Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

Sherlock had no answer to that.

They carried him over rough ground for what seemed like an hour. He kept looking around to see if he could see Virginia, but if she was being carried as well then she was ahead of him and out of sight. He hoped that she’d managed to escape.

Eventually he was thrown on the back of a horse. His arms and legs were tied together with a rope running beneath the horse’s stomach, and his belt was fastened to the saddle so that he didn’t slip underneath the animal while they were riding. One of the ‘corpses’ mounted the horse, and they started to gallop away.

The repetitive thumping impact of the horse’s rump in his stomach and the heavy odour of the horse itself made Sherlock feel sick. He was constantly on the verge of sliding beneath the horse, where its massive legs would pound into him over and over again until his bones were smashed to fragments. He clenched his arms and legs as tight as he could, trying to stay where he was.

His head was jolted up and down so much that he couldn’t see what was flashing past. He was dimly aware, though, that there were other horses ahead of him and behind. Was Virginia on one of them? As his discomfort got worse and worse, he hoped that she wasn’t.

The noise made by the horse’s hoofs changed. They weren’t riding on earth any more; they were riding on stone. He heard echoes, as if they were surrounded by hundreds of horses. They were inside some kind of stone courtyard. The horse slowed to a halt. Sherlock was thrown forward, and the rear of the saddle hit him in his side, knocking the breath from him.

Hands grabbed him. A knife cut through the ropes holding him on to the horse. He was carried again, face down this time, too weak and nauseous even to lift his head. All he saw were cobbles, and the occasional edge of a stone wall.

And flickering shadows. The whole place appeared to be lit by torches.

Where was he? He remembered the granite shape of Edinburgh Castle, looming above the town. Surely they hadn’t ridden far enough to be back in Edinburgh? Were there other castles around?

Sherlock was carried down a corridor and into a room. He heard barking and growling. On the far side of the room was a fenced-off area. Men were looking into it with avid interest, some of them exchanging money. Through gaps in the fence Sherlock could see two dogs – big ones – fighting. They leaped at each other, tearing at ears with their teeth and scratching at eyes and skin with their claws. In the flickering torchlight he could see blood spattered across the floor. Some of it was fresh, but some of it was dried. Dogs – and maybe other things – had been fighting there for a while.

He was carried out of that room and into another one. There was no fenced-off area here – instead, men and women were gathered around a rough circle that had been chalked on the flagstones. In the centre of the circle, two men warily stalked each other. They were stripped to the waist, and their chests gleamed as if they had been oiled. One of them had fingernail marks ripped down his torso. The second man suddenly stepped forward. He crouched, grabbing the first around the waist, lifted him in the air and threw him to the ground. The crowd went wild, yelling and cheering.

Moments later Sherlock was being carried out of that room as well. The next had a walkway round the edge and a rectangular pit in the middle, like a swimming pool. Except that there was no water, and a waist-high fence made of wide wooden panels ran all the way round the edge of the pit. Sherlock could smell a rank, feral odour.

Something made a snarling sound. Sherlock realized that there was an animal corralled in there. It had obviously heard the men carrying Sherlock, because it threw itself against the fence. The wooden panels shook. What was in there?

The men scurried for the far door, obviously terrified of whatever the beast was.

Sherlock was taken into a large room and dumped on the ground.

He lay there for a while, staring upward. His arms and legs felt three inches longer than they had been. He could feel bruises all over his body. All in all, he thought, he wasn’t really in a position to do any damage to anyone.

The ceiling was white plaster separated into squares by wooden beams. It looked old, and it looked impressive, but there were massive strands of cobwebs in each corner, hanging like grey rags.

Sherlock closed his eyes and listened. He could hear the crackling of a fire – logs splitting in the heat – and a background murmur that sounded like a whole group of people waiting for something – whispers, giggles, the shuffling of feet. The sound of an audience waiting for a show to start. He could smell sweat, and food, and underneath it all the rank odour of the animal in the pit in the previous room.

Eventually Sherlock pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around.

He was in a stone hall. Flaming torches hung from the walls, illuminating everything with a flickering red-tinged light. Tapestries hung between the torches, looking like old moth-eaten bits of carpet. Interspersed between the tapestries and the torches were the stuffed heads of animals, mounted on shield-like plaques. Most of them were stags with spread antlers, but there were also some wolves with their jaws open, exposing their teeth, and something that Sherlock could have sworn was a bear. He supposed he should be glad there weren’t any men’s heads on the wall.

Ahead of him was a dais, and on the dais was a chair. It looked like it had been hewn by hand from a massive tree trunk. Sitting on the chair, lounging on it, as if he was a king in the centre of his court, was a man who was as big as Amyus Crowe, but where Amyus Crowe was usually a symphony in white – white hair, white clothes, white hat – this man was a concerto in black. His mane of hair, wild eyebrows and unkempt beard were the colour of night. The checked jacket and the kilt he wore were mostly black as well, with occasional lines of red or white. Like Crowe he must have been in his late fifties or early sixties, but like Crowe he looked as if he could beat several younger men at a time in a fight.

Several men stood behind him. They looked like boxers, or wrestlers – heavily muscled, with flattened noses and thickened, misshapen ears. They too were wearing jackets and kilts of the same black-checked cloth. Clan tartan – wasn’t that what Matty had said it was called? Did that indicate they were all part of the same clan?

The man in the chair gazed down at Sherlock with a raised eyebrow.

‘So,’ he said in a Scottish brogue so thick that Sherlock could have cut it with a cake knife, ‘this is the other bairn the Yankees are looking for.’ He raised a hand and gestured to one of the men behind him. ‘Bring the youngster’s friends here. Let’s have a little family reunion before the inevitable and tragic separation.’

The man nodded and walked off through an arched doorway. While they waited, Sherlock took the opportunity to look around. Gathered on either side of the dais was a mixed group of people who were staring either at Sherlock or at the man in the chair. There were men, women and some children, but they all had the look of people who survived by their wits – hard, watchful eyes, and skin that had seen a lot of sun and rain. They weren’t dressed in tartan. Instead their clothes were a mixture of the patched and the threadbare. Where Sherlock saw a jacket and a pair of trousers that actually matched he guessed it was either by accident or because they’d been stolen together. Among the rabble that clustered around the dais, Sherlock noticed several of the white-faced, skeletal figures. The rest of the crowd didn’t seem to mind their presence – unlike the people in the tavern. They were fully integrated, not avoided, chatting with their companions. They weren’t acting in the distant, corpse-like manner Sherlock had noticed before. He didn’t know why they were dressed the way they were, but there had to be a reason for it.

A ripple of interest ran through the crowd, and they turned towards the archway. Seconds later, Crowe, Virginia, Rufus Stone and Matty were pushed through. They glanced around, orienting themselves. Seeing Sherlock in the centre of the room, Crowe headed over towards him.

‘Son,’ Crowe nodded as Sherlock climbed to his feet.

‘Ah worked out when ah saw they’d taken Ginnie that they’d gotten you as well.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect her,’ Sherlock apologized.

Crowe shook his massive head. ‘Ain’t nothin’ you could’ve done,’ he said. ‘These folk are organized. They took us at the top of the cliff an’ brought us here.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘I’m guessing they’re not Bryce Scobell’s men,’ he said. ‘They look more like locals, like Scotsmen.’

Crowe nodded. ‘Ah suspect they’re a local criminal gang based around Edinburgh. We seem to have fallen into their hands, though ah ain’t quite sure why or what they want.’

The man who had been sent out to get them stepped towards Crowe. ‘Nae talkin’,’ he growled, and reached out as if to cuff Crowe around the ear. Crowe calmly caught his hand and bent it backwards until the man screamed and dropped to his knees.

‘Ah don’t much like bein’ manhandled,’ he said quietly, ‘an’ there’s been a whole load of that already. Grateful if you could stop.’

The man on the ground struggled to get to his feet, and two thugs from behind the bearded man on the chair started forward towards Crowe, but their leader raised a hand.

‘Leave him be, for the moment. He’s got spirit. I admire that in a man.’ He nodded at Crowe. ‘Stand down, Mr Crowe. I could throw all my lads at you at once, I suppose, and that would certainly be fun to watch. As you can see, we do like to watch a good fight here – watch and place bets. Problem is that you’d return a few of them damaged and I need them for other things.’

Crowe faced up to the big black-bearded man. ‘You have the advantage of me, sir. You know my name, but ah don’t believe we are acquainted.’

The man stood up. He was even taller than Sherlock had thought, and his chest was as wide as a beer barrel.

‘My name is Gahan Macfarlane of the Clan Macfarlane, and I have a wee business proposition to put to you.’

Something about the name ‘Macfarlane’ struck a chord in Sherlock’s mind. He’d heard that name recently. But where?

Crowe smiled, but there was little humour in his expression. ‘You don’t strike me as a businessman,’ he replied. ‘More like a bully an’ a criminal.’

Macfarlane smiled back. ‘Strong words from a man who’s outnumbered. There are many kinds of business, my friend, and many kinds of businessman. They don’t all wear frock coats and top hats.’

‘So which particular kind of business are you in?’

‘Oh, I have a bonny portfolio of interests.’ Macfarlane stared around at his court, and they duly laughed. ‘Let’s just say I work in insurance and have done with it.’

‘This,’ Crowe said darkly, ‘would, ah guess, be the kind of insurance where local shopkeepers pay you a certain amount every week to ensure they don’t have . . . accidents.’

