Dodger (48 page)

‘Where is he, Dawkins?' barked Inspector Bracken into my face as two of his constables held me up against a brick wall. ‘Where's Evershed?'

‘Let go of me, you stupid bastard!' I shouted, and tried to punch and kick myself free of them. ‘They're going to kill her!'

‘You mean Miss Solomon?' asked Bracken as several other peelers came running towards us from the market with their truncheons out. ‘You've seen her? She's still alive?'

‘She went that way!' I pointed towards where I had just seen the black carriage go. ‘Hurry! They're going to kill her.'

‘Was it Evershed?' Bracken demanded as he looked in that direction.

‘Yes,' I told him. ‘And he's as mad as a clown. He's in a black carriage with some woman driving it. That way!' I was struggling to break free and take chase myself when I saw Warrigal appear from behind the policemen. He too was running to where Ruby had gone and I shouted to the peelers to grab him. ‘That's one of them!' I cried. ‘Stop him!'

‘We know,' said Bracken as the peelers released me and then footed it towards Cow Cross Lane. ‘He's with us.' And then I noticed that the peelers was not running after Warrigal at all. They was running with him.

I ran to the corner myself, praying to every ghost I had ever known that there was still enough time to save her. But, as I turned into the long lane, I saw that she was at the far end of it and already at Evershed's mercy.

The carriage had stopped moving, the door was open and Evershed had stepped out of it and into the street. He was talking to Ruby and, although I could not hear what they was saying, he was holding up that gold locket from its chain, the one with the picture of Ruby's mother inside. Ruby took the locket to see, unaware of the danger, as Evershed stood there clutching his wounded shoulder.

‘
Franklin Evershed!
' boomed Inspector Bracken as he, myself, half a dozen peelers and Warrigal all looked down the lane towards them. ‘
You are under arrest, sir!
'

Evershed spun around to see us all heading towards him. Then he turned back to Ruby and shoved her hard against a brick wall. She screamed and dropped the locket as he flung open his coat
and pulled out that old musket I had seen in the Dancing Mutineer. He pointed at her head and fired.

The blast rang out and there was a splash of blood as she fell to her knees in front of him. I cried out in horror as we all continued charging towards him and he threw the gun down and made to get back in the carriage. But Calista did not wait for him and before he could climb in, the horse was whipped onwards and the carriage left him in the street abandoned.

‘
Bitch!
' he cried out after her and turned again to see us closing in. Then he reached for his sword and pulled it out of its scabbard before heading off in the other direction. Bracken and his peelers all ran past where Ruby was lying and continued in pursuit of Evershed as he made it to a narrow alley and disappeared down it. I was the first one what stopped to aid the fallen woman.

‘Ruby!' I cried as I saw her slumped against the wall with the gold locket lying at her feet and her hat over her eyes. There was a hole in the hat and blood dripped down the lower part of her face. I could not contain my upset as I crouched down and touched her cheek.

Behind me, as I sobbed and told her I was sorry for everything I had ever done, I heard another set of footsteps make it to where she lay. My eyes was watery but I could sense that Warrigal was there and I was so full of anger that I was about to turn on him and charge him with not getting there sooner. From up the alley I could hear an almighty battle taking place and the sounds of policemen shouting for the man to place down his weapon.

Warrigal peered down to Ruby as a police van trundled down the lane behind him and I saw more peelers jump out, these ones with firearms, and head to where the cries was coming from to aid their brother officers. Warrigal just pointed at Ruby and spoke in a soft voice.

‘Red,' he said. And then I remembered when I had heard him say that last. I pulled her hat off to reveal a thick rare cut of steak what was sat atop her head and dripping its juices all down her face. I took it off and saw there was a musket ball embedded within.

Ruby's eyes blinked open and she spoke to me in shock. ‘Jack,' she said as I whooped with delight and kissed her unharmed head. ‘Who was that maniac? What did he mean by saying I looked like someone he once knew?' She struggled to stand up and looked towards the alley what Evershed had run off down. ‘What was all that about?'

