Sherlock Fic: The Long Game 5/? (Sherlock/John, 12+)
Title ~ The Long Game
Rating ~ 12+
Pairings ~ John/Sherlock
Summary ~ When Moriarty's plan to take out Sherlock and John in the swimming pool fails, John finds himself drawn into an even more complicated - and potentially deadly - game. (Continuation of The Great Game, with Chapter One starting exactly where the episode left off.)
Warnings ~ None.
Notes ~ Notes. I am indebted to ice_elf for all the encouragement she gave me when I was writing this, and for being the best beta anyone could ask for.
This fic has nothing to do with the Doctor Who episode of the same name; it's pure coincidence.
Disclaimer ~ Sherlock is the property of the BBC.
Masterlist
Chapter Five
It took John just over half an hour to solve the three clues circled by Moriarty, presumably the three that he was supposed to focus on. The letters already scrawled across the grid were distracting. He had to pause to borrow a pen from the youth behind the till so that he could scribble down his thoughts as he went along. The shop was quiet, but every one of the customers broke his concentration as they described the salad they wanted and loudly refused the jalapenos. Finally, he sat back, the clues solved: 11 across, Marylebone; 7 down, High; 3 down, Street. An address.
He drained the last of his coffee and rolled the newspaper into a tube, which he could shove into his coat pocket. He left the pen next to the till and hurried out, mentally planning out a route. He knew the nearest underground station was Baker Street. As he headed down to the platform at Swiss Cottage, he wondered if Moriarty was deliberately sending him so close to home. Daring him to go back to 221B in case Sherlock was there. It was a tempting thought. He could go home and put an end to the whole thing. But there was no doubt that Moriarty had eyes on both of them. He might even have a sniper rifle trained on Sherlock right now.
No, Moriarty was waiting for him to screw up. John scowled as he stepped aboard the carriage. He had to stick to the rules and keep on the path Moriarty had laid out for him, which meant going straight to Marylebone High Street.
It took five minutes to reach the Baker Street underground station. John joined the commuters heading for the surface. When he stepped out onto street level, he stared for a long moment down the length of Baker Street itself, wishing that he could just walk home. Then he turned away and started towards the next location without a backward glance. It wasn’t worth risking Sherlock’s life. He passed Madame Tussauds at a brisk pace, glancing at the tourists already waiting for the attraction to open. A few minutes later, he saw Marylebone Church rising up on his right, and crossed the street at the traffic lights outside it. He paused for a second to stare up at the dome and catch his breath, then hurried on.
He turned right onto Marylebone High Street and slowed his pace. He was familiar enough with the road to know that it was fairly long: a ten minute walk from end to end. The crossword had hardly been specific about where he was supposed to be. He pulled out Lestrade’s phone as he walked, hoping that a text or call would come in and give him a location, or at the very least another clue.
A couple of minutes passed and nothing happened. John shoved the phone back into his pocket and yanked out the newspaper instead. If Moriarty wasn’t sending him more information, he must already have what he needed. He found a convenient piece of wall to lean against and stared down at the crossword. He was fairly sure there was no clue in the message Moriarty had inscribed, but still he muttered it aloud to himself, “Which is easier, war or my crossword? Enjoy …”
He couldn’t think how that was relevant. He turned his attention to the clues. Aside from the circled clues, there were the crossed out clues. Most were across clues, some corresponding to the grid squares Moriarty had written in but some not. He looked at the clues Moriarty had left untouched. Some were fairly easy to solve, to someone with cryptic crossword experience. The clue to ten down was ‘Dangerous Post (6,4)’ and was obviously ‘Letter Bomb’: no help there, unless it was a threat. Fifteen across, ‘Rudimentary school education (10)’, equalled ‘Elementary’. Moriarty could have meant for him to go to the school he had just passed, but if so surely he would have crossed out all of the other clues. He spent another couple of minutes trying to solve the other uncrossed clues, but concluded that they were probably unconnected. He frowned, trying to think like Moriarty. He had already been set the challenge of the cryptic crossword to find the street; perhaps to find the exact location - the building or business he was supposed to go to - he had to do something different.
He glanced up at the café opposite. Above its large windows, there was a fifty-one: the building number. He blinked at the number etched into the stone and then down at the crossword. Perhaps it was as simple as adding up the numbers that hadn’t been crossed out. He did so, counting carefully so that there could be no mistake: eighty-three. He stared down at the crossword for another moment, wondering if it could really be so simple. He sighed and shoved the newspaper away. There was no way of knowing unless he tried it. He checked the numbers of the shops on his side of the street to work out which way to walk, and then set off, heading in the same direction as before towards number eighty-three.
