Dodger of the Dials (7 page)

Dick was up again and using his mask to dab at the blood underneath. He then walked towards where I was being held up just as I was trying to bite at the Turpin whose hands was going through my pockets. Dick flicked his wrist and revealed a sharp silver blade and held it close to my neck. ‘Stop struggling,’ he hissed as I was punched again in the stomach, ‘and let this happen.’ I groaned as they started patting my waistcoat hard until they found the necklace.

‘This it?’ asked the Turpin as he pulled out the Lady of Stars.

‘Well, what else would it be?’ Dick shot back and then told him to stuff it in his own pocket. Then, with his blade still pressed against my neck, he turned back to me as his four Turpins made to leave. ‘I’ve a mind to kill you anyway,’ Dick declared. ‘But I wouldn’t much care for the mess you’d make. So count yourself as a lucky Jack.’ He then put away the knife, gave me one last punch and I fell to the floor in a ball. I could see Georgie clutching his wounded leg and I heard the sounds of the Turpins’ wicked laughter as they ran off. I lifted my head and saw that Tom and Mouse was also curled up and beaten at the end of the lane where the pub was. Both their canes had been snapped in half.

Chapter 4
Thieves and Nothing More

A scene which is all dark questions and smoky suspicions

Only once the Turpins had fled out of sight did the good patrons of the Drop of Courage come out to inspect the rumpus. They made a good show of only just now chancing upon the scene and some people ran up to the wailing Georgie to help him. I tried to stand and I had a terrible urge to get myself and the others out of the vicinity fast. Some smart gentlemen, who I guessed would be local lawyers, was telling us that the peelers had been sent for and we could give our descriptions of the robbers to them. A stretcher was coming, they told us, to take Georgie to the nearest infirmary where we should then follow. I caught eyes with Tom who had a fresh bruise on her left cheek but was gathering herself together and I could tell she was of the same mind. We needed to grab Mouse and scud away when I heard a refined voice calling my name.

‘Ah, Mr Dawkins, here at last.’ I turned to see Percival stepping out of the back entrance of the pub and ignoring all the surrounding chaos. He tapped his fob watch as he moved past the other gentlemen and pulled me away from their hearing. ‘The money is close by,’ he said as if oblivious to what had been happening out here. ‘And can be sent for at once. But first I must of course see the necklace.’ My first thought on seeing Percival was, of course, that he must be the villain what had arranged this travesty. This seemed plain as he was the very person what had chosen that unfamiliar tavern as the place
of exchange and all this talk about wanting to inspect the necklace must just have been his weak and insulting pantomime designed to throw us off. And so, to show him that I was not so slow as all that, I crossed straight over to him, grabbed him by the coat collar and shoved him against the brick wall so I could charge him with playing us for dupes. I spoke quiet so as not to be overheard by the various onlookers and accused him of hiring these cheaper robbers to ambush us in order to pay less for the necklace. I asked if he thought I was green enough to fall for such a dodge but, in all truth, Percival appeared to be as shocked about the theft as I was and he became most indignant at the accusation.

‘I haven’t told a soul about our business,’ he said as I released him for appearance’s sake and he begun straightening his clothes. ‘Gentlemen of my standing do not boast of their criminal connections, you’ll be amazed to learn. And what’s more,’ he was whispering in my ear now, ‘I would still pay full price for the thing if you can get it back. There! I wouldn’t say that if I had plotted against you.’ This, I had to admit, was probably true and he wrote down an address at Barnard’s Inn to contact him if the necklace was retrieved. ‘You’ve no idea how unhappy I am with you for losing it, Dodger. I’d been assured that you and your collective were careful thieves and now
this
!’ He waved his hand over my torn clothing like a disapproving mother. ‘Fighting with other robbers in broad daylight,’ he shook his head. ‘I’m disappointed. Get it back, for God’s sake. Because if I haven’t told a soul about this meeting,’ he said as he looked about for any approaching peelers before making his leave, ‘then somebody did.’

He now seemed to regard my gang as though we was just the latest set of unreliable tradesman what was making his upper middle-class life intolerable. I decided to let Percival scarper off then as he would be simple enough to track down if it came out that he was
lying and I turned my attention to more pressing matters. I saw Tom and Mouse trying to clear away some interfering gentleman what was trying to get Georgie Bluchers to be stretchered off to a nearby hospital and I knew we had to get away as fast. Georgie – like most people of my class – had a horror of hospitals and he thrashed against those what was trying to take him there. I strutted over into their midst and started telling them all to mind their own business.

