The Magnussen Legacy
Chapter 3
Hello, darkness, my old friend.
I've come to talk with you again.
Because a vision softly creeping…
(Paul Simon)
Get away. Get away fast. Out of the room. Inside another room. And alone. Separate. Isolate. Don't look back. Don't listen. Don't be distracted. Just get away.
Get away to think. Got to solve this. Think.
Nearest door. Open it. Go through it. Shut it. Lock it. Turn away. Get away.
The first objective was to make sure the door was locked. Key turned on a place of safety and solitude, the key still in place so neither another key nor the over-ride nub could open it. And the next thing was get as far away from the door as possible. Which meant hunkering down in the space between the wardrobe and the chest of drawers on the far wall.
So that was where he sat. Back pressed to the wallpaper, knees high and feet tucked in tight, arms wound round ankles and right cheek on knees, facing the wall. Eyes crunched closed.
The door knob rattled and the door hinges squeaked a soft complaint as John Watson tested the firmness of the lock with his shoulder.
"Sherlock. Sherlock! Come out of there. Talk to me. For God's sake!"
Go away. How can I think if you don't go away?
Watson rattled the door furiously. Thumped it, just the once. There was a long silence.
"Sherlock, stop sulking in there. This achieves nothing. Come out."
Another long silence.
"We're a team," said the voice through the door. Source of the voice lower down now, Sherlock Holmes registered. So John Watson was sitting on the floor against the wall in one room, just as he was doing in another room. Don't need that.
Shut up.
"This isn't just about you, it's not just your problem. It's yours, and mine and Mary's. Mycroft's, All of us. We'll solve this, just like we always do. Together."
You don't have a clue, John. Not a clue.
Silence.
John Watson rubbed his hands across his face in frustration. God damn the man, why did he always have to be alone? Shoulder the problems of the world alone? Treat help and support as if it was a refined form of torture? He took several long slow breaths and tried again.
"Here we are. As usual. You being the tortured genius. Me being the idiot trying to keep up. But Mycroft's right. Much as I hate to admit it. We can't go on like this, Sherlock.
Since when has this been 'we'? This is ME! My problem, my situation my responsibility. And there is nothing I can say - nothing at all - that will make you believe me. Or even understand. understand it. Understand me.
"We've known each other too long for you to keep charging off with me running to keep up saying 'brilliant' and 'amazing' and just accepting it all.
"To stay with you, to keep helping you, to share the load….I've got to understand all this now. Know who you are and where you are coming from. And why…" the words petered out, hesitated, stopped. "Why we have to get you past this stuff. Running off and doing everything alone and making it seem as if you are punishing yourself for being ….." the words drifted away again. "Brave. You."
No! No. Just. No.
"So talk to me, you bastard!"
As if! Get the message, John. Why isn't silence doing it?
Watson thumped the door again. But there was still nothing but silence from the other side of it. A speaking silence, if anyone had been listening.
"You think it's any easier for me, being this side of the door, and saying all this? Easier than for you to do it? Talk and explain and share? 'Cos if you do you're more of a machine…." he bit the words off. Groaned with frustration as he got to his feet.
See? You see? This is what we always come back to. Alone protects me. But more importantly…. Me. Alone. Protects. You.
The silence this time was longer. Too long. And by the time Sherlock Holmes got to his feet, had unlocked the door and wrenched it open….he was only just in time to stride over to the front window to see Doctor John Watson walking away down Baker Street.
Without pausing he turned on his heel, put on the scarf and the Belstaff and also strode out into the night. But he did not follow John Watson.
o0o0o
The restaurateur was just going up the stairs to bed when that old familiar musical tattoo of knocks beat on his back door and slipped the cogs in Angelo Grimaldi's brain. He turned round quickly and ran to the back door.
"Get in here, you!" he exclaimed, flinging the door wide and grabbing an arm to pull a tall dark figure into the back kitchen of the Italian restaurant.
Sherlock Holmes stumbled over the threshold, and barked a laugh into the older man's face.
"You really should be more careful. It could be gangsters knocking on your door at midnight," he chided, more gently than he should. "Burglars, even."
"Fat chance!" the Italian restaurateur snapped back. "Attack the head of the Grimaldi clan! Who would dare?"
He laughed up into Sherlock Holmes' face; a tough bulky man in his early Fifties, light on his feet and with laughing eyes, smooth and streetwise and the best Italian chef in central London.
"Long time since you've arrived at the back door like this." he remarked, drawing the younger man deeper into the still warm fug of the empty restaurant. Flicking on the kettle to make tea, turning to fold his arms across his barrel chest and look assessingly at his visitor.
Thinner. Grey skin. Restless narrow eyes. Taut mouth. Stimming with the left hand again. Back to how he used to be when they had first met. The drugged up teenager surviving on the street Angelo remembered only too well.
"You look like you've had a nightmare. What's happened?"
"Living in a nightmare. You don't want to know."
"Do I not? I have know you too many years, my friend."
As he always did when Sherlock Holmes visited at night, Angelo Grimaldi reached for eggs, cream, butter, mushrooms and whatever else he had to hand - cooked bacon crumbs and cold peas - and began to assemble an omelette without being asked.
He hooked a chair from under the little kitchen table with his foot and pushed the consulting detective down onto it, making two mugs of tea and putting one down for Sherlock Holmes.
As he swirled butter into a pan and set the heat beneath it, he waited to hear words. None came.
"Cosa hai bisogna, di ragazzo?" he asked softly. "What do you need, boy?"
Sherlock Holmes looked up and met his eyes and shrugged, smiled a tired smile.
"A little information, vecchio amico." Old friend.
"So ask."
"Do you know of anyone in the Italian community called Enrico Baldissi?"
"Baldissi." His eyes were on his hands, chopping, beating mixing. Mind elsewhere, now.
