Harkness? It occurred to him that he didn’t have to follow
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.
Matty nodded. ‘That and other stuff, but you probably don’t want to even think about that. Just take my
