Stone Cold

by Andrew Lane

  ‘Where will you be?’ Matty asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll send a signal telling you. Somehow.’

  Matty stared at him for a moment. ‘I hate it when you don’t have a plan,’ he said finally. ‘You don’t do well when you’re improvisin’.’

  ‘Hey, I got you out of the orchard in one piece, didn’t I?’

  Matty nodded. ‘You did at that. All right then – take care of yourself. Don’t die.’

  ‘I’ll try not to.’

  Matty ran off towards the house, and Sherlock crawled into the web of rope beneath the cart. His weight pulled it further down towards the ground than he had intended, and he had a sudden horrible thought that he might end up being dragged along the road rather than hanging above it, but suddenly it was too late to do anything about it. He heard the sounds of men returning from the orchard and muffled conversations.

  ‘Get the chloroform canisters,’ Jude’s voice said – higher and smoother than the others, but his tone conveyed unmistakably that he was in charge.

  The rope was cutting into Sherlock as he lay there, face down. He could feel it pressing his chest and forcing his arms back in an uncomfortable way. He tried to worm his hands through the strands, but then they just hung down almost to the ground, and he knew that when the cart started moving his knuckles or his fingertips would be dragged in the dirt, so he pulled them in again. One strand of rope crossed his throat, and he felt like gagging every time he moved his head and it pressed on his windpipe.

  This was maybe not the smartest move ever.

  He felt the cart rock as objects were loaded on and people climbed aboard. The wooden underneath bowed closer and closer as people weighed it down. Eventually, at some silent signal, the horses took up the slack on their harnesses and the cart began to move.

  The padding on the wheels made it a smooth ride, but even so Sherlock found himself moving around, swinging from side to side. The road rolled past just a few inches beneath him, and he found himself fixating on particular stones set into the earth as they entered his field of view. He felt sick. It was like being on a ship, with the exception that he couldn’t see the horizon or feel the breeze. On a ship below decks, maybe.

  Under better circumstances, rocking back and forth like that might have sent him to sleep, but he was concerned about the knots holding the web of rope on to the iron axle loops. If just one of those knots slipped, then the best thing that could happen was that he would be dropped into the road and left behind. The worst outcome would be that his foot might get caught in the ropes and he would be dragged along underneath the cart, his skin shredded by every rock, until he looked like a side of beef hanging in a butcher’s window.

  The dust rising from the road made his throat dry. He would give a hundred pounds for a glass of water, just at that moment.

  The journey seemed to last forever, but in reality they couldn’t have gone more than half a mile down the road before the cart slowed down and began a ponderous turn into a gated field. It was still dark, but when the moon’s light was eclipsed by some dark bulk Sherlock knew that his deduction about a barn had been correct. The cart rolled inside and stopped. Sherlock waited as the men on board disembarked and the horses were untied.

  ‘There’s beer, bread and meat on the trestle tables,’ the boy, Jude, yelled. ‘Get a few hours’ sleep once you’ve eaten and drunk your fill. If you’re going to smoke, do it outside – this hay is dry, and one dropped cigarette could set light to the whole place. When the sun’s up you can leave, but don’t all set off at once. Make sure you go only one or two at a time so you don’t raise suspicions, and take different routes back to your homes. Back here tomorrow night at sundown – I think we’re close now, and I want to keep up the pace.’ His voice got louder. ‘Trust me, lads – we’ll be in the money soon!’

  There was a ragged cheer, and then half an hour or so of conversation and the sounds of people satisfying their hunger and their thirst, but the men must have been tired after their endeavours because they pretty soon quietened down and started to snore.

  Sherlock gave them ten more minutes before he wriggled free of the ropes down on to the dirt floor of the barn.

  He cautiously crawled out into the open, ready to run for it if anyone was still awake and saw him, but the men were all sprawled out on piles of hay, mouths open and eyes closed. Sherlock cast an envious eye at the jug of beer on the trestle table, but he’d have to step over half a dozen men to get to it. Not worth the risk, he thought.