As she asked this we heard the tremendous roar of Lord Evershed ring out from somewhere and all our heads turned to where it came from. Then some shots was fired and the roar was silenced.

I turned back to Ruby and helped her wipe the blood away. ‘Whatever it was,' I said, not knowing what to tell her, ‘it's all over now.'

Ruby took the steak from me and bit her lip. ‘Please don't tell John that I'm back on the lift,' she pleaded as she put it back in her hat. ‘He wouldn't approve.' I laughed and promised her that I would do no such thing. I was just so relieved to see her alive again and I told her how happy I was.

‘Not as happy as I am, you thieving little shit,' said a rough voice from behind me. I was yanked up by two strong arms and then thrown hard against the wall beside Ruby. I fought against this manhandling but my arms was forced behind my back and I felt some rusty prison manacles being locked onto my wrists. ‘You're coming down the station, baby brother,' Horrie said as he turned me round to face him. ‘We got some questions need answering.'

‘Fucking Hellfire!' said the Prime Minister of Britain. ‘This is going to take some fucking explaining.'

Although I could not in truth see Sir Robert Peel for myself as I sat in a police cell some hours later, I could hear his broad Lancastrian tones echo from the room next door as he tried to make sense of what he was being told. He had been speaking to Inspector Bracken for some time and it sounded as though he had been dragged away from some important public function to come down here and attend to this mess.

‘I shudder to think what Her Majesty is going to say about it all,' he moaned as I heard his footsteps stomping about. ‘Evershed was a friend of her father's and she doesn't care for me much as it is.'

I was in this cell with Warrigal, who lay on a small truckle bed and stared up at the ceiling. I myself was sat on a chair and looking out of the barred window to the white sky what hung over the city. It would be snowing soon, I thought to myself. It always does in time for Christmas.

‘He was a friend of Wellington's as well,' Peel continued ranting at the Metropolitan Police, a force he himself had created as Home Secretary. ‘And now he's been shot dead in a dirty alley by my
own damned officers like he was a rabid dog. I'll never hear the fucking end of it.'

Inspector Bracken was heard clearing his throat. ‘Yes, Prime Minister,' he said. ‘It is unfortunate that Lord Evershed drove us to take such action. But as you have been informed, he wounded three of my constables, one almost fatally. And we had just witnessed him trying to shoot an innocent woman in the head.'

Warrigal and myself had spent the last few hours being questioned as to what we both knew about His Lordship and we had managed not to incriminate ourselves. Warrigal had not told me what he had been up to earlier that morning when Pin and myself had gone to Saffron Hill to fetch the Jakkapoor stone and he was late collecting Lord Evershed at the docks, but it was starting to sound like he had been very busy.

‘And the reason you had armed officers in Smithfield Market looking for Lord Evershed,' Peel's voice was heard asking, ‘was because an Australian aboriginal told you he would be there?'

‘Indeed, Prime Minister,' Bracken confirmed. ‘A Mr Warrigal Bungurra.'

‘A reply, Inspector,' said Peel with a hard sigh, ‘that raises more questions than it answers.'

Bracken explained to Sir Robert Peel who Warrigal was, how he had met the two of us some weeks before in the Booted Cat, and how we had since been approached to cooperate in an unofficial investigation into the murder of Louisa Evershed and George Shatillion. He then told how, in the early hours of this morning, Warrigal had strolled into a police station when he should have been waiting for Lord Evershed and asked to speak to Inspector Bracken. Bracken was not there and Warrigal could not stay long, but he left a message to say that Lord Evershed would be arriving in England on that very day and would be going to the Dancing
Mutineer pub in Wapping. He also said that Evershed had threatened to arrange a massacre at an aborigine settlement in Australia. I looked over to where Warrigal was lying to see if he was listening to this all but he just kept staring at the ceiling. ‘You're a dark horse,' I said.