"No. But the name is Sicilian Italian. I can tell you that. He is in England?"
"Yes."
"I can ask around. How fast do you need to know?"
"Yesterday. "
The chef nodded. The eggs sputtered as they hit the hot pan.
"I will ask my brothers while you eat. I assume this man is not being assessed for sainthood?"
The ironic one sided little grin he received in reply was answer enough. A photocopied head and shoulder shot torn from a larger photograph was waved in front of his face. Grainy, an odd angle, but good enough for recognition.
"Do not know the face. But those dark and smooth Dean Martin features are very Sicilian. And you know what Sicily means?"
"I hoped not."
"You name a Sicilian villain to me that has Sherlock Holmes worried enough to be at my door in the middle of the night. And you do not think the man is Mafiosi? Pah!" heslid the omelette onto a plate and put it onto the table as he put utensils in the younger man's hands. "Is he part of an operating Mafia family, Sherlock: a coscia?"
"I don't think so. He worked for a newspaperman. Lived in. No life space for being mafiosi. Not directly anyway. Surely?
"Eat. I ask. Wait."
He walked across the room to pick up his telephone, punched in numbers, began to speak in rapid fluent Italian. Made another call. And another.
Sherlock Holmes ate steadily and without his usual protestations. Sipped his tea, hunched over the table. Could not have told anyone afterwards what it was he ate or drank.
Finally he pushed his emptied plate away and rose to absentmindedly wash the utensils he had used when Angelo returned.
"My brothers have background information," he said, and watched Sherlock work at the sink. "The Baldissi's are from Fontane Bianche in Syracuse. Came to Bedford in the Fifties to labour in the brickworks. Moved down to London. Hooked up with the Messinas. Heard of the Messinas?"
"No."
"Before your time. Legendary Sicilian gangsters, father and five sons. Big in prostitution and the sex trade. Does that make sense to you?"
Fur rugs and photos, use and humiliation. Oh God.
"Yeah."
"OK. Don't look at me like that. The boys will ask around, try to find him within the Italian brotherhood. We'll get back to you with something. You hooked up with this man, Sherlock?"
"You could say that." Hand stilled in the washing up water, head suddenly down. "He wants to kill me."
"So? Tell me the worst."
And so he did. Explained about Charles Augustus Magnussen and his death. About the escape of Enrico Baldissin from Appledore. And how he was still at large, eight days on. About the message written in blue spray paint on the sitting room wall at 221B.
Angelo whistled through his teeth.
"He will be hard to find. Mafioso men do not visit pubs or clubs. He will be lying low until he strikes. That is the Mafia way. And there is a strong Mafia network in London that will hide him. Does he have foreign connections, aside from the Italian ones?"
"Because of Magnussen, Denmark is the obvious place,"
"Bad choice." Angelo Grimaldi shook his head, and looked stern. "There are a lot of Italians in Denmark. Denmark has long been called 'the Italy of the North' and Italy is the Danes favourite holiday destination; many Italian businesses moving up to Denmark these days - Copenhagen, Aalborg especially."
He watched Sherlock Holmes rub a hand over his face in a sort of despair, and slump over the now emptied sink, hands still flat as if drawing warmth and comfort from the water.
Aalborg. Too much in Aalborg. Too many connections. Magnussen's brothers. Christina and Piet and the Jaegercorps. Would Baldissi know of them all? Was this fate or fear or simply coincidence caused by several threads of history sharing the same space?
"What do I do? I need to find him and stop him before he starts killing….. "
"You ask me, Sherlock?" Angelo Grimaldi sipped his tea and thought. For his young friend to be so defeated and lost, and then to ask him for advice, was unusual.
"It's context, Angelo. The things one Italian gangster might know about another. Things I need to know to find him, understand him."
"Former gangster, if you don't mind. Just because I am the only man in my family to have gone straight - and that mainly because of you - it's no reason to consider me an expert on both sides of the fence, Piccolo."
"No?" he quirked a smile, and for just a moment the old Sherlock was back. "I am not your little one, or anyone else's."
"Don't get spikey with me. My brothers will ask around, see what news they can find. You may need to be patient."
"I don't have that luxury….but warn them to be careful. He has not started killing yet because he was waiting for me to reappear so I can see and appreciate his handiwork. He wants me to suffer, you see? So he will kill others before he gets to me. I just don't know how many others."
"The Mafia way is to begin with family. But I do not know if this would mean your family - because you were the killer - or Magnussen's family, because they turned their back on him."
He looked at Sherlock and considered.
"I would say your family first, ordinarily. But that means Mycroft. And to get to Mycroft is rather like trying to walk through a wall. So I would say, if he plans to strike hard and fast once he begins, the persons he will start with are Magnussen's family. What I would do. Strike fast. Make an impression. Frighten the others. Standard procedure."
They looked at each other. Two hard men assessing options with the objectivity of a killer, for a killer.
"Two brothers."
"Two targets. Together. Maximum impact."
Angelo Grimaldi went to the bar, thoughtfully pulled out a bottle of brandy, poured a generous measure and handed it to Sherlock Holmes.
"Drink it. Good for shock."
"I don't….."
Angelo merely caught hold of the foot of the glass, pushed the rim into Sherlock Holmes's teeth and lifted. Brandy dribbled between the lips and the detective swallowed despite himself. Coughed at the bite of raw alcohol on an unpractised palate.
"This may be a long shot, Sherlock. But from what you say we have a villain who worshipped a mad man. Acolyte to hero. Tomorrow - today - is the saint's day for Theopompous and Theonas. A good Sicilian Catholic boy would know that, see the parallels."
He took a pull of his own brandy; no etiquette demanding gentle sipping when in private at this time of night.
