Dodger

chapter 10

Dodger uses his head



DODGER RAN TOWARDS home feeling in some way buoyed up by the meeting, especially since Charlie had whispered to him as he left that Angela had more money than anyone who wasn’t a king or queen. A nobby party sounded like a difficult crib to crack, though. He sped at a steady pace until he reached the first drain cover: an entrance to his world. A moment later, despite his smart attire, there was a distinct absence of Dodger and the sound of a drain cover falling back into place.

He got his bearings by feel, by echoes and, of course, by smell – every single sewer in the city had a smell that was all its own; he could taste them like a connoisseur of fine wines, and so he plotted the way home, changing direction only once when his two-note tosher whistle was answered by another already working that particular tunnel. It was still light, which helped when you passed the occasional grid or grating, and the walking was easy – not so much as a trickle today – and he almost absentmindedly explored as he passed a secret niche. He found sixpence, a sign that somebody or something was watching over him.

Overhead in the complicated world was the noise of hooves, the echo of footsteps and occasionally a carriage or a coach, and out of nowhere a sound that made him freeze: there was an eerie metallic squeal of metal in extreme distress, as if something was wrong, or maybe something had got stuck in a wheel, causing it to drag noisily over the stones with a sound that seared the soul and, once heard, could never be forgotten.

The coach! If he could see where it went, he might find the men who had battered Simplicity. He clenched his fists in anticipation – wait until they were on the receiving end of a set of brass knuckles . . .

The coach was running along the street above him, and he cursed the fact that the next drain cover in that direction was some way away, luckily in a usually moderately clean sewer which he told himself would save wear and tear on the shonky suit. He ran along the sewer, not stopping at all, not even for a shilling, and didn’t halt until he saw the gratings of the drain cover above him. He got out his crowbar, but just as he was about to fling the cover away there was a sound of heavy hoofbeats and the jingle of harness. Something huge covered that little circle of light that had been salvation with a great and glorious smell of dung, as a brewer’s cart pulled up on top of the drain and settled down like an old man finding a privy at last after a long wait. The likeness was assisted by the fact that the great steaming shire horses that had been pulling the cart decided, as one, very hygienically to empty their bladders. They were large animals and it had been a long afternoon, and so the shower was not over in the space of a moment, but rather an elegant duet to the goddess of relief. Regrettably, since the only way was down, there was simply no time for Dodger to dodge out of the way, not now.

In the distance, gradually merging with all the rattle and clamour of the streets, the screaming wheel could barely now be heard. In any case, the beefy men who worked for the brewers were unloading the heavy casks down wooden ramps, and the rumble of the great barrels drowned out every other sound that was left.

Dodger knew the routine of these men; once they had shifted all the empty barrels from the pub and replaced them with full ones, they would as sure as sunset drink a pint of beer. They would be joined in this cheerful enterprise by the landlord himself, the ostensible reason for this being that they would all agree on the quality of the nectar concerned, although in truth the likely reason was that, after heaving great loads around for any length of time, well, a man deserves a beer, doesn’t he? It was a ritual that was probably as old as beer itself. Occasionally, the brewery men and the landlords would have another beer, so great was their determination to make sure that the beer was in the best possible condition. In fact, Dodger could smell it, even above the scent of the horses, and even with a certain essence of horse to contend with, it still made him thirsty.

He had always loved the smell you got in the sewers by the breweries. A geezer called Blinky, who was a rat-catcher by profession, had once told him that the rats in the sewers underneath the breweries were always the biggest and fattest anywhere, adding that the rat-catching fancy would pay extra for brewery rats because they had a lot of fight in them.

Whatever he did now, though, Dodger knew he wasn’t going to catch up with that damned coach. The men above him were being very assiduous in deciding on the quality of the beer, and while he could, of course, run along to the next grating, his quarry by then would have got lost in the street noise of London, as sure as Heaven. All he could do was seethe at an opportunity lost.

He trudged on anyway, mostly because the large shire horses also did other things than piss – that’s why some of the street urchins used to follow them with a bucket. You often heard them shouting their wares among the nobbier houses, where people had gardens, with the refrain ‘One penny a bucket, missus, well stamped down!’