  He looked around. The barn looked like it was newly constructed – he could still smell the fresh timber and the creosote that had been used to protect it against the weather. The boy, Jude, had probably had it built just for this enterprise. Sherlock found himself admiring the boy more and more – all the planning he was doing, plus the way he managed to give orders to men three or four times his age without them arguing, meant that he had a strong personality and a convincing manner. In another life he would have made a good soldier, or maybe a detective, but he had chosen an apparently easier but less moral path.

  Thinking of Jude, Sherlock looked around the barn to see where he was, but the boy wasn’t visible. Maybe he had curled up beneath a pile of hay.

  What to do now? Jude had mentioned the dryness of the hay. Sherlock could easily start a fire in the barn, but what then? That might disrupt Jude’s plans, but the gang would scatter and they would never be brought to justice. And besides – people might die. They might be bad, but they didn’t deserve execution, and Sherlock didn’t want their deaths on his conscience.

  He was going to have to follow the plan that had come into his head back at Mortimer Maberley’s house and hope that it all worked out.

  Taking a last look around, he climbed on to the cart. As he had expected, the milk churns full of chloroform were still there. No point in unloading them and then loading them back up again.

  It took him barely five minutes to unscrew all of the lids.

  The characteristic smell began to drift across the barn, and Sherlock felt his eyes getting prickly and his limbs heavy. Quickly he jumped off the cart and ran towards the door. Before leaving he took a couple of handfuls of hay. The large doors had been closed, all but for a small gap; he squeezed through and pushed them completely closed, then went along the lower edges and stuffed the hay in there to stop the chloroform from leaking out. There were probably all kinds of holes in the barn, but if he was lucky then the chloroform would evaporate from the cans faster than it would leak out of the building. The thugs inside would sleep sweetly until the police got there.

  Which reminded him . . . he still had to set some kind of sign for Matty and the police to find when they got there.

  He was outside the barn now, in an open yard. Discarded farm equipment lay around. He quickly made a mental inventory of what he saw: hoes, ploughs, wooden beams, tins of creosote . . . Creosote! That was flammable!

  Even as he hurried over towards the tins, he was refining his plans. For a few seconds he considered making a pile of wood and setting fire to it, but if any of the men woke up and realized what was happening, then they could put it out pretty easily. Instead he carried the tins towards the road. It only took him a minute or so to pour the sticky liquid out. Some of the creosote sank into the dirt, but it was thick, like treacle, and after a few seconds of pouring it began to pool on the surface: a glittering brown stain in the shape of a giant arrow, pointing towards the barn.

  All he needed now was a flame.

  Sherlock had taken to carrying a flint and stone inside a small metal case in his pocket. Life, he had found, was full of times when you wished you could start a fire. He had some scraps of paper in his pocket as well, so he tore them up, piled them on the creosote, took the flint out and struck it a few times. Within moments the paper took light, and then so did the creosote. He backed away rapidly as the flames began to spread: a fiery sign that nobody could miss, right in the centre of the road. He felt the warmth
of the fire on his cheeks and forehead as he backed away.

  ‘I have to give you credit,’ a voice said behind him, ‘you’re inventive. I could tell you were going to be trouble just from your face. How did you escape from beneath the tree?’

  Sherlock turned around. Jude was standing a few feet away. He had some kind of farm tool in his hands: a long wooden pole with a sharp curved blade at the end, like a crescent moon. A scythe, Sherlock thought; something for slicing through hay at harvest time. Not that he was an expert on farm implements, but during the past few years he’d managed to amass quite a working knowledge of sharp weapons.

  ‘You read people,’ he said; ‘I read situations. I look for evidence where you look for twitches of the mouth or flickers of the eyelids. There had to be a way out, for the people who hid there. An emergency exit.’

  ‘Very clever, spotting that.’ Jude nodded. ‘Maybe you did manage to work out where the treasure was hidden. I should have given you more credit.’

  ‘To be fair,’ Sherlock admitted, ‘when we last spoke I only knew how to work it out, not where it actually was. Since then, though, I actually have worked it out.’

