly.) SHERLOCK: Claudette, I ... (He gets no further because the girl lifts her head, takes one look at him and begins to scream in terror.) SHERLOCK: No-no, I know it’s been hard for you ... (She continues screaming and scrambles to get away while pointing at him.) SHERLOCK: Claudette, listen to me ... LESTRADE: Out. Get out! (Grabbing his arm, he bundles Sherlock out of the room as the girl’s screams continue.)
Shortly afterwards, Sherlock is standing at the window of another office looking out into the night through the slats of the Venetian blinds. Sally stands at the other side of the office watching him thoughtfully. JOHN: Makes no sense. LESTRADE: The kid’s traumatised. Something about Sherlock reminds her of the kidnapper. JOHN: So what’s she said? DONOVAN: Hasn’t uttered another syllable. JOHN: And the boy? LESTRADE: No, he’s unconscious; still in intensive care. (In the building opposite Scotland Yard, all the lights in the offices come on. On the second floor, spray paint has been applied to three of the office windows. Sherlock stares at the enormous letters that have been painted:
I O U
Seconds later, the lights on that floor go out again. Behind Sherlock, the others are unaware of what he has just seen, their view blocked by the blinds.) LESTRADE: Well, don’t let it get to you. I always feel like screaming when you walk into a room! In fact, so do most people. (He looks round to Sally and John.) LESTRADE: Come on. (He and John leave the room. Sally stays behind as Sherlock turns away from the window and walks towards the door.) DONOVAN: Brilliant work you did, finding those kids from just a footprint. It’s really amazing. SHERLOCK: Thank you. DONOVAN (pointedly): Unbelievable. (Sherlock hesitates momentarily, then continues on. She watches him go with a thoughtful expression. Outside shortly afterwards, John waits for Sherlock to join him and then looks down the street.) JOHN: Ah. (He raises his hand to hail the approaching taxi. As the boys walk to the edge of the kerb, John looks round to Sherlock.) JOHN: You okay? SHERLOCK: Thinking. (The taxi pulls up at the kerb.) SHERLOCK: This is my cab. You get the next one. JOHN: Why? SHERLOCK: You might talk. (He gets in and closes the door and the taxi pulls away. John stares after him in disbelief, then sighs.)
Back inside Scotland Yard, Sally is in a large office and has scattered all the police photographs and other evidence over a long table. She stands looking down at everything thoughtfully. Greg walks along the corridor outside and notices her. He stops and looks into the room as Sally mentally plays back earlier moments. LESTRADE: What the hell is this? Chocolate? SHERLOCK: I think we’re looking for a disused sweet factory. (Claudette screams in terror.) LESTRADE: Get out! (Now Greg comes into the room and walks over to Sally as Claudette’s screams fade from her mind.) LESTRADE: Problem? (She looks around at him, then down at the evidence again.)
TAXI. Sherlock sits in the back lost in thought. Partway into the journey, the TV screen on the back of the driver’s seat switches on and an advertisement starts to play. London Taxi Shopping is advertising jewellery. VOICEOVER: This is a stunning evening wear set from us here at London Taxi Shopping. SHERLOCK (to the driver): Can you turn this off, please? (The driver doesn’t respond and the advert continues.) VOICEOVER: As you can see, the set comprises of a beautiful ... SHERLOCK (louder, angrily): Can you turn this off ... (The image on the screen begins to fritz as if another channel is breaking through. There are momentary glimpses of someone who can only be Jim Moriarty grinning at the screen. Eventually the advert disappears and Jim is seen smiling cheerfully. Behind him is a pale blue wall with painted white fluffy clouds floating across it. Jim’s voice takes on a sing-song quality as if he is talking to children.) JIM: Hullo. Are you ready for the story? This is the story of Sir Boast-a-lot. (Sherlock stares at the screen, his face intense.)
SCOTLAND YARD. Sally is showing Greg one of the photographs. DONOVAN: The footprint. It’s all he has. A footprint. LESTRADE: Yeah, well, you know what he’s like – CSI Baker Street. DONOVAN: Well, our boys couldn’t have done it. LESTRADE: Well, that’s why we need him. He’s better. DONOVAN: That’s one explanation. LESTRADE: And what’s the other?
