‘So I repeat the question,’ Rufus said. ‘Any idea where we go now?’
Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘We know that he wants to be found by us, because he left a coded message for us. So he’ll have left a trail that only we can follow, or he’ll assume that I can work it out. He won’t be staying in the centre of the village, because he would be too visible. Despite anything he does with his accent and his clothes, he can’t disguise his height. Virginia is with him as well. So he’ll find a place out by itself, and he’ll probably keep Virginia hidden away.’ He let his mind run loose on the various parameters of the problem. ‘He won’t rent a cottage on the main roads in and out of the village,’ he mused, ‘because there would be too much chance of passing people seeing him. He would choose somewhere high up, so that he would be able to see anyone coming well in advance, and so that he would have the advantage of height. Anyone who found him would have to approach slowly, uphill, while he could throw rocks and stuff downhill at them.’ He frowned. ‘He might choose a place on top of a hill, so that he and Virginia could escape in any direction if they were attacked, but that would mean attackers would be able to come at him from any direction while he could only watch in one direction at any time – or two if Virginia was helping him. No, it’s more likely that he would choose somewhere towards the top of a hill but in a cleft or a dip or something, so that anyone coming at him would be forced into approaching from the front.’
‘That narrows it down,’ Rufus said. ‘We can ask around for cottages that meet that description.’
‘There’s a better way,’ Matty said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Kids my age.’ Matty thumped his chest in emphasis. ‘In every town an’ every village there’s kids like me. They go everywhere an’ see everything. You can’t stop ’em. Just find one an’ slip ’im a tanner. He’ll know where Mr Crowe is hiding.’
‘Better than that,’ Sherlock added, ‘he’s probably paying them. Mr Crowe knows that urchins –’ he glanced at Matty apologetically – ‘go everywhere and know everything. He’ll be slipping them a tanner each himself to watch out for strangers. They’ll be watching out for us, as well.’
Enthused by this strategy, they headed towards the centre of the village. Whenever they passed either an individual kid with unkempt hair and dirty clothes or a group of them together, Matty slipped off the cart and went to talk to them. Each time he came back he shook his head and said that they weren’t talking, but Sherlock couldn’t help notice that whenever their cart was pulling away, the lone kid or one of the group would slip off. They all headed in more or less the same direction.
‘Should we follow one of them?’ Rufus asked after a while. The cart was parked on a stretch of dirt road near the centre of the village.
‘No,’ Sherlock and Matty said together.
‘They’re probably reporting back to another kid, an older one who acts as a central point for messages,’ Sherlock explained.
‘He’ll send a runner to Mr Crowe,’ Matty added. ‘If we get near that older kid, he’ll just up sticks and run for it, and then we’ll be back at square one.’
‘Given the scale of Mr Crowe’s intelligence network,’ Sherlock said, ‘we’re better off waiting here. Once the messages get to him, he’ll send someone to check us out.’
Sure enough, some time later a dirty, untidy child approached them. His feet were bare and almost black with dirt.
‘Afternoon!’ Rufus said, touching his forehead.
‘Got some questions for you,’ the boy said in a thick Scottish accent.
‘Go ahead.’
‘What’s the name of the lassie’s horse?’
‘The lassie?’ Sherlock asked.
‘The girl,’ Matty explained. ‘Virginia.’
‘Oh.’ Sherlock raised his voice. ‘It’s called Sandia.’
‘Aye. An’ what’s the name of your horse?’
Sherlock smiled. It had become a joke between him and Virginia. ‘He didn’t have a name for a long time, but eventually I called him Philadelphia.’
‘Aye,’ the lad confirmed. ‘An’ what’s your middle name?’
‘Scott,’ Sherlock said. ‘I’m Sherlock Scott Holmes.’
‘Come on then. I’ll take you where you want to go.’ As Rufus flicked the reins to get the horse’s attention, the kid added, ‘Best leave the cart. We’re headed uphill.’
He led the way off the road and upward, scrambling from rock to rock or clump of grass to clump of grass. Sherlock, Matty and Rufus followed as best they could. The way was steep, and Sherlock’s abused body found it hard to cope. After a few minutes his breath came in gasps and he could feel a rasp deep in his chest. His ankles started aching, where the rope had pulled on them, and after ten minutes spikes of pain were lancing up his calf muscles. But he kept on going. He had no choice. He could tell that Rufus was struggling too.
Their path led them past several cottages that were perched on the hillside, looking down on the town and on the sea. Every now and then Sherlock looked over his shoulder at the scenery. The sea was a slowly billowing sheet – grey now, seen from above, rather than the green that it had been when looked at on the way into the village – and he could see darker areas where, he guessed, the sand beneath the surface dropped suddenly away. The line where land met water was a stone quayside, and fishing boats were tied up along it, their masts dipping and bobbing as the waves rolled in. All in all it was an extraordinarily peaceful sight. Despite the pain in his legs and in his chest, Sherlock felt something inside him loosen its tight grip on his heart. Matty seemed to feel the same.
They passed a stone chapel and a graveyard – the highest point of the village proper. After that they were ascending through tall grass and thistles. The sound of seagulls crying accompanied them. Glancing backwards, to the sea, Sherlock realized that they had climbed so high that he was looking down on the seagulls.
After twenty minutes of hard hiking they came to an area where the hill rose up on either side of them and they were walking into a narrowing gorge where the ground sloped up slightly ahead but rocky cliff faces loomed on their left and right. Over his shoulder the boy said, ‘Difficult climb up ahead. Get ready.’
He was right. After a few hundred feet of gradually rising ground, with the cliff faces closing in on both sides, they came to a section where the ground ahead of them rose sharply for a stretch of perhaps ten feet. It wasn’t as steep as the cliff faces to either side, but it was still pretty steep. There was no choice but to scramble up using hands and feet. Once they got to the top, Sherlock looked back. He was surprised how high they were. Far in the distance he could see the dark line where grey sky met grey ocean.
The way ahead narrowed even more, and jinked around to the right so that the point of the gorge – if it even came to a point – was hidden. They kept trudging on, exhausted by the climb.
Sherlock looked back again after a few minutes. He could see the edge of the place where they had scrambled up, but nothing beyond that apart from the sky. The ground dropped away too steeply.
Finally, once they had moved beyond the jink in the gorge, a lone cottage came into sight. Built of the usual grey granite, weather-beaten by years of storms, it nestled into the hillside as if it had grown there. The cottage was set back into a V-shaped notch where the canyon came to an abrupt end, and the ground in front of it was littered with rocks of different sizes that had fallen from the cliffs over the years. On either side, steep faces of rock rose up to the point where the hillside began again. If this was where Amyus Crowe was hiding, Sherlock approved of his choice. The only approach to the cottage was uphill, and from the front. To either side and at the back there was a sheer face of rock. Anyone trying to climb down it would be risking their life.