Young Sherlock Holmes: Red Leech Read online

  Dedicated to the three teachers who taught me how to write over the years – Sylvia Clark, Eve Wilson and Iris Cannon – and also to the four writers whose work has acted as living tutorials for me – Stephen Gallagher, Tim Powers, Jonathan Carroll and David Morrell.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PROLOGUE

  James Hillager thought he was hallucinating when he first saw the giant leech.

  The Borneo jungle was so hot and so humid that walking through it was like being in a Turkish bath. His clothes were sopping wet, and there was so much water vapour in the atmosphere that the sweat wasn’t even evaporating from his skin: it was just dripping from his fingers and his nose, or rolling down his body and collecting wherever his clothes touched his flesh. His boots were so filled with water that he could hear a squelching sound whenever he took a step. The leather was going to rot away within a few weeks if this kept up. He had never felt so miserable and uncomfortable in his life.

  The heat was making his head swim, and it was that – and the fact that he was dehydrated and he hadn’t eaten properly for days – which made him think he was hallucinating. He’d been hearing voices in the trees around him for some time now: whispering voices that were talking about him and laughing at him. Part of his mind was telling him that it was just the sound of the wind in the leaves, but another part wanted to yell back at them and tell them to shut up. And then maybe shoot them if they didn’t obey.

  He’d already seen animals that made his mind boggle. Maybe they were real; maybe they were hallucinations as well. He’d seen monkeys with huge, bulbous noses; frogs the size of his thumb that were bright orange, or red, or blue; a perfectly formed adult elephant no taller than his shoulder; and a pig-like animal with dark hair and a long, pointed, flexible snout. How many of them were real, and how many a product of his fevered brain?

  Beside him, Will Gimson stopped and bent over, hands on his knees, taking deep gulps of the steamy air. ‘Got to stop for a minute,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Finding it hard to move.’

  Hillager took the opportunity to mop his brow with a handkerchief that was probably wetter than his face. Maybe he was hallucinating because he was coming down with some kind of tropical fever. These Borneo forests were rife with strange diseases. He’d heard of men who’d been reported lost in the jungle wandering out after weeks missing, with the flesh of their faces covered in pustules, or literally sliding off the bone.

  He looked around nervously. Even the trees seemed to mock him. Their trunks were twisted and gnarled, and smaller plants and vines grew out of them like parasites. They grew so close together than he couldn’t see the sky, and the only light that filtered down here was diffuse and shaded in green.

  Despite the heat, he shivered. He wouldn’t be in this terrible place if he didn’t fear his employer even more.

  ‘Let’s call it a day,’ he urged. He really didn’t want to spend any more time in that jungle. He just wanted to get back to the port, load up the crated animals they’d already collected and get back to civilization. ‘It’s not here. We’ve already collected enough animals to make him happy. Leave this one behind. He won’t even notice.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll notice all right,’ Gimson said grimly. ‘If we only return with one critter, this is the one he wants.’

  Hillager was about to argue the point when Gimson added: ‘Wait! I think I can see one!’

  Hillager moved to join his colleague. The man was still bending over, but he was staring at the base of one of the trees.

  ‘Look,’ he said, and pointed.

  Hillager followed the direction of Gimson’s pointed finger. There, in a pool of water between two tree roots, was what looked like a bright red clot of blood the size of his hand. It glistened in the weak light of the sun.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what Duke said it would look like. That’s exactly what he said it would look like.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Instead of answering, Gimson reached out with his hand and took the thing between his finger and thumb. He picked it up. It drooped bonelessly. Hillager watched, fascinated.

  ‘Yeah,’ Gimson said, turning it over and examining it closely. ‘Look – there’s the mouth, or the sucker, or whatever you call it. Three teeth, set around the edge. And the other end’s got a sucker as well. That’s how it holds on – it attaches itself at both ends.’

  ‘And sucks your blood,’ Hillager said darkly.

  ‘And sucks the blood of anything that passes by slowly enough that it can get a grip,’ Gimson explained. ‘Those tiny elephants, that tapir-thing with the pointy snout – anything.’

  The leech was changing shape as he watched, becoming thinner and longer. When Gimson had picked it up it had been nearly circular, but now it was more like a thick worm. His fingers were still clamped about a third of the way along from its head – if the bit with the mouth could actually be called a head.

  ‘What does he do with them?’ Hillager asked. ‘Why does he send people all this way to collect them?’

  ‘He says he hears them calling out to him,’ Gimson replied. ‘And as to what he does when he gets them – you really don’t want to know.’ He bent closer to the creature, examining it carefully. The creature waved blindly towards him, aware somehow that there was warm blood in the vicinity. ‘This one hasn’t fed for a while.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘It’s looking for something to attach to.’

  ‘Should we leave it?’ Hillager asked. ‘Look for another one tomorrow?’ He hoped Gimson would say no, because he really didn’t want to spend any more time in that jungle.

  ‘This is the first one we’ve seen in a week,’ Gimson replied. ‘It could be longer before we see another. No, we need to take this one. We need to get it back home.’

  ‘Will it survive the journey?’

