• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 539 0

might die, and Sherlock didn’t want that weighing on his conscience. For a moment he felt paralysed, brain whirling as it sorted through the various things that he’d seen in the short time he and Matty had been inside the tannery. Then it struck him: the vats! He could dump the boxes into the vats! If the alkaline chemicals didn’t bleach the ink off the pages or dissolve them into their constituent parts, then they would become sodden and disintegrate of their own accord. There was something poetic about using one part of Josh Harkness’s little empire to destroy another.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’

‘Thank God,’ Matty responded. ‘I’m on the verge of passing out, thanks to the smell.’

‘No,’ Sherlock clarified, ‘I meant that it’s time to destroy all this stuff.’

Matty just stared at him.

‘We can’t let Harkness get away with it,’ Sherlock said insistently. ‘He’s slowly destroying people’s lives.’

‘And he’ll destroy our lives a lot quicker than that if we do anything to cross him.’ Matty shook his head in despair. ‘The man’s an animal! He’s more dangerous than a rabid badger backed into a corner!’

Sherlock shook his head stubbornly. ‘I don’t care. I can’t leave here and then walk around town knowing that every third or fourth person I see is paying him to keep their secrets quiet. People have a right to privacy.’

‘Even if the secrets they’re keeping might get them put into jail if they were known about?’ Matty asked shrewdly.

‘Even so,’ Sherlock said. ‘If a crime has been committed, then there’s a process for that. It gets reported. The police investigate. Evidence gets collected. If there’s enough evidence then people get arrested. Josh Harkness isn’t punishing criminals because he thinks of himself as some unofficial part of the police force – he’s preying on people’s guilty consciences to make money.’

Matty grimaced. ‘It’s still evidence,’ he said. ‘And I think you’ve got a rosy view of the police. Like I told you earlier – the police around here are either taking money themselves or they’re doing their own little petty thefts on the side. Give a criminal a uniform and he’s still a criminal.’

Sherlock thought back to the time, some months before, when his brother Mycroft had been accused of murder. The police hadn’t seemed too interested in collecting evidence then, he had to admit, but even so, the principle was sound.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I admit the system isn’t ideal. I don’t even know what an ideal system would look like. Maybe the police need to be paid more. Maybe people need to be checked out and tested before they’re allowed to join the police. Maybe they need more training. Maybe they need consultants to help them out when they’re investigating difficult crimes. I don’t know. I just know that people like Josh Harkness aren’t the answer. He’s doing nothing to stop crimes – in fact, from his point of view, the more crimes the better.’

‘I ain’t going to convince you to give this up, am I?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re going to do it whether I help or not.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I suppose I’d better help out, if only to keep you alive. My life would be a lot more boring if you weren’t around.’

‘Thank you,’ Sherlock said.

‘I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing,’ Matty responded. ‘I’m just saying, is all.’ He sighed. ‘All right – what’s the plan?’

‘We take all of these boxes and dump their contents in the vats outside.’

Matty shrugged. ‘Somehow I knew it would mean getting closer to those vats. You know those workers aren’t going to let us come back once, let alone twice?’

‘Then we’ll have to distract them.’

‘With what?’

‘I’m still working on that.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It’s got to be something that will attract them all to one side of the building.’

‘Fire?’ Matty suggested.

‘Too dangerous.’

‘What if I let myself be seen, and they chase after me?’

‘That leaves me having to shift twenty-six boxes by myself.’

‘Oh.’ Matty’s expression brightened. ‘What if we wait until it’s dark, then we come back, break in and destroy them for good in peace: undisturbed, like?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘This place