"Theopompous was a bishop who converted to God a pagan magician who became his friend. Baldissi may identify with them. He may be at mass for them, and see that as if for Magnussen and himself, later today. Lunchtime.
"You may want to take a look at the Italian church on the Clerkenwell Road. See if you spot him. That is where he would be tomorrow if he identifies with them. Him or his Mafia family, his cosia. Yes?"
"Can't do any harm, Angelo. While I wait for news from your brothers."
"We do whatever we can to help, Sherlock." He patted the other man on the shoulder. "We owe you, remember?"
"Non permettero a nessuno di ucciderti," he said softly. "I let no-one kill you."
Sherlock Holmes put his hand briefly over the hand. Stood and left the restaurant without another word.
o0o0o
He made for Belgravia this time. Another walk in the dark, another address. Another door that opened to his knock in the middle of the night.
An armchair by a crackling fire, and a mug of hot milk with nutmeg on top.
"Why have you come to me?"
"You are my brother. That is what brothers are for."
Mycroft Holmes, in the matching judge's armchair on the other side of the hearth, was being his usual shuttered and slightly supercilious self.
The younger brother had updated the older on what Angelo Grimaldi had told him. His brother reciprocated with security camera stills from Appledore. A silent acknowledgement that they both needed to know as much as they could about the man making the threats.
Half a dozen clear shots of Enrico Baldissi.
"That is the man?" Mycroft asked. Conformation and clarity. He watched his brother take hold of the photographs and riffle through them. Saw his hands shake. Wondered fleetingly yet again just what had been done to his sibling during those lost hours in Appledore and who by. But rejected the idea. Even if he asked, even if his brother remembered, Sherlock would never tell him. And anyway, Mycroft really did not want to know.
"Yes. That is Baldissi."
"What can you tell me about him?"
"Not a lot," Sherlock's voice was determinedly light and offhand. "We had a short but telling relationship. I would put him as Magnussen's number three after Carlsson. Quick, decisive, vicious. Devoted to dear Charles. Obsessed, probably. And probably bisexual, if he thought of himself in such terms. Angelo is finding out about him for me. More reliable than your SIS sources, it seems."
He did not bother to keep the edge from his voice this time, and Mycroft heard it. Had the grace to say nothing at all as Sherlock concentrated down, looked at the photographs again, dispassionately this time.
"From his positions in these photographs, I doubt Baldissi will have seen you at all. Just John and me. I think, looking at the time signatures of these pictures and the positions of the cameras, by the time you got out of the helicopter Baldissi was already heading up to the roof. So you may well be safe."
"Thank you for that and your consideration. But I am not safe if he is mafia. You know as well as I do that the Mafia target families." Mycroft's voice sounded as if he was talking through a mouthful of bullets.
"Then I am so sorry I am yours."
Before, in any other situation, the tone would have been deep, scathing, as angry and dismissive as normal. This time the words slowly slurred themselves out as if through bone deep exhaustion.
"Stop it. You want me to beg, brother mine? Admit this is my fault? Has been for the last twenty years?"
For now the positions were reversed. Sherlock bloodless, Mycroft unable to contain his feelings.
Not the iceman, now, am I Sherlock? Am I ever? Am I really ever?
The atmosphere should have been electric, angry and angst laden. It usually was. But this time Sherlock refused to be the stone that struck sparks from his brother's iron will. The words bounced off his brain and fell to the ground unheeded.
"Hmn. Step up your personal security for the time being," he instructed quietly.." I want to have this sorted quickly."
"Do you know what you are going to do yet?"
Mycroft watched his little brother turn his eyes down into his mug of hot milk.
"I am trying to find him. Gathering intelligence as fast as I can so that I can make decisions, read his mind, try to outthink him. The logical and definitive answer is that I must kill him before he kills me. Or kills anyone else on his way to me." He looked up suddenly and straight into Mycroft's eyes, took him by surprise.
"But don't worry, brother. I will kill him if I have to."
The flat logic of the ultimate answer and solution had not been what Mycroft had been expecting, so his response now was sheer reaction, arch and sounding critical. The normal pose and poise reasserted. Probing and testing.
"Getting the taste for death, are you?"
No words, but the look he got in return was so overshot with bitterness and disappointment Mycroft almost felt his blood curdle.
"It was not me that let Baldissi escape. It was not me who did not share information. It was not me who failed to take Magnusson seriously enough. It was not me who charged in with the cavalry - totally unnecessarily, as it happened -and put me in an impossible position…."
"Impossible positions are always defeated by your arrogance of youth," Mycroft interrupted, unable to hear more. His version of saying "I know" and "I'm sorry" and "please don't." Simple honest words he could not force past his teeth, not even for someone else's sake. So he spoke as always, in the way his brother understood. Normally understood.
Sherlock Holmes did not visibly react apart from pulling a harsh breath. Did not even look at his brother. Put his half empty mug down on the occasional table at his elbow, stood and walked from the room without another word.
It took Mycroft a moment to realise he was really leaving, without argument and without his usual clever riposte to gain the last word.
"Sherlock! Wait!" He paused, still listening for the usual telling remark slung over the shoulder, but there was silence and the footsteps did not falter. "Wait! I'm….."
The front door closed and did not even slam.
o0o0o
He had no idea how long he walked, or quite how far.
London was his home and his refuge, and it's streets were his sanctuary. So he walked and thought, and walked to calm the rage in his mind. The anger that Baldissi had escaped, at the aftershocks of shame at committing murder, the humiliation of solitary confinement in a holding cell. The escape route of sweeties, and how even that had been denied to him. In the final analysis. Always denied comfort, and even the need for it.
Above all, anger at the enormity of the problem he now had to solve, and through no fault of his own, not this time. Tasked by Lady Smallwood to find and neutralise Enrico Baldissi. As if that would be easy. As if there were no injuries or inhibitions to hold him back.