The shop he eventually reached was one of the most old-fashioned on the street. Its windows were large and the frames were made of an almost honey-coloured wood. The sign above was painted bottle green and read, ‘Daunt Books’. Crossing his fingers and hoping that he was in the right place, John stepped in through the open door.
It was quiet, but he had been expecting that, what with it being so early. The assistant at the desk by the door smiled at him before looking back at his computer screen. There were shelves lining the walls and, in the more open space ahead, large circular tables were also stacked with books. John went further into the shop, looking around and trying to figure out where he was meant to go. The shop narrowed a little beyond the tables, then opened out into a large atrium. There was a set of stairs going down to a lower floor, and a balcony up above. As he walked around the stairwell, he noticed that above each set of shelves there was a label. Scandinavia. Switzerland. Austria. Germany. He glanced across to the far wall and saw that those shelves too were labelled by country. He stopped by a display of maps and stared around. This bookshop arranged its contents by country.
Where was he supposed to go? He looked up at the glass ceiling above and sighed deeply, reaching for the crossword puzzle. He was starting to hate the sight of it.
“Can I help you, sir?” a voice asked. He turned to face the assistant, shaking his head even before he had seen who was talking to him.
“No! No, thanks. I’m fine,” he said, a little more sharply than he normally would have. He wasn’t sure how much talking would constitute too much and break Moriarty’s twisted rule. Even though the bookshop was quiet, he couldn’t dismiss the idea that he was being watched.
“Well, if you need anything at all, just ask,” the assistant said, frowning slightly at him as she turned away and went back to her desk by the stairwell.
John hurried around the far side of a stand of books and pretended to be admiring the stained glass window that filled the shop’s back wall. It held his attention for a moment before he yanked the paper out of his pocket and glanced down.
So far, Moriarty had used two different parts of the crossword to get him here: the clues to give him the street and the numbers to give him an exact address. Was it a fair assumption that he would be using something else to indicate where he should be in the shop? The clues and numbers had served their purpose already, but what else was there? The only other thing Moriarty had added to the newspaper - that John could tell - was the message. John repeated it aloud to himself.
“Which is easier, war or my crossword? Enjoy! Yours - J. Moriarty.” He paused. “War … I wonder …”
It was a tenuous link. But it was the only link he had to a country. Moriarty would know that he had fought in Afghanistan. Sherlock had known that within moments of meeting him, and besides, it would be easy to look it up. He glanced around at the labels nearest to him, but couldn’t see Afghanistan.
He decided to risk a couple of sentences of conversation for the sake of speed, and went over to the female assistant who had spoken to him before. “Excuse me, do you have a section on Afghanistan?”
“Of course, sir,” she said. “It’s downstairs in the far right corner. I can show you if you like?”
“Thanks, I’ll be fine,” John replied, giving the girl a smile as he turned away.
It faded as soon as his back was turned. The Afghanistan section would be in the basement. He stopped on the top step, looking down the flight. The staircase was made of dark wood and old-fashioned in style. Two hand-rails ran all the way down. John gripped one of them in the hand that didn’t hold his cane, braced himself for the pain that steps would undoubtedly bring, and started down, trying to lean on his injured leg as little as possible.
The trip downstairs left every step an agony just when he had thought the pain inflicted by Moriarty was fading to a manageable ache. The shelf labelled ‘Afghanistan’ was one of the furthest back. John tried to focus on something other than his leg as he leant heavily on his cane and stared at the shelf in front of him. The shelves here were wooden, as they were upstairs, but they had been stained a lighter, warmer shade. Instead of glass tiles and wooden parquet, there was cool green carpet beneath his feet. There were more books in the Afghanistan section than John had been expecting, somehow. The majority faced outwards, presenting their front covers instead of their spines. Factual and fiction volumes were jammed against one another - alphabetically by author, as far as he could tell, with no division between the two. It was an interesting system to have adopted, he thought as he looked across the shelf at eye level.
He shifted his gaze to the next, slightly slimmer column of shelves: Pakistan. It was arranged in the same manner. John compared the two, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary about the Afghanistan section. He sighed and stepped closer to the shelves, reaching up for the book at the top left. He had to start somewhere, and he may as well act with some kind of plan, instead of pulling out books at random.
The first book yielded nothing unusual. He put it back, cover outwards, and decided to ignore the other copies of the same volume. He reached for the next title, then the next, reading the author, title and skimming the synopsis before he flipped through the pages. He had no idea what he was looking for, or even if he would find it here. He sighed and shoved the book back. There was only one more title on this shelf. He grabbed the first copy his fingers came to and flipped through the pages.
Something small and white fluttered out from between the pages and landed at his feet. John paused, staring down at it. It looked like it could be blank. His heart began to pound. If it had been marking a specific page, he had by now lost it. He might have just thrown away his only chance of survival - worse, of Sherlock’s survival.
