Andrew Lane - Black Ice

‘No room,’ his rescuer said succinctly. ‘Graveyards here are all full. Bodies buried on top of other bodies. Come a decent rainstorm and coffins’re bein’ washed up an’ exposed for everyone to see.’

Sherlock looked around at the piles of coffins, noticing that they all had a chalked number on the side. Presumably the numbers corresponded to entries on a list that somebody had written down somewhere, so that a particular coffin could be associated with a particular funeral. ‘And all of these are… occupied?’

The boy nodded. ‘Every one of them.’ He paused. ‘Good pickings.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Boxes sometimes get dropped. Smashed. And people sometimes get buried with their possessions – watches, rings, all kinds of stuff. And there’s the clothes as well. Some people’ll pay well for a nice jacket. Don’t matter who was wearing it before them.’

Sherlock felt sick. This was a whole new world, and one he didn’t want any part of. But despite himself, he couldn’t help but ask more questions. He needed to know. ‘So how do they get to Brookwood?’

‘Special railway’ The boy gestured into the distance. ‘Nekrops Railway. Tracks are over there.’

‘They run trains just for the dead?’

‘And for the ones they left behind.’ The kid smiled, revealing a mouth with one rotten tooth left in it. ‘First, second and third class travel, just for the coffins. Travel in style when you’re dead, you can.’ He gestured around. ‘Good thing people don’t see how their loved ones’re looked after before they get put on the train, ain’t it?’

Sherlock looked around again, at the serried ranks of coffins, stacked up higher than his head. All with dead bodies inside. He was standing among enough dead bodies to populate a small town. Scary stuff.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

The boy shook his head. ‘You’re on your own from here, mate.’

‘All right.’ Sherlock handed across the fistful of change from his pocket. ‘Thanks.’

The boy nodded. ‘You’re a gent.’ He stepped back, put his fingers to his lips and let out a whistle so loud it hurt Sherlock’s ears. ‘’E’s over ’ere!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘’E’s escapin’!’

‘I thought you were helping me,’ Sherlock protested.

‘I was.’ The boy shook the fist in which he was holding the coins. ‘Deal’s completed. Now I’m ’elpin’ them. Maybe they’ll let me ’ave your shoes.’

Sherlock could hear noises from the narrow gap he’d emerged from – the sound of long fingernails and toenails against brick. Looking into the darkness he could see the glitter of tiny eyes blinking in the light.

He stepped forward and caught the boy by the wrist. Twisting him round, he pushed him into the gap. ‘He’s got my money!’ he shouted. ‘He’s holding it!’

The boy stared back at Sherlock in horror for a moment before he was pulled into the shadows by a score of tiny hands. Sherlock heard him shout, and then there was nothing but the sounds of fighting and cloth tearing.

He ran. While they were distracted, he had a chance to get away.

Still feeling breathless, still feeling a burning in his lungs and his muscles, he moved as fast as he could through the stacks of coffins. Within a few moments he was clear and out in the open.

Ahead of him were three steam trains. They were on rails, but standing at the end of the line, nestled against barriers. They were like the one that had bought him and Amyus Crowe to London, except that they were painted black: engine and carriages. Each of the carriages had a white skull painted on it at the front and the back. The white skulls had crossed bones beneath them.

Sherlock assumed that the trains only ran after dark. Seeing one of those during the day would be a distressing experience for anyone.

Then again, having one appearing at night out of a cloud of smoke, boiler glowing red with the heat of the burning coals, would be a pretty terrifying experience as well.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the stacks of coffins. In the shadows around them he thought he could see the glimmer of eyes watching him, but he wasn’t sure. The important thing was that they weren’t pursuing him. They wouldn’t come into the light, and he certainly wasn’t going to go back into the darkness. It was over. For the moment.

He turned and took a step forward. Something crunched beneath his feet. He looked down, and saw a white section of bone protruding from the ground. He’d stepped on it, cracking it in two. Boxes sometimes get dropped, the feral boy had said. Smashed. It looked like the contents got left where they had fallen. All this pomp and circumstance for the dead – special trains, a massive city of the dead at Brookwood – and yet the remains were just left to rot where they fell if the coffins got broken. It was as if the spectacle was more important than the actuality. The mourners did not know, or maybe even did not care, whether the family member they had lost was in the coffin when it was buried.

Somewhere beyond the trains, the tracks would lead out into the open air. A breeze was blowing in, scouring away the smell of the catacombs through which Sherlock had been chased and in which he had so nearly lost his life. He trudged wearily towards the weak sunlight. Somewhere out there, back in the real world, Mycroft was still facing a murder charge, and Sherlock had to help clear his name. He was exhausted and in pain, but that didn’t matter. Mycroft needed his help.

He was so tied up with his own thoughts that it took him a few seconds to register the fact that the man with the stringy hair had just stepped out from behind the engine of one of the trains.

‘No escape for you, sonny,’ he said. He raised his hands. The meagre light glinted off the metal spikes on his knuckledusters. ‘And it looks like I saved myself a half-crown into the bargain.’

Sherlock felt his heart sink. All that effort, all that running, all that scraping of his skin against brick, and he still couldn’t get clear. He was too tired to do anything more. He had run out of energy.

‘How did you find me?’ he wheezed.

‘I couldn’t get through those gaps, could I?’ the man replied. ‘But I knew most of them came out here in the bone yards, so I made my way around the outside and waited. I was about to give up when I heard you scraping through.’ He paused. ‘I still need you to tell me why you were following me,’ he said darkly. ‘And then you die.’

A bulky shape moved smoothly out from the space between engine and tender, behind the man with the beard and the knuckledusters. It was wearing a hat.

Sherlock recognized Amyus Crowe just as Crowe slipped his left arm round the thug’s neck, grabbing the wrist with his right hand. The man’s neck was caught in the crook of Crowe’s elbow. Sherlock saw the fabric of Crowe’s sleeve tighten as he tensed his muscles.

The man’s eyes bulged. He brought his hands up to grab at Crowe’s arm, but he couldn’t budge it no matter how much he pulled. His face turned purple as Sherlock watched, too tired to be amazed. Crowe must have been exerting enough force to stop the man from breathing.

The man desperately kicked back with his booted right foot, but Crowe had braced his legs to either side and his captive couldn’t reach. Next he took his hands away from Crowe’s arm and punched backwards, behind his head, hoping to catch Crowe with the spikes of his knuckledusters, but Crowe just moved his head out of the way and increased the pressure on the man’s throat.

‘Ah’m disappointed that you were careless enough to let this man see you following him,’ he said mildly, looking at Sherlock over the man’s shoulder.