There was no richness of knowledge and observation in trying to find and neutralise Baldissi in the same way there had been for Magnussen. Whereas Magnussen had been the leader, the star, the public face and the mastermind, Baldissi had been the man in the background, the force and the enforcer, the manipulator for the master.
Baldissi had been part of the lost hours in Appledore, and when he and John Watson had been taken to Appledore on Christmas Day, Baldissi had been there to greet them on arrival. Had the Italian known the frisson of shock and fear that clutched Sherlock Holmes' breathing as Baldissi handed him out of the helicopter and onto the ground?
And had Baldissi - the man behind the man who was always so visibly just behind Magnussen, Erik Carlson, the man with the silver ponytail - had he watched and heard everything that had taken place through the security cameras? Had watched his humiliation - another humiliation - at the hands of Magnussen?
He did not know. And nor did he really want to. All he knew, and all he really needed to know, was that despite the adult and vicious Mafia connection at the height of his criminal mind, Baldissi's true delight lay in the simple human humiliation that characterised the born bully. And Sherlock Holmes knew all about that. The lost hours at Appledore had showed him that.
So put that experience and that fear into a box in the Mind Palace and lock it away. Deal with something else. Not Mycroft subsumed with guilt. Not what Angelo Grimaldi's brothers might yet find. Not John Watson trying too hard through a closed door…ah, yes.
For now there was also the secondary problem, the distracting problem that was his alone - to deflect John Watson from his task of digging and prodding and revealing…all the final and forbidden things Sherlock Holmes could not bear to have revealed.
For a moment he wondered what game his brother was playing by setting John Watson the task of getting to know him anew and understand him better this time. Why Mycroft seemed so intent on seeing him bleed and accusing him of acquiring a taste for death.
He was used to his brother pushing him into always being harder, stronger, cleverer, braver. But this was something else. Mycroft trying to deal with his own shame, perhaps? Recognising how slow he had been to recognise the threat Magnussen presented, how little he had helped? Pushing Sherlock into pain to assuage his own?.
Was this little project to goad Watson to do Mycroft's work for him? Lay bare a little brother the elder could read but not translate? To assuage the guilt and sense of over responsibility he always brought to bear in caring and protecting? To ease his own heart while taxing his little brother's?
Sherlock always tried not to think that, or to feel it, but sometimes it was hard not to.
When Mycroft tried so hard to control and to direct, to both test yet over protect, Sherlock responded and reacted badly. He could do no other. For he knew why Mycroft behaved in such a condescending, controlling, claustrophobic way. Enduring that was made no easier by the knowledge.
And now he had to face the humiliation of John Watson trying to find that knowledge for himself. And John Watson was nothing if not quietly dogged and determined. And Sherlock did not know how long he would be able to resist such open hearted persistence. Caring was not an advantage…..
He sighed and walked on, hands rammed deep into pockets, shoulders hunched against the winter wind.
He walked, he thought, forever. Trying to quieten his brain, to exhaust the frustrated hyperactivity that was driving him forward, despite his weakness, to calm his body and his mind. But it wasn't working.
He left Mycroft's without knowing where he was going, too angry to think, but eventually he found himself heading east, turning off the main drag of Oxford Street into the tiny courts and allies of Soho, crossing Long Acre and Kingsway, through Lincoln's Inn and flanking the rear of the Royal Courts of Justice, down Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street, turning right towards the river before the magnificence of St Paul's.
His route had taken him through the cuts and canyons of a silent and almost deserted London, unnoticed by the few revellers staggering home, by most of the homeless hunkered down in doorways, by the black cabs that hurried by.
Cut down little Goldiman Street onto Upper Thames and walked along the river, dark and running fast in winter flow. Down King's Reach towards Blackfriars, and along the Embankment, Waterloo Bridge in sight.
He was trying to tire himself out, to slow down his thoughts, which were churning like the river, running ahead of themselves. Despite his general weakness arising from being locked in a box for a week combined with a huge drug hit, the brain was driving the body on.
There was no point in being angry. Baldissi had escaped; what had happened had happened. He could tell Mycroft was angry - angry with himself, angry with his minions, angry with Baldissi, even though he really had no idea who or what Baldissi was.
This was his problem to solve, the final task in putting Charles Augustus Magnussen out of the world and beyond it. And solve it he would. It was the thought of who might be taken down with him as he closed the case that was worrying him, distracting him and driving him on.
He was walking fast, head down, hands still curled into fists. Until the instinct for danger was suddenly prickling the hairs on the back of his neck. He stopped and looked up and to one side.
In the centre of Waterloo Bridge to his left, across the wide empty pavement, a dance of death was being executed. A slight young girl fought two men who were trying to throw her over the parapet of the bridge and into the water, and remove her backpack from her shoulders.
He could hear her cries, the men's grunts and curses, the scrabble of shoes on concrete as she resisted and fought. And as he looked around, there was only him to intercede. No evening stragglers, no police cars when you wanted them, not even a passing cab or night bus.
He sighed - where do I find the energy for this? Why is it always me? - took a deep breath, set his shoulders and ran forward. Shouting. Arms flailing to push the men aside, to grab the victim and to haul her back from the edge of the parapet. A girl with a fine blonde ponytail. Long legs, narrow shoulders. Not quite as young as she had looked at first sight. But full of wiry determination as she resisted the attack.
After the shock of attack came the shock of rescue. The girl's first thought, in panic, was surprise that anyone had come to her rescue at all, then the heightened thought in panic and fear that an angel with black wings had dropped from the sky to save her from death.
Sherlock saw her frightened eyes widen in surprise at the sight of him, her assumption that here was her saviour and that everything would be all right now. He could have shouted with new anger at that.
"Let her go! Back off!"
