Dodger

chapter 6

In which sixpence buys a lot of soup, and a foreigner’s gold buys a spy . . .



THE EMBARRASSMENT OF this followed Dodger all the way back home, as did a certain aroma of giblets. Somehow he wasn’t quite as certain of who he was now – a kid from the sewers, or somebody who chats with the gentry – although he knew enough to understand that Mister and Mrs Mayhew were not exactly all that much like gentry, even with their house and servants. It was certainly better than anything Dodger had lived in, but the place was just a bit shabby here and there. Not really dirty, but just enough to indicate that money was perhaps tight in this household, like Mrs Quickly said, so every penny had to be counted.

Mrs Mayhew had been worried too, and Dodger rather felt that the worry was somehow built in, and not just about Simplicity. He shrugged it off. Maybe that’s how it goes, he thought. The more you’ve got, the more worried you become, just in case you lose it. If money gets a bit short, then you might be worrying about losing your nice house and all those pretty little ornaments.

Dodger hadn’t ever worried too much about anything beyond the important things – a decent meal and a warm place to sleep. You didn’t need a house full of little ornaments (and Dodger was a great one for noticing little ornaments, especially the kind that could be picked up very easily and shoved into a pocket at speed and sold again almost as fast). But what was the point of them? To show that you could afford them? How much better did that make you feel? How much happier were you really?

The Mayhew household had been doing its duty in a stiff kind of way, but it didn’t appear to be very happy – there had been a kind of tension there which he couldn’t quite fathom, unhappiness riding on the very air – and in a strange way that made Dodger feel a little unhappy himself, and he wondered why. Unhappiness was a state of mind generally alien to him. Who had the time to be unhappy, after all? He was often pissed off, fed up, even angry, but these were just clouds in the sky; sooner or later they passed. They never lasted long. But as he walked aimlessly away from the Mayhews’ it seemed that he was dragging other people’s worries with him.

He felt that the only cure for something like this would be to go down into the sewers, because if you had to be down in the dumps you might as well have a feel around and see if you could find sixpence. He would have to go and get changed – the shonky outfit was the finest and smartest he had ever worn, and it would never do to go to work in, would it?

But . . . Simplicity. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Wondering who she might be, and who might know what had happened to her and why. And who had hurt her, of course. He really, really needed to know that now. And in this crowded town there would always be somebody to overhear anything that a body said.

The police wouldn’t know anything, of course – that was because no one in their right mind ever talked to the peelers. One or two of them were OK, but it didn’t pay to trust them. However, people talked to Dodger, good old Dodger, especially when he loaned them a sixpence, to be repaid on St Never’s Day.

And so, on his winding way back to the attic to change, a route not just roundabout but swings and slides as well, he found time to lounge around chatting to the dregs of the earth; and to the Cockneys, who sold apples and who liked nothing better than to gang up on the peelers for a real old-fashioned, no-holds-barred war in which any weapon was fair game. He spoke to the street traders, trading on the smallest of margins; and he chatted to the ladies who hung about doing nothing very much, but always happy to meet a gentleman with money who would be generous to a girl, especially after his drink had been spiked – after which he could have the luxury of a long voyage down the Thames to places far, far away where he would possibly meet interesting people, some of whom might even endeavour to eat him, by all accounts. If a gentleman was very unlucky – or upset someone like Mrs Holland on Bankside – he would do the journey down the Thames without a boat . . .

Then there were the men offering games of Crown and Anchor, which at least had the benefit of being winnable if you were sober enough and the dice rolled your way – unlike the other game you might be offered by a cheery man who owned nothing more than one flat wooden board on which were three thimbles and one pea. On that little battlefield you would indeed bet some money on the whereabouts of the said pea, relying on your keen eyesight to keep track of it as the thimbles turned and spun under the hands of the cheerful chattering man. You would never, ever guess right, because where the pea really was was known only to the cheerful man and God – and probably not even God was certain. If you had drunk enough, you would try again and again, betting more and more, ’cos sooner or later, even if you simply guessed, it was surely bound to be under the one you guessed. But sadly, it never would be, ever.

