The Magnussen Legacy
Chapter 14
The journey is a hard journey, but if we hold together in the morning and in the evening, what matter if in the hours between there is sorrow?
(Title page inscription, Duchess of Sutherland's Keepsake Book)
She could not stand still. Walking up and down the sitting room in her own apartment, hands in her hair and tugging it. Face crumpled. John Watson, Alfredo Catalani and Piet Bruhl watched her anger and distress and had not the slightest idea what to say to her, or what could possibly make things better.
Except having Sherlock Holmes standing in front of them all, being scathing about their worry and concern. About him. About his whereabouts and what might be happening to him.
Mycroft Holmes stepped back two paces from the group and simply observed them all. Removed, remote. Head high and eyes like ice.
"This is what my home looked like when I walked through the door! This! Look at it!"
Christine Ravn turned with hopeless anger at the four men in front of her. The four men she had summoned to her home. Made a broad gesture with her right arm to encompass the room before them. Her sitting room.
The dining table had been set for two when she left for work that morning. Left for work with Sherlock Holmes standing by the window checking something on his phone, absorbed and grave.
He had looked up when she left and closed the door softly behind her, but had made no reply to her question and farewell: "See you later?" other than with a none committal hum.
So why wasn't he here now? Why did it look as if he had returned to her flat, but had been attacked and taken?
For now all was chaos in the room. The glasses and crockery swept off the table and lying broken on the floor. Place mats and cutlery flung aside. Cushions and pads from all the seats clustered together before the fireplace as if creating a nest; or a bed. The rugs rucked up on the cool pine laminate. Something sprayed and marring the bright polish of the floor nearby. She did not want to admit which human fluid she knew it to be.
Wine spilt and drying on the rug beneath the table. Another crusted redness close by that everyone in that room knew was blood. Which everyone peered at and then looked away, none identifying or mentioning.
A top of the range smart phone - Sherlock Holmes' phone - lay squashed and in pieces, stamped on and smashed in the doorway. A used and disgarded hypodermic syringe six inches closer to them than that.
There was the bitter aroma in the air of burnt food from the saucepan on the hob, a slight film of smoke from the kitchen. The electronic hum of a music centre at the end of a disc, retro turntable spinning vinyl, speakers humming and still waiting to be switched off. Piet Bruhl casually reached a hand across and did so. The resulting silence was far too loud..
"This," she said firmly, "Is not just burglary, now is it? This is not just criminals violating my home and my privacy! This is punishment and sheer spite. Destruction for it's own sake." She turned on them, annoyed by their silence before her untypical tirade. "Listen to you all, jumping in to help and reassure me! Say something!"
Still silence. Still being just watched by professionally, studiously blank, faces.
"Tell me you know where he is, what he is doing! Or what is being done to him! And say that he is safe!" Her voice was loud and bitter into the silence, and totally unlike her normal self. She could hear this shrill accusing voice that was not hers, but seemed unable to stop it.
It took Mycroft Holmes to stem the flow. He raised his umbrella and rapped it sharply on the floor.
"Detektive Inspektor! Please control yourself. This outburst does not help!"
"It makes me feel better," she replied stubbornly. Faced him without apology and stood tall, hands on her hips, and sucked in several deep breaths.
"I had been talking to him. Five minutes later I tried again - his phone was switched off. Which is not like him. Not at all. I have not been able to contact him since. I know why now," she said, looking at the mobile phone she recognised from that morning, just a ruined metal case now, in bits on the floor. "He was heading here, heading home. Coming back. This place was always his objective. He must have been almost on the doorstep….."
"Clearly he made it back ," Piet Bruhl observed mildly. He knew her well. She was his friend. Yet he did not feel he could step closer, offer comfort, even though he shared her fear just as acutely.
She made a futile gesture with her hands. "I had the meal all ready to cook for when he got here…." She stopped herself ranting this time.
Thought of the vulnerable frightened boy who had been next to her in the dark in the early hours of that very morning. Tense and rigid and hyper vigilant. Consumed with fear and a sort of shame she could not understand. But rigid determination to do the right thing and solve the problem, stop the promised killings.
She thrust that memory away. That weakness would achieve nothing. And he would not want her to remember it anyway.
"Someone broke in; knew he had been here and would be back. Set up the trap so he would step into it - to make it look as if I had got here before him. Meal cooking, wine poured, soft music, soft lights. Given the impression I was out to soothe or seduce. The bloody affront of it….."
Four men watched her tamp down her anger, fiercely now. All responding with typical male silence in the face of female anguish.
"They have taken him. Taken him, but set it up to look as if….as if….."
"He had given into the temptation of drugs again, or got pissed, and stumbled off into the night," John Watson. "Or even brought someone home for sex. Anything to mess with all our minds. Delay us. Show cleverness and power. Smear Sherlock."
"You have omitted to point out that he is hurt. There is blood on the floor," Piet Bruhl prompted quietly.
"He was bleeding anyway. Where Baldissi slashed him earlier today," John Watson explained. His head felt hollow and his soul was empty. He forced the words past his teeth. "And when he left the hospital he deliberately opened that cut again to make it bleed. To make himself look weaker - ill, distracted - worse than he really was."
She did not bother to stifle an angry sigh.
"All you clever men!" she exclaimed. "Do any of you have the first idea where he may be? What is being done to him? Even as we are standing here talking about him?"
Her heart lurched. The memory of Sherlock Holmes in her guest bed returned, unbidden.
His exhaustion, his plain description of himself it had pained her to hear: trollop, slag, rut with anyone…red hot good at it…distract…concentrate on me…. come on to me…. his plan to distract a despicable man from his other victims; by becoming the bait, the lure, a mere object for use. Just a body.
