by Andrew Lane
‘What’s goin’ on?’ Matty asked.
‘Shh!’ Sherlock said. He indicated the scene below.
Down in the mortuary storage room, the thief was checking the tag on the corpse’s toe, double-checking that the name on the drawer matched and that he’d got the right one. He released the tag and reached into his pocket, taking something out and unfolding it with a click. It took Sherlock a moment to work out what it was, and then he realized – it was a knife!
The thief bent down and began to work on the corpse’s right foot – the one without a tag.
‘’E’s takin’ its big toe off!’ Matty breathed.
Indeed, that did appear to be what the thief was doing. He was working at cutting the corpse’s right big toe off. It was hard work, and Sherlock heard some swearing coming from the room below, even through the glass. Eventually, however, he succeeded, and the big toe vanished into his pocket along with the knife. He quickly threw the sheet back over the corpse, pushed the drawer shut, and left.
Sherlock scrambled back across the tiled roof to the first skylight that he had looked through, trying to make as little noise as possible. He gazed down through the blurry glass as the man below entered the autopsy room again and began to make his way towards the door to the hall. His monkey was still sitting on the metal post-mortem table, alternately grooming its fur and looking around.
Sherlock felt a sudden cramp in his leg. He’d been crouched for too long in the cold. He tried to extend it surreptitiously, but he overbalanced and fell forward. He shifted his hands wider apart to take his weight, but there must have been a splinter of wood in the frame of the skylight, and he felt it jab into his palm. Without thinking he pulled his hand away, but his weight was too far forward and he fell into the glass and wood of the skylight.
Into, and through.
The skylight broke under his weight, and he fell head first into the room below. The metal autopsy table was directly beneath it. If he hit it he would probably break something – most likely his skull. He desperately twisted his body, trying to catch the edge of the skylight with his foot. He managed to hook the toe of his boot over the wood, and his body swung like a pendulum. His head rushed towards a set of chains and racks that were hanging from the ceiling, presumably for moving bodies around and holding them up, and he grabbed for it desperately with both hands. They caught hold just as his toe slipped off the frame of the skylight. He had a confused impression of the thief in the room below glancing upward in shock, and springing backwards the way he had come. Sherlock’s body fell again, but this time swinging on the suspended racks like an acrobat on a trapeze. The metal was slippery beneath his fingers, and he lost his grip. He flew sideways, bouncing off the wall and landing on the tiled floor. His head hit the tiles and he saw a crimson galaxy of stars rotating in his field of view. He felt sick, and his hands were burning with pain.
Knowing that the thief was there, and desperate to get past him, Sherlock forced himself to his feet. His vision was blurry – he could see two thieves standing in two separate doorways – but he blinked hard until his head cleared.
The thief scowled at Sherlock. He was unshaven, with wild black hair and ears that looked as if they had been repeatedly hit by someone’s fists. A boxer maybe, Sherlock thought muzzily. A boxer with a monkey – that probably meant he was from a funfair: a keeper for the animals and a participant in the boxing rings that were a central feature of most travelling fairs. Not the kind of person who would be stealing body parts, necessarily.
‘A spy, eh?’ he snarled. ‘You workin’ for the rozzers? That ain’t goin’ to stop me – I’ll cut yer throat anyway!’
Desperately aware that he had ruined the whole plan, Sherlock held up his scratched and torn palms. ‘Sorry – I was trying to get hold of –’ he thought for a moment – ‘some morphine. I’ve got a kind of . . . need for it!’ He tried to sound as pathetic as possible. ‘Look, I’ll get out of your way. I won’t try to stop you, and I won’t come after you. I just want the morphine.’
‘Students!’ the thief growled, but as Sherlock edged one way around the metal table he went the other. He seemed to be accepting the possibility of Sherlock being a thief too, and despite his bluster he didn’t seem to want any trouble. He just wanted to get out with his stolen toe.
His monkey, however, had other ideas.