Slowly, keeping his thumb in the pages of the book just in case he had the right one, he crouched down. His leg stabbed as the muscles stretched and he hissed, but otherwise ignored the pain. He grabbed the slip of paper and flipped it over.
Something was printed on the reverse. John felt the tension drain out of his shoulders: all was not lost. He had at least a partial clue. He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a look at the writing.
DESK
1 ↓
4 ←
It was yet another puzzle. John sighed and glanced at the book. The arrows probably didn’t refer to anything in the book - and even if they did, presumably they referred to something on the page the paper had marked, and he had definitely lost that. He put the book back and rubbed at his eyes. He had to work this out.
It couldn’t refer back to the crossword; he had stared at it for long enough to know that the number one was an across and four was a down. He lifted his head and looked from the paper to the shelves. Perhaps the arrows were literally directions: one shelf down, four books across. He pointed at the book he had just put back, and let his hand drop to the shelf below. This was where it would get complicated. There were five titles on the shelf, but multiple copies of each. Was he supposed to move across by title? Or did Moriarty just mean four books? Starting at the end of the shelf, or with the book directly below the one with the note? He decided to try the latter first, and counted four across from the book below the one containing the nose, including every book as one. He pulled out the corresponding volume and flicked through, waiting for it to open naturally onto a page that had been marked.
Sure enough, two pages near the middle folded apart to reveal another slip of paper. This one was similarly marked.
FOR
5 ↓
1→
This time, John found the next book more quickly. Moriarty’s notes led him up and down the shelves, forcing him to stretch and crouch to pick out and replace the books. By the time he was directed back to the first book - and presumably had reached the end of the puzzle - he was holding nine pieces of paper, stacked one on top of the other in the order he had found them.
He turned around and stepped over to the computer desk nearby, glancing around furtively for any employees. There were none on this floor at the moment. Though he hadn’t been paying much attention to the words themselves in his haste to find all of them, he had noticed a couple of things. All the words were capitalised, but only one had been followed by a full stop. He moved slips of paper down to the bottom of the pile one by one until he found the full stop. Then he laid out the sentence backwards from its final word on the desktop. The message revealed was a simple one:
ASK AT THE DESK FOR THE BOOK YOU WANTED.
John stared at the sentence. He was amazed that he had managed to find it. The code Moriarty had used relied entirely on none of the books on the Afghanistan shelves being moved. Moriarty had probably come to the shop just before it closed to place all the slips of paper, and assumed that John would arrive shortly after it opened. John checked his watch; it was after ten, and Daunt Books had been open for a full hour. His stomach lurched. It was sheer luck that none of the shop’s patrons has come in and moved these books around, not knowing that there was a code hidden there.
What if there were other clues that were time-sensitive, which might not even be there if he arrived too late? Stomach churning, John collected up the pieces of paper and stuffed them into his pocket. He walked as quickly as he could to the foot of the stairs and started the long climb back to the ground floor. Pain stabbed up into his spine with every step he gained and by the time he had reached the top he was gasping.
“Are you all right, sir?” the female assistant asked, hurrying over. He waved a hand at her, shaking his head and trying not to clutch at his leg.
“Fine,” he managed, forcing himself to keep moving in the hopes that it would prove to her that there was nothing wrong. “Absolutely fine.”
She let it go, though she looked far from happy as she turned to go back to her desk. He balled his free hand into a fist and stumped towards the front desk, leaning into his walking stick. He could have asked the girl for help, but it might draw attention when he had shooed her away so brusquely before.
The man at the front desk looked a little older than John. He smiled at him as he reached the desk and said, “Good morning, sir. How can I help you today?”
“I think you might be able to help me. There was a book I wanted … I think it might have been ordered for me, or left behind the desk, or something …”
“Name?” the assistant said, already tapping commands into the computer.
“John Watson?” John tried, and immediately wondered whether he should have tried Moriarty’s name instead.
“Ah, yes!” the assistant said with a smile. “A friend of yours came in yesterday and asked us to put a copy of A Journey Through Afghanistan behind the desk for you. It should be just here …”
He crouched down to look and resurfaced a moment later with a book in his hand. He slid it across the desk towards John.
“That would be the one,” John told him. The mention of a ‘friend’ clinched it. Moriarty - or one of his people - had to have been here to set things up.
“That’ll be twelve pounds, please, Mr Watson,” the assistant said as he reached for a plastic bag.
“Twelve - oh, of course.” John reached for the wallet. Why would Moriarty pay for the book in advance? He pulled out the correct amount and handed it over, taking the plastic bag in exchange and heading outside.