Finally, of course, there was the Punch and Judy man, running his puppet show, which was even more of a hoot these days now there was a policeman for Mister Punch to beat with his stick. The kids laughed, and the adults would laugh, and everyone would laugh as the laughing Mister Punch screamed, ‘That’s the way to do it!’ in that squeaky voice of his, like some terrible bird of prey . . . or the wheels of a coach.

You knew when you grew up that Punch was the man who throws the baby out of the window and beats his wife . . . Of course, such things did happen: certainly the beating of the wife, and as to what might happen to the baby, that might not be the subject for children – not a happy family.

Now Dodger, into whose mind was creeping a dreadful shining darkness in which lay a wonderful girl with golden hair, had to restrain his fists from knocking out that damned shrieking puppet as he passed the stall. He felt himself shiver for a moment and brought himself back down to earth. He knew all this, had known it for ever. But Simplicity . . . well, Simplicity was someone he could maybe do something about. And that something wasn’t just for Simplicity; it was for himself too, in some funny way he couldn’t quite work out yet.

Better though, if he wanted to see things that didn’t make him feel sick or angry, he would find the men whose dogs could do tricks, or the men who lifted heavy weights, or the boxers – bare knuckles, of course.

But today, today Dodger was asking questions. And he had done his best. He had spoken to two ladies waiting for a gent. He had chatted to the Crown and Anchor man, who knew him by name, and even the man who lifted weights, who had grunted with pleasure. On one occasion he even reminded somebody of the sixpence he had loaned to him because of his poor old mummy and subtly said, ‘Oh no, don’t bother, I’m sure you will find a way to repay me someday.’ In short, Dodger moved over the face of the world – or at least that part encompassed over the stews of London – spreading Dodger like a cat spreads piss and leaving little questions in the air. So that if ever somebody heard a coach that screamed, they might just have a word with Dodger; and even better, he thought, if someone who owned a coach that screamed, maybe screamed like a gutted pig, he might want to sort it out with the man who was asking all those questions. It was like throwing breadcrumbs into a stream to see if something would rise; the drawback of this method, he knew, might be that what would rise would be a shark.

Then he remembered the Happy Family man. He hesitated after this thought, and wondered where and when he had last seen the Happy Family man and his wagon; probably on one of the bridges, where there was always such a lot of passing trade. It was quite magical, the happy family – that little cart with its odd menagerie of animals all living so peacefully together. He would have to take Simplicity to see it as soon as possible – she would surely enjoy it. Then he realized he was crying, seeing again inside his head a beautiful face that looked as if it had been pushed down some stairs. Somebody had done that to her, and as he wiped his nose with a rag, he vowed that one day he would indeed take her Mister Punch and back him up to a wall somewhere and most surely make him mind his manners.

But now he was startled by somebody tugging at his trouser leg, and he looked down irritably at a couple of kids, maybe five years old, or six perhaps, looking up at him with their hands out. It wasn’t the kind of tableau he needed to see right now, but both of them had one hand held out while the other one was firmly grasped by their friend. He remembered doing that sort of thing once upon a time, but only to people he had thought of as wealthy – although when you are hungry and five years old, everybody has more money than you. In his smart clobber, of course, he didn’t look like a tosher no more. He told himself, you still are a tosher, but not just a tosher, and right now you are going to be a gentleman to the tune of sixpence.

So he led the kids to the stall run by Marie Jo, who dispensed nourishing soup to all and sundry who could put down a few farthings – perhaps even less if she was in a generous mood.

Marie Jo was one of the good ones, and there weren’t enough of them. Among the tales that people told about her was that she had once been a famous actress over in Froggy parts, and indeed there was always, even in these days, something fey about her, something mercurial. According to rumours, she was once married to a soldier who got shot in some war or other, but fortunately not before he had whispered to her the whereabouts of all the loot he had picked up in his many campaigns.

