The Body in the Fog (2 page)

But a horse-drawn bus full of uniformed policemen was blocking their way, closely followed by a second and a third. The wait seemed agonisingly long. Jack lost patience and dived between the
second and third buses. Alfie followed him, and in a moment they were both running up St Martin’s Lane.

By the time the last of the three buses had gone, Alfie, glancing over his shoulder, could see that only one man was still behind them. His right hand was stuck into his pocket and Alfie knew
enough about gangs to guess that he had a pistol there.

‘Run faster, Alfie!’ Jack shouted, looking back anxiously and Alfie sprinted down the lane after his cousin.

The race was on. The penalty for losing could be death.

CHAPTER 3

Alfie ran as fast as he could. His heart was thudding and his chest was searingly hot as he tried to suck in more air. He and Jack were dead tired. They had both been working
all night, pulling up the heavy nets full of twisting eels, carrying loaded boxes from Charlie Higgins’s boat to the stalls at Hungerford market.

Down Long Acre they went. Alfie could hear the sound of Jack’s bare feet slapping on the stone pavement of the street ahead of him, but then he turned into Bow Street and the noise ceased.
Alfie stopped. He could run no more. He tried to draw breath, holding onto his knees while he gasped and shook and black dots danced in front of his eyes. As soon as he was able, he looked over his
shoulder. The man was gaining on him. His hand had come out from his pocket. It did not hold a gun as Alfie had feared, but a gleam of light from the overhead gas lamp showed the glint of a knife
blade.

The next moment, the breath was knocked from Alfie’s body as the man’s weight toppled him to the ground. Alfie wrestled with him like a tiger, though the man was twice his weight.
But when he felt the point of the knife prick his throat, he lay quite still. Men from Flash Harry’s mob would not hesitate to kill.

‘What did you do with that letter?’ hissed the man. He was digging into Alfie’s pockets, ripping his already torn shirt wide open.

‘Threw it away,’ gasped Alfie.

‘That’s a lie,’ hissed the man into his ear. The point of the knife dug in a little deeper.

It had crossed Alfie’s mind to tell the truth about where he had hidden the piece of paper, but he decided against it. The mobster would probably drag him back to Trafalgar Square and
knife him in a dark corner once the note was secured.
Dead men tell no tales
was the motto of most of these London mobs – and it applied just as well to dead boys.

Where was Jack? wondered Alfie despairingly and, as soon as the thought had passed through his mind, he had his answer.

A very large and very hairy dog came flying down Bow Street, his barks changing to menacing growls as he saw his master on the ground. He seized the man’s knife arm in his mouth and held
it firmly, his lips stretched in a menacing snarl. He looked like a dog that would kill.

The man swore and screamed and let go of Alfie, dropping the knife to the ground. Then Jack appeared from nowhere and picked up the knife, holding it threateningly towards the villain’s
throat.

Slowly Alfie got to his feet. He was bruised all over and his heart still thumped. He could feel blood running down his neck but he strove to make his voice sound strong. ‘Now listen,
you,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you ten seconds to get out of this place. If you’re still here after that, well, this here dog of mine ain’t had any supper and he’s
not choosy. Leg of man tastes as good to him as leg of lamb. So scarper. Let him go, Mutsy.’

Mutsy reluctantly took his teeth out of the man’s sleeve, but he continued to snarl and to growl until the fellow had limped off, swearing loudly. Then he looked up at Alfie and wagged his
tail.

Alfie patted the dog’s head. ‘Good job you managed to get ahead and send Mutsy,’ said Alfie to his cousin. ‘That fellow is definitely one of Flash Harry’s mob.
I’ve seen him before. They’re probably the chaps that did the post office raid. Lucky I didn’t take that letter with me. I’d say that Inspector Denham will be interested to
have a look at it.’

Alfie was beginning to recover and his mouth watered at the thought of the sixpence or even the shilling that they might receive from their friend, Inspector Denham, for information about the
post office raid.

‘If it’s Flash Harry’s mob, I’d keep out of this business if I were you,’ said Jack uneasily. ‘They’re a vicious lot – kill you soon as look at
you.’

CHAPTER 4

Home for Alfie, his blind brother Sammy and his cousins Jack and Tom was a small, damp cellar down some steps from Bow Street. It was a handy place to live, near to Covent
Garden market and the theatre – both good places for the boys to beg, do tricks, sing songs or even pick up a job from time to time. Somehow or other they had managed to pay the rent and find
enough food to keep themselves alive in the years since Alfie’s parents died.

First there had been four of them, and then, one day, a shaggy dog with large paws had followed Alfie home from Smithfield meat market and made his home with them. Now it was almost impossible
to imagine how they had managed without Mutsy. He protected the boys, guided Sammy all over London’s West End and did tricks which earned the gang money, feeding himself on the rats that
swarmed in the old house and through the markets. Best of all, he was a great pet for the four boys who had no other living relations.

‘Poor old Jemmy, the beggar man from Trafalgar Square, has been murdered,’ said Jack to Sammy when they had finished laughing over how Mutsy had arrested one of Flash Harry’s
gang. ‘Don’t know who did it, but he was hit on the head with something and it knocked his brains out,’ he added, looking hopefully at Sammy. Jack had a great opinion of
Sammy’s brains and the blind boy had solved tricky puzzles before.

‘What do you think, Alfie?’ Sammy turned his face towards his brother.

‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ said Alfie impatiently. ‘I keep telling you, Jack. Jemmy was a quarrelsome type. He was always fighting with someone. Never liked him,
myself. Yes, I know, I know, he did you a good turn once,’ he continued hastily as he saw Jack open his mouth, ‘but that don’t alter the fact that he was a nasty
fellow.’

