Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

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.