The House Of Smoke Read Online Free PDF Page A

home secretary will hold a clemency hearing. Your death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment, and then if a successful prosecution of James Moriarty follows, I believe you may be pardoned.’
    I laughed at him for not knowing the real power lay with Brogan. ‘You want me to testify against
James
Moriarty?’
    ‘I do. I most sincerely do.’
    ‘Save your breath.’
    ‘I can afford to squander a little, as I, unlike you, have many more years to replenish the supply to my lungs.’
    ‘My, aren’t you the wit.’ I laid back and stared at the ceiling. A spider had spun a fine, taut web in the far corner. A still-fluttering fly was already caught. Its struggle to escape was pointless, but struggle it did. The predator moved slowly towards it. Death would soon be dispensed. I knew the ritual all too well.
    ‘I am offering you the chance to save your life, wipe the slate clean and begin again.’
    ‘Deportation, you mean?’
    ‘Not necessarily. There are options on English soil. But wouldn’t even that be preferable to death?’
    I looked at Holmes and wondered who was the spider and who the fly. He thought me about to get caught in his web, but I saw things differently. I was needed. The law needed me. I could, for the moment, safely reject this offer for I was certain Holmes would come back to press his case and in doing so he would perhaps afford me a chance to escape without me having to make any traitorous testimony. My mind was made up.
    ‘Please go away, Mr Holmes. And take your desperation with you.’
    He scowled at me, then walked to the door and rapped on it to summon the gaolers. Before it opened he added, ‘I must tell you one last thing: I have had a wager with my colleague, Dr Watson. He’s a military man as you might know, and he says people like you behave in a military manner.’
    ‘Go away!’
    ‘It is his belief that you will take your intimate knowledge of Moriarty, his crimes and his cohorts to your grave. My bet is to the contrary. You are a killer, Lynch. You deal in death and therefore know the value of your own life, which is of course greater to you than any loyalties you may have. So I have wagered twenty pounds that after some vacillation and pretence to the contrary, you will eventually seize my offer with all the eagerness of a young thief left alone in a cloakroom.’
    The door opened and a gaoler asked, ‘Are you ready, Mr Holmes?’
    ‘I am,’ he answered, ‘I am, indeed.’ He threw a final comment to me. ‘No sooner will this door close than you will begin to consider my proposal and its attractiveness. Use your brain, Lynch, instead of your fists, it might just save your neck.’
    The door banged shut. Keys clicked in the lock and once more I was fastened in.
    The great Sherlock Holmes had visited and propositioned me. Now wasn’t that a thing?
    Above me, the spider devoured the fly. The scene made me smile. Perhaps when I escaped I would visit Holmes with a proposition of my own. Death by knife? Or by my bare hands?
Manchester, 1885
    Brogan Moriarty.
    The name had meant nothing to me when the steely-eyed stranger introduced himself in the shadows of Sebastian’s rooms. Had it done, then I would have fought to the death to escape. But I was young, ignorant and arrogant. Mistakenly confident that I could bide my time and give him and his men the slip, as and when the fancy took me.
    In the light outside the Mancunian mill, the first of Moriarty’s companions appeared to be a well-built, handsome man in his mid-twenties. He was a professional type, a senior clerk perhaps, with shoulder-length black hair, grey eyes and a blue twill suit as perfectly tailored as his smile. With him was a smaller, thinner fellow, drearily clad in an ill-fitting, baggy grey jacket, tattered brown vest and frayed pants, topped by a flat cap far too big for his ragamuffin head. I supposed him to be an errand boy, kept close at hand to run hither or thither as his master wished.
    The four