On his way to the bookshop, he had walked past the Marylebone Church Gardens and noticed a few people seated along the path that led up to the building. He headed back the way he had come; once again, he needed somewhere innocuous to sit and figure out the next clue. The gates were open to the public and no one seemed to notice him as he went inside and took a seat on an unoccupied bench a little way away from the other people who were enjoying the gardens. He settled himself, propping his walking stick against the bench seat and stretching out his injured leg. The pain was a constant burn. He gently placed a hand over the wound. The touch made him wince. It was impossible to be sure without properly checking, but he suspected the wound might be bleeding through his bandages.
There was nothing he could do about that now - not without risking Sherlock’s life by breaking a rule. He pulled the book out of the carrier bag and looked down at it. A Journey Through Afghanistan by David Chaffetz. The front cover proclaimed it a memorial; in smaller letters above the title, John read, “Encounters with nomads, traders and peasants in peacetime Afghanistan.”
He checked the back cover, then carefully turned the pages of the book in case there was a bookmark or folded corner. Nothing. He was fairly sure that he wasn’t being pointed to Afghanistan: his funds wouldn’t get him there, and he probably wouldn’t be allowed to fly out there without a very good reason. So what? He thought back to the clue at the Freud Museum that had led him, eventually, to Swiss Cottage. There couldn’t be anything hidden in the cover image: Moriarty would have had to physically add or remove something, and it was brand new and flawless. That left him with the actual contents of the book. He found the contents page and scanned down it for any reference that might be useful, but he didn’t recognise anything that might point to a location in London.
He sighed and raised his head, staring around at the gardens in an attempt to calm himself. He wasn’t cut out for this. Whatever Moriarty was pointing him to, he couldn’t find it. He wasn’t Sherlock.
Thinking of Sherlock reminded him that he wasn’t far from the flat - from home. He closed his eyes and wondered whether Sherlock was there right now, pacing the room in long-legged strides or lying motionless on the couch with nicotine patches courting the veins in his arm. He might still be out, of course. It wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t slept; so long as there were clues to be tracked down, suspects and witnesses to interrogate, contacts to meet with, Sherlock could keep going on reserves that seemed infinite when there was a case at hand. John’s brows pulled down into an automatic frown of concern. He would much rather imagine Sherlock back at 221B. Even though he would get no sleep there, either, he might at least allow his body to snatch a moment’s rest on the couch.
He sighed and opened his eyes again. Musing on Sherlock’s whereabouts and wellbeing wasn’t helping. Right now, the only thing he needed to think about was the clue, and the consequences if he didn’t solve it. Remembering that there was a sniper rifle apparently trained on his friend was enough incentive to return to the book.
What would Sherlock do, he thought. He had to try to think more like Sherlock and Moriarty - more like a genius. It was all about the little details, things that no one else would notice. No one normal, John’s brain added, traitorously, and then he felt guilty. He shook his head and looked down at the book in his hands. Details. He might as well start at the beginning. He opened A Journey Through Afghanistan again at the first, unnumbered pages, before even the title page. There was a blurb about the author, which John skim-read and dismissed. He turned over to the title page, which was opposite a map of west Afghanistan, alongside a globe image and another map which showed where the country was in the world. He took a careful look both at the pictures and the text, then turned the page again. He was faced with the copyright page. His heart leapt; the book had been published by the University of Chicago press, and every instance of the word ‘Chicago’ had been scored under by a blunt pencil.
Details. Flipping through the book, he would never have seen it. He smiled and murmured, “Thank you, Sherlock …”
Not that the word Chicago actually got him anywhere. It couldn’t mean the city itself. Moriarty hadn’t given him the means to leave the country, and John was sure by now that he was supposed to stay in London. He closed the book and put it away in the plastic bag. He needed a location in London that was somehow linked to Chicago.
“I wonder,” he said to himself, thinking aloud. Moriarty had used a KT Tunstall song for one of his clues, and the location of a theatre for another; unlike Sherlock, he wasn’t oblivious to popular culture - or he was pretending not to be. Maybe he was trying to set himself apart from Sherlock, or prove himself the better of the two, because he saw the value in things Sherlock disdained. Whatever the reason, it gave John food for thought. There were plenty of things Sherlock was unaware of because he considered them unimportant. However, John had only found one gap so far in Sherlock’s encyclopaedic knowledge of London: he knew nothing about the West End. John could remember asking him, incredulous, how he could possibly live in the city and not know the name of a single show. What if the answer to this clue was the musical Chicago?
He had no idea which theatre Chicago was currently showing, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out. He stood up, mindful of his leg the moment he moved it, and started back towards Baker Street underground station. It would be quicker to take the tube across the city, not to mention easier on his leg. He also might be able to pick up a flyer there about London’s West End that had details of shows and theatres, which would give him more of an idea of where he needed to be.
