by Janina Woods
“What do you think you’re doing, treating this building so disrespectfully?”
“I’m very sorry,” I answered quietly and looked down to the floor.
“We don’t keep this place in order for you to vandalize it! Where are your manners, idiot?”
The man certainly didn’t pull his punches.
“I... I...” Without warning, I let my shoulders sink and released a loud sobbing noise. I brought my hand up to my face and squeezed the area around my eyes just so, as tears already ran down my cheeks.
Watson stepped up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright? You kicked that stone pretty hard...”
That was my cue. I turned around, fell into the doctor’s arms and cried even harder. Watson seemed genuinely surprised, which worked entirely in my favour, and patted my back in a calming gesture. The worker beside us cleared his throat noisily. His face was a mixture of confusion and commiseration.
“I am sorry for my harsh words, but you must understand...”
“I do, and I am sorry, but my recently departed father...” I crossed myself and looked to the heavens for a moment. “...had always wanted to visit the Duomo and pay his respects to Saint Vitus, who had given him strength throughout his long illness. But he couldn’t make the trip before he died.”
“And I am so sorry for your loss. If you want to see the statue and pay your respects, you might be able to visit it in the workshop, where it is currently being restored.” In just one moment, the man had changed his attitude completely from being angry to supportive. He pointed at a house, barely visible from our vantage point. “It’s in the big building directly behind the cathedral.”
“You are most kind,” I answered with a smile and rubbed the tears from my eyes.
The worker just shook his head and apologised again. We shook hands awkwardly while he looked at me with commiseration and then patted Watson on the shoulder in an empathetic gesture before he left us. As he turned his back, I immediately grabbed the doctor’s sleeve and dragged him into the direction of the stairs, which led down from the roof of the cathedral.
As soon as we were out of view, I wiped the last tears from my face with the help of my handkerchief. Seconds later, a pair of slightly red eyes were the only thing betraying the fact that I had actually cried earlier.
“So, what was that about?” Watson asked with curiosity in his voice. “You didn’t actually hurt your foot, did you?”
“A simple means of getting information. Most people are uncomfortable when faced with a grown man in tears. They will do anything to get out of the embarrassing situation as quickly as possible,” I shrugged, then recounted the contents of our conversation briefly for the doctor.
“You know, I actually believed you back there. Of course I thought you hurt your foot, but the pain was expertly played,” Watson laughed. “Just like your brother.”
“Quiet, doctor!” I replied in hushed, but urgent tones, and stifled his laugh as I placed my hand over his mouth. “What if the worker is observing us? It would be a rather poor behaviour to laugh while your friend is in grief.”
“My apologies...”
“Has my brother taught you nothing?”
“I do tend to get caught up in the moment and let my emotions get the better of me...” Watson’s voice had the nostalgic quality of a person talking about a summer long gone by. “But Holmes always says it’s one of my better qualities.”
“As long as it doesn’t interfere with the investigation...” I grumbled and wondered, not for the first, time if Sherlock had grown too soft in recent years.
The cathedral’s workshop was just behind the building itself - the only place still busy while the rest of the city was suspended in hibernation. We approached the entrance with purpose in our stride to get as far as possible into the place before anyone would notice. It’s not a secret that it’s rather easy to blend into a place if you just pretend like you have every right to be there. People are prone to ignore everything that does not directly concern them. If someone would notice us, we could still play the part of a pair of stupid, lost British visitors.
A long, low hallway lead into a large inner courtyard. Despite the cold season, many workers were out in the crisp air, working on various stone elements, which were being prepared to replace broken parts of the cathedral. Several statues were positioned underneath large tents, sheltered from the weather, where they were being cleaned and repaired. Inside the courtyard, it was easy for us to go unnoticed, as everyone was wearing heavy coats, scarves and hats to protect them from the cold, just as we did.
We split up and slowly, as inconspicuously as possible, tiptoed around the place to find the statue we were looking for. Fortunately, the workers didn’t pay me any mind, as they were focused on getting their work done as quickly as possible, which enabled me to move between the different tents and look behind the barriers that had been erected to keep the weather out.
While I inspected at the statue of an angel figure, I realised something odd. There was a small girl next to a stonemason, who was meticulously cleaning the surface of a statue. She handed him the required tools, one after the other. Now, as I focused on them, I could see children all around, huddled next to the fires for warmth, or mostly with the workers, engaged in the restoration process.
I pinpointed Watson’s location quickly, as I had never left him out of my sight completely, and made my way across the workshop to reach him.
“You have seen them?” I whispered as I had reached his side.
“Yes. Do you think we will find the right boy when we ‘Find help.’?”
“I believe so. We have to,” determination overlaid the desperation in my voice. “Saint Vitus is often portrayed as a young man, usually clad in only a sheet of cloth. And I believe I have found him just on the other side of the courtyard, in that brown tent.”
The distance was quickly crossed. And then, there he was: The statue of Saint Vitus. We had ‘found help’ at last! And at his feet, wrapped up in a thick blanket, was a boy, who couldn’t have been older than fifteen. There was no worker around, and he seemed to be sleeping in the middle of the workshop.
