Dodger of the Dials (36 page)

‘I’m William Blake,’ I insisted in a harder voice. ‘And I have important information concerning “Jerusalem”! Be sure to tell him that. Jerusalem and all its dark satanic mills!’

The old boy looked up at me then and his face altered. I would have thought that journalists might be used to having people pass secret information to them and it was clear that this door cove had begun to suspect that he might get into trouble if my cryptic words were not delivered. He nodded then and told me to wait outside while he went up to see Mr Brownlow.

‘I’m not staying here,’ I told him. I knew that if I was made to wait too long a policeman could be fetched and I did not trust Oliver that much. ‘Tell Mr Twis—
Brownlow
, that if he wishes to speak to William Blake then I shall be over in that there direction.’ I pointed northwards up Wellington Street and away from the river. ‘By that theatre, see. If he’s longer than five minutes then I’m going so tell him not to dither.’

The posters outside the Theatre Royal Lyceum all advertised its current production,
Babes in the Wood
, a Christmas pantomime. There was still the last of the evening’s inebriated street-walkers bumping around the columns of the theatre’s locked doors but none of these paid me any mind due to how I still smelt like I had been crawling through a sewer earlier that night. Some hackney carriages had reared up by a nearby trough for their horses to drink and there was some tramps sleeping under the theatre arches for me to blend in amongst. I slumped down behind the furthest column with the intention of feigning sleep but as I shut my eyes I realised that it would be easy for me to drop into slumber for real. The events of the last few hours – and of the last few weeks – had been so exhausting that my body pleaded with me to let it just lie
there until daybreak and forget all else. But Lily needed rescuing – among others – and I was not safe on the streets so I gave myself a slap in the face and kept waiting for Twist. I rolled my head over so I could see who was approaching from the Strand. There was some still-lit gas lamps along this stretch of street but these was starting to dim as daylight crept closer. In a short time I saw the silhouette of a man walking with purpose up the street. I could not make out his features in the dark but something about the rigidness of his gait and the straightness of his hat told me that this was Twist. As he neared the theatre I saw him look about for the person who had summoned him but I was crouched behind the column and only the top of my head poked around it, covered by shadows. The Lyceum prostitutes was of course much more interested in this affluent gent than they had been in me but he gave them all a curt shake of the head as he walked on.

He passed by the theatre columns, avoiding the black mass of homeless bodies what was slumped all around, and I sensed a wariness in his manner as he slowed before reaching where I was. I moved around my column so I was now behind him, close enough to reach out and touch his shoulder if I wanted to go for the full melodrama of the scene.

‘Mr Blake!’ he called out in strong voice. ‘It is Mr Brownlow. You wished to see me, sir.’

At that, I stepped out into the street so I was now standing just behind his back. I cleared my throat and spoke the same words I had uttered nine years ago when the two of us had first ever met.

‘Hullo, my covey,’ I whispered. ‘What’s the row?’

Twist spun around and I saw the plain shock on his face. He looked even more frightened than I had reckoned on and he lifted up his arm and pointed at me. Because it was still so dark I did not realise what he was holding at first, but when I saw the flash of
silver it was my turn to jump. There was a pistol just inches from my nose.

‘Stand back,’ he ordered, and I staggered away from him. ‘A step closer and I’ll shoot you dead.’ Some of the watching prostitutes screamed in fright to see the weapon and ran off in various directions while the vagrants in the shadows all woke themselves to hear what the shouting was about. ‘You won’t kill me like you did Anthony!’

‘Oliver!’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t fire. I’m not here to hurt you and I didn’t kill Anthony. I thought you believed me.’ He blinked then and I could see him straining to see me in the darkness. Then recognition seemed to dawn.

‘Dodger?’ he spluttered, his voice all astonishment. ‘How are you here?’

‘Checked myself out of Newgate about an hour ago,’ I replied. ‘Didn’t care for their hospitality much. The food was horrible for one thing.’

‘I thought you were from Mills and come to assassinate me,’ he exclaimed with the gun still pointed. ‘I imagined you to be this Billy Slade character you told me about.’

