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HTLA Chapter Two

(Third Person View: )

At Sherlock’s grave, John gazes down at the headstone, his eyes haunted with memories and loss. Since we last saw him he has grown a moustache. As he continues to look at the grave, which has several bunches of flowers – some of them fading with age – at the base of the headstone, a woman steps to John’s side and takes his hand. He clasps it tightly.

SERBIA. NIGHT TIME

A man with long straggly hair was running through a forest. Above him, a helicopter was circling around, shining a searchlight into the trees while the crew watched their infrared camera, radioing instructions in Serbian to the ground crew. There was much shouting and running, but eventually the soldiers surrounded the man and aimed their rifles at him. He slumped to the ground, exhausted.

Some time later, in what may have been a bunker or an interrogation center, a soldier was guarding the entrance to a room. He had earphones in his ears playing loud music. Behind the closed door, the prisoner cried out as he is struck for the umpteenth time. Hearing the noise, the soldier took one of his ear buds out just as the prisoner was struck again and groaned. The soldier put his ear bud back in and turned away.

Inside the room, the torturer shouted repeatedly at the prisoner, who was naked from the waist up and whose arms were chained to opposite walls of the small room, forcing him to stay upright. The man was slumped forward as far as he could be, exhausted by the repeated blows. In a dark corner of the room another soldier, well wrapped against the cold and with a furry hat on his head, sat with his feet up on a small table and watched as the torturer paced across the room. He spoke in Serbian at all times.

“You broke in here for a reason,” the torturer taunted. He picked up a large metal pipe and walked towards the prisoner again, whose face couldn’t be seen through the long straggly hair which was falling across it.

“Just tell us why and you can sleep. Remember sleep?” He drew back the pipe over his shoulder and prepared to strike the prisoner but the man whispered something quietly. The torturer stopped, lowering the pipe and leaning forward.

“What?” He asked in an irritated tone. He reaches down and pulled the man’s head back by the hair, leaning closer as the prisoner continued to whisper. The soldier in the corner spoke.

“Well? What did he say?” the soldier asked, speaking in Serbian. Straightening up and releasing the prisoner’s head, the torturer looked down at him in puzzlement.

“He said that I used to work in the navy, where I had an unhappy love affair,” the torturer said, sounding rather confused. The soldier asked a one-word question. The prisoner continued to whisper and the torturer relayed his words to the other man.

“...that the electricity isn’t working in my bathroom; and that my wife is sleeping with our next door neighbour!” He reached down and pulled the prisoner’s head up by the hair again, asking a one-word question. The prisoner replied briefly and the man released his head. “The coffin maker!” He exclaimed. Once again he bent down to the prisoner, demanding more. The prisoner responded in a whisper.

“...and...” the prisoner began. He continued whispering, and then the torturer dropped his head and relayed the words to the soldier.

“If I go home now, I’ll catch them at it! I knew it! I knew there was something going on!” He stormed out of the room, leaving the prisoner slumped in his chains.

“So, my friend. Now it’s just you and me,” the soldier began, speaking in Serbian still. He took his feet off the table and stood up.

“You have no idea the trouble it took to find you.” He walked  across the room to the prisoner, whose back was covered in blood and wounds from his beating. The soldier grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s hair and pulled his head up a little. Leaning close to the man’s ear, he spoke in English and in an accent that could only belong to Mycroft Holmes.