It grabbed a scalpel from a metal tray and leaped at Sherlock’s head, making a wild chittering sound. Sherlock saw the creature coming out of the corner of his eye and whirled around. He ducked just as the monkey got to him. It sailed over his head, slicing at Sherlock with the scalpel but missing.
‘Barney! You stupid critter – come ’ere!’ the thief yelled, moving fast towards the door, but the monkey wasn’t listening. It landed on the metal table and whirled around, jumping straight back at Sherlock’s chest. It grabbed hold of his shirt with its back paws and its front left paw, and jabbed the scalpel at Sherlock’s left eye. Sherlock caught its arm in his left hand. It was thin, like a twig, but hairy and incredibly powerful. He could feel the muscles writhing beneath its skin as the monkey fought to force the scalpel closer to Sherlock’s eye.
Sherlock forced his right hand between the monkey’s chest and his own and pushed. The monkey’s back paws scratched the skin of his stomach as it scrabbled to get a grip. His shirt tore, but he managed to push the animal away. With one massive effort he threw it across the room. It hit the wall, screaming in anger, and dropped out of sight. The scalpel hit the wall and clattered to the floor. Sherlock could hear the monkey’s claws clicking on the tiled floor as it moved, but he didn’t know where it was. The thief didn’t either – he was poised in the doorway, not sure whether to run or to rescue his creature.
Sherlock reached out his right hand for the metal tray where the monkey had got the scalpel. His hand was shaking from the unexpected fall and the shock of what was happening.
The monkey suddenly appeared around the edge of the metal table. Its wizened little face was contorted in rage. It grabbed hold of the table’s edge with its left hand and swung itself up on to the surface, then jumped straight for Sherlock, screaming.
Sherlock brought the metal tray smartly around like a tennis racket and batted the creature across the room, towards the thief, who grabbed it out of the air, bundled it under his coat and ran.
Sherlock just stood there, breathing heavily. A noise from above made him glance upward. Matty’s face was staring down at him.
‘Are you all right?’ he whispered.
‘I’m . . . fine,’ Sherlock said, although he didn’t feel fine at all. ‘It was just a stupid fall. Now we’ll never know where he goes!’
‘Leave it to me,’ Matty said. Before Sherlock could respond, the boy had vanished from sight. Sherlock had to stop himself from shouting after his friend. The thief had a knife, and a homicidal monkey. Matty was in incredible danger!
CHAPTER SEVEN
He left via the back door and sat outside for a while, in the cold breeze that blew across the hospital grounds, letting his body relax and his brain process what he had seen. On the one hand, things went pretty much as he had anticipated, apart from the fall through the skylight. On the other hand, the revelation that the thief was after a particular body this time, and presumably therefore every time, was entirely new. The important thing now, however, was whether Matty could follow him back to his base of operations.
A sudden thought made him laugh. What if the police had chosen that very night to mount an observation of their own? What if they had seen him there and decided to arrest him?
The thought provoked Sherlock into moving. After all, he couldn’t stay there all night. He headed off towards the hole beneath the tree.
Initially Sherlock had intended to go back to Mrs McCrery’s house, but he was worried about Matty, and so he went to the barge instead. Matty wouldn’t risk heading for the boarding house and trying to wake Sherlock up. He would go back to the barge and wait – if he managed to
get away from the thief, that was.
The barge was exactly where Sherlock remembered. Harold, the horse, was dozing in a field nearby. He slept standing up, with his head lowered, whickering gently as he dreamed of whatever things horses dreamed about. Hay, possibly, or maybe running free across fields and jumping hedges with his mane flowing in the wind.
Sherlock grabbed a blanket from inside the barge and settled down on the deck, wrapping himself up warmly and waiting for his friend to return.
He expected that the excitement of the evening and the worry over what was happening to Matty would mean that he wouldn’t sleep, but he was wrong. He drifted gradually into a confused state where memories and dreams all mixed together into a strange landscape, like something Charles Dodgson – or his alter ego, Lewis Carroll – might write. It was only when the rising sun shone directly into his eyes as he lay there, with his cheek on the deck, that he woke up. His back ached and his feet and hands were chilled. The morning’s dew had soaked into his clothes. He felt completely miserable.
