Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stopped mid-motion in the middle

Of what we call a life, I looked up and saw no sky —

Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.

I’m frowning as I read the words, trying to hear them in my head. It doesn’t make them sound any better. English is a harsh language, and blank verse loses too much. I open my Italian copy — a well-thumbed school edition — to find the first tercet, though I know it by heart.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

I recite it aloud, letting the mellifluous syllables roll off my tongue. Dante’s Tuscan original would’ve sounded a bit different, but not enough to make a real difference.

Disgusted, I throw the English book down on the table. Whatever had possessed my daughter to send it to me as a birthday gift? True, she’s done a year as an assistant teacher of English at the University of Trento, but this new “modernised” translation is an abomination.

A sudden memory: reading out the first lines of the Inferno in languid tones, tracing with my finger a mediaeval sigil onto the alabaster skin of my lover’s thigh. At the end of each line, I press a kiss to that flesh, as if to punctuate my passion.

“It does sound better in Italian,” came the baritone reply. The echo of that caramel voice, especially speaking Italian, still turns my bones to water.

I’d agreed, laughing that “everything sounds better in Italian. You speak Italian like a Roman. How’s that even possible? Is it my influence?”

He’d sniffed. “I’ve been walking the city and listening. I’ve always had an ear for languages, accents, idioms. It’s usually dialect features that trip me up.”

“So that’s why we’ve been speaking only Italian. It’s all working: you’ve practically become Italian.”

“Robe’, a leopard cannot change its spots. I am English, no matter what language I’m speaking.”

Saying this in English he broke the unspoken rule he had himself imposed. Was it a rebuke? At the time, I was oblivious, too much in love to realise that he was already starting to leave me.

My answer embarrasses me now.“A leopard, very quick and lithe — a leopard covered with a spotted hide. You’re right, that’s you. And you’ve driven me from my safe little world into a new adventure.”

More a misadventure, as it had turned out. There was a time when I’d thought of Sherlock as Dante, a soul lost in the woods, and myself as Virgil, to lead him out of the dark place he seemed to be in. I imagined how we'd be once he was even more integrated into Roman life:  the two of us descending into the Italian underworld of organised crime, solving cases, building a life together.

It was a naïve fantasy. All I’d done was show Sherlock how much he missed his beloved John. Like Virgil, I’d been left behind; Sherlock went home to build his own paradise back in London.

The wound of losing the love of my life had scarcely scabbed over when it re-opened. Our paths crossed again in Venice, on — of all the rotten cosmic jokes — his honeymoon. Coming on the two of them, seeing their happiness, per carità di dio — that had been hard. A divine comedy that, like the original, wasn’t the least bit funny. In the intervening years the scars have faded, but on occasion, the dull ache of loss returns.

“Basta!” Angry with myself, I pick up the English book from where I’d thrown it on the coffee table and shove it back in the bookshelf. I go out of the apartment, down the stairs into the brutal July sun.

We still were by the sea, like those who think
about the journey they will undertake,
who go in heart but in the body stay. (Purg. 2.10–12)

July 2022

John tugs his t-shirt away from his neck in the vain hope that letting some air in there will help. In the narrow lane taking them towards the oldest part of Sorrento, it must be well over thirty-five degrees in the shade. Heat seems to pulse from the stone walls of the houses lining the street. “Remind me whose idea it was to go on holiday in Italy in July?” 

Sherlock, hand-in-hand with Rosie, wears a white linen shirt and shows no sign of the sweat that John’s drowning in. He lifts his sunglasses to give John one of his looks before answering calmly, “Blame the English school system. It’s still mired in the past, when children were needed in high summer to help bring the harvest in. And all those Brits heading south for sunny beaches are happy to perpetuate the absurd calendar. It was you who said that a bit of foreign sunshine would be welcome, after being unable to travel for the past two years.”

“Don’t you want to be on holiday with me, Da?” The seven-year-old is slathered in high-factor sunscreen, her blonde curls almost hidden under a floppy sunhat.

“'Course I do, Rosie. Only three more days before you start at your language summer school, so we have to make the most of them. Are you up for some ice cream?”

“Sì, sì!”

In via San Cesareo they reach Raki, an artisanal gelateria. John sinks down into a metal chair under a parasol, while Sherlock and Rosie join the queue. John smiles at her eager “Ooooh, look at all those ice cream flavours!”

“Not ice cream. Gelato,” Sherlock replies. “A taste experiment will help you appreciate the differences.”

John lets his attention drift down the cobbled pedestrian street. The fruit and vegetable stand by the gelateria has lemons the size of grapefruits. Tourists mingle with Italian nonne, short, stout, with string bags full of produce. Sorrento’s a tourist town, but it’s also home to a lot of people just living their lives. The smell of coffee wafts from the bar across the street. Lunch was some time ago and he’s looking forward to a gelato.

Sherlock brings out a tray with three metal dishes and bottles of local spring water. John snaps one open and gulps, relishing the cool as it slides down his throat.

Thirst quenched, he looks at the dish in front of him. “What’s this?” But he already knows.

“Your favourites, obviously ­—chocolate chip and strawberry. I know better than to challenge your taste buds with anything as exotic as fig and honey-roasted almond.” He points to the ivory-coloured scoop in his own dish, flecked with slivers of almond and dotted with brown seeds. “Or this one — melone,” a bright orange.

Sherlock leans over to look at Rosie’s dish. “Any observations?” Rosie’s tucking into the first of her two flavours, pausing to say, “It’s different from ice cream.”

“Let’s break that down. How does the temperature compare?” 

“Not so cold. It doesn’t make my teeth hurt.”

“Correct. Gelato’s served at a warmer temperature than ice cream.”

“Warmer by the minute, in this heat,” John says, spooning up the growing pool of liquid at the bottom of his dish.

Ignoring the interruption, Sherlock asks, “What does that do to the feel of it in your mouth?”

“Softer, smoother.”

“It has less dairy fat in the base recipe.”

“Oh,” she says, licking the next bit off her spoon. “Is that good?”

“You tell me. Also, there’s thirty percent less sugar in gelato than in ice cream.”

“Dentist will approve,” notes John.

“It tastes better, more chocolaty.”

“Flavours that aren’t masked by sugar and fats will taste more intense. They make it here in the shop, too, no artificial ingredients.”

John muses, “The strawberry was delicious, but this doesn’t taste like the vanilla chocolate chip we get at home.”

“That’s because there’s no vanilla in stracciatella. Boring.”

John’s lip quirks. “Trust you to choose one with honey in it.”

Sherlock licks his spoon. “Gelato’s origins are Roman; they poured honey over crushed ice brought from the mountains.” He looks at Rosie’s dish. “Aren’t you going to try the green one?”

She looks dubiously at the remaining scoop, now melting. “It’s green. That’s weird.”

“Taste it and you might change your mind.”

She takes a tentative mouthful and closes her eyes. A moment later, she opens them in surprise. “Oh! That’s nice. I thought it would taste of vegetables, but it’s really good. “

John laughs. “You think your Ba would bring you broccoli ice cream?”

“If he did, broccoli ice cream is just – yuck.”

Sherlock’s still nudging. “What have you eaten before that tastes like this?”

She squints, concentrating hard on the next spoonful. “I don’t know. It’s sort of familiar, but I can’t put a name to it.”

“Small hard shell, slightly pink outside, green on the inside.”

Rosie beams. “Pistachio!”

“Yes, indeed. The same word in Italian, but a hard c: pistacchio. You weren’t keen to try it because it was green, yet now you’ve tasted it, you enjoy it. So?”

“It’s a mistake to theorise before you have all of the evidence,” Rosie and John chorus. 

“Eat up before you have to drink the evidence rather than eat it.”

She returns to her gelato with enthusiasm. Sherlock finishes his melone and pronounces it excellent. “At home we can try some recipes to compare the ice cream and gelato versions. I’ll show you some of the chemistry involved.”

John can’t resist. “I might have got you to cook when I first moved in, if I’d called it a chemistry experiment. Though ice cream seems a bit trivial to spark your scientific curiosity.”

“To a great mind, nothing is little,” his husband intones, licking his spoon one last time and opening his bottle of water.

John’s amused. Over the years Sherlock’s always made Rosie’s learning fun: challenging her assumptions, guiding her to come to her own conclusions. It’s helped to make her independent and confident, well able to handle the oddities of their home life. Over the four days of playing tourist together — taking in the sights of Herculaneum, Vesuvius, the archaeology museum in Naples, a boat trip to Capri — Sherlock’s entertained Rosie with everything from classical myths and history, to the geology of volcanic eruptions, to the reasons why Sorrento lemons are three times the size of any she’d ever seen at home.

Once she starts her language program here in Sorrento, the two of them will hire a car and head south. Their first stop will be Ravello for a night; Sherlock’s got tickets at the world-renowned Music Festival for a performance by Eleonora Volturno, rising Italian baroque violinist. (Nothing else, he’d grumbled, would make him brave the Amalfi coast in July.) After that, the Greek temples at Paestum. It’s been too long since they spent time alone — good food, good wine, a pool to cool off in at the end of each day. A good bed, and the best of companions in it. 

Three  weeks of bliss, and John’s been aching for it.

Something catches his eye. He looks up the alleyway and sees a pair of men heading purposefully in their direction. Not tourists: dressed in business suits, one of them with a briefcase. Not locals; Sorrento natives seem more used to the heat, more relaxed in their posture and clothing. Businessmen? These two stand out, making John’s instincts prickle.

Identical dark sunglasses shield their eyes, but they seem to be looking straight at him. Is he being paranoid? Sherlock’s back is to them: time to alert him.

“Sherlock — behind you.”

“But why should I go there? Who sanctions it? 

For I am not Aeneas, am not Paul; 

nor I nor others think myself so worthy.” (Inf. 2.31–33)

Without hesitation Sherlock moves his chair. To a casual observer, it will look as if he’s taken a sudden interest in Watson’s ice cream. And it puts him between her and what John’s hinting might be a threat.

Even better, it places him where he can glance up the alleyway at the two men who are approaching.

Business suits, sunglasses; the younger a bodyguard, the older man, greying, fifties but keeps fit, military bearing, moves with an authority earned through many years of …  

“Relax, John; not a threat.” This is said sotto voce, so as not to alarm Rosie, and John’s hyperalert posture eases. “Still, not a welcome interruption.”

Although still too far to hear him, the older man hesitates a moment, gathering from Sherlock’s annoyed expression that he is not welcome. The younger suspiciously scans the tables of tourists and the other pedestrians, seeking what had given his employer pause.

Their sunglasses provide some protection against Sherlock’s own deductive process, so he lets his displeasure show even more clearly in his posture.

Realising that he’s been spotted, the older man gives Sherlock a nod and closes the distance between himself and the table.

“Mi scusi, Mister Holmes. I am sorry to intrude.”

Across the table John is still stiff, mirroring Sherlock’s displeasure. Watson is looking up at the men with untroubled curiosity.

There’s no politeness in his tone when Sherlock snaps, “John, allow me to introduce Gianni Alfieri, Director of the DIA, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia.”

At this last word which even someone who doesn’t speak Italian will understand, John’s eyes narrow and he sits up straighter, glancing protectively at Watson.

Sherlock reverts to Italian. “What part of my not responding to your communications was difficult to understand? I’m on holiday with my family.” As he stresses the word famiglia, it should be apparent even to the direttore that he’s not welcome.

Alfieri shrugs and replies, “If you had answered your phone or responded to my messages, I would not have been forced to interrupt or expose your family to this conversation. It is a matter of some urgency.”

Before he can answer, John leans forward. “In English.”

Sherlock tilts his head towards Watson; they don’t discuss casework in front of her.

As if sensing the impasse, Alfieri takes off his sunglasses and gives her a big smile. “This must be Signorina Rosamund Watson. I am pleased to meet you.” In a courtly manner, he bends down and holds out his hand to her.

She giggles, puts down her spoon and in the next moment has her hand swallowed up in the older man’s handshake. “Buona sera,” she says and then frowns. “Or is it buon pomeriggio?” She looks at Sherlock for guidance.

“Either is acceptable, young lady,” Alfieri replies, his accent Tuscan but not Florentine.

Watson whispers, “What did he say, Ba?”

“Both are used. Technically buona sera means good evening, but it’s commonly used after lunch, too. Buon pomeriggio is more accurate, but more formal.”

The Italian releases her hand. “Miss Watson, I understand you are here to attend an Italian language course. Complimenti on your accent.”

John draws in a breath and stiffens. “And just how do you know that? In fact, how did you know where to find us?” Suspicion sharpens his words.

“The young lady’s uncle was so kind as to inform me of your hotel. In this heat, it does not take a master of deduction to realise that you would be either at the pool or on your way to the best gelateria in Sorrento.”

Oh, hell. What’s Mycroft up to now? Sherlock shifts uncomfortably. John crosses his arms and glares, equally annoyed. They’d been very careful, registering at the hotel only under the more common Watson name. Given Sherlock’s reputation, neither had wanted to draw attention to their identity. This is to be a family holiday, sacrosanct, a well-earned time-out from their working lives. Long delayed, too.

Unfazed, Alfieri continues addressing Watson. “My colleague here is Tommaso Ricci. He has an eight-year-old daughter named Martina who is learning English. Perhaps you would like to meet her? He could use his telefonino for you to share some English conversation.” He gestures to a table, close enough to keep an eye on and far enough to be out of earshot.

Sherlock recognises a compromise that will allow conversation to continue, and his estimation of Alfieri goes up marginally. He’s curious, too, about why Mycroft would consent to such a breach of security. He answers John’s glare with a raised eyebrow and is relieved when John sighs, rolls his eyes, then reluctantly nods.

As Sunglasses commandeers the nearby table and takes out his phone, Watson chatters away to him. Fastidiously Alfieri deposits her metal dish and spoon on the tray, then drops into her seat between her parents. He takes his slim leather briefcase into his lap and opens it.

“Signor Holmes, you are a victim of your reputation. Your activities on behalf of the Courtauld Institute in recovering the Turner painting came to our attention thanks to Christopher Marinello, the founder of Art Recovery International. You know, the man they call ‘The Sherlock Holmes of Art Crime’? He’s been involved in the repatriation of artwork and antiquities on behalf of many governments, including my own. And if I needed more evidence, our contacts in France confirmed your surprising role in the return of the Gioconda, the Mona Lisa. To solve such important thefts — crimes against the whole of humanity’s cultural heritage —and yet insist upon taking no public credit for it? Straordinario!  I understand that you received a letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Légion d’Honneur.”

John’s sniff is audible. “So much for anonymity. I told you to decline that medal.”

Sherlock shifts. “Solving crimes is often complicated by too public a profile, Direttore, as you well know in your own field. Why does a man leading the Italian government’s fight against organised crime networks concern himself with art? More importantly, what would that man want from me?”

“Your expertise, of course. Before you blame our French allies for their indiscretion, it was due to their support at the highest level that I was able to attract your brother’s attention despite his prolonged attempt to avoid my entreaties. With their help I was eventually able to persuade him that you and only you are the man to undertake this case.

“To put it simply, I am here on behalf of the Italian nation, to seek your assistance in dealing with the most heinous art crime of the past century: the theft in 1969 of the Caravaggio Nativity altarpiece in Palermo.” He takes a photograph out of the briefcase, and slides it across the table towards Sherlock. “You are familiar with it?”

Familiar with it? He thinks. An understatement. I went into a fugue state over it on our honeymoon, for God’s sake, running over thousands of details known and hypothesised about the theft, the painting, its location. I’ve spent more hours trying to untangle that knot than any other unsolved case. If this man has a real lead on it–

Eventually, he raises his eyes from the photo. Dryly, he pronounces, “The idea that there’s a mafia connection to the theft is not new.” To refresh John’s memory, he goes on. “For over fifty years the painting has been assumed to be in the hands of the Sicilian mafia; statements by various priests and turncoat mafiosi made it clear that Don Tano Badalamenti had it. When he died in an American prison in 2004, many thought that the painting would surface again, perhaps in Switzerland. It didn’t, and it probably never will.”

“Think again. We have new evidence. And you are the only man who can solve this.”

A surge of adrenaline hits Sherlock with a jolt. Could it be possible? He stares at the Direttore, subjecting him to forensic scrutiny. Fighting the mafia is not a thrilling adventure, more a slow war of attrition in which tiny gains of information are needed along with blind luck and a stubborn refusal to be deterred by bureaucracy, corruption and the threat of death. Alfieri is not someone who is prone to getting excited, yet excitement is exactly what Sherlock detects in the man’s posture. He really believes it’s possible!

Before he can respond, John reaches across the table and plucks the photo out of Sherlock’s fingers, putting it back into the open briefcase. “We’re not interested.”

Nonplussed, the Italian retorts, “At least hear the evidence before you draw a hasty conclusion, Doctor Watson.”

John shakes his head. “Nope. Not going there. Anything involving the mafia is off-limits, too dangerous. We have responsibilities.” He looks pointedly over at the table where Watson’s having an animated discussion on the phone with someone whose English is obviously better than her very nascent Italian.

Alfieri looks at Sherlock, then back at John. “If that is your wish, then by all means, join your daughter and I will continue my conversation with Mr Holmes. I would have preferred that you work as a team, but will make do with just the one if necessary.”

John’s eyes narrow. His chin lifts a little towards the right and that smile forms — the one Sherlock calls ‘the rage smile.’ It only comes out when John’s so angry he’s holding himself from exploding, screwing his control over himself to the tightest level possible.

“We are united on this, aren’t we, Sherlock.” It isn’t a question.

Sherlock leans back in his chair, putting a bit more distance between himself and John’s incandescent fury.

The silence lengthens. The noises of a normal afternoon in the Sorrento sunshine seem to amplify. Snatches of conversation float over from other tables; the sound of a coffee machine at the bar, Rosie’s laughter.

  And just as he who unwills what he wills,

And shifts what he intends to seek new ends,

So that he’s drawn from what he had begun (Inf. 2.37–39)

“Really? How could you? This takes the fucking biscuit.”

Though John’s voicing this in a stage whisper, he wants to shout it at the top of his lungs. The only thing holding him back is Rosie, bedded down in the next room. She’s had a busy day and should, like any normal seven-year-old, be tired enough to sleep through the sound of a normal conversation.

The tile floors at the Grand Vesuvius hotel don’t muffle the sound of his pacing; it’s tapping a staccato rhythm in time to the pounding of his headache. When he gets this angry but has to hold it in, a headache always results. His medical training whispers about high blood pressure; his emotions yell back to shut the fuck up and let him rant all he wants; besides, the release would end the headache instantly.

The object of his fury is no doubt deducing this. Sherlock is currently sitting and watching him, looking concerned. Good. Bloody well should be, too. It’s not every day they have a row like this one.

Being with Rosie made John bottle up his anger for hours, from the time it took to finish the conversation with Alfieri and return to the hotel. He’d meant to raise the subject when Rosie insisted on another dip in the pool, but Sherlock had dodged him, spending time in the water instead of poolside. Dinner’d been an exercise in deflection, Sherlock getting Rosie to tell them all about Martina, with whom a play date has been arranged for tomorrow in Rome. A play date.

Incandescent doesn’t begin to describe his anger. After all the pronouncements back in London about this being their escape—their family time with Rosie, then a three-week sabbatical together, away from London, from work, allowed to kick back and enjoy each other without a worry in the world—Sherlock’s agreed to look at a damned case. Tomorrow they’re to travel by fast train to Rome (bloody Rome, of all places), meet the special team that will show them the evidence, and return by early evening.

That’s what Sherlock had agreed with this antimafia director. “Reconnaissance, John. That’s all it is; no commitment.”

After six hours of building up his head of steam, John stops pacing to glare. “Not even a week. Four days. That’s all it took. That and some flattery. Christ, Sherlock. Your ego is the eighth wonder of the world. And you fall for it every time.” Try as he might, John can’t help but say these last two words at a volume that somehow escalates out of his clenched teeth into a near shout.

Sherlock flinches but gets to his feet and walks to the patio doors. Sliding them open, he gestures to John. “Don’t wake her. Out here.”

John pushes past and steps from air-conditioned comfort into the sticky warmth of a southern Italian evening. He stalks to the edge of the balcony. High in the hills above Sorrento, the hotel has a picture-postcard night view of the Bay of Naples. To the north looms the bulky outline of Mount Vesuvius, barely visible in the darkness.

Seizing the metal balcony rail, John lowers his head and shoulders. “I know you. You’ll get the bit between your teeth and suddenly the case will be more important than anything else. All those promises you made? Just bullshit. You break them whenever you want.”

Sherlock comes close; his hand hovers over John’s shoulder, then retreats. “No case is more important than you and Watson. You know that.”

“Then why the hell are we traipsing up to Rome and back? What’s the bloody point?”

“This sort of case takes years of investigative work. Not my scene, and we don’t have time. Once Watson’s started the language course here, we have three weeks on our own. It may be that there’s nothing I can contribute and we’ll still have our time touring the south. The point of going to Rome is to find that out. How can I know until they’ve shared the evidence with me?”

“‘With me,’ not us. That’s at the bottom of this. If I don’t want the risk, you’ll just go off on your own.” He shakes his head: “You’re being played, Sherlock, and you’re falling for it hook, line and sinker. Your curiosity’s tickled; they’ll give you enough information to entice you and suddenly you’ll be knee-deep in mafia work. You know these aren’t your common or garden variety crooks? The list of people they’ve blackmailed, tortured, killed… it’s endless! They’ve terrorised a whole country, corrupted public life here, have a global criminal network bigger than anything Moriarty ever dreamed of. If they ever found out that you were involved, you’d never be safe. And it’s not just about you; it's about me and Rosie, and what you mean to us, too.”

He’s gripping the balcony rail hard enough to hurt, and makes himself ease up.

“Then they won’t find out.” 

Oh, grand, Sherlock’s put on his voice of sweet reason. 

“That’s the reason why Alfieri wouldn’t share the evidence here, and why we need to go to Rome. The fewer people who know that a new team’s been set up to deal with the case, the safer everyone is. I doubt Alfieri actually knows the evidence in detail, or that he’s even met with the team members. That’s how the system works here; they mirror the cell structure of the criminals to limit risks for those directly involved. It’s worked well for the past twenty years to protect the people who are most directly involved. There’s no reason to assume it won’t now.”

He feels Sherlock step closer and wrap his arms around John’s shoulders, gently pulling him upright. “In any case, there’s no need to catastrophise. We are only going to spend a couple of hours finding out whether it’s worth interrupting our plans for. When the time comes, we’ll make the decision together.”

He turns round to face Sherlock. “I’ll hold you to that.” A soft off-shore breeze blows a stray curl across his husband’s forehead. For a moment, the sight fills him with an almost unbearable love. He puts his hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck and pulls him down for a kiss.

There’s an urgency to the kiss and what comes after that John recognises only later. For now it feels right and reassuring, and incredibly arousing, to bundle Sherlock through the terrace door and toward the bed. To unbutton the linen shirt, so clearly fitted but somehow still fresh, despite a dozen scents that include summer sweat and a low note of chlorine from the pool. How can it be that after years of marriage and parenting, familiarity and proximity, Sherlock is still this exotic and alluring object of desire?

As he lips where the shirt gapes, Sherlock lets slip a slight moan. Over the years, they’ve learned to control the sounds and volume of their lovemaking; soft whispers and baritone rumblings musn’t be overheard. That too has been an erotic element, the hint of the forbidden implied by their near-silence. Knowing each other’s desires and pleasures, tics and reactions, is infinite: paradoxically, the other only grows more mysterious, more complex, with the knowing.

Sherlock locks the door between their room and Rosie’s, and moves back to the bed to unbutton John’s flies and slip his trousers down; how many times have they done this, and how does it stay so new? The jolt of lust when Sherlock’s fingers close over his cock chases every thought from his mind—Alfieri, his own intense irritation, the mysteries of long-term love—and he whispers “yes, yes” into Sherlock’s mouth.

They half-fall onto the bed, the cool white linens welcome and welcoming, and John’s suddenly so eager he can barely breathe. Sherlock’s on top of him, braced on one knee as he strokes them both, deliberately and lightly at first, then grasps more tightly and moves more forcefully in sync with John’s insistent thrusts.

He changes course unexpectedly, shifting down to the foot of the bed and taking John in his mouth. The new sensation of heat and wet intensify John’s already desperate pleasure into an overpowering wave of orgasm and he muffles a grunt while Sherlock gives a hum of relaxation and falls still.

After a moment of blissful paralysis, he tugs at Sherlock’s shoulder. “Get up here, you. I’ve things I want to do to you.”

Sherlock lifts his head and gives him that smile, that lazy, blissed-out smile that turns his bones to water, and says, “Too late. Or rather, I’ll have to take a rain check.”

The way each one’s climax calls the other’s … it’s never stopped being astonishing. What they are to each other, and what their larger family is to them both—it’s everything that John had ever hoped for, and that doesn’t change. It couldn’t.

Chapter Text

When it can, your art would follow nature,
just as a pupil imitates his master;
so that your art is almost God’s grandchild.
(Inf. 11.103–105)

John’s asleep in his arms, familiar and grounding, all fury spent in the unfailing pull of their symbiosis, mental and physical and emotional. He underestimated John’s investment in this holiday, his need for it. Stupid mistake: the waves of mortality and lockdown had hit John hardest of the three of them. Watson had started school a year early anyway, and her return to a home-centred life was no shock to her or her Ba; if anything, she’d gone back to school ahead of her peers.

By now, looking at their clashes from both sides was a habit; Sherlock doesn’t need to spend all night revisiting John’s vigorously expressed point of view on this unexpected case. Ego, he’d said; selfishness, he’d implied; indifference to their family, he’d all but shouted.