She, being a decent sort, despite the fact of being married to a Froggy all them years, had set up this stall, which was one you could trust: trust for no rats in the soup, trust for no things worse than rats, trust her not to sell soup that had bits of cats and dogs in it. Marie Jo’s soup was full of lentils and other odds and ends; slightly scruffy perhaps, but taken all together it did you good and kept you warm. All right, there may occasionally have been a bit of horse, that being the Froggy way, but it just meant you had a slightly more nourishing soup. It had been said that even some of the grand eating places these days would give Marie Jo leftovers, knowing that they would be going on her stall. Apparently, people said, her French wiles twisted the nobby chefs around her little finger, but ‘Well done, her,’ everyone said, because it all went in the great big pot that she stirred all night, pausing only to dip the ladle in for the next customer; and what you paid was what she reckoned you ought to pay, and because people didn’t like to see her shake the ladle at them for being greedy, nobody haggled.

And so, when Dodger turned up with the two kids in tow, she looked him up and down and said, ‘Well now, aren’t we in the money, Dodger, and who did you steal that from?’ But she was laughing, perhaps because both of them could surely remember the time – years ago before her hair was so white – when Dodger himself was very small and had hung around near her stand with one hand out, looking very sad and very hopeful, just like the pair he was delivering.

He said, ‘Nothing for me, Marie Jo, but feed these two up today and tomorrow to the length of sixpence please?’

The expression on her face was strange. Like the soup she sold it was full of everything, but mostly it was full of surprise. But this was the street, and she said, ‘Let me see your sixpence, young Dodger.’ He plonked it on the stall, where she looked at it, looked at him, looked at the kids who were very nearly drooling with anticipation, then looked back at Dodger, who was red with embarrassment, and she said quietly, ‘Why, oh why, well now, here’s the thing and no mistake, what am I to do?’ Then her face broke out into wrinkly smiles as she said, ‘For you, Dodger, I will feed the little buggers today and tomorrow, maybe the next day too, but oh my word what has happened? Glory be! The world has gone upside down while I wasn’t looking! Don’t tell me that you have been going to church – I’m sure the confessional would not be big enough to hold everything you’ve got to say! And lo, what is this? My little Dodger has grown up to be an angel.’

Marie Jo pronounced his name ‘Dodgeurr’, which sent little silver messages passing up and down his spine every time he heard it. Marie Jo knew everybody, and all about everybody, and now she looked at Dodger with a dangerous smile, but you always had to play her game, so he smiled back and said, ‘Now don’t you go saying those things about me, Marie Jo! I don’t want nobody to whiten my name! But well, I was a kid once, you know what I mean? Mind, if you keep tally of what you feed them, I’ll see to it you get the cash later, trust me.’

Marie Jo blew him a little kiss with the smell of peppermint in it, lowered her voice, leaned forward and said, ‘I’m hearing all kinds of things concerning you, my lad. Careful how you tread! One of them was the little fracas you had with Stumpy yesterday. He’s boasting about it, you know.’ She lowered her voice still further. ‘Then there was a gentleman. And I know a gentleman when I see one. He was asking about someone called Dodger, and I don’t think it was because he wanted to give you a present. He was an expensive kind of gentleman.’

‘He wasn’t called Dickens, was he?’ said Dodger.

‘No, I know him – Mister Charlie, the reporter man, knows the peelers. One of you insufferable English, though. If I had to guess, my friend, this gentleman was more like a lawyer.’ Then, as if nothing had happened, she turned to the next customer without a further glance.

Dodger wandered on, meeting somebody he knew on every street corner, with a bit of banter here and a bit of conversation there, and every now and then asking a little question – not very important really, just as a sort of afterthought, concerning a girl with golden hair escaping from a carriage into the storm.

Not that he was interested, of course; it was just something he had heard, in a round about way, as it were – not for any special reason, of course. It was just good old Dodger, and everybody knew Dodger, wanting to know about the coach and the girl with the golden hair. He would have to be careful how he walked, but so what? He always was. And right now he was at the bottom of the rickety staircase that led up to the tenement attic.

Home, where Solomon was, as usual, at work. He always was; he was never hard at work – he was always soft at work, almost always on tiny things that needed tiny tools and considerable amounts of patience, and a gentle hand as well as, sometimes, a large magnifying glass. Onan was curled up under his chair, as only Onan could curl.

