Dodger of the Dials (11 page)

Bolter scowled back at her and looked ready to retaliate with his own verbal assault but – before we was treated to what no doubt would have been a glorious display of silver-tongued gallantry towards the opposite sex – he was interrupted by the door swinging open again. From the perturbed look on Bolter’s face, we was once again in the presence of the master of the house.

‘Morris, Morris, Morris,’ Slade said with a small chuckle. ‘Hospitality just isn’t your gift is it, old son? But then I find myself wondering – as I often have before – just what on Earth your true gifts could ever be.’ He stepped across the room and waved off Bolter’s attempts to defend himself as he took the champagne glass from out of his hand and took a sip. ‘Introductions, I suppose,’ he then said as he turned and looked towards Tom and myself. ‘I never would have known that the striking young man at the dance last week was the famous Artful Dodger if you hadn’t been there to enlighten me. But beyond that you’re really just a waste of skull and bones.’

Slade winked at me then and – in spite of my wariness of the man – I found myself smiling back at him. There was a natural presence about him in close proximity, a charisma what I had not been ready for. I wanted him to like me even though I had been told many repulsive things about his cruelty by Lily and had just moments before been outraged by the age of the children he set to
work. He was an evil bugger, this was plain, but then so was most of the people I had grown up with so I struggled to hold it against him. I envied his clothing, the black waistcoat he had on looked expensive and the shirt was a fine cut while his whiskers was thick but well-barbered. I was even finding the northern accent to be somehow exotic.

‘It’s a nice crib you got here, Mr Slade,’ I said by way of conversation. ‘I’ll give you that. You must be doing well for yourself.’

‘I keep the wolf at bay,’ he said and smiled at some men what had entered the room behind him. ‘And you can call me Billy if you don’t mind me going by Christian names also, Jack,’ he nodded and then looked to my lieutenant, ‘and Tom. I’ve heard good things.’

‘It’s Jack if you like, Billy,’ I said. ‘But my real friends call me Dodger.’ I felt a small wince of guilt as soon as I said that. I was glad that Lily could not see me being so free with her old bawd.

‘Dodger, then,’ Slade grinned back at me.

Slade then signalled for those girls to take the elderly man upstairs now to where a more comfortable room had been prepared and the harpist was told to stop playing and leave us too. Once these had all left us Slade had his men move the furniture around so we could sit in a circle and discuss our business while Bolter stoked the fire and fetched more drinks. Slade poured the champagne he had taken out into a nearby pot plant and commanded that he wanted the decanter of brandy brought over with some glasses – for him, his two guests but not for Bolter himself. ‘I can’t bear to see more spillage,’ he said rolling his eyes towards us. I noticed that he did not ask us if we cared to switch drinks – it seemed that if Weeping Billy was drinking brandy then we all was.

‘Before we get into things I would like to raise a toast,’ said Slade once Tom and I was seated on the settee what was still perfumed
from the prostitutes. ‘To clear up any confusion for one thing.’ Bolter had poured out the glasses by now and retreated to the corner of the room while we waited for Slade to raise his glass. ‘There was a misunderstanding at the fair I think. When Lily – the girl you were dancing with and who used to reside in this establishment – saw me looking at you both. I fear from the way that she reacted that she must be under the impression that I’m holding some sort of grudge against her for running out as she did. And it is irksome when a whore who owes me her income behaves in such a way, I will confess. But I want to impress upon you, Dodger, that bygones are most certainly bygones where that direction is concerned. I hold no malice against your girl, I even have fond recollections of her time here. She was always too nice for this place anyhow and I was glad to learn from Morris that she now resides with a successful a crim such as I hear you to be. You make a nice couple I think.’ His ungloved hand raised the glass up and stared at me with a face I found unreadable. ‘To Lily Lennox,’ he said, ‘a fine escort for a fine thief.’

Tom looked towards me to see whether she should do likewise. I waited a beat, to eye Slade and make him see that I considered his declaration important, before raising mine too.

‘To Lily, then,’ I said and held his gaze hard, ‘and to her continued good health.’