There was no sign of Matty. Sherlock went inside the barge and found half a loaf of bread, which he ate hungrily, tearing it into pieces and wolfing it down without butter or jam or anything. All the time he ate he tormented himself with thoughts of Matty being discovered and beaten, maybe even killed. The boy was wily and quick, but he was neither invisible nor indestructible.
Sherlock was just about to go to the police and report Matty missing when the boy arrived back at the barge. It was late in the morning, and the canal was busy with passing barges stacked up with coal or wood or crates. Matty looked, if possible, even worse than Sherlock felt. He threw himself on to the barge’s deck in exhaustion.
‘If I ever try that again,’ he said, ‘stop me.’
‘What happened?’ Sherlock asked.
‘Nothin’ actually happened. It’s just that I’ve walked a long way, an’ I’ve hidden in some uncomfortable places.’ He sighed, turning over to stare upward. ‘I s’pose you’re not goin’ to let me sleep until I tell you what ’appened.’
‘I might let you sleep,’ Sherlock conceded, ‘but I’d check every ten minutes to see if you were awake yet. You wouldn’t get much rest.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I figured.’ He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘All right then. I followed that cove to a cart that he had outside the grounds. I knew if ’e’d just come on an ’orse then I’d never be able to keep up, but I managed to climb on the back of the cart an’ ’ide under a tarpaulin without ’im seein’ me. We drove for ’bout twenty minutes, an’ every time we went over a bump in the road I felt it all the way from my head to my feet. Eventually, just as I was thinkin’ I couldn’t take it any more and I was about to jump off, we stopped. ’E got off, an’ I waited a few minutes before followin’. Turns out that ’e’s a local ’andyman – does some carpentry, some buildin’, some gardenin’. ’E’s got this barn place that ’e works out of, an’ that’s where we were.’
‘And the monkey?’
‘’E got it off ’is dad, who used to take a barrel organ around the streets. The monkey used to collect the coins while ’e played the music. ’E retired a few years back.’
‘And you know this how?’
Matty was indignant. ‘Cos I asked around, didn’t I?’
‘So what did he do with the big toe?’ Sherlock asked.
‘I’m gettin’ to that! I got inside the barn without ’im seein’ me, and managed to get close to the office area where ’e was workin’. You’ll never guess what ’e did!’
Sherlock thought for a moment. He actually had no idea, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Matty. ‘I never guess,’ he said loftily. ‘I make judgements based on evidence, and I haven’t yet got enough evidence to make a judgement.’
‘You mean you haven’t got a clue.’ Matty smiled. ‘Actually, ’e put the toe in a wooden box. There was waxed canvas in the box, which I s’pose was there to stop the water leakin’ out.’
‘What water?’ Sherlock asked.
‘The water from the ice.’
Sherlock sighed patiently. The boy was tired, after all. ‘What ice?’
‘The ice that ’e filled the box with after ’e put the toe inside.’ He frowned at Sherlock. ‘Pay attention – I only got enough energy to tell this story once.’ He closed his eyes and continued: ‘’E screwed the box down, wrapped it in brown paper an’ tied it up with string. Then ’e wrote an address on the front.’
‘He’s posting the body parts somewhere?’ Sherlock was incredulous. He had never expected this. The ice he had expected – it was obviously necessary to stop the body parts from decomposing and becoming useless for whatever purpose they were intended – but he hadn’t thought that the parts might be being stolen to order.
‘’E took the package outside, got in ’is cart an’ drove off,’ Matty went on. ‘I could see what ’e was plannin’, so I got there first an’ ’id beneath the tarpaulin again. You’ll never guess where ’e went next!’
‘The post office,’ Sherlock said.
‘’Ow did you know that?’
‘He had a package. He was either going to give it to someone or send it to someone. The fact that he wrote an address on it strongly indicated the latter possibility.’
