Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

He nudged the newspaper into one of the puddles of rainwater that had come through the holes in the ceiling.

The man turned his head slightly, so that he was looking at Rufus Stone, and something about the way the light illuminated his face puzzled Sherlock. ‘It goes without saying,’ he added, ‘that I will tolerate no interruptions from the sidelines. Are we clear?’

Stone nodded his bruised and bloody head, but Sherlock was too concerned with what was happening with the newspaper to pay attention to his friend. The water was beginning to soak into the pages, but a quick hand could pull it out of the puddle.

He risked a glance down. The ink had began to run, erasing the letters that he’d written in the margins of the page. Within a few minutes even the printed text would be indecipherable. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the quiet man’s face, trying to gauge whether the man had seen anything. Sherlock was suddenly struck by the fact that there was something wrong with his skin. There seemed to be marks on it, but he couldn’t see what they were.

‘Then let us begin.’

The man raised a hand from his walking stick. Sherlock saw with shock that the head of the cane was a golden skull, gleaming in the light from the window, but he only glimpsed it for a second before the men on either side moved forward. Stepping over Matty’s inert form they grabbed Sherlock by his arms and hauled him to his feet. The floorboards creaked and bent with the strain.

The men were both holding ropes with loops at the end, made with slip knots. One of the men – the earless one with the ponytail – threw his loop over Sherlock’s head and pulled it tight around his neck. He threw the other end of the rope over one of the bare rafters and pulled it tight. Rufus struggled against his bonds in protest, but the man nearest him casually cuffed him with the back of his hand. Rufus fell back, groaning.

Sherlock felt the rope tighten beneath his chin, choking him. Instinctively he rose up on tiptoe to try to lessen the strain, but the other man – the one with the smallpox scars – was slipping the loop on his own rope beneath Sherlock’s feet and tightening it around his ankles.

‘I suggest,’ the quiet man said in a calm, reasonable voice – the kind of voice that a vicar might use when asking for a cup of tea – ‘that you take a tight hold on the rope that is above your head. In a few seconds your life will depend on how tight a grip you can keep. Plus, of course, on how truthfully you answer my questions.’

Abruptly the man holding the rope that was around Sherlock’s neck pulled on it. The noose tightened, yanking Sherlock off his feet. He grabbed for the rope above his head and hung on for dear life. The strands were rough beneath his fingers, but he could feel his palms becoming sweaty, and he knew that if his hands slipped then he would be left dangling by his neck, and he would suffocate.

His toes dangled in the air inches from the floorboards. The man pulled harder, and Sherlock rose into the air, still hanging on to the rope above his head with both hands. His vision was turning red, but he could just about make out the shape of the man who was holding the rope crossing the room and tying it to an exposed lathe.

‘Now,’ the quiet man said, ‘let us begin.’ He cleared his throat. ‘What is the nature of the relationship between you and Amyus Crowe?’

‘I . . . don’t . . . know . . . anyone . . . with . . . that . . . name . . . !’ Sherlock gasped between precious breaths of air.

‘Now I know that to be a patent falsehood,’ the quiet man said. He raised his hand an inch above his walking stick. As Sherlock looked down he could see the man who had slipped the rope around his feet crouch down, reach into the shadows behind him and pull out a stone the size of Sherlock’s head. String had been tied and knotted around the stone, and one end of the string was attached to a fishing hook. The man hoisted the stone in one hand and stuck the fishing hook in the rope that hung loose from Sherlock’s ankles. Then he let go of the stone.

The weight of the stone suddenly transferred itself to the rope and thus to Sherlock’s feet, dragging him down, stretching his muscles and tendons and pulling the noose tighter around his neck. He clamped his hands even more tightly around the rope, trying desperately to keep himself from choking.

‘On the assumption that you may be congenitally stupid and you may not have understood the rules,’ the quiet man said, ‘I will repeat the question. The penalty for lying should be obvious by now. As you will already have worked out, I do know the answer to this question: what is the nature of the relationship between you and Amyus Crowe?’