But in good conscience Sherlock can acquit himself of most of it. John had said those things while missing something very obvious: the specific lure of this case.

After all, the project of recovering the Mona Lisa never seduced Sherlock, or derailed him from plans long anticipated: it never could. Only the Caravaggio Nativity can do that, the loss that’s obsessed him for years. It isn’t (only) that its theft is a compelling puzzle; it’s that its return is a moral imperative. There are thousands of Nativity paintings, tens of thousands of painted masterpieces. Not one of them matters like this one.

Frustrating, of course, that he can’t articulate even to himself why this is so. It’s a composite of meanings and motivations he can’t untangle: aesthetic and psychological, intellectual and ethical. He just knows that after 53 years, the Caravaggio has to come home.

On their honeymoon, in front of the painting’s digital reconstruction in Palermo, he’d spent—so John, amused and tender, had told him—half an hour frenetically examining the site, calculating ways and means of the work’s removal. He remembers thinking of the Nativity then as a hostage, abducted and locked in a fight for its life, with time running out. It has to be rescued, before it’s too late to repair the damage it’s suffered.

Caravaggio wasn’t Leonardo da Vinci; he was more complex, if less many-sided. He took the iconographical patterns and painterly conventions of his time and turned them inside out by the forcible collision of light and dark, the impact of contrasting perspectives. Caravaggio was the very essence of the individual genius, flaming out and torquing away from a backdrop of bland conformity and dull-witted habit; he was every outlier who's ever managed to not merely survive in a hostile society but dominate it. And his Nativity had been abducted, not because it was unique but for the most squalid and generic of reasons: it was worth money, and it was accessible.  

And Sherlock could make a difference. Perhaps with a splash that would mutilate the organized crime cartel responsible for its disappearance; perhaps quietly, a rescue that would mean more to him than to anyone else. He could end it. Not by begging the police for access to their resources, but rather by granting them his.

He can’t tell John what he’s overlooked, in overlooking the Caravaggio: it would sound like a pretext; he’d just deny and dig in his heels. Letting him get there on his own would reconcile him to all of it, that is a dead certainty.

“What is it then? Why, why do you resist?
Why does your heart host so much cowardice?
Where are your daring and your openness?”

(Inf. 2.121–123)

As their sleek train pulls into Rome’s central station, John gathers Rosie’s gear.

“I don’t understand, Da. It took over an hour to get from Sorrento to Naples, but why just an hour to get from Naples to Rome when it’s so much farther?”

John answers, “Geography. The mountains make it tough for railways to be built and trains go slower, or they go around.”

Sherlock’s expression tells John there’s more to it than this, but he’s usually careful not to contradict John in front of their daughter. “Also economics, Watson. The line to Naples was built by the local authorities to serve commuters and has many stops. The line from Naples gets central government investment for high-speed trains, with higher-priced tickets aimed at business people and tourists like us, so it’s faster.”

It still delights John how effortlessly Sherlock slips into teaching mode, delivering a quick lesson in economics at an age-appropriate level. No wonder Rosie’s growing up cleverer than her peers. Her natural curiosity is given a steady diet of enrichment from a parent who always answers questions. 

As they exit the station, the full weight of the Roman sun seems to land on John’s shoulders. After Sorrento, the crowding in front of the station, intense and noisy, is an assault on the senses.

“This way, Watson.” Sherlock’s hand envelops Rosie’s. John brings up the rear rather than block a pavement overcrowded with pedestrians. It always makes him smile; he’s learnt to let Sherlock take her by the hand when walking because he will always slow his pace to match hers. If John walked with her, Sherlock would surge ahead without thinking and then be surprised at how far behind him they were.

He scans the area ahead: a mass of bus lanes, queues of passengers waiting, others getting off. People are streaming in both directions, and a torrent of conversations is punctuated by the clatter of suitcases rolling over cobblestones. He raises his voice. “Which bus?”

“Follow me.”

Sherlock moves them through scores of people and past several bus lanes before turning in.  “The 64,” he says. “It’ll get us closer to where we want to go.”

“What about the underground?”

“So says a Londoner. Rome still has only three metro lines, and stations in the central area are very far apart. Buses will get us nearly everywhere. Our destination’s a half-hour walk away. Not good in this heat.”

“Taxi?” John suggests.

“Can’t go in the bus lanes. We’d be stuck in the standing traffic.”

Rosie’s eyeing the other passengers in the queue. “Do we buy tickets on the bus?”

“No.” Sherlock bends down to show her his phone. “The myCicero app. It beats queuing for a machine or buying paper tickets at the newsstand or the tobacconist.”

“But why would the tobacconist sell bus tickets?”

“Like the newsagents, they sell a lot of things. Stamps, too.”

“Cool. Saves queuing at the post office.”

“If you say so, Watson.”

John smirks. Their daughter’s managed to pick up practical thinking, despite Sherlock’s frequent disregard for such things. Somehow, between the two of them they make one good parent, despite their individual deficits and blind spots. From him she’d picked up stubbornness and practicality; from Sherlock, curiosity, memory skills, and a surprising well of patience. He used to think of Sherlock as an impetuous whirlwind, but how patient a father he’s turned out to be.

Fifteen minutes later the bus disgorges them at the intersection of the Corso and Piazza Venezia. Heat is radiating from the pavement, and Sherlock automatically steers them towards the shady side of the street. “Ten minutes more, then a rest,” he announces.

By the time they reach the café in the Piazza Sant’Ignazio, John’s hot and disgruntled. Tommaso Cicci and his daughter are waiting for them in the welcome shade of the umbrellas. Cicci’s agreed to take the girls to the Hydromania water park. Spending the torrid hours swimming should not only keep them cool but wear them out, and he’d have them back by four or four-thirty.

Before leaving Sorrento, John had questioned the wisdom of turning over Rosie to a stranger they’d only met the day before, and worried about how she would get on with a young girl she’d only spoken to once on the phone. “I know you want someone to babysit while we look at this case, but it’s a bit sudden to spring it all on her; she’s only seven.”

“Almost seven and a half, John, as she’d tell you. She’s socially well-adjusted, if you hadn’t noticed. She’s confident, and happy to engage with kids her own age and with adults to whom she’s been introduced. We agreed it would be good for her to be without us, with an Italian speaker her own age.”

“At the school, yeah. But…”

Sherlock had interrupted. “Cicci’s an officer of impeccable standing, or he wouldn’t be Alfieri’s bodyguard. She’ll be as safe with him as with us. She has her phone, too, and she’ll call if anything worries her.”

Again John had reluctantly backed down. Logically, he couldn’t argue with the reasoning, even if he’s still worrying. He wonders why, though: the girls seem to be getting on like a house on fire, speaking mostly in English but with Martina’s Italian in there, too, making Rosie have to listen carefully.

Over the girls’ high-pitched enthusiasm about their outing, Sherlock orders an Orangina for Rosie, a double espresso for himself and a cappuccino for John. Rolling his eyes, Cicci declines a second round for himself and Martina. “With two girls? Already I’ll be looking for gabinetti all day.”

John’s been a bit on edge all morning and lets frustration creep into his tone as he gets down to business. “What can you tell us about the team?”

Cicci shrugs. “Nothing, nothing at all. That is how it works. My boss phoned the boss of the team and told him to contact you here after we leave. I don’t know who he is. Total anonymity is a way of life for us in the anti-mafia division. I have no idea who’s on the team, or even where they’ve set up shop. It’s not a permanent thing, so no office, no burocrazia. Ignorance is protection for everybody.”

John shifts, uneasy. “So we just sit and wait?”

Before Cicci can answer, the waiter delivers the soft drink, their coffees, and a glass of water each, slipping under Sherlock’s saucer what John assumes is the bill.

In a few minutes they get up to leave. As the girls chatter, Cicci, Sherlock, and John exchange numbers and set up a schedule for check-ins by text.

John’s equally reassured and dismayed by Rosie’s offhand goodbye; she’s already fixated on the water park and on her new friend. As they climb into the back of Cicci’s Fiat he hears her say, “You call your father Ba too?” and Sherlock grins.

As the car pulls away John rolls his eyes and says, “No parking signs everywhere, and he just pulls up alongside the church. That’s Italy for you.”

Sherlock points to a building behind John’s shoulder. “No, that’s the headquarters of the Carabinieri’s art theft division for you. I’m sure Cicci has permission to park here.”

The white and ochre building has an entrance porch flanked by two large flags. “Oh, we’re meeting there?”

“Not at all.” Sherlock pulls out the piece of paper the waiter had given him  and unfolds it. “An entirely different part of Rome, in the Prati district, north of the Vatican City. Our instructions are to assume we’re being watched, avoid cameras and enter singly.”

John’s foreboding spikes yet again. “Christ, even just to meet? Do you need any more proof that this is fucking dangerous?”

Sherlock waves a hand dismissively, channelling Mycroft. “Standard operating procedure. They’re more worried about other people finding out about them, than anything to do with us.”

“That’s exactly my point.”

Sherlock lowers his sunglasses to look John in the eyes. “I have some experience in keeping safe in similar circumstances. Trust me.”

That’s it — right there, the thing that’s been bothering John. That all this is harking back to the time Sherlock had been undercover, away dealing with Moriarty’s network; it’s not something he wants to consider. Is Sherlock thrill-seeking here? Willing to take the case simply because it injects an adrenaline-shot of danger back into their lives?

Before he can voice his disquiet, Sherlock pulls his sunglasses up and surges to his feet in one graceful movement.

Tossing a ten euro note and some random coins onto the table, John hastily follows. I’ll have to put a leash on him; he’s like a bloodhound on a scent. 

“your soul has been assailed by cowardice,

which often weighs so heavily on a man—
distracting him from honorable trials—
as phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.” 

(Inf. 2.45–48)

An hour later he’s sitting at a window of the Bar della Salute, having a Peroni to cool off and settle his nerves. This is a whole different experience from the way he and Sherlock move through London, it’s shot through with a feeling of hostile surveillance. Sherlock insisted that they split up, keeping in touch via text. During a brief rendezvous down an alleyway too narrow for cars and too boring for cameras, Sherlock handed over a baseball cap and a loose t-shirt. He opened a cheap nylon daypack, telling John, “Put your shirt and jacket in there along with mine. Carry this bottle of water, and you’ll look like every other tourist in Rome. Keep your sunglasses on, too.”

Sherlock had the same sort of disguise, having wet his hair enough to shove it under a hideous I ❤️Roma hat. His white hoodie and the day pack would be sure to make him hot, but the bunched-up hood would help disguise his neck and jawline.  Safe from the camera on the tourists at the fountain, Sherlock tapped into John’s phone the address on Google maps: Viale Mazzini, 122.

“Make your way there, as quickly as you can. Once you cross the river, take a taxi.” He opened Street View. “See this bar? Have a coffee there, use the loo, dawdle. I’ll take the metro, so I won’t be able to answer a text for a while. Don’t worry. When you see me walk past the bar to the street door of 122, wait a couple of minutes to make sure no one’s followed me, then come in. I’ll meet you on the stairs.”

On his own, John kept having to look at the map on his phone. He felt unmoored, uncomfortably conscious of how well Sherlock knows Rome, and why. He’s never liked feeling lost and that sense is creeping up on him. Not just the city; it’s the whole setup, the idea that they’d get involved in a case so far from home, the nature of the case itself. What use is a doctor in an art theft case? Unable to carry his gun, he couldn’t even be useful as back-up if things got nasty.

The trees lining the high river embankment had afforded some shade, but crossing the bridge he was in full sun and he’d sweated copiously. The bridge was lined with statues of angels, a magnetic attraction for the tourists taking selfies. He’d felt conspicuous and exposed; every glance from a pedestrian made him nervous. The idea of being followed made him twitchy. On the north side, in front of some mammoth pile labelled Castel Sant’Angelo, he’d snagged a taxi. Reading off the address from his phone, John sank back and enjoyed the air conditioning, firing off three texts to Sherlock.

Only after he’s been at the bar for fifteen minutes do those texts get a pinged thumbs-up icon, so Sherlock must have exited the underground. Relieved, he takes another gulp of beer. The delay had ratcheted up his anxiety levels to an alarming degree.

When a tall lanky youth in a white hoodie ambles by the bar window, John does a double-take. The walk is nothing like Sherlock’s normal purposeful energy; this is the laid-back stroll of someone years younger who hasn’t quite grown into his height. 

How does he do that?

He finishes his lager in a gulp, squeezes into the loo and then exits onto the street. He strolls nonchalantly past a beat-up white builder’s van parked in front of the open doorway of number 122. Once inside, he walks past bags of plaster and lengths of lumber to head up one flight of stairs marked by dusty boot prints. The youth slouching against the wall on the landing, nonchalantly scrolling through his phone, is transformed by a welcoming smile into his husband. John takes advantage of the moment and leans in for a kiss only to find his embrace rebuffed.

“You smell of beer.” Sherlock’s nose is wrinkled. 

John laughs, “You smell of sweat. Probably worse than me. Your disguise leaves a lot to be desired in this heat.”

As John reaches up to kiss him anyway, a series of loud bangs from upstairs makes him flinch away; the sound of a nail gun brings back muscle memories of a different kind of gunfire.

“Relax. It’s good cover. The noise will excuse a lot, and explains the comings and goings of people the residents don’t know.” Sherlock’s smiling as he says it.

“How do you know they aren’t really builders?”

“It’s what I would do, if I wanted to set up a temporary space to run a case free from outside interference. If they’re lucky, the noise will chase away some of the residents and make it even easier.” 

The volume increases as they climb the staircase. Hammering, and the roar of some sort of electric saw, add to the racket. By the time they reach the fourth floor, the landing is almost white from plaster powder; boot prints lead to the one door that isn’t sealed off by taped plastic sheeting.

Sherlock raises his hand to knock, but the heavy wooden door opens first. A tall woman dressed in a dirty builder’s coverall gives them the once over and then nods. Her curly black hair frames a strong chin. Her eyes are so dark they’re almost black, more startling because she wears no make-up. “Avanti!” It’s less a welcome than an order, delivered in a contralto loud enough to be heard over the building work.

She shuts the door behind them and closes a series of deadbolts, asking, “You weren’t followed?” in accented but clear English. Sherlock shakes his head no. Behind her, a boombox is blasting out construction noises.

Sherlock grins at him. “See?”

The woman gives them a puzzled look, eyeing their clothing. “Cover,” Sherlock explains and shrugs off the day pack to peel off his hoodie.

“Thank God, this t-shirt’s disgusting.” John pulls off his hat and sunglasses, shucks the hated garment over his head and grabs his now very wrinkled linen shirt. Sherlock does the same quick change, rolling up the offending garments and stowing them all in the day pack.

The wooden floor beneath their shoes is, oddly, gleaming; there’s no dust at all except what they’ve brought in.

The woman gestures to a thick mat. Over the cacophony, she says loudly, “Wipe your feet. The concrete dust gets everywhere. We lost a laptop last week, the dust destroyed it.”

When they’re done she leads them down the hall, moving with an economy and strength that make John suspect military training. In front of an unmarked wooden door she stops, looks back, and pulls it open.

Once the door shuts behind them the noise is barely noticeable; the place must be sound-proofed. It’s a large room, nothing like what John’s been expecting. Along one wall is a whiteboard, conspicuously empty. A pile of yellow hard hats fills a cardboard box by the door; a large table with six chairs occupies centre stage, one plain file folder on it. Two desks hold closed laptops, a printer, and some chargers, all plugged in. The air conditioning unit in the window is wheezing a bit, but it’s definitely cooler than the outside.  

The four men in the room—different ages, sizes and shapes—all wear the same builders’ dirty coveralls and worn work boots, and are eyeing them up with an edge of hostility. John recognises the young man with the trendy blond quiff as the waiter at the café, the one who’d left this address on the paper stuck under the saucer. 

The woman takes charge. “I’m Valentina Bonacci. My boss asked me to brief you. He’s on his way, but wanted me to start. He doesn’t want to waste any more time on this, so you’ll only be told as much as you need to decide whether you are joining the team or not. The boys know enough English to know I’m giving you only what I have to say.”

The waiter pulls out two chairs and gestures for them to sit. “I’m Paolo, by the way. And you proved it’s true that the British do drink cappuccino too late in the day. Horrible.” He shudders theatrically.

That raises smiles from the other men. An older man with a short haircut and a jaw like a prize fighter unfolds the muscled arms he’d crossed in front of his chest. “Giorgio. I’ll tell you more if you decide to join us. If not...” He gives an exaggerated shrug.

Bonacci rolls her eyes and then points to the other two. “Pietro and Francesco.”

She hitches a hip onto the boardroom table and starts. “This is awkward. I can’t tell you everything you want to know. Our boss’s boss says you have to be convinced to join the investigation, says you have something special to add to our work. Our boss is not keen, and we aren’t either. We know who you are, but we don’t know how or why you could help.”

Giorgio drops into one of the chairs against the wall. “This job is risky enough without amateurs.”

Sherlock has been sitting quietly but bristles. He replies to Giorgio, “I can understand that a man with twenty years in the Carabinieri would worry about the risk to his wife and two children; perhaps the fact that you married late and worry about providing a good lifestyle for them is why you accepted the offer of joining this team. Art? Not your usual crime but the possible mafia element is compensated with a much higher salary. You want to do well, drag out the assignment for the two, no, three years until you can retire.”

He shifts his gaze to the young man who’d been their waiter. “You, Paolo, are the bright young thing at the Carabinieri’s Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale. Wanted to join the art command from the get go and this is your chance. You were bored with chasing farmers who were robbing Etruscan tombs and selling off the artifacts to dealers. Want to make a name for yourself, even while telling your parents at home in Turin that you’re just doing boring work on the database of stolen art work and antiquities.”

John’s trying to control his smile, but finding it hard. Accusing Sherlock of being an amateur always brings out a deductive evisceration.

Bonacci gives a wry laugh and shakes her head. “He said you’d do that.”

John glares. “Who? Alfieri?”

“No, he doesn’t know you. My boss says Alfieri is ambitious and wants to make a name for himself. Nobody stays head of the antimafia division for long. The whole point of the DIA is to rotate leadership so the mafia can’t get to the head. Alfieri is working on his next appointment and we’re guessing it’s at Europol. That still includes the UK, despite your Brexit madness. He wants a big mafia win but isn’t going to get anything more during his tenure so he’s going for headlines. That’s why this team got set up; rescuing art will make him a hero. Apparently, you have an international reputation when it comes to recovering art. So really you are window-dressing.”

Now John’s bristling as well. She stands up and gives them both a firm look.

“Before you do any more party tricks, Pietro’s been seconded from the Carabinieri’s Europol liaison team, and Francesco is the operations specialist from the Polizia di Stato who manages security, keeps us fed, watered, housed and hooked up with the right IT while we work this case. I am thirty-seven years old, single, I live alone in a flat with a cat, and I live for the work I do for the Guardia di Finanza’s SCICO division. I specialise in organised crime’s money laundering in Italian banking, but I’ve never worked on the mafia-art theft  angle. None of us have. That’s the whole point. Keeping us separate from the DIA keeps us safe. We’re virgins on that score, hand-picked by our boss because we’re good at our jobs without being of the slightest interest to the mafia and their friends.”

John is surprised how calmly Mister Know-All takes her refusal to be impressed, remarking only, “That makes sense. Tell me what you are allowed to say.”

“You must have heard of the maxi-trials that started eighteen months ago in Campania. The Mancuso clan is one of the ’ndrangheta families and they’re having a bit of a bust up, as you British would say. One of the sons has become a whistleblower, a pentito, turning state’s evidence in exchange for immunity. And it’s a rich seam we’ve been mining for the past three years. He is the reason why over three hundred people are on trial.”

John huffs. “So what? How does this relate to a stolen painting? And more specifically, to us?”

Bonacci reaches for a folder. “I’m going to read you something. This is just one of many, many interviews, what you call fishing expeditions, yes? Forgive any errors in translation, but you will get the gist. The interrogator asked about a particular priest, Monsignor Cristoforo Scoglio. 

“Mancuso answered, ‘He’s not a Sicilian. Born in Limbadi. My father knew him when they were kids, long before he was a priest, before he was posted to Palermo.’ The interrogator then asked whether he knew anything about the theft of the Caravaggio from the Oratory. His answer was ‘Before my time. Don’t know about that deposit.’”

Here Bonacci pauses. “Now, his word choice was interesting. The Italian words he used suggest a bank deposit into a vault, and it made the interrogator prick up his ears. He asked about it. Mancuso just shrugged. ‘Everybody uses it,’ he said, and made a joke about how the media like to write stories about paintings being rolled up like carpets and stuck behind a fridge, but it doesn’t work like that. The interrogator circled back to the line of questioning two more times, enough to glean that no one knows who runs this service. That’s what Mancuso called it – a service. Anonymity is its security and apparently it’s used by mafia organisations all over Italy. It takes only personal holdings. Apparently, a person who makes a deposit of an artwork can transfer ownership to another and even raise a loan based on the asset without it ever leaving the vault.”

Sherlock sits up straighter in his chair, his attention totally focused. “How brilliant is that?” he comments.

“Yes, well, that is why we are here: to find the vault and its contents, for the sake of the cultural patrimony of the world. No one knows how many pieces of art have been stolen by the various arms of the mafia. What is certain is that the vast majority of it has never been sold, traced or recovered. We’re wondering how much of it is in this vault.”

John’s unmoved. “This is a long-term investigation. Why on earth does anyone think we can help in the short time we’re in Italy?”

As he’s talking the hallway door opens, allowing the sound of the construction noise to intrude again. They all turn to see the man at the door, who says, “That’s the same question I asked Alfieri. I also told him it’s too dangerous to involve you. Yet here you are.”

Chapter Text

Before my eyes there suddenly appeared

One who seemed faint because of the long silence. 

(Inf. I.62-4)  

The sight of Roberto Zanardi in the doorway shocks Sherlock into silence.

Beside him, John stiffens and sighs, “Bloody hell. I should have known.”

In a builder’s jumpsuit, Roberto manages to look as well-dressed and exquisitely groomed as ever. Perhaps it’s the absence of marks or stains; it sets him out as the project manager, the one with the clipboard who doesn’t get his hands dirty. Of course, Roberto could pull it off with elegance.

The two and a half years since he laid eyes on Roberto in Venice have been kind. There’s a bit more silver in his dark hair and neatly trimmed beard, a few more lines on his face; but it’s still the tall, lithe man he’d known years ago who’s standing in front of him. Sherlock’s disorientation rises with his worry about how John will react.

Roberto’s not looking directly at them; all the better, it gives Sherlock more time to adjust. 

John recovers first. “Well, that comment just makes this even easier. We’re out of here.”

He moves to get up, but Sherlock puts a hand on his arm. John stares at the hand, in disbelief. “Sherlock, you cannot be serious.”

The others sense the tension in the air and wait. Bonacci seems least bothered, nodding a greeting to Zanardi. “I’ve given them the bare bones. You get to tell us why they could make any difference to our work.”

Roberto meets his eye briefly before turning to the team.

“Whatever personal motivations my boss may have, I have no doubt that Sherlock Holmes would be an asset to any investigation. He sees things that other people miss, finds patterns and deduces motives that defy explanation.” He looks at Sherlock again. “You know as well as I do what this case means and what a difference your involvement would make. That said, I told Alfieri it was too dangerous to involve you, your husband, your child, in this.”

Sherlock hears the emphasis on the last two, and the unspoken implications. He wants to work with me, just not with John. This sets so many alarm bells ringing that he has to look away and take a deep breath. The calculus around this case and their potential involvement just became much, much more complicated.

Still, if Roberto’s trying to put John off by playing the danger card, Sherlock can counter that threat. “I know you, Zanardi. You’ll have made arrangements to protect your own family and the families of your team. You don’t leave anything to chance. So, trying to use that as an excuse is just that: an excuse.”

John interrupts. “Hang on; I’m in this conversation, too. If he thinks it’s too dangerous for us, then we need to know why.”

“The mafia,” Roberto shrugs. “They have a long memory. Even if we can keep your involvement secret at the start, it’s still a risk, especially if Alfieri makes a big deal of it internationally once it’s solved. Europol, your own National Crime Agency; there could be mafia informers built into the system anywhere and everywhere.”

Still unconvincing. “My work against organised crime elsewhere is known. We take sensible precautions. This case is a side-show to a side-show: art doesn’t jeopardise the basic business model of the mafia, or your boss would have kept it inside the DIA. Anyway, if this goes his way, he’ll take all the credit and our role will never be disclosed. You demanded total anonymity for that reason, too; neither you nor any of your team would have taken this on without it. You and Alfieri are the only ones who know about the secondments of your team members. They and you are far more likely to be at risk than John and I, for the limited time we’d be involved.”

John turns to Sherlock. “You’re seriously thinking about this? Sherlock, we have three weeks, max. What the hell can be done in that amount of time?” He returns his glare to Zanardi. “Be honest: your colleague here said the trials started in 2021. How far have you gotten since then? Any real progress on finding this vault, or even confirming that it exists at all? Why on earth would having us around for three weeks make any difference?” 

“Doctor Watson. I’ve seen him work too; I know the catalytic effect of his involvement. Alfieri’s not wrong: the patient trudge of police work is not going to solve this. Thinking outside of the box is the only way forward.”

“You’ve hit a dead end then.” Sherlock makes it a statement, not a question.

“I don’t have your kind of magic, Sherlock.” His voice seems to falter. “Still, that’s not a reason for the two of you to take the risk.”