Tom echoed the words and we all drank from our glasses as one. Once this was done Slade seemed to relax and unbuttoned his waistcoat. One of his men produced a silver cigar box and offered one to each of us as Bolter walked over with some matches. Then, once we was comfortable, Slade came at last to the business at hand.

‘In the criminal underworld of London today,’ he announced as if it was from a speech he had prepared earlier, ‘there is no thief more famous than the Artful Dodger, or Dodger of the Dials as he
sometimes goes by. Even when still a young lad, I am often told, the Dodger was greatly admired for his dexterity with an open pocket. Is that not right, Morris?’

‘So they say,’ sniffed Bolter.

‘In all honesty,’ Slade said with a wink, ‘knowing that this very evening I was to meet the legendary thief myself I almost considered leaving my more valued items at home locked up.’ He followed this with a mighty laugh. ‘And we’ll be sure to check the silver on his way out, eh, Morris?’

I shrugged in mock-humility and told them that they was making me blush. But Slade told me to save my false modesty because this was just the beginning of the wonderful things he had heard regarding all things me.

‘Because in the last year your reputation as a burglar has eclipsed even that of the late Bill Sikes, bless his departed soul. It’s said in some circles that you’ve turned simple house-breaking into an art form, Dodger. That you move through great homes like a ghost does and empty it of all that is priceless. Even well-to-do gentlemen, so I’m told, have begun approaching you and paying you to steal items on demand and that you charge high figures for performing such services. It’s said that what you earn from these activities is beyond that of any other cracksman in the land and that your Diallers,’ here he turned his attention away from me and towards Tom, ‘are as brilliant as they are loyal. And I hear that a certain Tom Skinner is invaluable to you.’

He turned back to me to see if I would deny anything he had said. I did not.

‘What you have heard is accurate, Billy,’ I said trying to look unaffected by his tribute. ‘You are indeed in the presence of a fantastic pair of thieves.’

Slade chuckled at this and said he was glad to hear it. Then
Slade looked over to Bolter and gave him a small signal that I did not understand. ‘Fantastic is right,’ he then continued. ‘If what I hear about your adventures is true then you’re also daring and audacious, ambitious and clever. Qualities I value very highly.’

Behind me I could hear Bolter creeping from one end of the room to the other. I felt a sudden terror that we was being set up for an attack and turned to see what he was up to. He had reached a small office desk and was unlocking one of the drawers with a small key. Was he about to produce a weapon, I panicked, and come at us from behind?

‘But let me ask you this,’ Slade continued trying to force my attention away from him. ‘The one burning question. A question that rather begs itself actually. If the two of you are so very ingenious, if the Diallers are some of the highest earning thieves in the capital, a claim you do not deny, then why, oh why, are you both so very poor?’

I turned back to face Slade as his voice had dropped on that last word. His smile was still fixed onto his face but there was a menace there now, a hard challenge.

‘We ain’t poor,’ I replied while I stared him down. ‘And we’re getting richer all the time. You’ll see.’

‘Not what I hear,’ said Slade and now all the lightness and humour had vanished from him. ‘Not this time. I hear you can’t hold on to anything, that’s your trouble. I hear that you’re London’s most admired thieves, yes, but I do not hear that you are its most feared. Not by a long road.’

‘Whoever it is what’s told you that we ain’t feared,’ said Tom from beside me, ‘they never say such things to our faces. Most peculiar that.’

‘Good in a fight, are you, Tom?’

‘Very good,’ she replied. ‘So’s Dodge.’

‘How many you killed then? Either of you?’

There was a sharp pause. Neither of us said anything in return.

‘Come on,’ Slade persisted and then looked at me. ‘How many people you put in the ground? Or am I to believe that the great Artful Dodger is still, to use the language of the fox-hunter, unblooded?’

Morris Bolter now came around to where he was sitting with what he had fetched from the desk. It was a brown parcel and as his master took it from him I noticed with great unease how much Bolter was enjoying this part of the evening. He knew something I did not and his wicked smile wanted me to know it. Slade began unwrapping the parcel.

‘I thought so,’ he went on. ‘It’s another thing people say about you but this time it’s never as a compliment. Means you’re soft and that if you have something worth taking then why not go ahead and take it. They’ll be no recriminations. Dodger hasn’t the stomach for it.’