‘That’s correct,’ Macfarlane acknowledged. ‘And you would be surprised how often those shopkeepers have accidents very shortly after they decide they can’t afford my particular kind of insurance any more. It’s a dangerous world out there. Shops catch fire all the time, and shopkeepers get beaten up by roving gangs of roughs for no reason at all. As I see it, I’m providing a public service by protecting them from these perils.’

Crowe turned to Sherlock. ‘Extortion,’ he said simply. ‘Innocent struggling shopkeepers paying money to stop this man from sending his thugs in to destroy their stock, beat them up and set fire to their premises. It’s an ugly way to make a living.’

Macfarlane shrugged. ‘It’s nature, red in tooth and claw,’ he said. ‘Every animal has something that it’s scared of, something that can kill and eat it. It’s no different here in Edinburgh. The locals avoid paying their taxes to the Government whenever they get a chance. The shopkeepers sell beer and bread to the locals, but they water down the beer and adulterate their bread with sawdust to save some flour. I come along and take my own cut from the shopkeepers. It’s the chain of life, my friend.’ He smiled. ‘They call us the Black Reavers,’ he said proudly. ‘And we’re known and feared from here to Glasgow!’

The name was familiar to Sherlock from the Edinburgh newspaper reports. The Black Reavers were the criminal gang that was feared so much. ‘So who are you scared of?’ he asked boldly. ‘Who takes their cut from you?’

Macfarlane moved his shaggy bearded head to look at Sherlock. ‘I’m at the top of the food chain in these parts, laddie,’ he said grimly. ‘There isn’t anyone I’m scared of.’ He glanced back at Crowe. ‘And give me my due – I don’t get involved in prostitution, or blackmail, or kidnapping, or anything like that. Nothing that affects bairns, by the by. I leave that to the lower classes of criminal. I have my standards.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe a little pickpocketing or breaking and entering every now and then. Or some of the men who work down at the docks get a little careless with the occasional crate, it smashes on the dock and some stuff gets scooped up and taken away. I don’t organize the crimes, or carry them out, but I do take a cut from the pickpockets and thieves for the privilege of being able to operate on my territory.’

‘A criminal with morals,’ Crowe mocked. ‘How touchin’.’

‘A criminal with a practical attitude,’ Macfarlane rejoined. ‘The police get more exercised over kidnapping, blackmail and murder than they do over theft and extortion. I try not to attract their attention.’

‘So there is someone higher up the food chain than you,’ Sherlock pointed out.

Macfarlane scowled. ‘Even the bear avoids disturbing the wasp’s nest,’ he snapped.

Interesting, Sherlock thought. The man was touchy on that point.

He looked around at Macfarlane’s court of bullies, thugs, pickpockets and thieves. And of course the skull-faced ‘corpses’ scattered among them. ‘But what’s the point of pretending you have dead people under your command?’ he continued. ‘I mean, it’s very well done, very convincing, but I don’t understand what it’s for.’

‘I rule through fear, laddie,’ Macfarlane replied simply. ‘People pay me extortion money because they fear what will happen to them if they don’t. I’ve found that they fear me more if they think I have powers they don’t understand. Sometimes they try to stand up to my men – try to get them to back down, or try to pay them off – but how can they threaten or bribe a corpse? If they think I can control the dead they will live in mortal fear of me, and they’ll keep paying.’ He laughed. ‘There’s some that don’t call us the Black Reavers any more – they call us the Black Revivers, on account of the fact that we revive the dead!’

‘But they’re just people dressed and made up to look like corpses,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Don’t people realize?’

‘People believe what they want to believe. Edinburgh is a dark place. People here want to believe that the dead can walk. What with Burke and Hare, the buried parts of the city and all the ghost stories associated with the castle, my work was half done for me already.’

‘Fascinatin’ though this is,’ Crowe said, ‘ah don’t quite see what we have to do with your fine little business setup. We’re not thieves, we’re not pickpockets an’ we’re not shopkeepers. What exactly are we doin’ here?’

‘Ah,’ Macfarlane said. ‘That’s an interesting question. Word reached my ears that someone new to the area was looking for a party of people. They were looking for a big man with white hair and a funny way of speaking who was travelling with a girl with red hair who was dressed like a boy. In fact, the word that reached my ears suggested that the girl might even be disguised as a boy, but that she could be recognized by the unusual colour of her eyes.’ He gestured towards Crowe and Virginia. ‘And here you are – a big man with white hair and a funny way of speaking and a girl with eyes the colour of gorse in flower. Once I was told you’d been seen in the area of Cramond I decided to take a look at you myself. I wanted to see what was so valuable about you.’

‘Valuable?’ Crowe said. His face was grim. He seemed to know where the elliptical conversation was heading, and Sherlock had a good idea as well.

‘Oh, didn’t I mention? There was talk of a reward offered for the man and the girl I described. Alive, of course. Five hundred pounds was spoken. That’s a significant sum in these parts. There was no reward for them dead. In fact, there was a specific threat made of retribution if they were killed by accident.’ He smiled at Crowe. ‘I don’t know who you are or who you annoyed, but someone is very keen to get their hands on you. Not that it matters, but do you want to tell me why they want you so badly?’

Crowe locked gazes with Macfarlane. ‘Everythin’ is scared of somethin’,’ he rumbled.

Macfarlane nodded. ‘Bold words,’ he said. ‘But you’re here, and you don’t seem too frightening to me. I’ve sent a message to the man who was offering a reward for your capture. He’ll be here soon. Then we’ll see what we see.’

‘What about the boys?’ Crowe asked, jerking his head towards Sherlock and Matty. ‘You said you never hurt bairns. They got caught up in this by accident. Ah’d be obliged if you could see your way clear to lettin’ ’em go. There’s no reward for them, an’ you have mah word as a gentleman that ah’ll be less trouble to you if you let them go.’

Macfarlane considered for a moment. ‘It’s true that I’m not a man who countenances violence to bairns,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘I won’t go!’ Sherlock blurted out.

Crowe rounded on him. ‘You will if ah say so, son,’ he hissed. ‘You don’t know what Bryce Scobell is capable of.’

‘But—’

Crowe raised his hand. ‘No more discussion. Better two of us stay to confront Scobell than all four of us. Ah’d feel easier in mah heart if ah knew that you and young Matthew were safe.’ He turned to Macfarlane. ‘Well? Do we have a deal?’

Macfarlane stared at Crowe for a while. ‘On the one hand, you’re right – there’s no specific reward offered for the two laddies. On the other hand, they’re resourceful, and I think that, despite what you say, you might be more inclined to cooperate if I keep them here. So, no, there is no deal. I hold all the cards at the moment, and there’s no reason for me to give any of them up in a hurry.’

Something was still tugging in the depths of Sherlock’s mind about the name ‘Macfarlane’. He tried to give it space to come through, to make itself more obvious. Something he’d heard recently? No, something he’d seen.

‘That murder case!’ he said suddenly as the memory broke through to the surface of his thoughts. ‘The one where Sir Benedict Ventham was killed.’ He tried to bring the images of the newspapers into focus in his mind – the one he’d read on the train from Farnham to London, and the one he’d read in the park at the head of Prince’s Street. ‘The woman who was arrested – her name was Macfarlane, and the newspaper said she was connected to the Black Reavers.’

A hush seemed to settle over the room. Macfarlane’s face turned thunderous. ‘Mah wee sister,’ he growled. ‘To have that happen to her! She’s not even guilty! She wouldn’t hurt a fly!’

‘She’s related to a criminal gang leader,’ Crowe growled. ‘Ah presume the police just took one look at her family tree an’ threw her into jail.’

Macfarlane stood and walked forward, stepping off the dais and coming right up to Crowe. The two men stood face to face, nose to nose. They were both the same height, and had the same impressive build and the same mane of hair. The only differences between them were that Gahan Macfarlane’s hair was black instead of white.

‘She isn’t guilty of any crime,’ he said quietly, his words dropping into the expectant quiet of the room like stones into a still pool of water. ‘She always hated the line of business that I’d gone into. She’s a God-fearing lass, and nothing could ever change that.’

‘Things can happen,’ Crowe said, equally quietly. ‘Perhaps this Sir Benedict Ventham attacked her, and she had to protect herself.’

‘She wrote to me.’ Macfarlane wasn’t blinking. He was staring straight at Crowe, daring the big American to continue finding reasons why his sister might be guilty. ‘She swore to me on the Bible that she didn’t do anything that might have resulted in his death, and that she mourned his death like she mourned the death of our own dear father. I believe her.’

‘In that case,’ Sherlock said loudly, ‘I have a business proposition for you.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Macfarlane stared at Crowe for a long moment, as if he hadn’t heard Sherlock speak, then swivelled his head until he was looking directly at him. ‘Go on, laddie. Astound me.’

‘If we can clear your sister’s name, show that she’s innocent – you let us go. You don’t give us to Bryce Scobell.’

Sherlock could hear a murmur of disbelief run around the room.

Crowe had also turned to look at Sherlock. In contrast to Macfarlane’s calm, almost serene expression, he was frowning as if he was wondering what Sherlock was up to. Sherlock had to admit that he wasn’t sure himself.

‘Let me get this right,’ Macfarlane said slowly. ‘You want to . . . what? Investigate the murder? Look for things the police might have missed? And you seriously think you can collect enough evidence to convince the police that young Aggie is blameless in this crime?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘What have you got to lose? If we fail to prove her innocent, then you give us to Bryce Scobell and collect your blood money. If we succeed, and she’s released, then you get your sister back. Either way, you win.’

