The other 'Sherlock' thing

So now we know how the death fakery was achieved, it's time to address the other 'Sherlock' thing i.e:

What the heck was all that about?

Or, to put it another way: what was actually going on in the 'Reichenbach Fall' episode of the BBC's 'Sherlock'? Well, as the saying goes - "if you don't want to know the score, look away now". Of course, if it turns out that I have nailed it, it will be down to Sheer luck. But don't say you weren't warned.

So. Was there really a 'key' and, if so, what was it?

If you believe Holmes, there was a key. And if you believe Moriarty, there wasn't, it was all a bluff. So who was right? Well, both of them. There was a key and it did merely amount to a few lines of code. But it's not so much about the key as the lock it opened.

So what was the clue to the key? When Moriarty visits Holmes after his acquittal, he taps out a rhythm on his knee which Holmes later identifies as a motif from Bach's First Partita for violin. But that's not the clue. It's the apple.

When Moriarty first enters the flat he picks up an apple from the bowl, sits down and begins carving into it. After he leaves, Holmes picks up the apple and discovers that Moriarty has neatly carved the letters IOU into it. Well, I say neatly, but he appears to have made rather a mess of the 'O', taking out the entire centre of the letter.

So. It's about an apple. It's about a key. And it's about power. Despite what Holmes said, it's definitely about Moriarty's quest for power over Holmes. He might not need it, but that doesn't stop him wanting it.

It's about an apple. It's about power. And it's about a key.

Apple... power... key...

And there it is. The power key from an Apple computer: IOU carved into an Apple.  There's the I in the middle. The U is formed by the broken circle and the O can be taken either as the outer ring, or the completion of the broken inner circle. This photo of iPhone power key wallpaper illustrates it more clearly, perhaps:

... but I included the first photo as it shows the way that the motif is 'carved' into the power key on an Apple computer. Also, recall that Moriarty took the centre out of the 'O' when he carved it. It could just have been it a bit of sloppy workmanship on his part, but I doubt it since it also serves to mimic the "chomp" taken out of the Apple computer logo. Thus:

While we're about it, it also makes reference to the bite taken from the poisoned apple by Snow White in the classic Grimm's fairy tale. You don't get a picture of Snow White, though. Or Sir Isaac Newton and his falling apple. Or any of the other apple references in the episode.

But back to the Apple computer power key. So what?

We know from later in the episode that Holmes uses a MacBook (though the glowing logo is disguised by an envelope). But we also know that he uses an Apple iPhone. One of the key themes of the episode is celebrity and tabloid culture and, as anyone who has watched the TV news in the last six months knows, there are two words that go with "tabloid" like "ticket fiasco" and "Olympics": "phone" and "hacking". And yet they are not mentioned in the entire episode.

But this isn't just phone-hacking. This is Moriarty and Sherlock phone-hacking: a covert eavesdropping app smuggled onto Sherlock's iPhone which gives Moriarty and his clients access to Holmes's every conversation, text and email. And not just his telephone conversations, of course. Any conversation within range of the phone's microphone would be picked up and broadcast to waiting criminal ears.

It's well known that such eavesdropping applications have existed for some time:

 http://www.appedia.com/news/3774.html

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/remotely_eavesd_1.html

According to the media sources, you would currently need to physically install the app on the phone. That is to say, you would need to have it in your hands. The suggestion in 'The Reichenbach Fall' however, is that Moriarty plants the app on Sherlock's phone, more than likely via Bluetooth with his phone doing the work for him while he quietly sips his tea at 221B after the trial. It's a small leap of the imagination, but to misquote the lady in the lab "if you can imagine it, someone is probably doing it".

So, there you have it. In a nutshell, it all turns on a visual pun. Moriarty hacks into Sherlock's phone and sells access to the feed to his various criminal clients as well as using it for his own ends. Having taken so long to say not a lot in this post, I'll save the further technical details and the implications for next time.

Next up: all the other stuff, including 'Chompion!', Addlestone, spy versus spy and the nature of the 'final problem'.