The old man took his time relocking the door, then said, ‘Mmm, a busy day again, my friend, I hope it has proved fruitful?’ Dodger showed him the largesse from the kitchens of the Mayhews, and Solomon said, ‘Mmm, very nice, really very nice and a fine piece of pork, I see; possibly a casserole later, I think. Well done.’

Some years ago, after he had brought home a piece of pork that had remarkably tumbled out of a kitchen window and right into the innocent hands of Dodger, who had merely been passing by, Dodger had said to Solomon, ‘I thought you Jews were not allowed to eat pork, right?’

If Onan was the king of curling up, Solomon was a prince of the shrug. ‘Strictly speaking,’ he had answered, ‘that may be so mmm, but another set of rules applies. Firstly, this is a gift from God and one should never refuse a gift given freely, and secondly, this pork appears to be quite good, better than usual, and I am an old man and I am mmm very hungry. Sometimes I think that the rules made centuries ago for the purpose of getting my excitable and bickering forebears across the desert cannot easily be said to apply in this town with its rains, smogs and fogs. Besides, I am an elderly man and I am quite hungry, and I have mentioned this twice, because I think it is very relevant. I think in the circumstances that God will understand, or He is not the God I know. That is one of the mmm good things about being Jewish. After my wife was killed in that pogrom in Russia I came to England with only my tools, and when I saw the white cliffs of Dover, alone without my wife, I said, “God, today I don’t believe in you any more.”’

‘What did God say?’ Dodger had asked.

Solomon had sighed theatrically, as if he had been put upon by the question, and then smiled and said, ‘Mmm, God said to me, “I understand, Solomon, let me know when you change your mind,” and I was really pleased with that, because I’d had my say and the world was better, and now I sit in a place that is rather dirty, but I am free. And I am free to eat pork, if God so wills it that pork comes my way.’

Now Solomon turned back to his work. ‘I am making sprockets, my boy, for this watch. It is engrossing work requiring considerable coordination of hand and eye, but also in its way the work is very soothing, and that is why I look forward to making a sprocket or two. It means I’m helping time know what it is, just as time knows what I will become.’

There was silence after that, apart from the reassuring noises of Solomon’s tools, and that was just as well because Dodger didn’t know what to say, but he wondered whether all that was because Solomon was Jewish or because Solomon was quite old, or both, and so he said, ‘I want to do a bit of thinking, if that’s all right with you? I’ll get changed, obviously.’

This was because Dodger was certain he did his best thinking on the tosh. It had rained a bit last night, but not too much, and now he wanted some time with nobody else in it.

Solomon waved him away. ‘Take your time, boy. And take Onan too, if you would be so kind . . .’

A little while later, a little way away, the lid rose on a grating and Dodger dropped comfortably into his world. It wasn’t too bad, because of the rain, and because it was still daylight there were echoes, oh yes, the echoes. It was amazing what the drains picked up, and voices could echo along for quite a way. Every sound left its dying ghost, bouncing who knew how far?

Then, of course, there were the noises from the street; sometimes you could follow a conversation if it was near a drain, people talking away totally oblivious to the tosher hiding below. Once, he had heard a lady get out of a carriage, stumble and drop her purse, which opened. Some of the money, as the luck of the tosher would have it, rolled into the nearest drain. Young Dodger had heard her cries, and the curses to the footman who she said hadn’t been holding the door properly, and he followed the sound already down in the sewer to where, falling like manna from heaven, one half sovereign, two half crowns, a sixpence, four pennies and a farthing dropped almost into his hands.

At the time he had been quite indignant about the farthing; what was a grand lady with a coachman doing with one farthing in her purse?! Farthings were for poor people, and so were half farthings!

You didn’t often get days as good as that, but it was night time when the sewers became strangely alive. Toshers liked nights with a bit of moonlight. If they went down there then, they sometimes carried a dark lantern – one of the ones with the little door so you could shut off the light if you didn’t want to be seen. But those came expensive and were cumbersome, and the tosher sometimes had to move fast.

It wasn’t only good honest toshers down there in the dark, though, oh no and dearie! There were rats too, of course – it was their natural home, and they didn’t particularly want to meet you and you didn’t want to meet them – but after the rats came the rat-catchers, trapping rats for the dog fights.