Macfarlane smiled, as if amused at Sherlock’s confidence. ‘You’re a little young to be a copper, lad.’

Sherlock’s mind flashed back to the time, some months before, when his brother Mycroft had been accused of murder. The police hadn’t been interested in investigating the crime: they had a suspect right in front of them, and enough evidence to convict. It was Sherlock who’d had to find the real killer.

‘The police see what they want to see,’ he said bitterly. ‘They see what’s easiest for them. I don’t get distracted by the obvious. I can see things they can’t.’

Macfarlane stared at him without speaking. His expression was a strange mixture of dismissive scorn and faint hope. There was something in Sherlock’s voice that was working on him.

‘I believe you can, at that,’ he said eventually, ‘but I’m going to need more than that before I let you loose to investigate. This might just be a way of getting you somewhere you can make a run for it.’

‘Not when you’ve still got my friends captive,’ Sherlock pointed out. He glanced around, desperately looking for something – anything! – which he could use to persuade Macfarlane that he could do what he said.

‘You said some of your men work at the docks?’ he asked.

Macfarlane nodded.

‘What if I could tell you which of your men work on the docks and which don’t. Would that convince you?’

‘Just by looking at them? Not asking them any questions?’ Macfarlane shook his head. ‘I can’t see how you’d be able to tell.’

‘Line up twenty of your men,’ Sherlock said. ‘Don’t even tell me how many of them work at the docks. I’ll work it out.’

‘Let’s make it more difficult,’ Macfarlane said. ‘You can’t look at their hands either, just in case you were hoping for rope burns or the like.’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘If that makes you happier.’

Macfarlane moved away from Amyus Crowe as if he had forgotten that the big American was even there. He pointed at various people in the crowd. ‘You, you and you – over there, against the wall. Dougie, you too. And you, Fergus . . . Hands behind your backs, all of you.’

While Macfarlane was selecting his twenty men, Rufus Stone gestured to Sherlock. ‘Are you sure about this, Sherlock? Can you do it?’

‘I think so,’ Sherlock replied. ‘I’m not sure there’s an alternative. We need to find some leverage to get him to release us. If you’ve got a better idea . . . ?’

Rufus shrugged. ‘Not off the top of my head.’

‘All right,’ Macfarlane announced. ‘Let’s see your party trick.’

Twenty men were arranged along the wall, all with their hands behind their backs. They ranged from one of Sherlock’s age to a handful in their sixties. They all had dirt ingrained in their necks and in the backs of their ears, and crude blue tattoos on their forearms. Some had long hair down to their shoulders, some had ponytails and some just had stubble covering their scalps.

Sherlock went up to one end of the line. Instead of walking along and looking at their faces and their clothes, which he suspected Macfarlane was expecting him to do, he crouched down and examined the first man’s shoes as closely as he could. He could hears titters of laughter from the crowd of thugs and thieves, but he ignored them. On hands and knees he scuttled along the line, checking shoes and boots and the turn-ups of trousers.

When he got to the end of the line, he straightened up. The men in the line were all craning their necks, looking at him with fascination and, in some cases, suspicion, while the rest of the crowd were talking among themselves and pointing at Sherlock.

‘Right,’ he said. He walked back along the line, pointing to five of the twenty men. ‘You, you, you, you and . . . yes, you. Step forward.’ He glanced across at Macfarlane, who was watching him with fascination. ‘These five all work on the docks on a regular basis. The other fifteen don’t.’

‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right.’ He gestured to the men to return to the crowd. ‘How did you know?’

‘They work near salt water,’ Sherlock said, ‘and that’s what gives them away. They must get splashed with the water from the docks on a regular basis. I’ve noticed it before. Seawater does two things. When it soaks into shoe leather and dries out it leaves white marks behind, where the salt has been deposited in the leather itself. Also, when drops of water collect in the turn-ups of trousers and then evaporate, they leave crystals of salt behind. These five men either have white marks in their shoe leather or salt crystals in their turn-ups, or both.’

‘I’m suitably impressed,’ Macfarlane admitted. ‘You seem to have your wits about you, which is more than I can say for the coppers investigating the murder of which my sister is accused. All right then – I’ll take you up on your offer. Have to tell you, though, that you haven’t got long. It’s –’ he checked his watch – ‘nine o’clock now, give or take. A meeting’s been arranged with the men who want your American friends here for two o’clock this afternoon. You’ve got five hours, no more and no less.’

Sherlock glanced at Amyus Crowe, then at Virginia’s white face, then at Matty. Matty gave him a smile and a thumbs-up.

‘If that’s all I’ve got, then that’s how long it will take,’ he said grimly, hoping he could live up to the boast.

Macfarlane gestured to one of his men. ‘Dunlow, you know the lie of the land. Get a carriage out front right away. You and Brough go with the kid. Take him to the big house first. If he tries to make a run for it, go and find him. Whatever happens, get him back here for two o’clock. Understand?’

The men nodded.

‘The butler at Sir Benedict Ventham’s house is a . . . client of mine,’ Macfarlane told Sherlock. ‘Tell him you’re working for me and he’ll let you in to look around, although I can’t think what you’ll find now.’

‘Neither can I,’ Sherlock murmured. He went to leave with Macfarlane’s man, Brough, but turned back to smile at Virginia. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ he said.

‘I know you will,’ she replied.

Brough was a thin man in his thirties with a scattering of freckles across a bald head. His lips were twisted in a sneer, as if he could smell something unpleasant. He accompanied Sherlock back through the rooms he’d been carried through before. Whatever was in the pit was snuffling around behind the fence on the far side as they passed, but in the next room the two men were still fighting, trading blows slowly while standing close together, not moving anything apart from their arms. They looked exhausted, and their faces were swollen and covered with blood. The dog fight had ended, and the crowd who had been gathered around it were dispersing. Money was still changing hands.

They headed towards the door to the outside, emerging into a weak, watery sunlight that was filtering through rain-heavy clouds. Sherlock turned around to look at the building they had left. Based on the flagstones, the tapestries, the animal heads and the flaming torches, he was expecting an old manor house at the very least, perhaps even a castle, but he was amazed to see that it was just a large and anonymous wooden warehouse set among other warehouses. The area looked deserted. It was probably located somewhere near the docks where those men worked. From the outside the building looked like somewhere that sacks of grain would be stored, not the central base for a criminal gang. More disguise, he supposed. Anything could be made to look like anything else, if you took enough trouble over it.

Dunlow was already waiting outside. He was older than Brough, shorter and wider, but he gave the impression that his bulk was largely muscle rather than fat. The two men led Sherlock to a black carriage.

Half an hour later they drew up outside a building made of grey stone and with a long roof of black slate tiles. The windows were barred. A carving in the stone above the door read Edinburgh and Lothian Police.

‘This is where the boss’s sister is being kept,’ Dunlow said. His voice sounded like stones grinding together. He looked uncomfortable at being so close to a police station. ‘Let me go in and see if they’ll let you talk to her.’

‘Is that likely?’ Sherlock asked. ‘I mean, I’m not a relative or anything, and even if you claim I am, they’ll know as soon as I open my mouth that I’m not Scottish.’

‘There’s a fine trade goes on in these parts in letting citizens with spare change observe criminals in their cells,’ Dunham replied darkly. ‘The middle classes like to see the poor in police custody – it lets them sleep more securely in their beds. I’ll slip the sergeant a shilling and tell him that you’re the son of a visiting English lord. He’ll be happy to let you have ten minutes alone with her, no questions asked.’ He saw Sherlock’s shocked expression and snorted. ‘What, you think the police are any better than the criminals? The only difference is that they have uniforms and we don’t.’

He walked off into the police station and came out five minutes later.

‘There’s a constable on the desk who’ll take you to the cells,’ he said. ‘Be out in quarter of an hour, otherwise they’ll want another shilling.’

Dubiously, Sherlock entered the police station. It smelled musty, unpleasant. A uniformed constable was indeed waiting just inside the door. He had mutton chop whiskers and a bushy moustache. ‘This way,’ he said gruffly, without making eye contact. ‘Fifteen minutes to look at her and talk to her. No funny business, you hear?’

‘No funny business,’ Sherlock agreed, without knowing quite what he was agreeing to.

The cells were down a set of stone steps that had been worn into curves by generations of feet. They reminded Sherlock uncomfortably of the time he had visited Mycroft in a police station in London. He hoped that this visit would have as successful an outcome as that one.

The constable stopped in front of a door and unlocked it with a large key from a hoop on his belt. He pushed the door open and gestured Sherlock in. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he warned. ‘She spends most of her time crying, so I don’t think she’ll do anything stupid, like attack you, but you can’t tell with this sort. If she makes a move towards you, bang on the door. I’ll be just out here, waiting.’

Sherlock entered. The door closed behind him, and he heard the key turn in the lock. He was alone with a potential murderer.

The potential murderer was lying on a metal bed that seemed to be attached to the wall by hinges and chains. She looked up at him. She was about thirty-five years old, with hair like straw and blue eyes. There was something about the shape of her face that reminded Sherlock of her brother, although she was smaller and more delicate. Her face was dirty, and streaked with tears, and her clothes were crumpled, as if she had slept in them – which she probably had.

‘I don’t need a priest,’ she said. Her voice was weak, but firm. ‘I am not yet ready to make my peace with God.’

‘I’m not a priest,’ Sherlock said. ‘Your brother sent me.’