‘We don’t have time for no stretchers,’ I announced and gestured for Tom and Mouse to take Georgie by the shoulder. ‘This man needs surgery fast. I happen to know of some medical students what live hereabout what’ll set his leg right in no time. You kind people just go inside and back to your drinks, he’ll be all right with us. Go on,’ I shooed them all away as they dithered, ‘shove off out of it!’

The grumbling crowd soon dispersed and the four of us made off around the corner and went in search of these students who was not as fictitious as they may have sounded. These young men lodged together near Fetters Lane and they was nice respectable boys from good homes. They was known to me on account of their habit of buying opium from off of my friend Herbie Sweet, who himself purchased the goods from my own stolen supply. So – knowing that these fledging surgeons would be easy to incriminate and intimidate – we reached their home, bashed on their door until they had no choice but to admit us and convinced them that they would help Georgie or face severe consequences. Then, once they had promised to remove the shot and fix up our luckless friend, the remaining three of us scudded off towards Holborn, moving fast through the by-lanes and heading north. We didn’t stop until we reached somewhere we knew would be safe and we could discuss this turn of events in private.

*

Barney, the landlord of the Three Cripples pub in Saffron Hill and a man who had once been the closest friend of my old departed teacher, Fagin, unbolted the back entrance of his tavern after I had rapped upon it with my cane using the secret signal, a short but loud series of knocks what only I ever used. An evil chained-up dog with a frothing mouth was barking at us but we ignored him as the door swung open and his master welcomed us in.

‘Dodger! How wonderful to see you, my boy!’ he beamed as soon as he was sure who it was. ‘I was only yesterday saying to old Lively that we never …’

But then he registered our bruises, cuts and the bloody fogle what Mouse was holding up to his nose and his countenance soon changed. We must have looked to him, with our achey movements and pained faces, like the very trio his pub was named after and he hurried us into his hostelry as if he expected our attackers to still be in pursuit.

‘Who done this to you, boys?’ he asked as Tom and myself had helped Mouse limp over the threshold and he had bolted the door behind us. ‘Peelers?’

‘Some Irishmen,’ I told him and he nodded his understanding. ‘We’re hoping you might help us fathom which ones.’

Mouse, who had taken the worst beating, was ready to collapse in that small back hallway and I asked Barney if we could use his taproom to crash down. Barney told me that there was a card game in progress through there. ‘There’s a shocking amount of drunk whisky bottles in that little room, Dodge, and someone is always losing, are they not? Might be safer for you to just go through to the bar instead.’

So instead we went to one of the many dark corners of the main saloon which was just as good as being in a private room. The Cripples was a thieves’ den after all and it had been almost
designed to accommodate clandestine discussions such as the one we was about to have. We sat ourselves around a small table against the far wall of the saloon with boarded partitions what helped to screen us from prying eyes. Barney fetched us a pot of water and some flannels to dab at our cuts as well as three small glasses of whisky each and we sank these drinks without speaking. We lit up some clay pipes, and eyed everyone in the bar through their own clouds of tobacco smoke to see if any was paying us too much mind. There was always plenty of Irish in the Cripples and I wondered if anyone here might know who the Turpins was. The room was already thick with smoke and bustling with the low sort – prigs, fences, swindlers, magsmen, mollies and whores. I knew most in the place – and some raised their glasses to us as they passed by our little hole – but they would have seen from our demeanour that we did not care to be approached. Pickled Liz, a prostitute what lived in a room above and who never left that building, swayed over to us, burped a greeting and asked if we would be interested in her company. Tom told her to clear off and so she turned around and tottered back to the bar a few short feet away. Then Barney asked someone to strike up a melody upon the piano at the further end of the bar and offered one of the ladies a free drink if she would lead the place in a song. In this way our conversation was drowned out by the noise and once I was sure that nobody was eavesdropping I leaned in close to my two companions.

‘Now then,’ I began, ‘what in high heaven was all that about?’

The others shrugged in answer.

‘We took a proper battering,’ Mouse said at last, ‘there’s no denying it.’

