Dodger of the Dials (8 page)

‘No need to get all lit up, Dodge,’ Barney intervened in his meek manner. ‘We’re just thinking out loud, right, boys? We’re just crossing out names to see who’s left.’ But now even Mouse Flynn, who I had never known to utter a word of doubt against me, began to question my assurances.

‘You didn’t tell Lily about the necklace though did you, Dodger?’ he asked me. ‘Before you’d even stolen it? Did she know about the meeting today?’

‘Of course he did!’ Tom answered for me. ‘He’s always trying to impress her and saying too much. I’d wager she even tried it on when he got home this morning. She knows more about this job than you do, Mouse.’

Mouse stared at me and asked if this was true. I took another long drag on my pipe and shrugged. ‘So?’ I said.

Tom threw her hands into the air as if she was declaring the matter closed and Mouse groaned. Barney coughed and said that he had some barrels what needed attending to and he scuttled away.

‘You think Lily has told other crooks about our doings?’ I asked them in disbelief. ‘Well, that shows how little you know her then. Because she ain’t a Slade girl no more, she hates the man. She’s a Dawkins girl if anything.’

Tom shook her head and sighed. Her manner now became less aggressive and accusing but this was replaced with a patronising edge I did not much care for either.

‘Listen, Dodger,’ she said and tried to pat my hand with hers. ‘We all know you’re safe. You’re probably the most honest man I’ve ever met which, to be fair, ain’t saying much. But have a think, why don’t you? Trusting your lady friend more than your own gang is the backward way around. Especially
your
lady friend.’

Again I bridled at the way she saw fit to speak of my Lily and was about to take her to task. But I was shocked to see Mouse nodding along with her.

‘She makes a fair point Jack, he shrugged. ‘I love Lily to bits but you never know with some people, eh?’

Thunderous applause erupted throughout the bar as the song reached its bawdy climax. I glanced over the saloon and bit my tongue in agitation at the unwelcome suggestions my friends was making. The notion that Lily might have betrayed me was one my mind wanted to reject but now that it had been placed in there it was like a flea I could not catch. Tom was right, I should not have been so free with my secrets, but I could not believe for one moment that Lily had any hand in this counter-robbery. Despite this, I wanted to get straight back to my crib so I could assure myself that they was all mistaken and – as the people in the bar began calling out for another tune – I stood up to put my coat back
on. I then reached for my hat from off the peg as they both got to their feet also.

‘Right then,’ I told them in a huff, ‘I’m off home. But we shall continue this discussion tomorrow. Until then I expect the both of you to find out all you can about these rude bandits. Nobody steals from me, it ain’t the natural way of things.’

Tom kept her eyes fixed on me, her face a question.

‘I, meanwhile, shall be making my own enquiries,’ I answered her look. ‘Lily has had nothing to do with any of this dirty business, of that I’m sure. But if it transpires that she has spoken out of school then I shall soon uncover it.’ I spoke then in a darker tone what even I myself did not recognise. ‘And I’ll settle the matter myself.’

Chapter 5
The End of Summer Fair

In which the days begin to grow darker

‘Whatever happened to the fortune-telling pigs?’

It was the following Saturday. Lily and I was walking arm-inarm past the many vendors of Bartholomew Fair and there was a familiar smell of roast pork about.

‘And all the jugglers and the decent harlequins,’ she continued. ‘This here carnival is a shadow of itself.’

We bumped into another couple what had approached from the opposite direction to watch the well-worn clowns of the season and Lily broke off to make a big fuss about how much she admired the lady’s flowery dress. I meanwhile, explored the gentleman’s left-side coat pocket while his eyes was on my beautiful escort and, once I had executed the perfect dip, I signified to Lily that we needed to move on now. Once clear I inspected the find and discovered that the cove’s pocket contained just enough to buy us a pot of whelks each.

‘See what I mean,’ she tutted as we paused to eat them by a side attraction of distorted looking-glasses what made people seem either fatter, thinner or more frog-eyed than they really was. ‘You used to meet a more affluent set of people around here.’

