Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [18]
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. Urea. It sounded innocuous. It sounded like . . . oh. Yes. It sounded like ‘urine’. He looked down at Matty, frowning. ‘Are you telling me that they tan leather using urine?’
Matty nodded. ‘That and other stuff, but you probably don’t want to even think about that. Just take my advice – hold your nose whenever you pass by that place.’ He shook his head. ‘I heard a story about one of the blokes who worked in there. He was trying to mix the skins around in the big tank they have, using a long stick, but he overbalanced and fell in.’
Sherlock felt his eyes widen. ‘Fell into the . . . ?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What happened?’
‘He drowned.’
‘Drowned in . . . ?’
‘Yeah.’ He shuddered. ‘When I die I want to die quietly, in my sleep. Not drowning in a bath of—’
‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Sherlock said decisively.
‘What?’
‘I said, we’ve got to get in there.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Josh Harkness went in there.’
‘Yes. I know. That was my point. Not only does that place smell worse than the wooden outhouse you rescued me from in that American railway station last year – which, by the way, smelled like someone had got stuck and died – but it’s also got inside it the most dangerous man within a hundred miles. There are times when I wonder about you, Sherlock.’
Sherlock sighed. ‘Look, I wish it wasn’t necessary, but he’s got some information about my family. He’s blackmailing my aunt and uncle. They’re nice people. They’ve never done anybody any harm, and they’ve looked after me and fed me for over a year now. I owe it