  Gimson shrugged. ‘Probably – if we feed it before we start back.’

  ‘OK.’ Hillager looked around. ‘What do you suggest. A monkey? One of those pig-things?’

  Gimson didn’t say anything.

  Hillager turned back, to find Gimson staring at him with a strange look on his face. Partly it was sympathy, but mostly it was distaste.

  ‘I suggest,’ Gimson said, ‘that you roll up your sleeve.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Hillager whispered.

  ‘No, I’m a tracker and guide,’ Gimson explained. ‘What exactly did you think your purpose on this expedition was? Now roll up your sleeve. This horror needs blood, and it needs it now.’

  Slowly, knowing what Duke’s reaction would be if he found out that Hillager had let his leech die rather than feed it, Hillager began to roll his sleeve up.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Have you ever thought about ants?’ Amyus Crowe asked.

  Sherlock shook his head. ‘Apart from the fact that they get all over jam sandwiches at picnics, I can’t say I’ve ever given them much thought.’

  The two of them were out in the Surrey countryside. The heat of the sun weighed on the back of Sherlock’s neck like a brick. An almost overpowering aroma of flowers and freshly mown hay seemed to hang in the air around him.
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  A bee buzzed past his ear and he flinched. Ants he was relatively ambivalent about, but bees still spooked him.

  Crowe laughed. ‘What is it with the British and jam sandwiches?’ he asked through the laughter. ‘I swear there’s a nursery aspect to British eating habits that no other country has. Steamed puddings, jam sandwiches – with the crusts cut off, of course – and vegetables boiled so long they’re just flavoured mush. Food you don’t need teeth to eat.’

  Sherlock felt a stab of annoyance. ‘So what’s so great about American food?’ he asked, shifting his position on the dry stone wall he was sitting on. Ahead of him the ground sloped down to a river in the distance.

  ‘Steaks,’ Crowe said simply. He was leaning on the wall, which came up to his chest. His square chin was resting on his folded arms, and his broad-brimmed hat shielded his eyes from the sun. He was wearing his usual white linen suit. ‘Big steaks, flame-grilled. Properly grilled so there’s crisp bits around the edge, not just waved over a candle like the French do. An’ not smothered in some kind of cream brandy sauce, also like the French do. It don’t take the brains of an archbishop to cook and serve a steak properly, so why can’t anybody outside the United States do it right?’ He sighed, his bubbling good nature suddenly evaporating to leave an unexpected flat sadness exposed.

  ‘You miss America?’ Sherlock said simply.

  ‘I’ve been away for longer than a man should. An’ I know Virginia misses the old country as well.’

  Sherlock’s mind was filled with a vision of Crowe’s daughter Virginia riding her horse Sandia with her copper-red hair flowing out behind her like a following flame.

  ‘When will you go back?’ he asked, hoping it wouldn’t be soon. He had grown accustomed to both Crowe and Virginia. He liked having them in his life since he’d been sent to live with his aunt and uncle.

  ‘When my work here is done.’ A huge smile creased his lined, weather-beaten face as his mood changed. ‘An’ when I consider that I have discharged my responsibility to your brother by teachin’ you everythin’ I know. Now, let’s talk about ants.’

  Sherlock sighed, resigning himself to another of Crowe’s impromptu lessons. The big American could take anything from around him, whether it was in the countryside, the town or someone’s house, and use it as the springboard for a question, a problem or a logical conundrum. It was beginning to annoy Sherlock.

  Crowe straightened up and looked around behind him. ‘I thought I’d seen some of the little critters,’ he said, walking over to a small pile of dry earth that was piled up like a miniature hill in a patch of grass. Sherlock wasn’t fooled. Crowe had probably spotted them on the way up and filed them away as fodder for his next training session.

  Sherlock jumped down from the wall and walked across to where Crowe was standing. ‘An anthill,’ he said with little enthusiasm. Small black forms wandered aimlessly around the mound of earth.

  ‘Indeed. The external sign that there’s a whole bunch of little tunnels underneath which the little critters have patiently excavated. Somewhere under there you’ll find thousands of tiny white eggs, all laid by a queen ant who spends her life underground, never seeing daylight.’

  Crowe bent down and gestured for Sherlock to join him. ‘Look at how the ants are movin’,’ he said. ‘What strikes you about it?’

  Sherlock watched them for a moment. No two ants were heading in the same direction, and each one seemed to change direction at a moment’s notice, for no visible reason. ‘They’re moving randomly,’ he said. ‘Or they’re reacting to something we can’t see.’

  ‘More likely the first explanation,’ Crowe said. ‘It’s called “the drunkard’s walk”, an’ it’s actually a good way of coverin’ ground quickly if you’re lookin’ for somethin’. Most people, searchin’ an area, will just walk in straight lines, criss-crossin’ it, or divide the area up into a grid an’ search each square separately. Those techniques will usually guarantee success, eventually, but the chances of findin’ whatever it is quickly are increased by usin’ this random way of coverin’ the ground. It’s called “the drunkard’s walk”,’ he added, ‘cos of the way a man walks when he’s got a bellyful of whisky – legs goin’ in different directions to each other and head goin’ in a different direction entirely.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and removed something. ‘But back to the ants: once they find somethin’ of interest, watch what they do.’