In the silence that follows, Sherlock feels John’s increasing agitation: left hand flexing, spine stiffening. To forestall the inevitable, he announces, “John and I are going for some air, have a conversation. I assume you’re using a burner; give me the number, I’ll phone you with the results.” 

“I am left with less

than one drop of my blood that does not tremble:

I recognize the signs of the old flame.”

 (Purg. 30.46–48)

Per carità di dio. I thought I was ready to see him again. Yet when I walk into the case room, I’m seared by the same lightning bolt as when I first laid eyes on him back at New Scotland Yard.

He’s still so beautiful, painfully so, and my heart constricts in my chest. He looks warm in a rumpled white linen shirt, his dark glasses dangling from the pocket, curly hair a bit damp. The six years we’ve been apart fall away and I have to look away lest my attraction become too apparent, so I can’t gauge his reaction to seeing me.

But I can and do register Watson’s fury when he recognises me, cursing that he should have known.

So Vally didn’t tell them I’m the team leader. I’d urged Alfieri not to name names, lest it lead to an instant refusal. But perhaps that would have been wiser; if he’d known, would Watson have allowed this meeting to take place? For that matter, would Sherlock have agreed to come?

I’ve been torn between head and heart. I’m late to this meeting because I tried once more to convince Alfieri to do without Holmes and Watson, only to be overruled again. I left that rendezvous both dejected by my failure to persuade him, and agitated at the prospect of seeing Sherlock again. I have to be honest, too; after a promising start nine months ago, for the past two, the case has been going badly enough that I can use all the help I can get. But at what price?

Watson is half-out of his chair, announcing loudly that what I’ve said makes it easy for them to leave. Am I more relieved or pleased when Sherlock pulls Watson back into his chair?

Vally puts the ball back in my court, challenging me to explain to the team how this pair could help us. But it isn’t the pair of them, it’s Sherlock. 

I tell the truth, mostly. I’ve seen him in action. His thinking is unique, he’s able to absorb data so quickly, shuffle the deck and come up with a winning hand despite the odds. (I’d loved him for his mind, even before— well.) He’s creative, charismatic, exultant when the pieces come together. We need that catalyst now. 

When I’ve said my piece to the team, I do the decent thing, give Sherlock and his husband one more chance to walk away. I want him to be under no illusions. This work is dangerous if it becomes known he's played a part.

My situation is different. My family’s growing ever more distant from me. In the two years since I last saw Sherlock in Venice — on their honeymoon, of all the damned things — I’ve buried myself in work, picking one risky assignment after another to fill the jagged hole he left in my life. When I work myself into exhaustion, I’ve less energy to spiral into the ‘what if’ maze.

If I’ve been gaining recognition as something of a miracle worker on cases others couldn’t solve, it’s because I have nothing to lose. That’d been some satisfaction when this slimmest of chances to crack the biggest art thefts in the twentieth century had come my way. I get my kicks now out of solving cases, the bigger the better. Certainly there’s not much else going on in my life.

So many times I’ve thought, at the end of a difficult case, how much better and quicker it would have gone with Sherlock working with me. From the very beginning, back in London on that trafficking case, it had been my fantasy to entice him to Rome, not just to my bed but to my work: we’d have been invincible.

Yet now that the opportunity presents itself, I find myself hesitating. Of course, John Watson complicates things. The man had squandered his chances to love Sherlock, but when he’d whistled, Sherlock had gone running back to him. At least Watson had the decency to marry him; under Italian law I couldn’t do that even if he’d wanted me.

But he did want me, once. He didn’t just say it, he showed it. If that month with him hadn’t been so intoxicating I could have accepted it when he left me; but we were good together, I know we were. He blossomed when we became lovers: his body relished being worshipped, and he loved bringing me to my knees. Conversation was easy, dancing was just another form of lovemaking, and he was happy with me in Rome. Until he wasn’t. 

So despite wanting Sherlock to work his not-exactly-magic on the case, I’m apprehensive about working with him on it. Am I even capable of behaving normally around him? Functioning normally? To go by my racing thoughts, I may not be; I’m barely keeping up my end of the conversation, fading in and out of memories of the past (and maybe, wishes for the future). And this case is vital. Definitely dangerous, too: all the more so with Sherlock as a clear and present distraction. If he does join me, will it be more help or hindrance? 

Well. We’ll see what happens. He’s saying that he and Watson are going out to talk privately. I hope against hope that Watson will refuse to have anything to do with it, that he’ll take their daughter home or back to Sorrento and leave Sherlock here with me. It doesn’t seem likely, but I might strike it lucky. 

Either way, I suppose we’ll know within the hour.

One ought to be afraid of nothing other

than things possessed of power to do us harm,

but things innocuous need not be feared. 

(Inf. 2.88–90)

John follows Sherlock out the building’s back door, down the alleyway and onto the cross-street, their tourist disguises left behind. Just as well: he’d felt as unconvincing as if he were wearing a toupee or a false goatee; he’ll never have Sherlock’s ability to become somebody else. They went into the building separately and looking quite different; they’re walking out together, as themselves. If anyone’s watching the premises, he hopes they won’t connect them with the people who went in.

They walk side by side a few streets southwards before John asks the obvious. “So why no disguises now?” 

Sherlock murmurs, “If anyone’s watching the flat, it’s not because of us. They’ll be surveilling the team. They’ll be sweeping the back route in on a regular basis for cameras; that’s not at all easy on the street side with the shops, the parking and the pedestrian traffic. We’ll walk to the Castel Sant’Angelo and take some very banal photographs, then head west to St Peter’s Square for more of the same. We’ll have to talk in the open; anyone following us with surveillance equipment would be fairly visible on these side streets. If it weren’t high summer we might have found a private enough chapel in St Peter’s, but now there’ll be too many tourists for us to even go in. So from there we’ll head north again, back here. Almost an hour’s walk in all. That should be more than enough time.”

John feels his jaw tighten. “Then let’s walk. We’re still tourists, so lots of photos, a selfie or two.” 

Sherlock guides them unhesitatingly through an uninspiring grid of indistinguishable streets. Sherlock has mental maps John never could master himself, so he’s careful to not just see but observe and retain street names, business signs, the look of a neighbourhood. Streets like Via Germanico and Via dei Gracchi, with cafés colonising the pavement on one side and scooters on the other. Via Ovidio and Via Virgilio, part of a chessboard of hulking interchangeable palazzi and bland streets named for people he’s never heard of and never wants to.   

They reach the Castel Sant’Angelo from the north, and the map on his phone shows that its precinct is a sprawling starfish clinging along the bank of the Tiber. He’ll never confess that he’s just looked it up on a site Sherlock derides called romewise.com, which informs him jauntily that “Castel Sant'Angelo is not just a castle. It's a tomb, a fortress, papal party palace, the site of horrific executions, and much more.” 

Perfect for this Mafia lark he’s flirting with. By all means, Sherlock, bring on the horrific executions and the tombs.

Normally he’d be hungry by now, but the imposing, iconic structure of Hadrian’s Mausoleum draws massive crowds that blunt his appetite. The sultry heat is peaking at one o’clock, and the food emporia smells that are meant to entice are making him vaguely queasy instead. But then that could just be this grotesque pantomime of holiday-making they’re staging, on top of the very palpable tension between them. When all he wants is to be on holiday with Sherlock, all Sherlock wants is to cancel their holiday to charge off on a dangerous case with Roberto sodding Zanardi. 

They head for St Peter’s Square and John sees that Sherlock hasn’t exaggerated: massive crowds are queuing at the bottleneck security checkpoints to get into the Basilica. It may be beautiful, but it’s hardly the generous embrace of Holy Mother Church if you have to melt in the sun for an hour and go through metal detectors to get inside.

The whole way, they’ve been using their cameras and sunglasses to hide the fact that they’ve been watching for watchers. No one looks even vaguely suspicious; everyone’s too busy gawking and taking selfies. Thirty-five minutes out John decides it’s time to talk; the atmosphere is antagonistic, the very opposite of what they’ve come to Italy for.

“Okay, far enough. We can stop playing for the cameras, I don’t think anyone’s following us. We need to talk.”

“I know just the place.” Because of course he does. Past the colonnade full of tourists, Sherlock turns north into an odd little square up against the Vatican City walls. Mercifully, it’s got shade trees and a tiny bar with tables outside. “Sit. No one else will be outside when the inside is air-conditioned.”

As soon as the barman leaves them John, hot and bothered, dives straight in. “Are you really suggesting that this is safe enough? With all this hole-and-corner skulking that we have to do because the mafia is so dangerous?”

“The ’ndrangheta, John. What you think of as the Mafia, upper-case M, is Sicilian. And yes, the case can be safe enough. Arrangements can be made, as we’ve just seen. These people could teach Mycroft a thing or two. —I know this is a drastic derailing of our holiday plans, and I’m sorry. But it does seem to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, this discovery that there’s a centralised system and location for concealing—and exchanging—art that was stolen by the mafia. Going back decades. If we could find the Vault, retrieve the art, it would be a blow to organised crime, at least in Italy, from which the whole enterprise might never recover.”

Sherlock’s voice, his expression and posture, are taking on a proselytising zeal that John finds ominous.

“How do you make that out? It’s art we’re talking about, not weaponry. Not even money. You called it a side-show to a side-show, for God’s sake.” 

“Art is more of a weapon than you think. It’s symbolic capital, John. The appearance of invulnerability is what gives organised crime networks real invulnerability. They depend on” — he flaps his hand in frustration — “the frightened complicity of large numbers of the population, and the way they get it is by projecting omnipotence. An immense win like this could be—it wouldn’t just heal a wound in the cultural patrimony of humanity as a whole, though that’s reason enough to do it. It would discredit the notion that the Italian state can’t defeat organised crime and doesn’t deserve to. It’d bring down the whole house of cards around the ’ndrangheta’s ears. And even if it’s not being used by other mafia clans, solving this would strike a blow that would weaken all the crime families. But if it is being used more widely—as Mancuso said it is—then it’s a nuclear strike.”

The fervour in Sherlock’s lowered voice means that he isn’t considering, he’s persuading. Pulling out all the stops to recruit John’s moral compass for backup. He sounds entirely sincere, but the possibility that it’s all a manipulation irks John to no end.

“What ever happened to ‘We’ll make the decision together’? Or was that just window-dressing, to talk me down last night?’”  

Sherlock looks at him sharply, but answers mildly. “We are making it together. That’s why we’re talking.”

“The hell we are. I know this kind of ‘talk.’ It’s the kind where you pretend to be listening to my opinion, but you’ve already made up your mind and you’re just thinking how to counter me or override me.”

As soon as it is said John knows what the reply will be. And it isn’t exactly wrong.

“Oh, but that describes you, exactly. You made up your mind before Alfieri finished talking yesterday. Add Zanardi to the equation and there’s no way you were prepared to consider this case impartially.” 

Sherlock’s voice has got louder and unusually cutting. Bad sign: in a normal disagreement he tends to be impassive. 

John winces; he hates this tone, and the mood it betrays. “I won’t deny it. But you still haven’t given me reasons that outweigh running insane danger, to all of us, or even scuttling a holiday that was supposed to be—” he stopped, uncertain how to describe his disappointment without sounding needy.

“I was looking forward to it too. Obviously. It’s been a long—and nothing but the most—but John, this is like finding the Rosetta Stone, or the Holy Grail—can’t you see? This is the Holy Grail of a career like mine, like ours. The Caravaggio alone—! If I can help restore it to public ownership and the light of day, let alone some of the other illegitimately sequestered works of art—I can retire happy. I can die happy.”

John sees the very instant that Sherlock realises this is not the most strategic turn of phrase. The temptation to throttle his husband has never been greater, and God knows there’s been ferocious competition.

“What if I don’t agree? And does Rosie get a say? What if there’s literally nothing that we would be happy to have you die for?” Nothing but the need for discretion is keeping this conversation from devolving into a shouting-match. Silver linings, he supposes.

“Of course I know that. It’s an expression, not an intention, and it was stupid of me to use it. I will never make you or Watson run that risk. Just—John.”

And there it was— the vocative that contained 500 words, thirteen footnotes, twenty emojis, and five, no, six facial expressions.

He turns away. “You made me a promise. You put it in writing. That you would do everything you had to do, to minimise the risk of Rosie losing another parent. ‘Another parent’ means you, too, not just me.”

“Of course it does. But we need to hear what they’re offering to do to make sure we’re both safe, that we’re all safe. Watson will be safer in their close protection than she’d be at a school we’ve really only researched online and communicated with by phone and video. If she’s placed with Italian speakers, she doesn’t even have to give up the idea of learning Italian for three weeks.”

John sighs. “Sure, ‘place’ her with strangers, why not, what could possibly go wrong?”

“They’re strangers at the school, John. This would be safer.”

“Just tell me this: would you be so eager to take this case if Zanardi weren’t involved? And don’t hide behind ‘the question is moot.’ It isn’t moot to me.”

Sherlock seems to give this question the compliment of serious consideration.

“I would be, yes, for the sake of the art and for the experience I have in tackling organised crime. And I was eager, as you put it, before I knew he had anything to do with it. He’s good at his job, of course. But if he wasn’t involved—then I might be less confident that our safety would be a top priority. Knowing him—trusting that—makes me willing.”

“Even if I’m not.” John’s tone is flat, affectless. He knows he’s already lost this skirmish.

“Three weeks, tops. That’s all I’m asking for. But if you really can’t live with it, then I’ll drop it if you want me to.”

John knows a rhetorical concession when he hears one, and doesn’t believe it for a minute. And yet — can he really deny Sherlock this opportunity? Can he let possessiveness—and, well, a sincere and rational fear of anything to do with the mafia—stand in the way of what Sherlock so clearly wants to do? If he does put his foot down, what will the consequences be? He shifts his weight, leaning back on his flimsy chair.  

“You’ll drop it–yeah, right. And it would always be a sore spot between us. One that’ll make ripples or riptides down the road.”

Sherlock moves closer and grips John’s arm, pulling in close. “First of all, it wouldn’t. You’re too important to me for that. But second, we’ve never been afraid to do important things together. We’ve faced danger before, and always been stronger by being together. I won’t do it without you. I can’t.”

This holiday they’ve been looking forward to for months—well, maybe only John has, and Rosie. Maybe a case like this is the holiday Sherlock needs, and craves.  A chance to do something worth doing, with the greatest protection possible in the circumstances; he trusts Sherlock’s judgment on that dimension, mostly. He doesn’t see a way around it: one of them is going to be disappointed, perhaps resentful, and he doesn’t want that to be Sherlock. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake.  Take the damned case. On two conditions. First: Rosie’s complete safety is absolutely assured. And not just in your opinion: I have to be confident of her safety, too. Second: I will be with you every goddamned step of the way. Sideline me once, and I’ll retrieve her and go back to Baker Street, and there will be a price to pay. Leave me out—lie to me by omission or commission—and we’re through. I will not lose you because you decided to treat me like a junior partner hanging off your gun arm.”

John quotes Mary’s phrase deliberately, hoping Sherlock will recognise it and be warned. He’s too dispirited to argue any more. Later they’ll talk about telling Rosie, and getting back into harness before they’ve had even a full week out of it. And if Roberto Zanardi puts a single foot wrong, John swears to himself he’ll shoot it off.

He swings back into motion, estimating thirty more minutes before they return to the team’s temporary headquarters in Viale Mazzini.

“You are in doubt; you want an explanation

In language that is open and expanded,

So clear that it contents your understanding.” 

(Par. 11.22–24)

It was obvious that Sherlock and Watson would be butting heads, but I never expected it to take this long. We’d no time to waste on their marital spat, so I had Valentina send the others off to get something productive done. She and I spent some time talking over the case independent of the possible addition of Sherlock; no point in planning how to integrate them if the answer was going to be no. 

It isn’t no. 

Ninety minutes after they left, they come back in, looking tired, overheated, and vaguely at odds. At the sight of Sherlock rumpled and pink-cheeked I’m ambushed by a flood of memories, piercing and erotic and wholly out of place.

Watson’s silent and leans on the wall; Sherlock sits down and says, subdued,  “We’ll do it.” 

I exhale as if I’ve been holding my breath. I’m elated. And uneasy. And—

I’ve no more time to scrutinise my state of mind: Watson jerks his head up and snaps, “Maybe. First we need to know what provisions you propose to make for our daughter’s safety. We’re not leaving her in the school as we’d planned, now that there’s a chance she’ll be vulnerable there.” 

Sherlock looks chastened; obviously he should have put that stipulation first. “We have half an hour before we have to leave to pick her up again in Piazza Sant’Ignazio.”

I now regret not having made a plan with Vally for briefing Sherlock. Since I still mean to see to it that they don’t come as a pair, she’ll have to start the on-boarding process for him, so I can have Watson one-on-one. 

Silently she’s doing what I should have done, giving them each a bottle of water to help them acclimate after the ferocious heat outdoors. 

“Thanks, Vally, sorry.” Usually I’m careful not to leave the social and service tasks to the one female member of the team, my second-in-command at that. I’m well off-balance here, that’s obvious. “We don’t have a lot of time. Could you please give Sherlock a more granular run-down on where we are this week, and what we need to do, what the others are focusing on at present? I’ll talk with Doctor Watson about the safety arrangements for the team members’ families.”

Watson’s still looking pugnacious, but Sherlock’s expression is one of absolute concentration. 

“This way.” I lead him into the private office; it’s sometimes used for discussions that the other team members, for safety reasons, don’t need to hear. 

“Please sit down. I’ll describe the safety protocols in general, and then go over the arrangements I’ve made for my own family.” I summarise the broad lines: anonymity; separation and distance; cover stories that stay close to the truth; protection via my hand-picked agents on site and electronic surveillance, and all the rest of it. 

“My two university-age children have gone up to the Dolomites, a region they’ve known all their lives from summer holidays. My mother’s with them; my father’s gone now, and my ex-wife and her husband are fortuitously spending a year in Bolivia. My family’s using assumed names, and they’re fifty kilometres from where people know us. There’s a broad defensible space around the house, and a team of three agents on duty twenty-four hours a day, rotating on and off. The agents don’t know the identities of their charges, either, only that they’re to be protected at all costs. All the local authorities have been alerted to be responsive to any sign of trouble coming from that address.” 

I look at him; he’s weighing the variables, and asks, “And you’re comfortable that these measures are sufficient?” 

“Yes, absolutely. The number of organisations and agencies with their eye on my family you can’t even count on both hands, and that even includes mountain rescue, mountain guides, the forest service–in other words, those units with the most intimate local knowledge. Those to whom anything off, anyone unfamiliar, would stand out.” 

“And there’s no loss of confidentiality with such a large number of people involved? No leaks?” His audible scepticism is annoying—as if I’d endanger my own children. But it might be useful in my campaign.

“I’d say, no. They none of them know any details or identities to leak. The safest and most efficient solution is for your daughter to join the household. Everything’s already in place, from the security point of view. Plus, safety in numbers; one less place for us to monitor; and she can still learn Italian, with a bilingual family.” 

He nods slowly, and I hope he doesn’t notice I haven’t suggested placing her with any of the other team members’ families, closer to Rome. If I can get him to go with his daughter, the farther the better. 

“You sound fairly comfortable with the arrangements up there.”

“I am. I have to be. But to make certain, you can join your daughter there and be her security detail.” I hold my breath. 

Watson gives the very essence of a mirthless laugh; sometimes a cliché is a cliché for good reason.

“Yeah, no. I’m not leaving him with his flank unguarded.”

This is no more than I expected, but I don’t give up. “You don’t think we can keep him safe here?” 

“‘Keep him safe’? He’s hardly defenceless. But I’m going to be here.” This is a much more openly aggressive Watson than I’d met in Venice—more like when I met him at Sherlock’s flat, back in 2016. 

So I go on the offensive. “Your daughter is defenceless, though.” 

“Your own kids are hyperbolically protected, you just said, and Rosie’s got … well. Rosie’ll have the British government as well.”

I don’t know what to make of that; the girl’s hardly royalty, to be protected at the highest levels. 

I change tack. “Your presence will distract him.” Actually, I’m the one Watson’s presence will distract. He’ll distract Sherlock too, but from me. 

Watson’s laugh is short and his hand grips his water bottle a bit too hard. “That’s ridiculous. First, we work together; I don’t distract him. Second, he’s a genius, not a machine. He can be distracted in any case, if there’s concrete danger.”

“Surely that’s all the more reason for you to be out of harm’s way. Knowing you and your daughter to be safe–she under your protection, and both of you under ours—he can focus on the case only.” 

Watson looks thunderous. “Yeah, no. I’d be climbing the walls. —Listen, Zanardi. You knew him for a couple of months; I’ve known him for twelve years. And worked with him for most of them.” 

Of course he has to put his finger in the wound. (Damn it. That’s not English. Turn the knife in the wound.) If it weren’t for Watson, Sherlock and I would have been partners in every sense of the word for the past six years.

“I’m aware. But you don’t know this context, and this country. You’re not part of this, and—forgive me—your language skills aren’t up to it.”

“Yeah, well, forgive me, but he’s not part of it either. And I resent the hell out of you trying to park me somewhere where I can’t have his back.” 

All the hostility is out in the open now. I’m going to lose this round, and a respectful retreat might be necessary: we can’t have a productive team with this kind of open rivalry and suspicion.

I perform an attempt at candour, fiddling with the bottle cap. “You don’t trust me. With his safety.”

Watson’s silent, considering. “I don’t trust anyone with his safety. Because nobody cares about it more than I do, and our daughter. I won’t delegate that to anyone.”

One last try. “Not even Sherlock himself? Do you trust him?”

Watson shifts back a little, looks at me. He’s wondering what kind of trust I mean, and he’s right to. “I do. With my life.”

“With your daughter’s, as well?”

Watson laughs again, even more shortly. “To save our daughter, Sherlock would sacrifice himself or me without a second thought.”

Something’s making me feel even worse. Although the two of them had been at odds before, this seems to be an indissoluble family unit—like the one I once had, or thought I had. The kind where you never have to wonder. Where everything’s rock-solid. 

Doesn’t mean I’m giving up, though, just—falling back to regroup.

As Vally ushers Sherlock back into the room, I reply, “Second thoughts would come later.”

And Watson, looking at Sherlock and not at me, answers, “They would, yeah.”

He turns to Valentina to say his goodbyes, and Sherlock and I agree to communicate again after they’ve hashed out my proposal for their daughter’s placement.

Chapter Text

“Therefore, if I consent to start this journey, 

I fear my venture may be wild and empty.”

(Inf. 2.34–35)

The walk back to the café to collect Rosie is tense and often silent. Sherlock already seems fixated on the case, tapping away on his phone as they walk, while John’s still trying to imagine the household and security set-up Zanardi had described. If he’s trusting the man with their daughter, he needs to know more. In theory, it all sounds plausible: he’s always known Zanardi’s mother is English; his son and daughter are completely bilingual. Apparently, the daughter’s an assistant instructor of English who could probably give Rosie formal lessons in Italian, to reinforce the language immersion in the home. But John worries about the human factor.

What if these people are awful? Of course they’ll love Rosie, who wouldn’t? She gets along with everyone—but what if she doesn’t like them? What if they aren’t up to keeping her stimulated, and protected, and happy? What if they’re unwelcoming, or boring? It isn’t as if Sherlock or I will be reliably free to check in at regular hours, or trouble-shoot, or oh God is this going to be an utter train wreck? Depriving Rosie of the language course she’d asked for, replacing it with a stilted stay with total strangers—we might be ruining her summer entirely, all because Sherlock’s obsessed with an old painting and a dangerous case.

Approaching the piazza they settle on an excuse for the change of plans. It’s a lie, but not the first one they’ve told to shield Rosie from things she’s too young to understand. She’ll have to be told the truth afterwards, though. When it’s all done and dusted. If it doesn’t take too long, they can hardly put her back in the Sorrento school unless they do tell her.

For now, he’s determined not to infect her with his doubts. When they meet at the café, she bursts out “Oh Da, Ba, we had so much fun,” and her face is bright red from heat, excitement, and likely sunburn. She and Martina seem to have promised to keep in touch, something to note for security purposes. He hates having to think about things like an 8-year-old posing a potential security risk. Thanking Cicci for giving Rosie a wonderful day out, he gives Sherlock a gimlet stare to drag him out of his love affair with his phone. With a sharp shake of the head, Sherlock pockets his mobile to focus on the girls and the goodbyes.

On the crowded bus back to Termini, Sherlock announces that they have a surprise to tell her about on the train, which seems an odd way to present a change of plan. Her hopeful look makes him backpedal: “It’s quite different from what we planned, but I think you’ll like the new version.”

Sherlock piques her curiosity by refusing to say more until they’re on the train back to Naples, when he explains that a COVID outbreak has closed the summer school, so her holiday in Sorrento will now be a holiday in the Dolomites. Unlike John, Rosie has an optimistic temperament; unlike Sherlock, a serene and even placid one. For a moment or two she’s disconcerted, before declaring that she likes mountains as much as the seaside, and can swim in mountain lakes as well as in salt water. John reflects that Rosie, having inherited Mary’s complexion, might do better in slightly cooler temperatures (for that matter, so might Sherlock). He chimes in, doing his best to play up the advantages of living with “real Italians” rather than the foreign kids she’d have met at the school.

Privately, he hopes Sherlock notes her sturdy determination to be accommodating; she’s often mature for her age, and this isn’t the first time they’ve had to pivot to accommodate the Work. As she texts her new friend on Sherlock’s phone, John tries to identify what’s niggling at him. This disharmony between them is unsettling: how long has it been since they’d felt this out of step? The answer comes, and with it an idea: 2019, when Sherlock had deduced, incorrectly, that John was having an affair.