Lily and I was at last on speaking terms again following the furious row we had had when I had returned to our crib after the Turpin assault. I had been so shaken by the theft of the Lady of
Stars and by what poison my gang had then poured into my ear about her that I was all lit up for a fight by the time I burst back into our apartment. She was sat at our little desk with a pen in her hand and writing a letter and – in my mistrustful frame of mind – I imagined that she must be communicating with her co-conspirators and I bounded straight over and snatched the letter away. It turned out she had been writing to her estranged sister up in the country and she took great offense at my oafish behaviour and some very cruel things was said on both sides. Lily became most enraged at the suggestion that she might have played some part in this plot against us and she pointed out that if she had told other thieves about where we was going and with what then she would hardly still be sitting about waiting for me to come home now, would she? Soon Mrs Grogan began knocking on our door to tell us both to keep the shouting down but even after that it was a few days before relations between us improved.

But now, as the two of us worked the crowd of this once-popular annual event, it seemed as though romance had won through and I was again reassured that my darling girl would never betray me and she, on her part, had forgiven me for suggesting otherwise. But this did not alter the fact that my pecuniary situation was now somewhat straitened and so I too was disappointed by the lack of real money found in the young gent’s purse. I had managed to pay Mrs Grogan enough so that she and her sons did not make us homeless but it was a mean time what with all my other expenses. I had begun to resign myself to the unwelcome fact that the Lady of Stars was lost to us as, for all I knew, the Turpins could have returned to Ireland by now. And so, after much time and energy had been wasted upon the matter, I had begun to accept the truth that Percival’s generous reward was forever lost to me and that I was better off not dwelling on it further.

‘This sounds agreeable,’ I said to her once the whelks was finished and we headed towards where some fiddlers was playing. Three of them was sat upon the strongest branch of a tall tree and underneath a rope-dance was in progress. I knew that Lily could never resist such entertainments and I was keen for us to at least have a fun time while we was here. After I had flipped the last stolen shilling to the master-of-the-rope we was admitted into the ring where scores of other merry couples was already whirling about, bouncing, clapping and stamping within the great crush. We joined hands and she began to twirl and I soon noticed that every other male eye in the ring was on her as she danced and I was overcome with love for the girl. The little orchestra above soon reached the end of a lively jig and we all took the moment to catch our breaths before they struck up again. Lily was laughing with all the excitement and I took the opportunity to pull her towards me for a kiss. But, just as the strains of the fiddles resumed and we took each other’s hands to spin as a circle of two, her eyes widened as she spotted something behind me. Every couple around began spinning but Lily would not budge, she just took root and continued staring over my shoulder. The joy of the dancing vanished from her face and, as I turned to see what had upset her, I assumed that the young gentleman whose pocket I had picked would be standing behind me ready for a rumpus.

But instead I found my attention pulled towards the shaded part of the tree where two men was eating cold meats from the same small plate and watching us close. One of these coves, who was chewing on some boiled tongue and whispering into the other man’s ear, was known to me. His name was Morris Bolter and he was someone what I had very little affection for. He was a restless, friendless person who was forever attaching himself to
harder crooks and behaving toward them in a servile manner. He had arrived into London from the country around the same time that I had been transported to Australia although I had only met him upon my return. He had introduced himself by claiming that he had been present at my trial in the Old Bailey, saying that Fagin had sent him along to report on the sentence. He seemed to think that this information would ingratiate himself to me, but I rejected his advances of friendship as he had, to my trained eye, the stuff of the sneak about him. So I took no delight in seeing him here spying on me once more and whispering into the ear of a green-hatted stranger.

However it was this stranger, and not Bolter himself, what had made Lily start. It was clear at a glance that he was of the criminal class – we always know our own – but I could also tell from his rich red coat and stiff black hat that he was prosperous enough to be considered a top sawyer like myself. He was about ten years older than me though and was handsome and held himself well. He at first reminded me of Bill Sikes on account of the sense of threat what accompanied him but I revised that impression because Bill was a man for the shadows, he would never dress with such flamboyance and draw attention to himself like this.

This man saw me looking back as Bolter continued his whisperings and, as he lifted a morsel from the plate and put it into his mouth, I saw him give Lily a small nod of acknowledgement.