‘Teacher!’ Sherlock gasped.

‘Good. Thank you.’ A pause. ‘Now, the second question – where is Amyus Crowe now?’

Sherlock’s vision was narrowing down into a fuzzy tunnel. His blood was thundering in his ears, but the question still reverberated around his mind. He couldn’t answer it – surely he couldn’t answer it! But if he didn’t . . .

He had no choice. He couldn’t give Amyus and Virginia away.

‘Don’t . . . know . . .’ he choked.

The quiet man sighed. ‘Another falsehood. You would not have come all this way if you did not know where your teacher is. Are you stubborn, or just foolish?’ He raised his hand again, just an inch off his knee.

Despairingly Sherlock tried to kick out with his feet to hit the crouching man in the head, but the weight of the stone that was pulling his ankles downward was too great. The man reached into the shadows again and pulled out another rock as large as the last. It was similarly tied up with string, with a fish hook dangling off the string.

The rope was already pulling Sherlock’s chin up. His fingers were beginning to cramp. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold his body up and stop the rope from cutting off his air supply.

The man by Sherlock’s feet hooked the fish hook into the rope and let go. The heavy stone clunked against the one that was already hanging there. Sherlock felt as if he weighed twice as much as he had when the rope around his neck was first pulled tight. The muscles of his shoulders and arms were shaking with the strain of taking his weight. His heart was hammering within his chest, and his vision had narrowed to a coin-sized circle in the centre of a red-tinged darkness. The rope around his ankles was digging deep into the flesh, and the weight felt as though it were dislocating his legs. The man crouching by Sherlock’s feet shifted position, and Sherlock distinctly heard the floorboards creak beneath his feet. Similarly, the man who had pulled Sherlock off his feet took a step to his right, and once again Sherlock could hear the floorboards creak beneath the man’s weight. Even to his ears, blocked as they were by the desperate rushing of blood, that creak spoke of a possible sudden splintering in the near future. Those boards were old and rotten. That gave him an idea.

But he had to time it perfectly, otherwise it would not work.

‘You seem to singularly misunderstand your situation here,’ the quiet man said. His voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. ‘The pain must already be immense, and I cannot see you surviving more than one or two more questions. I admire your fortitude, I really do, but are your friends really worth the torment? At the end of the day, would they die for you?’

Sherlock had to force the words through his constricted throat one by one. ‘Doesn’t . . . matter . . . what . . . they . . . would . . . do.’ He gasped for breath. ‘Matters . . . what . . . I . . . do!’

‘Ah, a man of principle. How rare – and how pointless.’ The quiet man sighed. ‘I will ask again, and this time I really do suggest that you give me an answer that I can use. Where is Amyus Crowe now?’

‘I . . . don’t . . . know!’ Sherlock ground out.

The quiet man raised his hand again. Sherlock’s head was canted at such an angle by the weight of the stones pulling on his feet and the noose pulling on his throat that he couldn’t see downward, but he could hear the scrape of stone on wood as the man crouching at his feet pulled another rock out of the shadows. How many did he have there?

A pause, as the man attached the rock to the rope, and then he released it. The sudden jolting pain was so immense that it was as if Amyus Crowe himself was holding on to Sherlock’s legs and pulling. Sherlock’s arms were on the verge of being wrenched from their sockets as he held on to the rope above his head in a desperate attempt to stop his entire weight from coming down on the noose. Even so the rope around his neck was biting in so deeply that he could hardly breathe. The problem was that he had to make things worse if he wanted to escape.

With the last vestiges of his energy he clenched his right hand on the taut rope above his head and tensed the muscles of his arm as tight as he could. Then he let go with his left hand.

The entire weight of his body and the three rocks was suddenly taken by his right hand, and his neck. Before his fingers could slip from the rope, leaving his neck to bear the entire weight, he whipped his left hand down and