THE HIMALAYAS…
In a monastery in the mountains, a Buddhist monk lights the last of many small white candles. Close by, several monks are kneeling side by side, their heads covered by cowls and their hands raised in front of them. More monks, apparently the abbot and his accomplice, come into the large tent, their heads also hidden under a cowl, and hobbles towards them. They work their way along the row, the two running their hands quickly over each monk's head, murmuring, 'Tashi delek', and then one of them briefly clasping his hands. When the abbot's accomplice reaches the last monk in the row, he reaches towards that monk's head but pauses for a couple of seconds, then reaches towards the cowl and flips it up to reveal a blonde woman. She glares up at him.
"You bastards!" The woman yelled.
The other monks, all men, pull back their own cowls and stare in surprise at the abbot and his accomplice. They begin to raise their heads, their faces still in shadow.
LONDON….
Greg Lestrade and Doctor Anderson are sitting at a table in a corner of a pub. Greg is wearing a shirt and jacket, and Anderson has a beard and is wearing an oatmeal knitted jumper. Greg stares at Anderson in disbelief.
"A breakaway sect of Buddhist warrior monks infiltrated by a blonde drug smuggler?! That never really happened!" Lestrade said, angrily.
"A-A blonde drug smuggler who was exposed by an abbot with unusual powers of observation and deduction and his accomplice that had the knowledge of knowing who was the blonde drug smuggler!" Anderson said, happily.
"A blonde woman hiding amongst bald monks? That wouldn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes and Jared Shay!"
"Well, perhaps it did."
"They're dead." Lestrade said, while Anderson looked at him with a hurt expression on his face. "I'm sorry. I wish they weren't, but they really are dead and gone."
Anderson looks away, "Well, how d'you explain this?"
Anderson pulls a map of the world towards himself and points at a red cross drawn above New Delhi.
"Sighting number two: Incident at New Delhi." Anderson said.
Greg looks at Anderson, appalled, "You haven't been titling these?"
NEW DELHI…
Photographers are taking pictures of a police inspector sitting at a table with a couple of his colleagues either side of him. Many microphones are set up on the table in front of him. He smiles smugly at his audience.
"After that it was simply a matter of tracking down the killer, which I did by working out the depth to which the chocolate Flake had sunk into the victim's ice-cream cone." Inspector Prakesh said, chuckling contentedly as the photographers and reporters crowd closer to the table.
Shortly afterwards he leaves the room while the photographers continue trying to get one last picture. Closing the door behind him, he turns and looks at people waiting a little way down the corridor.
"My friends!" Prakesh said, looking over his shoulder as if to make sure that nobody is looking through the round glass window in the door, then turns back to the people in front of him. "Will neither of you take any of the credit? This was all down to the both of you."
He is looking at very familiar shapes, one with curly hair and wearing a greatcoat is standing facing him and the other is wearing a hoodie and jeans standing beside his friend. Their faces are obscured in shadow.
PUB…
"Clever man, Inspector Prakesh." Lestrade said, happily.
"Oh, for ...! What police inspector could have made that deduction?" Anderson asked.
"Oh, thank you!"
"You remember how Sherlock and Jared never took the credit when they solved all of your cases? All Jared did was give Sherlock hints for all of your cases and help John title said cases for his blog."
"They didn't solve all of my cases! Sherlock and Jared didn't!" Lestrade said, indignantly.
"They're out there. They're hiding." Anderson said, gazing thoughtfully into the distance. "But they can't stop themselves from getting involved." He chuckles. "It's so obviously them, if you know how to spot the signs!"
"The Klein Brothers, the Tower House thing, the Kensington Ripper – I solved all those myself!"
"Well, you got Tower House wrong."
"No I didn't!" Lestrade said, annoyed.
"Yep, you did." Anderson said, folding the map to another location. "Okay, sighting number three …" He taps Hamburg on the map. "... the Mysterious Jurors."
Greg literally head-desks, leaning forward and thumping his forehead down onto the table.
HAMBURG….
In a jury room, the male foreman rubs his head tiredly before addressing the rest of the jury in German.
"Nun, wie wir alle wissen, wurde diese Jury unter höchst ungewöhnlichen Umständen zusammengerufen. Aber ich muss Sie jetzt auf ein Urteil drängen. Ist Herr Trephoff schuldig oder nicht schuldig am Mord seiner Frau?" The foreman asked.
