Eventually he became aware that Matty was standing beside him, helping push the boxes. ‘Last ones,’ Matty said. He looked exhausted. Dust coated his hair and his face.
‘What the . . . ?’ a voice shouted.
Sherlock looked down into the centre of the room. Josh Harkness was staring up at the two boys. His face was a mask of outraged disbelief.
‘Quick,’ Sherlock said. ‘Let’s get the last boxes in there!’
‘I saved the lightest for last,’ Matty said. ‘You can probably throw them.’
He was right. Sherlock picked up the box marked
‘Oi!’ Harkness yelled. ‘Stop that!’
The box hit the edge, and for a moment Sherlock thought it was going to topple backwards, but fortunately its momentum carried it forward and over.
‘Get them!’ Harkness yelled. Two of the workers Sherlock had seen earlier ran from the far side of the room. They hesitated slightly when they saw the boys, but the vicious anger in Harkness’s face propelled them forward. They swung their hooked poles forward like lances.
Sherlock grabbed Matty’s shoulder and pulled him along the raised platform, towards the room where they had entered. Behind them he heard the clattering of feet on the wooden stairs.
Matty got to the door first. He turned to say something to Sherlock. Before he could, Sherlock pushed him backwards and ducked. A pole sliced the air above his head, and a sharp-edged hook embedded itself in the door frame.
‘Get out!’ Sherlock yelled. ‘Quickly!’
Matty scooted backwards into the room on hands and feet. Sherlock swung around to confront the man who had attacked him. He was tugging at the pole, trying to free it from the door frame. His friend was about ten feet behind him, approaching with violence in his eyes. Harkness had grabbed a ladder from somewhere and was climbing up the side of the vat into which the boxes had been dumped, obviously hoping that he could rescue something from the mess that Sherlock had made of his raw blackmail material.
Sherlock offered up a rapid prayer that he would fall in, before quickly following Matty inside the storeroom. He slammed the door shut, knowing that it would only buy them a few seconds.
Matty was already over by the window. He turned, saw Sherlock and made a step with his hands: palms up and fingers interlaced. ‘You get up,’ he said. ‘Pull me after you.’
The door behind Sherlock shuddered as something slammed into it.
Sherlock took three steps across the room, bent, grabbed Matty’s legs and hoisted him up to the window. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘I’ll follow.’
Matty looked as if he wanted to argue, but he was already half out into the street. Sensibly he struggled forward rather than backwards.
The door burst open. One man was framed in the doorway, with the other man visible behind him.
‘You little whelp!’ the first man snarled. He stepped forward, pole upraised.
Sherlock grabbed another pole from the bundle that had been stacked against the wall. He stood, pole held diagonally across his body, feet planted apart, knowing that it was going to come down to a fight. It sometimes seemed to him that he could use all the logic in the world and things would often still come down to a fight.
The man was average height, with a paunch, but the battered nature of his ears, and the bend in his nose, suggested to Sherlock that he had a history of boxing – probably illegally, in rings set up in fields, rather than using Queensberry Rules. He stepped forward, holding his pole diagonally as well, but the other way. He smiled.
‘I’ll be Little John,’ he said, ‘and you can be Robin Hood.’
‘This isn’t a kids’ game,’ Sherlock said.
‘Too right,’ the man said. He suddenly struck out with his pole, trying to smash Sherlock’s knee with the bottom end. Sherlock blocked with his own pole. The sudden shock as they clashed vibrated up his arm and made his teeth ache.
The man nodded, acknowledging Sherlock’s unexpected manoeuvre. He lashed out again with the bottom end of his pole, but it was a feint. He reversed direction suddenly, bringing the top down towards Sherlock’s head. Sherlock raised his pole with both hands, preventing the man’s weapon from knocking him out and probably splitting his skull, but before the poles could touch the man had reversed his strike again, bringing his pole up towards Sherlock’s groin. Sherlock twisted to one side, but the pole struck his right hip. He fell to one knee just in time to see the pole scythe sideways an inch above his head.
Desperately Sherlock climbed back to his feet, ignoring the spasms of pain that shot from his hip down towards his knee. The man was off balance, and Sherlock reached out with his pole and caught the back of the man’s shoe with the hook on the end. He pulled, and the man fell backwards, swearing. He hit the ground with a
The second man stepped over his fallen comrade. He was more cautious, weaving his pole from side to side in an attempt to deceive Sherlock as to the direction the first strike would come from. He feinted once, twice, then drew the pole back and lashed out at Sherlock as if he was holding a spear rather than a quarterstaff. As Sherlock jerked backwards he realized that the sharp hook on the end could be just as lethal as a spear point.
The man pulled his pole back again. Instead of attacking Sherlock he turned his head slightly and spoke to his companion. ‘Get up, you moron! Go outside – get that other kid if he’s still around, and stop this one getting out of the window if he’s not.’
The man shook his head as he climbed to his feet. His expression was a mixture of sullen and furious. ‘I want this one, Marky. I
‘I saw you fall over on your fat rump,’ Marky snarled. ‘Now get outside. This ain’t a time for bruised muscles and bruised feelings. The boss will want to talk to this one, and knowing you like I do, you’ll slit his throat for making you look stupid, and then the boss will take it out on both of us.’
The man – presumably Nicholson, based on the names Sherlock had heard earlier – backed away and turned towards the door to the outside. He cast a last, baleful glance at Sherlock before he left.
‘You don’t want to go through the window,’ Marky said, smiling at Sherlock. ‘If Nicholson catches you, then the chances are you’ll be dead before your feet touch the ground, despite what I told him. He don’t like being embarrassed. Really don’t like it at all.’
‘So what’s my alternative?’ Sherlock asked, keeping his eyes fixed on Marky’s eyes, looking for some indication that the man was about to strike with his hook-tipped pole.
‘The alternative is that you put that pole down and come with me. The boss wants to talk with you, is all. Just a little talk.’
Sherlock shook his head. ‘Based on what I’ve done, I think I’ve got a better chance with your friend outside than with Josh Harkness. At least I’d die quickly.’
Marky shrugged. ‘I see your point, I really do. It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Go out of the window and you die straight away, but quickly. Come with me and you stay alive for a little longer, but your death is more painful and slower.’ He dropped his voice, trying to lull Sherlock into relaxing. ‘You know, kid, if I were you, I’d –’
Without warning he lashed out with the pole, trying to get the hook past Sherlock’s shoulder so he could catch it in the flesh and muscle over Sherlock’s shoulder blade and pull him forward, but Sherlock had noticed the slight widening of his eyes that meant he was about to do something physical. It was one of the things Amyus Crowe had taught him – how to predict from small movements what people were going to do. ‘Body language’, he had called it. Sherlock swept his pole left and right across his body, intercepting Marky’s weapon as it flashed towards him and deflecting it sideways.
‘So that’s the way you want it then,’ Marky said, pulling back again. ‘A stand-off, right? Except that when the boss arrives it’ll be two against one, and you won’t stand a chance.’
‘There’s always a chance,’ Sherlock said with as much bravado as he could muster.
‘Two ways to escape,’ Marky pointed out, ‘both of them covered. Unless you can magically walk through walls or disappear through the floor, you ain’t got a hope of escaping.’
‘I do if –’ Sherlock caught himself before he said Matty’s name – ‘if my friend escaped before Nicholson got to the window. He’ll have gone straight to the police. They’ll be here in a few minutes.’
Marky shook his head scornfully. ‘The local peelers don’t dare make a move against the boss. He knows too much about them.’