Chapter Six
Full Crossword Solution, in case anyone is interested.
.
Rating ~ 12+
Pairings ~ John/Sherlock
Summary ~ When Moriarty's plan to take out Sherlock and John in the swimming pool fails, John finds himself drawn into an even more complicated - and potentially deadly - game. (Continuation of The Great Game, with Chapter One starting exactly where the episode left off.)
Warnings ~ None.
Notes ~ Notes. I am indebted to ice_elf for all the encouragement she gave me when I was writing this, and for being the best beta anyone could ask for.
This fic has nothing to do with the Doctor Who episode of the same name; it's pure coincidence.
Disclaimer ~ Sherlock is the property of the BBC.
Masterlist
Chapter Five
It took John just over half an hour to solve the three clues circled by Moriarty, presumably the three that he was supposed to focus on. The letters already scrawled across the grid were distracting. He had to pause to borrow a pen from the youth behind the till so that he could scribble down his thoughts as he went along. The shop was quiet, but every one of the customers broke his concentration as they described the salad they wanted and loudly refused the jalapenos. Finally, he sat back, the clues solved: 11 across, Marylebone; 7 down, High; 3 down, Street. An address.
He drained the last of his coffee and rolled the newspaper into a tube, which he could shove into his coat pocket. He left the pen next to the till and hurried out, mentally planning out a route. He knew the nearest underground station was Baker Street. As he headed down to the platform at Swiss Cottage, he wondered if Moriarty was deliberately sending him so close to home. Daring him to go back to 221B in case Sherlock was there. It was a tempting thought. He could go home and put an end to the whole thing. But there was no doubt that Moriarty had eyes on both of them. He might even have a sniper rifle trained on Sherlock right now.
No, Moriarty was waiting for him to screw up. John scowled as he stepped aboard the carriage. He had to stick to the rules and keep on the path Moriarty had laid out for him, which meant going straight to Marylebone High Street.
It took five minutes to reach the Baker Street underground station. John joined the commuters heading for the surface. When he stepped out onto street level, he stared for a long moment down the length of Baker Street itself, wishing that he could just walk home. Then he turned away and started towards the next location without a backward glance. It wasn’t worth risking Sherlock’s life. He passed Madame Tussauds at a brisk pace, glancing at the tourists already waiting for the attraction to open. A few minutes later, he saw Marylebone Church rising up on his right, and crossed the street at the traffic lights outside it. He paused for a second to stare up at the dome and catch his breath, then hurried on.
He turned right onto Marylebone High Street and slowed his pace. He was familiar enough with the road to know that it was fairly long: a ten minute walk from end to end. The crossword had hardly been specific about where he was supposed to be. He pulled out Lestrade’s phone as he walked, hoping that a text or call would come in and give him a location, or at the very least another clue.
A couple of minutes passed and nothing happened. John shoved the phone back into his pocket and yanked out the newspaper instead. If Moriarty wasn’t sending him more information, he must already have what he needed. He found a convenient piece of wall to lean against and stared down at the crossword. He was fairly sure there was no clue in the message Moriarty had inscribed, but still he muttered it aloud to himself, “Which is easier, war or my crossword? Enjoy …”
He couldn’t think how that was relevant. He turned his attention to the clues. Aside from the circled clues, there were the crossed out clues. Most were across clues, some corresponding to the grid squares Moriarty had written in but some not. He looked at the clues Moriarty had left untouched. Some were fairly easy to solve, to someone with cryptic crossword experience. The clue to ten down was ‘Dangerous Post (6,4)’ and was obviously ‘Letter Bomb’: no help there, unless it was a threat. Fifteen across, ‘Rudimentary school education (10)’, equalled ‘Elementary’. Moriarty could have meant for him to go to the school he had just passed, but if so surely he would have crossed out all of the other clues. He spent another couple of minutes trying to solve the other uncrossed clues, but concluded that they were probably unconnected. He frowned, trying to think like Moriarty. He had already been set the challenge of the cryptic crossword to find the street; perhaps to find the exact location - the building or business he was supposed to go to - he had to do something different.
He glanced up at the café opposite. Above its large windows, there was a fifty-one: the building number. He blinked at the number etched into the stone and then down at the crossword. Perhaps it was as simple as adding up the numbers that hadn’t been crossed out. He did so, counting carefully so that there could be no mistake: eighty-three. He stared down at the crossword for another moment, wondering if it could really be so simple. He sighed and shoved the newspaper away. There was no way of knowing unless he tried it. He checked the numbers of the shops on his side of the street to work out which way to walk, and then set off, heading in the same direction as before towards number eighty-three.
The shop he eventually reached was one of the most old-fashioned on the street. Its windows were large and the frames were made of an almost honey-coloured wood. The sign above was painted bottle green and read, ‘Daunt Books’. Crossing his fingers and hoping that he was in the right place, John stepped in through the open door.