TAXI. Jim’s image continues to smile from the TV screen. JIM: Sir Boast-a-lot was the bravest and cleverest knight at the Round Table, but soon the other knights began to grow tired of his stories about how brave he was and how many dragons he’d slain ... (Behind him, the pale blue sky gets darker and the white clouds become grey and threatening.) JIM: And soon they began to wonder ... (Behind him, rain begins to pour from the clouds.) JIM: ... ‘Are Sir Boast-a-lot’s stories even true?’
SCOTLAND YARD (offscreen). DONOVAN (voiceover): Only he could have found that evidence.
TAXI TV SCREEN. Jim sadly shakes his head. JIM: Oh, no.
SCOTLAND YARD. DONOVAN: And then the girl screams her head off when she sees him – a man she has never seen before ... unless she had seen him before. LESTRADE: Wh-what’s your point? DONOVAN: You know what my point is. You just don’t wanna think about it. JIM (on the taxi TV screen): So one of the knights went to King Arthur and said ... (in a dramatic whisper) ... ‘I don’t believe Sir Boast-a-lot’s stories. He’s just a big old liar who makes things up to make himself look good.’ (At Scotland Yard, Anderson has now come in and he and Sally stand opposite Greg’s desk as he sits talking with them.) LESTRADE: You’re not seriously suggesting he’s involved, are you? ANDERSON: I think we have to entertain the possibility. (Greg stares at him, bewildered.) JIM (on the TV screen): And then even the King began to wonder ... (He frowns, raising a finger to his mouth and gazing off to the side with a thoughtful look on his face. At Scotland Yard, Greg sinks his face into his hand as he is forced to consider what his officers are telling him. On the taxi TV screen, Jim frowns thoughtfully while cartoon lightning bolts shoot out of the clouds behind him.) JIM (shaking his head repeatedly): But that wasn’t the end of Sir Boast-a-lot’s problem. No. (He looks down for a moment, then raises his eyes to the camera again.) JIM: That wasn’t the final problem. (Sherlock bares his teeth at the screen as the camera pulls back to show Jim sitting with a storybook held in his hands. He looks up at the camera and finishes in an even more sing-song voice.) JIM: The End. (Behind him, a red velvet curtain drops down as if covering a theatre stage. The shot changes to an extreme close-up of Jim grinning hugely and showing his teeth, then the screen fritzes a few times and eventually returns to the jewellery advert.) SHERLOCK: Stop the cab! Stop the cab! (The taxi begins to pull up to the kerb.) SHERLOCK: What was that? (He jumps out of the right-hand door and runs forward to the driver’s door.) SHERLOCK: What was that? (The cabbie, wearing a cloth cap very reminiscent of the one worn by the cabbie in “A Study in Pink,” turns his head towards Sherlock and reveals that he is Jim Moriarty, who adopts a London accent as he speaks.) JIM: No charge. (He immediately accelerates away as Sherlock tries to grab hold of the door and pull the cab back. Forced to let go, he chases after the taxi but it soon speeds away. He stops in the middle of the road, glaring after it and unaware that another car is speeding along behind him. As it sounds its horn in warning, a man hurries off the pavement, grabs him and pulls him out of danger.) MAN: Look out! (Not yet fully realising what the man is doing, Sherlock strikes out at him but then stops as the car roars past and he realises what has happened. He stands with the man at arm’s length, breathing heavily while the man looks warily at him. Those of us who have been paying attention – or who just rewound the recording to check – realise that this is Sulejmani, the Albanian assassin who lives on Baker Street.) SHERLOCK (catching his breath): Thank you. (He holds out his hand for the man to shake. Sulejmani somewhat reluctantly takes it and we soon realise why he wasn’t keen when three bullets are fired into him in quick succession from somewhere behind Sherlock. Sulejmani slumps to the ground and Sherlock spins around, trying to find the source of the gunfire. Just then another black cab comes around the corner and pulls up a short distance away. John jumps out and hurries towards him.) JOHN: Sherlock!