And then you got down to the really dreadful things . . .

There were still plenty of places in the city where the sewers were open and above ground, and where some of them were pretending to be rivers; this meant that anything that could float or anything that could roll could be dropped or trapped in them in the dead of night. A sensible tosher stayed away from those areas, but there were other people who used the privacy of the sewers for purposes of their own – they were the kind of people who normally wouldn’t go out of their way to do a horrible thing to a tosher, but on the other hand they were the kind of people who might just do so if the mood took them, just for a laugh.

They liked a laugh . . .

Dodger’s thoughts shot back to what Marie Jo had told him. Someone who looked like a lawyer was asking after somebody called Dodger. And Marie Jo was a very shrewd lady; otherwise she wouldn’t have survived.

These thoughts spread out in his brain like the incoming tide (always a nuisance to toshers near the Thames). And an answer sprang back at him.

This was his territory; he knew every sewer in the length and breadth of the city, every little hidey hole that could barely be seen lest you knew where to look, the places that were half blocked off and nobody knew they were there. Honestly, he could navigate by the smells themselves and he knew exactly where he was right now. If someone is looking for me, he thought, if I’m going to have to fight someone, I must see to it that it’s on my patch. I’m Dodger; I can dodge down here.

Right now, the air in the tunnel was more or less sweet – well, in comparison to the things that weren’t sweet at all, with the possible exception of Onan who had, of course, brought his own particular odours with him. Dodger gave the two-tone whistle that every tosher knew, and listened for a reply; there was none, and so, at least for now, he had this area all to himself, as he so often did.

Almost without thinking he picked up a tie pin and a farthing within a couple of yards; luck was with him, and he wondered if it was because he had just done a good deed. As he thought this, Onan began to snuffle and whine and worry at something in a broken-down pile of old bricks. Dodger suddenly heard a clink as Onan’s nose knocked something loose. Now the dog had something golden in his jaws – a gold ring with a big stone in it! Worth at least a sovereign!

Good old Onan! And thanks to the Lady. But things happened, or didn’t happen, and that’s all there was to it, Dodger knew. You could drive yourself mad thinking otherwise.

In the gloom, listening to the sounds of the world above, hunting through the tunnels, Dodger was in his element and Dodger was happy.

Elsewhere, others were not . . .

There were many candles in this room, but none of them illuminated the face of the man seated by the tapestry. This considerably disconcerted the man known to his special clients as Sharp Bob – most certainly not the name he used when dealing with more ordinary legal affairs. He always liked to see whoever it was who was employing him; on the other hand, he also liked gold sovereigns, and they didn’t worry him at all – he was always pleased to see them. He could see two of them now; a lamp in the darkness before him showed them shining on a low table. He hadn’t picked them up yet, because he thought, If I pick them up before that incredibly toffish voice tells me to, for a certainty I might just have my knuckles rapped, or worse.

He didn’t like this place. He hadn’t liked having to spend some time in that rattling coach with a blindfold over his eyes and a man with a foreign accent sitting opposite him who had threatened to do him a mischief if he tried to take it off. He didn’t like working for men with foreign accents, when it came down to it. Not to be trusted. Not like doing business with a good, honest, God-fearing Englishman – Sharp Bob knew how to deal with them. He didn’t like the way the journey here had been all around the houses either, doubling back and constantly changing direction like a thief on the run. Nor did he like the fact that after this interview he would have to go through the whole business again.

This place was plush – that was certain; it even smelled plush. Occasionally people walked past behind him and that made him angry too, because he dared not turn his head. Creepy stuff. He had been here for ten minutes, waiting for whoever it was who had just walked silently over to a chair on the other side of the flames – a fact he knew only because the padded leather chair had complained with that little farting noise that only the very best padded leather chairs gave off when sat upon. Sharp Bob knew a good chair when he heard it, for he had been in the houses of the mighty before, though not on business such as this.

Now there was a stirring, and the someone behind the flames who was anxious not to be seen was about to talk. At this point Sharp Bob realized that the really anxious one was himself, and he had a terrible premonition that he would sooner or later have to pass water.