The two assailants paused, half turned. Then he struck. One assailant was smacked hard on the jaw and reeled back. Let go of the haversack he had been trying to prise off the girl's back, and she catapulted forward and would have been over the side and in the water if Sherlock Holmes, in the role of avenging angel, had not thrust out a hand and grabbed her by her anorak hood and arrested the fall with a jolt that jarred her very bones.
And that was when he proved himself to be human to her. His hands bit painfully into her arms as he hauled her back from the edge of the abyss. He groaned with the effort and swore fiercely as he did so. The girl was wrenched back from her frightening view of dark swirling water beneath her to look up into an androgynous angel's face. Opal shining eyes slanted down at her with a look of shuttered concentration and demonic will power and she knew she would never forget those eyes.
He dragged her backwards, as the other attacker shoved her forward. Shouted something, and with his free hand boxed the ears of the man balancing her on the edge of the world.
The next strike was vicious. He dragged her backwards to safety and to slither onto the pavement rather like a landed fish, and she shook down there on the damp tarmac as he ruthlessly and rapidly grabbed both men and tipped them over the very edge they had tried to push her across, ignoring their cries as they fell, all whirring arms and legs, and thudded into the water below.
"Are they….dead?" she stammered. Shocked by the speed and vicious action she had just witnessed.
"Who knows? Who cares?" drawled the rescuer she saw as her angel of deliverance as he brought her to her feet. "Are you OK?"
"Fine," she said automatically, although she wasn't sure. "Are you?" He ignored the question, lifting her by the elbows, propelling her towards the city, away from the concert halls and theatres of the South Bank. "Come on, move. We need to get you away from here before the police arrive and start asking stupid questions."
He did not add that in the past ten days he had had enough of policemen to last a lifetime.
"Stupid?" she echoed, bemused.
"Yes, stupid. The police are." He could not have sounded more bored.
She felt her legs moving along the pavement, but no sensation of them carrying her weight. He was carrying her weight, she realised, one arm around her waist and the other supporting her elbow, as she stumbled along quickly at his side, at his pace.
"Bit exposed on the bridge," he explained. "And we don't want police arriving and asking what those men were trying to steal; what you have in that backpack."
She stopped walking then, shocked, and looked up into his face .He did not return her look, or stop when she stopped, but simply lifted her smoothly off her feet again and kept walking, very fast. But he still did not meet her eyes and he did not stop.
They crossed Victoria Embankment below and only at the traffic lights at the corner of the Strand did he pause.
"OK to stand now?" he asked. She nodded, but as soon as he let her go her knees buckled.
"Just reaction," he told her smoothly, grasping her arm again, lifting her. "Where are you heading?"
She flapped an arm up the slight hill before them, which he interpreted.
"The Waldorf?" he asked, unimpressed, and she nodded.
"You need something to steady you first. Shock," he commented, and steered her rapidly across and left along the Strand and through dark narrow alleys, by the side of a church and down some stairs.
Distraction. Any distraction would do this night. This will distract for a few minutes, and a few minutes can stretch out to an hour.
"Where….?" she began.
"Crypt," he said unhelpfully, and opened a blue door.
Inside, a long narrow space of stone arches full of plastic tables with oilskin cloths, people sitting on chairs, a coffee machine gurgling in one corner, a quiet hum of conversation, a refuge of light and warmth.
He steered her towards a table for two and down into a chair.
"Sit," he said, and went to the counter, spoke to the middle aged woman behind it, and waited while two white mugs of steaming hot drink were obtained. She forced her breathing and her pulse to quieten, looked properly at her rescuer for the first time.
His height, distinctive looks and upright posture would have been eyecatching in their own right, especially so wearing that stylish coat with it's distinctive high collar and red buttonhole. But the face was itself arresting; tousled dark hair contrasted with ascetic features, an expressive feminine mouth, and astonishing eyes the colour of a winter sea storm. Once seen, never forgotten, she thought. Sensual features at odds with an impregnable exterior. A very dark angel indeed.
Who - and what - was he? And how and why had he come to her rescue?
He returned with the mugs. Two policemen in high visibility jackets at one table nodded a casual greeting, two scruffy girls who might have been homeless, sharing a drink between them, spoke to him as if he was a friend. He bent to talk briefly, took something from a pocket and gave it to them, and they nodded and looked away. A tall gaunt man sitting on his own called him 'Shezza' and the man smiled and patted a shoulder.
"Hot chocolate," he said brusquely. "Good for shock."
He sat down opposite her, but she could see she only had half of his concentration; peripheral vision scanning the room.
"Thank you," she said, cupping her hands round the mug. "Where are we?"
"Church Crypt. All night coffee bar. The place to meet London's most interesting people."
He smiled briefly and finally turned his attention to her and looked. A long, deliberate, expressionless assessment.
After a moment she squirmed and heard herself say: "Please don't."
"Do what?"
"Look at me like that." She looked up into those deep opal eyes. Who are you?"
"No-one of interest," he responded.
"Azrael, That's who you are," she said. "Azrael."
"I am no angel. Dark, black or otherwise."
She had not expected him to understand her comment. But he did, she saw. Who was he?
"No?" she argued. " Azrael has no aura, he carries his light within him. He has black hair that glistens with his inner light. A black cloak and black wings and brings comfort to all who need him. Sorry, but…is that not you?"
"I only wish it was," he said briefly, disillusion burring his sophisticated dark brown voice. "But 'do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some have unwittingly entertained angels.'" he quoted at her.
She smiled at that, and then frowned, for who quoted the Bible these days?
"You are that stranger," she maintained. "You came out of nowhere. You rescued me, committed violence to save me. You might have killed two men for me; a stranger. Who are you?"
She asked again. Again he dismissed the question with a fleeting glance, and looked away.