One of the jurors closed his eyes as the translation was being told to him in his head as 'As we all know this jury was convened under highly unusual circumstances, but now I must press you for a judgment. Is Herr Trepoff guilty or not guilty of the murder of his wife?'
One by one, the jurors answer in German.
"Nicht schuldig." Female juror 1 said.
'Not guilty.'
At the end of the table, the fingers of a male juror wearing a shirt and dark coat drum impatiently on the table. The other male juror wearing a tweed jacket and bow tie is eating jammie dodgers and drinking a cup of tea.
"Nicht schuldig." Female juror 2 said.
"Nicht schuldig." Male juror 1 said.
One of the juror's fingers continues to drum and the other is still snacking on his jammie dodgers …
"Nicht schuldig." Male juror 2 said.
... and drum from one of the jurors and jammie dodgers are being eaten by the other juror…
"Nicht schuldig." Female juror 3 said.
"Nicht schuldig." Male juror 3 said.
"Nicht schuldig." Male juror 4 said.
... and drum from one of the jurors and more jammie dodgers are being snacked upon by the other juror …
"Nicht schuldig." Female juror 4 said.
"Nicht schuldig." Male juror 5 said.
"Nicht schuldig." Female juror 5 said.
... and drum from one of the jurors and the other finished eating the jammie dodgers... and then stop above the table. The foreman sighs wearily and looks at the last two jurors.
"Nun?" The foreman asked, in an exasperated voice.
'Well?'
He looks at the two jurors as one of them has dark curly hair and is wearing a dark greatcoat with the collar popped and the other is wearing a tweed jacket and bow tie.
Some time later, a man walks across a concourse towards to a display of newspapers. The 'CAM Global News' front page headline reads 'Trepoff 'Guilty' Sensation!' while a German newspaper beside it reads 'TREPOFF SCHULDIG!' [Trepoff guilty!]
PUB…
"It had to be them! There's no-one else it can be! Do you not see?" Anderson asked.
"I see that you lost a good job fantasising about dead men coming back to life, and I know why you want that to happen." Lestrade said, grimacing. "But it's never gonna." Anderson shakes his head. "Okay…" He finishes his pint. "... I'm gonna go and see an old friend." He picks up his coat and looks across to Anderson. "You take care, okay?" Lestrade stands and picks up a white box from a nearby stool, then looks down at his former colleague sympathetically. "I'll put a word in – see if they won't review your case."
"Just look at the map, though." Anderson said, as there is an imaginary dotted line that works its way from New Delhi to Hamburg and then on to Amsterdam, and then Brussels. "They're getting closer." He looks up at Greg. "It's like they're coming back. And there were other sightings of Jared in Cardiff, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Shanghai back in 2011 and that was after his fall with Sherlock."
Greg looks thoughtful for a minute, then nods politely to Anderson and leaves the pub.
JOHN WATSON'S HOME…
John walks across the living room of his flat or house and puts the white box down on top of a filing cabinet. He turns and smiles at Greg.
"It's good to see you, Greg." John said, happily.
"And you." Lestrade said, shaking hands with John.
"Have a seat."
"So, how've you been?" Lestrade asked, sitting down in an armchair.
"Er, yeah, good. Yeah. Much better." John said, sitting down on the sofa.
Greg nods.
John points towards the box, "Er, so what's in the, er ...?"
"Oh, that, yeah. That's, er, that's some stuff from my office – some stuff of Sherlock's and Jared's, actually. I probably should have thrown it out, but I didn't know if …" Lestrade said, looking awkwardly at John.
"No, fine, yeah." John said, smiling at Greg, who stands up and walks over to the box, smiling.
"Yeah, there's-there's-there's something here. Um, wasn't sure whether I should have kept it in." Lestrade said, taking off the lid.
Inside the box are a pink iPhone – perhaps the pink phone – together with a box of nicotine patches, a small sheet of paper with some writing on it, a toy train engine, a yellow mask of a face, a Nintendo Switch, a pair of AirPod Pros, a vortex manipulator, a sonic screwdriver, an iPhone charger, and a DVD in a case.
Lestrade takes out the DVD.