‘Gahan?’ She pushed herself upright. There was panic in her eyes. ‘He mustn’t get involved. He mustn’t.’ She glanced towards the door, as if the constable might be listening outside. ‘If the police think he has anything to do with this, they will chase him to the ends of the Earth and never rest until they catch him!’

‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘He’s not involved. I asked him if I could come to see you. I want to find out what happened.’

‘What happened?’ She looked away, eyes filling up with tears. ‘Sir Benedict is dead, and the police think I did it, sir. That’s what happened.’

‘And did you?’

She looked back at him, shocked. ‘I couldn’t kill Sir Benedict! I’d worked for him for twenty years. Sir, he was like a father to me!’

Sherlock nodded. ‘All right – then why do the police think that you killed him?’

She put her head in her hands. ‘Because I am his cook. Or at least, I was his cook. I prepared all of his food. And he was poisoned, or at least that’s what they say. So if he was poisoned, then I must have done it. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

‘But other people must have touched his food, or carried it, or been able to access it, surely?’

She shook her head. ‘Sir Benedict was very . . . untrusting. He believed that his business rivals were out to destroy him. He was convinced that they would attack him, or poison his food if they could. There were guards all around the house to prevent anyone getting in or setting fire to the place, and he took one with him whenever he left the house. All the doors and windows were locked and barred, and the only person he trusted to cook and serve his food was me.’ She made a slight sighing sound. ‘It was like a prison sometimes, and yet I was happy there. I’d been working for him for a long time, and he knew that I would never do anything to hurt him. Besides, he put it in his will that if he died of natural causes then I was to inherit five hundred pounds. The same was true for the butler, the maids, the gardener and all the guards he employed as well.’ She sniffed. ‘He knew that nobody could pay any of us to hurt him, or to let them into the house.’ She sniffed. ‘Not that the money was the reason why I wouldn’t have done anything.’

‘So you prepared his food – by yourself – and you took it to him? Alone?’

‘That’s right,’ she confirmed. ‘And I collected all the raw ingredients myself. Bought all the herbs and vegetables and milk from the market, and picked the meat from the butchers’ slabs. And I baked all his bread myself too.’

‘So if the meat or the vegetables were poisoned, then anyone in the area buying them would have died as well – and nobody did.’

‘That’s exactly the case, sir, and that’s why I’m in here now, facing the gallows.’

Sherlock checked his watch. Time was ticking away. Bryce Scobell was only a few hours from meeting Gahan Macfarlane. ‘And are the marketplace and the butchers’ shops the only places you got the raw ingredients?’

‘Yes.’ She caught herself, hesitating. ‘Except for the occasional rabbit. The gardener catches them in traps. He’d bring them to me, still warm, and I’d gut and skin them. Sir Benedict loved a bit of rabbit in cream-and-mustard sauce – ordered it a couple of times a week, he did.’ She sniffed, on the verge of tears again. ‘That was what they reckoned killed him. They fed a dog with the remains of his dinner, and the dog died as well.’

‘Interesting. His last meal was rabbit in cream-and-mustard sauce?’

She nodded.

‘And you prepared it all yourself?’

‘That’s right. I bought the cream in the market, along with the mustard seeds. The gardener provided the rabbit himself. It was still warm, so I knew it had only just been killed.’

Sherlock racked his brains for something else to ask. Nothing sprang to mind. He looked at the woman as she sat there on the hard metal bench, her face tearful, grief-stricken, and yet hopeful. She was depending on him to prove her innocent, just as Amyus and Virginia Crowe, Matty Arnatt and Rufus Stone were depending on him. He couldn’t let them down, but he couldn’t see how Aggie Macfarlane could be anything else but guilty. If what she had told him was true, then Sherlock couldn’t see any way that the meal could have been poisoned. Yet if Aggie Macfarlane was guilty, wouldn’t she have given him a story that provided some chance that the food might have been poisoned by someone else? She was likely to be convicted and hanged because of her own honesty.

‘I need to see the house,’ he said lamely, ‘to look at the scene of . . . of the crime. If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.’

He left her there, in the cell, staring after him with newly kindled hope in her eyes.

He told Dunlow and Brough that he wanted to visit Sir Benedict Ventham’s manor house next. They raised their eyebrows, but they set off without a word.

The journey took another twenty minutes. Sherlock checked his watch at least five times, counting the minutes and the seconds.

They turned off the road and into a driveway that curved up to a large, forbidding house. Instead of stopping at the front, the carriage kept going, past the house and down a side road to the back.

‘Servants’ entrance,’ Dunlow explained.

They got out of the carriage, and with Dunlow in the lead and Brough bringing up the rear they walked towards a door at the back of the house. It opened as they got to it. A tall, thin man with a pencil moustache stood there, looking at them. He was dressed in striped trousers and a black jacket. His left cheek appeared to be slightly swollen, and Sherlock wondered if he had been in the middle of eating something when they turned up.

‘What in heaven’s name are you two doing here?’ he hissed. ‘I’ve paid your employer his blood money this week. Get out of here!’

‘Macfarlane wants this kid here to see the place where Sir Benedict died.’

‘This is not a tourist attraction,’ the man said. ‘We do not conduct sightseeing tours.’

‘Are the police here?’

The butler shook his head. ‘They said they already have everything they need.’

‘Then there’s no reason you can’t show us the room where your boss died, and the kitchen where the meal was prepared. Or do you want to explain to my boss that you don’t want to?’

The butler hesitated. He looked at Sherlock. ‘Just the boy, then, and only for a few minutes. No more than that.’

Dunlow looked at Sherlock.

‘That should be enough,’ Sherlock said.

The butler led the way into the house, moving from the servants’ area, where the walls needed painting and the carpet was threadbare, to the main part of the house, where the paint was immaculate and the carpets were so thick and so comfortable it was like walking on clouds. He led Sherlock into the main hall. A grandfather clock was set against one wall. It ticked loudly, counting down the seconds. The butler turned to one side, into a dining room. Sherlock noticed that he was chewing something.

‘This was where Sir Benedict died,’ the butler said. He nodded to a chair at the head of the table. ‘Sitting there, he was.’

The smell of tobacco drifted across to Sherlock as the butler spoke. That explained the swollen cheek – he was chewing tobacco.

‘Who brought the food in?’ Sherlock asked. He already had the cook’s answer, but he wanted to check that she had told him the truth.

‘Aggie Macfarlane.’ The butler’s lips wrinkled. ‘Very close to Sir Benedict, she was. Too close, if you ask me. She came in carrying the plate like everything was normal, but she knew that there was poison in it.’

‘You’re sure she poisoned the food?’ Sherlock asked.

The butler scowled. ‘Who else could have done it?’ he asked.

That was a fair question, and Sherlock was asking himself the same thing. ‘What about the plate?’ he asked. ‘Could the plate have been coated with poison?’

The butler paused before answering, and Sherlock noticed that he was shifting the chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘The cook had strict instructions always to wash the plate just before she dished up the meal,’ he said eventually. ‘Everybody was aware of that. There would be no point in poisoning the plate.’ He paused, thinking. ‘And I was told that the police fed a dog with some of the food – not from the plate, but from the oven dish she’d cooked it in. The dog died. That surely must mean that it was the food that was poisoned, not the plate.’

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said slowly, ‘but that means the food was poisoned before it was cooked. Why poison the food and then cook it? The poison might be destroyed by the heat of the oven. It makes more sense to put the poison on the food after you’ve served it up.’ He felt a little flutter of excitement in his chest. This was the first real evidence he had that Aggie Macfarlane might actually be innocent. It wasn’t enough to clear her name with the police, but it suggested to Sherlock that he was on the right track.

The clock in the hall made a sudden noise as the cogs and gears inside shifted. Sherlock glanced at its face. He needed to be on the right track.

‘I need to go to the kitchen,’ he said.

‘Follow me.’

As they walked back through to the servants’ area he checked his watch. Ten thirty in the morning. Two and a half hours left – and half an hour of that would be wasted in getting back to Macfarlane’s warehouse. He was running out of time.

The kitchen was almost identical to the one at Holmes Manor – a large table in the centre stained with years of use, a big range with plenty of oven doors, a dresser stacked with plates and dishes, a rack hanging from the ceiling where the bodies of pheasants and rabbits dangled, a large, square sink . . . all the usual paraphernalia of the culinary arts. There were no dirty plates or food-encrusted saucepans – either Aggie had tidied up as she went along or she hadn’t been arrested straight away.

He wasn’t going to learn anything here.

‘The rabbit that was poisoned,’ he said. ‘I need to see where it was caught.’

‘That,’ the butler sniffed, ‘is not my area of expertise. My domain is indoors, not out. I will fetch the gardener.’ He walked across to a door that led outside, to the garden, and opened it. He spat the tobacco out of his mouth in a brown stream that hit the ground to one side of the door and called, ‘Hendricks! Come here!’

The butler turned back to Sherlock. ‘Hendricks will answer any more questions you might have. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a new position to seek.’

He walked off, leaving Sherlock alone. Sherlock stood there, in the kitchen doorway, gazing out on the well-tended garden, aware of the dark odour of the tobacco rising up from where the butler had spat it out. He felt slightly sick at the smell. He couldn’t see the point in tobacco – either smoking it or chewing it. They were disgusting habits. He had no intention of doing either when he grew up.

A figure appeared at the end of the path, through a gap in the hedge. He was in his forties, with short salt-and-pepper hair and beard, dressed in a dark green jacket and moleskin trousers. ‘Did someone call?’ His voice was a rich Scottish brogue, completely unlike the butler’s strangled accent.