"No-one you would know," he replied. "It really doesn't matter. But I know who you are."
Without moving a muscle, something in his eyes and face changed and hardened. And that set, emotionless expression which had chilled her blood earlier was back.
He was about to say more when a hand dropped onto his shoulder and he froze.
"Sherlock! How good to see you!" The man standing by her angel's side was, appropriately enough, a priest. A young, slight man with a scholar's face wearing an old fashioned tweed jacket and a dog collar along with a warm smile.
"Good morning young lady!" the priest greeted her. "Any friend of Sherlock's is a friend of mine," he said before turning to the angel. "Haven't seen you in ages. Chess? Thursday? Usual time?"
"Sorry, Theo. I'm working."
"Not to worry. Whenever you get a chance. See you soon," he grinned, and was gone.
"Mr Sherlock…" the girl hissed, now more confused than ever. "Who are you? How does everyone here know you?"
" Natural magnetism," he smiled at her. "Like you. When you play."
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"I deduced it. I deduced you." She stared into his eyes and he held her gaze.
"You are young and foreign. You present yourself as any ordinary student. But you are no student. Your jeans are from a trendy boutique neat Rome's Spanish Steps, your trainers cost £200 from Rutmans in Manhatten, and the anorak is limited edition Seasalt.
"But the haversack gives you away. Anyone who knows backpacks will know yours is bespoke for a particular purpose; longer, deeper, wider than normal, and that the ordinary pockets on the sides surround an armoured mid section that holds something special. And holds it secretly. Your violin case.
"So you own - and therefore play - a fine and rare and expensive violin. The professional violinist's violin is a Guarneri, and therefore the violin that is now between you and that cheap plastic chair you are sitting on is a Guarneri worth several million pounds. Perhaps even a Pietro Guarneri. Yes?"
He did not wait for her to nod or even react, but continued:
"So why would you have that rare and beautiful and seriously expensive instrument? Because you yourself are also rare and beautiful? But of course." He paused.
She was starting to feel light headed and panicky again. How did he know?
"You speak English perfectly, but there is a slight accent. Russian certainly; from Minsk, perhaps? Why were you on Waterloo Bridge heading towards the city? Because you were coming back from - where? Not the National Theatre or the Movie Museum. A concert hall then. In concert at The Royal Festival Hall tonight was a young Russian virtuoso being heralded for great things. So. You were heading from the Royal Festival Hall.
"You stayed afterwards for a post performance party, radio and press interviews, to chat with new friends and contacts. A meal, perhaps. It is very late. And you left, inconspicuously alone, long after everyone else had gone, to walk back to your hotel; not very far, so perhaps an understandable lapse in personal security. That could have been catastrophic for you.
"So you are Alyssa Almedova. Good morning, Alyssa. I am Sherlock Holmes."
He held out a hand across the table, smiling vaguely. The deduction was simple, barely the distraction he craved. But the rescue, and the break in routine and in thought, was momentary respite from the problem of Enrico Baldessi. He did not really care about her, and her problem, either way.
She smiled back and grasped his long cool fingers in her own. Transfixed by his courage and his cleverness, perturbed that even now, after all that had happened in the past twenty minutes, he was still distracted by something, not fully taking notice of her.
"Hello, Mr Holmes. Pleased to meet you. I don't know how you know all that. I am amazed. And rescued. So thank you. However can I thank you?"
"Drink your chocolate," he said sternly. "Then I will deliver you to the safety of your hotel."
He hunched his shoulders and put his own mug to his lips. Did not think about the hot drink he had failed to finish earlier. Or why.
"What are you doing walking alone in the city at this time of night?" she asked, intrigued.
"Just walking. It helps me think." He clicked out the last syllable firmly as if ending the conversation.
There was no answer to that, so she made none, They drank in silence, and when finished, he stood abruptly and said, brooking no argument:
"I will walk you back to your hotel. Make sure you are safe."
She thanked him but did not argue. He gave a brisk wave of farewell to the room as they left, and they stepped into the darkness. A wind had risen and the world was cold.
Aware of him pausing to check dark corners and the road behind them, she shivered and remembered anew what had happened. She settled the haversack on her shoulders and instinctively took hold of the woollen sleeve nearest to her. She felt him pull away from her touch almost as if he had forgotten she was there.
"Sorry!" she said.
"No. It's OK," he replied. So they walked quietly along together, past the shops and offices of the Strand and onto the Aldwych. At some point she found the courage to put her arm in his, and felt oddly reassured that he let her.
Her black angel stopped outside the impressive black and yellow frontage to the Edwardian marble hotel that is the Waldorf Astoria.
"I leave you here," he said formally. "Be more careful next time. That could have been merely a random attack. Try to have people with you if you are out so late again. You could get hurt. Your violin is as rare as it is valuable."
"How do you know about violins?"
A quirky smile and his eyes shone with genuine feeling for the first time. She was made breathless at the way it transformed his stern features.
"I play the violin."
He said it in such an amused, offhand voice all she could do was smile back and sway towards him, suddenly made boneless by his proximity, reluctant to allow his calm unemotional reassurance to leave her.
"That explains everything," she laughed softly. "I hoper that means you have your own Guarneri?"
"Could be."
"Seriously?" She laughed at the very idea, then sobered. "How do I thank you for all you have done for me? "
"Oh, come," he purred, still not quite engaged, still with most of his mind elsewhere. "What is a hot chocolate between friends?"
"I don't mean that - but thank you for it," she replied, suddenly serious. "How do I say thank you for saving my life?"
He started to turn away, uninterested in her little speech. But her hand on his arm stopped him. He stood stock still, not turning back but turning his head, his eyes somewhere above and miles away from her. Then he looked down, back into her eyes as if returning from a long way away.
Leave me alone, little girl. Do not disturb. Do not be attracted. You are wasting your time and mine.