It was quiet, but he had been expecting that, what with it being so early. The assistant at the desk by the door smiled at him before looking back at his computer screen. There were shelves lining the walls and, in the more open space ahead, large circular tables were also stacked with books. John went further into the shop, looking around and trying to figure out where he was meant to go. The shop narrowed a little beyond the tables, then opened out into a large atrium. There was a set of stairs going down to a lower floor, and a balcony up above. As he walked around the stairwell, he noticed that above each set of shelves there was a label. Scandinavia. Switzerland. Austria. Germany. He glanced across to the far wall and saw that those shelves too were labelled by country. He stopped by a display of maps and stared around. This bookshop arranged its contents by country.
Where was he supposed to go? He looked up at the glass ceiling above and sighed deeply, reaching for the crossword puzzle. He was starting to hate the sight of it.
“Can I help you, sir?” a voice asked. He turned to face the assistant, shaking his head even before he had seen who was talking to him.
“No! No, thanks. I’m fine,” he said, a little more sharply than he normally would have. He wasn’t sure how much talking would constitute too much and break Moriarty’s twisted rule. Even though the bookshop was quiet, he couldn’t dismiss the idea that he was being watched.
“Well, if you need anything at all, just ask,” the assistant said, frowning slightly at him as she turned away and went back to her desk by the stairwell.
John hurried around the far side of a stand of books and pretended to be admiring the stained glass window that filled the shop’s back wall. It held his attention for a moment before he yanked the paper out of his pocket and glanced down.
So far, Moriarty had used two different parts of the crossword to get him here: the clues to give him the street and the numbers to give him an exact address. Was it a fair assumption that he would be using something else to indicate where he should be in the shop? The clues and numbers had served their purpose already, but what else was there? The only other thing Moriarty had added to the newspaper - that John could tell - was the message. John repeated it aloud to himself.
“Which is easier, war or my crossword? Enjoy! Yours - J. Moriarty.” He paused. “War … I wonder …”
It was a tenuous link. But it was the only link he had to a country. Moriarty would know that he had fought in Afghanistan. Sherlock had known that within moments of meeting him, and besides, it would be easy to look it up. He glanced around at the labels nearest to him, but couldn’t see Afghanistan.
He decided to risk a couple of sentences of conversation for the sake of speed, and went over to the female assistant who had spoken to him before. “Excuse me, do you have a section on Afghanistan?”
“Of course, sir,” she said. “It’s downstairs in the far right corner. I can show you if you like?”
“Thanks, I’ll be fine,” John replied, giving the girl a smile as he turned away.
It faded as soon as his back was turned. The Afghanistan section would be in the basement. He stopped on the top step, looking down the flight. The staircase was made of dark wood and old-fashioned in style. Two hand-rails ran all the way down. John gripped one of them in the hand that didn’t hold his cane, braced himself for the pain that steps would undoubtedly bring, and started down, trying to lean on his injured leg as little as possible.
The trip downstairs left every step an agony just when he had thought the pain inflicted by Moriarty was fading to a manageable ache. The shelf labelled ‘Afghanistan’ was one of the furthest back. John tried to focus on something other than his leg as he leant heavily on his cane and stared at the shelf in front of him. The shelves here were wooden, as they were upstairs, but they had been stained a lighter, warmer shade. Instead of glass tiles and wooden parquet, there was cool green carpet beneath his feet. There were more books in the Afghanistan section than John had been expecting, somehow. The majority faced outwards, presenting their front covers instead of their spines. Factual and fiction volumes were jammed against one another - alphabetically by author, as far as he could tell, with no division between the two. It was an interesting system to have adopted, he thought as he looked across the shelf at eye level.
He shifted his gaze to the next, slightly slimmer column of shelves: Pakistan. It was arranged in the same manner. John compared the two, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary about the Afghanistan section. He sighed and stepped closer to the shelves, reaching up for the book at the top left. He had to start somewhere, and he may as well act with some kind of plan, instead of pulling out books at random.
The first book yielded nothing unusual. He put it back, cover outwards, and decided to ignore the other copies of the same volume. He reached for the next title, then the next, reading the author, title and skimming the synopsis before he flipped through the pages. He had no idea what he was looking for, or even if he would find it here. He sighed and shoved the book back. There was only one more title on this shelf. He grabbed the first copy his fingers came to and flipped through the pages.
Something small and white fluttered out from between the pages and landed at his feet. John paused, staring down at it. It looked like it could be blank. His heart began to pound. If it had been marking a specific page, he had by now lost it. He might have just thrown away his only chance of survival - worse, of Sherlock’s survival.
