Part 10 (2/2)

The journey took about twenty s all er halls and s Close up, Sherlock noticed that the grey stone contained hints of other colours a orange, yellow, blue, green a and that even the stone that was really grey often had ripples of darker hues running through

The cab took theht into a wide thoroughfare lined with shops and hotels It was theSherlock had seen in London, New York or Moscow Edinburgh, he could tell already, was an old and proud city

The cab took a sudden right and drew to a stop Sherlock and Matty got out just as the driver threw their bags down from where they had been stored behind him He obviously felt that he shouldn't dismount for kids Sherlock resisted the temptation to throw the htly out of reach, so that the driver had to lean forward precariously to get it

They had stopped before a tall terraced building with a sign saying 'The Fraser Hotel' The cab pulled away into a turn, back towards the hfare, and Sherlock noticed with part of his mind that the road sloped doard ahead of the at the castle that had been revealed as the cab pulled away It was enormous and dark, but the fact that it was built on a hill that was partly hidden by ing over the town

'What now?' Matty asked

Sherlock felt the absence of Rufus Stone weighing heavily on his one he felt vulnerable, uncertain Two kids, alone in Edinburgh What could they do?

'I don't know,' he said

CHAPTER NINE

After dus Sherlock and Matty headed down the hotel's staircase and out into the town The sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and the darkness of the night was leavened by gas la torches attached to brackets on the stone buildings People were already thronging the streets, crossing from one tavern to another apparently in search of a better ti all of the activity as far as they could, the two of them found a relatively civilized tavern where they could sit in a corner and eat a gammon pie each, washed doith a watery beer which the bar them However, when Sherlock asked for a pitcher of water the man just looked at him with a scowl on his face

Every few minutes a different person tried to sit down beside thee them in conversation Sometimes it was a wo clothes that looked as if they hadn't been washed in a while, but rey collarless shi+rt and braces Matty always said the sa a 'Our dad will be here in a minute, and he wouldn't like it if he found you here' a and they quickly left with a y or a curse The first tied it off, but after the third time he stared at Matty with a question in his eyes Matty avoided his gaze 'There's soe people around,' he muttered 'Don't matter what town you're in, they always try and make friends with you if you're a kid alone You learn early on not to have anything to do with them'

Sherlock didn't ask any questions It was obvious that Matty didn't want to go into details, but once again he was glad to have his friend with him

For a while they discussed what to do about Rufus Stone It was clear that they had both secretly hoped that they would find hie fro had rattled theo to the police,' Matty suggested 'Tell the'

'The trouble is that we don't actually knohat has happened to him, so there's notabducted They'll say he just missed the train and he'll turn up tomorrow Worse than that: they'll worry about two kids alone in Edinburgh They'll assign a guardian to us, or place us in some philanthropist's ho ant'

Matty nodded 'I can see that What about your brother, though? We could send hiram, tell him what's happened'

'And within an hour he'll send a telegra us that we have to return to London until he knohat's happened to Rufus If he does that, then I won't be able to disobey him a I've tried that before, and it never works out well No, we need to be here It's best that we don't tell anyone what's happened'

'What do you think's happening to Rufus?' Matty asked quietly, not looking at Sherlock

Sherlock sighed He'd been trying not to think too hard about that 'I don't know for sure Maybe those two A hi that they don't already know, they'll probably release hiht, but he didn't put his fear into words Although Matty was streetwise in a way that Sherlock would never be, he was younger than Sherlock, and there were so froh,' Matty pointed out

'If they were on the train with us, then they know about Edinburgh as well That secret is out of the bag, I suspect' He paused for a moment 'On the other hand, if it's the Paradol Chamber, then I don't knohat they ith him'

Sherlock found that the conversation had blunted the sharp edge of his appetite Thinking of whatin a war well made his stomach lurch

'I don't want to worry you,' Matty whispered after a while, 'but have you seen the bloke over there?' He nodded his head at the opposite wall 'In the booth, sitting by hi not to be too obvious about it He orried that Matty ht have spotted Mr Kyte, but when he saw the unfah of relief A moment more and he started to feel uneasy, however Theinterested in the two of the Sherlock couldn't quite work out He was painfully thin, for a start, as if he'd been starved for weeks, and his skin was so white it was almost translucent His eyes seemed invisible in the dark shadows of his eye sockets, and the bones of his cheeks and his chin pushed out against the tautness of his face so ht suddenly split as he watched There was soe about the ht have been his Sunday best, but they were coated in dirt, and there was a green tinge to his shoulders and sleeves He was staring straight ahead, but he didn't appear to be looking at anything in particular nobody was sitting near hih he didn't have a drink in front of hio across and either take an order or throw hi

