The Janissary Tree

[ 61 ]

The first thing Yashim noticed, after the stench he was forced to suck down into his heaving chest, was the light.

It rose in eerie columns from the vats into which, across an area of several acres, the animal skins were lowered for boiling and dyeing. Against a forest of flickering torches, each vat threw out a spume of coloured vapour, red, yellow and indigo blending and slowly dissolving into the darkness of the night air. The air stank of fat, and burned hair, and worst of all the overreaching odour of dog shit used to tan the leather. A vision of hell.

A hell into which Yashim’s quarry had disappeared.

Yashim dropped to one knee and took a careful look around.

He’d heard about the tanning yard, and smelt it, too, but this was the first time he had seen it with his own eyes. A high wall enclosed a space about the size of a football field, and crammed together, almost touching at the rim, the vats lay embedded in a raised floor of clay and cement, which glinted greasily in the torchlight, and allowed the tanners to walk between them and stir their bubbling contents with a long pole. Moulded of clay, lined with tiles, each vat was about six feet across. Here and there crude derricks had been set up for hauling the heavy bundles of wet skins in and out of the dyes, and at the junction of each four vats, in a space that resembled a four-pointed star, circular iron grilles had been fixed, Yashim imagined, to feed air to the flues that ran underneath. Several of these grilles were visible from where he stood.

Of the assassin there was no sign, but Yashim knew that he was there, somewhere, hidden behind the lip of one of the vats, perhaps, or standing motionless against the shadowed walls. Yashim knew almost nothing about the killer, except that he could operate in the dark: it was in the dark that he had launched himself against him, in darkness he had killed Preen, in the night he had stolen in to garrotte the hunchback. The dark, Yashim thought, is this man’s friend.

He scanned the tannery again. It was surrounded by high walls: only at the farther end of the tannery across the dancing glow of colour could he see other darkened doorways. He did not think the killer had found time to reach them.

Yashim shifted focus to look at the vats closest to him. The colours in the steam were less vivid, perhaps because of the way the light caught them; it was only further out, as the pillars of steam overlapped, that they showed a rainbow iridescence. Some of the nearer vats appeared to be empty.

Yashim edged closer on bended legs, holding up the skirt of his cloak. He stepped out onto the clay. It was surprisingly slippery, beaded with droplets of steam and fat, and he moved cautiously, planting his feet with elaborate care. He could feel the heat from the vats but, yes, there were empty vats among them. They were drained, he now saw, by means of a wooden bung attached to a chain which ran up the inside of each vat and was secured by a metal loop at the rim. He had a vision of the killer dropping down into one of them: like the soldier lying dead in the cauldron at the stables, long ago.

He reached into his cloak and unsheathed the little dagger at his belt. For a moment its blade glinted fiercely in the weird light, and then dulled as the vapour which filled the air condensed on the cold metal. He held it out, the handle beneath his thumb and nestling into his curled fingers, using it like a pointer.

He put one foot on top of the grating, feeling a rush of hot air up his leg; he tried it with his weight and felt the grating rock, with an almost imperceptible metallic sound. He pushed again, a little harder. Again the same slight yielding to pressure, but this time the metal grille gave a distinct knock against the frame.

Yashim stepped back and crouched down to inspect the grating. It was about twenty inches in diameter, set with rounded iron bars about two inches apart. He raised his head, considering. There had been so little time to hide. Crouched in one of the empty vats, the killer would be caught like a bear in a pit: it would be only a matter of time before Yashim found him, and then…

He put out his hand and pushed the far side of the grating, watching it rock very slightly away from him. It was not properly bedded at one side, and by rocking it to and fro he worked out the pivotal point. Yashim ran his fingers along the edge and gave a grunt as his fingers closed on a small twist of cloth no bigger than a fingernail that protruded from the joint.

He stood up and stepped back, carefully, to take a flaming torch from a bracket in the wall. Once more he scanned the tannery, but nothing moved. By the grating he knelt down and thrust the torch against the grille.

Tunnels. These grilles had to be more than air-vents: they must also act as access-points to a network of tunnels for the tanners to feed the fires that boiled the water in the vats. The killer could have dropped down here into the tunnels: in his haste, though, a corner of his sleeve must have caught in the join as he replaced the grille overhead.

It has already been said that Yashim was reasonably brave: but that was only when he stopped to think.

Without a moment’s reflection, he heaved up the grille and swung his legs into the pipe. The next moment he was crouched at its base, about five feet below, peering in astonishment at what was revealed in the flickering light of his torch.