Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm (6 page)

She shook her head. ‘That damned family are expecting their evening meal. I swear, Josh, there are times when I just feel like poisoning the lot of them and watching as they writhe in agony on the dining-room carpet. But not just yet. I need to get back.’

‘Stay in touch.’ He laughed. ‘Let me know if you find them golden plates you keep on about.’

‘I will.’ She turned away, then turned back. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I found this in the room of one of the maids.’ She reached into a hidden fold of her crinoline skirt and withdrew a letter. ‘It is a note from a boy who claims to love her.’

‘I ain’t interested in tittle-tattle,’ Harkness said.

‘You would be if you knew that the boy in question is the eldest son of the Mayor of Farnham.’

Harkness cocked his head to one side in sudden interest. ‘The Mayor’s son, seeing some little hussy of a housemaid? That ought to be good for a few quid. The Mayor’s very particular about the company he keeps. He tells everyone that his son is going to marry into the nobility. He’ll want to keep this one
very
quiet.’ He frowned. ‘The letter’s in the boy’s own handwriting? And he’s signed it?’

‘With love and kisses.’

Harkness grinned. ‘People never learn, do they? I never commit anything to writing, just in case.’ He reached out and took the letter from Mrs Eglantine. ‘Thanks for this. You want cash now, or shall I add it to the account?’

‘Pay me later. Just make sure you remember.’

‘Oh, I’ll remember. My memory’s razor sharp.’

They parted, Mrs Eglantine heading off in one direction and Josh Harkness in the other. Sherlock almost expected the man to try to kiss her on the cheek, based on that momentary final flash of friendship, but if the thought crossed his mind he didn’t act on it.

Sherlock’s gaze flickered uncertainly between the two of them. Should he follow Mrs Eglantine, or Josh Harkness? It occurred to him that he didn’t have to follow
either
of them – he could just go and find Matty and spend the rest of the day in Farnham – but he knew that he couldn’t let this thing go. There was more at stake here than he had realized – not just his own safety, but the future of his family. He
had
to find out what was going on, and stop it. If he could.

After a few seconds he decided that he should follow the greasy-haired man. Mrs Eglantine was heading back to the house – she had said so herself. He knew where she would be and pretty much what she was going to be doing. The man was the uncertain quantity here, and Sherlock needed to find out much more about him. That was the direction that any immediate threat to Sherlock would be coming from.

Harkness now had something incriminating on one of the housemaids in Holmes Manor. Sherlock wondered which one it was. He didn’t know any of them by name, and rarely said anything to them, but they all seemed pleasant enough, and good at their jobs. If one of them had found happiness with a boy who was from a different social class, then what of it? Sherlock didn’t see why either of them should be punished for the fact, let alone the boy’s father.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that the British system of working class, middle class and upper class people was not only pointless and archaic, but damaging to the very fabric of society.

Checking to see that Mrs Eglantine hadn’t turned around to come back for some reason, Sherlock slipped through the crowd after her friend.

Sherlock stayed well back, just in case Harkness looked over his shoulder. He probably didn’t know what Sherlock looked like, but he seemed like the kind of man who would be constantly checking for pursuit. As the two of them moved through the crowd Sherlock couldn’t help but notice how some of the townsfolk – usually the better-dressed ones – moved out of his way and turned their heads to avoid looking at him. He seemed to be known to a lot of people – and not in a good way. Sherlock couldn’t help but remember some of the older boys at Deepdene Academy who had bullied the younger ones. They had swaggered through the school halls in much the same way, and the kids had moved out of their path like minnows moving out of the way of a stickleback.

Sherlock sensed a presence by his side. He turned his head a fraction, not sure that he wanted to acknowledge whoever it was. Maybe Mrs Eglantine had turned back and seen him. But no – it was Matty. He grinned up at Sherlock, one hand holding a cauliflower which he was eating raw.

‘Wha’s goin’ on?’ he said through a mouthful of vegetable.

‘We’re following someone.’

‘Who? That Mrs Eglantine?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘No. Some other man she was meeting. Harkness, I think his name is. Josh Harkness.’

Matty’s face seemed to freeze. His eyes widened in concern. ‘Josh Harkness? Small bloke with hair that looks like he washes it in lamp oil?’

‘That’s him.’

Matty shook his head. ‘Best not to get involved with him, Sherlock. I heard things about him. The barge hands on the canal talk about him in whispers. He takes a cut from most of the thieves that work this town. Five per cent of their earnings, he takes, payable every week. If they don’t pay him, he takes five per cent of their bodies – just cuts it off. Fingers, toes, ears, noses . . . whatever it takes until he has five per cent of their body weight. That’s his rule, and he never varies it.’ He shuddered. ‘We had a talk, him and me, a little time after I arrived in Farnham. He took me by the shoulder in the marketplace and said quietly, “I notice that you’re not averse to nabbing bits of food here and there, young ’un. That’s all right – never let it be said that Josh Harkness begrudges a boy his fill. But take a note from a friend – if you ever graduate to taking money rather than fruit and pies, I get a cut. Ask anyone. And if I don’t get a cut –”’ he made a snipping motion with his fingers – ‘“well, one way or another, I get my cut, if you see what I mean.” He’s not a nice man, Sherlock. Even on a scale of people who are not nice, he ranks right near the top.’

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully as the two of them moved through the crowd. ‘I understand. I got the impression that he had few scruples, but he’s got something on my family – some kind of information that he’s holding over their heads.’

‘Yeah, he dabbles in blackmail as well. He collects all the little secrets that people have, and he gets them to pay him every week according to their means for the privilege of keeping it all secret.’ Matty shook his head. ‘It’s a few pence here, a couple of shillings there and a handful of pounds every week, but it all mounts up. He’s making a fortune without working for it.’