Inconspicuously he checks his phone to confirm that what he’s about to say is practical, or at least won’t look desperate or unreasonable to his currently unreasonable husband. Right. Rail hub. On the best route to the Dolomites anyway.

He decides against running this one past Sherlock, just to regain a little control for a while. With this new case beckoning, Sherlock might object—though if he has any sense of John’s frame of mind, he won’t.  

“So tomorrow we’ll pack up, make new arrangements, and the next day we’ll take the train up to Bologna. You’ve heard all about Bologna, haven’t you, Ro?” He hopes his husband hears the subtext. It’ll be good for Sherlock to remember the city that brought them together as a couple.

He keeps his eyes fixed on her smiling nod, but feels Sherlock’s surprised silence.

“We’ll spend the night there, so we’ll have an afternoon and the next morning to visit. It’s a beautiful place, and there are some fairly magical spots to explore. Some even we haven’t seen.”

“That whispering place, Da! And the anatomy—the anatomical models?” God, she’s such a direct mirror of their obsessions, sometimes. 

He finally looks at Sherlock, who’s still staring at him, his brain visibly whirring. Recalculating. He looks uneasy,as well he should, the prat.

“Bologna’s a wonderful idea,” comes the reply. “It always is. Shall I see if the Settimo Cielo’s available?”

“and as they go, they loose the knot of anger.” (Purg. 16.24)

The next day is taken up with revising travel plans, packing, cancelling the next ten days’ hotel rooms and car hire (John hasn’t given up hope of salvaging at least a remnant of the holiday). Rosie has a bit of a sulk when she realises she won’t after all be seeing her new friend again. But either John is so inured to the mega-sulks of the Master, or her version of one is so mild that it hardly dents his mood.

Any magic he’d hoped to find in Bologna, though, evades his grasp. The place isn’t a panacea at all; it barely seems to register with Sherlock. Maybe that isn’t entirely fair; he seems only subdued, not absent. Perhaps John’s just missing the lively spark of complicity, of shared memories, that the city had brought out the last time, post-reconciliation. Or perhaps he’d exaggerated its importance in their lives, or at least its association with moments that were turning-points in their life together.

But Rosie’s eager to see a new city, one she’s heard so much about. She’s unusually patient with the steaming humidity of the Bolognese summer, listens as Sherlock points out its lethal geography—lethal for heat, at least—and positively bounces every time she reaches the shade of a portico, or feels cool air from a cellar grille waft out into the street.

“I always hoped they were something sinister, like secret prisons. I now suspect, a convenience for coal delivery or something equally dull.” Sherlock sounds so disappointed that John knows he’s putting it on for Rosie. She can always be prompted to console someone suffering such a crushing blow.

“Oh, Ba. I’m sure they had secret prisons here. But they’re secret, so you can’t see them.”

“Well, yes, everyone in power had to have a prison, and maybe there’s still a secret one or two. Back in the thirteenth century, they kept the emperor’s son imprisoned for the whole of his natural life.”

As usual, he’s able to keep Rosie wide-eyed, hanging on a story John didn’t even know he knew, as they wander the historic centre in search of their favourite gelateria. Is it a good idea to get her used to gelato every day? Are they going to be sorry for this back in London? 

He tunes in and out of Sherlock’s relaxed commentary on the city: why it has porticoes. Why some streets are pure mediaeval and others pure twentieth-century. Why there are so many towers; why, if there used to be two hundred, there are so few left. Why there are segments of canals to be seen in unexpected corners, and how many rivers ran through the city, and why they run underground now, just like in London.

Finally Sherlock turns to him with a real smile, the private one, and muses, “I wonder where my pyjamas ended up.”

And the knot of anger, which John only now realizes had been tightening in his gut, eases.

Rosie looks up, shocked. “Ba, you don’t wear pyjamas,” and a passing couple in Atlanta Braves baseball caps look at each other, taken aback.

“No, Watson, I do not. I never shall, either. They’re boring.” Sherlock still issues that judgment with the revulsion usually reserved for words like obscene or appalling. “Like every sensible man, I much prefer flannel nighties.” 

By now Rosie’s in stitches; her sense of humour is preternaturally adult in some ways, typically juvenile in others, and both threads converge in Sherlock’s joke.

The Settimo Cielo welcomes them back, but can provide only a small double room with a trundle bed. Which is fine, they aren’t teenagers. And perhaps Rosie’s presence is a blessing in disguise. They can’t argue, or—worse—have to address what it means that John feels less like making love to Sherlock than he has ever felt anywhere, let alone in this magical city.

No, the Bologna cure isn’t working this time. At best, it’s suppressing the symptoms.

High up, in lovely Italy, beneath

the Alps (Inf. 20.61–62)

Their train leaves Bologna at three the next day, and John’s reflecting that he was — modestly — brilliant to break up the long journey from Naples to Belluno. Two 3.5-hour trips over two days are much more pleasant than one seven- or eight-hour haul. They’ve tired Rosie out with a walking visit of the city and stuffed her with an excellent lunch, so it’s no surprise that she’s out like a light within ten minutes.

Sherlock immediately dives into his phone, apparently to use his time off from Ba-duty to gather information. Or is it to avoid conversation? 

Well over an hour passes before John just has to ask. “Who’re you texting?”

Sherlock looks up, astonished: this is a first for that question, certainly. 

“I’m not. I’m looking into something,” he almost whispers.

John’s irritation rises. Cagey git. “Anything I should know about?”

Starting to wake Rosie gently before they have to change trains in Padua, Sherlock says only, “Brief you later.” But he doesn’t.

When they leave Padua Rosie catches sight of massive mountains, and can think and talk of nothing else.

John marvels with her and uses his phone to identify what they’re seeing, as the scenery grows more dramatic and enchanting. As they pass towering crags and intricately terraced vineyards, watchtowers and castles and churches, even Rosie falls silent.

Sherlock, again plunged deep in his solitary internet searching, doesn’t surface until shortly before they arrive in Belluno. John’s a bit chagrined that their seven-year-old is so much more patient with her Ba’s absent presence than he is.

By late afternoon they’re being whisked by car from the Belluno station west and south to the countryside, through an almost unbelievably beautiful landscape. South of the Piave river the mountains are less rugged, more like the Apennines; the route takes them through dark green woods and bright green pastures, with the higher peaks looming behind them, to the north.

At the Zanardi family’s safe house, Rosie's very taken with Chiara, a quiet and slender young woman with her father’s build. Chiara immediately starts off speaking Italian with Rosie, who’s surprised and delighted at how much she can understand.

Chiara switches to English to tell John, “I taught intensive courses in Italian for uni students at Bristol, remotely, during the lockdowns. I got used to regulating my speed and intonation, and using cognates and repetition, to make it easier for them to follow the teacher-talk. Her French will help her a lot, of course.”

She’s already taking her teaching role very seriously. Her brother Luca’s more exuberant and noisy, and in this he’s even less reminiscent of Zanardi than Chiara is, though the facial resemblance is stronger. John resigns himself to being loomed over by these affable young people. They enter the house to be introduced to Zanardi’s mother.

Who is looking like thunder at Sherlock. Well. That’s an exaggeration. She’s very well bred, very English, so her dislike is telegraphed by a stiffness and a lack of warmth even more striking by comparison with her grandchildren.

“Mister Holmes. Of course I remember you. I wasn’t aware that your daughter was the English girl who would be joining us.”

John’s ears prick up. What the hell did Zanardi tell her? He can’t have meant to conceal Sherlock’s participation, can he? That would never have worked; Rosie can’t go an hour without mentioning her parents, let alone three weeks. If Zanardi was aware of his mother’s hostility, then he was pretty damned cowardly to send them up here instead of accompanying them. The sour little twist in his gut tells him there’s too much emotional static here. How much of it is his alone, he can’t tell; but this doesn’t bode well.

Undaunted by her frosty reception, Sherlock responds politely, “Mrs. Zanardi. Helen. A pleasure to see you again. My husband, John Watson; our daughter, Rosie. We’re very grateful that you can keep her with you, since her school closed for yet another outbreak of the virus.”

Her keen eyes narrow. Again, John’s left wondering what Zanardi’s told her.

“Mister Watson. John. Would you like to take Rosie upstairs? We’ve put a rollaway in Chiara’s room. She’s quite excited, aren’t you, darling, always wanted a little sister.”

Chiara smiles, glancing at Luca. “And instead I only got this monster. I’d have died if I hadn’t had all the girl cousins as a consolation prize.”

It seems to be an old game of teasing, and Luca settles for swatting the back of her head and saying something in Italian John can’t catch.

“English, children. For the moment. Later we can talk about which language to use, and when.”

When John turns back around from the staircase, he sees Helen Zanardi staring at Sherlock with a severity that would have felled a lesser man. To judge by the rigid set of his back, Sherlock is well aware of it.

Just when the fly yields to the mosquito (Inf. 26.28)

Despite the rocky start, Helen unbends (a very little) under Rosie’s irresistible cheerfulness, her occasional adult expressions in English, and her earnest efforts in Italian. Helen is clearly a professional grandmother, and has assembled almost everything a girl Rosie’s age could need or want for a stay of ten days or more. John can still hope for the best-case scenario, though the worst is seeming more likely by the hour.

While Rosie’s upstairs with Chiara, Helen explains, “This house is smaller than our usual summer rental, but it has the advantage of having no association with our family. The location allows my son’s people to keep us anonymous as he works on this current case. It does mean, however, that space is at a premium.”

John and Sherlock are to spend the night in a sofa-bed in the living-room, which is open to the kitchen and overlooked by a kind of loft. Another night without privacy, then, for conversation or anything else. The kitchen’s filled with cold food for the evening meal. Zanardi’s due in an hour or two, held up in traffic between Venice and Belluno. He’d texted to confirm that the delay was due only to the typical summer traffic saturation, frustrating but innocuous.

John wanders outside to, as Sherlock says with a quirk in his smile, secure the perimeter. With the lush green, the mountains around, the picturesque house, the discreet outbuildings—occupied by agents, he knows—this would be a perfect place to summer. He’s beginning to envy Rosie, if he’s going to be stuck in the infernal heat of Rome.

On the lawn where the last daylight lingers, Luca and Chiara are setting up for an al fresco supper. They move in sync to fling a tablecloth and lay the table, as though they’d done it all their lives—though not here, surely, this isn’t the vacation home of their childhood. John’s surprised to see Luca lean over and kiss Chiara on the temple: do brothers that age do that to sisters nowadays? He and Harry had had to become thirty-somethings before they were at all affectionate together. And let’s not talk about Mycroft, for God’s sake. 

Eventually Helen gives up waiting for Zanardi; by the time the grandchildren bring out an aperitivo and some antipasti, the sun’s long since ducked down behind the mountain. Sherlock and Helen are at the other end of the table from John and Rosie, with Chiara and Luca between; the empty seat at John’s right is for Zanardi, whenever he shows up. From what John can see of Sherlock’s posture and expression, his quiet conversation with Helen is neither casual nor cordial.

Chiara slaps her calf in annoyance and mutters, “This place has the biggest mosquitoes in the world, I swear.” 

When Rosie scratches distractedly at her bare arms, Sherlock holds up her lightweight long-sleeved shirt, then hastily gets up to bring it to her.

“I was coming, Ba—” she starts, but Sherlock just says, “I needed a kiss from my two favorite people, didn’t I.”

Not something he’d ever say in public, normally. John wonders if it’s an olive-branch, until he hears Sherlock hiss in his ear, under cover of a kiss, “I had to get away from her for two minutes, she’s flaying me alive.”

John puts his hand up to Sherlock’s face for privacy, murmuring, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sherlock says, quietly, “I mean, she’s not forgotten her former antipathy.”

Taking pity, John speaks loudly enough to be heard. “I’m missing you. Can you change places with Luca?”

Luca intervenes. “Not yet, I’m about to bring out the pasta salad. Later, when pudding’s been served, we’ll switch around. Or maybe when Ba arrives you can give him the place of honour, next to nonna.”

Sherlock looks resigned but thanks him, returning with no great alacrity to Helen’s side. No dinner for Sherlock then; he never eats when he’s under fire.

John asks Chiara about the family home they would have been staying in.

“The house is in the Val di Zoldo, about forty-five kilometres north of here, much higher up. Fewer mosquitoes, better scenery, and the woods are amazing. Down here’s nice, but it’s brilliant up by the peaks. Some challenging hill climbs, too.”

Rosie leans in, suddenly interested, and bursts in with, “In Bologna, I got new trekking boots for the mountains.”

The topics of mountain walking and riding in summer, skiing and snowshoeing in winter, carry them through the pasta salad, the cold salmon mousse and the three vegetable side-dishes. Watching how Chiara and Rosie get on puts some of his earlier worries to rest.

Just as he’s beginning to feel more relaxed, Zanardi arrives, parks his rental car and strides toward them.

“For where the mind’s acutest reasoning

Is joined to evil will and evil power,

There human beings can’t defend themselves.” 

(Inf. 31.55–57)

Sherlock’s the first thing I see, and he’s pinned like an insect by my mother’s implacable stare, so I make for that end of the table and kiss her cheek. “Sorry, Mum, too many holiday-makers on the road. Did you save me any dinner? Hullo, Sherlock.”

I absorb his neutral reply and turn to greet everyone else at the table. I’m introduced to Rosie Watson. She seems a sweet child, and I feel an unexpected stab of nostalgia for Chiara’s childhood—we were a happy family, back then. But where Chiara was a dreamy little thing, Rosie’s a live wire, and I wonder how being brought up by Sherlock has influenced her.  

She’s already made friends with Luca and Chiara who are both, given their army of cousins, experienced kid-whisperers. Her earnestness about learning Italian reminds me of Sherlock, the month he spent with me, when he refused to speak any English at all, even with my mother. He’s speaking it now, out of deference to his family.

He gets up gracefully (he does everything gracefully) and joins Watson at the other end of the table. Mum gives me a plate heaped with pasta salad, her salmon mousse, and various contorni; I raise my eyebrows at the quantity.

“You’re still too thin, and I’m still your mother.” The words sound just like her usual humour, but the tone is more a warning than maternal solicitude.

At a distance from Mum now, Sherlock’s looking more relaxed; I remember that easing of posture and facial expression when a pressure is removed. Under cover of eating and listening to her, I watch him: his open tenderness toward his daughter, his more reserved complicity with Watson.

Mum’s describing her arrangements for Rosie Watson, and querying me sharply (interrogating me—God, she could teach the police a thing or two) about my caginess in brokering this security-bubble-cum-homestay for an appealing but wholly unrelated little stranger.

Finally, I put down my fork and turn to meet her eye, shifting into Italian. “You know I couldn’t go into detail on the phone, Mum. And be honest: if you’d known whose daughter you’d be taking in, would you’ve said yes?”

Her lips press together tightly (and dear God isn’t that a dire sign) and she answers, quietly, “You know I wouldn’t. I’ve no good impression of her father, and no appreciation for the state he left you in.”

Uneasy, I confirm that everyone else is engaged in talking about the bizarre, seemingly unending, ordeal of the pandemic, and only then reply, “That wasn’t his fault, Mum, none of it. And it certainly isn’t hers.”

My mother’s scrupulous sense of justice forces her to fall back. “But you don’t have to work with him, Roberto.”

Roberto? She may as well have added my middle name. I look at Sherlock and see him watching me, though unobtrusively. I smile at him and answer her: “I do, actually. Blame my boss, Mum. I tried to talk him out of it, and if you don’t believe me, Sherlock will confirm it. The very last thing I need is to take on someone from so far out of our context. His partner—husband—even more so, he doesn’t even know Italian. Just bringing them up to speed on the investigation is going to take time we don’t have. But even as I was arguing against bringing them in, I had to admit that our investigation’s at a standstill. A view from the outside might be just what we need.”

I push my plate away; she’s soured whatever appetite I had, and that was little enough already, between the heat, the stress, the logistics and the—distraction.

She’s always been able to read my mind. In a low, pleading tone she says, “Robbie. You can’t afford this distraction. You have to be focused, and you have to be careful. Please. I can’t lose—anyone else. Not after Jamie. After your father. And Luca and Chiara—they can’t lose you either. So please, please, take care.”

Sherlock is watching me more openly now, his brows drawn together, looking troubled. Oh, how I remember.

I smile and don’t answer what she’s really asking of me. “What am I supposed to do, resign? Of course I’ll be careful, Mum. I always am.”

She whispers, almost hisses. “Of course you should resign. You can be as careful as you like on your own account, but your job has begun to put your children in danger, and they did not sign up for this.”

“This is temporary. The kids know that, and they’re fine with it.” I hear how defensive I sound, and I don’t like it. It gives her the advantage.

Which she immediately presses: “You shouldn’t have put them in the position of being fine with it or not. You’re their father. You’re responsible for keeping them safe. So be responsible,” she snaps.

I turn and stare at her in mild shock. She hasn’t spoken to me like this since before Giulia left me.

I give her a look, get up and move a few feet to where Sherlock is talking with Chiara, in Italian. His daughter’s watching and listening, frowning with concentration; John Watson is talking with Luca about medical school, and what’s changed since he trained. I wonder if Luca’s just being polite or if he’s really interested: when last he spoke with me about it he’d no interest in the health sciences, to my father’s dismay. But then, he hasn’t spoken with me about it in—a few years now, sadly. Another painful reminder that I’ve lost touch with my children. 

He’s a bright lad, a better student than one would guess from his boisterous demeanour. I should take this opportunity to sit him down and ask how things are coming along. Thank him for being such a good sport about having his summer hijacked this way. Chiara, too.

I place a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, get his attention, and nod back toward my mother. He’s too polite to wince, but I think I can see a trace of dread at the prospect of her next cross-examination. Or perhaps I’m projecting.

“Could we trade places, Sherlock? I haven’t seen my kids in too long.” This is both true and strategic. I want to talk to John Watson again. “Rosie, Mum wants to know what your favourite gelato is. She’s laid on three or four flavours.” This too is true and strategic; Mum had told me on the phone, and perhaps feeding Rosie will distract her from savaging Sherlock any further.

“Certainly. Come along, Watson.” Holding her hand he escorts her the metre and a half to the other end of the table as though she were royalty. Is this the same man who gave me the blow job of a lifetime in a rural lay-by? This fond, careful father? Another thought follows on: if a truly devoted family man would give this case up, what does it mean that Sherlock is eager to pursue it?

I sit down beside Watson the Elder as Luca thanks him for “the consultation” (what consultation?) and goes to fetch the gelato. Chiara joins him, to help with the bowls and spoons.

Watson turns to me. “Fine young man. A pleasure to talk to.” Olive branch?

“So’s your daughter, my mother says. Chiara seems very taken with her already.” This I can safely say; Chiara’s taken with all children.

“She’s offered to give Rosie structured instruction, to make up for some of the grammar she’d have been studying on the formal course. It’s very kind of her to do that.” He says it warmly, making an effort.

I do the same. “Rosie’s just the age Chiara likes most, and she’s doing a study on language learning in the pre-pubescent. Ask her about it. It’s fascinating work. Of course, I may be biased.”

Whatever else he is, John Watson is no fool. “I came here ready to send Rosie back to her aunts in London if the set-up wasn’t right, the atmosphere. But this seems a good situation for her, under the circumstances. And we’ll be more comfortable if she’s closer.”

I shift in my chair. The evening air’s finally cooling a bit; the sky’s darkening, the stars are winking in one by one. There’s an impalpable chill in the air. I don’t think it’s the weather.

I try my luck again. “You can always come up here to stay with her, if you need to. For a day or two. Longer.”

He turns to face me directly, and a parade of emotions crosses his face: incredulity, annoyance, distrust. Resistance.

“I thought I made myself clear. I’m not leaving Sherlock. We’re a team. You want him, you take me.”

Again I retreat on this subject. “No, no, I heard you loud and clear. I only meant that if you need to, you can get up here quickly. A couple of hours, in a government plane.”

He relaxes, marginally. I look past him to the lighted windows of the house where my children are pottering in the kitchen, getting the gelato ready to serve. Luca shoulders the screen door open and carries the tray across the grass, sets it down in front of Rosie and Mum. Chiara follows with toppings (revolting Americanism) and additional serviettes—the stuff melts quickly on summer evenings.

When all the flavours have been served and tasted, debated and ranked, and my children have had a spirited argument about the best gelaterie in Rome, Mum begins lobbying for Rosie to be put to bed. “Look at the child, she’s practically asleep already. You know where to find her things, you can get her ready for bed and tuck her up while I clear. —No, darlings, you’ve done everything this evening, let nonna do something, at least.”

Rosie’s apparently too tired to object, and her fathers look their approval at Mum’s urging. Within half an hour I spot them in the loft corridor, closing Chiara’s door quietly behind them. Rather neutrally they say goodnight and go downstairs to their sofa-bed. Mum’s already made it up and opened it; she’s thoroughly hospitable, and that doesn’t seem to be changing despite all the other changes in her life.

Doors open and close, quiet voices rise and fall, lights go out. I’m to sleep in Luca’s room, where the stars are brighter now through the skylight. The security detail texts to confirm that they’ve checked the property and all’s well.

As I leave the bathroom, I glance over the railing into the living room. I can’t help looking down. I know it will hurt, but I can’t stop myself. 

They’re lying on the sofa bed in the middle of the room. Sherlock, already asleep, is turned away from Watson, who’s lying on his back, white t-shirt seeming to glow. He looks up and catches my eye, expressionless. Sherlock shifts from his left side to his right and folds into his husband’s—embrace. John Watson draws him in, then runs a hand through his night-dark hair.

When I turn to go back to Luca’s room Watson is still staring at me, his eyes grey in the gloom.

Art by the amazing Procoffeinating.

Chapter Text

“You reason like a child;

Your steps do not yet rest upon the truth;

Your mind misguides you into emptiness.” 

(Par. 3.26–28)

I sleep badly. I want to blame the unfamiliar bed, Luca’s proximity. But it’s my mother’s warning that keeps echoing in my head. Fair enough that she’d been worried about the risks associated with the case; the hovering of my carefully chosen protection team makes her nervous. But this is something more: a deep-seated disapproval, and a state of distress that I’ve not seen in her since my brother died. Now that she knows Sherlock is the consultant involved in our mission, she won’t let it rest. Her unspoken anger at my cowardice in not naming the father of this stranger child, thrust into her care—it all showed in the way she looked at me last evening.

She and I have never seen eye-to-eye on the subject of Sherlock. Do I blame her for seeing from the beginning what it took me a month to realise? When she played the I-told-you-so card after he left, I flung out of her house. I’d gone to her seeking some consolation, the comfort a mother should give a heartbroken son, but instead she’d told me a hard truth: “You’re your own worst enemy, Robbie. You gave your heart to someone who never wanted it.”

The rift took months to even begin to close.

I should leave as soon as possible. What further salt might she rub into my wounds? Can’t she see that Sherlock’s very presence is wound enough? Anyway, I have my excuse: duty calls, literally. Vally texted me at seven this morning to say that the team (herself included, I assume) is getting restless. Should they get back to work, or what? I call her, tell her to take the day off and that we’ll be getting to Rome this evening. “Be ready at the flat tomorrow. We begin again,” I say.

She sighs. “Can I ask you something, as a friend?”

“Of course.” Over the past few years, Vally has gone from a colleague to a proper friend. We’ve come to know enough of each other’s private lives that it improves the way we work together. I trust her opinion because it’s so often different from my own. My mother would call it creative friction: Vally and I often thrash something out that works better than what either of us had started with.

But this time, she oversteps the boundary between work and our private lives. “Is this Holmes really necessary? He seems to be putting you off balance.”

I snap, “This is no time for personal issues. We have work to do. So get what rest you can on this day off, and be ready to work all hours for the next three weeks while they’re here.” I ring off without giving her a chance to reply, no doubt confirming her impression.

After an early breakfast Chiara announces that she will take Rosamund Watson for a walk, so they can speak Italian. “First lesson: talking about nature in Italian.” The child’s positively bouncing with energy: how easy it is to sleep when unburdened by worries.

Sherlock’s decided to go with them; he seems to be assessing the suitability of everyone and everything. Perhaps Mummy’s hostility is making him uneasy about the set-up here. Sensibly, Watson decides to stay behind. Brought up bilingual, I forget how isolating it can be when everyone is speaking a language you don’t understand.

Sitting in the pergola and shaded by a vine, sipping our morning coffee, Watson and I watch them head up the path towards the meadow above the safe house. My officer follows discreetly some twenty metres behind.

Perhaps it’s the atmosphere of privacy that loosens Watson’s tongue; with Sherlock gone, he doesn’t have to keep harping on the danger of collaborating on this case. Or perhaps it’s a relaxation of vigilance, now that he’s seeing for himself that his daughter will be protected here, and probably happy. Whatever the cause, looking out toward the perimeter he makes a light remark about organised crime. 

“I was more worried, at first. But maybe I was panicking for no reason. Maybe these people aren’t so dangerous, or at least not to children. One of their epithets is ‘men of honour,’ after all. Some of them seem to be almost Robin Hood figures. Helping the little man against the impersonal State.”

Robin Hood? Helping the little man? Dear God, is he serious? It’s a shock to realise how dangerously superficial his understanding is. 

I have to set him straight. Immediately. “Doctor Watson. I—please, listen to me. You can’t take rational comfort in a romanticised notion of who these people are. If you’re reassured that our children are protected here, I’m glad of it. We all concentrate better when our families are safe. But they’re safe because they’re protected, not because the mafias are too ‘honourable’ to harm children.