I turned back to her and saw the very real alarm in her eyes. ‘We should go, Jack,’ she said and tried to pull my hands to follow her in the other direction. ‘You know who that is?’ I stood there, still holding onto her hands in the centre of the dance as other couples spun around us. I then looked back to the men and saw that they had at last turned their attention away from us. Bolter was sniggering about something that this flash cove was saying.

‘It’s your old bawd,’ I said then with certainty. ‘Weeping Billy Slade.’

‘
Let’s go, then!
’ she said as she managed to free herself from my grip and stepped away. But I had no intention of being seen running away from a man with as fearsome a reputation as this Slade and so I remained where I was and continued to stare him down. I was about to tell Lily that we should continue to dance and that if Slade wanted to cut in then he would be given a polite refusal. But Lily had already spun around, was shoving her way through the other dancing couples, under the rope and away from the scene. So now I was in the centre of a rope-dance with no partner and I must have looked like a proper fool. I had no choice but to chase after her. By the time I caught up with her she was halfway through the fair and I grabbed her hand before she made for the exit.

‘Stop running, Lily,’ I told her. ‘I don’t know what grievances he thinks he still has with you, he’d never hurt you with me about.’ Once she was assured that Slade was not in pursuit she calmed herself and put her hand on mine.

‘But it’s you I’m most worried for, Jack,’ she said as if I had failed to comprehend the seriousness of the situation. ‘Weeping Billy …’ she checked again over my shoulder to watch out for him as she spoke, ‘… well, he’s what you might call the jealous type.’

Weeping Billy Slade was a name I had heard uttered a lot ever since my return to London and not just from Lily. He was spoken about by my criminal acquaintances as if he was some jungle celebrity – a man-killing tiger best admired from the safety of a high branch. It was said that he had been born in Manchester and as a child had been put to work in the mills there before two of the smaller fingers on his left hand had been nipped off in the spindles. This explained why he was always seen gloved – the short nubs he was left with was disguised with wood what filled out the
empty finger-sleeves and helped him to hold a blade steady. Part of the legend what surrounded him was that he had left for London soon afterwards but not before setting fire to the mill what had disfigured him.

He was now famous for running one of West London’s most heavy-soldiered gangs what was into every dark activity considered profitable. A large part of his criminal income though was through bawdy work and he operated out of a brothel in Hammersmith called Molly Gay’s. This place was notorious for providing its affluent clientele with a higher standard of harlot then they would find in the pubs and back alleys of the rookeries and these fair maidens was known as Slade girls. Lily had been a Slade girl until I had stolen her away and it’s never been considered a smart move to steal from a crook bigger than yourself. Lily had spent enough time in his company and she had witnessed many terrible acts of violence what he had meted out to those who crossed him and so if she thought he was worth running away from then perhaps she was right. But later, when we was sat together in a tearoom some distance from the fair, I did my best to convince her that she was fretting for nothing.

‘I should think,’ I assured her with a mouthful of sponge, ‘that if a man like him meant us any harm he’d have done it by now. And if Morris Bolter has told him who I am,’ I shrugged with little attempt at self-effacement, ‘then he won’t be bothering us no further.’

Lily sipped her tea and said nothing.

Chapter 6
The Undertaker’s Apprentice

Wherein I receive a visitor and hear a name what I do not much care for

Pebbles tapped against the window pane at Five Fingers Court and I felt Lily’s hand stroke the hairs on my chest. ‘That queer girl must be here again,’ she murmured before rolling onto her side away from my half of the bed. I reached over to the bedside chest and grabbed my pocket watch as I told Lily that she needn’t get up. I would take Tom into the kitchen and boil a kettle while she slept on, I promised, and we would be gone before eleven. Tom and I had planned to spend the day scouting the genteel districts for the next set of houses to crack – always a more complicated business than the layman might imagine – and I was expecting her at about half past ten. So I was most surprised to see that the little hand of my ticker had not yet crossed the eight and I concluded that either the dratted thing needed winding or this was not Tom outside in the courtyard after all.