She was her professionalism, her objectivity. Always. But her head screamed, and her heart could only think of the warmth of him, the almost boyish old fashioned courtesy and humour when they were alone, his over awareness and fear, his dislike of being touched, which only he could see as weakness and not a touching, almost charming, vulnerability.
Piet Bruhl said:
"Someone has trampled his phone to stop the GPS tracker inside being used to find him. Stomped on the phone out of sheer spite." He shook his head. "The last time he was in Denmark I cut a GPS tracker from under his skin. If only I had left it…."
"If you had left it," Christina Ravn pointed out, "He would have been dead then. Not just missing now."
"Stop all this," Mycroft Holmes rasped. "Regret is pointless. It wastes mental energy."
"He was intent on doing all this himself. No help. no support. He saw a bigger picture," John Watson said.
Alfredo Catalani was computing possibilities and clearly not enjoying his conclusions.
"I have fitted him with trackers," he said. "New micro tracking devices. They are in his digestive system."
They all looked at him, resisting over reacting, registering what looked merely a restrained professional surprise.
"The bits in the orange juice he complained about? They were in the drink you gave him in hospital?" John Watson's voice was hollow.
"Of course." Catalani shrugged. "They are new but not infallible. He needs food or drink to activate the trackers so I can locate him. I have the tablet in my pocket on alert. They will also expel at the normal digestive rate. Unless he has something to eat or drink, I cannot find him. "
"But he didn't know any of that when he left here. And when he left here….." Christina Ravn swept a handful of items that had been in her bag, up into her hand. "He left behind, in my bed and hidden under my pillow, his wallet and passport. I just found them now, when I checked through the flat.
"He left them because he did not think he was coming back. What did he think was going to happen to him?"
Only Mycroft Holmes met her look levelly when she said this. And answered.
"We all know the answer to that. Please do not distress yourself unduly at the thought, Inspektor. My brother knows what he is doing. He has done this before. And calculated this as the only course of action open to him. He knew the risks. And the odds." He nodded once; objective approval, professional calculation..
"Which is exactly why I am so worried, Mr Holmes."
o0o0o
It seemed an appalling end to the day. Earlier, she had crammed herself into the corner of a ward clerk's tiny office, hidden by a filing cabinet, phone to her ear.
"I got the passenger manifest from Harry Baldwin's flight to Aalborg, got Scotland Yard to check it for any possible fellow travellers who might be his accomplice. He may think of himself as Enrico Baldissi, and that's who he is to everyone else, but his passport still says Harry Baldwin."
"Yes, let's keep everything formal and correct," Sherlock Holmes agreed distantly.
"There were five possibilities. The Yard reckon the accomplice has to be a young man called Joel Barbarossa. Ever heard of him?"
"No. Another Italian name, though. Yet another cousin?"
"Seems so."
"Any criminal history?"
"None found so far."
"So our Harry is busy corrupting yet another youngster. I really must stop him doing that. Any background?"
"Joel is twenty. Spoilt and sheltered only son, daresay the sort that thinks the world is one big Marvel comic and he's the next superhero. Fancies living dangerously with his sexy naughty cousin. According to a Sergeant Donovan, anyway."
"Yes, that is exactly what she would say. A criminal virgin, then. That should be fun. And should give me a little advantage I might not otherwise have. Thank you for telling me."
"Are you OK? You sound a bit….strange."
"I am always strange. That's what you get when you work with a freak."
"Don't say that."
"Why? It's true."
"It unsettles me."
"Why? That's neither your definition nor your problem."
She could hear the rigidity in him, the intensity of purpose that was anything but blind. Conversation was rather like trying to bend teak.
"Yes, you are." Simply, firmly.
"I. Am. Not." Each word snapped out crisp, as if annoyed. The irritated click of a tongue. "I am putting a plan into operation now - right now - to draw the enemy out of the shadows. Lure him to me. As a result you should have him in custody in the next few hours.
"Just respond fast when I call for you. OK?"
"OK. I'll be waiting."
"Good. The others will assist in their various ways. When you tell them what is really going on."
"They won't like it." She laughed, couldn't help it. "Clever men never like other people being cleverer than they are."
"That is what I do. They should be used to it." There was no humour in his voice, just slight irritation.
"That's one way of putting it."
Her wry response made them both laugh a little, a tiny intimacy that brought them closer again. Neither acknowledged it.
"Come home safe, Sherlock. Do that for me."
He did not reply, but ended the call.
She shook her head, closed her phone, put it back into her pocket and went to find the four men who would help her.
o0o0o
Consciousness returned with a rush. He had not expected it. And he wished it had not bothered. Unconsciousness kept him outside of events and of himself while he endured.
Nothing new about this feeling, though. Nothing at all. He was an addict, reformed or not. People expected it of him, going back to the allure of drugs. He understood drugs. Knew why he used them, how to bend himself into their shape, bend them to his will.
But this had not been his choice. This had been Baldissi behaving like Magnussen before him. How boring and predictable. But he would endure. and he would wait for his chance to get the upper hand. For it would come.
And until then he would listen. Because amongst one or two other notable flaws. Harry Baldwin was a boaster. And boasting was very informative. Especially when the man doing the boasting thought he was only talking to a dead man who still breathed. And that information would be worth the commitment it had taken to get up this close and personal. Worth the anger and pain and humiliation. Yes.
Inventory, now. Before bothering to open eyes.
Cool air on skin, but not actively cold. Naked then. Not outside, in a room. A room that smelt of very little other than cleaning fluid and anonymity. Hotel room? Vacant apartment? Abandoned house? No noise. No street sounds, no vibrations of people beyond the walls.