The only thing to do now was hurry along to the next drain cover and get out there. And so, after a day of dodging, he traipsed through the maze of streets, tired, hungry and well aware that there was indeed not one mark on the shonky suit; it was now, in fact, made up of marks. Jacob and his sons were pretty good at cleaning things up, but they would have their work cut out on this. No hope for it, though; he would have to take his lumps.

Gloomily he walked on, paying attention all the time for heads that dropped out of sight as soon as they knew that they had been made, or people who very swiftly disappeared into alleyways. This was what a geezer did; a geezer knew that most of the hurrying, scurrying crowd would be simply minding their own business, although with the option of minding somebody else’s business as well if the opportunity arose. What Dodger was looking out for was the interrogating eye, the eye of purpose, the watchful eye, the eye that read the street.

And right now the street seemed clear, in so far as any street could, and at least Simplicity was safe for tonight, he consoled himself. Although not safe if she went out. It was dreadful the things that could happen on the street, in full view.

Not so long ago, he remembered he had dressed up as a little flower girl; he was young enough to pull it off with his auburn hair sticking out fetchingly from a scarf, and it wasn’t even his hair because he had borrowed it from Mary-Go-Round, who had pretty good blonde hair. Mary’s hair grew like a mushroom and looked like it too. But she made good money every few months or so by selling it to the wig-makers.

The reason he had been doing this favour was that the flower girls, some of whom were as young as four years old, had been having a certain amount of . . . harassment from a particular kind of gentleman. The girls, who mostly sold violets and daffodils in season, were a decent bunch, and Dodger quite liked them and cared for them. Of course, they had to make a living as they grew older, just like everyone else, and it might be said that in certain circumstances a little bit of hanky-panky might just be acceptable to the older ones, provided that they were in control of the hanky, not to mention the panky. However, they were furiously protective of their younger sisters, at which point Dodger had been persuaded to don his first dress.

And so when the sharp-suited gentlemen who liked to go down among the poor flower girls to see if there were any new blossoms they could pluck came to ply them with strong liquor until they could have their wicked way with them, they would actually be subtly directed to the shrinking and simpering violet who was, in fact, Dodger.

Actually, he had to admit that he had been incredibly good at it, because to be a geezer was to be an actor and so Dodger was better at being a shrinking violet than any of the other flower girls who had, how could you put it, better qualifications. He had already sold quite a lot of his violets because his voice hadn’t broken then and he could make himself a real little virgin when he wanted to. After a few hours of this, the girls tipped him off to the whereabouts of a particularly nasty dandy who always hung around the smaller girls, and who was heading towards him with his nice coat and his cane, jingling the money in his pockets. And the street applauded when a suddenly rather athletic little flower girl grabbed the smarmy bastard, punched him, dragged him into an alley and made certain that he would not be able to jingle anything in his pockets for some time to come.

That had been one of Dodger’s very good days because, well, firstly he had done a good deed for the flower girls, earning from one or two of them the likelihood of an occasional kiss and cuddle, as between friends. Secondly, since he had left a gentleman groaning in the alley without even his unmentionables, he had harvested one gold watch, one guinea, a couple of sovereigns, some small change, an ebony walking cane set with silver trimmings, and one pair of the said unmentionables.1 And the bonus in the whole affair was that the man was never, ever likely to get in touch with the peelers. Also, he had forgotten this: there had been the gold tooth which the man had spat at him after the best punch that Dodger had ever laid on anybody. He had actually caught it in the air, much to the applause of the flower girls, making him feel for a while the cock of the heap. He had taken the older flower girls for an oyster supper and it had been the best day a young man could ever have. It was always worth doing a good deed, though that had been before he had rescued Solomon, who wouldn’t have approved of some aspects of the enterprise.

Since Dodger was now practically on his home patch, blackened by smoke though it was, he let his guard down and a hand landed on his shoulder with a grip that was surprising, given that its owner mostly used his strength to push a pen.

‘Well, Mister Dodger! You will be amazed how much I had to spend on the growler to get here so quickly. And, may I say, your sewers have made short work of your suit. Any chance of there being a coffee house around here, do you think?’

Dodger thought not, but did volunteer that one of the nearby meat pie houses might have some of it on the go, adding, ‘Not certain what it will taste like. A bit like, probably very much like, the meat pies, really; I mean, you have to be really hungry, if you see what I mean.’