‘And he’s cashing in on people’s unhappiness,’ Sherlock said grimly. He found that the thought was making him angry. ‘He’s a parasite on the human race, and someone ought to do something about it. Why don’t they?’

‘The people he’s blackmailing are too scared to go to the police, because if they do their secrets will be revealed. Besides, he’s probably blackmailing half the police in Farnham as well. The last thing they’re going to do is expose him.’

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to do it myself,’ Sherlock said. The words surprised him even as he heard himself saying them, but they sounded right.

Matty was about to say something else, but up ahead Josh Harkness turned a corner out of the marketplace. He was still clutching the stolen letter in his hand. Sherlock gestured to Matty to keep quiet. Together they exited the fringes of the crowd and moved towards the corner. Sherlock sidled up to the edge of the brick wall and looked around it carefully, half expecting to come face to face with the blackmailer, but the man was up ahead, walking along an empty street. Sherlock hung back until Harkness was almost at the far end. If he and Matty started after him while he was still only halfway along, then if he turned, he would see them straight away. They would be the only two people on the street.

Harkness got to the end of the street and turned left. As soon as he vanished from sight, Sherlock pulled Matty into the street and started running.

It only took a few seconds for Sherlock and Matty to get to the end of the street. They did the same there as they had before, Matty hanging back while Sherlock peered around the corner. Harkness was perhaps twenty feet away, still striding along, ignoring everything around him. He was, Sherlock judged, very confident in himself.

A smell began to prick at Sherlock’s nostrils: a sharp smell, like a combination of cleaning chemicals and something darker, like sewage. Sherlock felt his eyes watering as the vapour – whatever it was – began to irritate them.

At the end of the street, rather than turning into another street or an alley, Harkness came to a door and opened it with a key. He stared right and left suspiciously, the stolen letter still held in his hand. Sherlock pulled back so that he couldn’t be seen, trying to suppress a sneeze that kept trying to explode out of his nose. By the time he felt confident enough to poke his head back out, the man had vanished.

‘What’s in there?’ he asked Matty.

Matty poked his head around the corner as well, underneath Sherlock’s. He sniffed. ‘Tannery,’ he said firmly. ‘They get the cow hides coming in from the farms and the abattoirs, and they cure them to turn them into leather.’

‘“Cure” them?’ Sherlock asked. He’d heard the term before, but he wasn’t sure what it entailed.

‘Yeah.’ Matty glanced up scornfully. ‘You ought to get out more. “Curing” is what they do to turn skin into leather. It makes it harder, makes it last longer and stops it from rotting.’

‘And how do they do that?’

‘They scrape as much flesh as they can off the skins with sharp knives, and then they wash them with some kind of chemical stuff.’

Sherlock sniffed again, feeling the bite of ammonia at the back of his nose and throat. ‘Yes, I can smell the chemicals.’

Matty grimaced. ‘You can smell them all over Farnham. The chemicals they use to cure the hides are made from some pretty horrible raw materials.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, put it this way – some bloke told me that the chemical was called “urea”.’

Sherlock thought for a moment.
Urea
. It sounded innocuous. It sounded like . . . oh. Yes. It sounded like ‘urine’. He looked down at Matty, frowning. ‘Are you telling me that they tan leather using
urine
?’

Matty nodded. ‘That and other stuff, but you probably don’t want to even think about that. Just take my advice – hold your nose whenever you pass by that place.’ He shook his head. ‘I heard a story about one of the blokes who worked in there. He was trying to mix the skins around in the big tank they have, using a long stick, but he overbalanced and fell in.’

Sherlock felt his eyes widen. ‘Fell into the . . . ?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What happened?’

‘He drowned.’

‘Drowned in . . . ?’

‘Yeah.’ He shuddered. ‘When I die I want to die quietly, in my sleep. Not drowning in a bath of—’

‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Sherlock said decisively.

‘
What?
’

‘I said, we’ve got to get in there.’

‘Are you
mad
?’

‘Josh Harkness went in there.’

‘Yes. I
know
. That was my point. Not only does that place smell worse than the wooden outhouse you rescued me from in that American railway station last year – which, by the way, smelled like someone had got stuck and died – but it’s also got inside it the most dangerous man within a hundred miles. There are times when I wonder about you, Sherlock.’

Sherlock sighed. ‘Look, I wish it wasn’t necessary, but he’s got some information about my family. He’s blackmailing my aunt and uncle. They’re nice people. They’ve never done anybody any harm, and they’ve looked after me and fed me for over a year now. I owe it to them to do something.’ He gazed down the street, feeling a grim expression settle across his face. ‘I’ve decided that I don’t like blackmailers.’

‘All right.’ Matty looked around. ‘Going through that door would be a waste of time. Harkness probably locked it behind him, and even if he didn’t we don’t know where it opens out. Might be right into a room full of people. There’s a broken window round the corner. We could probably get in that way.’

‘How come you know there’s a broken window round the corner?’

Matty looked at Sherlock with exasperation. ‘I know where all the broken windows in Farnham are – just in case I need them. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that people leave out on kitchen tables. Although in this case I decided never to use the window as soon as I found out what was in there and who owned it.’

Sherlock frowned. ‘I wonder why Harkness doesn’t get it repaired.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Maybe he knows that nobody in their right mind would ever burgle the place, knowing who he is, an’ all. Maybe it lets some fresh air inside. Lord knows, it needs a stiff breeze running through.’

Sherlock nodded, and led the way around the corner, walking along the street and past the closed door through which Harkness had entered the building. He deliberately didn’t look sideways just in case the door was open a crack and Harkness was looking out, watching for people following him. The confidence with which he’d walked away from the market suggested that he didn’t expect to be followed or didn’t care if he was, but Sherlock couldn’t take the chance. Maybe the man was trickier than he looked.