Black Ice by Andrew Lane

Author:Andrew Lane
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: mystery, detective, YA, Sherlock Holmes
ISBN: 9781447205111
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2011-06-03T03:45:41+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

A shocked silence descended around the table.

‘You’re going to go to Moscow?’ Sherlock asked, stunned. ‘In Russia?’

‘I’m afraid I am,’ Mycroft replied.

‘But you get vertigo if you go north of Oxford Street!’

Mycroft smiled, but it was one of those smiles where humour was a thin veneer over a deeper pain. ‘The fact that I do not wish to go to Russia is immaterial. I should go. I have to go. My own personal comfort is quite irrelevant.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Sherlock protested.

‘I do.’ Amyus Crowe nodded softly. ‘How can you expect subordinates to trust you, to follow your instructions, if they think you will abandon them the first time they get into trouble?’

‘That is exactly it. My people across the world must know that I am not just a fair-weather superior. When storms come, as inevitably they will, I will be standing in the rain with them.’ He shuddered. ‘Uncomfortable as it may be.’

‘And you’re curious,’ Sherlock ventured.

‘Curious?’

‘You want to know the truth. You want to know who actually tried to have you framed for murder, and what the situation is with this land sale.’

Mycroft shrugged. ‘I do confess a certain desire to uncover the actual state of affairs. I dislike uncertainty. It is like having a nagging toothache.’

Across the restaurant, the family that Sherlock had been watching earlier were leaving their table. He stared at them for a moment. The mother was checking that her children were correctly buttoned up and neat while the father looked on. Were they heading off to see the sights of London, or visiting family? Perhaps they were just stopping off in London on their way to somewhere else, and were going straight to one of the main stations to catch a train. Whatever their plans, he felt jealous. He couldn’t remember a time when his own family had been like that – normal, ordinary. What with his father off on army business most of the time and his mother confined to bed, there had never been a time when they had all sat around a table and just been . . . a family.

‘So I won’t be seeing you for a while, just as I won’t be seeing Father,’ he whispered.

‘Unless you come with me.’

For the second time in as many minutes, Sherlock was shocked into silence. ‘Me?’ he squeaked eventually. ‘Go with you? To Russia?’

Mycroft was eyeing the remains of the breakfast on his plate longingly. ‘Perhaps you could explain it to him,’ he murmured to Crowe. ‘I think I may have finished too soon.’

‘Ah’m not sure ah understand it myself.’ Crowe’s expression was severe. ‘Perhaps you could explain it to both of us.’

‘Oh, very well. Sherlock has already become involved in this affair. If I head off to Russia then the best way to distract me, to get me back, or even to stop me going in the first place, would be to threaten him. If he were kidnapped, and let us say a fragment of his ear, or his little finger, were sent to me in a parcel, then I would be rendered incapable of further investigation.

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