In the end, he led Charlie to a pub where they could talk without being overheard, and where it was least likely somebody would try to pick Charlie’s pocket. When Dodger went in, he was Dodger in spades. No, come to think about it, not just in spades, but also in clubs, hearts and diamonds as well – a diamond geezer, the friend of everyone in the rookeries. He glad-handed Quince, the landlord, and a few of the other hangers-on of dubious repute with enough fire to send the word to those who had the eyes to see that this mark belonged to Dodger, and nobody else.

On the whole, Charlie was putting a good face on it, but nevertheless, here he was in the rookeries, where even the peelers trod carefully and never, ever went singly. Here was Charlie, as out of place as Dodger had felt himself at first in Parliament. Two different worlds.

London wasn’t all that big when you thought about it: a square mile of mazes, surrounded by even more streets and people and . . . opportunities . . . and outside that a load of suburbs who thought they were London, but they weren’t at all, not really, at least not to Dodger. Oh, sometimes he went outside the square mile – oh, as far as two miles away! – and he took great care to cloak himself with the full cocksureness of geezerdom. Then he could be all friendly with all those people it paid to be friendly with, and geezer would call unto geezer; the geezers of the Outer Wastes, as Dodger called those streets, weren’t exactly friends but you respected their patch in the hope and sureness that they would respect yours. You reached an understanding with looks, assumptions and the occasional exchange of gestures which hardly needed words. But it was all a show, a game . . . and when he was not Dodger, he sometimes wondered who he really was. Dodger, he thought, was a lot stronger than he was.

Now and then, a customer in the pub glanced at Charlie and then looked at Dodger, and instantly thought they understood and looked away. No problem, ’nuff said, guv’nor, right you are.

When it was clear that warfare would not break out, and two pints of porter, for once in clean glasses, what with there being a gentleman here, were put in front of them, Charlie said, ‘Young man, I made great haste to my office after finishing our business with Angela, and what did I find but that my friend Mister Dodger the hero is a very rich man.’ He leaned closer and said, ‘In fact, I have in my pocket, carefully wrapped so that they should not jingle, specie to the tune of fifty sovereigns and what you might now call small change, with the promise of more to come.’

At last Dodger got control of his own mouth, which for a few seconds had totally been beyond him. He managed to whisper, ‘But I ain’t no hero, Charlie.’

Charlie put a finger to his lips and said, ‘Do be careful about protesting; you know who and what you are, and I suppose so do I, although I suspect I am kinder to you than you are to yourself. But right now the good people of London have contributed this money to someone they consider to be a hero. Who are we to deprive them of their hero, especially since it might be that a hero can get things done?’

Dodger glanced around the bar. Nobody was listening and he hissed, ‘And poor old Todd is a villain, right?’

‘Well, now,’ said Charlie. ‘A hero, a man might think, is a man who might protest that the so-called villain is nothing more than a sad, mad man in torment because of what war has done to him, and indeed suggest that Bedlam would be more sensible than the gallows. Who would deny a hero, especially if said hero sprang some of his newfound wealth seeing to it that the poor man had a reasonable time there.’

Dodger thought of Mister Todd in Bedlam, where the poor devil would presumably be locked in somewhere with his demons and with no comforts unless he could afford to pay for them. The thought made Dodger’s flesh crawl, because surely that would be much worse than the gallows in Newgate, especially since they were getting the art of putting the knot in the rope in such a way that the neck was broken instantly, which saved a lot of hanging around for all concerned and meant that people no longer had to rely on their friends swinging on their heels as they danced the hemp fandango. Reportedly, a good pickpocket could get his lunch just by strolling behind people who were intent on making the most of the entertainment. Dodger had himself tried this out once and hadn’t done too badly, but he had been surprised to find himself feeling a little ashamed at using such an occasion for profit and so he had re-distributed the money he had expertly filched to a couple of beggars.

‘No one’s going to listen to me,’ he said now.

‘You undersell yourself, my friend. And you undersell the power of the press. Now close your mouth before something flies into it, and remember, tomorrow morning you must come to see me at the offices of Punch magazine so that Mister Tenniel can make a very droll likeness of you, for our readers would like to see the hero of the day.’

He slapped Dodger on the back – an action he immediately regretted as his hand encountered an especially fruity patch of Dodger’s suit.