He nearly did when the hidden voice said: ‘Also, Mister Sharp Robert, I believe you told us that your men would have no difficulty in dealing with one simple girl. And yet, my friend, it would appear that she has twice escaped you and you were only able to catch her once. This does not, I am sure you will not blame me for pointing out, appear to be a very good record, wouldn’t you say?’

There was something in the voice which disturbed Sharp Bob. It was English, but not quite English; as if a foreigner had learned English absolutely perfectly, but hadn’t been able to include all the little usages that a native-born speaker would have picked up. In fact, as English, it was too good. Too perfect. Lacking the slurs and imperfections that the native users sprinkled on their conversations. He sat in his puddle of darkness – and fortunately nothing else at the moment – and said, ‘Well, sir, we expected a girl, but that lady had a punch on her that knocked out one of my boys. And one of them’s been in the ring, sir! She was fast and clever, sir, fighting like anything, and you did say that you wanted her back and on the boat in one piece. Unfortunately my boys, quite frankly, sir, also wanted to get home in one piece. They say there never was a girl like that who kicked and spat and punched like a good ’un, and I’ve got one lad now who walks funny and is sporting a black eye, and another who had two of his fingers torn off. I mean, the first time she took us by surprise, but that time she just ran and they got her back in and tied down in your coach. Of course, after that we were too late for the boat, which is why we were bringing her back to you.’

Sharp Bob was feeling on very shaky ground at the moment because, after all, it had hardly been his fault.

‘Just as I told your colleague earlier, sir,’ he went on, ‘everything would have been all right on the second try, but she kicked the door out and jumped off in the middle of that terrible thunderstorm. Your coachman couldn’t stop the horses, sir, not in that rain. Very unusual circumstances. Difficult to predict.’

In the silence there was the sound of a page turning and a voice said, ‘And apparently, Mister Sharp Robert, a person called’ – the pages rustled – ‘Dodger actually wounded your two men, very nearly drowning one in a gutter. It seems to me that we should perhaps have employed him instead.’

The man who liked to think of himself as Sharp Bob but wasn’t feeling all that sharp right now said, ‘I can still be of some help, sir, bearing in mind that you already owe me quite a lot for having tracked her down in the first place. I believe you have had my bill for that for some time . . .?’

The speaker ignored the latter part of this statement, saying instead, ‘I would like to assume that you have some news pertaining to this little difficulty. I understand there was something further about this troublemaker? Do be so kind as to enlighten me, will you?’

Sharp Bob said, ‘He has been asking around, sir, and being very what you might call methodical about it, sir.’

Sharp Bob was satisfied with ‘methodical’ as a description, but not pleased when the voice said, unnecessarily sharply in his opinion, ‘Good heavens, man, surely you can use your own initiative, can you not?’

Sharp Bob knew what an initiative was, but right now he was certain he hadn’t got one. Hopefully he said, ‘The body asking the questions ain’t just any nobody, if you get my drift; he’s got contacts on the street, which makes things a little more difficult.’

The voice sounded angry, and that did not sit well with Sharp Bob’s bladder. Things got no better when, out of the dark, the voice came back with, ‘Is he working for a policeman . . . what you call, I believe, a peeler?’

A peeler! What a word to use to a troubled gentleman of fortune. The bloody, bloody peelers. You couldn’t bribe them, you couldn’t make friends with them – not like the old Bow Street runners – and mostly the new boys were war veterans. If you had been in some of the wars lately and come back with all your bits still attached to your body, then that meant you were either a hard man or very, very lucky. Bloody Mister Peel had sent them scurrying about like busybodies and no mistake, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer, and mostly they wouldn’t take any answer at all from anyone unless it was: ‘It’s a fair cop, I’ll come quietly, sir.’ You cried uncle, you cried aunt, you cried your eyes out the moment you fell foul of the peelers, and the bleeders wouldn’t even help you put them back, and they drank like fish and roared like the Devil, and weren’t friends with anybody – and that, amazingly, included the nobs. It certainly included those on the fringes of the legal business, like himself, who had relied on the old Bow Street boys who were, well . . . understanding, especially when money jingled.