‘Are you Mr Hendricks?’

‘Just Hendricks will do.’ He glanced at Sherlock’s clothes. ‘Sir,’ he added. ‘What can I do for you?’

Sherlock debated whether to try to explain who he was and what he was doing, but after a moment’s thought he decided just to tell the man what he wanted and leave it at that. ‘The rabbit that you caught – the last one Aggie Macfarlane cooked for Sir Benedict – I need to see where you caught it.’

Hendricks stared at Sherlock for a moment. ‘Fair enough,’ he said eventually. ‘Best come with me then.’

Sherlock checked his watch. This was all taking too long! Time was running short, and the lives of his friends were on the line!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hendricks led the way along the path and through a gap in the hedge. On the other side was the edge of a stretch of woodland, still within the estate’s boundaries. He set off, trudging with easy steps, not looking to see if Sherlock was following.

Sherlock checked his watch again. Coming up to eleven o’clock, and all he was doing was walking in the countryside. He wasn’t going to make it!

The gardener came to a stop by a grassy bank. On the other side of the bank the ground dropped away to a natural depression, roughly circular in shape, that was bereft of trees. Around the edges of the bank Sherlock could see dark holes – rabbit burrows, he presumed.

He had a sudden flash of memory – the rabbit’s head in the burrow, back in Farnham. The thing that had started his journey off. It seemed so long ago now, but it had only been a few days.

‘This is where I laid the traps,’ Hendricks said. He wouldn’t look at Sherlock, but instead gazed into the distance. ‘Used a looped snare attached to a bent sapling. The rabbit puts its head through the snare and triggers it, and the sapling pulls the snare tight and lifts the little critter off the ground. I check the snares every couple of hours.’

Sherlock gazed at where the snare had been, but he wasn’t sure what it could tell him. On a whim, he moved across to the bank where the rabbit burrows were. He bent down to check the nearest one. There was no sign of a rabbit, but he did notice some plant stalks that were lying just inside the mouth of the burrow. For a moment he assumed that they were the remnants of a meal that the rabbits had brought back to the burrow, but then he realized that couldn’t be the explanation. He’d never seen rabbits move food from one place to another – they always ate wherever they could find grass growing. He bent and picked up one of the stalks. There were flowers at one end, like purple bells, and the other end had been cut. These plants had been deliberately put there, in the mouth of the burrow. But who would do that?

‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked, holding the stalk up where Hendricks would see it.

‘Foxglove,’ the gardener said, glancing at the stalk and frowning. ‘Be careful of that, sir. “Dead Man’s Bells” they call that. Just a nibble of one of them leaves can kill you. There’s some as say that just breathing in near the plant can kill you, but I don’t put much stock in that. Been walking these woods for years, I have, and never had a problem.’ He frowned ‘Not seen much foxglove neither. Quite rare round here.’

‘Why would rabbits be eating poisonous plants?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Surely animals avoid poisonous plants.’ He turned the stem in his hand. ‘More to the point, why would someone put a poisonous plant where a rabbit can’t help but find it?’

‘They do say,’ Hendricks said, ‘that rabbits are immune to foxglove.’ His face was contorted, as if he was thinking something through. ‘Don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is . . .’

‘If it is true,’ Sherlock said, his thoughts racing ahead of his voice, ‘then the poison in the foxglove might build up in the rabbit’s meat. That might poison anyone who ate the rabbit!’

He glanced up to meet Hendricks’s gaze. The gardener was staring at him, the frown still darkening his face. The thought occurred to Sherlock that if it was Hendricks who had left the foxglove plants by the burrow, hoping that the rabbits would eat them and the poison would build up in their meat, and if he had then given the rabbit to Aggie Macfarlane, knowing she would prepare it for Sir Benedict to eat, then the gardener had committed a particularly devious murder. He might want to stop Sherlock telling anyone about it. He tensed his muscles, preparing to spring up and run if Hendricks made any move towards him.

But no – if Hendricks was a murderer, then why tell Sherlock what he needed to know to solve the crime?

‘Someone deliberately left the foxglove here, for the rabbits to eat?’ the man asked. ‘So the chances were that if I caught a rabbit, its flesh would already be poisoned?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘How long would it take for the poison to build up?’

‘A week,’ Hendricks said. ‘Perhaps two. But . . . who would do something like this? Something this barbarous?’

Instead of answering, Sherlock glanced at the ground. The earth was hard – too hard to retain any impression of shoes or boots. He might know how the crime had been committed, but that information was useless without knowing who.

He wanted to check the time, but he stopped himself. Knowing how little time he had left wasn’t going to make him think any faster.

His gaze was skittering around the area of the burrows, looking for something, anything that might be important, when he suddenly realized that there was something unusual on the ground. It was brown and dry, and looked a bit like a long, straight worm. He stared at it for a few moments, wondering why a dead worm would be laid out as straight as that, before he realized.

It wasn’t a worm. It was the mark left where someone had spat a mouthful of tobacco and saliva.

He glanced at Hendricks. The gardener had followed Sherlock’s gaze and was staring at the tobacco stain.

‘Do you chew tobacco?’ Sherlock murmured.

‘Can’t say I ever picked the habit up,’ he replied. ‘I don’t chew tobacco and I don’t smoke it. But I know who does.’

Sherlock remembered the butler, back at the house, and his mouthful of tobacco, and also the way he had claimed that the garden and the woods weren’t his area of expertise. If that was true, why had he been out here, all this way from the house?

‘You need to go to the police,’ Sherlock said. ‘Tell them what you found.’

‘What you found,’ the gardener said grudgingly. ‘I should have seen all this, but I didn’t.’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘The police won’t listen to me – I’m a kid, and I’m not local. There’s more chance of them believing you. If you want Aggie Macfarlane to be released, you need to tell them everything.’

‘Aye. I will.’ A corner of his mouth turned up. ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Aggie. I’ll do whatever I can to get her out. But what about you?’

Now Sherlock did look at his watch.

Ten past one. He had less than an hour to make it back and convince Macfarlane that he could clear Aggie’s name.

‘I have to run,’ he said. ‘I need to be somewhere else in a hurry.’

And he did run. He ran all the way back to the house, to where Dunlow and Brough were waiting for him. Before he even got to the carriage he was shouting, ‘Quick! We need to get back!’

As he climbed into the carriage, which was already pulling away, Sherlock glanced back at the manor house. He thought he saw the butler staring at him from a downstairs window, but the carriage was jolting too much to be sure. As they drove away Sherlock couldn’t help thinking about Mrs Eglantine. Were all staff who ran households potential murderers?

He kept his watch in his hand as the carriage rattled through the streets, lanes and alleys of Edinburgh. His heart was pumping, and he could feel a pressure in his ears and temples. He wanted to jump out of the carriage and run, but that wasn’t logical. It wouldn’t have done any good. The carriage was already going faster than he could.

He hated waiting. He hated relying on other people. He wanted to be doing something.

He glanced out of the window for the thousandth time. Walls, windows, street signs and street lamps flashed past, blurring into an amorphous mass. He was sure Edinburgh was a wonderful place, but at the moment he hated it.

He realized that they were getting close when he started to see warehouses rather than ordinary houses go past. As they slowed to a halt he jumped out and sprinted towards the particular warehouse he recognized from earlier. Macfarlane’s base.

‘Kid,’ Dunlow shouted, ‘wait for us!’ Sherlock pelted full speed through the front door. Men standing guard tried to stop him, but he managed to evade their reaching hands. He left a wake of shouts and yells behind him as he ran onward through the dog-fighting room and through the room where the two men had been boxing.

‘I’ve done it!’ he cried as he sprinted into the room where Macfarlane held his court. He spotted Amyus Crowe, standing protectively next to Virginia, and Rufus Stone, and Matty. Their gazes intersected on him, amazed, as he skidded to a halt in front of Macfarlane’s dais. ‘I’ve done it!’ he repeated. ‘I know who killed Sir Benedict Ventham, and it wasn’t your sister! It was the butler. I don’t know why, but I know it was him.’

‘That’s good news,’ Macfarlane said. There was something grim about his voice, and his previous good humour had evaporated. ‘I owe you, laddie, as we agreed. The problem is, I’m not in a position to pay and you’re not in a position to collect.’

Sherlock was about to ask what he meant, to point out that they had a deal, but he suddenly realized that most of the eyes in the room weren’t looking at him or at Macfarlane, but were looking past him, towards the door. Already knowing what he was going to see, he turned round.

Ten men were standing along the wall, invisible to anyone looking into the room. Nine of them were pointing crossbows at Macfarlane and his men, and at Sherlock. The tenth man stood calmly a pace in front of the others. He was below average height, and had short hair brushed neatly across his forehead. His clothes were tailored to a perfect fit. He rested his hands on a black wooden cane, the point of which rested on the floor between his feet. The head of the cane was a golden skull. All of this Sherlock noticed in a flash, but it was the man’s face and hands that fixed his attention. There wasn’t a square inch of skin that didn’t have a name tattooed on it. From where he stood Sherlock could see ‘Alfred Whiting’, ‘Cpl Bill Cottingham’, ‘Winnie Thomas’ and ‘Paul Fallows’. They were all written in black, but prominently tattooed in red across his forehead was ‘Virginia Crowe’.

‘Bryce Scobell,’ Sherlock said calmly.