Cool air with little eddies of movement across his flanks and shoulders. Someone in the unit with him, then. Someone busy doing other things for the moment. Moment of relief and respite all round, then.
Smell. What smells? Oh, so predictable. Sweat, sex, semen, beer, cologne, the salty grease of potato crisps. Like boys at a football match, stag do, birthday party. Out on the slash. And he was what was being slashed. Oh, the irony.
Smell of a clean but not too clean woollen rug his face was turned down into. Could be worse.
Physical reactions. Nothing new. Or special. Or unknown.
Strange sweetly metallic taste in the mouth. GHB? Ketamine? Xanax? Punched in with opiates? Oh, lovely, cocktails. And how predictable. The same mix as at Appledore then. Ram, rape, regress, repeat. Boring.
Tension in muscles. Ache of stretch. Dry and sore throat, dry sore lips. Skin sticky, drying; as expected. Smell of blood but not copious bleeding, so no risk of death from injury as yet. All muscles and joints - tested them surreptitiously - could still stretch and flex. No restraints at the moment, apart from loosely around the wrists. Silken plaited cord. Probably thinking creatively with curtain tie-backs from the room he was in. Game still on, then.
All sensations and reactions were pushed down and away with deliberation, responses ruthlessly purged from one experience to the next, when memory rushed back in fine detail if, and as, and when needed.
From Appledore. From so many dark alleys and commercial waste bins and cheap hotels. From under park bushes and car park stairways when the fog of drugs and self loathing and the need for nourishment, any nourishment, became too much to bear.
School store rooms and dorms and jungle undergrowth and a kothi house of shining cheap silk, gold trinkets, cloying perfume, bright red saris trimmed with gold. Ankle bells…stopstopstop.
That way lay madness.
Deep breaths. Start tumo breathing to become warm and centred again, distanced from fear and the physical self. Step back down into the Mind Palace and distance mental self from bodily self. Intellect from consciousness. Head from heart.
Pain. Delete.
Fear. Delete.
Expectation. Delete.
Reaction, repulsion. Delete.
Anger. Delete.
Reboot: Purpose.
Reboot: Eidetic mental recording of process. Override drugs.
Reboot: Eidetic mental recording of speech. Override drugs.
And relax. And wait. And muster reserves of ….oh…..everything.
I do not have friends. I do not expect help. Support. Knights on white chargers racing to the rescue. …
No charger have I, and no sword by my side…..
No-one has given me anything to eat or drink, Freddie, and I don't think what I have swallowed will count somehow. Come on, Mycroft, use that great brain of yours to detect where I am. Relative to where I was taken from.
Get with it, Christina. Relate your brain to the known perpetrator. All the known perpetrators. Come on, Piet, use your local knowledge.
Find me! While there is still a me left to find.
And the knights are no more, and the dragons are dead.
Or their dragon slayer. Looks like it might be the dragon slayer dead, this time.
Oh well. Don't ask about the state I'm in…
I can do this on my own, of course I can. Just waiting for my chance. Then I'll do it. Kill the bastard now I have him in reach.
But, boys. If you would trouble yourself to do your bit. It would be much appreciated if you stepped forward. Just a bit. And saved me the effort….and quickly.
"Hello again, Sherlock. Joel and me were just taking a little break for a drink and something to eat…."
A voice by his ear. A hand in his hair. Head lifted just enough for discomfort.
"Water…." he mumbled. "Please. Water…..the drugs….terrible thirst."
"Hear that, Joel? I'm sure he just asked for more drugs. That's the thing with reformed junkies, you know. Big appetite. High tolerance levels." A chuckle.
"Now, what do we think he would like this time? A spot of good quality GHB would make a nice change, would it not? That do you nicely, Sherlock?"
"I would prefer ice cream. If you have any?"
"And caviar?"
"Don't mix well."
"Thought not. Never mind. One nice little prick and you will forget all about caviar."
"You want me to scream?"
"Yeah. That would be fun. Let me give you the reason first, though. Don't rob me of the pleasure."
A shadow loomed. He closed his eyes and waited.
"Here we go then."
o0o0o
She had gathered all four men together. Now looked at them hard. Her friend Piet; watchful and controlled as always, but humming with energy as if poised on the balls of his feet.
The special agent Catalani: a stranger, frighteningly capable and detached, always looking as if amused at the ills of the world, yet burning with purpose and something old fashioned, something she had had difficulty finding the right word for. And had eventually settled on 'righteousness' - an outdated word that seemed to suit his age and natural gravitas.
And then the puzzles; the stranger pair, the Englishmen. Deeply contrasting and unreadable, whose only link could ever be Sherlock Holmes; the tall and impassively correct upper class English gentleman, hyper intelligent, disconcertingly objective. Almost impossible to believe this cold fish was Sherlock Holmes' older brother, and operating at a dizzying level of government power.
But she had met and worked with his type before. An emotionless chess player, who did not care if the pawns and rooks were human and not made of stone. Even when the main piece on the board was his own brother.
More of a puzzle to the policewoman was the doctor. Small, ordinary, self effacing. Hid great depths of courage and ability behind a quietly cultivated blandness. Sherlock Holmes' best friend. Not as unlikely a connection as it seemed at first sight, she assessed after watching him for some time, oddly fascinated by the clear blue eyes, the concentration, the compact understated military bearing.
For this was a man Christina instinctively trusted. And who had the trust of Sherlock Holmes. There was, she realised, probably no higher praise. And she wondered if he realised. Then decided that he did. But in his own, more ordinary way, he was as undemonstrative of his inner self as his younger and more striking friend.