  ‘Do you fancy telling me?’

  Sherlock shook his head. ‘Not a chance.’

  Jude hefted the scythe. ‘Can I convince you?’

  ‘You can try.’

  ‘I’d offer you a weapon as well, but –’ he shrugged – ‘that would even the odds, and I like to have the odds in my favour whenever I –’

  Without finishing the sentence, he swung the scythe at Sherlock’s head. It was only a twitch in the muscles of his right hand that gave him away. Sherlock ducked, and the scythe swished through the air above his head. He could feel the coldness of its swift passage.

  Sherlock straightened up to see Jude swinging the scythe upward, ready to bring it down on to Sherlock’s skull. He kicked out with his right foot, sending one of the pots of creosote flying towards the boy. It caught Jude on the knee, splashing oily liquid everywhere. Jude’s leg gave way and he crumpled sideways, the scythe unbalancing him as it completed its swing downward and its blade embedded itself in the dirt.

  Sherlock launched himself at Jude before the boy could recover. His head hit Jude’s chest, pushing him backwards, as he tried to get a grip on the boy’s clothes. They rolled together on the ground, Sherlock uppermost first and then Jude. They ended up with Jude kneeling above Sherlock, having twisted out of Sherlock’s grip. He glanced quickly around, looking for the scythe, but it was too far away for him to grab. Instead he started punching Sherlock in the face – right fist, left fist, left fist again.

  Sherlock could taste blood. He was blocking with his forearms as much as he could, but Jude’s fists were like hammers flying at him from all sides.

  He brought his right leg up sharply. His knee struck Jude in the small of his back and the boy lurched forward, toppling towards Sherlock, arms automatically flung out to break his fall. Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Sherlock shoved a hand up beneath the boy’s chin and pushed hard. He felt a sharp click as Jude’s teeth snapped shut. Or maybe it was his neck breaking as his head went backwards.

  Sherlock twisted out from beneath the falling boy and scrabbled sideways, towards where the scythe was sticking out of the ground. If Jude was still alive, still mobile, then the scythe seemed like his only chance to even up the fight.

  As his fingers touched the wooden shaft he saw a dark object hurtling towards him from the side. He only had time to move his head slightly to see what it was when something hard and sharp caught him above his left eye. He fell sideways, fireworks of pain exploding in his head.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sherlock felt his face smash into the ground as he fell. There was something sticky all over his forehead, his cheek and his chin. Was it blood? How badly was he injured?

  He rolled sideways, in case Jude was following up the attack by running at him. The stuff on his hands was brown, not red. It was creosote. Jude must have thrown one of the cans at him, and it had caught him in the head.

  Relieved that he wasn’t bleeding – well, not too much anyway – he stood up. The scythe was a few feet away, and he reached out to pull it from the ground. Turning, tasting the tarry creosote in his mouth now, Sherlock saw that Jude was crouching over near the barn. He had something in his hand, retrieved from on top of a pile of logs, and when he turned around Sherlock saw that it was a sickle – a curved blade like the one on top of the scythe, but with a short handle instead of a long shaft.

  ‘Blade against blade,’ Jude muttered. His voice was slurred. ‘How very historical. And how apt, considering that this is all about a Cavalier treasure hoard.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ Sherlock pointed out, panting. ‘We’re pretty evenly matched. We’ll just keep on hurting each other, and the police are on their way. You’ve seen the sign I left them.’

  Jude glanced over towards the road, and then back to Sherlock. His expression, beneath the blood, the dirt and the creosote that now covered both boys, was thoughtful.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Sherlock said. ‘You’re trying to work out whether you can get to the flames and put them out before I can stop you, but you can’t. You can either fight me or put out the flames, but you can’t do both things at once.’