“Watch the area,” I ordered Watson in hushed tones, then kneeled down next to the boy. I woke him gently, but his first instinct was to run. Of course I had anticipated this. Even if it wasn’t the gentlemanly thing to do, I had already placed one hand on his shoulder and another one across his mouth and pushed him down as quickly as he wanted to get up.
“Sherlock Holmes,” I said quietly and shushed the boy again. As he stopped his struggle, I produced the letter from my coat pocket and held it up, so the boy could see it.
“I didn’t think you’d ever show,” the boy said then, in a broken Italian that was most appalling. “I’ve been waiting here, every day, for weeks. I would’ve stopped, if that nice man hadn’t paid me to do so.”
“That nice man?” I asked and wondered if he meant Sherlock.
“Yeah.”
“And where is the nice man?”
The boy shrugged. “I was told to wait. But I don’t know where he is now.”
“It’s a start. Then tell me what you know,” I said, as amicably as possible.
“No.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Unless you get me something to eat, I won’t tell you anything.”
I groaned but folded immediately. If that’s what it was to get the boy to talk, so be it.
“You might want to speed this up,” Watson said and turned my head into the direction of a large man, approaching us fast. He didn’t seem overly angry, but it was clear that he wasn’t happy to be seeing outsiders within the courtyard of the workshop.
The boy reacted quickly and jumped up to meet the man. They exchanged a few heated words, then he motioned for us to follo
w him. Together we left the premises under the scrutiny of the annoyed supervisor - the boy still wrapped in his assortment of baggy clothes and rough blankets.
As we emerged from the building, our little friend gestured towards a restaurant behind the cathedral with a cheeky grin. It was in this way I found myself watching our newest acquaintance wolf down a frankly enormous dish of pasta and waited for him to finish his food, just to get the information we so desperately needed. While he had seemed genuinely surprised upon meeting us, it had only taken him a few minutes to realise he could profit from us in exchange for the information we so clearly craved. Street smarts are never to be underestimated.
“The tall man wanted us to find someone,” the homeless child recounted while he licked the last remnants of sauce from his fork. “A woman... how did he say... pitch black hair and striking green eyes.”
“A woman?” I asked, barely able to hide the surprise. “Did you find her?”
“We searched for days, but there was no sign. The man paid us anyway. Then the nice man came to me. The tall man vanished after that. No more money for us,” the boy sounded sad. If out of concern for Sherlock or for the lost money, I couldn’t say, but I suspected it to be the latter. Still... something didn’t add up.
“What did the nice man look like?” Damn that child for not using any names in his description. Maybe he really didn’t know them, but I was still irritated.
“Normal, I guess. He had an eyepatch, though. He gave me a piece of paper, money and a name. That was the last I saw of him.”
Eyepatch? What in the world...? I relayed the information to Watson, who had waited with bated breath while the boy talked slowly, at his own leisurely pace.
“A nice man with an eyepatch? I can’t think of anyone resembling this description,” he said. “Do you think he’s the one who...”
“Yes. And now we know why the letter is so short. My brother probably had to write it, so it was recognisable as his hand, but that was only intended to lure us here.”
“But the riddle... the game you used to play?”
“I don’t know. Why would he be allowed to lead us here if the man with the eyepatch could just abduct my brother and escape without any danger of us getting to him?”
The boy looked back and forth between us and waited patiently for more fortune to be bestowed upon him. I took pity on him and handed over a few coins from my pocket, along with the instructions to find us if Sherlock would reappear anywhere in the city.
The boy nodded, then pulled something out of his own pocket and placed it on the table between us. He then snatched the last few pieces of bread from the table and bowed playfully before leaving the restaurant.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Watson asked, but the boy made no attempt to stop his leave.
We both stared at a small clay figurine, shaped roughly into the form of a basic human figure with a round head on a cone-shaped body. I picked it up and gingerly turned it around between my fingers, feeling the coarse surface.
“It looks like a play...”
A shot rang out. It pierced the comfortable atmosphere of the brilliant winter day as it echoed through the streets. The doctor jumped up and ran towards the door as if the hounds of hell were at his heels. Curse this man’s ingrained desire to help the innocent. In a feat of extraordinary speed, I caught up to Watson and threw myself at him. We tumbled to the ground most ungracefully in a tangle of limbs. It didn’t matter because I had achieved my goal: We were still inside the restaurant.
“Are you mad? Stay down!” I hissed and drew Watson under a table, so that we wouldn’t be visible from a window. “I should complain to the idiot in charge of your army training, because he left out the chapter about firefights!”
“But the boy!” the fool shouted, the adrenaline from the sudden shock coursing through his veins. I gripped his arms, kept the doctor grounded, as he still looked like he could bolt at any second.
It was clear that other customers and passersby on the street were not as cautious as me, because the noise outside was growing by the second. They couldn’t know the implications. Voices grew louder, and from the words I could discern it became clear that the victim had indeed been the boy. But why shoot our informant only after he had talked? It made no sense! As soon as the mass of people on the street was large enough to blend into, I gave Watson my blessing to move, but insisted on leaving the door first.