The crowd in the tavern grew larger, and eventually the view of the strange pale-skinnedtheir pies and got ready to leave As they stood up a gap opened in the crowd Sherlock looked across The one

'You ever heard of the Resurrectionists?' Matty asked as they left the tavern He seenize the name,' Sherlock said

'It o blokes named Burke an' Hare Both called William They was notorious up in this neck of the woods a few years back I heard about the Lookin' at that bloke back there reh is one of the places doctors coe, but they've got a problem: how do they find out about the 'uman body if they can't examine 'eans is, an' where the blood goes?'

'I thought medical schools were allowed to use the bodies of executed cri

'In theory, yeah,' Matty responded, 'but there's always less bodies available than there's student doctors wantin' to take a look at 'eone down a lot, which means there's a lot less bodies available for use Sixty years ago there was over two 'undred different cri Now there's only five So only about two bodies a year cae Which is where Burke an' Hare ca,' Sherlock said quietly, feeling a shi+ver down his spine 'They dug up corpses and sold them, didn't they?'

Matty stared at hio on ”Bodysnatching”, it was called There was sothat friends and relatives of anyone who had just died used to keep watch over the grave to stop it being dug up Soraves of their relatives to stop anyone getting in Before they realized as going on, people used to visit the graves of their loved ones and find them disturbed, as if the bodies had come back to life an' just crawled out of their own accord' He and Sherlock were pushi+ng their way through the crowded streets towards their hotel 'Course, once people got to know about the bodysnatchers, they had to change how they went about things They was quite inventive, the bodysnatchers They used wooden spades, cos theydown at an angle, so that any disturbance to the grave would be a ay, not directly over it They'd uncover the end of the coffin, s the body out with a rope'

'All right, but you said this Burke and Hare weren't bodysnatchers What were they then?'

'They was both Irish, for a start,' Matty replied, 'an' they h to work as labourers on the Union Canal Burke ended up stayin' at a boarding 'ouse run by Hare's ot talkin' one night about ways of ested that they could steal the body of someone who 'ad died locally of natural causes an' 'ad no fae who could use it to de before some old pensioner ed Hare four quid died of natural causes Burke an' Hare made sure the coffin that was buried was filled with tree bark, 'an they flogged the body to a Dr Knox 'ere in the city for seven quid'

'Very enterprising,' Sherlock said drily

'Probleh for 'e a bit First one they actually killed was a local ot 'im drunk on whisky an' then suffocated 'im Second one was another pensioner, a woail Sied

'Well, they was off an' runnin' Dr Knox would pay 'euaranteed sum for every dead body they delivered to 'iood nick, eight if there was anything wrong with it They preferred women and kids, of course, cos they was easier to subdue an' to suffocate'

Sherlock found he was feeling sick It was the casual nature of what Burke and Hare had done that offended him The murders weren't crimes of passion, or 'spur of the moment' incidents a they were a series of ere effectively business decisions Business decisions that left people dead

'How ?' he asked quietly as they turned the corner and headed towards the hotel's front door

'Best guess is seventeen,' Matty answered, 'over the course of a year'

'And didn't anyone suspect? Ithe bodies to ing must leave a distinct mark on the neck, and those corpses wouldn't have had that h Burke later swore otherwise He just didn't want to disrupt the supply of bodies He was getting a reputation as being the best anato to his lectures, and payin' for the privilege He wasn't going to give all that up' He snorted 'Story is that there was one bloke that Burke and Hare killed, name of Daft Jamie, ell known around the town When Dr Knox uncovered the body in the lecture theatre, ready to cut into it, sonized it Knox said that it must be someone else, but he started the dissection on the face first, to nizable quickly'

'What happened in the end?' Sherlock asked, as he pushed open the front door 'I presume they were found out, otherwise you wouldn't know all this'

'Burke and Hare killed a wo house naet rid of the body they hid it under a bed There was lodgers there, an' they got suspicious When Burke was out of the way they checked his room, an' they found her So they called the peelers Burke and Hare got the body out of the house before the peelers turned up, but they took it to Dr Knox's place, where the peelers found it later Hare turned Queen's evidence and testified against Burke in exchange for ied, an' his body was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College a perfectly legally, of course'

'And what happened to Hare?'

'Vanished Never heard of again'

'So he ht still be here, in the city?'

Matty nodded as he opened his bedrooh it's more likely that he went back to Ireland'