‘Oh.’ Matty’s mouth twisted in disappointment. ‘Well, you’re right – ’e went straight to the post office an’ waited for it to open. When it did ’e went in, went up to the counter, ’anded the package across an’ passed some money over as well. Then ’e left.’
‘I really wish we knew where he sent that package,’ Sherlock said, feeling his heart sink. This looked like a dead end. The investigation was finished.
‘Actually, we do.’ Matty was grinning. ‘I went in ten minutes later an’ said that my employer ’ad brought a package in earlier but he thought ’e might’ve put the wrong address on, an’ could I check? The bloke behind the counter went an’ fetched the package an’ let me take a look. Didn’t let me touch it, but that was all right. I told ’im it was the correct address, an’ I left.’
‘Matty,’ Sherlock said gently, ‘you can’t read.’
‘No,’ the boy replied obstinately, ‘but I can draw. I memorized the shapes of the letters on the front an’ wrote them down on a piece of paper before I left the post office. They’ve got lots of forms an’ stuff, and pencils that people can use.’ He reached into his trousers and pulled out a crumpled and dirty scrap of paper. ‘This is it, best that I can recall.’
Sherlock took the scrap and looked at it in wonder. There, in careful, large capital letters, was an address:
MR THOMAS NATROUS
23 RYDAL CLOSE
EALING
LONDON
‘Matty,’ he said, ‘you are amazing.’
‘I know,’ the boy said. He frowned, and glanced over at Sherlock. ‘Is it okay? I mean, does that address make sense? Did I copy it down right’
‘It does and you did.’
‘Great. After that I walked back, an’ it took me ages. I know where that cove lives now, in case you need ’im, but I’m guessing that you’re more interested in the London end of things at the moment.’ He yawned suddenly. ‘I’m goin’ to go to sleep now. Don’t wake me up.’
‘It’s a bargain.’
‘What are you goin’ to do?’
‘I,’ Sherlock replied, ‘am going to send a telegram to my brother. I did promise him that I would keep in touch.’
Sherlock left the barge and walked into Oxford. He debated going back to Mrs McCrery’s house for a change of clothes, but he knew that he had to send that telegram as soon as possible. Letters and parcels were quick – the parcel might get to its intended address the next day, if not that very day, but telegrams were even quicker. He composed it in his mind as he walked – as short as possible, given that telegrams were paid for by the letter – and when he got to the central Oxford post office he was able to dictate it to the man at the counter straight away.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
The answer arrived two days later, delivered directly to Mrs McCrery’s house. In the meantime Sherlock had checked out several lectures at Christ Church, as well as undertaken an expedition to the barn to which Matty had followed the thief. The lectures were more informative than the barn, which was, as Matty had observed, a workplace for someone who did a lot of different jobs for a lot of different people. Sherlock managed to get inside while the thief was out pruning someone’s rose bushes, but there was no sign of any body parts there, or any reason why they might have been taken. This was just a way station, a point on their journey, not the final destination.
His next tutorial with Dodgson proved odder than Sherlock had been expecting, and he had been expecting something odd.
He turned up at ten o’clock precisely, outside Dodgson’s rooms, to find a note pinned to the door. It said:
Meet me down in the gardens between the college and the river.
Dodgson.
Sherlock walked back down the stairs again and found his way out through the college buildings to the gardens at the back, wondering all the time what Dodgson was up to. Was this some new lesson in logic that could only be undertaken outside, like the little exercises that Amyus Crowe used to carry out using animal tracks or the way that moss grew on the side of trees?
He found the tutor on a patch of grass near the river. He was setting up a complicated device that looked like a wooden box on stilts. It was tall and thin and ungainly, as was the man who was working on it. They made a perfect match. On the front of the box was a lens, like a small telescope. Nearby, a small tent had been set up, secured with guy ropes.
‘Ah, Holmes,’ Dodgson said, ‘Just in t-t-time. Please go and stand in front of the c-c-camera.’ He was, Sherlock noticed, still wearing the same white gloves as he had the first time Sherlock had met him.