The icy weather seemed to be forgotten, as everyone pushed to get a glimpse of the already cooling body, bleeding out on the pavement. The corpse in front of us was indeed the boy, previously so full of life. Now he lay motionless in the dirty snow of the street. Blood oozed from a large opening in the side of his head that looked very much like the exit wound of a bullet. The bread, which he had grabbed from the table, had fallen from his hands into the puddle of blood, and soaked it up like a sponge.
Watson inspected the body while I directed my attention to our surroundings. None of the onlookers behaved suspiciously, and I didn’t expect them to, as the culprit was very likely not among them. The exit wound was on the right side of the boy’s head - a result from an entry on the left. I had only seen a wound like this once before: on a dummy made by my brother. Assuming the boy had wanted to return to the workshop, he would’ve turned right immediately after leaving the restaurant, which made the only building to have the right vantage point... the cathedral!
I raised my head immediately and scrutinised the top of the building. Night had fallen and it was almost impossible to track anything between the countless columns, decorations and statues. But then I saw it: A brief appearance of light, a glint in the darkness I just knew to be a reflection in a glass lens. There was but one exit from the roof: The very same staircase I had used earlier that day. I wasted no time to explain. My body propelled itself upwards and I pushed my way through the crowd barely a second after I deduced the situation.
There is little that can stop me when I am running with purpose.
The tiled floor underneath my feet flew by and my surroundings faded to a blur. I knew that the entrance to the roof was close. Whoever wanted to leave the cathedral roof would have to go through there, and with the added weight of the rifle, they shouldn’t have been able to clear all the steps before I reached the entranceway.
Fueled by adrenaline and armed with desperate determination, I pushed a pair of people out of my way and sprinted up the narrow staircase. My ears strained to make out a sound, and as I was halfway up the tower I heard the unmistakable noise of quick, nervous steps above me. The killer must have heard my approach and turned around. But there was nowhere to go.
The air was burning in my lungs with every breath as I caught up to a tall figure, barely visible around the bend of the tower’s central column. With a final effort I doubled my speed and climbed several steps at once, then threw myself at the person, clutched their clothes and restrained their movement by my added weight. The killer released a high-pitched scream as I jumped them, which cut off suddenly, like lifting the needle off a phonograph record, when we hit the floor together.
We struggled for dominance, which was made easier by the fact that I was already on top, when I felt something hit my legs. A figure stumbled and fell over the pair of us. Its speed was sufficient to catapult it out into the open night air and deep into the snow, as we had ended up on the top of the stairs, right at the exit to the roof.
“Release me!” A furious voice screeched from underneath me. “I’ll kill you!”
“I will do nothing of the sort,” I answered coldly, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible and noted with satisfaction that only a hint of the sprint I had just undertaken was noticeable in my tone. “Doctor, so good of you to join us. Please, would you assist me?”
During the short time, I had managed to restrain both hands of the person underneath me at their back and
pressed them into the stairs. Their head rested sideways on the top step - a most uncomfortable position that suited my purpose perfectly. From my viewpoint, I couldn’t see their face, only the long, black hair, which had come undone from a bun atop the person’s head. Not only from the voice, I could conclude that the culprit was unmistakably a woman.
“My inner left coat pocket, if you would be so kind,” I addressed the doctor again, who still drew in heavy breaths, trying to find his equilibrium. He stepped closer and supported himself on the cold cathedral wall, then reached around me to find a pair of iron handcuffs in the aforementioned pocket. A few moments later, I had twisted the killer’s hands into the right position and Watson let the metal snap shut around her wrists. Still, as we didn’t have any means to restrain her legs, it wasn’t wise to release her just yet.
“You will pay for this! I will make you pay, I swear,” she hissed, reminding me of a rather angry cat.
The woman lifted her head and glared at me, as much as her position allowed. Her eyes were narrowed and the face was distorted in anger. If she were indeed a cat, her fur would have been standing on edge. She emitted a feral energy, which would make lesser men shrink back in fear, but I didn’t move a muscle. It was then I noticed her striking green eyes.
“Her appearance... Is she...” I shut up Watson with a piercing stare. I put as much non-verbal communication into my gaze as possible, thereby relaying the message that I would like for him to stop talking right now and keep on doing just that indefinitely. His bumbling, careless nature would not help my interrogation at all.
“Can you see the case she dropped? Retrieve it, Doctor,” I said calmly. “The murder weapon will be in it and I would very much like to take it with us.”
“Leave your filthy hands off it!” the woman hissed.
“It seems like someone wants to do this the hard way,” I sighed and pulled my own gun out of a concealed carrying holster around my waist, then pressed it to the back of the shooter’s head. “Now, you shot a helpless child in cold blood. While I do need information from you, I do not necessarily need you alive to get the important details. You are clearly very convinced of yourself and the skills you think you possess, and have never thought it possible you could be caught by someone as insignificant as the useless, lazy brother of the man you abducted. Let me make this very clear: You make one wrong move and it will most certainly be your last.”