‘Well, I ain’t,’ I replied and indicated the gun. ‘I’m just your old pal, the Artful. But I have come to warn you about Slade, in truth. You’re right to think yourself in danger, he knows your name from the visitors’ book in Newgate. He don’t know who you are yet but a man like that has ways and means of finding out.’

Oliver’s mouth was open as he heard that. ‘And you broke out of Newgate Prison,’ he gaped, ‘just to warn me?’

‘Yeah, if you like,’ I replied as if my own self-preservation had never once crossed my mind. ‘So do me a favour and point that elsewhere, eh, poorhouse? I’ve been through too much tonight to get shot by you.’ Oliver pointed the pistol away but kept staring at
me as if I were a ghost and, on reflection, I suppose that explanation might have seemed more plausible to him. When he spoke there was a clear uncertainty in his tone.

‘I was praying for your soul not ten minutes before,’ Oliver went on as if he thought that that meant something. ‘I had risen early because I wanted to get to Newgate in time to see you hang.’

‘Oh, charming.’

‘No, I don’t mean I was
happy
to see you hang. I mean, I wanted to be there for you considering I had failed to secure your release in time. I wanted to be a friendly face in the crowd.’

Just then the cab driver who was tending to his horse across the way at last plucked up the courage to call over.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ he said from a safe distance. ‘Shall I fetch the police?’

‘No, thank you,’ replied Oliver, his startled eyes not leaving mine. ‘It’s quite all right. This man isn’t here to harm me, it’s just a misunderstanding.’

‘I was speaking to the other gentleman.’

Oliver then noticed that his pistol was still exposed and that from an outsider’s view it would appear as though he was the threat, not me. As he placed it back beneath his coat I considered what an enormous amount of trust I was placing in him. Now that I was an escaped convict there was sure to be a large reward for my recapture and Oliver had a gun on him. He was a flat, meaning he was a man of principles, and there was nothing more dangerous than that. I realised that this would be my last chance to run for it but I held fast regardless. I decided instead that I would just brazen this out.

‘Thank you, coachman,’ I called back. ‘But all is well. We’re just two old school pals with plenty of catching up to do.’

Oliver then grabbed me by the arm and we both stepped away
from the gaslight. ‘You frightened the life out of me, Jack,’ he said. ‘What is going on?’

‘Listen, Twist,’ I said wanting to get straight to the point of the matter, ‘did you mean what you said to me in my cell the other night?’

‘About thinking you innocent? Yes, I do. I’ve made even more investigations since then and I’ve no doubt that Detective Superintendent Mills arranged for Anthony’s death and that of Constable Wingham. Those crimes are linked and I think I could convince a court if I could just …’

‘I meant what you said about Nancy?’ I interrupted. ‘About how you still wished you could have helped her?’ Oliver hesitated for a moment but then nodded his head. ‘And would you help someone else in the same situation now, if you could?’

‘Of course I would,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t hesitate.’

Through my tiredness, I prepared myself for what I had to ask him next. Oliver occupied a different world to me now and I knew that he would be unwilling to involve himself in underworld activities after having worked so hard to distance himself from that background. Genteel people like him talk a lot about what they intend to do for the poor but it was rare for one to plunge their hands into the same filth as us.

‘There is another woman then,’ I began, speaking fast, ‘of about the same age what Nancy was when she died. Lily her name is. She’s of the same profession too – or at least she was. And I think she’s in great peril now. Weeping Billy Slade has her over at a brothel in Hammersmith and I’m sure that he means to do her as much harm as what Bill Sikes ever did to our Nance. Now if you really want to help me, Twist, you need to lend me some money to pay for that carriage so I can go straight over there and save her from his violent hands. I ain’t got time for police visits, they take too long
and peelers only ever arrive after blood has spilt. You can go and report the crime if you care to, I know you’re one for a peach and I ain’t going to stop you. But this is criminal business and if I’m too late to save her life then I shall settle Slade another way. He’s a man I don’t mind swinging for.’

‘Hold on!’ interrupted Twist. But when he spoke next it was in clear and calm voice what contrasted with my own frantic babbling.

‘Are you saying this woman is in danger now? At this very moment?’