“They are sometimes called ‘men of honour.’ But they are not. They’re sometimes portrayed as fascinating anti-heroes. They are not. They’re brutal murderers and extortionists who have cloaked themselves in a patina of macho allure to fool naïve people impressed by violence, and a venal subset of the media.”

My words, my tone, are so vehement that Watson looks taken aback. “Well, but I’ve read they solve problems the state can’t be bothered to solve.”

That old chestnut. I try to ratchet back the intensity of my tone—I don’t want to put him on the defensive, after all—but not of my words.

“No, they use problems the state can’t manage to solve. They’re not out to help people. They have no interest in the common good. The stolen art—it’s a perfect metaphor. They want to take everything that is public and sequester it, appropriate it. For their own private gain, and power, and prestige—and vanity—and self-aggrandisement. They only pretend to respect or assist the average man, the ordinary citizen. They. Don’t. Care.”

He listens, nods. “So where does this myth come from?”

He’s paying me the compliment of taking me seriously, so I imply a compliment in return. “You’re right to call it a myth. For them it’s a means to an end. A method. They manipulate the average person’s sense of powerlessness. They pretend to be a source of borrowed power, personal advantage, against the impersonal structures and forces of the polity. Structures that seem to — ostacolare—block them.” Damn it, I never lose my words in English: why now?

He nods again, and looks up from under his brows. “A silver bullet, but only for individuals. Not scalable to the collective, the common good.”

He’s getting it: the individual and the group; the societal and the anti-social.

“That’s it. For the powerless, the ‘protection’ of a mafia is an illusory back-channel to power. Vicarious power, an easier life. And if you join them it feels like privilege, it feels like exclusivity, superiority. Makes you an accomplice in inequality.”

Watson pulls a face at this. “Like airline companies declaring you a Platinum member?”

I’m not sure the comparison holds, but whatever. “I guess. In truth, though, anyone who turns to them is begging their poisoner for an antidote. Being pathetically grateful if they give you clean water, even if they’re still contaminating the town well and everyone who depends on it. You think you’ve squeezed into the only safe space, the charmed circle, while everyone outside it is suffering. They count on the selfishness of people who only consider their own well-being, or at most that of their family.”

Another wry glance from Watson, who tips back on the back legs of his chair. “And that means … a sufficient percentage of the population? How else would organised crime thrive all over the globe?”

Now that’s a good question. What does make organised crime a menace worldwide? “I suspect that the element most favourable to organised crime is a population which is convinced—either by cultural history or current economic and political circumstances—that you can only count on your family, your tribe. I try to tell people never to make the mistake of trying to coexist with them, or play both sides, or collaborate. That is the currency they deal in: it’s your willingness to turn a blind eye, to not challenge them, that gives them power over everyone and everything. And for what? You’ll lose your soul and eventually your life, anyway. There’s only one rational response: they have to be hunted down and crushed. Publicly exposed, and emasculated by their defeat.

“Their power lies in secrecy, in the conspiracy of silence. Secret threats, pressure points, violence, violation. It’s an enduring shame that too many Italian politicians have fallen prey to their tactics—local, regional, even national; it’s all carefully managed to serve their interests. The state’s power should lie in exposure, and prosecution, and punishment.”

“Playing by the rules?” He shakes his head. “Seems they don’t have to.”

I nod. “Yes, but consider: the state may sometimes fight dirty in its battle, but mafias always fight dirty; terror and violence are their weapons of choice. And when they infiltrate the state, we’ve the right to use any means at all. Senza esclusione di colpi. No holds barred.”

For the first time, Watson looks me straight in the eye, dead serious. “So where does that ‘men of honour’ label come from, anyway? It seems the actual reverse of the truth, if organised crime is a cesspool and the criminals are the turds.”

I snort at the crude and accurate analogy that follows his decorous euphemism. “Magical thinking? The same reason the ancient Greeks called the Furies ‘the benevolent ones’—to avoid attracting their anger. And the users of those euphemisms are complicit, too—because every secret society is corrosive to the larger society. By being based on exclusion and exclusiveness, mystery and lies.”

He doesn’t answer, but his expression is sombre. He does seem to get it now: why this matters, why it’s an existential fight for the team, for the justice system. In all honesty, for the nation.

I press my point home. “Everyone needs to put aside that Hollywood rubbish. It’s not all gang wars and shoot-outs. I swear, the Godfather films did more to glamourise the mafia’s image than anything else, and it’s made our jobs—no, our lives in Italy—all the more difficult because it obscures the truth. The American fetish of the heroic outlaw, the criminal gangster—it’s a long way from how things really work.”

I’ve been lecturing John Watson, hectoring him, and he’s borne it patiently. I’m embarrassed to have got so worked up, especially with him. I try to regain the advantage of self-control.

“Sorry to have ridden my hobby-horse for so long. It’s just—essential you understand. For everyone’s safety. For this case. They’ve stolen our culture, our heritage, things that belong to the people; I want to break their stranglehold. I hope I haven’t been condescending. Put you off.”

He brushes off my apology. “Not at all. And I’ll read any source you recommend, if it’s available in English.”

I make a note in my phone to get him the classic by Salvatore Lupo, and something recent by the current prosecutor, Nicola Gratteri. I can translate a relevant excerpt myself, if need be. If there’s time.  Maybe Midnight in Sicily — at least that’s in English.

I come back to the present and spot see Sherlock and Chiara and Rosie down the path, still a way off. Watson clocks them when I do, and he stiffens: in that context he and I cannot be neutral. The chill is back, and he gives me a much grimmer stare. “What did you mean by watching Sherlock and me last night?”

Shit. No soft opening, let alone tacit agreement to leave it alone. I think fast. “I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t trying to be a Peeping Tom.” (I was.) “I always check out the whole house inside and out before I turn in. See what’s what and who’s where. Especially in a house I don’t know. That way if something happens, if we have to wake up in the night, I’ve a baseline for seeing what’s out of place even if I’m still disoriented from sleep. It’s become second nature, but it must have looked very invasive.”

Watson considers a moment, and although I’m fairly impressed by my improvisation, I’m not sure he believes it. Sherlock nods at us and heads straight into the house; the girls are coming towards us, and I think Watson’s going to let it drop.

He doesn’t. He looks at me without a trace of the humour or openness he’s been showing, and says only, “Don’t try to get between us. It won’t work, and it’ll sabotage your whole operation.”

Now I’m definitely taken aback. I hardly expected such directness.

“It’s the farthest thing from my mind, I assure you,” I reply, and hope he’s not as good at detecting lies as Sherlock is.

Now Chiara’s got her hand on my shoulder, and Rosie’s showing Watson her haul of treasures from the woods, and the tense atmosphere dissolves in our children’s delight.

Her stance still regal and disdainful, she

Continued, just like one who speaks but keeps

Until the end the fiercest parts of speech. 

(Purg. 30.70–72)

Sherlock leaves the girls and heads straight to the house: he has something important to attend to. Last night he’d slept only fitfully, returning to wakefulness too often. Perhaps the unfamiliar surroundings: he’d only just acclimatised to the hotel room in Sorrento. Bologna had been oddly worse, despite being in the same hotel where he and John had reunited. This time, there’d been an atmosphere of disquiet, and Watson in the room; that mood’s continued up here, as if John’s regretting that he agreed to take the case.

The Dolomites had originally appealed: the altitude attenuates one of the things that bothers him most about Italian accommodation in the summer. To beat the heat and humidity that ruin sleep, the hotels all have air conditioning. To his hyperacute hearing, the noise is a constant irritant.

Last night, the temperature had been kinder; fresh mountain air is bliss, as is the quiet. Italian cities are noisy, even more than London — too many scooters, too many loud voices echoing up narrow stone streets. He’d thought the peace up here would help him sleep. However, the high ceiling of the safe house’s living room was unsettling. Sleeping on the sofa bed he’d felt exposed, even with John beside him.

Luckily, it won’t be necessary to stay a second night. They’ve agreed over breakfast that Roberto will drive them to Milan to catch a flight back to Rome tonight.

At last! The case has been burning a hole in his composure, and he’s found it almost impossible to hide his impatience. The temptation to spend time thinking seriously about it — about the possibilities, about the sheer scale of what’s on offer here—is so overpowering that he’s struggled to stay present for John and Watson. 

He’s under no illusions, however. Anything that involves all of the mafia tribes, unites them in their use of a common service, will be fiercely defended. The risks are real.

While Roberto may be reassured by the isolated location and the presence of the security detail in the outbuildings of this safe-house, Sherlock is not. As they’d walked into the woods today, he’d been seeing worst-case scenarios. What if a sniper had taken that officer out? An abduction would have been all too easy. But to raise the issue with Roberto would be questioning his judgement, and confrontation is difficult at the moment. For the sake of the Work, he won’t rock that particular boat. He’d told John he trusted Roberto’s measures.

Entering the house, he feels Helen’s icy glare following him from the living room sofa, now folded away. Before he can take a step to flee she calls out to him. “Mister Holmes, a word.” It’s delivered in one of those ultra-polite but commanding tones reminiscent of his childhood—enough to make him mis-step and falter. He sighs, but bows to the inevitable. He’s known since yesterday what would be coming, but there’d been too many people around for what she wanted to say; now, he’s for it.

He marches into the living room. “Yes?”

She keeps her voice low, as Luca’s in and out of the kitchen just a few metres away. “I won’t ask you to sit. What I have to say won’t take that long. You ruined my son’s life when you left him; he was so very unhappy. And now you’re back again, flaunting your family at him.”

Ruined Roberto’s life? flaunting my family—? This is more frank and far more hideous even  than he’d expected when she summoned him.

“I’ve already lost one son; I won’t risk losing Robbie. Do not dare distract him when he needs to focus on this dangerous case—whatever it is that worries him so much that he’s put us under house arrest here.”

Sherlock arches an eyebrow. “I have no intention of distracting anybody. We all need to be able to set aside our emotions to focus on the work. What he needs from you right now is your commitment to stay here, and to keep his children safe. And Watson.”

Her frown deepens. “Yes… and put up with this poky house and the guards. If you must be involved, then please at least be quick about it. I really would rather not have our entire summer spoiled.”

“That makes two of us. And it would be insulting for me to say that I trust you won’t hold your feelings about me against my daughter.”

A pause while she takes this in. “It most certainly would be.” Her tone, while low, is indescribably angry.

He beats a hasty retreat before she can add anything else. He never imagined she’d speak so directly, and he’s slightly queasy at what she’s said about Roberto’s shredded heart. Yet another layer of complication, or two: more emotional static on the team, and yet more guilt for him.

He sees Luca, head in the fridge. Amused, Sherlock asks, “Are you hungry again, or already preparing lunch?”

Luca straightens up, waving a salame at him and laughing. “Both! When am I not hungry? Nonna said to have lunch on the table early. Just bread, a cheese and meat board, fruit, and wine.”

Sherlock checks his watch and heads out the back door. “I’ll be there; I’ve a call to make first.”

“Now you must cast aside your laziness,

...for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame;

and he who spends his life without renown
leaves such a vestige of himself on earth
as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.” 

(Inf. 24.46–51)

He strides past an outbuilding, noting the cameras concealed there and on the garage. Civilians wouldn’t spot them, but a professional would, and quickly. That’s exactly the problem: Roberto’s ideas of security are born from a career in the police. Sherlock, in two years away dealing with organised crime networks across the globe, honed a necessary paranoia and heightened vigilance.

He taps a number into the burner phone. Three rings and then a connection opens but no voice answers. Into the silence, he says, “Mycroft. Call me back…now.”

Before he’s reached the far side of the outbuilding, his phone is ringing.

“What is it?” Mycroft’s question is mildly spoken, but he’d rung back so quickly that Sherlock knows his own call was not unexpected.

“You know what this is about. Why did you tell Alfieri where we were staying?”

A slight pause, then: “On that ridiculous scale of yours, this case is at least a twelve. You know very well that if you ever found out I’d stopped you from even hearing about it, you’d have been livid.”

“Well, if you’re going to put my family in the firing line without asking, you’d better do something better than what they’ve managed to rustle up in terms of security.” 

“Never fear, brother mine. I provided for the safety of my niece, her father and even you before ever agreeing to tell Alfieri where to find you. As soon as you texted from the train, I activated those provisions. You can return to Rome confident that whatever you and John get up to, your daughter will be safe.”

“Mrs Zanardi is being prickly about being moved to the safe house by Roberto. Make sure your people aren’t visible.”

Mycroft’s sigh is audible. “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Sherlock. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have. I assume this number will reach you in future?”

“Yes. Goodbye for now.” Sherlock ends the call without waiting for his brother’s reply.

By the time he returns to the house the light lunch is set out, which suits him. Instead of the formality of a first and second course, he can take only what he knows he’ll actually eat — some bread, a few pieces of cheese, a glass of water.

Fortunately the general conversation is lively, more Italian than English. Luca and Chiara clearly share a sense of humour, and they tease one another mercilessly. Watson is enchanted, focusing hard on what they’re saying to one another, fearlessly asking for translations when she can’t follow; luckily for John, this is often. Roberto does the translating, and teases stories out of his children to entertain her. Whatever glowering looks Helen shoots at him, Sherlock can see that she too is enjoying Watson, and smiling frequently at her son’s obvious pleasure.

Who wouldn’t be falling under Watson’s spell? She’s is having a blast, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Even John’s manner shows he’s reassured that this arrangement will work, which relieves one of Sherlock’s worries. The time Watson spends in this family unit truly will be a more intensive language-learning experience, and one with much more freedom, than she’d have had mewed up in a schoolroom with other learners of Italian. Up here she’ll not only be insulated and protected, she’ll be having fun as she gets far more instruction than they’d bargained for back when they made their plans. At least Watson will get a brilliant holiday.

Will the same be true for John and himself? The case has derailed John’s plans for carefree frivolity in the southern Italian sun. While that does give him some remorse, it’s a question of opportunity costs. Holidays like the one John had anticipated can happen at any time; the chance to solve one of the greatest art theft cases ever? The Caravaggio, no less, and perhaps infinitely more stolen art? Immeasurably rarer, even if their involvement can only last the three weeks. Selfish, perhaps, yet some of the best times of their life together have happened during cases.

But the clock is ticking, which is an added incentive to dig into the case as soon as possible. Given the choice, he’d rather not have agreed to the strict time limit, but it does have the huge advantage of lowering the risk of being detected. If they’re lucky, he and John can be in and out before anyone dangerous can find out that they were involved at all.

Roberto too hears the clock ticking, and is keen to get back. Over the inevitable gelato he announces, “We have to leave soon. It’s three-and-a-half hours to Milan-Bergamo airport where we drop off the car. Summer traffic can be erratic, so we need to give ourselves extra time.”

After lunch and packing comes the ordeal of saying goodbye. Their daughter’s spent time away from them before, but never three weeks. Watson proves more able to let them go than John is; impatient and imperious as a seven-year-old can be, she says, “Ba and Da, shoo! Get going! Chiara’s going to teach me how to play bocce; we have to beat Luca.”

John stoops for a last hug. “I’ll call you every day, sweetheart. And if you want to call us, you can. Be a good girl, Rosie.”

When it’s Sherlock’s turn, he picks her up and holds her close enough to whisper, “Bella, ciao,” and she giggles. “Ciao, Ba.”

Luggage stowed in the boot of the rented Audi, Roberto gestures to Sherlock: “Sit in the front, so we can talk on the way.”

And leave John feeling like the spare wheel in the back? Sherlock shakes his head. “I’ll take the back; I need some time on my phone to research.” Roberto just about conceals his mortification at the snub.

As the car starts off down the track, Sherlock is aware that Roberto is adjusting the rear-view mirror to keep him in view.

Not surprisingly, the journey passes in silence. For once the awkward atmosphere isn’t unwelcome: it lets him start serious work on his research.

Now and again, though, the thought of Roberto’s emotional turmoil intrudes. He’s had every pretext for not knowing it fully, or not facing up to it: he’d put Roberto out of his mind when he left Rome, and rebuffed his text contact a year after; they’d never spoken until they’d met again in Venice, where he’d been focused on John’s emotions, not Roberto’s. But now Helen has thrust Roberto’s devastation under his nose with great emphasis and vehemence, and at some point he’ll have to think about it. Talk about it, even.

But now, with the case before him, he has no bandwidth or appetite for this minefield. He puts a pin in it for a later date: for now, the game is on.

Chapter Text

“It is because you try

To penetrate from far into these shadows

That you have formed such faulty images.”

(Inf. 31.22–24)

John had spent the drive to the airport all but vibrating with a silent tension; now the flight to Rome adds discomfiture. It wasn't possible to get two seats together on such short notice.  His seat’s at the back, but he can see that Sherlock doesn’t once look in Roberto’s direction. Has something happened between those two? If so, when?

Though it’s late by the time they get out of the arrivals hall, Sherlock refuses Roberto’s offer of a lift into Rome; they’ll take the train instead. 

The goodbye feels a bit stilted, too. Roberto’s “See you tomorrow, then” gets only a short “Ciao” in reply from Sherlock, then they head for the airport train station. 

The express train into the centre is crowded, limiting their opportunity to talk. At the left luggage kiosk they collect the two cases they’d brought up from Naples, along with a small black duffle bag John doesn’t recognise. Before he can ask, Sherlock says, “Mycroft has his uses. I texted a list of things we’ll need.”

Outside the station he opens the duffle and extracts an envelope, handing over a British passport in the name of John Simpson, and a credit card in the same name. “Try to remember your new name. The pin number for your card is the same as your own — remember, don’t keep that one in your wallet.” There’s a new phone, too. “Don’t let anyone on the team see it. The ones the Italians provide might well be compromised.”

That idea might be more disturbing than the fact that Mycroft knows his pin number. He takes a quick look at Sherlock’s fake passport. “Lars Sigurson?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “A joke only Mycroft would make.” He strides off before John can ask what’s funny about it. Three streets away from the station, in the dodgy Esquilino district, Sherlock rolls his bag into a rather run-down pensione; they hand over their fake passports to the desk clerk to make the copy required of all hotels in Italy. Only when they reach the tiny room that has just enough space for a double bed and a bedside table, does John see the contents of the black bag.

A spike of adrenaline hits as he recognises a Glock pistol, shoulder holster and ammunition. In little more than a whisper, Sherlock says, “Untraceable… so we don’t have the complication of asking the Italians to issue you with one.”

“What about you?”

For almost the first time that day, John’s answered by a real smile from Sherlock. “I don’t need one; I’ve got you.” He gestures to the walls. “Thin as paper, so no talking about the case.”

John loads the weapon and slips on the holster, which fits as if made for him. If Mycroft knows his PIN, he shouldn’t be surprised he knows his measurements. “I’m starving; any restaurant around here still open?”

“This is Italy. Of course food’s available; you just have to know where to get it. Indian okay?”  He’s scrolling on the new phone.

“Yeah. Nice change. “

Sherlock stops to tap something, then starts typing furiously. Fifteen minutes later, Deliveroo arrives and he collects from the street door. They eat sitting on the bed.

“So. Are you comfortable with the security in the mountains? For Watson?”

Considering the question, John finishes chewing his mouthful of pilau rice and sighs. “I’d not go so far as comfortable. Adequately reassured, for the moment. You do understand why I’m not staying up there with her.”

The frown wrinkle returns between Sherlock’s eyebrows. “We both made it very clear that we’d do this together, or not at all.”

“I’m glad it’s clear to you, because Zanardi was definitely pushing for me to leave the pair of you to go to it. He hinted at it again last night.”

His phrasing is deliberately equivocal, but Sherlock seems to miss the implication.

“He can push if he likes. He won’t prevail.”

“Good. I’m glad there isn’t any daylight between us on that.” He picks up a piece of surprisingly good tandoori chicken.

“‘On that’? Are you worrying about something else?”

“You know I’m not enthusiastic about this case. I’ll try not to keep mentioning it, unless circumstances change, or your behaviour warrants it. I don’t want to keep emanating disapproval like Mycroft on a bad day.”

“Good.” Sherlock flashes another smile. “That would be beyond distracting.”

“Speaking of. I’m going to contact him, bring him up to date on Rosie’s situation. I want whatever extra level of protection he can provide. I know he’ll want to.”

“I already did.”

“You already did.”

With exaggerated patience: “Yes, that’s what I said. I called him while we were up in the mountains, and I’d already texted him from the train up to Belluno.”

“Yeah, you said you’d brief me later, but you didn’t.” The chicken’s not that good after all.

“Now is later, and I am briefing you, so yes I did.”

Let it go. He clears up the packaging from their meal before asking, “What does Mycroft think?”

“That I’m the right person for this case and that you’re indulging me at Watson’s peril, what do you think he thinks? He’s as conflicted as I am on this. But not an hour after I texted there was already an incredibly byzantine plan in place to give her double backup for our folly. My folly.”

“Well, I for one am glad of it.” And immediately, lest it sound like another jab, “Comes in handy, to have an uncle with unlimited reach and resources.”

“Unlimited devotion, too.”

“True.” However else Mycroft might fall short, he’s the very model of the avuncular. Probably the only thing keeping Sherlock from murdering him.

“For when your longings center on things such

That sharing them apportions less to each, 

Then envy stirs the bellows of your sighs.”

(Purg. 15.49–51)

John can’t decide whether it’s the stale smell of curry or the lumpy mattress that kept him awake for so much of the night. Either way, he’s only up for coffee when they return to the train station. Outside of Termini they wait until a white builder’s van pulls up, Francesco beckoning them into the back.

When they emerge at the flat in the Viale Mazzini, John and Sherlock are wearing soiled builder’s coveralls and work boots, each carrying what a casual observer would assume to be a bag of tools. As before, once behind the locked door, they shed the gear and make their way into the case room.

Now the whiteboard is covered with photos and bits of paper, and John sighs: practically all of it’s in Italian. Some conductor of light I’m going to be, when I can’t understand the evidence in front of me.

Valentina Bonacci is standing at one end of the long table; at the other end, Zanardi’s in almost identical position. The other four team members are sitting in the chairs in varying poses, a non-verbal pantomime of hostility and annoyance. All eyes are on Sherlock as he ignores everyone completely, walking the length of the white board devouring the contents.

They’re expecting a bloody performance. It grates that Zanardi isn’t making it any easier, almost as if he’s setting them up for a fight. After their discussion in the mountains, John had hoped for at least a little warmer reception by the team.

When Giorgio starts muttering, Sherlock waves a hand behind him. “No, in English,” a gesture John appreciates.

The older man grumbles, “The crime is Italian. You are in Rome. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

Sherlock snorts. “Yes, we can see how far that’s got you.”

John appreciates the comeback, but from his perch leaning against the windowsill, he notes the team’s reactions. Sherlock’s not making any friends here; is that deliberate?

Undeterred, or perhaps with malice aforethought, Sherlock strides over to a typed list, tapping it with a long finger. “This… your list of banks. How many weeks did you waste looking into these?”

Bonacci clears her throat. “There are over four hundred banks in Italy, from global players to small regional credit institutions and private banks. That doesn’t include branches of foreign-owned banks. We know from experience that mafia money moves into and out of the banking system every day, most of it locally-based where the families are able to control legitimate businesses and the bank managers who fund them. We focused initially on banks with substantial safety-deposit business—”

Sherlock interrupts, “And how’s that working out?”

She shrugs, “No luck so far. I’m beginning to think we need to head north, to Switzerland. Their banking secrecy laws are both lax and weakly enforced, so that such a thing could exist. It is no secret that a lot of stolen art goes through Swiss dealers.”

Sherlock whirls about to stare at her. “Ms Bonacci, you are a specialist in money laundering. You assume this was something similar, an art laundry working inside the financial system.”

Defensively, she snaps back, “The pentito used the words sotterraneo and caveau. That points to an underground vault, especially for storing valuables: a safety deposit vault or maybe a strongroom.”

“Then you’re taking his meaning too literally. No criminal would take the risk of using a bank to store art the way Mancuso said.”

Giorgio scowls. “Why the hell not? Safer than sticking it in a cavity behind drywall.”

“Is it? Think it through logically.”

Silence falls. John feels the tension rising amongst the Italians; no one likes the implication that they’ve been less than logical. Even Zanardi’s looking uncomfortable.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Oh, all right — simple answers for simple minds. Bank vaults with valuables attract attention. From the bank staff, the other customers, the regulators, criminals. Known mafia families using any bank in a personal or business account know it will be monitored, if only by the bank manager who’s hoping to get away with it. Staff can be bribed or threatened into silence by those families locally able to enforce it. You’re overlooking how competition makes a bank the worst place for such a store of art.”

He walks over to the map of Italy in the middle of the white board. “A bank down here—” he points to Lamezia Terme — “that had a hoard of art owned by the Mancuso family would become the target of another ’ndrangheta family. Who are the people most attracted to a bank that’s sitting on a pile of easily sellable treasure?”

Immediately John says, “Bank robbers.”

“Exactly! Even if all of the ’ndrangheta families were using the facility, that would attract the attention of the other mafia organisations — the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra, the Stidda, the groups operating out of Puglia, any one of which would consider it fruit ripe for plucking.” He turns to look at the other end of the boardroom table.

Zanardi leans forward, hands on the table, responding to Sherlock’s eye contact. “You’re saying that even if all the southern groups could agree to share the facility, groups from Rome, Milan, the Veneto — they’d try to rob it.”

“Of course. Organised crime syndicates thrive on defeating their enemies. Take away one of their principal assets — stolen artworks — and it would damage more than the losers’ pride. Empires would fall.”

Paolo’s eyes are wide. “Cazzo, when Mancuso said tutti he really meant everyone. Every family, every criminal organisation.”