"Gentlemen. Your attention, please." They all looked at each other. Not all friends or known to each other before this, but united by common purpose and Sherlock Holmes.
"I am about to take you elsewhere in the hospital. I have information to give you, and would appreciate it if you absorb this quietly, as you will be in a specialist side ward, and surrounded by patients and staff." She smiled. Realised it was her professional plastic smile, and led the way.
Lift, corridors, double doors. Footsteps that resounded on the concrete floors. They looked, she thought, like an inspectorate. Troubleshooters. Well….shooters, anyway. She tried not to smile at the irony of the thought.
But she heard John Watson huff a little breath of laughter by her side when he realised they were entering the Neo Natal Unit.
She slanted a look at him, and he turning smiling eyes at her.
"A long time since I did a rotation in neo-natal," he said. "My wife is pregnant. But far too close to delivery to even flash past a neonatal unit's doors."
"Oh, really? Congratulations!" She grinned at him, taken by surprise. "Boy or girl?"
"Girl."
"Fingers crossed for you," she said with honesty.
"Yeah. Thanks"
In the corridor either side of the main doors to the unit a young man and a woman sat on hard chairs outside a door. He was reading his phone, she flicked through a magazine. Both looked sleepy and bored.
"Your relation in there?" Christina asked brightly.
"Yeah. Complications. We're waiting to see…." said the young man amiably.
"You're doing fine," she said.
Then pushed open the door of the small side ward and gestured the four men in her wake forward and past her. All four looked at the young couple with darkly assessing eyes as they passed, but said nothing. The young couple looked back at them with level looks, studied blandness.
Then she firmly closed the door between them.
The high bed was surrounded by machines connected to a patient within who was almost hidden by them; from the doorway only the shape of feet could be seen at the end of the bed, tenting the smooth coverlet . A tiny cot stood beneath the window.
Only from where she stood, very close to it, could she see that the baby within was a dummy, and that a small covert surveillance camera sat by the pillow, giving every impression of being a pink teddy bear.
"No-one would look for an injured male patient here on the neo natal ward," Christine Ravn said, and stepped back so the four men could look. See what she already knew and had seen. "Sherlock's idea. His plan. When he rang me, even before the ambulance scooped them both up and brought them here….
"What he suggested seemed the safest course, in view of the damage from the knife. And what must be done as a result. Disappear the patient. Disappear his wife and daughter for the safety of them all.
"The risk - the expectation, even - was that he would die from his injuries. So we officially jumped the gun and indeed said he had died. Let everyone believe it. Because Sherlock is right - you are safest when you are dead. So, for the time being, he is dead."
She turned and looked at the men standing at the end of the bed. At the sandy haired man with the chubby face and the long eyelashes breathing quietly, unconscious there. Bandaged and in a hospital gown.
"Let me introduce you, gentlemen: this is Johan Magnussen. Alive and soon to be well. God and Sherlock Holmes allowing." She grinned, dipped her head a little in silent tribute. "With more than a little assistance from Colonel Bruhl and Doctor Watson."
There was a beat, full of silence and surprise. She thought Sherlock himself would have approved of that moment of speechless bafflement.
John Watson was the first to speak.
"Sneaky bugger. Typical. I'll kill him."
He grinned at her, slightly wild eyes. And she grinned back at him. But then, she knew he wasn't talking about Johan Magnussen.
She watched him lift the case notes with practised ease and read what was there. Look with silent neutral assessment at the monitors and the tubes leading in and out of the unconscious man.
"Touch and go for a bit there. He was lucky," he commented finally.
"Yes. Because he had you and Piet," Christina Ravn's voice was brusque, but she had a tolerant smile for the doctor. "Hr Magnussen is under guard, as you have seen. Meanwhile, his wife and children are in a safe place. Sherlock assures me this situation will not last long."
"Yes," remarked Alfredo Catalani, "About Sherlock….."
"Not here," the detective inspector said quietly. "I needed you to see our patient first. To convince you. But we don't want to wake him, do we? Follow me…."
She led them down two floors, and they commandeered a far alcove in the staff restaurant. No other customers at this time. Just five intense people.
Not until they were sitting down around a table, with drinks before them, did she return to the problem in hand.
"Sherlock," she said. "Where is he and what is he doing? And why are you all, such important people, here looking for him?"
John Watson held up his hands in mock submission.
"Nope. That's not me. Just his friend."
She turned her eyes to Mycroft Holmes. Who was concentrating hard on blowing cool air over the top of his hot coffee and avoiding her eyes.
"He is my little brother. His welfare is a major concern. Obviously."
""Piet?"
"Family concern. And a debt owed," Bruhl replied shortly. She already knew the answer to this. So why did she need to ask? Ah. Of course. Catalani. So he added: "Because of Sherlock, I was able to marry. Because of Sherlock, my husband, his brother, and his brother's wife, all avoided blackmail.
"Because of Sherlock, my then fiance avoided being killed. You might say finding and helping Sherlock now is the least I can do."
"Which leaves you, Mr Catalani? What is your interest in Sherlock Holmes?"
Alfredo Catalani looked around the table. And realised he had been manoeuvred into truth. But that he was also in the company of the aware and the wise. The rare situation of being with strangers he could trust and talk to on a level of understanding.
"I knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes until after the death of Charles Augustus Magnussen on Christmas Day," he began.
"I had been interested in Magnussen for some time. He had been on the edge of my radar for years. Because of his career start in porn magazines. Which is on the periphery of what I do: break down human trafficking and sex rings and save the victims. The increase in demand for sex purchase of victims grows larger and younger; more boys, more from African nations and Eastern Europe.