‘We meet again,’ Scobell said in his curiously precise, curiously gentle voice. ‘Apologies. I know that my appointment was later on this afternoon, but I just could not wait any longer. Mr Crowe and his beautiful daughter have been on my mind, and on my skin, for quite some time now.’ He gazed at Sherlock. His eyes were so black that Sherlock couldn’t tell the pupil from the iris. ‘You caused me significant trouble yesterday. Two of my men were crippled by your actions.’

Sherlock looked along the line of Scobell’s men, but couldn’t see any casts or bandages.

‘Oh, you won’t see them now,’ Scobell continued. He had a small smile on his face. ‘Like horses, I have them put down when they are injured.’

‘Then why do the rest stay working for you?’ Sherlock asked. ‘If I were them, I wouldn’t take the risk.’ As he was speaking he let his gaze run up and down Scobell’s body, looking for something – anything – that might give him an edge if it came to a fight, or anything he could use to influence the man verbally, but there was nothing. There were no clues to anything on Scobell’s person. He might just as well have been a walking, talking mannikin.

‘They fear what will happen to them if they leave, of course,’ Scobell replied, ‘and I reward them well enough to compensate them for the risk. If there is one thing I have discovered about people it is this: nobody ever believes that they will die. Others around them, yes, but each person privately believes that they personally are invincible.’

Sherlock’s attention was caught by the golden skull on the top of the cane. The dark hollows of the eye sockets seemed to be staring at him. He thought he could see something on the top of the skull, a slot of some kind, but before he could work out what it was Scobell had lifted the cane up so that the end was pointing directly at Sherlock’s face. His finger moved slightly, pressing into the skull’s left eye socket, and a slim blade sprang out of the end of the cane. The point hung in space, half an inch from Sherlock’s right eye.

He felt sweat bead on his forehead.

‘There is,’ Scobell said, still in that horribly gentle voice, ‘no time for pleasantries and polite badinage, I fear. I am on a tight timetable, and there is something I have been promising myself for a few years now. Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold, but I have been waiting so long that my revenge has congealed on the plate.’ He gazed at Crowe. ‘You owe me. You owe me for the death of my wife and child.’

‘Let the boys go, Scobell!’ Amyus Crowe shouted from the dais. ‘They’ve done nothing to offend you. It’s me you want.’

‘On the contrary,’ Scobell replied, ‘they cost me several of my best men. I will have my revenge on them later, but first I will see to your beautiful daughter – not so beautiful when I have finished with her, I promise you – and then I will deal with you.’

Gahan Macfarlane stepped forward. ‘This is my place,’ he growled, ‘and you are a guest in it. I give the orders here.’

Scobell slowly let the end of the cane sink down to the floor. He pushed down on the golden skull, and the blade slid back into the cane.

Sherlock heard a click as it was caught by some kind of spring mechanism so that it was ready to jump out again when needed. His attention was still caught by the slot on the top of the skull. What was it for?

Scobell gazed calmly at Macfarlane. ‘I hold all the cards,’ he pointed out. ‘You have done nothing to offend me – yet – but whether you live to see another day depends on your making sure that you continue that way.’

‘You do not,’ Macfarlane roared, ‘give orders in my—’

Before he could finish the sentence, Scobell raised his free hand. One of the men behind him moved his crossbow slightly, and pulled the trigger. With a metallic twang the bow released, sending a bolt flying through the air. It hit Dunham in the centre of his chest. He stared at it for a moment in horror, then fell forward to his knees. He looked up at Macfarlane and tried to say something, but instead he slumped sideways to the flagstones.

‘I give orders wherever and whenever I please,’ Scobell said, his voice as calm as if he was buying a newspaper.

Sherlock glanced around, taking in everything that he could see, calculating whether or not he could use it to change the dynamic of the situation. Scobell’s men had the advantage, and Sherlock couldn’t see any way out. Another few minutes and he would lose both Virginia and Amyus Crowe. A few minutes more and he would be dead too, along with Matty and Rufus Stone. He had to do something.

His gaze moved over Gahan Macfarlane. The big Scotsman was staring at Sherlock. He glanced at the doorway to the previous room, then back at Sherlock again. Then he nodded.

What was he trying to say?

Sherlock remembered the pit in the centre of the room next door, and the creature that was penned inside. Was that what Macfarlane wanted him to think about? He didn’t know what the creature was, but judging by the dog fight and the boxing match in the other rooms, and by the various animal heads that hung from the walls here, Macfarlane liked to see people and animals fighting. Whatever was in the pit was likely to be big and fearsome. Macfarlane probably set dogs against it, or possibly even people, wagering not on whether they would win but on how long it would take them to die.

It gave Sherlock an idea, but he had to get to it first.

‘It’s time,’ Scobell said. ‘The names on my forehead and on my forearm have been red for too long. It is time to have them covered in black ink.’

As Scobell stepped forward, Sherlock’s eyes fixed again on the gold skull on his cane. The cane had a blade in the end, activated by one eye socket. But the skull had two eye sockets . . .

He reached out and jammed his forefinger in the skull’s right eye socket.

A blade erupted out of the slot in the skull and through Scobell’s hand. He screamed: a high-pitched, shocked noise that paralysed everyone in the room apart from Sherlock. He pushed past Scobell and towards the door to the previous room – the one with the beast trapped in the pit. Scobell’s men regained their wits and tracked him with their crossbows as he ran, but he was already through the doorway when they fired. He heard the bolts whizzing behind, and screams as some of them found a mark. Scobell’s men were shooting each other by accident.

There was chaos in the room he had left, cries and shouts and sounds of people running, but Sherlock was more concerned with what was ahead of him: the swimming-pool-like pit, and the waist-high wooden panels that lined the edge.

The creature in the pit roared. Sherlock heard the thudding of paws and the clicking of claws as whatever it was rushed towards his side of the pit.

He grabbed a panel and pulled it upward. It was loosely bolted to the floor and resisted for a moment, but in his desperation his strength was such that he tore it loose. He didn’t have the luxury of failure. The panel was perhaps fifteen feet long and three feet wide, and so heavy that he had difficulty in manoeuvring it, but somehow he managed to turn it and throw it into the pit so that one end was left on the edge by his feet, right in the gap where the panel had been fastened.

He had made a ramp so that whatever was in there could get out.

It was the only thing he could think of that could even up the odds.

With a roar, a massive shape surged out of the pit and loomed above him, shaggy arms wide and claws spread like handfuls of knife blades. It was a bear – a brown bear – and it must have measured ten feet from its tail to the tip of its nose. Its eyes gleamed red with rage and madness. God alone knew where Macfarlane had got it. Probably he’d had it since it was a cub. The chances were that it had been penned up for years, taunted and abused and forced to fight, and now it was free.

It swiped at Sherlock with a massive paw. Sherlock dropped to the floor and rolled beneath it, just as Scobell’s remaining men burst through the doorway looking for him. The bear forgot about Sherlock. It saw the men, and it saw their crossbows. It remembered all the pain it had suffered.

And it attacked.

Sherlock rolled over the edge of the pit. As he was falling he could hear screams from Scobell’s men and terrifying roars from the bear.

The impact with the floor of the pit drove the breath from his body in a whoosh. His vision filled with stars. It took him a moment to recover. He rolled over and stood up cautiously, looking around. The sides of the pit were about fifteen feet deep, and it was littered with bones. Some were old, but some were fresh and bloody. Sherlock could have sworn that some were human.

He climbed carefully back up the ramp. The bear had gone into Macfarlane’s main room, but five or six of Scobell’s men were lying on the ground just inside the doorway. It was hard to tell exactly how many there were, given the state they were in.

Cautiously Sherlock moved into the doorway.

Most of Macfarlane’s men had run. Macfarlane himself was still there, on the dais by his throne, with Rufus Stone, Matty, Amyus Crowe and Virginia clustered around him. They were watching what was happening in the centre of the room with horror.

The remainder of Scobell’s men had been pulled apart by the bear’s claws. They had obviously tried to stop it: their crossbows had been fired, and there were bolts sticking out of the bear’s fur, but that hadn’t helped them at all. Having dealt with them, the bear was rearing over Bryce Scobell. It was nearly twice his height. There was no trace of fear on Scobell’s face. There was no trace of pain either, despite the blood that was streaming from his right hand where the blade from the cane had sliced through it.

‘Get out of my way,’ he said with just a tinge of annoyance in his voice. ‘I have business to attend to.’

The bear swiped at Bryce Scobell with a deadly paw. The sharp claws caught in his chest, picking him up like a rag doll. He flew across the room and hit the wall. As Sherlock watched, his body slid, broken and crumpled, to the ground. His expression was as calm, as uninterested, as it had always been, and now would always remain.

The bear scented the group of people on the dais. It dropped to all fours and stalked towards them. The growl that rumbled deep in its chest reverberated through the floor.

Sherlock moved up behind it. He knew he had to stop it, but he didn’t know how. One of the crossbows dropped by Scobell’s men lay by his feet. It hadn’t been fired. He bent and scooped it up. Five or six bolts were already sticking out of the bear’s body, but maybe Sherlock could hit a vulnerable spot. Did bears even have vulnerable spots?

Gahan Macfarlane took a step forward, but Amyus Crowe put a hand on his shoulder. Macfarlane looked at the American, frowning. Crowe moved past Macfarlane, stepping off the dais. He walked forward, towards the bear. Matty and Rufus Stone were frozen. The bear padded towards Crowe, growling. Sherlock could see Virginia raise a hand to her mouth. Her face was shocked, her eyes wide. She could see her father’s death unfolding right in front of her.