"I told you. It was nothing."
"Not to me," she said.
She took a step closer to him, What could she do to impress upon him what his actions meant to her? Acting on instinct, she rose up onto her toes to try to match his height, lifting her face to kiss him. He saw her intent and she felt as much as heard him say 'no.' His eyes and his body recoiled.
But as she gasped a reaction he paused, looked beyond her, whispered a brief: "Oh!" and then very gently put his arms out and drew her to him.
Something had changed within him, she knew it. She drew in a tremulous breath, overpowered now by his closeness.
"I'm so sorry," he said, and now he was smiling at her properly. A charming smile that melted her bones. "Everyone who knows me will tell you I have no social graces."
He gathered her softly into his coat then, whispered his lips across hers and smiled deeply into her eyes. His magnetism left her breathless. Especially when he slowly and deliberately kissed the edge of her jaw, leaving her beaming up at him like an idiot, She knew she was doing it, but she couldn't stop.
"Invite me up to your room," he commanded silkily, beguiling her, stepping back slightly and raising his voice. There was no mistaking his intent from the now seductive drive of that mesmeric baritone. A voice he knew how to use to good effect. She wondered fleetingly if he had a beautiful singing voice as well?.
"Wha - what?" she pulled back against his hold, surprised, suddenly realising what he had said. But he easily tugged her back, still smiling warmly into her eyes, drawing her close up to him again, wrapping his arms around her back so she could feel his lean strength against the full length of her body
. "You're a fast worker!"
"Because you are beautiful!" he laughed down into her eyes and she thought her heart would melt. But this was her guardian angel. This couldn't be real! Could it?
"And I am irresistible," he stated, laughing and running butterfly kisses along her cheek.
As his lips reached her ear lobe and she shuddered, he whispered into her ear, in a very different and very businesslike voice:
"We are being watched. Make a show of inviting me to your room. Make it obvious you want me with you. So I can protect you from the people determined to take that violin from you."
She gasped and looked into his eyes. Hard and cold again. Dark angel. Dark, she realised, in many ways.
"Come," she said simply, obeying, instinctively now, tugging his arm with one hand and dancing her fingertips across his cheek with the other. "I need you with me tonight. Don't argue. Just come."
Fear and reaction were at war with something else, and she dared not analyse either.
She smiled at him, clung tight to his arm and did not let it go as they crossed the pavement and passed through the revolving doors. She did not look directly at the two men she could see across the road on the edge of her vision.
Two men looking at her. Two men she did not know and instinct cried out at her not to look again. A shiver went down her spine. She did not take her eyes off Sherlock Holmes. Or let go of his arm.
Angels of light deliver us, she thought. And this one plays the violin.
That whimsical thought kept a smile on her lips as they crossed the foyer stepped into the lift. He stood away from her then, not speaking until they reached her suite.
He stepped forward to close the curtains and turned to face her.
"Where is your chaperone? Parents? Manager?" The harsh clipped voice was one she had never heard before. Work mode, she recognised.
"I don't have anything as old fashioned as a chaperone!" she exclaimed, stung. "My parents are home in Minsk. My manager…"
"Call him. He needs to know what happened to you. Needs to get you security. How long are you here in London?"
"I leave tomorrow…." she was disorientated by his speed. "Will I be safe?"
"I don't know. I don't know your schedule or your situation…"
"I have been on a European tour. Came from Germany to here for two days, then back to my base in Scandinavia for three weeks of workshops and master classes."
"Why target your violin especially?"
"I don't know. It's not even mine. It is on long term loan from the company that owns it. I have only had it for six months. Still learning it."
She slipped the backpack from her shoulders, zipped open the central section and took from it a modern violin case of white hard shell polycarbonate. She opened the number coded lock and opened the lid. Took out the elegant violin within and held it out to him.
"It is a Pietro Guarneri," he said. "I was right." He turned it in his hands with casual ease. And she watched him, intrigued, as long skeletal hands caressed the scroll and the peg box, glided down the fingerboard, the bouts and the waist.
Seeing his assurance, she took her bow from the inside of the lid and handed it to him.
"Haven't played for a while…." he murmured, and almost absentmindedly raised the violin and tucked the chinrest into his neck. Adjusted the tuning and the screw of the bow to tighten the hair.
"Horse's hair, the old fashioned thing," he murmured absently, as if approving, and she nodded. Watched him peer through the F holes of the violin.
"The sound post has been repaired, but many years ago," he observed. Thought a moment. "So this is the Holderness Guarneri. Owned by the Wardrobe family for generations. Bought by - hmn - Magnus Industries about fifteen years ago."
"You are very knowledgeable."
"Yes," he agreed without arrogance. Played the first few dancing bars of Mendelssohn's best known Violin Concerto without flourish or embarrassment. And she smiled to register that.
"You are a musician," she breathed.
"After a fashion," he replied. Unmoved, not even recognising her words as a compliment.
"Just who are you?" she asked again. Let her hands linger on his as he passed the violin back to her. He frowned, did nor reciprocate the contact.
"No-one at all," he said. "Look, would you ring your manager, get him to send hotel security to put this violin into the hotel safe and make sure your personal security is increased? If this violin is being targeted….and by someone who would happily tip you into the Thames and kill you…then you need guarding until this thing is sorted."
"Can't you…..?" she began.
"No," he said firmly. "I am busy. Working. And just at the moment…." he swallowed. "I am very tired."
She put a hand back on his arm and he snatched it away, but now when she looked she could see he was thinner than he should be, skin dull, dark shadows under his eyes and stubble on his face. And decided not to argue, however much she felt she needed his presence and assurance.
"I will ring Marco," she said, "Don't worry."
"Marco?"
"My manager, Marco de Bono."
"Italian?" The question was sharp, over alert.