"This is a mushrooming and increasingly profitable world trade, and of great sadness and anger to me. It motivates me to work harder, do more. I am sure you understand?"
Everyone nodded calmly. Yes, they knew. Understood and appreciated.
"Interest in Magnussen grew as sex trafficking rocketed. A pattern had developed, his name increasingly mentioned. Proving it was the problem. The links between the sex and the blackmail became stronger, his victims of ever growing status. So no-one was prepared to speak against him. I started to dig deeper into his activities.
"Also his right hand men. Carlsson - who died with him that night - was a cousin and had many links in the sex trade across Europe, back to even before the start of Magnussen's own career.
"The Ghanian was known to us in his own right, had started in Romeo crime, and soon stepped up into darker deeds.
The youngest man, Baldissi, was always seen as the wild card. Something of a bagman for Magnussen and the others; would do anything for the thrill. I had thought of him as a minor player - headstrong and not over bright. Everyone thought that, ton be fair.
"When Magnussen and Carlsson died I did not believe that public story of a suicide murder pact for one moment. Nor the sexual tryst or treachery theory. Those men were too close, and had been close for too long for that. So I asked a contact of mine connected to both MI5 and MI6 for the truth."
"My brother-in-law's mother-in-law," Piet Bruhl suggested with an air of confident finality.
Alfredo Catalani shot him a wild look. "Really? A family connection to you? How surprising! Or perhaps not." He paused and thought for a moment. No-one interrupted his silence.
" Maggie Driscoll…"
"Hang on," John Watson interjected. "Explain things to the idiot of the party. Who's Maggie Driscoll?"
"Mrs Driscoll runs what might be described as a high level escort agency. For celebrities, diplomats, CEO's and the like, major players who would find it difficult to obtain the services of companionships for social events and the like. Intelligent, trustworthy companions, that is."
"Are you telling me she is a spymaster for pillow talk?"
"Doctor Watson, please!" Mycroft exclaimed. "That sounds like the assessment of a red top tabloid. Hardly worthy of you….."
"That's an affirmative, then, Mr Holmes. Thank you." Catalani grinned briefly. "Mrs Driscoll told me the truth of the events surrounding Magnussen's death. And that was when Sherlock Holmes came onto my radar.
"I instantly understood why Magnussen had been manoeuvring him. What he had done to him. How he could even be blackmailing Sherlock. But that Sherlock actually killed the man to protect….others."
He had the grace to not look at John Watson or Mycroft Holmes.
"To protect so many others. Before himself. I could not speak to Sherlock because at that time he was in solitary confinement in Paddington Green police station. But the Ghanian was in custody. I went to London and was only one of several people who interviewed Simeon Kosi Nzema. He is a professional at what he does, so was not giving much away.
"Then I discovered Baldissi had escaped from Appledore I took a closer look at Baldissi. Discovered from Maggie Driscoll that as Harry Baldwin he had been turned down by her organisation Magenta Rose; and also that he had been rejected by the Mafia.
"That the double rejection had made him mad - in any definition of that term - and that the game was still on. His game became deeper and more important than anyone had thought. That the sex ring we knew as The Charlemagne Level was still operating despite the loss of it's head.
"So it seemed to me Sherlock was going to be a key to solving this." He sipped coffee, intent and thoughtful.
"I had intended to just appear on his doorstep, but then Baldissi staged another bit of taunting and games playing and set up the silly little stunt with the taxi. So when Sherlock stepped away from all that to follow the people who had done it, I followed him. Saw him handle himself against Baldissi and his cousins. Stepped in only when necessary. When it looked like someone was going to die.
"Sherlock was angry with me for letting Baldissi go that night. But I had fatter fish to fry. And Sherlock understood that. So, now. If Sherlock Holmes dies. It will be my fault. So I am doing all I can to stop that. Do you understand?"
The four other people sitting at the table looked at him. They nodded. They understood.
Alfredo Catalani looked down and away, and gave a stiff little nod in return.
"And now we have to find him. How can someone like him be lost in a city as small as Aalborg? It is beyond belief!"
The frustration finally showed in his voice.
He was not reassured when Christina Ravn patted his hand.
o0o0o
The drugs were fading. Ketamine and GHD had a strong effect, but were also quick to deteriorate in the system. He had lost track at the number of times he had floated back to the surface of himself, became aware of what was happening to him, the effects he catalogued every time he was aware.
Lying on his back this time amid a heap of bedding, hands across his still naked stomach. Too many distasteful human smells. Sweat and sex and blood. Blood.
Something cold and straight lay against his ribs. And he knew instantly it was the misericorda stiletto.
"Fav'rit toy…" he mumbled, and one uncoordinated hand tried to flap the steel weapon from where it lay along his body. While the other hand dragged it back down.
In response his already falling hand was knocked away and the knife pressed harder. He felt a little line of warm blood bleed out onto his skin. But he felt the pressure cut not at all. Ket, then. It was Ket he was recovering from.
A powerful anaesthetic used mainly on animals. Loss of feeling, paralysis of muscles, distortion of reality when taken by humans. Floating feeling, detached from pain and sensation - 'entering the k-hole,' as it was called. Hallucinations, panic, yes, all those.
"Don't touch me."
"Too late for that, poncey posh boy," Baldissi's voice drifted in. It was his hand leaning on the knife. No surprise there then, either.
"Harry….stop. Harry, c'mon. That's enough."
The new voice was apologetic. Hesitant. But oddly determined.
"Shut up, Joel. And my name is ENRICO!"
The angry shout made Sherlock Holmes flinch. He looked at Enrico Baldissi's little helpmate. Taller than Harry, but younger and slimmer, loose limbed, still not grown into his height and bodyweight. Dark and good looking, with a natural confidence that had been rattled by the events if the night.