Sherlock raised the crossbow, taking aim at the back of the bear’s neck. Maybe he could sever its spinal column. He knew his chances were very slim, especially given how much his hands were shaking. But he had to do something.

The bear reared up on its back legs. It loomed above Crowe, front legs stretched wide and paws spread. It raised its snout and let out a deafening roar.

And then Amyus Crowe did the most amazing thing Sherlock had ever seen. He threw his arms wide and his head back, and he roared as well. His voice echoed through the room. With his massive chest and his heavily muscled arms and legs he seemed suddenly larger than life. He was like a bear as well, but white instead of brown – a polar bear instead of a grizzly bear.

The bear dropped its head and gazed down at Crowe. It sniffed uncertainly.

‘Ah have eaten bigger bears than you for mah breakfast,’ Crowe said firmly. ‘Go back from whence you came, mah friend. Live for another day.’

Unbelievably, the bear sank to all fours. Even so, its head was on a level with Crowe’s. It sniffed at him for a long moment, then it turned round and shambled out of the room, back towards its pit. It passed by Sherlock without even a glance, head held low.

‘Now that,’ Macfarlane said, breaking the silence, ‘is something men would pay to see. Can I perhaps offer you a job, Mr Crowe? Fights twice weekly, payment to be agreed?’

Crowe glanced at Sherlock. He saw the crossbow, still held in Sherlock’s hand, and nodded. ‘Ah gave up bear-wrestlin’ some years ago,’ he said. ‘Ah much prefer bein’ a teacher. More of a challenge, ah find.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

They returned home from Scotland the next day. Sherlock slept for most of the journey. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically. None of the others seemed inclined to talk. In those occasional moments when Sherlock’s mind rose from the depths of sleep he found them either asleep, reading newspapers or just moodily staring out of the window. Matty dashed off the train at Newcastle and came back just as it was leaving with a paper bag full of bread rolls. That was the extent of anything momentous happening.

At Farnham they said their goodbyes as passengers disembarked around them and porters unloaded crates and boxes from the train.

‘You’ll be staying around?’ Rufus said to Crowe, phrasing the question that Sherlock had been wanting to ask but didn’t dare.

‘No reason to go anywhere else now,’ Crowe replied. He had his left arm protectively around Virginia’s shoulders. She looked pale. ‘We don’t need to run any more, and we got nothin’ pullin’ us home.’ He gazed down at Virginia and then across at Sherlock. ‘In fact, we’ve got a shovelful of reasons to stay. As long as the cottage is still standin’, an’ nobody’s moved into it, ah think you’ll be seein’ a deal more of us in the future.’

‘I think I speak for all of us,’ Stone said, ‘when I say that I’m glad. Life would be a lot less interesting without you around, although to be fair it would also be a lot safer.’

Crowe extended his right hand towards Stone. ‘You were there for us when we needed you. That’s the only definition of friendship that counts, in my book. Thank you.’

Stone, taken by surprise, shook Crowe’s hand. He winced at the pressure of Crowe’s grip on his still tender fingers. ‘I’d say it’s been a distinct pleasure, Mr Crowe, but it hasn’t; and I’d say don’t hesitate to call on us again if you need any help, but I’m seriously hoping that you will forgo that opportunity.’ He smiled, to show that he wasn’t serious. ‘Regardless of all that, however – you’re more than welcome.’

Crowe shook Matty’s hand next. ‘Son, you’re brave an’ you’re street-smart. With your instincts an’ Sherlock’s brainpower, you make an unbeatable combination. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome, I s’pose,’ Matty said, shifting uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to praise, or to being the centre of attention.

Crowe turned to Sherlock. He gazed at him for a long moment, then shook his head. ‘Sherlock, whenever ah think ah’ve gotten you figured out, you manage to surprise me. Ah’m not sure which one of us is the student and which one is the teacher any more. Ah suspect that it’s more a partnership of equals now, but ah’m not uncomfortable about that. Ah’m not too old to learn.’ He paused and swallowed. ‘Fact is, Virginia an’ I would be dead or on the run now, if it weren’t for you. Ah owe you more than ah can say.’

Sherlock glanced away, out at the bustling scene of the station forecourt. ‘I don’t like change,’ he muttered eventually. ‘I like to have everything in my life familiar, and I need to know where I can find it. That counts for people as well as things.’

‘Well, son, you know where we are. Don’t be a stranger now.’

Crowe dropped his arm away from Virginia’s shoulders, ready for the two of them to head off towards their cottage, but Virginia stepped closer to Sherlock.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply, and kissed him on the lips.

Before he could do anything apart from blush, she had turned away and was walking off with her arm through her father’s.

In the station, the train’s steam whistle sounded. It was ready to leave.

‘I think,’ Rufus Stone said, breaking the heavy silence, ‘that I need a stiff tot of rum and a liniment-soaked bandage for my fingers. Or a stiff tot of liniment and a rum-soaked bandage for my fingers. Either one will do. The rum in the Farnham taverns tastes like liniment anyway.’ He cocked his head as he looked at Sherlock. ‘Let’s delay restarting the violin lessons, eh? I suspect that your fingers will be a lot more agile than mine for a while, and I hate to be embarrassed.’

Glancing at Matty, Rufus raised a finger to his forehead and saluted. ‘Until next time, Mr Arnatt.’

Stone walked off jauntily. Sherlock watched him go. He knew he should have been feeling something over all the goodbyes, but his lips were still tingling with the memory of Virginia’s kiss.

‘See you tomorrow?’ Matty said.

‘I suppose so,’ Sherlock replied. ‘The only thing I can think of now is sleep, and lots of it.’

Matty glanced at the crates that had been unloaded from the train. ‘Looks like there’s some good scoff there,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll follow them crates for a while, just in case an accident happens and one smashes.’

Sherlock smiled. Matty was irrepressible. He would always survive, no matter what happened. In fact, Sherlock wouldn’t be surprised if, in fifteen or twenty years’ time, someone named Matthew Arnatt was a highly successful businessman with interests all over the country. But he would still be stealing pies off market stalls, just to keep his hand in; of that much Sherlock was certain.

‘People think there’s an obvious dividing line between things that are legal and illegal,’ he said quietly. ‘I think if I’ve learned anything since moving to Farnham, it’s that there is no line. There’s a whole lot of grey in between the white at one end of the scale and the black at the other end. We just need to be careful where we stand.’

‘As long as I’m closer to the white end than the black end, I’m prob’ly all right,’ Matty said. He grinned suddenly, then turned and ran off.

Sherlock held on for a moment, waiting for something to happen. He wasn’t sure what that thing might be, but he had a sense that the storm had paused for a moment rather than passing on. Eventually, when nobody else came up to talk to him and nothing at all noteworthy happened anywhere around him, he left, feeling somehow deflated.

He caught a ride on a farmer’s passing carriage back to Holmes Manor. He jumped off at the gates and walked up the curving drive to the front door, carrying his bag of clothes and toiletries.

The door was unlocked, and he pushed it open. Sunlight streamed across the hall. The space that for so many months had seemed dark and threatening now was filled with warmth and light. It was like an entirely different house. Had he finally got used to it, or was this something to do with Mrs Eglantine’s departure? Had she taken the shadows and the darkness with her?

As he stepped into the hall, a figure appeared from the dining room.

‘Ah, you must be Master Sherlock,’ a voice said.

Sherlock’s tired gaze took in the form of a middle-aged woman with straw-coloured hair pulled back into a bun that was secured at the back of her head with a net. Her face was kind, and her eyes were brown and lively. Although she wore black there was something about her clothes that gave the impression of parties and dances rather than funerals and wakes.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been away for a few days.’

‘So the master said. He mentioned that he was expecting you back soon.’ She smiled. ‘My name is Mrs Mulhill, and I am the new housekeeper. I started yesterday.’

‘Welcome to Holmes Manor.’

‘Thank you. I am looking forward to working here very much indeed.’ She glanced at his bag. ‘I’m sure you have laundry that I can take. If you want to make yourself comfortable somewhere, I will bring you a tray of tea and some biscuits. The master and the mistress are out at the moment, but they will be back for dinner.’

‘Tea and biscuits,’ he said, ‘would be wonderful.’

Leaving his bag in her care, he went across to the library. In his uncle’s absence it was the place where he felt most at home. The front room was for receiving visitors, and the dining room was for eating, and he didn’t feel like going up to his bedroom.

He settled down into his uncle’s leather chair, soothed by the smell of the books and the manuscripts that surrounded him. On the desk he could see the pile of sermons, letters and suchlike that his uncle had asked him to sort through, before Josh Harkness, Gahan Macfarlane and Bryce Scobell had infiltrated his life. It all seemed so long ago.

The sermon in front of him was one he had already looked at – an attack by a vicar somewhere up in the Midlands on various heresies and schisms within the Church. Sherlock’s gaze caught on the phrase ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ halfway down the page, and it was as if a light had suddenly gone on in his brain.

Gold plates. Mrs Eglantine had been looking for gold plates, because she had overheard Sherlock’s Uncle Sherrinford talking about them. She had been obsessed with the idea that somewhere in the house was hidden a stash of gold plates – a treasure of some kind – but she had never found them.

There was a treasure, but it wasn’t the kind she had been anticipating.

