Anthony Horowitz - Moriarty

The cab dropped us as the church bells were striking eight o’clock, the hollow chimes echoing in the dark. I saw at once that we were expected and my spirits sank. There were a dozen roughs waiting for us, so dirty and ragged that they could themselves have been summoned from the graves that surrounded them. They were dressed, for the most part, in close-fitting coatees, greasy corduroys and boots. Some of them were bareheaded, others wore billycocks and carried cudgels which they balanced on their shoulders or on the crooks of their arms. Torches had been lit, throwing red light across the gravestones as if they were determined to make the scene even more hellish. How long they had been there, I could not say, but it seemed incredible to me that we were simply going to deliver ourselves to them. I had to remind myself that there was no alternative, that we had made our choice.

Still, we lingered at the gate.

‘Where is my daughter?’ Jones called out.

‘You came alone?’The speaker was a bearded man with long, tangled hair and a broken nose that threw uneven shadows across his face.

‘Yes. Where is she?’

There was a pause. A sudden breeze whispered through the cemetery and the flames bowed in recognition. Then a figure appeared, stepping out from behind a monument with a stone angel perched above. For a moment, I thought it might be Clarence Devereux but then I remembered that his condition would not allow him to show himself in this open space. It was Edgar Mortlake. I had last seen him plunging into the river and to my eyes he now seemed more dead than alive, moving slowly, as if the impact of the water had broken several of his bones. He was not alone. Beatrice Jones, pale and tearful, was holding his hand. Her hair was unbrushed and there were smuts on her face. Her dress was torn and soiled. But she looked unharmed.

‘We don’t give a damn about your dear little daughter!’ Mortlake shouted. ‘It’s you we want. You and your infernal friend.’

‘We’re here.’

‘Come closer. Come and join us! We have nothing to gain by keeping her. We have a carriage waiting to send her home. But if you do not do as I say, you will see something you might rather not.’ He had lifted his other hand, revealing a long-bladed knife, which glinted in the flames as it hung over the little girl. Mercifully, she could not see it. I had no doubt at all that he would use it if we did not obey his instructions. He would cut the girl’s throat where she stood. Jones and I exchanged a glance. Together, we moved forward.

At once we were surrounded, the hooligan boys moving behind us, cutting off any means of escape. Mortlake stepped towards us, still holding onto Beatrice. She had recognised her father but was too terrified to speak. ‘Take the girl back home.’ He handed her to one of the younger men, a curly-haired rogue with a smile and a stye in one eye. The two of them walked off together. ‘You see, Inspector Jones? I am true to my word.’

Jones waited until his daughter had left the cemetery. ‘You are a coward—a man who steals a child and uses her for his own evil ends. You are beneath contempt.’

‘And you are the cripple who killed my brother.’ Mortlake was very close to Jones now, his face inches away, staring at him with eyes on the edge of madness. ‘You will suffer for that, I assure you. But first there are some questions you must answer. And answer them you will!’

Mortlake nodded and I saw one of the roughs step forward with a shillelagh, which he swung viciously through the air, hammering it into the back of Jones’s head. Jones fell without another word and I realised that I was now alone with the enemy, that they were all around me, and that Mortlake had already turned to me. I knew what was coming. I expected it. But I was still unprepared for the explosion of pain that sent me hurtling forward into a tunnel of darkness and certain death.

I was almost afraid to open my eyes for I was quite convinced that I must be dying. How else could I be so cold?

As consciousness returned, I found myself lying on a stone floor with a light flickering somewhere close by. I had no idea how long I had been here nor how badly I had been hurt, although my head was still pounding from the blow I had received. I wondered if I had been removed from London. The chill had penetrated right through to my bones and my body was shuddering involuntarily. There was no feeling whatsoever in my hands and my very teeth were aching. It was as if I had been transported to the frozen north and left to perish on an ice floe. But no. I was indoors. It was concrete, not ice, beneath me. I pulled myself into a sitting position and wrapped my hands around me, partly to conserve what little bodily warmth remained, partly to hold myself together. I saw Athelney Jones. He had already regained consciousness but he looked quite close to death. He was sitting slumped against a brick wall with his walking stick next to him. There were sparkles of ice on his shoulders, his collar and his lips.

‘Jones… ?’

‘Chase! Thank God you are awake.’

‘Where are we?’ A cloud of white vapour emerged from my mouth as I spoke.

‘Smithfield, I think. Or somewhere similar.’

‘Smithfield? What is that?’

My question answered itself. We were in a meat market. There were a hundred carcasses in the room. I had seen them but, with my senses returning to me only slowly, I had been unable to grasp what they were. Now I examined them; whole sheep, stripped bare, missing their heads, their fleeces or anything that would have identified them as God’s creatures, lying with their limbs stretched out, stacked up in piles that reached almost to the ceiling. Small pools of blood had trickled out and then frozen solid, the colour more mauve than red. I looked around me. The chamber was square with two ladders attached to rails so that they could slide from one end to the other. It reminded me of the cargo hold of a ship. A steel door provided the only possible way out, but I was certain it was locked and to touch it would have torn the skin from my fingertips. Two tallow candles had been placed on the floor. Otherwise, we would have been left in the pitch dark.

‘How long have we been here?’ I asked. It was as much as I could do to enunciate the words. My teeth were locked together.

‘Not long. It cannot be long.’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No. No more than you.’

‘Your daughter… ?’

‘Safe… or so I believe. We can at least give thanks for that.’ Jones reached out and took hold of his stick, dragging it towards him. ‘Chase, I am sorry.’

‘Why?’

‘It was I who brought you here. This is my doing. I would have done anything—anything—to get Beatrice back. But it was not fair to bring you into this.’ His words were breathless, staccato, as stripped of warmth as the butchered sheep that surrounded us. It could not be otherwise. Every word, even as it was uttered, had to fight against the biting cold.

And yet I replied: ‘Do not blame yourself. We began together and together we will end. It is as it should be.’

We retreated into silence, conserving our strength, both of us aware that our lives were slipping away from us. Was this to be our fate, to be left here until the blood had frozen in our veins? Jones was almost certainly correct. This had to be a major meat market—and one that was surrounded by cold rooms. The walls that contained us would be packed with charcoal and somewhere nearby a compression refrigerating machine would be grinding away, pumping glaciated—and lethal—air into the chamber. The mechanism was fairly new and we might be the first to be killed by it—not that I could find a great deal of consolation in the thought.