Too much for him, sll this. Too much evil and harm. A bad night. Hard work, growing up over the course of one night. Sherlock Holmes would have felt sympathy; empathy even. If that had not been burnt out of him long ago.
He watched the boy reach forward, eyes flickering between torturer and victim. On an edge. Boldness and confidence curdled.
What did I say to Christina? A criminal virgin, was it? A possible advantage to be used? However little?
"No, it's not. That was great granddad. Stop playacting now. This is serious."
"Why is it serious, arsehole?"
"It's serious because you are gonna kill this bloke in a minute, if you're not careful. Haven't you done enough? Made the poor sod suffer enough?"
"Shut up, Joel. This piece of shit will never suffer enough. Not for what he did, for killing my boss…."
"Magnussen was a bad man, Harry, and from what you've said it sounds like self defence. That Magnussen had been torturing…."
"Lies! don't buy them!"
Sherlock Holmes sucked in air and engaged thought process. Started to try, to begin, to speak.
"Listen to the boy, Harry. Knows what he's talking about…."
"Enrico!"
There it was again. The loss of control, the delusion of identity, the madness.
"No. Harry it is. Just stupid little Harry Baldwin from Clerkenwell. Not a class act operating for Magenta Rose. Not a Mafia capo. Just little old Harry, who left his mum and dad behind because they didn't buy his lies or delusions of grandeur and status. Pathetic."
"Shut up."
Sherlock Holmes turned onto his side with a groan of pain so he was facing Enrico Baldissi and Joel Barbarossa.
Gathered his knees under him and half rose. Gathering energy into his shaking limbs, purpose from somewhere beyond the woolliness in his head, He knew drugs. He knew a lot of drugs. He knew how to function through drugs. He could do this.
But he hurt, and he was drug addled and tired beyond boneless. But he would still leap up. In a moment. And he would get his hands round Harry Baldwin's throat. And he would choke the bastard to death. And he would swat the insignificant naïve cousin aside on the way up.
Just another minute, when the room stopped spinning and the floor levelled out.
"You are pathetic, Harry."
"Oh, yeah. Just look at yourself. Then tell me who's pathetic."
Sherlock Holmes grinned, shot a look from under his brow.
John Watson had often said I could talk anyone to death. I'll try doing that until the strength comes back…..
"You think you've beaten me? When it takes two of you and a hypodermic needle to even get close? Call that fair? Call that having the upper hand? Like hell!
"You think you have me at your mercy? That just because you've fucked me and demeaned me and hurt me, it means you have won? Pathetic. Winning battles doesn't mean you win the war. Don't you know that?
"There are people out there trying to find me. And they will. Find me. And then they will find you. Because I was the bait to lure you into the open, Harry boy. And you are such an arrogant tit you fell for it.
"You were safe in the shadows. But now you are out in the light of day. And even if you kill me, kill me here and now, it won't matter. Because there are too many people after you now, Harry Boy. And if you kill me now, then they'll get you for that, too.
"Wouldn't like to be in your place….."
"Shut the fuck up!"
The back handed blow caught him unawares: he still wasn't reacting at survival speed. The hard slap made his head jolt and split his lip. He tasted fresh blood flow into his mouth, but was more interested in checking with his tongue to make sure his teeth were still intact.
He rocked backwards and put a hand down to stop himself falling. Tried to. Fell anyway. Hands weren't working properly, still held together with the curtain tie.
But the fall back into the bedding took him down and out of arm's reach.
Arms reach. Harm's reach. So what's the bloody difference at this stage of the game?
"Harry, stop! You're frightening me now. You've done enough to punish this bloke. I'm tired and I'm sick of it. It stopped being fun hours ago. This is just….."
"Just what? Revenge? Sport? Yeah, both of them, Joel. What's up? Not got the stomach to be an adult?"
Joel Barbarossa, dark and handsome like his cousin, threw up his hands. Anger and disgust warring for domination.
"You call this being an adult? Being grown up? This ain't grown up. This is just nasty and spiteful."
"Oh! You're just getting that now? Well, hate to tell you this, little baby Joel. This is what I do. It's how to get and work power. And it works!"
"You're proud of this? Acting like a madman? Torturing this bloke beyond endurance and shame?"
Sherlock Holmes lay curled back into the bedding and watched the argument happen. There was nothing he could do to help or intercede. He had tried.
When thieves fall out…
Don't ask about the state I'm in….don't ask me what I think if you, you might not get the answer that you want me to…...
"Shut up, Joel. You know nothing about this. What a nasty slippery bastard Sherlock Holmes is. How he needs to suffer. And how much I need to give it to him."
"I don't care any more, Harry. This has turned my guts."
"It's Enrico! How many bloody times….?"
There was that shout again.
Enrico Baldissi, eyes wild, body clenched, spun away from Sherlock Holmes to face his other tormentor. The stiletto in his hand caught the light. The arm flew out on full extension as Joel Barbarossa caught it with an uncoordinated grab half way up the forearm.
His older cousin snarled loudly. There was a second of tussle - no more than two - as the two bodies closed upon each other in anger and then a horrible wet sound that Sherlock Holmes recognised too well.
For a split second the two bodies were poised like ballet dancers, frozen in time. And then the younger man flopped backwards, suddenly boneless, to slump against the wall.
How quickly the pall of death covered a body and took it over. How swiftly eyes glazed over and the soul departed. This was not the first time Sherlock Holmes had watched it happen. He was always immune to it. Almost always. As soon as he had registered what had happened - the moment was too recognisable - he looked away and at Harry Baldwin instead.