‘Mr Bungurra would not wait for me to arrive at the station, Prime Minister, as he did not want to be missed. But he told the sergeant on duty that he would try to keep Lord Evershed and his companions at the Dancing Mutineer until we arrived. However, due to some incident involving Jack Dawkins jumping out of a window, he was unable to do this. Evershed and Pin had left Wapping before we got there and only Bungurra remained. Bungurra then travelled with us to Smithfield Market and said that he had since learnt that Evershed intended to kill a woman called Ruby Solomon. I asked him if he would testify against Lord Evershed in a court of law and he said that he would. But only as long as both he and Dawkins were cleared of all wrongdoing.' There was a pause as this seemed to grate upon Bracken. ‘With some reluctance,' he continued, ‘I have agreed to honour this condition.'

I looked over to Warrigal again as I heard this. ‘Thanks,' I said. He just looked over and nodded.

‘We have not been able to apprehend Timothy Pin, sir,' said Bracken after Peel asked if anyone had been arrested. ‘He's the man we suspect of having killed George Shatillion by pushing him from a cliff. He was last seen getting beaten up in a pigpen in Smithfield and has since vanished. The lady driver of his black coach is still at large also.'

‘This incident is bad, Wilfred,' said the Prime Minister before leaving. ‘It's bad for the force. See to it that you can prove that there is absolutely no doubt about the rightness of your actions in shooting Evershed. And try to keep things as quiet as possible.'

And so it came to be that Warrigal and myself would not be arrested provided we both agreed to go along with everything the police wanted us to say about Lord Evershed, which, as luck would have it, was also the honest truth. Our tales of his tyranny and evil was more than just believed by the Metropolitan Police, they was welcomed. We was kept in that station for some days after the incident going over our accounts of Evershed's villainy, and Ruby was brought down to tell them the little she knew as well. It was Bracken, not myself, who told her what we had heard about her being the illegitimate child of George Shatillion and Louisa Evershed, and I cannot imagine how she took the news.

The key turned in the iron door and Horrie stuck his head in. He had been looking in on us most regular ever since he had dragged us to this cell, providing us with toiletries and regular vittles, but if he was feeling bad about trying to arrest his own flesh and blood he was good at hiding it. He had given me some dry clothes however, to replace the ones what I had jumped into the Thames with. ‘That lawyer is here again,' he told us now. ‘The one what stinks of gin.'

Jacob Slaithwaite was the lawyer what Barney in the Three Cripples had mentioned knowing and he had sent him down on hearing of our unfair detention. Slaithwaite was the man what had defended Fagin after his arrest six years ago so I was not expecting great things from him. He shuffled into the cell behind Horrie, coughing his hellos and apologising for his head cold. He was an elderly man what should not still be practising law at his time of life, but the worn-out shoes, threadbare coat and battered briefcase he walked in with told me he had no other choice. There was a small writing desk in this cell with chairs on either side of it and he sat on one as I took the other.

Jacob breathed out in exhaustion as he watched Horrie leave us
and shut the cell door after him and then reached into his coat pocket. ‘Thank goodness he's left us in peace,' he wheezed pulling out a silver snuffbox. ‘I do hate the peelers.' I waited as he took a pinch of snuff and let the sensation of it hit him.

‘So, Jacob,' I said after he had replaced the top back on and left it on the table, ‘what news have you got for us?'

‘All good,' he said, and grinned at me so I could get a good look at every gap in his teeth. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out the pardon what the Governor of New South Wales had written out for me. ‘This,' he said, and held it out, ‘is still watertight. Just because the man named as your character witness lost hold of his senses and ran amok with a great sword does not mean this official pardon can be overruled. Otherwise they'd have to start overruling all sorts of decrees and that would never do. So you are allowed to stay in England for the rest of your days if you wish it.' He then again turned to Warrigal and cleared his throat. ‘That is, if you commit no further crimes.'

‘Don't you worry on that score, Jacob,' I told him. ‘I'm a changed man.'

‘Very good,' said the lawyer, not seeming to care either way. ‘Mr Bungurra will be expected to remain here for some time as he is helping the police with this Evershed business. But you, Mr Dawkins –' he winked and got to his feet – ‘cannot be detained here for one moment more. You can walk out of this building with me now if you care to.' He banged on the door for Horrie to let him out again.