Part 13 (1/2)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sherlock's heart went cold, but before he could ask Rufus why Virginia's name should have been tattooed on the quiet man's forehead the ht up with so that had been said a few moments before 'You knohere Ae for us in the newspaper,' Matty replied 'It was coded, but orked it out'

Sherlock gazed at Matty and raised an eyebrow at the 'we', but Matty just smiled back innocently

'Well done' Rufus looked around 'We should get out of here before our friend comes back'

They went down the stairs together and across the ground-floor roo in pain and groaning Rufus stopped and stared at theested he was thinking about paying back some of the pain they had caused hi 'We could question thehtfully, as if he was still teht, 'but they look like hard nuts to crack'

'I dunno,' Matty said, following his gaze 'They look like they're pretty cracked already'

Rufus led the way out into daylight The sky was covered by a ht on their surroundings Sherlock looked around curiously He had assu back at the building the three of thes around, he could see that he'd been wrong The buildings, which were grouped together, were six floors high and as long as half a street The blocks were separated by narrow alleyways that were like straight paths between vertical cliff faces The ground floors were lined with doors, one after another after another, and the upper floors s, lass The buildings looked soulless and empty, more like ants' nests than places where people lived

'What are these places?' Sherlock asked

Unexpectedly it was Matty who replied 'Tenements,' he said 'I remember 'em from the last time I was here Find 'em all over the place, you do They're cheap places for poor people to live, but you end up with only two rooms to call your own, stacked up with other people's rooms like birdhouses Everyone's rooms look the same a same front doors, same plaster, sameframes The people who live there try an' make 'em individual-like, with curtains an' flower pots an' stuff, but it's like decoratin' one beer crate in a pile of crates wiv a bit of ribbon Just draws attention to how borin' it is' He sniffed 'An' they all end up se'

'The place looks deserted,' Rufus observed 'A perfect temporary base of operations for our transatlantic captors I wonder how they heard about it'

'I 'eard a rumour,' Matty continued, 'last time I was 'ere, that the local authorities was tryin' to move people out of the tenements 'Parently they wanted to sell the land off to build factories on, or posh mansions or somethin' People I talked to told me that the authorities would start a ruue, had broken out in a tenement They'd move everybody out to the workhouse, then they'd knock the tenement down an' build on the land Make a lot of money that way, they could' His voice dropped to a whisper 'I 'eard that sometimes, if there weren't any places left in the workhouse, they'd brick up the alleyways in an' out of the tenements an' leave the people inside to starve, but I don't believe that'

'The trouble is,' Rufus said thoughtfully, 'that we don't have any idea where we are, we have no way of getting out and there's nobody to ask for help'

Sherlock looked around He had the map still in his pocket, but it was no use 'I think ere carried fro to an alleyway between two of the blocks 'We didn't turn any corners, and that's the only straight route'

'Cart'll be gone by now,' Matty observed darkly 'That bloke as askin' the questions will've taken it'

Rufus shook his head 'He had his own carriage That's how he brought me here Just hie'

'With the two men who kidnapped us from the park still in the tenement block,' Sherlock finished, 'the cart should still be here'

The three of them looked at each other for a moment, then rapidly headed for the alleyway that Sherlock had pointed out The alleyway opened out on to a dirt road that led away into the distance On the other side of the road was a stretch of unkerazing on thistles and weeds Sherlock couldn't help but coe back in Farnhainia's well looked-after horse grazed contentedly Here, everything seemed to be a dark inverse of that familiar place: rows of identical prison-like blocks next to a patch of wasteground where horses that s had been left to die

Glancing into one of the teneht of ato see what it was A curtain fluttering in the wind? A pigeon or a seagull roosting?

Soainst the darkness inside the doorway More quickly this time, Sherlock realized that it was a skull The deep sockets of the eyes, the hairless surface of the head, the sharp edges of the cheekbones and the sinister grin of the teeth a another dead ure moved back into the shadows before Sherlock could point it out to Matty or Rufus Stone He scanned the row of doorways frantically Was he going mad? Most of theure stood half in shadoatching him It moved back into darkness as soon as it realized it had been seen

Were these creatures connected with the Americans who had kidnapped the three of them, or was this so azed over at Matty, and saw that the boy was staring at the tenement doorways as well Matty turned his head to look at Sherlock

'Did you see them?' Sherlock asked desperately

Matty nodded 'They're deadus They want us'

'I don't believe that dead men can walk'

'Why not?'

'You've seen dead rabbits on butchers' slabs, and dead fish in costerer's?'

'Yeah So?'

'They never one fro left is flesh, and that decays Dead animals don't come back to life, so dead people don't coot tiue wiv you,' he said'

'Coet out of here before they come back!'

On the side of the road a cart had been left, its horse tied to a stunted tree The animal looked in considerably better condition than the ones in the ground across the road

'That,' Rufus said, 'is our ride home a if we knehich way home was'

'I memorized the route out,' Sherlock said 'I can just reverse the times and the turns, and we can work out the way back to our hotel'

'But we'll have to put a sack over your head,' Matty murmured He looked up at Sherlock and smiled 'So the conditions are the sa'

Sherlock and Matty climbed into the back of the cart while Rufus clambered in the front He flicked the reins experiun It didn't see near the tenements

Sherlock stood up behind Rufus's shoulder, clutching on to a wooden bar, and tried to reverse the route that had brought the at about the same speed, so all he had to do was reh times in his head and then start the list at the bottoe the turns around A right-hand turn heading from the city centre to the tene back

His neck was throbbing, and his ankles had been scraped raw by the rope Whenever he took a breath he could feel a catch in his throat, as if the cartilage had been pushed in Worse than the physical da of helplessness that had flooded over hi there, in the tenement room He'd been close to death before, but he'd always felt that there was soht Before he had remembered the knife in his pocket a Matty's knife a he had been completely at the quiet man's mercy He had been moments from a painful and protracted death

If he hadn't kept Matty's knife, if his friend hadn't told hi on to it, then he wouldn't have had any way out He would be dead by now

On such trivial things survival can rest The thought made him feel uneasy He looked at Rufus, as also injured, and wondered if he felt the sa turns, before they were back at the park near Princes Street

'Right,' Rufus said 'Where now?'

Sherlock looked at Matty 'Do you want to tell hied 'After all, orked it out'

'Nah' Matty s in a place called Cramond I've looked on the map, and I know the way It'll probably take us an hour or so to get there'

'We'll grab some food first,' Stone said, 'and clean ourselves up I don't know about you lads, but I'm starved'

After they had done both, Matty purloined a scarf from somewhere, and Sherlock used it to cover the , Rufus steered the cart out of the city It took a while to get past the houses and out into the countryside, and for the first half-hour or so Sherlock are of the dark shape of Edinburgh Castle loo of rock The low grey skies matched Sherlock's mood What had started as an adventure to find his friends now see much darker and more unpleasant There were people out there anted to hurt Amyus Crowe, that much was sure The question hy? But whatever the reason, it looked as if Sherlock had unwittingly led theet to Amyus Crowe before his enemies could work out where he was