Sherlock looked back along the road as they moved. He was looking for carts or carriages or horses keeping their distance but not dropping too far back. He couldn’t see anything, but he felt that he had to do more to identify possible followers. Twice he got Rufus to pull off the road and hide the cart behind a barn for twenty minutes while he carefully watched every vehicle and rider that went past. He didn’t recognize anyone, and nobody looked confused at the fact that the people they were following had suddenly vanished.
At one point, while they were waiting, Sherlock leaned across to Rufus. ‘I thought you might have been taken by the Paradol Chamber, back on the train,’ he said.
‘Why would you think that? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since Moscow – apart from that attempt they made to have you diagnosed insane and locked away.’
Sherlock grimaced, remembering. ‘I thought I saw Mr Kyte at Newcastle Station. He was standing behind a pile of luggage, and he was staring straight at me.’ He paused, aware of a tightness in his chest. ‘I thought maybe the Paradol Chamber had decided to take some kind of revenge against us for messing up their plans. I think they still want to get even with me, and with you.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Rufus said, shrugging, ‘I didn’t see Mr Kyte on the station. If I had, I would have taken that great red beard of his and shoved as much of it as I could as far down his throat as I could reach. Take my advice, Sherlock – never trust a red-headed man, or a red-headed woman. They’re born for trouble.’
‘Virginia has red hair,’ Sherlock pointed out.
Rufus turned to fix Sherlock with a warning expression. ‘In that case, my friend, you have a problem.’
Uncomfortable at the way the conversation had turned back to him, Sherlock said quickly, ‘What do you think these people want with Mr Crowe?’
‘The same thing you seem to think the Paradol Chamber want with us – revenge.’
‘But what’s Mr Crowe done to them?’
‘Amyus Crowe is a complicated beast,’ Rufus replied. ‘On the one hand he’s civilized and fair-minded and very genteel. On the other . . .’ He paused. ‘Let’s put it this way – I think if we knew more about Mr Crowe’s past we might not like everything we found.’
‘He told us that he used to be a spy for the Union against the Confederacy during the War Against the States,’ Sherlock protested. ‘And after that he was responsible for tracking down Confederate criminals who had looted and pillaged civilian towns during the War.’
‘Yes,’ Rufus admitted, ‘he did tell us that. But he didn’t tell us the lengths he went to in order to recover those criminals, and he didn’t tell us how many of them he managed to bring back to face trial and how many happened to die in shootouts before he could take them captive. Remember, Sherlock, the man is a bounty hunter. He hunts men for money.’ He sighed. ‘Except that in this case it would appear that men are hunting him, and not for money. They want payback.’
‘You don’t like him, do you?’
Rufus smiled. ‘Ah, you picked up on that, did you? No, he’s not the kind of man I would choose to sit with over a tavern table, with beer in our glasses and tobacco in our pipes. I don’t think we would have much to talk about, but I think we would have a lot to argue about. I have a strong respect for the sanctity of human life, whereas I think Mr Crowe would have no problems in taking another man’s life for little provocation. What’s worse, he doesn’t like music.’
Sherlock was quiet for a while, digesting what Rufus Stone had said. He couldn’t find fault in his logic or his description of Amyus Crowe, but neither could he square the harsh words with the genial smile that he had seen on Mr Crowe’s face or the way he had taken Sherlock under his wing and looked after him. Were all people like this – complicated, not easily understood? If that was the case, what about Rufus Stone himself? Or Mycroft?
Or himself.
He thrust the thought aside. He would rather believe that what people displayed on the surface was what they really were.
‘How many of these Americans do you think are over here in England, hunting Mr Crowe?’ he said eventually.
‘Impossible to say,’ Rufus mused. ‘There were three in the tenement room. Add that to the driver of the leader’s carriage – assuming he was part of the gang, and not just someone hired for the day – and we get two left that we know of. Trouble is, there might be others we don’t know of.’
‘There were two carrying me,’ Sherlock said.
‘And two carrying me,’ Matty added.
‘So that’s at least four people still at large. Problem is, if the man in charge came over here with money, then he could just hire whatever support he needed of any nationality. There’s people in every major town and city in the British Isles that would murder their own grandmothers for an evening’s drinking and gambling.’ He sighed. ‘There’s no end of bad men out there, and a precious shortage of good men to fight them.’
‘That’s all right,’ Sherlock said. ‘One good man is worth ten bad ones.’
Matty snorted, and Rufus eyed him sceptically. ‘If only the world worked that way, things would be a lot better.’
‘When I grow up,’ Sherlock murmured, ‘I’m going to make them better.’
‘You know,’ Rufus said, smiling at him strangely, ‘I think you just might. You and your brother between you, but in radically different ways.’
‘But I’m not going to work for the Government like Mycroft does.’
‘Why not?’ Matty asked.
‘I don’t like taking orders,’ Sherlock said darkly. ‘Not from anyone. I know that sometimes I have to, but I don’t like it.’
When they got back on the road there was nobody in sight. It looked as if they had got away from the city without being spotted.
The landscape was a mixture of rough patches of scrubland and outcroppings of rock. The terrain undulated such that they were never on a level road for more than a few minutes, and their path detoured to get around some of the bigger rocky areas.
Cramond was on the coast: a collection of granite cottages with thatched roofs. Virulently green moss erupted from between the stone blocks of the cottages, looking like some kind of seaweed that had been deposited on shore by a storm and was not only clinging on to life but thriving. The air smelled of salt, and seagulls cried out like abandoned babies.
As the cart rounded the side of a hill Sherlock suddenly saw the sea laid out beneath them. The sun caught the tops of the waves and made them glitter in a hypnotic pattern, points of light dancing on a grey-green background. Closer to the shore, waves broke in parallel lines of white foam that appeared from nowhere, ran for a while and then vanished again.
‘Well, this is Cramond,’ Rufus said as they began the descent into the village. ‘Any idea where we go now?’
‘We could always ask if anyone’s seen a big American bloke with a white suit and a white hat,’ Matty piped up.
‘I think he would have dumped the distinctive clothes,’ Sherlock observed. ‘And we’ve both been with him when he’s gone into taverns and other places to ask questions, and done it in an English accent so good that he might have been brought up a few miles from London. No, he’s got the hunter’s skill of being able to blend with the background so well that you just don’t notice him until he wants you to. By now he’ll have picked up a Scottish accent so perfect that you would think he was born in Edinburgh.’