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 and finally stops and slides one of the doors open.
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.