This was the moment when Sherlock Holmes should have had an advantage to take. When Enrico Baldissi should have realised what had happened. When Harry Baldwin realised he had just killed his younger cousin.
In blood hot or cold, the result was the same. When there was regret and pause and horror. When he looked down at the person he had killed and the thing he had become. That Joel Barbarossa had become.
Instead of taking that moment of recognition Enrico Baldissi stood upright. Took three steps over to what had been his cousin. Checked the boy was no longer breathing. Wiped their great grandfather's stiletto clean on Joel's shirt, where it left a red line to match the small puncture mark underneath the ribs.
For a second Sherlock Holmes though he would be sick. Seeing such an unemotional reaction to death. That small punch of blood through a white shirt. How it took his mind back to Charles Augustus Magnussen's penthouse flat. And the bullet that had punched a similar small but devastating hole in him. Had nearly killed him.
He sucked a breath and waited. Baldissi would turn back to him in a second. And then he would have him. Would take him down then, as he stumbled a little in normal, human regret and reaction.
Hands tied together would not stop him delivering a rabbit punch, a dagger stroke, an Ottoman slap, a sleeper hold. That brief hesitation was all the advantage, all the chance he would need.
But even as he drew himself together to make that move Enrico Baldissi turned to him. There was a smile on his face that turned into an obscene grin.
"Poor lad," he said almost absently. "But such a waste of space."
He had turned briskly on his heel and was facing Sherlock Holmes again.
"Bloody hell, that felt good. An adrenaline high is that called, Sherly boy? You would know if anyone does. Is this how you felt after you shot Charles through the face?" He took two steps back. Dropped to his knees by Sherlock Holmes' head.
"Know what is needed after a brilliant kick to the brain like that? A kick somewhere else to celebrate."
He grinned. Stabbed the long thin knife into the floor just an inch from hazy storm grey eyes. Where it vibrated in wait.
Picked up yet another hypodermic syringe from the coffee table just a reach away. And full of a pale liquid.
"Fancy a quick shag, posh boy? No, don't bother answering. It won't make any difference."
This time the consulting detective refused to close his eyes. Watched every step of the pain and indignity coming. Held on to his anger.
"You are so predictable." He spit out the words, voice so low with disgust and repressed anger he could taste the bile in his throat.
Which was the last thing he really knew for some time.
o0o0o
A chilly late January afternoon in London.
Chris Walsh had had a busy day and was back on duty at the revolving doors at the glossy entrance to the Savoy Hotel.
It had been a busy day. Work and a lunch break sneaked into the security office, checking, finding, texting Sherlock.
Other than that there were visitors and clients and queries, Politeness and smiles. Cars and the usual comings and goings. He enjoyed his job. Enjoyed the endless stream of people who passed him by.
The endless stream of black cabs and smart cars that made the broad sweep of the entrance towards the hotel was all part of that. Today there had been taxis and Bentleys and Mercedes and more. But it was the silver grey Rolls Royce Ghost that caught his attention and made the hackles on the back of his neck stand to attention.
He registered in one slow blink tinted the reinforced window glass to repel sub machine gun fire. Side skirts that hid a reinforced bomb resistant floor pan. A dropped suspension and wider wheels than normal. But standard number plates, no personalisation, no diplomatic badge.
He stepped forward, as normal, to open the rear door closest to him, to tip his top hat in formal salutation, to murmur: "Good afternoon. Welcome to the Savoy."
Two young people got out. Man and woman. Both in dark suits, with spectacles and smooth hair. Neither looked at him, did not speak or smile. Just made for the door at speed. Both carrying laptop computer bags. Invisible, anonymous nerds on a mission, he decided.
He let them pass. Knew what they were about to do, even though he did not know who they were. Not exactly. He watched them disappear inside, looked back to the driver of the car.
Saw a broad shouldered man in his fifties with a disciplined crew cut and bright all seeing eyes above a still fit solid body contained within a well cut suit. This was a man he recognised. As a distinct and very special type.
The window beside the driver purred down.
"Chris Walsh?" asked the driver.
"Yes, sir."
"Don't 'sir' me. Civvy street now. Both of us. Message for you."
"Yes, Sergeant." A grin. They shared it.
"Message from Sherlock. Thanks for the help. He'll see you right when he's back. Well, either him or me. Someone, anyway."
"No need for that. I owe him."
"We all owe him, son. Doesn't mean he'll let you pay him back, though. Thanks anyway. Your country needs you."
From the invisibility of the car interior he sketched a brisk army salute. Chris Walsh snapped the sketch of a reply to his top hat and grinned.
There was a nod, and the Ghost drifted away again. Leaving Chris Walsh tring to prise the satisfied grin off his face.
o0o0o
The cold air on his face and shoulders, combined with the pain across his chest, woke him and he opened his eyes with difficulty.
Found himself looking straight down. Thirty feet, perhaps, straight down to the ground. And his heart kicked with the shock of it, and with a sudden unusual vertigo, and that ridiculous lurching instinct for survival, and so he instinctively tried to fling himself backwards and to safety.
A hard hand pressing down in the middle of his back kept him firmly where he was. The pain of the something unyielding pressing up into his chest took away his breath and his power of speech.
Half in, but also half way out, of what he quickly realised was a four storey apartment block window. Looking down grey walls onto grey concrete in a grey dark day.
The cold air was the air of a Danish January morning, and the relentless pain across his chest was the aluminium window frame, a hard bar pressed into his upper body producing a compressed feeling not unlike heart failure.
Pressing to death. Piene forte et dure. Oh bloody great. Get out of this one, Holmes!