I saw the light of the fire catch upon the diamonds as they spilled out from the parcel and into Slade’s clutches. He held the necklace out between his two mismatched hands so there was no mistaking it.

‘Or at least that’s the word on the street,’ Slade smiled as he took in the surprised reactions of his two guests. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘The Lady of Stars!’ I cried in outrage.

‘So you’re the devils what took it!’ Tom leapt up from her seat in a second and reached over to grab it back but one of Slade’s henchmen was up first and he shoved her back down again with some force.

‘Now, now,’ Slade said with a stony stare. ‘No snatching. Not in this house.’

I looked at the stolen necklace in Slade’s hands and wondered at how it could just reappear here like a watch in a magic trick, and suddenly I felt very angry at seeing it again. That object was to have been our fortune, or at least the beginnings of it, and now here was Slade boasting of how he had swiped it from us. In just a few short seconds I had gone right off him.

‘I did not steal anything from you, young Thomas,’ Slade announced as if offended by the suggestion. ‘Nor would I employ any who would, as it’s not my way to steal from other thieves. No, I merely heard about your misfortune from someone connected to the Seven Dials community. I was very angered when I heard about the travesty, I don’t like to hear of clever thieves being ambushed by dumb ones. It feels unnatural somehow. So I made my own more forceful enquiries about who did take it, enquiries that I’m happy to say where more fruitful than any you may have launched.’

‘You’re saying that you found them?’ I asked not disguising my distrust. ‘The Turpins? You tracked them down and got it off them.’

‘I did indeed,’ Slade said. ‘They headed up north as soon as they stole the necklace from you, so my sources told me, and so I had some of my lads pursue them. As you can see the hunt was a success. They hadn’t even got that far.’

As I peered closer towards the necklace I noticed that there was something different about it from when it was last in my possession. It was stained around the edges with something dark. Something red.

‘I wonder,’ Slade said as he folded the necklace back into the brown paper and got to his feet, ‘whether you care to meet them for yourselves. These Turpins, the ones we dragged back here.
Two of them are in the outhouse at the far end of the garden, I’ve just been checking on them a moment ago. Let’s reunite you.’

*

This outhouse was small, made of orange bricks and set deep into the furthest part of the long back-garden, hidden from view by some over-hanging trees. Slade held out a black light as he led us down a path while explaining that he liked to have a place of business what was far away from the bawdy house. ‘The cries that come out of this little hideaway,’ he said as we came up to the green door and knocked twice, ‘would make too strong a contrast with those that come from the main house.’

Some light rain had begun to fall which did nothing to calm my nerves. I was already wary of heading into this low building with Slade and this was made worse when I noticed that there was no decent windows to the place, just air shafts and small gaps in the walls what had iron bars across them and was boarded from the inside. Even though there was now four men escorting us there through the drizzle, including Bolter, I still rebelled when the door was opened from within by another henchman in a red bowler hat.

‘We ain’t going with you,’ I said as I saw that there was a few steps inside what led downwards to a lowered concrete floor. There was candlelight flickering from within and I could hear some muffled groaning and rasps. ‘You can’t make us. If you don’t like it then we can have it out now but Tom and I don’t go down without a fight. We’ll make an almighty racket that even your neighbours won’t ignore.’

Slade paused and looked at me. His eyes then glanced over to Bolter and then back again as if he was considering taking us in by force. Then he spoke to me like a long-suffering parent making bargains with an unreasonable child.

‘I’m sorry you don’t trust me yet, Dodger,’ he sighed. ‘The
whole purpose of this exercise is to win that trust and I see I still have a long way to go. Well then. Why don’t we let Tom Skinner go home and then you come in without her? That way should you never return from inside – or whatever else is disturbing your imagination – then she can inform any interested parties where you were last seen? It’s a shame as I was hoping for her to join us but if it will make you feel more secure …’

I looked to Tom who agreed that she would go straight back to the rookeries and alert my whole gang to my current whereabouts. I did not doubt that she would get there safe as she was always most adept at losing shadows and unwelcome escorts.