"You remember the video message they made for your birthday?" Lestrade asked, and John nods. "Oh, Jared had to practically threaten Sherlock to be in front of the camera." John smiles a little. "And Jared gave me the uncut version. It's quite funny."
Smiling, Greg hands the DVD to John.
"Oh, right." John said, taking the DVD and looks at it.
"Maybe I shouldn't have brought it." Lestrade said.
"Don't worry. It's okay. Probably won't even watch it."
They smile awkwardly at each other, then John looks down at the DVD again.
LATER…
Greg has gone. John is sitting in the armchair pouring himself a glass of whisky. Screwing the lid back onto the bottle, he stands up and puts it into a nearby cupboard, then sits down again, picks up the glass and takes a drink. Gazing at the DVD on the table in front of him for a while, he eventually picks it up, looks thoughtfully across to the TV, then gets up and walks across the room to put the disc into the player. It loads and he walks back to get his glass. On the TV screen is the very familiar sight of the sofa in 221B Baker Street, with the smiley face sprayed on the wall behind it. John sits down on the sofa opposite the TV and takes another drink.
"Was that supposed to happen – the light going down? Yeah, okay." Sherlock said, on screen, pacing across the living room in front of the sofa. "Oh, er, mmm. So, what do I, what do I, what d'you want me to do at the end?" He stops and looks at Jared who is presumably behind the camera. "Shall I, um ...? Smile and wink. I do that sometimes. I've no idea why. People seem to like it – humanises me."
Sherlock turns away.
"Yeah. You can do that." Jared said, behind the camera.
"Why am I doing this, again?" Sherlock asked, turning back around.
"Sherlock, we're gonna miss the birthday dinner."
"Of course we're gonna miss dinner. There'll be people." Sherlock said, starting to turn away, then turns back. "How can John be having a birthday dinner? All his friends hate him."
"Not really. We like him." Jared said, behind the camera.
John smiles very briefly.
"That is true, Jared. But the rest of John's friends hate him. You only have to look at their faces. I wrote an essay on suppressed hatred in close proximity based entirely on his friends." Sherlock said, on screen.
John smiles again. Sherlock looks away thoughtfully.
"On reflection, it probably wasn't a very good choice of gift." Sherlock said, pulling himself together and looks into the camera for a moment before looking past it to Jared. "What was our excuse again?"
"Sherlock, you said we had a thing to do." Jared said, behind the camera.
"Ah, right, yes! That's right. A thing." Sherlock said, on screen.
"You might want to give more details on the thing."
"No, no, no. Only lies have detail."
John closes his eyes and shakes his head minutely. Sherlock stares intensely into the camera for a couple of seconds.
"Right, I just ... I need a moment to, um, figure out what we're going to do." Sherlock said, walking offscreen towards the window.
John looks down at his glass.
"I can tell you what the both of you can do. You two can stop being dead." John said, drinking.
"Okay." Sherlock said, momentarily back in front of the camera and looking straight into it while he said that. John looks at the screen, startled, but Sherlock has already walked away again. "Okay, I'm ready now."
Sherlock sits down in his armchair, settles into it, then looks into the camera.
"Hallo, John." Sherlock said, smiling. "We're sorry we're not there at the moment. We're very busy. However, many happy returns."
John looks at the screen, his face hard to read.
"Oh yeah. John. There's no need to worry. Everything's fine. We're fine. Sherlock and I are going to be with you again very soon." Jared said, coming into the camera view.
John's doorbell rings. He looks round, then sits forward, putting his glass on the table and pressing the Pause button on the remote control. The picture freezes on Sherlock and Jared looking intensely into the camera. John stands up and walks out of the room.
Pub…
"They're coming back." Anderson said, looking up and smiles to himself, then laughs quietly and looks down at the map, chuckling with delight.
London…
Greg is walking along a road, intermittently looking down at his phone, but then stops and stares at a man with a white beard standing nearby. The man is reading a copy of the Daily Express and the back page of the newspaper is facing towards Greg. It shows three footballers in the middle of a match, and the headline reads, 'THE GAME IS BACK ON!' Greg stares at the headline for a few seconds, then smiles cynically and walks into a nearby shop.
John's living room…
The Pause button shifts to Play on its own. Sherlock smiles widely into the camera and winks and Jared smiles and laughs widely into the camera.