What could you do with men like the peelers, who respected nobody except Sir Robert Peel himself? The very thought of them was just another problem for Sharp Bob’s bladder to cope with. A certain amount of fear trickled down his leg as he said carefully, ‘No, sir, not for the peelers, sir. He’s a bloke, sir, although he is really more of a geezer, sir, if you catch my meaning?’

This led to a frosty silence, which was followed by, ‘I do not intend to catch anything of yours, Mister Bob. What is a geezer?’ The word was said as if the speaker was pulling a dead mouse out of their soup, or more accurately, half a dead mouse.

Sharp Bob, who in these circumstances now realized that only half his name was accurate, was struggling now. Didn’t everybody know what a geezer was? Of course they did! Well, every Londoner did, anyway. A geezer was . . . well, a geezer! It was like asking: What is a pint of beer? Or, What is the sun? A geezer was a geezer; although it did occur to Bob that he would have to do some work on the definition before he answered the dangerous voice in the darkness.

He cleared his throat again and said, ‘A geezer, now, well, a geezer is somebody that everybody knows, and he knows everybody, and maybe he knows something about everyone he knows that maybe you wished he didn’t know. Um, and well, he’s sharp, crafty, um, not exactly a thief but somehow things find their way into his hands. Doesn’t mind a bit of mischief, and wears the street like an overcoat. Dodger now . . . well, Dodger’s a tosher as well, which means he knows what’s going on down in the sewers too – a tosher, sir, being somebody who goes down there looking for coins and suchlike which may have been lost down the drain.’ This mention of drains seemed to make Sharp Bob somewhat more uneasy as he continued to move uncomfortably and added, ‘What I’m meaning to say, sir, is that he is a central kind of cove, you might say – makes the place a bit more interesting, if you know what I mean? And he’s been seen mixing with some nobby types recently.’

Sweating hard and still squirming on his seat, Sharp Bob awaited judgement. Above the frantic beating of his heart he thought he could hear faint whispering beyond the wall of fire. So there was more than one person in the room with him! He squirmed even more – this was not going well.

Eventually, the voice said, ‘We do not have any interest in interesting people; they can be dangerous. However, if this Dodger is asking questions about the girl then he might either find her, or know where she is now, and so therefore I require you to make certain that he is watched at all times, do you understand? And, of course, it goes without saying that there should be no way that he can know that he is being spied on. Do I make myself clear, Mister Robert? Because I generally do. This is a very delicate matter, and we will be extremely disappointed should matters not be brought to a happy ending. I don’t intend to expand here, but I’m sure you will understand what an ultimate failure ultimately entails. We want that girl, Mister Bob. We want her back.

‘Incidentally, Mister Bob, one of my associates will now take you gently by the arm and lead you to a place where you can, as it were, find some relief. You may take the sovereigns as a token of good faith and we rely on you to deserve them.’

A foreigner’s gold, Sharp Bob thought, was as good as anyone else’s, but you could get into trouble with foreigners, and he would be glad when all this was over.

After taking up the sovereigns and being allowed the blessed relief of the jakes, Sharp Bob was bundled back into the wretched coach, which by the feel of it trundled him all around London again before he was rather rudely pushed out close to his office, his mind busy with what he knew about the lad called Dodger.

One of the invisible gentlemen who had been sitting in the dark leaned down and, switching to his native tongue, said to the interlocutor, ‘Are you quite sure about this man, sir? After all, we could get the Outlander? I have made enquiries and he is free at the moment.’

‘No. The Outlander is sometimes very messy, dangerous; it might become . . . political, if it was known that we had called him in. We would prefer to avoid causing an . . . incident. No, the Outlander is the last resort. I have heard about what he did to the family of the Greek ambassador – it was entirely uncalled for. I won’t dream of sending for the likes of him until every other avenue has been fruitless. If this troublemaker persists in his trouble-making, or brings others into the affair . . . well, then, we may need to reconsider. For now, however, let us continue to use this Mister Robert Sharp. It surely can’t be all that difficult, can it, for him to find a girl for us? To follow a grubby little guttersnipe? We can always get rid of him later if he becomes an . . . embarrassment.’