John nods to reinforce the point. “No bank robber robs his own bank. So, the best protection for a robber’s assets is a place that has everyone else’s ill-gotten gains, too.”

“And it’s not a bank,” Sherlock repeats, impatient and rather histrionic. “It can’t be. Too much camera surveillance, too many customers coming and going, not to mention regulators, inspectors. In any case, the safety deposit box business is hugely unprofitable; banks all over the world are cutting back. Boxes come in fixed sizes.” He uses his hands to estimate the sizes. “Fees are charged only on the size of the box, not the value of its contents, which in theory the bank doesn’t know.” 

Sherlock shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Can you see a customer walking into a branch carrying a framed painting? A sculpture?” He mimes drawing a cloak over something being carried. “Everyone in the place would be staring. There’s another, final flaw to your bank theory: what about bank staff? John. When was the last time you were served at the bank by someone you recognised?”

John’s happy to oblige. “They’re getting younger every day, and never the same one twice—”

Sherlock finishes the thought. “—because staff move to other banks paying higher wages, so they’d be taking with them knowledge of what’s going on in a vault full of artwork. It’s all too risky.  If other banks learnt that one of their competitors was lending money off the books, using unknown art assets as collateral, they’d be…”

John finishes Sherlock’s sentence, “… forming an orderly queue at the authorities to rat them out.”

To develop the thread of Sherlock’s reasoning, John continues, “Look at it from the crooks’ point of view. Ms Bonacci said that most mafia families use local businesses with local banks to launder their cash. If you know that a bank is laundering money for your enemies, you’re hardly going to trust those same guys to keep your artwork safe. Too risky.”

Sherlock waves dramatically at the whole white board. “That’s what’s missing from your investigation of the Vault’s users. You’ve left out competition, suspicion and greed.”

Two men are just, but no one listens to them.

Three sparks that set on fire every heart

are envy, pride, and avariciousness.

(Inf. 6.73–75)

I am an idiot. He walks in here and in ten minutes dismisses months’ worth of work. Vally looks like she’s going to spit rivets. Giorgio’s scowling like he’s had something foul for breakfast. Francesco, head down, is scribbling furiously in his notebook, while Paolo’s melting into hero worship.

Sherlock’s right. We’ve completely missed the point, wasted months. Realising that is painful enough; being told it by an outsider is ten times worse.

To resurrect some semblance of composure, I get up. I’ll use my height to dominate a room when I have to, so I walk closer to Sherlock, trying to reassert my authority over the investigation. “If not a bank, then who?” I put enough challenge into my tone so that the rest of the team will hear it. I can't afford to lose their respect by appearing to defer to him.

“First let’s start with a what and a why.” Sherlock grabs the cloth eraser and with his right hand wipes the board clean while with his left he gets busy ripping off the photos and typed sheets, flinging them over his shoulder to flutter to the floor. I feel the truculence in the room: I’m not the only one who resents how he’s apparently dismissing everything we’ve done to date.

On the now clean board, Sherlock draws a box and scrawls WHAT inside it. His handwriting really is a mess; my mother would be appalled. How many times have I heard her admonish me? “Good penmanship is the sign of a gentleman, Robbie.”

Sherlock, oblivious to her strictures, pops the cap off the marker again and gets to work. SECURE and PRIVATE join the other words linked to WHAT, and then he resumes pacing. He snaps the cap back on the marker and spins about to confront us again.

“We’ll start with the Caravaggio stolen in 1969, because that’s what your turncoat said. How many major artworks have been stolen in Italy over the past fifty years?”

Paolo answers. “Tens of thousands. More, if you count ancient Etruscan, Roman or Greek objects. And then there are all the masterpieces stolen abroad by Italian suspects, possibly brought back to this country.” He’s clearly enjoying the opportunity to show off his expertise. “Globally, there are at least fifty thousand art thefts every year, the majority from private houses, not museums; a total value of several billion dollars, if insurance claims are any indication. The Art Loss Register has over a million items on it. Less than 10% of that will ever be recovered. Even with three hundred officers, the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage cannot hope to recover more than a handful of items while every year the list of stolen art grows longer.”

“My point exactly. If even a fraction of them are in this what box, the vault needs to be BIG.“ He draws a set of arrows on the sides of the box, re-drawing them bigger to show we need to re-think this. “Size matters.”

Stage left, I hear Watson snigger. English schoolboy humour, not a reference most of mine will catch. It irritates me that Watson is enjoying this, seeing Sherlock make fools of us. They seem to be on the same wavelength, leaving us behind to grope in the dark. 

Sherlock’s grin disappears as he continues, “Think like a thief. If he tries to sell it he risks getting caught, and for what? An average of three percent of the market value of the work. Many thieves try to extort a ransom from the museum or owner, in the hope that if they do get caught, it will mitigate a sentence. The insurance company pays up and everyone is happy. The third option, one favoured by the Russians in particular, is to try to monetise the art, swapping it like bearer bonds between other parts of their criminal networks.” 

I can’t help but butt in here: “Like the Turner watercolour that was returned to London. You were behind that.”

Nodding, Sherlock continues his flow of deductions, pouring out sentences so quickly that I’m sure some of the team’s grasp of English will be challenged. “Back to the size question. The Caravaggio altarpiece is over two and a half metres in height, nearly two in width. The canvas could not be kept rolled for any length of time without damage, so wherever it is, the vault has to be big enough to hold a painting like this, newly framed, as well as countless others. Sculptures, too. Think of how much space an art museum storeroom takes, and the specialised equipment required — rolling shelving, accurate labelling, temperature and humidity sensors, air filtration systems. If you consider what’s needed, there’s absolutely no way any bank vault could do it.” On the board he writes EQUIPMENT and FIXED COSTS, connecting them with arrows to the WHAT box.

“Yes, fine, we concede the point,“ I say, surrendering with what grace I can muster. “But such a general description? Even if you’re right about this box of what, you’ve given us nothing to narrow down the search.”

Sherlock gives me one of those looks — when he knows he’s right and he thinks everyone else is an idiot. I saw it when we worked together in London on that trafficking case. His enthusiasm for what he does is part of his charm; his brilliance is incandescent, but I see now how intensely irritating his method of delivery can be for those on the receiving end.

I choose not to rise to the bait.

A silence between us grows until he breaks it with a shrug. “To narrow it down, we need to think about the WHY.”

He turns back to the white board, marks out another box and writes WHY inside. “Why would anyone do this? Take in stolen artwork from some of the most dangerous criminal networks in the world, spending a fortune to preserve it in museum-level conditions?”

Vally signals her displeasure with Sherlock’s performance by yanking a chair away from the table and flopping down into it. She crosses her arms and glowers. “You’re the one who said we had missed greed as a motivating factor. Surely, this vault is there to make money for its owners.”

Sherlock draws an arrow from the WHY box and writes MONEY? “John, what would you say to that idea?”

“Bollocks. If the owners of the vault were merely greedy, they’d just flog one of the pieces.”

Sherlock turns to Watson with one of those smiles I’d once cherished — the one that says you’ve put your finger on the exact answer. “Obvious:  if money was your motivation, and you were sitting on a vault containing a painting worth twenty million dollars, wouldn’t you just sell it on? After all, you probably know more about art than the criminals who stole it, and you could just replace it with a good forgery. Who would know?”

I can’t resist taking a shot at his arrogance. “It would only take one… withdrawal of such a painting that was discovered to be a forgery and the game would be up. Everyone would demand their art back.”

Swooping down on me like some raptor on hapless prey, Sherlock announces, “It’s not like a run on a bank, Robe’. They would just tell everyone that painting was always a forgery from the day it was deposited. Who could prove otherwise, and who’s going to argue? It’s only one painting, and someone else’s painting at that. My enemy’s loss is my gain. More importantly, to whom are you going to complain?”

Vally’s not convinced, and I’m not entirely sure either, so I give her a nod. Sitting up, chin out, she fights back. “The pentito said that money was loaned against the value of the asset. They would have to have substantial amounts of money themselves and would have to charge interest and would get income that way, as well as fees for depositing. How can that possibly be from anything other than a bank?”

Sherlock sighs, but does turn back to the board, drawing out lines from the MONEY box, labelling them CAPITAL? INTEREST? FEE INCOME? He turns back to counter, “If you lend money based on the art deposited, then in addition to capital you can loan, you need expertise in its valuation. You need to be able to spot a fake, run all the scientific tests needed to authenticate, be able to assess the provenance, and correctly evaluate any damage done during the theft.” 

The WHAT box sprouts another word: ART EXPERTISE. “To staff this vault you need people who can tell the difference between a painting by Caravaggio and one by a caravaggista, whether an apprentice or a follower — or a forger. Someone able to spot a forgery, assess damage and appraise accordingly. Not many bankers fit the bill, do they? Anyway, there’s an alternative.”

Sherlock draws another arrow out from the WHY box and scrawls NOT FOR PROFIT? “If you take profit out of this, what happens?” In three rapid flourishes, he draws three more lines running from the new box, scrawling: ALTRUISM? PROTECTING CULTURAL HERITAGE? KEEPING ITALIAN ART IN ITALY?

“Think of this scheme as providing a public service, and the rules change. Greed disappears. It’s an investment, not a fixed cost. It’s being done for a more noble purpose — to stop stolen art being ruined, to save it from maltreatment by people who don’t know its true worth. Not a business: something more secretive, not in the public sector but an organisation that thinks it works for the greater good.”

Giorgio finally explodes. “By doing deals with the devil? How could anyone be willing to support organised crime unless they are criminals themselves?”

Undeterred, Sherlock continues, slowing down. “A group with vast sums of money at its disposal. An organisation that is everywhere and yet remains unknown unless you are one of the selected few in the inner sanctum. An entity immensely powerful, beyond the reach of ordinary law and enforcement. A moral authority that could impose its will on those who deposit stolen art with it, because it believes it’s protecting humanity’s cultural heritage.”

Giorgio’s fist bangs the table. “There is no such thing. You are building castelli in aria.”

But Sherlock turns to me, his eyes boring into mine. “You know, Robe’. They already own the greatest collection of art in the world.”

“Cazzo,” I whisper. “The Church?”

Chapter Text

“These to the left—their heads bereft of hair—

were clergymen, and popes and cardinals,

within whom avarice works its excess.” 

(Inf. 7. 46–48)

Giorgio’s frustration finally erupts into a shout. “THE CHURCH? Ridiculous. Blasphemy! This is all fantasy; you have no proof.” He springs out of his chair, putting his outrage into motion.

John tenses. He’s had his doubts about this older Carabinieri officer from the beginning; he seems to have a very short fuse. But to John’s dismay, Sherlock adds fuel to the fire.

“Logic,” Sherlock snaps, “always trumps what you believe to be a fact. Or a faith.”

John moves away from his station at the window, placing himself back in the team’s line of sight and blocking at least one route to Sherlock at the whiteboard. He glares across to where Zanardi’s sat down again, making his message as clear as he can: control your man.

But to his surprise, it’s Bonacci who takes charge. Slapping the table, she growls, “Shut up, Giorgio. But, yes, Mister Holmes, if you make an accusation like that you will have to back it up. If you are right, then this whole investigation is pointless. The Vatican City is a sovereign state. If your precious vault is in there, there is no way in hell we can take this any further.”

Finally, Zanardi joins in. “She has a point, Sherlock. In any case, if you’re going to point the finger at the Church, you have to be a bit more precise.” He points to the WHO box. “The pope, the cardinals, and hundreds of thousands of priests and laypeople don’t fit inside that box. How do you propose to narrow it down?”

Sherlock smiles at Zanardi. “That is the right question to ask. We must assume that this is a small group, if only for security’s sake. Knowledge of its existence would be a closely-guarded secret. Whoever took the deposit of the Caravaggio in 1969 is probably dead by now, which means the secret was passed down to a very select few in the next generation.”

It’s a relief when the tension in the room starts to ease: focusing concretely, and on a rogue actor or group, seems to dissipate the rancour that had come of accusing the Church.

Sherlock turns back to the whiteboard and draws a new box, scrawling inside it WHEN. “Let’s think about this a bit more,” he says. “There’s no reason to assume that the Caravaggio was the first so-called deposit. Quite the contrary: stealing such a massive painting implies that the system of art deposits, and the facility to store them in, was already set up. So, think about the reasons why someone in the Church would want to protect Italian art before that. If we give the Church the benefit of the doubt, posit that it was working for the greater good, then the vault may have been set up for purely altruistic motives. Dealing with the mafia could have come later.” He taps the board with the marker. “Let’s think about the WHO for a minute. What is the biggest threat to art? Who were the world’s most successful art thieves?”

The question provokes only a set of confused faces amongst the team.

Impatiently, Sherlock taps the board again. “Come on; this isn’t rocket science. War destroys more art than anything. What isn’t bombed into fragments becomes loot.” 

Paolo sits up and shouts, “Nazis!” 

“Indeed. The art world is still chasing what was stolen, pilfered, sold on, whatever, over the past seventy-plus years. If you were an Italian cleric who was a lover of art, wouldn’t you be worried?”

Francesco looks up from his notebook, where he has been copying Sherlock’s work on the white board. “Not at first. The Germans were our allies.”

“Well, but it didn’t end like that, did it? So, my question stands; when would you start to worry?”

John’s knowledge of Italian history is limited to say the least, but the team must have reasonably solid collective memory. Francesco continues, “The fascists didn’t sign up to the Axis until 1940. While he was in charge, Mussolini would never have allowed anything to leave.”

Paolo shakes his head vigorously. “That’s just not true. German soldiers broke into a lot of private homes in the north. In 2016 the Carabinieri’s Tutela Patrimonio Culturale recovered three paintings of nearly forty stolen in that period, from a villa in Camaiore. They’re in Milan now, in the Brera.”

Bonacci shrugs. “Everything started to unravel in the summer of 1943 when the Americans invaded Sicily. In less than a month Mussolini was dismissed by the King, and by September the surrender treaty was signed. Who the hell knows what people were getting up to in the weeks of chaos?”

“Servito a nulla. Surrendering was useless,” Giorgio groused. “The Germans invaded and took control of Italy down to Lazio and put Il Duce back in charge, so long as he did everything the Nazis wanted. They occupied everything from Rome to Naples and dug in.”

Sherlock draws a line out from the WHEN box, writing at the end of the line AUTUMN 1943. “Meanwhile in the Vatican…from the research I’ve been doing, the Papacy was either a willing collaborator or, at best, prepared to look the other way. Why would a pope endanger his neutrality by confronting the Germans on art? We need to look elsewhere.”

Zanardi nods. “That makes sense. Vally, your father was working in Rome in the 40s, wasn’t he?”

She nods. “Yes. He never liked talking about the war, but now he complains every time he hears a German tourist. Said the place was crawling with Germans from the moment Italy entered the war on their side. He worked in army intelligence and told me that he was more worried about their spies than he was about the Allied Powers.”

Giorgio isn’t happy. He’s shaking his head. “You forget, it was the Allies who bombed Rome in July 1943. Fifteen hundred civilians died in that first raid and there were others, many others.”

Paolo jumps in. “But what about Florence? The Nazis stripped the entire contents of the Uffizi Gallery and shipped it all north. That would be a wake-up call for the church to take action.”

It's surprising, a bit funny, when Sherlock pivots to playing peacemaker. “Whichever one of you is right, it makes Rome an unlikely hiding place for art. So where should we look?”

He draws another line out to a box in which he writes WHERE?

Paolo leans forward, gesturing at the map. “South. It would make sense. Escape the clutches of the Germans who steal art. The Pope knew that the German occupiers were Protestant; they wouldn’t have hesitated to steal art from the Vatican if they could. Go south.”

“Into a war zone?” Giorgio isn’t having it. “No. The Americans and the British armies were fighting their way up from Sicily.”

This is more familiar territory, so John enters the fray. “At Sandhurst, we studied the Italian campaign. Military targets, not civilians. The rules of engagement for the British 8th Army were simple – go for the Germans. Italian civilians often greeted Allied forces as liberators.”

A snort from Giorgio, followed by a sardonic laugh. “If you believe their propaganda. Anyway, the British were already bombing cities in the south in 1940, only weeks after Italy entered the war. All through 1943, the Americans were bombing Naples. Why would you put art down there?”

Choosing a side, Paolo turns to the older officer. “Because you chose your site carefully, avoid the rail lines, big city ports, shipyards and troop concentrations. There’s a lot of the south that escaped being touched until the Allies actually crossed the Strait of Messina. Even after the Italian forces surrendered, the main push moved north to Salerno when the Allies landed there.”

Now John has something concrete to contribute. “The Americans established a bridgehead and held it while the 8th Army moved up across country. The Germans fought back but couldn’t stop them linking up. It only took ten days and the Germans fell back north to defensive positions, twenty miles or so north of Naples.”

Sherlock draws a line out from the WHERE box and titles it SOUTH, with three new lines coming from it, which he rapidly captions RURAL?, NON-MILITARY?, and CHURCH PROPERTY? “What do we know about Italian art being evacuated from churches during the war?” He points towards Paolo. “You’re the art specialist.”

Paolo shrugs. “It was a mess. Galleries learned from the Uffizi debacle. The Pitti Palace collection was smuggled out and hidden in various villas in Tuscany. Some of those were looted by soldiers, most of whom knew nothing of the value of the art. Some of the stuff was sold to Italians who were happy enough to keep the provenance quiet. Local priests tried to protect their churches by removing valuables and hiding them anywhere and everywhere. Losses occurred, inevitably — if the clergy and civilians who knew where it was hidden were killed, then it just vanished.”

The young man leans back in his chair, expansive, relishing again the chance to show his expertise. “The big collections were more of a challenge. The Capodimonte art in Naples was moved north to Montecassino; the abbey there had its own collection, and it was hoped that it could be held securely up there. But the Germans found out and ordered the abbot to remove everything to Rome. That was in October 1943. Trucks arrived and took the art and libraries north. Twenty trucks were diverted to Berlin and Goering’s personal collection. We finally recovered those in 1947, damaged, covered in mould from being stored in a salt mine, but most of it could be restored. Of course, with hindsight, the German order saved the art; the monastery was bombed to hell and gone by the Allies. Completely destroyed” He glares at John.

Throughout this exchange, Sherlock's been pacing backwards and forwards in front of the white board. He’s tapping the capped marker against the palm of his left hand, as if keeping time with his steps.

As the discussion flags, the team’s attention returns to him. Giorgio mutters, “What a load of nonsense. None of this history stuff is helping to solve our case.”

Stung, Sherlock stops in his tracks and pops the cap on his marker. “Anzi. On the contrary: history is the key. It suggests something very, very important.” He writes in bold POST-1945 inside the WHEN box. “Scarred by that horrendous experience, some people in the Church would be determined to ensure it never happened again. So, they would build a secret vault. We need to look into reconstruction. That’s when it would have been built.” 

“Oh!” Zanardi’s shocked affirmation reminds John of someone he knows very well.

O you possessed of sturdy intellects,
observe the teaching that is hidden here
beneath the veil of verses so obscure.

(Inf. 9.61–63)

There, the penny’s dropped for Roberto. Good: he might finally pitch in, plough through all this resistant gabble, and let me think.

Sherlock pops the cap back on and uses it to tap the WHO box. “We’re looking for a small group of people associated with the Church.” He takes two steps to the right to touch the WHEN box. “In the postwar reconstruction era, let’s say 1945 to 1948, they want to build a secret art vault to ensure that nothing like the debacle of the war happens again.”

He shifts to the WHAT box. “The vault has to be built to take a whole museum’s worth of art. Protected against bombardment, with temperature and humidity controls to ensure the works of art are preserved.” He reaches up to tap the marker against the WHY box. “Because ‘never again’: that is their sworn duty.” His mind is whirring like a hard drive, all the possibilities coming together in a deductive stream of consciousness.

“I need to see the actual footage of the interview.” He turns to stare at Bonacci. “Your précis isn't enough. There may be other clues you missed. I’ll need to ask more questions.”

“You’ll never be allowed anywhere near Mancuso.” Roberto’s tone and expression are surprisingly sharp.

“Then get someone to ask my questions for us, and let us see the recording. Surely that’s not too much to ask when so much is at stake?” Sherlock returns to his pacing.

The old Carabinieri officer snorts. “Who are you to dictate to us? What a farce. You talk yourself into some outrageous plot by a secret cabal inside the Holy Mother Church. What possible proof is there? None at all. You are crazy, delirante. Where on earth would any one of us even begin to look for this fantasy?”

Sherlock keeps tapping the capped marker against his teeth, trying to blot out the fool bellowing nonsense.

Bonacci starts arguing with Giorgio, calling him too closed-minded to think outside the box. They get more and more heated, their body language more and more distracting. He tries to tune it all out.

It’s a relief when John intervenes. “Shut up, all of you — just, be quiet! Let him think!”

As ever, John knows what he requires and when he has to have it. He puts the marker down and starts to pace. Walking seems to relieve the chaos of trying to sort through everything. Right now, the pieces of this puzzle need to fall in place, give him the signpost, the starting point. How to approach the investigation, after so many months of false starts and dead ends? Has he just asked that question out loud? 

He realises that John’s in motion, positioning himself as if to shield him from their hostility and scepticism. In an undertone, John asks, “Why not begin at the beginning? Your WHAT.”

“Oh!” John’s doing what he always does, being his conductor of light. Sherlock turns, aware of beaming at John as though he were the only other intelligent being in the room. “You are so right!”

He turns to face Roberto and his team again. “There’s always a starting point. To go from an aspiration to reality, there has to be a plan, a literal blueprint, before anything concrete can be built. An art expert wanting to build a vault needs the help of an architect. We need to find out which architects were experts in museum design in the late 1940s — and look for a professional known to be working in the south on reconstruction projects.”

Roberto’s watching him now, intent; he half-rises from his chair and tells Paolo, “That’s your job. Work up a list.” Leaning on the table to look at Sherlock again, he asks, “Any particular ways to narrow the field?”

“The obvious choice is to start with any major art museums or galleries with serious construction work in the late 1940s. Hiding something in plain sight, in effect a secret vault, a bolt-on to an existing facility, would be logical. So, we start with a list of the reconstruction work on known museums damaged in the war.” He starts pacing again. “We need to assess how easy it would have been to add in something off the books. Finding the architects on these projects might help, even though our man is very unlikely to be alive seventy-five years later.” 

Roberto turns to his team. “Vally, your financial expertise can help here. Follow the money. See who provided the funds for those projects and what degree of oversight and control there was. For all we know, the money might have come at least in part from the organised criminal networks. Were the construction companies legitimate? Were any of them fronts for the mafia families? They kept the black market alive during the war and after, infiltrating every part of life in the south. Mafia penetration of Italy’s public services and infrastructure was kick-started in the reconstruction era. 

“Giorgio. You’ll dig into the police and civil court records of the period. When Valentina has the list of projects, you chase down who owned the construction companies and what happened to them after the project was over. Same for the architects that Paolo digs up. A question we need to answer: are there links to any of the mafia families?”

John interrupts. “Hold on; if a mafia family was involved at the start, they wouldn’t share it with one of their rivals. Greed, remember? Being too closely associated with any one group would make it impossible to perform the sort of one-stop-shop that keeps the whole thing going.”

Sherlock’s smile broadens into a grin. “Yes, John. Exactly. I think that whatever motivation began this process of ‘protecting’ art, it wasn’t the mafia’s. You should look, Roberto, but I don’t think you’ll find anything specific to link them to it at the beginning. If any dirty money or crooked officials were involved at the start, then something happened to remove them from the picture, so that whoever’s running this could maintain the image of neutrality. More likely, the process happened the other way around. Best intentions at the start, which then got taken over by the mafia later.”

He turns to the team. “You’ve been looking at this from back to front. Time to start over.”

“He who decides without distinguishing

Must be among the most obtuse of men;

Opinion—hasty—often can incline

To the wrong side, and then affection for

One’s own opinion binds, confines the mind.” 

(Par. 13.116–120)

Stung by both Watson’s and Sherlock’s comments, I’m thrown back on the defensive. I’d let my enthusiasm get the better of my judgment, damn it. Am I so consumed by jealousy at the sight of their synergy that I’ve lost my common sense?

In the space of a morning we’ve been shown to be dullards, unable to see beyond the well-trodden path of police work. I assembled the team but failed to give it the insight, the leadership, the case needed. We stumbled around in the dark, and now these two show up and set fire to everything. I’m burning with shame at my own obtuseness.

If I’d ever needed an excuse to give my mother about why I’d agreed to work with Sherlock again, this morning’s exercise is proof enough. We’d started with a basic failure to examine, analyse the problem in order to understand it. Perhaps it’s a fault of our generation — we see the mafia’s evil shadow everywhere.

Sherlock has demolished that by returning to first principles. Mancuso’s throwaway comments about an art depository led us to think it was being run by the mafia. Any stone we lift these days, we assume we’ll find the mafia hiding underneath.

I feel even more the fool now, given how I’d lectured Watson only yesterday. We’ve been assuming things we shouldn’t have been assuming.

Not only about the case, either. Watching them work together, how Watson had stepped in at just the right moment, keeping Sherlock focussed when the manic fluidity of his mind threatened to overwhelm him — it makes me rethink something I’ve been assuming ever since Sherlock left me. I thought what had pulled him back to Watson had little or nothing to do with his work. Ever since his inexplicable departure for London, I’ve tortured myself trying to understand it. His love for John Watson had been unrequited for literal years; apparently he’d been made to be Watson’s best man, which showed if nothing else a callous disregard of his feelings. No wonder Sherlock had jumped at the chance to leave London with me.