A grey, hopeless dawn that now had no-one in it but himself and Enrico Baldissi.
"I was going to shoot you. Just shoot you," said the voice conversationally. "Just like you shot Charles. Put the gun barrel to your forehead and shoot your face off. Just like you did with him."
The voice in his ear was slightly ragged, and he could feel the hot breath against his face. Ragged after a long sleepless night, but still determined. He felt the cold steel barrel of a pistol press against his left cheek.
"But then I thought: wouldn't it be much more fun, and much more fitting, if you flew from a high building, just like you did before? Just the threat of the fun to make certain you went splat out of the window when you died. Soft body, hard ground. Great impression!
"But to do it that right it had to look as if it was all you. As if you had shot yourself by an open window. So you had arranged yourself to fall out and made sure you really were dead this time. Really dead. Not pretend dead. For once. The final once, that is.
"Something clever enough and complicated enough to mark the death of Sherlock bloody Holmes. How am I doing so far?"
A hard shove bore him up and forwards, and Sherlock Holmes flailed his arms, uncoordinated, groggy, to try to keep his balance and his body the right side of the window frame. He was not far from toppling out, almost beyond his point of physical balance.
He knew that, just as he knew there was no point in dying - not now, not right now - not without taking Enrico Baldissi with him.
After the long ravaged night it took time to recognise he was still naked, and that the long shallow cuts in his skin were still leaking blood. Exsanguinating.
Exsanguinating. Lovely word that. Had a musical ring to it. Ex- san-guin - a -ting. Far too pretty a word to mean bleeding to death. The action and draining a person, animal or organ of blood. So was that all he had become now?
No longer a person. Too aware to be an animal. Perhaps an organ. A mere organ of underachievement. How appropriate. Still, what the fuck: cuts no worse than an average night in a BDSM club or a kothi house. Had suffered worse.
Blood and pain. Superficial pain on his arms and torso. Hot, angry, spiteful little cuts that tortured the epidermis: sharp like paper cuts.
Not deep, angry, life sapping cuts. Not bleeding out, numb and nauseous cuts. Painful, distracting. But manageable.
He closed his mind to the pain in his skin. In his chest. Between his legs and buttocks where the bleeding felt to be a different issue altogether, around his prostate where the stretch and the bruising was enough to make him double over and vomit. To scream and run away and hide.
Which was just too easy and humiliating a course to follow. And anyway: this was nothing new. He calmed his brain and took conscious control of his mind and his body.
I am not letting this pain in! Not any of it! I am not!
"Or," the voice droned on in a cheerily confident tone: " I could just stick my faithful misericorda in your gut. Or your gullet. Or through your eye. I have such a wonderful range of alternatives.
"Would a little of all of them be too greedy, do you think? Overegging the pudding?"
"Dunno. Don't care. Hardly subtle," he rasped. His voice felt and sounded rough. Mouth hurting. Lips split inside and out.
"I don't want to be subtle. I want you to die as painfully as possible, and I want you to die so you are not a tidy heap in a smart suit and overcoat bleeding prettily onto the pavement from one little head wound.
"This time I want you to be naked and abased and the human equivalent of a dead mongrel in a gutter. So everyone knows what a freak and a pervert Sherlock Holmes is. Was."
'Come away, come away death. And in sad cyprus let me be laid," he mumbled blankly in reply.
Words running away with themselves for their own sake; an appearance of nonchalance, a disconnection of feelings from fate, a delaying conversation that meant nothing, a disassociation tactic. "'Fly away, fly away breath…' Yeah, I guess that'll do, young Harry."
"Beating you is getting so boring now, Sherlock."
"You're not beating me, because I am not in competition with you. You are just amusing yourself. Going to upgrade to the next level after killing me and start pulling wings off flies? Stealing pennies from a blind man's begging bowl? Fucking babies? All that too hard for you so you have to make do with sorting me instead?"
"If you don't shut up…I might not kill you after all."
"What? Delay the pleasure? Ruin the image you have been building up so carefully then show you haven't the bottle? Can't do it after all? Thought these thungs were always easier after the first? Gain the upper hand, the kudos, Harry. By killing me."
"I've fucked you senseless. Robbed you of your pride. Your dignity. So I win."
"Yeah? Then why am I still here? Still talking? You're an amateur, Harry. Always will be. And if I don't get you, someone else will."
"Brave words, and I don't believe any one of them. What else can I do to convince you, Sherlock?"
"You can't." He swallowed dry. It hurt. "Water, Give me water. Please."
He sobbed then. Face collapsing in pain. Tears flowing out of the window to spatter invisibly down onto the path below.
"Begging now? How predictable."
"Yeah. I know. But it's no big deal, just a physical thing. Lubricant for the throat."
"You've had lots of lubricant. Throat and more."
"True. But that's not the sort of lubricant I mean. Or why."
TO BE CONTINUED…..
Author's notes:
Pien forte et dure: In French, 'hard and forceful punishment' under law in which a defendant who stands mute and refuses to plea is pressed to death by more and more stones being placed upon the chest to stop breathing. Or simple torture for information. Very popular in the Elizabethan era. Choose it as an alternative to being burnt at the stake? Or hung drawn and quartered? Or the blood eagle? Tough call.
Tumo Breathing: Ancient and little known Buddhist breathing technique to still and warm the body, when in cold places, by concentration alone. It is said that an expert can generate so much body heat flammable material pressed to the stomach can be made hot enough to smoulder and form the basis of a warming fire.
Songs going through Sherlock's head include Jan Struther's When A Knight Won His Spurs and Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well Part 1 by Peter Green. The song/poem is Shakespeare - Twelfth Night.