‘The coach,’ said Dodger. ‘I heard it again. Nearly caught it too. I’ll find them coves, Charlie. Simplicity will be safe from them.’

‘Well, she’s certainly safe right now at Angela’s.’ Charlie smiled. ‘And I believe I can keep Ben quiet for a day or so whilst I make further enquiries. We make a team, Mister Dodger, a team! The game is on, so let us hope we are on the winning side.’

With that, he left the pub, heading fast for the next wide road that might contain a cab and leaving Dodger standing there with his mouth open and a pocket full of glorious, shiny specie. After a few seconds, the goddesses of reality and self-preservation ganged up on him, and a man holding a fortune raced through Seven Dials and hammered on Solomon’s door.

He gave the special knock, heard the joyful bark of Onan followed by the shuffling of Solomon’s slippers, followed by the rattle of bolts. Dodger knew that at the Tower of London – a place he never wanted to see the inside of – there was a great ceremony of the Yeoman warders, known by some as the Beefeaters, when the place was locked up at nights. But however complicated their ceremony was, it probably wasn’t as careful and meticulous as Solomon opening or closing his door. This was, in fact, now at last open.

‘Oh, Dodger, a little late. Never mind, stew is all the better for a really good simmer . . . Oh dear, what have you done to Jacob’s very nearly new suit!’

Carefully taking off the jacket, Dodger hung it at the insistence of Solomon on a coat hanger to await further attention before turning round slowly, opening the purse that Charlie had given to him and letting its contents tinkle onto the old man’s work table.

He then stood back and said, ‘I think Jacob would now agree with me that the suit is not really important at the moment. In any case,’ he continued, smiling, ‘everybody knows that a little bit of piss does no harm to a garment whatsoever, so I think some of this specie would make everything as right as rain, what do you say?’ And while the old man’s mouth was still open Dodger went on, ‘I hope you’ve got some room in your strongboxes!’

Then he thought, as Solomon stood there in amazement and said nothing, maybe it would be a very good idea to get his riches somewhere else, as soon as ever possible.

Sometime later, two empty bowls of stew sat on the table alongside a fortune made up of carefully stacked coins, which were ranged in order of denomination from one or two half farthings right up to the guineas and sovereigns. Solomon and Dodger stared at the piles as if expecting them to perform a trick or, possibly more likely, to evaporate and go back to where they came from.

As for Onan, he looked anxiously from one to the other, wondering if he had done something wrong, which to be frank was generally likely to be the case, although on this occasion he was blameless so far.

Solomon listened very carefully to Dodger’s account of what had happened in the barbershop and all that had followed, right up to the dinner invitation from Miss Angela and the reward Charlie had given him in the pub, sometimes raising a finger to ask a particular question but otherwise not making a sound until finally he said, ‘Mmm, it is not your fault if people call you a hero, but it is to your credit that you recognize that if he was a monster then it was other monstrous things which made him so. The iron forged on the anvil cannot be blamed for the hammer, and I believe God will quite understand you took every opportunity to explain the situation to all those who listened. Mmm, don’t I just know that onto the world that is people paint the world that they would like. Therefore they like to see dragons slain, and where there are gaps, public imagination will fill the void. No blame attaches. In the case of the money, one might feel that this is in some way a society trying to feel better. A healing action, which almost as a side-effect makes you a very well-off young man who in my opinion definitely should put most of this money in the bank. You tell me of a lady by the name of Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts; she is indeed extremely rich, having received a very large legacy from her grandfather, and you would be very wise to deal with her family. The people at Mister Coutts’ bank are your men, I think, and therefore I suggest that you put the money with them, where it will be safe and earn interest. A very good nest egg indeed!’

‘Interest? What’s money interested in?’

‘More money,’ said Solomon. ‘Take it from me.’

‘Well, I don’t want people to be very interested in me!’ said Dodger.

The mmm from Solomon was an unusually fruity one, and he said, ‘Not so much interested in you, but very interested in your money. Mmm, you see, it is like this. Supposing one of these newfangled railway gentlemen, let us call him Mister Stephenson, has a design for a wonderful new engine. Being a man interested in mostly bolts and atmospheric pressures, he might not be very well versed in the world of commerce. Mmm, now Mister Coutts and his gentlemen will find for him entrepreneurs – that is you, Dodger, in this case – who might lend him the necessary cash in order to get his good idea to a state of solid reality. Mister Coutts can take the measure of a man as to his trustworthiness and, in short, see to it that your money works for the aforesaid engineer, and also at the same time for you. Of course, they will take advice to ascertain that this gentleman with the shining eyes and grease down his breeches with a definite reek of coal dust about his person is a sound investment, but Mister Coutts and his family are very wealthy people who most certainly didn’t get that way by guessing wrongly. It’s called finance. Trust me; I’m Jewish, we know about these things.’