Sherlock called to mind what he had read about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or the Mormons, as they were also known – while he was in his uncle’s library. The movement had begun in America about forty years before, led by a man named Joseph Smith Jr. He had claimed that he had in his possession a sacred text called the Book of Mormon, which he told people was a supplement to the Bible. When asked where this sacred book had come from, Smith claimed that when he was seventeen years old an angel named Moroni told him that a collection of ancient writings, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets, was buried under a hill near New York. The writings told of a tribe of Jews who had been led by God from Jerusalem to America six hundred years before Jesus was born.

Golden plates.

Sherlock felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest. Mrs Eglantine must have overheard Sherrinford Holmes talking to Aunt Anna about the golden plates of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Had he mentioned the word ‘treasure’ as well? Had he said to her something like, ‘I shall treasure this letter, my dear, as it gives me everything I need to argue that the golden plates of the Mormons never existed,’ and had Mrs Eglantine overheard the words ‘treasure’ and ‘golden plates’ and drawn a completely erroneous conclusion? Without asking her, Sherlock would never know, and he devoutly hoped that he would never meet her again, but it seemed likely. The treasure she had so diligently searched for was a chimera. A complete illusion.

Sherlock laughed again. He would tell his uncle, of course, as soon as he returned, but he didn’t think Sherrinford would be too distressed by the news that there was no treasure. He wasn’t a man who cared much for worldly goods.

In the midst of laughing, Sherlock smelled something sweet. It was a familiar smell, vaguely medicinal. He knew it from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite place it. For a moment he thought that Mrs Mulhill had returned with the tray of biscuits she had promised, but the room was empty apart from him.

He tried to stand up, but his vision began to blur. He put a hand on the desk to steady himself, but he missed. He fell forward, head impacting on the blotter, but he didn’t feel the impact. He didn’t feel anything apart from a delicious lassitude. A warm mist closed in around him, and he slept.

Vague visions, like a collage of pictures, filled his mind. A black carriage. Ropes. A pad that smelled sweet and cloying placed across his mouth. The sky. A face, red-bearded and wild-eyed, that he recognized but could not put a name to . . .

When he woke up, everything was different.

He was buried in the midst of a pile of thick, tarry ropes in a small room. The walls, the floor and the ceiling were made of rough wooden planks. His head was pounding, and his stomach was lurching. The floor seemed to be moving beneath him, but it was only when he tried to push the ropes away and get to his feet that he realized that the problem was with the room, not with his sense of balance. It really was moving.

He pulled the door open and stepped through, still holding the frame for support.

He was looking out on the deck of a ship. Beyond the rails was a choppy grey sea flecked with white spume. There was no land in sight.

A sailor came around the corner and stopped dead at the sight of Sherlock. He sighed heavily and turned to look behind him.

‘Get Mr Larchmont,’ he yelled. ‘We got ourselves a stowaway!’ Turning back to Sherlock he shook his head. ‘You chose the wrong ship to stow away on, boy.

‘Why?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Where are we going?’

‘This ain’t a pleasure cruise to the Mediterranean,’ the sailor said. He smiled, revealing a handful of tobacco-stained teeth. ‘This is the Gloria Scott, and we’re sailing all the way to China!’

HISTORICAL NOTES

You might think that researching a book set on the same land mass as the one where I live would be easier than researching one set in, oh, say, America or Russia. I certainly thought that before I started work. The strange thing is that it didn’t turn out that way.

I first started thinking about setting a book in Edinburgh when I was staying there for a few days. I was doing a talk at the Edinburgh Festival, and then visiting a couple of schools and talking to the pupils about Sherlock Holmes, and me, and why I wanted to write these books. I was staying in a small hotel in the centre of Edinburgh – just off Princes Street, in fact – and every day, when I left the hotel, I looked to my right and saw the massive volcanic plug of Castle Rock, with Edinburgh Castle sitting on top of it like a solid grey cloud hanging above the city. It all looked so stunning that I couldn’t help but start to picture Sherlock Holmes clambering up Castle Rock, risking his life to save someone. Probably Virginia.

What I should have done, of course, was go to the nearest bookshop and buy as many books on the history of Edinburgh as I could. But I had a lot of stuff in my suitcase, and at the time I was busy writing the previous Young Sherlock Holmes mystery, Black Ice, so I didn’t have time to think about the next book. I filed the images and scenes away in a little locked box in my mind for later. Much later.

Much later comes around faster than you expect. By the time I started to write Fire Storm I was back in Dorset, nearly as far from Edinburgh as it’s possible to get without falling into the sea. Looking around for inspiration, I could only find Michael Fry’s Edinburgh – A History of the City (published by Macmillan – who also publish the Young Sherlock books – in 2009, which means I probably could have got them to send me a free copy rather than buying my own). That book did, however, give me a good sense of how the city had developed and the kinds of people who lived there.

The story of the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare, which Matty tells Sherlock when they are in the tavern off Princes Street, is entirely true. Edinburgh was famed for its medical school, and there was indeed a shortage of bodies. Burke and Hare found the perfect solution to the problem – provide fresh bodies to order, by killing people. Burke was indeed hanged, and then dissected in the very place where so many of his victims had ended up, while Hare did vanish, never to be seen again.

The other story that Matty tells Sherlock – later, when they are coming out of the tenements where they have been questioned by Bryce Scobell – is not true, although it is widely believed.

I ’eard a rumour, last time I was ’ere, that the local authorities was tryin’ to move people out of the tenements. ’Parently they wanted to sell the land off to build factories on, or posh mansions, or somethin’. People I talked to told me that the authorities would start a rumour that some illness, like consumption or the plague, had broken out in a tenement. They’d move everybody out to the workhouse, then they’d knock the tenement down an’ build on the land. Make a lot of money that way, they could. I ’eard that sometimes, if there weren’t any places left in the workhouse, they’d brick up the alleyways in an’ out of the tenements an’ leave the people inside to starve, but I don’t believe that.’

The tenement in question is called Mary King’s Close (a ‘close’ being the local name for the alleyway between two tenement blocks). It’s been built on, over the years, to the point where what were alleys are now underground tunnels. You can visit the place today, and hear the stories about the people who were walled up there to starve, and about the ghosts that still appear in the rooms at night, but the truth is rather more prosaic. People falling ill with the plague often voluntarily quarantined themselves in their own houses to avoid passing the disease on, indicating their status by placing white flags in the windows. Friends and neighbours passed food and supplies to them until they either got better (unlikely) or died (much more likely). There were even special places set up outside the city where plague victims could go to be segregated from everyone else.

Interestingly (or perhaps not) Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and studied medicine there from 1876 to 1881. One of his teachers was a man named Joseph Bell, and it is widely accepted that Doyle based the character of Sherlock Holmes on Bell (who, it was said, could diagnose not only a patient’s illness but also their occupation merely by looking at them). I did briefly consider including an appearance by Joseph Bell in this book, but I quickly decided not to. It would have been too much like an in-joke, and there was no real reason for him to be there.

It would be wrong of me not to mention, by the way, the Sherlock Holmes novel written by American author Caleb Carr entitled The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (Little, Brown, 2005). It takes place largely around Edinburgh. Carr is an excellent writer, and his version of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps as close to Arthur Conan Doyle’s as anyone has managed since Doyle’s death in 1931.

The story that Amyus Crowe tells about Colonel John Chivington and the appalling attack he mounted on the Native American tribe led by Chief Black Kettle is, tragically, true. I grew up watching Western movies in which the Native Americans (or Red Indians as they were known then) were the bad guys and the noble white soldiers were the good guys. Those movies were lies, and I still feel a sense of betrayal that Hollywood convinced so many people otherwise. There is, of course, no record of Chivington having a second in command named Bryce Scobell, but there is no record that he didn’t either.

The bizarre fact that rabbits are immune to the poisons contained in the stalk and leaves of the foxglove is something I first discovered in The Wordsworth Guide to Poisons and Antidotes by Carol Turkington (Wordsworth Editions, 1997). Having done some checking around I have since found that opinion is divided on the subject. Maybe they are; maybe they aren’t. At any rate, Sherlock Holmes believes it to be true.

Bear-baiting was a well-known ‘sport’ in England for hundreds of years, until it was made illegal in 1835. It usually took the form of a bear being tied to a stake and dogs set on it. Either the bear would kill the dogs or the dogs would kill the bear. It was rare that a bear and a man were set to fight, although not unknown. For some reason (possibly a surplus of bears) Russia was better known for its bear-versus-man contests. I had originally intended to have Amyus Crowe face off against a bear in Black Ice, but I couldn’t find a place where it made sense to slot that scene in. For some reason it made more sense in this one – probably because Crowe didn’t have a lot to do in Black Ice, but in Fire Storm he pretty much finds himself pushed to the limit.

The material concerning the Mormon Church’s belief that the word of God was handed down to their prophet Joseph Smith Jr in 1823 on golden plates is also true (by which I mean that the story as I describe it is more or less what the Mormon Church claim – not that the story is actually true. That’s not for me to say).

So, Sherlock has finally confronted the evil Mrs Eglantine and had her banished from the Holmes household. He has also grown up now to the point where he can stand on his own two feet and rescue his brother and his surrogate fathers (Amyus Crowe and Rufus Stone) from trouble, rather than rely on them to rescue him. What next for Sherlock? Well, according to Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the original fifty-six short stories and four novels about a grown-up Sherlock Holmes, his character was an expert at martial arts. Where, I wondered, would he learn those martial arts? China perhaps, or Japan. Time, and the prevailing winds and currents, will tell.

Also by Andrew Lane

Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud

Young Sherlock Holmes: Red Leech

Young Sherlock Holmes: Black Ice

First published 2011 by Macmillan Children’s Books