Slowly, keeping his thumb in the pages of the book just in case he had the right one, he crouched down. His leg stabbed as the muscles stretched and he hissed, but otherwise ignored the pain. He grabbed the slip of paper and flipped it over.
Something was printed on the reverse. John felt the tension drain out of his shoulders: all was not lost. He had at least a partial clue. He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a look at the writing.
DESK
1 ↓
4 ←
It was yet another puzzle. John sighed and glanced at the book. The arrows probably didn’t refer to anything in the book - and even if they did, presumably they referred to something on the page the paper had marked, and he had definitely lost that. He put the book back and rubbed at his eyes. He had to work this out.
It couldn’t refer back to the crossword; he had stared at it for long enough to know that the number one was an across and four was a down. He lifted his head and looked from the paper to the shelves. Perhaps the arrows were literally directions: one shelf down, four books across. He pointed at the book he had just put back, and let his hand drop to the shelf below. This was where it would get complicated. There were five titles on the shelf, but multiple copies of each. Was he supposed to move across by title? Or did Moriarty just mean four books? Starting at the end of the shelf, or with the book directly below the one with the note? He decided to try the latter first, and counted four across from the book below the one containing the nose, including every book as one. He pulled out the corresponding volume and flicked through, waiting for it to open naturally onto a page that had been marked.
Sure enough, two pages near the middle folded apart to reveal another slip of paper. This one was similarly marked.
FOR
5 ↓
1→
This time, John found the next book more quickly. Moriarty’s notes led him up and down the shelves, forcing him to stretch and crouch to pick out and replace the books. By the time he was directed back to the first book - and presumably had reached the end of the puzzle - he was holding nine pieces of paper, stacked one on top of the other in the order he had found them.
He turned around and stepped over to the computer desk nearby, glancing around furtively for any employees. There were none on this floor at the moment. Though he hadn’t been paying much attention to the words themselves in his haste to find all of them, he had noticed a couple of things. All the words were capitalised, but only one had been followed by a full stop. He moved slips of paper down to the bottom of the pile one by one until he found the full stop. Then he laid out the sentence backwards from its final word on the desktop. The message revealed was a simple one:
ASK AT THE DESK FOR THE BOOK YOU WANTED.
John stared at the sentence. He was amazed that he had managed to find it. The code Moriarty had used relied entirely on none of the books on the Afghanistan shelves being moved. Moriarty had probably come to the shop just before it closed to place all the slips of paper, and assumed that John would arrive shortly after it opened. John checked his watch; it was after ten, and Daunt Books had been open for a full hour. His stomach lurched. It was sheer luck that none of the shop’s patrons has come in and moved these books around, not knowing that there was a code hidden there.
What if there were other clues that were time-sensitive, which might not even be there if he arrived too late? Stomach churning, John collected up the pieces of paper and stuffed them into his pocket. He walked as quickly as he could to the foot of the stairs and started the long climb back to the ground floor. Pain stabbed up into his spine with every step he gained and by the time he had reached the top he was gasping.
“Are you all right, sir?” the female assistant asked, hurrying over. He waved a hand at her, shaking his head and trying not to clutch at his leg.
“Fine,” he managed, forcing himself to keep moving in the hopes that it would prove to her that there was nothing wrong. “Absolutely fine.”
She let it go, though she looked far from happy as she turned to go back to her desk. He balled his free hand into a fist and stumped towards the front desk, leaning into his walking stick. He could have asked the girl for help, but it might draw attention when he had shooed her away so brusquely before.
The man at the front desk looked a little older than John. He smiled at him as he reached the desk and said, “Good morning, sir. How can I help you today?”
“I think you might be able to help me. There was a book I wanted … I think it might have been ordered for me, or left behind the desk, or something …”
“Name?” the assistant said, already tapping commands into the computer.
“John Watson?” John tried, and immediately wondered whether he should have tried Moriarty’s name instead.
“Ah, yes!” the assistant said with a smile. “A friend of yours came in yesterday and asked us to put a copy of A Journey Through Afghanistan behind the desk for you. It should be just here …”
He crouched down to look and resurfaced a moment later with a book in his hand. He slid it across the desk towards John.
“That would be the one,” John told him. The mention of a ‘friend’ clinched it. Moriarty - or one of his people - had to have been here to set things up.
“That’ll be twelve pounds, please, Mr Watson,” the assistant said as he reached for a plastic bag.
“Twelve - oh, of course.” John reached for the wallet. Why would Moriarty pay for the book in advance? He pulled out the correct amount and handed it over, taking the plastic bag in exchange and heading outside.