"No. Maltese. He, too, was a violinist…."
She took her mobile from her pocket. Speed dialled. Spoke.
Sherlock Holmes took up the violin she had abandoned to take hold of her phone instead back into it's case, having memorised it.
"He'll be here," Alyssa said. "He's only along the corridor…."
And it was Sherlock Holmes who opened the door of the suite to a sharp rap.
Before him, a dark haired, thickset young man with a harassed frown.
"Alyssa….?" he asked, worried, not reassured, by the presence of a strange man.
"She's here, she's fine…." and he told Marco de Bono what had happened on Waterloo Bridge, and how he became involved.
The other man listened, distracted, and as he did he went over to his client, and grasped her by the elbows.
"You OK, you silly girl?"
Mid thirties. Not a native English speaker. A worrier. Failed musician. Jogger, slightly asthmatic. Smoker, though. Unmarried. More fond of Alyssa than she is of him. In love? Possibly. Right handed.
He was speaking to her sharply, but she nodded and reassured. And he finally turned to Sherlock, who was standing by the door and ready to leave. Marco de Bono read the body language and frowned.
"I will have the violin put away. And have Alyssa moved to a different room under another name. Put hotel security on alert." He nodded, brisk and decisive.
"Yes. Has Alyssa been threatened or approached by strangers at all?"
"Only you." The manager's tone was mistrustful. "Who are you?"
"Just a passer by," he said casually.
"He came to my rescue. And he plays the violin," Alyssa said helpfully, trying to create a link between them all. He caught the look De Bono gave her.
"I must go, Make sure she is safe. Will you call the police?"
"And what more could we tell them? Not enough for an investigation, I am sure. I imagine Alyssa's robbers were just chancers - she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"We leave London soon. We have a schedule we cannot abandon….."
"You need not necessarily be delayed, when you explain your situation,,,, "Sherlock began. "Where are you going to?"
"Denmark. Just a short hop."
A cold chill of premonition went down his back. He dismissed it as fanciful. He was too much on the alert, he told himself sternly, too busy looking for danger…because he knew it was there, round the next corner perhaps, lying in wait for him.
"Oh, Copenhagen?" he said with a smile, quenching memories of battle, the shock of dark canals at night, of tracking devices, of attack and defence and attack again. "A beautiful city."
"No," de Bono denied. "Not Copenhagen this time. But Aalborg, further north. You know it?"
"No," Sherlock lied. Fighting to keep the shock and the lurch of fear from both his face and his voice.
Christina. Pedder and Johan. The Utzon Centre. Serial murder. A silent and secret method of execution. Playing a violin. Another violin. Not this violin. Whose violin?
Coincidence? The universe is rarely so lazy….but Aalborg again.
No. No, no, no. No!
o0o0o
Author's notes:
The back story of the friendship between Sherlock Holmes and Angelo Grimaldi is told in the O'Donnell short story, At Angelo's.
Although the main image of Italians working in the UK lie in catering, hospitality and ice cream, a large number came over, mainly to the Peterborough and Bedford areas, in the 1950's, to labour in the brick making industry. Many still remain.
The Messina's were a real Italian/Maltese mafia family operating in London after WW2. Father Guiseppe and his five sons not only ran 30 brothels in central London, they ran a sex trafficking ring throughout Europe.. They are considered responsible for giving Soho it's current reputation for sex and sleaze.
Mafia: The famous collection of crime gangs and families as begun in Sicily and spread around the world. More properly known as Cosa Nostra ('Our Thing') with a strong and inflexible code. Dealing with a wide range of crime, from murders down; and especially honour killings, both for revenge, punishment and as a test for young hopeful Mafiosi members. To kill is an initiation test, but also then as a source of blackmail to keep the new murderer controlled and compliant..
Theopompous and Theonas: Two real life saints forever linked by their unusual friendship, and whose saint day is January 3rd: which is the date it really would be in the storyline following Magnussen's death on Christmas Day.
SIS: UK Special Intelligence Services. Basically MI5 and MI6.
The Italian Roman Catholic Church, St Peter's, on London's Clerkenwell Road really exists. It was the first Basilica style church in England, built in 1863 and is considered the premier Italian church in England.
The Alyssa element in this chapter was first created for the short story Black Angel, and always threatened to lead into a longer story. This is that story.
Archangel Azreal is one of the most powerful and highest ranked angels in the Host. His name means 'whom God helps' but he is often described as The Angel of Death. He appears in many faiths, and is the angel of grief who helps people with transitions and change.
Sherlock's nightlife due to his need for very little sleep is addressed in the O'Donnell short story All Through The Night. All night coffee bars, refuges, shops and crisis centres feature in many London churches, do a great deal of good and bring help and friendship to thousands.
Sherlock's angel quotation comes from Hebrews 13:2. There are various translations, but the basic meaning remains the same.
Guarneri violin: In ACD canon Sherlock Holmes has a Stradivarius he buys cheaply from a dealer who does not know the true value of the violin he sells. Which always seems a bit trite and obvious even from an author who was often slapdash in detail due to concentrating on plot.
However, he also envisaged Sherlock as a collector of violins. So the Strad may well be safe in Baker Street. He just prefers to play the Guarneri. Another violinist's violin.
Holderness is the part of East Yorkshire that lies between Hull and the sea. The unusual surname is local to the area and is part of a legend of it's history. That when the new town, canal and port of Goole was being constructed in the 1820's, many of the navvies employed on the construction were ex-criminals, men on the run and Irishmen - all seeking a new life. So when they were employed formally and had to give a name, many preferred the use of aliases as a new name, a new start..
So the new names appeared out of thin air, often inspired by items the men saw around them. So the area is rich in such names as Wall, Hook, Nail, Plaster, Wardrobe, Brush etc