  ‘And I know what you’re thinking,’ Jude responded. Somewhere along the way his lip had been split. It was beginning to swell up, and was making it difficult for him to speak. ‘You don’t want to kill me, and you’re only willing to injure me as much as it takes to stop me. You have scruples, and I have none, which means I will win in the end, all other things being equal.’ He gestured at himself, and then at Sherlock. ‘And they are equal, aren’t they? We’re both about the same size, the same strength and the same ability and we now have a similar weapon. The only thing that differentiates us is: how much damage are we willing to cause to the other? I think I can win on that one.’

  Sherlock shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ He knew that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere, but he needed to catch his breath, and he suspected that Jude did too.

  ‘I really need to put that signal out,’ Jude said. His body hunched, as if he was going to make some sudden and explosive movement and was preparing himself for it. ‘In fact, I want it so badly that I’m willing to kill you to do it. Are you willing to kill me to stop me, because you’re going to have to.’ He smiled – lopsidedly, because of the split lip. ‘I can read your character from your expression. I don’t think you have it in you to be a killer.’

  Sherlock knew what Jude was doing. He was trying to affect Sherlock’s confidence, his ability to fight, trying to undermine Sherlock’s belief in himself, and it wasn’t going to work.

  ‘I’ve killed before,’ Sherlock said flatly. He wasn’t proud of it, but it was a fact.

  The boy put his head to one side. ‘Not through choice, I think. In the heat of the moment maybe. By accident perhaps. But I don’t think you can make the decision to kill me in –’

  Without finishing the sentence, he started to sprint towards the flaming sign out on the road, limping badly on his right leg but still covering the ground with amazing speed.

  Sherlock threw the scythe like a spear.

  The wooden shaft passed between Jude’s legs, tripping him up. The boy cartwheeled, head over heels, across the ground. Sherlock ran past him, ignoring the scythe but determined to get between Jude and the flaming arrow.

  When he got out into the road and turned, Jude was already standing in the gateway, and still holding the sickle. What with the sticky creosote, the dirt and the blood, he looked like something out of a nightmare. Sherlock suspected that he didn’t look that much better.

  ‘What is it with you?’ Jude snarled. ‘What drives you on? I just can’t –’

  Again, he left the sentence hanging and suddenly ran towards Sherlock, but Sherlock knew the trick by now and was ready. He backed up a few paces u
ntil he could see the burning creosote on the road out of the corner of his eye, then he bent down, scooped some of the creosote up in his hand and flung it at the running boy.

  The flames burned his hand, and he quickly rubbed it in the dirt of the road to scrub the sticky liquid off, but the effect on Jude was more dramatic. The flames caught the creosote on his clothes, setting them alight. He threw the sickle away and dived to the ground, rolling in the dirt until the flames were extinguished. Standing slowly, he checked his arms and legs for any more burning areas. The bits of his clothes that weren’t covered in creosote were now burned black, and his skin was blistered.

  ‘What is so important that you keep on going?’ he shouted. ‘Why can’t you just stop? You should have stopped by now!’

  ‘I’ve got a job to do,’ Sherlock said simply, and the simplicity of the words caught him by surprise as much as they did Jude. ‘I promised someone that I’d help their friend solve a mystery, and I intend to do that.’

  ‘Who is that important that you care so much about keeping a promise?’ Jude wanted to know.

  ‘Nobody important. His name is Ferny Weston. He’s a policeman. He was a policeman.’

  The name seemed to strike Jude like a bucket of cold water. He straightened up, his face immobile. For a long moment he stood there, staring at Sherlock, then he turned away and ran back towards the barn.

  Sherlock put his hands on his knees and rested for a moment or two. He was almost finished. He had nothing left. All he could do was to wait for the police and Matty to arrive, and hope that Jude wasn’t about to launch another attack.

  Thoughts flew around his brain – jagged jigsaw pieces that revolved around each other, sometimes hitting each other with a jangle of pain before ricocheting away again. Jude. His face when Sherlock had mentioned Ferny Weston. His admission that he had been given inside information about the art robberies he and his men had committed. The photograph Sherlock had seen in Charles Dodgson’s study showing Ferny Weston, his wife Marie and a boy, together with Mortimer Maberley and Mycroft Holmes.