But Watson’s toxic hold didn’t end there. I’ve always known he was to blame for Sherlock’s mute resistance to committing himself ever again. He’d not been able to fall in love with me not because we weren’t a good match—because Christ, we were—but because of the damage John Watson had inflicted. So, when the doctor finally decided that absence had indeed made his heart grow fonder, and summoned Sherlock—of course the man I love had dumped me unceremoniously and gone back to London.

Theirs, I’d thought, was an unequal relationship, bordering on the emotionally abusive. And since Sherlock had told me Watson was straight, I was sure it was only a matter of time before Watson dropped him, and—well, I’d have a chance again. Even after they married, I thought Sherlock was the suppliant of the two.

But now, I’m shaken. Was that assessment ever fair? Sherlock’s not submissive; Watson is not domineering. They seem to have a balanced connection. For the present.

And another one of my assumptions is clearly wrong. I’d always thought that Sherlock and I, working together, would be the most effective crime-solving team imaginable. I mean, really… John Watson had no experience. A doctor? In the army? No wonder Sherlock decided to leave him behind when he disappeared to tackle Moriarty’s network. The man would have been a distinct liability.

And yet here they are in my case, showing us what it means to work together. Watson seems to know what Sherlock needs: he asks questions at the right time, sure, but he’s also protective, using his knowledge of Sherlock to know when to get us to back away, give him room to think without having to fight us. They seem to be in tune in a way I hadn’t appreciated before. When Watson said something accidentally illuminating, Sherlock gave him a look so adoring he might as well have kissed him in public.

But there’s no reason to believe Sherlock and I can’t be symbiotic too, if in different ways; I know what he can do, and I can learn how to channel his strengths which are—quite evidently—complementary to my own. I know we were compatible, deeply and meaningfully so, and that’s something that can be recovered, if I’m cautious and strategic. Watson warned me not to try to come between them: the shoe’s on the other foot, as he came between us first. His additional threat, that to do so would undermine our investigation, will make me careful but not compliant.

I have three weeks: to watch and learn, and to take this case to the next level. Two goals, which I will not allow to subvert one another. When it becomes painful—as it inevitably will—I’ll have to remember the end goal and keep it in view. 

It’s a gamble, but if I win, I win everything.

Later that night

He hates the new arrangement. Being so isolated makes him restless and agitated. Zanardi had made it a condition of joining the team months ago, so he knows that he has no choice. His mysterious mentor, who had influenced his selection for this role, needs to know what had happened today.

Stress makes him clumsy as he types:

23.12    CODE AMBER, CALL ME?

The answer comes back almost immediately.

23.13    No. text only. You know the rules.

Sighing, he lifts his eyes to the ceiling of the grotty little safe house flat; the weak phone signal available here mustn’t break up in the middle of his message. He sets his unsteady fingers to work:

23.15  Trouble in team. Missss.

Porco dio; he taps delete repeatedly, and the typos disappear.

23.16  - misdirection towards banks failed. New consultant(s?) joined us today, now focus is on Church role.

No sooner does he tap send, the dots start dancing and then stop. The wait drags on, then:

23.19  Upd8 daily 

Chapter Text

“Oh unenlightened creatures, 

how deep the ignorance that hampers you!

I want you to digest my word on this.” 

(Inf. 7.70–72)

A fly’s buzzing against one of the windows, a sound that carries to Sherlock’s ears even as he struggles to block out the wheeze of the air conditioner.

Concentrate. Annoyingly, he hears the word. He must have spoken it out loud instead of keeping the command inside his head where it belongs.

No longer pacing, he’s glaring in frustration at the evidence board. Behind him, murmurs amongst team members. After a while they’d given up being quiet: their initial expectation that he’d somehow work magic on the mess was dissipating as the minutes passed. He knows John’s not part of their soft conversation; Sherlock doesn’t need to see him to know that he too is focused on the evidence board, hoping that something will yield to their scrutiny.

Two days after his last magic trick of deduction, the board is totally covered with coloured sticky notes lined up under the headings WHO, WHAT, WHEN, HOW that one of Roberto’s team had pasted up.

Yesterday was heads-down researching, each team member working away on a different piece of the puzzle. He and John had drawn up a roster of art thefts that were likely candidates for deposits in the vault; their blue notes litter the WHAT column with firm blue lines drawn to the WHEN timeline. The process of elimination is easier for the more recent thefts, where forensic clues existed. The further back in time, however, the scantier the clues, making it harder to assess whether they might have been part of the initial collection. The art looted by the Nazis hadn’t all been recovered, not by a long shot, but which pieces might have survived the war isn’t clear. Degrees of ambiguity are indicated by the number of question marks after the artwork listed.

Paolo, playing to his strengths, focussed on the WHERE, identifying museums and churches damaged in the war;they might have motive to build  a hidden vault to give shelter to their artwork should the need arise again. their artworks, once restored, could be possible candidates for a vault built on the basis of never again. Francesco, a team player, had been his wing man, quietly digging out data from Paolo’s list and passing it on to Bonacci so she could trace who funded the rebuilding and when. Francesco’s neat handwriting makes the WHERE notes very legible.

Bonacci’s yellow stickies list out the major sources of funding, taking up a lot of room under the WHO and WHAT, with yellow marker lines linking names under those columns to the timeline of the WHEN. Connections to the Church have giant crosses in black marker pen. Pietro has been using his Carabinieri sources in Europol to access the art theft registers and investigation databases to confirm or contradict the others’ work. A number of sticky notes all across the board now wear large red Xs crossing them out.

Sherlock takes a deep breath and tries to silence his impatience. Having to involve the rest of Zanardi’s team has slowed down his normal deductive processes. He’s increasingly convinced that almost none of the work they’d busied themselves with over the past two days matters at all.

He walks closer to the board. The conversations behind him grind to a halt, all eyes back on him, as if willing him to break the logjam. Spurred by their pressure, he mutters, “We have to narrow it down. We have too much data here, most of which is probably irrelevant.” If this is said tersely, well so be it. Sherlock’s temper is not improved as he peels off the notes with the red Xs, dropping them to the floor.

Giorgio grunts. “All of it is irrelevant. How could anyone hide a vault?”

No surprise there: Giorgio’s been the naysayer all along, challenging all the others in the team to come up with something concrete that proves the Church as Complicit Criminal, as he calls Sherlock’s hypothesis. The team dynamic or, rather lack of it, means that rapport too is sorely lacking. Not for the first time, he wonders how Roberto deals with the squabbling.

As if to validate Sherlock’s criticism, Paolo raises his hands, gesturing theatrically towards his colleague. “Giorgio, of course it’s possible. Remember the vault under the crypt below the San Lorenzo chapel in Florence? In 1947, bones were exhumed from under the floor, examined and then reburied. Nobody even knew there was a vault below that level until 2004. So it is possible.”

“We can eliminate that one,” Pietro replies calmly. “Water damage from the 1966 flood.”

Sherlock keeps his focus on the evidence board, fighting frustration. The team seems locked in a mindset that isn’t moving their thinking forward. Despite his best efforts, his tone is sharp when he snaps, “Forget about a place so hidden that even archaeologists can’t find it. We’re looking for a site where routine monitoring can be done without attracting attention, so that the artwork can be protected.”

Giorgio shrugs dismissively. “Flood, fire, earthquake — nowhere in Italy is safe.”

Sherlock ignores this and resumes pacing in front of the board until a sound stops him in his tracks. All eyes turn to the door. “At last,” he declares as Roberto sweeps into the room.

“Of every malice that earns hate in Heaven

Injustice is the end; and each such end

By force or fraud brings harm to other men.

However, fraud is man’s peculiar vice.” (Inf. 11.22-25)

Roberto’s been conspicuous by his absence over the past day and a half, chasing down what he called the mission impossible — getting permission to ask more questions of their ’ndrangheta pentito.

Sherlock subjects him to an intent stare, then starts to smile. “You’ve got something.” He doesn’t even try to conceal his excitement.

An answering smile lights up Roberto’s face. “Yes. It took a while, but yes.”

John, souding sour, interjects, “If we’d been able to ask him face-to-face, we might be further along by now.”

“Not possible.” Zanardi shakes his head. “Knowledge of Mancuso’s location is on a strictly need-to-know basis, and, according to the powers that be, none of you need to know. He’s in the safest of safe houses. Evidence in the trials is given by secure video link. That’s how I got answers to your questions.” He unzips his workman’s overalls and pulls out a USB from the pocket of the smart shirt he’s wearing under them. He waves it triumphantly.

Bonacci sets up the laptop link to the projector and turns it onto the blank wall opposite the evidence board, then slips the USB into the port. “Which one?” she asks as she scrolls down a list of a folder labelled 2011 Holiday videos.

“06 Jan,” Roberto replies.

John rolls his eyes. “You couldn’t choose something a little less obvious?”

The rest of the team look confused until John points a thumb at Sherlock. “It’s his birthday.”

Well. John could have refrained from mentioning that.

The file takes only a few seconds to load and then the screen comes to life. A young man with dark eyes, rather lank dark hair and a few days’ worth of stubble fills the screen. “Emanuele Mancuso,” Roberto says. “We weren’t allowed to see the lawyer defending him on screen, and certainly not the officer asking the questions. And no, I can’t tell you who they are because I don’t know.”

“Shhh — I need to listen.” Sherlock stars at the screen with almost manic intensity.

A deep bass voice asks a question: “Emanuele, we want to ask you more about that comment you made about the artwork. What was the painting and when did you deposit it?”

Even as the words are leaving the officer’s mouth, Sherlock translates for John. “He’s asked him about the painting he mentioned before, the deposit in the vault.”

On screen, Mancuso sighs. “It wasn’t like that. The painting was my mother’s. She was given it years ago by her father as part of her dowry. He got it from his father, sometime during the war. She gave it to me as a wedding gift. I passed it to my daughter.” He waves a tired hand at whoever asked the question. “That’s the way it’s done. Ownership is transferred from one person to another to another. The art stays safe. Il curatore keeps track of it all.”

Sherlock leans down to murmur John’s, “The painting must have been war loot, possibly deposited in the 60s. He’s mentioned a curator, who manages ownership records and transfers from his great-grandfather down the family and then to his wife. We’re finally getting somewhere.” Mentally he parses the words of the interrogator for his accent. Milanese? No, west of Milan—Rho, or even Magenta.

The deep voice returns. “Who is “il curatore”?”

Mancuso laughs, a high-pitched cackle with no humour in it. “Who knows? Who cares? No one, so long as ownership is maintained and the assets protected. That’s the beauty of it, why it works.” Then his face falls into a deep frown. “I should demand ownership again, now that my wife has taken my daughter away from me and run back to her family.”

Again, Sherlock translates. “The officer’s pushing him about the deposit — which painting?”

Mancuso shrugs. “Boring portrait. Some dude, 15th century. Not Italian. Flemish, I think.”

“Can you remember who painted it?”

“Membing? Mimbling? Something like that.”

As the pentito fumbles the name, Sherlock tells the group, “Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man, painted in 1490. Pause the recording. Paolo?”

The video’s frozen while Paolo consults his laptop. After frantic typing, there’s a brief pause and the team holds its collective breath.  Triumphantly, the young man shouts, “YES! It was moved from the Uffizi during the war and kept for safekeeping at the Castello Poppi, near Florence. German army officers stole it on their way north and it’s never been seen since, presumed destroyed. We didn’t even list it as a possible. What other treasures are we going to find? Maybe the Raffaello?!”

Sherlock snorts at the excitement pouring off of Paolo. “Unlikely. The Czartoryski family’s Portrait of a Young Man was stolen from Poland, not Italy. Presumed destroyed in a fire.”

Paolo nods sadly, then brightens. “Presumed! Another painting that everyone thought was also destroyed in that fire turned up at an auction in New York less than a decade ago. If the Raffaello could be found, the Poles have offered a reward of a hundred million dollars for its recovery.”

Bonacci lets out a low whistle. “That’s astronomical! If we can crack this vault open to find just that one painting, it’s going to devastate the ’ndrangheta’s finances.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Roberto says, mildly. “Focus on what the pentito says about his artwork. Restart the recording.”

The interrogator isn’t impressed by Mancuso’s answer. “Not interested in art? How can you not know the painter? It was your inheritance.”

“I’ve never laid eyes on it; it’s always been in the vault. It doesn’t matter who the hell painted it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just collateral. The curator re-values it every so often, according to the art market.” He looks a bit pained by the admission. “It’s not as valuable as it used to be; too many of the artist’s portraits are already hanging on museum walls. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m unimportant, not worthy of a major artwork. That’s reserved for men like my uncle, the heads of the families. They’re the ones who decide who gets what. Patronage… it’s what the whole organisation thrives on. They pass on title to paintings, cars; they get you jobs, pay for your education, sort out your mortgage. Everything is done for you. Until it isn’t. That’s why I could no longer take it. I want a safe life, a new start, for me and my daughter.”

Absorbed, he forgets to translate until John taps his shoulder. “What’d he say?”

“He’s a philistine; the art’s just another commodity to him. He claims that the best pieces are reserved for the heads of the clans.”

The interrogator asks the last of their questions. “How would you get the painting out of the vault? Wouldn’t the rest of the Mancuso ’ndrini oppose such a move?”

Mancuso sighs. “Probably. But the curator would allow me to transfer the ownership to my wife as a ransom to get my daughter Lucia back. Or transfer ownership to me, if she refuses. The curator has rules; they’ve been able to manage these family disputes for generations by sticking to them and not taking sides.”

“So, how would you contact the curator to do this transfer?”

Mancuso shakes his head. “Not telling you. It’s none of your business. They’ve taken away my money, my house, my child. I’m dead to my wife. At least this painting is safe from their greedy fingers. It’s all I have left.”

“Now you can see, my son, how brief’s the sport

Of all those goods that are in Fortune’s care,

For which the tribe of men contend and brawl.”

(Inf. 7.61–63)

The recording ends abruptly. John turns to look at him, his arched eyebrows asking the obvious.

He purses his lips, thinks before speaking. “He’s explained that the Curator keeps the records, transfers ownership and Mancuso’s still got title to it.” He glares at Roberto. “Why didn’t you follow up? It was the ideal opportunity.”

Zanardi shrugs. “The interrogator’s questions moved on to other topics and my link was shut down.”

“Just when it started to get interesting,” Sherlock’s already moving back to the white board, writing up a new blue sticky note — Memling Portrait of a Man, with a big M in a circle. He places it under the WHAT column and draws lines out to the WHEN timeline. On the first line he writes ‘deposit’, and links it to the 1950’s and 1960’s with a question mark. He asks over his shoulder, “Francesco, track down when the marriage of Emanuele’s mother into the Mancuso family was registered; it will give us another date for the transfer of ownership and then again when her son married.”

Giorgio’s shaking his head. “What difference does one painting make? Out of your many hundreds, thousands. How does that get us any closer to this mythical vault?”

Before he can answer, John does it for him. “Not mythical; and you should be congratulating him for getting solid confirmation that this Vault is real, that stolen artwork has been stored there for at least seventy years, and that someone called the Curator is managing it. Actually several someones, given the time involved. So curators, plural. Data like that is a gift. It’s up to us to make it work.”

Giorgio’s standing at the back of the group, arms crossed and frowning. “Where do we even begin?” He waves a dismissive hand at the evidence board.

Marching right up to Giorgio, shoulders set as if spoiling for a fight, John lets loose. “You might try thinking about the who and the where, instead of wasting time like you lot have for months.” He points at Sherlock, “In just two days, he’s given you the first proper leads in this case. Focus on trying to work out who these curators might be and where their vault might be hidden.”

He takes a moment to appreciate the sight of his husband defending his honour. Whatever John might think in private about the wisdom of pursuing this case, he’s delivering the sort of back-up support Sherlock needs to function at his highest level. My conductor of light.

Roberto’s nod is accompanied by a frown. “Sì, this is a step forward, but the idea of a couple of generations of curators is... well, challenging.”

John’s glare turns from Giorgio towards Roberto. “Why?”

With a tolerant smile, Roberto explains, “Because this is Italy. We are local. People grow up knowing everything about their neighbours; they go to school together, their mothers talk, their fathers work alongside each other or in competition with one another. Everyone knows who’s in bed with whom, both figuratively and literally. It’s almost impossible to be anonymous.”

Sherlock resumes pacing. “And yet the curators are. If anyone could guess their identity, it would be a death sentence. If anyone knew who has the key to the vault, they‘d be able to steal everyone else’s art, or blackmail the curator to defraud the other families. Every one of them would then target any and all of the curator’s family. So absolute anonymity is crucial.” 

He walks to the whiteboard and scrawls two new words under the WHO column:  ANONYMOUS and INVISIBLE. “For decades, every mafia family would have been trying to work out who the person is — yet clearly no one has yet done it. So, that’s something to bear in mind.”

“To keep this quiet across generations?” Bonacci’s surprised tone speaks volumes. “The curators must be a single family, a small one, used to being out of the public eye. It has to be a family so tight, so committed, that no one could suspect them or entice any of them into betrayal. So, Signor Holmes, write that up there.”

“That’s an omertà that even the mafia cannot manage.” Giorgio waves at the laptop. “The ’ndrangheta have been finding that out the hard way.”

“But they can’t be anyone who is known as wealthy or influential; that would bring them into too much contact and possible pressure from the mafia.” Paolo waves his hands in confusion. “The criminals know the art market as well as the best experts; some of the biggest names in the art business are known to have ties to one or more of the families. Yet these curators are not known. How is that possible?”

Bonacci builds on this. “Paolo has a point. To be capable but invisible is already hard, but also at least two generations of the family have had someone with the knowledge needed to look after the works, to judge their worth, and re-value them as market prices change.”

Sherlock puts up two more bullet points under the WHO column: EXPERT YET NOT WELL KNOWN? 2 OR 3 GENERATIONS?

Roberto claps his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s spend a bit of time on the WHERE. We might be able to narrow it down and that could help with the WHO. The vault would need to be visited by the curator, for deposits and maintenance. So, they can’t be strangers in the area; nothing is so visible in Italy as the person from a different region or even town. The family needs to be seen to fit into the place where the vault is.”

Pietro interjects, “Maybe this vault is like a bank, with local branches?” He runs his hands through his greying hair. “That would allow deposits to be taken in nearer to where the thefts happen, in other countries. Surely that would reduce risk.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Not the way you’re thinking. You’re stuck in your Interpol mentality. The more countries, the more places, the more people, all of that mean a greater risk of the secret getting out. You’re getting ahead of yourself.” 

He wonders if anyone will eventually realise that they’re putting the cart before the horse. The team has been so slow to realise what he’s known almost from the start —they are looking for two places, one which might have been there from the start, while the war was ongoing, the second purpose-built to the Church’s specifications after the war was over, to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. The latter is the only one that matters, because it’s the one that was taken over by the mafia.

Before he can make the point clearer, Roberto comes up to the board and points to the timeline. “Go back to 1943. With the Vatican squeezed between the German occupation and the Allies advancing, the Church was in a hurry to create a haven for its art. If you were between a rock and a hard place, which would you choose—north or south?”

Bonacci frowns. “Why not Rome? Why not just stay put? The Papacy was neutral. The Vatican City is a sovereign territory. Surely the safest place would be some hidden storeroom in there!”

Sherlock clenches his jaw, nearly grinding his teeth with frustration. They seem determined to go down rabbit-holes, dead ends that lead nowhere. It’s the location that was built after the war that matters.

“No way,” Francesco disagrees with Bonacci. “The Vatican was overrun by refugees. The Papal Palace itself was housing and feeding six thousand people who had come into the city for protection. The Germans were watching the place like hawks; they had spies inside the Vatican disguised as refugees because they were sure that the Pope, or the Curia, was holding out on them.”

Paolo nods and butts in. “They would be right. The Vatican Museum closed its doors to visitors after the allies bombed Rome in July; some of the art —the great masters paintings— were boxed up and stored in the basement. Things in the Basilica of St Peter’s had to stay there. The sculptures especially; no one could move something like Michelangelo’s Pietà without it being very obvious. They were sand-bagged and boarded up. Maybe they just moved the art into a vault that no one knew about.”

Working with Roberto’s team is driving him crazy. Impatient, he resumes pacing in front of the board. 

Roberto isn’t reining in the debate; instead, he adds to it. “You’re forgetting, the Germans had a plot to kidnap the pope and hold him hostage. They’d want to move the Vatican’s money and art to a place where it would be safe, even if the Holy Father had to remain.”

Pietro looks back and forth between his arguing colleagues. “Surely, they wanted to put the art out of reach before the Germans even got to Rome.”

“Vally, he’s right,” Roberto intervenes again. “We can take Rome out of the equation.” He points to the timeline. “The Allies bomb Rome in July; the Germans occupy the city in mid-September. That’s not a lot of time so that limits their choices. Say they got some of the art out in those six weeks. That wouldn’t necessarily be the end of it. Even after the Germans leave Rome in November and the fighting moves north, the Church would still want art to go south into the Allied zone because they weren’t trying to steal the art, the way the Germans were.”

Bonacci gives a reluctant nod. “Okay, but we need to remember this isn’t a short-term measure. They didn’t know how things would go. The war in Europe would go on for nearly two more years; if the Normandy landings had gone wrong, if the Germans had pushed the Allies back, they might have come back down into Italy. Mussolini’s puppet regime would have done anything to get the Germans to launch a counter-offensive.”

“Even hand over the art, you mean?” John asks, incredulously. “Really?”

Roberto answers, “Mussolini would have done anything, sold his soul to the devil, if it meant the Fascists returning to Rome.”

They’re still going off in the wrong direction. Exasperated, Sherlock strides to the evidence board and writes a big SOUTH under the WHERE. “Stop wasting time. Logic says the safest place is not in Rome but south. Let’s narrow it down. South of Rome, yes, but not so far south that it would mean transporting the Vatican’s treasures into a battle zone.” Maybe a prompt about the timing will help them realise their error, so he asks “John, when did the Allied forces occupy Naples?”

“October 1943.”

“But don’t forget the Quattro giornate di Napoli,” Francesco says.

“What?” John asks.

Giorgio rolls his eyes. “No idea of Italian history. The Italian army stopped fighting on the 8th of September; by the middle of the month, many of the soldiers had gone to Naples and linked up with the anti-fascist resistance. By the end of September, they organised a rebellion against the occupying Germans, setting it up so the Allies could just walk in.”

“So, if you were a Church cleric charged in August ‘43 with protecting the art, would you choose Naples?” John’s tone indicates his doubt.

Francesco answers, “Maybe, even though back then the Allies were bombing it. There are lots of places deep underground; the Germans didn’t know much about Napoli sotterranea.”

“Explain,” Sherlock demands.

“Underground cisterns built by the Romans. Most of them had dried out and over the centuries got made into caverns with connecting tunnels. They were used as bomb shelters; during the war, tens of thousands of napoletani sheltered there. Some had electricity, water, like a whole city down there.”

“Lots of people mean lots of chances for secrets like Vatican treasures to be known about.” Sherlock writes a sticky note with the word SOTTERRANEA and a question mark.

Before he can open his mouth to tell them that it doesn’t really matter, Pietro pipes up. “But Francesco, is it possible they moved the art more south than Naples? How far from Rome could a truck go in a single dark night?”

“That is a good point,” Francesco admits. “None would want to be seen by aerial reconnaissance flights in daylight. Roads were bad back then and trucks were slow, no more than fifty-five or sixty-five kilometres per hour. It’s summer, there are maybe four hours when it is dark enough to hide a column of trucks. I do not think they would go more south than Naples.”

Sherlock moves to the map of Italy taped to the wall and draws a circle with Rome at the northern edge and Naples at the southern end. “Then for the first site, we concentrate our focus on likely sites inside this area.” He hopes that by emphasizing first, the team will realise that it is not as important as the second site.

Francesco walks to the map. “We can narrow it down more.” He takes the marker from Sherlock. “No further east than Avezzano.” He draws a line diagonally down the map. “From Avezzano to Campobasso, the Apennines make travel to the east by truck very slow. Also the Allied bomb destroyed many bridges.”

“Excellent! We have to concentrate on our work in those areas.” Suddenly catalysed into action, Roberto starts pointing at the individuals. “Paolo, where were the biggest collections in the south moved to when they emptied the art museums and the churches? The Vatican might have smuggled theirs into the same place without anyone realising. Francesco, look into those underground passages and see if you can find any mention of Naples’ art collections being moved down there. That would give the Vatican an example; maybe they just smuggled their treasures in there too.”

Sherlock almost groans in frustration until he sees that John’s not listening to them. He goes to John, leans in close with a silent question.

John smiles and answers it. “It’s two places, isn’t it? This is a two-step process. A mad dash to whatever haven might be available, followed by something being tailor-made once the fighting is over. It doesn’t really matter where the first one is; the one we should be looking for is the second one because that’s the one the mafia took over.”

“Exactly!” Sherlock points his marker pen at the board. “We are looking for not one place, but two. When the collection was initially hidden, it would need to be done very quickly and therefore most likely to be in a single place. Conditions might not be ideal, but it would be better than leaving it in easy reach of the Germans. Even then, the Vatican would be looking for a better place — where, once reconstruction got under way after the war, they could construct a purpose-built vault so this sort of disaster couldn’t happen again.”

He turns back to the team. “It doesn’t matter where the first storage place was. Once the war was over, the Vatican’s art went back to Rome. The vault was built as a fail-safe, should it ever happen again. At some point, the Curator started taking in mafia artworks, with or without the Church’s knowledge, at least at first. At some point, the collection might grow too big for one place. But by then, the curators would have worked out a system with branches they could easily control. We mustn’t waste too much time on the Vatican’s short-term hiding place.