Solomon was beaming happily, but Dodger said uneasily, ‘This sounds a bit like gambling to me. You can lose money gambling.’

Under the table Onan whined, because nobody was paying him any attention.

‘Indeed you can, but mmm you see, there is gambling, and on the other hand there is gambling. Take poker, for example. Poker is about watching people, and you, young man, are incredibly good at that. You read people’s faces. I don’t know how you do it so well – it’s a gift. So it is in finance; you have to be careful with the people you deal with, and so are Mister Coutts and Co.’

‘You make them sound as if they are on the dodge, like me!’ said Dodger.

Solomon smiled. ‘Mmm, that is a most interesting philosophy, Dodger, but not one that I might suggest too appropriate to mention to the men at Coutts bank. Remember, it’s very hard to stay in business with a bad name, and they certainly stay in business.’ He wrinkled his nose as the odours of the drying jacket managed even to overwhelm Onan’s contribution to the air in the attic.

‘I’m sorry about the shonky suit,’ Dodger managed, but Solomon waved this away with a sound like phooey!

‘Don’t worry about Jacob,’ he said. ‘Jacob would never be angry with a man who has a lot of money to spend. Anyway, horse urine is, as we know, very good for cleaning clothes – a fact not everyone appreciates, though everybody knows it has a smell like good cider, and is very fruity. Now I suggest an early night, once you have finished the washing-up, because tomorrow we will be dining with very important people and I will feel ashamed if people were to say, “Look at that overgrown street urchin, you can see that he has no manners at all.” They will say he might know how to use a knife and fork, but he certainly does not know how to use mmm a fish slice; and they will say to themselves, “I suspect that he slurps when he drinks his soup” – which you, Dodger, if I may say so, do a lot. If people like Mister Disraeli are going to be there, then you must be a gentleman and mmm, it would appear that I have less than one day to turn you into one. Money alone doesn’t do the trick.’

Dodger winced at this, but Solomon plunged on loudly with Old Testament firmness and waggled the finger of rectitude as if at any moment he would throw down the Ten Commandments. Given that the timbers of the property were already creaking and groaning with the weight of multiple families in that one building, this would mean that the building would surely collapse.

Sticking out his beard like an advance guard, Solomon mumbled on, ‘This is a matter of pride, Dodger, which I have and you must acquire. First thing in the morning we will go and visit Mister Coutts, and then see if it is possible to find in London a man who would do the very best haircut and shave for the customer without killing him with a razor. I know just the one.’

Before Dodger could say a word the finger was raised again, seas parted, thunder rolled and the sky darkened, making birds fly frantically for safety. Or at least, that is what happened in the privacy of the attic, and indeed in the mind of Dodger.

Solomon said fiercely, ‘Do not argue with me. This isn’t the sewers. When it comes to finance, and banking, and smartening yourself up, I am a master. With the scars to prove it. I must tell you that just for once in your life I am insisting! This is not the time to argue with your old friend. After all, I wouldn’t tell you how to work the sewers.’

His finger stopped stabbing and joined its family on the hand, and the tide turned back, the dark sky became the peaceful if somewhat dirty glow of evening and the terrible finger of thunder and lightning faded out of Dodger’s imagination as Solomon became rather smaller and said, ‘Now, please take Onan down to do his business and we can shut up shop for the night.’

There was still some light in the sky when Dodger got the dog downstairs. As is the protocol of these things, he let Onan off his leash then looked around as if he had no idea what the dog was actually doing. There were a few lights to be seen, though not too many, candles being the price they were. Just the galaxies of London, the occasional star, or a candle in a window, wasting a part of its tallow on the ungrateful streets. When you saw a candle in a window at this time of night, it meant that some poor wretch had died, or some other poor wretch had been born. Lights were for when the midwife had to be called in, and lights were for a death. If, of course, it was the more heated kind of death – the kind that might make the peelers take an interest – that would be a job for the coroner and would bring forth a second candle.