I nodded.

‘Then I have money for the ride and a pistol in my pocket. Take me to wherever you think she is.’

I was overcome with relief to hear him offer his services like that and I went to thank with an embrace. But as I did so I must have staggered because the next thing I knew he had caught me in his arms.

‘For pity’s sake, Dodger, you look like you’re going to die and you smell foul. What have you been doing?’

‘Twist, I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.’

‘You need to be taken inside before we do anything. You need rest.’

‘No! I need to get Slade before he learns I’m free from prison. You don’t understand, Twist, the surprise of the thing is to my advantage.’

‘You are about to collapse, man. You’re no good to anyone like this. Let me take you to my lodging to get you washed and changed properly. It’s not far from here and I have some coffee and some food also. Don’t tell me you’re not hungry.’

I was not just hungry, I was ravenous. And yes, I was desperate to get to Lily and help her but the evening’s exertions had caught
up with me and I would be useless to her if I did not attend to myself first.

‘In all truth, Twist,’ I said as I placed my hand on his shoulder to steady myself, ‘I could murder a bacon sandwich if you got one.’

Chapter 22
Streaky Well-Cured Bacon

I am invited into Oliver’s lodgings and encouraged to consider myself at home

‘Sausages and bacon,’ said Oliver once he had both sizzling in his frying pan for me. ‘What does their smell remind you of?’

I had been rattled when Oliver had told the coachman his address, as it turned out that he lived in the very same stretch of houses near Hungerford Stairs where I had broken into just a few weeks before. Oliver said that this was not a coincidence as many young journalists took lodgings near Embankment as the rooms was affordable for bachelors and it was close enough to Fleet Street where all the action was. He also added that when he had first returned to London to embark upon this writing career of his, he and Anthony had wanted to live close to one another for companionship’s sake. As he spoke about his fondness for this dead childhood friend I could hear how much pain and anger he felt at his sudden death and I heard my own feelings about Mouse echoed.

Oliver had sat me down on a small and comfortable armchair while he spoke to me from the kitchen and it gave me a chance to look about. This apartment was just three doors down from the one where I had discovered Anthony’s murdered body but this abode was less austere than the other, more lived in. They both shared a fondness for having more books than their bookshelves could hold though and beside my chair, on the floor, was a tall stack of poetry.
This similarity brought back to me the image of the bloody crack I had seen in poor Rylance’s head as he slumped over his desk and I had told Oliver that I would like my meat served not too rare if possible. He at last came out of the little kitchen carrying a full breakfast of meat, eggs and a bun, and a cup of coffee in his other hand. I took these from him, set the plate down on my lap and began feasting.

‘Fagin,’ said Oliver as I gobbled down the bacon and reached for the coffee he had placed on a small table beside me.

‘What about him?’ I asked after taking a big slurp and returning to attack the sausages.

‘That’s what the smell reminds me of,’ he explained. ‘Fagin’s kitchen. When you first took me to meet him he was cooking breakfast over a stove and held a sausage at the end of his fork as he welcomed me in. I thought he looked like the very devil at the time and ever since the smell has conjured him for me.’

‘He enjoyed his sausages all right,’ I agreed as I chewed on these and closed my eyes with the raw pleasure of food. Hours earlier I had turned away my last meal from the turnkeys as I felt no appetite for it. This meal, however, was restoring me to life.

‘I know,’ Oliver nodded, ‘which was peculiar considering that he was a Hebrew.’ I tore the bun in half and started dipping it into the egg yolk. ‘But then he wasn’t what you would call “a good Jew”, was he? Of course you knew him much better than I.’

I was too busy concentrating on my plate to want to respond to any of these observations about my late teacher’s religious habits or lack thereof. Instead, I just finished devouring the food and once that was done, I licked the knife, the fork and the plate clean of any fat. I suppose Oliver must have considered me a very uncouth individual as he watched me display all the social graces of an undomesticated dog but I was so hungry that I did not care much
for whatever he might be thinking. Once I was finished I lay the plate down onto the table and got up again.

‘Right then,’ I said as I stood. ‘Let’s go and get Lily.’