‘He wasn’t a bad fellow when you got to know him,’ said Jack stubbornly. ‘He had no luck in life, he said. His parents died when he was seven years old and the aunt that
took him was a drinker and the one that took his twin brother Ned wasn’t.’ Jack paused. ‘I think we should do something about him. Mutsy liked him as well.’

Alfie shrugged his shoulders. It was true that the big dog had been devoted to Jemmy for some reason, wagging his tail madly whenever he caught sight or smell of the beggar man.

‘Well, let Mutsy look into the crime, then,’ he said. ‘There you are, Mutsy, your first case. If you find the murderer, we’ll put a badge on you.’

‘PC Mutsy, the rat hunter,’ said Tom. ‘Anyway, why was that fellow from Flash Harry’s mob chasing Alfie?’

Jack told the story of the raid and how the mail van had been stolen while everyone was distracted by the fire at Morley’s Hotel, and how Alfie had picked up the piece of paper. Meanwhile,
Alfie was thinking about the piece of paper that he had hidden in the base of the statue of King Charles. Why was it so valuable to the thieves? Why did they go to the lengths of chasing him
through the streets of London in order to get it back?

‘So the paper was to say what time to start the raid?’ said Sammy, as if reading his brother’s thoughts. ‘Flash Harry can’t read so he would need a message in
pictures.’ He paused. ‘But the raid had already happened, so why would he need to hold on to a bit of paper?’

‘Dunno,’ said Alfie. And then an idea came into his head. He remembered something about Flash Harry and, funnily enough, it was old Jemmy the beggar who had told him it. His words
echoed in Alfie’s mind:
Flash Harry keeps out of trouble because he has a hold on so many people. He’ll collect evidence and keep it until he has a use for someone and then threaten
to use it against them if he needs them. Blackmail, that’s what it’s called.

So that was why Flash Harry sent one of his mob after me, thought Alfie. ‘I’d say that Flash Harry wanted to keep the note,’ he said, ‘so that he could blackmail the
geezer who sent it. Might be someone who works in the post office, maybe even a high-up bloke who would know that something valuable was being sent by the midnight post. Maybe I’ll go and
talk to Inspector Denham in the morning.’

‘So we have a new mystery to solve.’ Sammy had a note of satisfaction in his voice.

‘And even if you get nothing from Inspector Denham, we’ve got something out of that business tonight,’ said Tom cheerfully. He picked up the man’s weapon from the
mantelpiece above the fire and turned it around in his hand, watching the firelight flash from the sharp blade. ‘Good knife,’ he said admiringly.

‘So it is,’ said Alfie, taking it from him. ‘Feel the edge of that, Sammy, carefully now. I’ll just touch it to your finger.’

‘Knife like that would shave you if you had a beard,’ said Sammy, his sensitive finger feeling the razor-sharp blade.

Alfie frowned. That word ‘shave’ reminded him of something. He glanced across at Jack. Jack was a good fellow who had just saved Alfie’s life by running ahead and releasing
Mutsy from the cellar. He had a disappointed look on his face now – he was upset about Jemmy’s murder and wanted to talk about that, not the post office raid. Alfie decided to try out
the puzzle about Jemmy on Sammy.

Sammy Sykes was eleven years old and he had been blind from the age of two.
He has other gifts
, the boys’ grandfather used to say whenever his daughter wailed about her son’s
blindness. And that was true. Sammy was gifted. He sang beautifully, could memorise any song and reach the highest notes without effort. He also had a brain as sharp as a razor, extraordinary
hearing and an amazing ability to tell people’s thoughts from the sound of their voices.

‘Sammy,’ said Alfie, ‘what do you make of this? When Jack and me saw the dead body of old Jemmy, I had a good look at him and I saw that his beard had been trimmed. He had a
ginger beard. Well, it was sort of neatened off and it seemed to be kind of shaved around the ears and along the line of the cheek.’

‘Jemmy went to the barber’s, had a haircut and shave and then dropped dead with the shock,’ said Tom, laughing at his own wit.

‘What about his hair?’ asked Sammy.

‘Dunno,’ said Alfie. ‘He was wearing that big old cap. Never saw him without it. It didn’t show much in the way of hair as far as I can remember.’

Sammy shook his head slowly. ‘Can’t think of no reason why anyone would shave him. He must have done it himself.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Alfie, ‘but it don’t make sense.’

‘He dosses down in Opium Sal’s place, don’t he?’ said Sammy. ‘Perhaps one of her customers did it to him – for a joke, like.’

‘Could be,’ said Alfie. Sal had an opium den down by the Hungerford Stairs. Most of the people who went there to smoke opium were so out of their minds on the drug that they might do
anything, but they would be more likely to shave half his beard off, or something like that. And Jemmy was a vicious fighter who would never let those drug-crazed people do anything to him.

Alfie moved the problem to the back of his mind and looked across at his cousin. ‘Jack, I don’t think we can do anything about old Jemmy,’ he said patiently. ‘He probably
had it coming to him. Do you remember him with Bert? You know, Bert the Tosher, the geezer that works in sewers. Jemmy half-killed him over that gold thing Bert found in the Tyburn sewer. And
there’s Opium Sal. She hated him. I think that he had some sort of hold over her. Otherwise she’d never have allowed him to doss down in her den.’

‘Well, that’s just it – gives us lots of suspects,’ said Jack eagerly. ‘And I heard someone shouting at Jemmy last night as we passed him before we went fishing
– someone with a funny sort of voice, not a toff. There was a bit of an argument going on.
Don’t you threaten me
, Jemmy was yelling. And then he dropped his voice a bit, but I
still heard it.’ Jack looked around at the other three boys and continued dramatically. ‘
If there’s any murdering to be done, then I’ll be the one to do it
,
that’s what Jemmy said.’