On his way to the bookshop, he had walked past the Marylebone Church Gardens and noticed a few people seated along the path that led up to the building. He headed back the way he had come; once again, he needed somewhere innocuous to sit and figure out the next clue. The gates were open to the public and no one seemed to notice him as he went inside and took a seat on an unoccupied bench a little way away from the other people who were enjoying the gardens. He settled himself, propping his walking stick against the bench seat and stretching out his injured leg. The pain was a constant burn. He gently placed a hand over the wound. The touch made him wince. It was impossible to be sure without properly checking, but he suspected the wound might be bleeding through his bandages.
There was nothing he could do about that now - not without risking Sherlock’s life by breaking a rule. He pulled the book out of the carrier bag and looked down at it. A Journey Through Afghanistan by David Chaffetz. The front cover proclaimed it a memorial; in smaller letters above the title, John read, “Encounters with nomads, traders and peasants in peacetime Afghanistan.”
He checked the back cover, then carefully turned the pages of the book in case there was a bookmark or folded corner. Nothing. He was fairly sure that he wasn’t being pointed to Afghanistan: his funds wouldn’t get him there, and he probably wouldn’t be allowed to fly out there without a very good reason. So what? He thought back to the clue at the Freud Museum that had led him, eventually, to Swiss Cottage. There couldn’t be anything hidden in the cover image: Moriarty would have had to physically add or remove something, and it was brand new and flawless. That left him with the actual contents of the book. He found the contents page and scanned down it for any reference that might be useful, but he didn’t recognise anything that might point to a location in London.
He sighed and raised his head, staring around at the gardens in an attempt to calm himself. He wasn’t cut out for this. Whatever Moriarty was pointing him to, he couldn’t find it. He wasn’t Sherlock.
Thinking of Sherlock reminded him that he wasn’t far from the flat - from home. He closed his eyes and wondered whether Sherlock was there right now, pacing the room in long-legged strides or lying motionless on the couch with nicotine patches courting the veins in his arm. He might still be out, of course. It wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t slept; so long as there were clues to be tracked down, suspects and witnesses to interrogate, contacts to meet with, Sherlock could keep going on reserves that seemed infinite when there was a case at hand. John’s brows pulled down into an automatic frown of concern. He would much rather imagine Sherlock back at 221B. Even though he would get no sleep there, either, he might at least allow his body to snatch a moment’s rest on the couch.
He sighed and opened his eyes again. Musing on Sherlock’s whereabouts and wellbeing wasn’t helping. Right now, the only thing he needed to think about was the clue, and the consequences if he didn’t solve it. Remembering that there was a sniper rifle apparently trained on his friend was enough incentive to return to the book.
What would Sherlock do, he thought. He had to try to think more like Sherlock and Moriarty - more like a genius. It was all about the little details, things that no one else would notice. No one normal, John’s brain added, traitorously, and then he felt guilty. He shook his head and looked down at the book in his hands. Details. He might as well start at the beginning. He opened A Journey Through Afghanistan again at the first, unnumbered pages, before even the title page. There was a blurb about the author, which John skim-read and dismissed. He turned over to the title page, which was opposite a map of west Afghanistan, alongside a globe image and another map which showed where the country was in the world. He took a careful look both at the pictures and the text, then turned the page again. He was faced with the copyright page. His heart leapt; the book had been published by the University of Chicago press, and every instance of the word ‘Chicago’ had been scored under by a blunt pencil.
Details. Flipping through the book, he would never have seen it. He smiled and murmured, “Thank you, Sherlock …”
Not that the word Chicago actually got him anywhere. It couldn’t mean the city itself. Moriarty hadn’t given him the means to leave the country, and John was sure by now that he was supposed to stay in London. He closed the book and put it away in the plastic bag. He needed a location in London that was somehow linked to Chicago.
“I wonder,” he said to himself, thinking aloud. Moriarty had used a KT Tunstall song for one of his clues, and the location of a theatre for another; unlike Sherlock, he wasn’t oblivious to popular culture - or he was pretending not to be. Maybe he was trying to set himself apart from Sherlock, or prove himself the better of the two, because he saw the value in things Sherlock disdained. Whatever the reason, it gave John food for thought. There were plenty of things Sherlock was unaware of because he considered them unimportant. However, John had only found one gap so far in Sherlock’s encyclopaedic knowledge of London: he knew nothing about the West End. John could remember asking him, incredulous, how he could possibly live in the city and not know the name of a single show. What if the answer to this clue was the musical Chicago?
He had no idea which theatre Chicago was currently showing, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out. He stood up, mindful of his leg the moment he moved it, and started back towards Baker Street underground station. It would be quicker to take the tube across the city, not to mention easier on his leg. He also might be able to pick up a flyer there about London’s West End that had details of shows and theatres, which would give him more of an idea of where he needed to be.
Chapter Six
Full Crossword Solution, in case anyone is interested.
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