  He showed Sherlock the thing in his hand. It was a pottery jar with a waxed paper top held on with string. ‘Honey,’ he said before Sherlock could ask. ‘Bought it in the market.’ He pulled the string off and removed the waxed paper. ‘Sorry if this brings back bad memories.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sherlock said. He bent down to kneel beside Crowe. ‘Should I ask why you’re wandering around with a jar of honey in your pocket?’

  ‘A man never knows what might come in useful,’ Crowe said, smiling. ‘Or maybe I planned all this in advance. You choose.’

  Sherlock just smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Honey is largely sugar, plus a whole load of other things,’ Crowe continued. ‘Ants love sugar. They take it back to the nest to feed the queen, and the little grubs that hatch from the eggs.’

  Dipping his finger in the honey, which Sherlock noticed was runny in the heat of the morning sun, Crowe scooped up a huge shiny droplet and let it fall. It caught on a clump of grass and hung there for a few moments before strands of it sagged to the ground and lay there in scrawled and glistening threads.

  ‘Now let’s see what the little critters do.’

  Sherlock watched as the ants continued in their random wanderings; some climbing up strands of grass and dangling upside down for a while and others foraging among grains of dirt. After a while, one of them crossed a strand of honey. It stopped midway. For a moment Sherlock thought it was stuck, but it wandered along the strand, then wandered back, then dipped its head as though drinking.

  ‘It’s collecting as much as it can carry,’ Crowe said conversationally. ‘It’ll head back for the nest now.’ And indeed the ant did appear to retrace its steps, but rather than heading directly for the nest it continued to wander back and forth. It took a few minutes, and Sherlock almost lost it a couple of times as it crossed the path of other groups of ants, but eventually it reached the pile of dry earth and vanished into a hole in the side.

  ‘So what now?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘Look at the honey,’ Crowe said.

  Ten, perhaps fifteen ants had discovered the honey by now, and they were all taking samples. Other ants kept joining the throng. As they joined, others broke away and headed vaguely in the direction of the nest.

  ‘What do you notice?’ Crowe asked.

  Sherlock bent his head to look closer. ‘The ants appear to be taking a shorter and shorter time to get back to the nest,’ he said, wonderingly.

  After a few minutes there were two parallel lines of ants heading between the honey and the nest. The random wandering had been replaced with a purposeful direction.

  ‘Good,’ Crowe said approvingly. ‘Now let’s try a little experiment.’

  He reached into his pocket and took out a scrap of paper about the size of his palm. He laid it on the ground halfway between the nest and the honey. The ants crossed the paper back towards the nest as if they hadn’t even noticed it.

  ‘How are they communicating?’ Sherlock asked. ‘How are the ants who have found the honey telling the ones in the nest where it is?’

  ‘They’re not,’ Crowe answered. ‘The fact that they are returnin’ with honey is a signal that there’s food out there, but they can’t talk to each other, they can’t read each other’s minds and they can’t point with those little legs of theirs. There’s something a lot cleverer goin’ on. Let me show you.’

  Crowe reached down and deftly turned the scrap of paper through ninety degrees. The ants already on the paper walked off the edge and then seemed lost, wandering aimlessly around, but Sherlock was fasc
inated to watch the ants who reached the paper walking across it until they reached halfway, then turning and heading at right angles to their previous path until they reached the edge and then walking off and starting to wander again.

  ‘They’re following a path,’ he breathed. ‘A path they can see but we can’t. Somehow, the first few ants had laid that path down and the rest followed it, and when you turned the paper around they kept following the path, not knowing that it now leads somewhere else.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Crowe said approvingly. ‘Best guess is that it’s some kind of chemical. When the ant is carrying food, he leaves a trail of the chemical behind. Imagine it like a rag covered in something that smells strongly, like aniseed, attached to one of their feet, and the other ants, like dogs, have a tendency to follow the aniseed trail. Because of the “drunkard’s walk” effect, the first ant will wander all over the place before he finds the nest. As more and more ants find the honey, some of them will take longer paths to the nest and some shorter ones. As more ants follow, the shorter paths get reinforced by the chemical because they work better and because the ants can get back quicker, and the longer paths, the wandering ones, fade away because they don’t work as well. Eventually you end up with a nearly straight route. An’ you can prove that by doin’ what I did with the paper. The ants still follow the straight-line trail even though it now leads them away from the nest, not towards it, although eventually they’ll correct themselves.’

  ‘Incredible,’ Sherlock breathed. ‘I never knew. It’s not . . . intelligence . . . because it’s instinctive and they’re not communicating, but it looks like it’s intelligent.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Crowe pointed out, ‘a group is less intelligent than an individual. Look at people: one by one they can be clever, but put them into a mob an’ a riot can start, ’specially if there’s an incitin’ incident. Other times a group exhibits cleverer behaviour than an individual, like here with the ants or with swarms of bees.’