“Thank you, John.” Projecting a deliberately theatrical relief, Sherlock snaps the cap back onto the marker and drops it on the desk. “Now we can move on.” 

“... You make yourself 

Obtuse with false imagining; you can

Not see what you would see if you dispelled it.”

(Par. 1.88–90)

Looking around the room, seeing their reaction to Sherlock’s words, I realise the depth of my failure. He and Watson had come to their conclusions not because of the work of my team but rather despite it. Working alone with Watson, he had reached where we are now much quicker.

That’s my fault. As a leader I seem to have done little more than parcel out work to others, delegating activity, and they’ve blindly followed my orders. But they’ve never gelled as a team. Their failure is my failure. The past few days of watching Sherlock work his magic have been a lesson in humility for me.

Quiet, still stinging from the realisation, I command my team’s attention. “He’s right. We need to focus on the post-war, the reconstruction period. Forget what I said. Vally, this is your challenge. You, Pietro and Georgio try to find a building project that might hide a secret vault. Paolo, I still think it’s worth seeing where the Church down south hid its stuff while the war was still going on because it might be where they’d build the vault. Francesco can help you with that. Sherlock, what do you and John want to focus on?” Am I able to disguise the embarrassment I feel as I ask the question? I hope so.

Sherlock spins the laptop around and flops down into the chair in front of it. “We’ll work on the timeline for art thefts—not the ones lost in the war—but later, thefts likely to be deposits by the mafia. If we can spot trends, then that may tell us something about when the Curator did his deal with the Church.”

“What deal?” Giorgio growls suspiciously.

“To turn a blind eye to the fact that the Church’s fail-safe refuge was now taking in new deposits from dubious customers.”

Once again, Sherlock’s moving faster than any of us. As Giorgio mutters “a deal with the devil,” I snap, “Basta! Get to work.”

An hour later, I’m pacing from one group to another, looking over their shoulders, offering an occasional word of encouragement. Still the strange limbo of a team leader; once the tasks have been delegated, there’s little to do other than watch and wait.

It gives me time to reflect further — and to be distracted, too. When Sherlock gets up to go to the bathroom, I can’t help but watch him leave. I’m seized by a memory of watching him do the same after we made love, only that time he’d been naked and my view of that arse was unencumbered. When I turn my head, I realise that Watson is looking at me, and it isn’t a kindly look.

I can’t help but think, “Why you?” I’m puzzled that someone like John Watson could be the object of Sherlock’s devotion. I mean, he’s clearly intelligent, capable. A doctor, a good father. But how could that ever be enough for someone like Sherlock? It baffles me.

My reverie is interrupted by Watson saying quietly, “I’ve no idea. But from the day I saw him—it could only be him. So at least it’s mutual.”

His words startle me; is he a mind reader, that he could know what I was thinking? or have I been so unaware as to say those things out loud?  I’m mortified, but Sherlock reappears and he and Watson go straight back to work.

I watch the two of them, seeing their obvious rapport. I’m in awe of Sherlock’s catalytic effect. Fuelled by Watson, who seemingly knows just what to say and when to say it, he lays bare the weaknesses of my leadership. I realise that Sherlock already knew the answers without needing us. What I’d thought was him being frustrated about the case, I now see had been barely concealed impatience at the way the team has had to be dragged into agreeing with him. Both I and my hand-picked team consistently failed to follow his train of thought. We’re too slow, too earthbound.

Am I jealous that it was Watson who made the breakthrough?

It hurts. I am just as much — no, even more to blame — than my team. I’ve spent the years since Sherlock returned to London consoling myself that my work was my life now, and that I was good at it. The Italian police services are no meritocracy, but my own successes at solving difficult cases had reflected well on my superiors. Is it any wonder they’d rewarded me with the only thing they considered valuable — promotion?

As my reputation rose, I used that to salve my wounds, repair some of the damage done by losing the man who’d been the love of my life. I consoled myself that I’d only seen Sherlock work one case to a successful conclusion; but in fact I’d been so blinded by my attraction to him that I’d not realised the true scope of his genius.

In less than a week, I’ve been shown just how stupid that error was.

I need to tell him this, to apologise in private. Best done when Watson isn’t in earshot; no need to stoke his ire any further. The man reeks of jealousy; I only wish it was deserved, that Sherlock still had some shred of affection for me. Maybe these days, the best I can hope for is that he isn’t shouting at me that I’m an idiot.

After another hour spent scourging myself for being so slow, Vally stands up and stretches, making me realise that we’ve worked for hours without a break. That gives me an idea.

“That’s enough for today. Everyone, go home, eat, relax and sleep. We need fresh minds at work tomorrow morning. Sherlock, I know that you two are in a horrid little pensione near the station. We need to get you into more suitable accommodation. My safe house is a two-bedroom apartment in Trastevere that I’m borrowing from my ex-wife’s distant cousin. He’s in New York until next year. It’s safe, comfortable and conveniently located. With no lease to sign, it’s totally anonymous. Come stay with me.”

Is it my imagination, or is Watson’s glare telling me I’ve overstepped?

His curt “No, thank you” is delivered through clenched teeth. Sherlock stands up, adding, “We’ve made our own arrangements. It’s best that none of you know where we are staying; that makes it even more secure. If you have to contact us, use the burner phone. We’ll see you in the morning.” He gathers his workman’s overalls and they head for the door without a backward glance.

Even in this I have failed.

Chapter Text

“One can’t absolve a man who’s not repented,

And no one can repent and will at once;

The law of contradiction won’t allow it.”

(Inf. 26.118–20) 

Sherlock’s precautions are grating on John’s already abraded nerves. 

He’s come bounding up the stairs, dangling the keys at John. “Met the landlord on the street outside,” he says, opening the door to the studio flat. “I organised this Airbnb completely off grid, under an assumed name. Paid cash. Not even Mycroft knows.”

Oh, all very safe.

“Why would the owner agree to that?”

“He makes money. No fees to the company, no taxes local or otherwise. Win win.”

So more than an organisation, corruption's a mentality. Fantastic.

He can’t help asking, “How long’s the lease?”

“Three weeks. But the owner won’t be taking anyone else for a month, so he said he’d agree to an extension, just in case.”

This whole supposed holiday is due to end in less than three weeks. “Damn it! No more than ten days. You agreed to keep to the schedule.. We go home on the date on our tickets, not a day later. You promised.”

Sherlock walks in, drops his bag, and lays his laptop bag on the glass coffee table. He inspects the studio: kitchen corner, king-sized bed, fashionable décor and soft furnishings. “Yes, of course. But in the meantime, you have to admit that this is nicer than the pensione.” He throws open the door to the bathroom. “A shower big enough for two. All mod cons, including quieter air conditioning. Should make sleeping more comfortable.”

John knows a deliberate distraction when he hears one. “This was supposed to be a holiday, not an excuse for a case. We have a life to go back to. Or is that not important to you?”

“Of course it is. But this case, it’s a real challenge. If it’s taking time, it’s because the others are so slow.”

Sherlock’s spent all of four words on reassurance before returning to his current obsession. John shifts gears, but the issue isn’t resolved—not by a long shot.

“You seemed pretty pissed off with the Italians today. Were you trying to antagonise them, or was that just your natural charm coming to the fore?”

Ignoring both the barb and the question, Sherlock’s in the kitchen corner now, opening cupboards and drawers, inspecting the contents of the little fridge. “Ah, that’s useful.” He pulls out a two-litre plastic bottle of water and fills two glasses. “Drink,” he commands, handing one to John. “There’s even a little terrace.”

Between unpleasantly icy gulps, John manages, “I’d rather be sitting on a balcony overlooking the sea, drinking a glass of wine under a nice umbrella.”

“We can do that, well, minus the sea, but we’re still just two tourists enjoying our holiday. Let’s get out of these ridiculous coveralls and go out for dinner.”

Before John can answer, a ringtone interrupts—his personal phone. He fishes it out of his bag: Rosie. He’s too cross with Sherlock to sound relaxed, or to focus on Rosie properly. 

“You deal with tonight’s call. I’m off to shower.” He hands over the phone and disappears into the bathroom.

But their delightful conversation soon

was interrupted (Purg. 22.130–131)

“Watson.” On the tiny balcony he tries to light a cigarette soundlessly, without alerting her.

“Ba! I rang Da.” 

“He’s in the shower. It’s hot here today.” He keeps his Italian simple. They’ve spoken French together all her life; she won’t be shy of speaking Italian with him.

“Here it’s not bad. The mosquitoes are bad.” 

That’s not good: she’s sensitive to insect bites in general.

“Do you have your antihistamines?”

Carefully she repeats antistaminici. “Sure. But I don’t need them. Yet.”

She’s doing beautifully. (Admittedly, Chiara is too.) He knew Watson would pick up Italian faster in a family than in a school filled with foreign children like herself.

“Don’t wait until you have swelling and redness.” 

She’s so quick, connecting the Italian gonfiore to French gonflement, rossore to French rougeur. 

“Okay, Ba. I miss you. You come soon?”

A bit stilted, but not actually wrong. 

“Not yet. Unless you get lost, of course.”

She objects vigorously. “Ba! We do not lose ourselves!” And John still struggles with reflexive verbs. 

He apologises, takes another drag with a pleasure that John would not like. Nor would Watson, for that matter.

In the background he hears Helen’s “come to the table,” and Watson answers, “Yes yes, coming,” idiomatically and without hesitation. 

“Goodbye, Ba, kiss Da for me.” 

“You’re doing so well in Italian. Say hello to everyone for us.” 

She rings off, and he lights a second cigarette from the stub of the first. 

Ah, how hard it is to speak of what it was!  (Inf. 1.4)

John’s nose twitches. “You smell, and not just of sweat. That’s cigarette smoke.” 

He pats Sherlock’s pockets but doesn’t find a pack. “Where’d you get it? More important, where’d you stash the rest?”

“Pietro smokes; I liberated a couple from his jacket when I went to the loo.”

“Ha. No wonder they don’t like you. It needed only that.”

“It helps me think.”

“You shouldn’t be doing that either, if we’re ‘two tourists enjoying our holiday.’ Get in the shower.” Why is it that the captain in him comes out most when he’s annoyed with Sherlock? For the next half-hour, as they get ready to go out for dinner, he tries—fails—to stifle that reaction. 

But if he was hoping they’d be able to eat companionably, without the case intruding, he’s doomed to disappointment. No sooner had they ordered at an outdoor table than Sherlock says, “I need to think.” His sunglasses hide his eyes but John knows that conversation won’t be happening anytime soon.

He gives up trying and watches the steady flow of passers-by instead. Young people exchange noisy greetings; older couples stroll, chatting quietly. His resentment about Sherlock’s silence lasts until their food arrives and Sherlock finally emerges. As they both dig into their spaghetti cacio e pepe, John’s attention is caught by one particularly attractive couple. They seem dressed up, as if for some special occasion.

Swallowing, Sherlock shakes his head. “The passeggiata, remember?  A leisurely stroll most nights at sunset, purely for pleasure and socialising. Dressing up is all about being seen.”

John’s not mollified by Sherlock’s mind-reading. “You going to tell me what you’ve been thinking about while you were ignoring me?”

“I wasn’t ignoring you. I just needed a time out. I spent too long today dealing with too many people, too many distractions. You and I always work better alone. It’s no wonder these people have been going in the wrong direction for months.”

“Is that because he can’t lead? Za—”

Sherlock cuts him off: “No names in public. Later.”

Wonderful: another admission, another reminder, that this case is dangerous. 

As they walk back from the restaurant, John’s still tense. “No way are we going to spend this evening talking about the case. It’s bad enough watching him eye you up all day long.”

“Eye me up? What’s that supposed to mean?” Irritatingly, Sherlock sounds bewildered.

“Are you really that clueless? Up in the mountains, you only had to walk into the room and he was undressing you with his eyes. It’s even worse in the case room. He’s had you out of those coveralls and on his bed — at least in his head.”

“Don’t be absurd, all that was years ago. There’s no need for jealousy.”

Feeling jealous is bad enough, but being called out on it is infuriating. By the time they reach the flat, John’s positively steaming and not just from the heat, which has barely diminished as the sun sets behind the buildings. Not, he thinks savagely, that Sherlock can be arsed to notice.

Which isn’t exactly accurate. As soon as the door shuts behind them, he feels long arms wrap around his middle.

“What is it? Am I being impossible? I don’t mean to be.”

He sighs, as irked that Sherlock has noticed as he would be if he hadn’t. “I can’t help comparing this Roman non-holiday to the one we set out to have. Delighted you’re having the time of your life, of course.” (He’s a bit ashamed of the sarcasm.) “And Rosie’s obviously enjoying herself. But I’m feeling very much like I don’t matter, like what I wanted doesn’t matter. And if that sounds childish, well,” he finishes petulantly, “it is what it is.”

A long silence from behind him, as Sherlock runs his nose through John’s hair and over his nape, raising goosebumps and a not-unwelcome shiver. Then a quiet, thoughtful reply.

“Nothing matters more than you and Watson. I said it, and I meant it: when you want me to stop, when you want us to stop, we will. Annoying as the group dynamic is, I think we’re getting somewhere on a case of massive importance—from every point of view. I wouldn’t give up our time together otherwise. But nothing’s as important as you and Watson.”

A soft answer turneth away wrath, says the Bible, but if you’re married to Sherlock Holmes, a soft answer just turneth up the volume on it. “Then you’ve a very strange way of showing it. This isn’t just any case. It’s dangerous, it’s opaque, and Zanardi’s a constant irritant. He’s still got his eye on you and he takes every opportunity to rub my nose in it. And I’m disgusted that you don’t care how much that bothers me.”

Sherlock turns John around so he can look at him, showing he’s genuinely startled. The most observant man in the world hasn’t been noticing Zanardi’s behaviour? 

“I most certainly do care, about anything that bothers you. But I haven’t seen this ‘rubbing your nose in it.’”

Reluctantly John says, “Then this time, you’re the one who sees but doesn’t observe. He never consults me. Never acknowledges anything I say unless it’s to correct me. Then there’s the body language: I could fill a book with that. Not to mention the language language. How often does he start off in Italian, as though he were shutting me on the other side of a door? Leaves me out, even about things that are my area and not his? It’s galling, it’s humiliating, and you never call him on it.”

Sherlock’s silent, then says slowly, “As I see it, I’m careful not to encourage any of that. I always put you first. And—forgive me, I’m not trying to score a point—it was you who taught me that as partners, as husbands, we only have to trust each other, and let everyone else do as they please.”

He pulls John closer, makes him meet the patented Sherlock stare. “Is there something more concrete? Something you haven’t told me? There must be.”

John looks down, miserable. “Earlier today. You were running over the figures Bonacci assembled, and I was looking through the list of postwar building projects you had Francesco put together. I looked up and he was staring straight at your arse as you left the room. Then he looked at me, kind of shook his head. So I went over and asked, ‘What?’ and didn’t try to hide my irritation. He said: ‘Why you?’”

Relaying this conversation is even more uncomfortable than having it had been. “It sounded as though he were talking to himself, but saying ‘you.’ He said, ‘I’ve tried to understand it. You’re obviously intelligent, a doctor. A loving father. But I don’t get why it could only be you.’ Which is hardly a compliment, but I was so startled I just said, ‘That makes two of us. But from the day I saw him—it could only be him. So at least it’s mutual.’

“Then you came back and we got back to work.”

... I moved on, completely rapt, among
so many first fruits of eternal pleasure,
and longing for still greater joys... 

(Purg. 29.31–33)

Sherlock’s eyes flashed, something John had thought happened only in novels. “Implying you’re ordinary—that was inexcusably rude. Stupid, as well: if he hasn’t seen why I need you, he’s not as bright as I thought.”

Sherlock’s undoubted sincerity is a balm. “Well, he hasn’t been making much headway with this case, so maybe he isn’t. —Honestly, I don’t think he was completely aware he was talking to me. Seemed lost in his head. Scrambled by strong feeling. Something weird, anyway.”

“John. There’s only one thing that could remotely excuse him: I never told him nothing about you. Absolutely nothing. If nothing else, it would hardly have been consistent with my goals in accompanying him to Rome. But more because you were private, mine. My own heart, my own loss. I never told him how utterly unique you are, and even when I left, I was never explicit about what you’ve always been to me.”

He takes John’s face in his cupped hands and bends to kiss him gently, intently, as present now as he’d been absent over dinner. And as always John feels that pull of overwhelming love, an alchemy of trust and desire and certainty and relief that very quickly turns their kiss heated. 

He remembers Sherlock, in their first intoxicating times together, asking “what if this doesn’t last?” He smiles against Sherlock’s mouth, thinking how every intimacy, every moment of honesty, every minute understanding of each other’s needs and pleasures make their lovemaking now not infatuated, but incandescent.

“I do love you, you git,” he manages, as he moves them to the bed and delights in Sherlock’s gasp at being stripped bare, his clothes tossed away with urgent, practised ease. Touching his ribcage always risks tickling, but John knows the right pressure to avoid giggles, the right moves to provoke groaning, panting heat instead. He seizes the slim waist and tugs, bending to kiss and lick and suck until Sherlock, slick and desperate, pulls away and says, “Let me, too. Both of us. Together.”

And oh, that is exactly what’s needed, a reciprocity of gift and ecstasy, the slick, salt sweat of a Roman summer only grounding this euphoria in the bodily realm even as the wild accord of heart and mind transcend it altogether. It’s easy to let go of old regrets that another man brought Sherlock to this experience first when it’s John’s greedy mouth and fondling hands Sherlock is writhing under, pulling off only to groan “John,” and “yes,” and “oh God I’m—” before they collapse in on each other, in a state that’s closer to unity than to harmony. After a few minutes, they shift round until they’re face to face, their breath synchronising and slowing into a light sleep.

Morning comes too early, even if they try to stave off the inevitable with another round of sex. Hunger and a schedule get them out of bed and dressed in their workman’s outfits. Although the flat’s within walking distance, in case of any prying eyes they hop on a bus and then walk back, grabbing a pastry and coffee from a bar on the way before climbing the stairs to the top floor flat.

Zanardi’s already disappeared, after telling Bonacci that he has a duty to inform the powers that be how the investigation has ‘re-structured’ its approach. According to her, he’d promised not to say too much. 

John snaps at her, “He’s the one who said that this team needs to remain anonymous and autonomous; we don’t want anyone to get too excited or nosey about what’s going on and certainly not about our role in it. Remember, in ten days we’re out of here.”

He asks Sherlock to text Zanardi. 

08:43  —No names, no credit. Keep us out of the picture. Make your boss think it’s all your idea. You’ll have to finish the case without us when we go home.

The heavy sleep within my head was smashed
by an enormous thunderclap, so that
I started up as one whom force awakens. (Inf. 4.1–3)

When my phone buzzes in my pocket, I’m just leaving Director Alfieri’s office. The discussion had been short and direct, brutally so. “Make some progress, Zanardi. I called in a lot of favours to get this Englishman to work with us. We need a victory and we need it before the Mancuso trial gets much further. Whatever you have to do to get this art thing done now—do it.”

Vally’s message this morning had been equally direct. We’d both arrived at the case room early: me to take a good look at the evidence board to decide how little I could tell the DIA, she to download the data of reconstruction projects between Naples and Rome she’d worked on half the night. “We have to keep up with Holmes; yesterday was just embarrassing.”

Over coffee I’d pointed out that we’d done it all together. She shook her head sadly. “He’s mesmerising you and, well, everybody but Giorgio. Please, don’t let your affection for him distract you. You’re our leader. When he and his side-kick go back to London, you’ll be the one doing the hard work.”

She’s right, annoying though it is to admit it. I’d been weak yesterday and spent half the night canvassing my failures. I have to get a grip, show more initiative, more daring. Am I getting risk-averse in my old age? Christ, that rankles. I need to be more assertive.

My gaffe with Watson was equally embarrassing. Yes, he appears ordinary, but I’ve overlooked the stabilising effect he has on Sherlock. When Sherlock was quivering with frustration Watson calmed him, asking practical questions, listening to the answers and slowing down long enough to read between the lines. While we were arguing amongst ourselves, Watson realised what Sherlock was actually after.

On the stairs leaving the DIA, I read Sherlock’s text and laugh out loud, raising a stare from workers coming into the building. No, caro mio, you are getting the credit for this breakthrough. My superiors know me too well to think this is coming from me. 

I park a few streets over from the flat, go into a down-at-heel café for a coffee and come out of the modest washroom wearing my works manager’s overalls. The tip I leave under my saucer is generous: a wink and a nod to the barista. “Running a bit late,” I say as I leave and head down the street.

By the time I climb up to the flat, I’m hot and bothered. Rome’s delivering yet another day of infernal heat. Having to change clothes every time we go in or out of the place is wearing more than a little thin, but at least the air conditioning cools me down a bit before I enter the work room.

I’m surprised to see that the whole back wall is now filled with photos of construction projects, all posted since I left early this morning. Vally’s presiding as Pietro and Francesco tie up green and red strings between the photos to blue sticky notes that Paolo’s putting up. Walking closer, I can see that he’s written names of museums and churches. I try not to gape. “What is all this?”

Sherlock has his back turned to the rest of us. Before any of my team can answer, he snipes, “Pin the tail on the donkey.”

Watson, sitting at the desk facing the evidence wall, chokes back a laugh.

Vally turns around to snarl, “Making connections. That’s what is going to solve this. We have identified more than thirty reconstruction projects in the area of interest, and linked them to the nearest collections of art. That’s the red string. The green is cross-referencing with anything we can find out about where they hid their art during the war. Paolo’s working on the sticky notes. It should help us to narrow it down.”

“Always assuming there is a connection, when in fact there may not be,” Sherlock adds dryly.

“It is logical that the Church would look for a place close to where they hid their art in the first place.” Francesco throws a stare that could kill a lesser mortal, but Sherlock’s still looking away.

“Is it? Why? The Vatican’s art went back to Rome after the war, back on display. They built the vault as a fail-safe—a safe haven, should a similar threat ever arise again. That doesn’t require prior experience of the area or propinquity.”

Giorgio’s confusion is evident; he grumbles, “Propinkitty? The hell is that?”

“Proximity,” I mutter. 

I’m frustrated by this conflict, and it’s time to show it.  “I leave you together for one morning and I come back to squabbling and discord. We have to work together.”

Watson turns around to face me. Arms folded in a silent rebuke, he adds, “Maybe it would help if you told us what you got up to with your superiors.”

I shrug. “Only the briefest details, just that we have a new direction.”

Sherlock turns too, wearing that expression that means he knows something I don’t. I saw it when we worked on the case in London, before he’d come to realise that I had something to offer. He waves a dismissive hand at the wall of leads. “Nothing in the public records on any of these projects suggests that they were financed by anything other than legitimate public funds. There’s no way to narrow it down. We don’t have time to investigate all thirty-two rebuilds up there.”

I shrug again. “Of course not. I’ll talk to a few old contacts —people on the fringes of both the Church and the mafia. They’ve always had what the English would call an ‘interesting relationship’, each denying that they have anything to do with one another, yet having to live and work in the same space. Accommodations have to be made. I don’t doubt this is how the families started putting the Church’s vault to their own use. If we can find out which projects got money from the Church on the quiet, we might be able to narrow our focus to those projects.”

Vally nods. “It’s worth a try.” She glares at Sherlock. “Of course the public documents would never include that kind of contribution. The paperwork will be the very model of propriety, while hiding the inevitable secret backers. You can’t be so naïve as to think you would find the vault on the blueprints, can you?”

John rolls his eyes. “Why is this level of deception always taken for granted in Italy?”

“Dietrologia,” I reply, taking some satisfaction from the fact that the word doesn’t appear to be in Sherlock’s vocabulary.  “What’s on the surface is official, but rarely the real explanation. Dietro: what’s behind the surface. We have to find that before we can identify the project that became the site for the vault.”

Sherlock gets up and starts his eternal pacing again in front of the evidence board. “We’re missing something important, something that will make a difference to how we’re thinking about this.” 

I can see he’s frustrated, and I know it’s because he has only limited time to work on the case. I take a leaf from Watson’s book, try to find the words to calm him.

“It’s going to take time, Sherlock. Things do, in Italy. The vault’s been there for decades and it’s not going anywhere. We’ll just keep at it, whatever it takes to find it. Even after you two leave.”

Watson huffs and gets to his feet. Stretching his arms, he rolls his shoulders and bends his neck from side to side. “Maybe it’s better to think of this in reverse. Instead of looking into all these projects or calling up your informers, why not ask an architect what it would take to build such a vault? Wouldn’t that give us a better idea what we should be looking for?”

Sherlock stops mid-stride, his foot lifted as if to take another step but frozen in place. Slowly, very slowly he puts it down and brings his hands together under his chin. “Architect… there’s something there…Not exactly what you said, but turn it on its head—”

A gasp, then an explosive “Oh!”

Now he’s all frenetic motion again, whirling about and taking four huge strides to get to John. “Not just any architect; the one who designed it. John, that’s brilliant. That’s who we need.”

Giorgio lets out a loud guffaw. “Oh, and how are we going to find him? No one writes ‘built a secret vault’ in his CV, does he? Is he even still alive?”

Sherlock spins around to face him. “No, that’s the one thing we do know — he’s not going to be alive now. Even if the clerics that got the vault built swore him to secrecy in the late 1940s, you can be sure that the mafia would get rid of him as soon as they started using the vault. Dead men tell no secrets. All we need is to find the architects who worked on those projects and died under mysterious circumstances. We’ll have a much shorter list.”

It's as if a thunderclap had gone off over our heads. All eyes on my team turn to me in astonishment.

Vally’s the one who puts it into words: “My God, he’s right.”