With that in mind, Dodger called Onan to stop worrying whatever he was worrying and a tiny bell rang in his mind as he realized that in the darkness someone had crept so silently towards him that they now had a knife at his throat.

A voice said very quietly, ‘There is something of considerable importance that you know the whereabouts of, Mister Dodger, and I’m hearing that some people are scared of you on account of everybody knowing, so they say, that you must be quite the lad to have put down Sweeney Todd. But me? I say no, that can’t be true, can it, considering that all a cove needs to do is wait right here and threaten you when you comes out to take the air of a night, waiting for your stinking mutt to make the cobbles even more treacherous for law-abiding folks, such as what I am. Don’t blame yourself, Mister Dodger; routines have been the undoing of many poor buggers, and I heard tell you was clever. Well, there’s none here but you, me and the mutt, and he won’t last long when you’ve told me what I want and I’m done with you. You’ll be just one very short scream in the rookeries, eh. And my employer, Mister Sharp Bob, will be all the happier. That is, Mister Dodger, if you can tell me of the whereabouts of that girl with golden hair; and if you don’t I’ll gut yer anyway.’

Not one muscle had moved anywhere on the body of Dodger, if you didn’t count the sphincter. But as the name Sharp Bob rocketed through his brain, he said, ‘I don’t know you. Thought I knew everyone in all the boroughs. Would you mind telling me who you are, mister? After all, it’s not as though I’ll be able to pass on the information, right?’

The blade just occasionally touched the nape of Dodger’s neck. Onan would almost certainly attack if Dodger gave him the signal, but a knife at your neck is a great encouragement to careful thinking. The neck, Dodger knew, was tough and strong and quite capable of holding the weight of a very large man, as was demonstrated regularly at the Tyburn gallows, and sometimes difficult to puncture if you didn’t get the place right. But what it was vulnerable to was, of course, the slice.

The unseen man had stopped talking; if it hadn’t been for the sensation of his breath close to Dodger’s ear, he almost wouldn’t have known somebody was there. All this went through the brain of Dodger at speed. The man was enjoying the fact that Dodger was helpless and totally in his power; you got that sort sometimes, and the man would never become a geezer. If a real geezer wanted you dead he’d have done it straight away.

Now the man apparently decided that it was time for more tormenting of his victim. ‘I like to see a man take his time,’ he said, ‘so by now I reckon you’ve worked out you can’t break my grip and I could do very nasty things to your neck before your doggie got to me. Of course, there would be a wee little set-to between him and me, but dogs is not too difficult if you have the knowing of it and take care what clothing you wear. Oh, I didn’t spend years in the ring without knowing how to take care of myself in any fight you could mention! And I knows you can’t get to your knuckles right now, nor that little bar you like to carry – not like the last time we met.’ The man chortled. ‘I’m going to enjoy this after the way you came at us in that storm. You might have ’eard tell that someone has taken measures since then so as my associate of that night is now no longer in the land of the living – and you’re going to be joining ’im pretty sharpish, I reckon. Now if I don’t want to be amongst that happy crowd, I needs that information. Now.’

Dodger gasped. So this was one of the men who had been beating Simplicity! And Sharp Bob was behind it! He had heard tell of the man – a legal cove, of sorts, widely respected by the unrespectable. Was he the geezer who had been talking to Marie Jo?

Anger rose in him, a terrible anger that coalesced into one glittering shining certainty as the man’s blade gently stroked across his neck. It whispered, ‘This man is not going to walk out of here.’

Nobody was nearby. There was the occasional scream, shout or mysterious sigh – the music of the night in the tenements – but for now Dodger and the unseen man were alone. Dodger said, ‘It sounds like I am in the hands of a professional, then?’

The voice behind him said, ‘Oh yes, I guess you could say that.’

‘Good,’ said Dodger, and threw his head back so hard that he heard the reassuring noise of something breaking, and then spun round and kicked. It didn’t matter very much what he kicked, or indeed on what he stamped, but he found a multitude of choices, and in his rage he kicked and stamped on practically everything. When it came to it, the only sensible thing to do was stay alive, and the chances of staying alive with a man threatening you with a knife were reasonably small. Better him with a bloody nose and a great big bruise than you being nothing but a memory. And goodness, the bloke had been drinking before coming out – never a good idea if you wanted to be really quick. But this was one of the men who had been beating Simplicity, and no kicking now could be thorough enough for that.