‘Did either of you recognise who those Turpins was?’ I said as Barney brought over four pots of beer for us and handed them out.
‘Behind the masks? Could they have been the Sikes gang doing voices?’

Tom, with a wet flannel pressed hard against her bruise, shook her head and Mouse said that he doubted it. The Sikes gang was not the sort to hide their faces while fighting, they would have liked us to know it was them.

‘
Turpins
?’ Barney asked as he pulled up a wooden stool and squeezed his fat self in around the small table. ‘What’s one of those then?’ He had left his daughters to tend bar while he joined our discussion and he looked most bewildered as I told him about the metropolitan highwaymen we had just encountered. After I had recounted the whole tale I asked if he had ever heard of such a gang before and if he could guess at the identity of the jockey-sized leader calling himself Dick.

‘If I hear of anyone sporting a smashed mouth what he didn’t have yesterday,’ Barney offered, ‘I’ll be sure to tell you. But no, nothing tinkles.’

‘London is full of Irishmen,’ Tom observed as she drew on her pipe and cast an eye over the comely girl what had entered into the chorus of ‘Making Love in The Derry Air’. ‘It’s needles and haystacks.’ Her voice lowered then, readying itself for the dark alleys our conversation was to go down next. ‘More to the purpose,’ she said after taking another drag on her pipe, ‘is how they knew we was coming? And that Dodger had a priceless necklace on him?’

This was indeed the most urgent question of all. As far as I was aware the only people what I had told about the business beforehand was those what would have gained more from a successful delivery than from being in league with the Turpins. Tom, Georgie and Scratcher would receive less money if they had to split its value between five others and Mouse had taken a savage beating. Georgie had been shot in the leg but who knew what sort of deal any one of
them could have struck with the rival gang. I viewed them all now with suspicion and – in my foul humour – was happy to let them know it.

‘We’ve lost a small fortune this afternoon, boys,’ I said, ‘and I mean to get it back. So if either of you two have something to tell me then now is the time. It’ll be too late tomorrow.’ Mouse looked at me in surprise.

‘Are you asking us if we’re unsafe, Dodge?’ he checked. Tom stared at me as smoke puffed out of her nostrils and I returned her fierce look in answer.

‘I suppose I am, Mouse, yeah,’ I replied while still eyeing Tom. ‘Because it’s clear that somebody in our company is not.’

Tom scowled as she pushed back her stool. ‘You need correcting for saying that to me,’ she pointed as she stood up. ‘I don’t care if you are top sawyer, you don’t call me a splitter and not answer for it. I’m the straightest crook you know!’

‘I want answers, Tom,’ I told her. ‘So sit yourself back down. I’m going to be asking the same questions of Georgie and Scratcher in time but right now I’m asking you. Who did you tell about our meeting with Percival?’

‘Not a soul,’ she shot back. ‘And I should knock you down for even asking.’

‘What about your Janet?’

‘I never talk to women about work, Jack,’ she said as if the question itself was mad. ‘We all know they can’t be trusted. And besides,’ she put some bite into these next words, ‘I ain’t the one living with a Slade girl, am I?’ Mouse and Barney looked at each other in discomfort as I asked her what that was supposed to mean.

‘It means,’ she continued staring at me as she sat down again, ‘that if there is any member of this gang with a fancy woman of dubious virtue then it’s our great leader. My Janet knows nothing
about how I make my earnings, she just takes money from me and buys herself nice things. Ebony Bet, Georgie’s girl, can be trusted not to talk to anyone on the grounds that she don’t speak no English anyway. And – Mouse – I don’t doubt that your dead Agnes is the very model of discretion. Lily Lennox, however …’ she snuffed out her tobacco and tapped it into a tin spittoon, ‘there’s a chit with a history on her. If I was you I’d start asking your questions at home before you cast aspersions over your own gang.’

‘You know something, Skinner,’ I leaned in closer and hissed at the side of her face what was not purple from the fight, ‘if you was a real man you’d have a matching bruise on your other cheek by now.’ She cocked her head, daring me to do my worst but I preferred to keep hitting her with words. ‘You wouldn’t even be in this crew if it weren’t for me, you impertinent mare. No other London gang would touch you, so remember who your benefactor is and shut your sharp mouth. I know my own fancy woman and she ain’t been near her old bawd since the very day I met her.’