The knife had been dropped, and he picked it up, looked down at the man who was lying in the gutter and said, ‘Good news is that in a couple of months you will hardly remember this; the bad news is, that after about two weeks you will need to get somebody to break that nose proper for you again so’s you look like your old ’andsome self.’

The man snuffled, and by the sight of him in the gloom, the way his face looked now was quite probably better than it had been before: it was all scars. People thought that a ragged face was a sign of a professional boxer, but it wasn’t – it was a sign of an amateur boxer. Good boxers liked to be pretty; it put the contenders off their guard.

Dodger kicked the recumbent man in the fork, as hard as he could, and while the man groaned, he riffled his pockets to the total account of fifteen shillings and sixpence ha’penny. Then he kicked him again for good measure. He also pulled off the man’s shoes and said, ‘Yes, mister, I am the geezer that knocked you down in the storm. The geezer who stood up to Mister Sweeney Todd, and do you know what? I have his razor. Oh my, how it does talk to me. You tell Sharp Bob to come and ask me questions himself, right! I ain’t a murderer, but I am on good terms with such as is, and I’ll see you in lavender if I ever see you around here, or hear of you taking your fists to a lady again. You will float down the river without a boat, and that’s the truth.’

Above and around them there was the sound of windows being cautiously opened – cautiously because whatever it was that had just gone down in the street it might be something that you really didn’t want to see, especially if it was possible that the peelers might quiz you about it. In the rookeries, you needed to develop a blindness that could be switched on and off.

Dodger cupped his hands and shouted cheerfully, ‘Nothing to worry about, folks, it’s me, Dodger, and a bloke from out of town who amazingly enough fell over my foot.’ The ‘out of town’ bit was necessary, to show to all those listening that the local patch, such as it was – and mostly it was mud and the remnants of Onan’s most recent meals – was being defended, and it did not hurt, did it, to let everyone know that it was being defended by Dodger, good ol’ Dodger.

In the grey light there was a sleepy applause from everybody except Mister Slade, who was a bargee by profession and not known for the gentleness of his speech, him being a man who also had to get up very early in the mornings. He had clearly had a bad day and shouted down, ‘OK, now piss off and go back to bed.’

Dodger decided not to take the invitation to piss off and go back to bed; instead, he half dragged, half carried the man off his patch, as the protocol of the streets demanded, then spent another ten minutes dragging him a further distance away from the tenement, just in case a peeler wanted to investigate. He propped the figure up against the wall and whispered, ‘You are a very lucky man. And if I ever see your face around here again you will have what we in the business call a very close shave. Understand? I will assume that was a yes.’ Then Dodger whistled to Onan, though not until after the dog had urinated on the man’s leg: something that in fact Dodger hadn’t intended, but that he thought in the circumstances was a perfect ending to that particular scenario.

And then . . . there was just Dodger, and it seemed to him that the events of the evening needed one last touch, one last little detail that a geezer could look back on and be proud about – a detail that would give his reputation even more shine too. After a few moments’ thought, jingling the purloined coins in his hand, he walked back to his own streets, over to a small doorway and knocked several times.

After a while, a very cautious old lady in a nightshirt peered out, saying with the deepest suspicion, ‘Who’s that? I ain’t got any money in the house, you know.’ Then it was, ‘Oh, it’s you, young Dodger. Cor blimey, I only recognized you ’cos of your teeth. Never known anyone with such white teeth.’

Dodger, to the old woman’s surprise, said, ‘Yes, it is me, Mrs Beecham, and I know you haven’t got any money in the house, but you have now.’ He dropped the booty into her astonished hands.

It felt good, and the toothless old woman perceptibly beamed in the darkness and said, ‘God bless you, sir, I will say a prayer for you at church in the morning.’

This somewhat surprised Dodger; no one had offered him a prayer before, as far as he could recall. The idea that he might have one was, on this chilly night, a welcome warmth. Cuddling that to his bosom, he led Onan up the long stairs to bed.

1 Rather soiled but nevertheless very well made, and which he had subsequently worn quite a lot afterwards – that was, after some serious washing.