Dodger of the Dials (18 page)

‘Then you had a lucky escape, madam,’ the sergeant told her as his constables forced me out and into the street. ‘For this one is a violent killer and has given your neighbour up there a proper bludgeoning.’

I denied this and told the two peelers what was bundling me into the back of their vehicle that Anthony Rylance was given his bludgeoning before I had even arrived. But they was not interested in my protestations and they raised their truncheons to tell me to shut it until we reached the nearest police station. I was sat in the back of the van and as the police horses led us away I looked over to Mouse. Even he looked like he did not believe me.

When we arrived at the nearest police station there was some confusion as the Night Inspector there did not seem to recognise the three arresting officers – the fourth had been left to mind the body – and he seemed most surprised to see them in his vicinity.

‘We’ve come from a different division,’ the sergeant explained and pointed at some numbers on his uniform. ‘As you can see. My name is Sergeant Dickinson and my constables and I have apprehended these two villains in the very act of murder at an address near Embankment. The body is still there and I suggest you send some of the police from this station to attend to the scene directly.’

‘I see,’ said the Night Inspector, who lay down some novel he was holding and regarded the unfamiliar peelers as though they was nuisances what was distracting him from a much more diverting narrative. ‘And what are you calling yourselves then, eh?’ he asked us.

‘We’re the Innocent brothers,’ I declared. ‘And we ain’t done nothing to nobody.’

I was hoping that Mouse and I could be able to evade having our identities revealed for long enough that if a chance for us to foot it out of here came along we could take it and not be tracked so easy. But, just before the Night Inspector was about to enter us in his ledger under Unknown, one of the arresting constables piped up.

‘Sergeant Dickinson,’ he said and pointed towards me. ‘That one there is familiar to me, sir.’

‘Oh, is he now?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the constable who I did not recognise at all. ‘I’ve known him from when I was under Inspector Bracken.’

My spirits sank as I heard this. Bracken was always bursting into the Three Cripples whenever he wanted to bully some criminals and loved to harass me in particular. If this constable had served under him then he was sure to know me.

‘I believe his name is Dodger, sir,’ his voice was flat. ‘Or something like that.’

‘Dodger is not his given name, I take it, constable?’ asked the sergeant. ‘What’s the surname then?’ The constable shrugged and so the sergeant asked the Night Inspector if he had ever heard of me.

He just sighed as if he thought this was going to be a long night. ‘I’ve known scores of criminals called Dodger,’ he remarked. ‘It’s a common nickname around these parts.’

The arresting sergeant looked annoyed and turned to the constable. ‘Well, you better send for Inspector Bracken then,’ he ordered him. ‘For the identification.’

‘At this time of night?’ yawned the Night Inspector, who did not seem to much care what my name might be. ‘Why not just lock them up for now, eh? They’re not going anywhere and I’d sooner let the day police worry about them. You’ll find a free cell down the end of that corridor and on the right.’

*

Once the locks on this cell door was turned and Mouse and I was alone, he spoke for the first time since our arrest.

‘What happened, Dodge?’ he whispered in a frantic way. ‘What was you doing with that man?’ He was looking at me as if I was a total stranger to him and I was stunned about what must be going through his mind.

‘You don’t think I killed him, do you?’ I asked in amazement. ‘He was like that when I found him.’ My childhood friend blinked back at me. ‘Don’t be silly, Mouse, it’s me. I ain’t a killer. Besides, his head was cracked with a barker which you know I never carry. Have a think!’

‘Right,’ he said in a voice what did not sound certain. ‘Of course you never. I don’t know why I thought … it’s just …’

‘Just what? How could you even entertain the thought?’

‘Dunno. It’s the way you’ve been acting lately. Chucking things at people’s heads and being more boisterous and quarrelsome than is normal. I thought you was trying to become more violent. Y’know, like Billy Slade is. I thought Slade had asked you to do it.’

This remark managed to shock me more than anything else I had experienced that night. But rather than take him to task for his moral misconceptions about me, I instead knelt down and started giving him some advice.

‘They might think they know who I am, right, but it don’t follow that they’ve placed you. So give them a false name because if there is a chance to escape then we need to take it. Things look bad and I’ve a feeling they’ll get worse soon enough.’

Some hours before daybreak I was proven right. We heard the locks of this holding cell turn from the other side and I heard the voice of Sergeant Dickinson talking to someone.

‘So if we’re right about his identity,’ I heard him tell this person as the bolts was slid, ‘then your constable is the one to tell us. I’m glad we sent for you, Inspector.’

The droning voice what replied was a familiar one.

‘I shall be able to tell you myself,’ I heard it say, ‘he’s not a person you forget in a hurry.’

The door opened and in Bracken walked with his tombstone face and bird-shit pallor. He looked at me as though he held me in similar high regard and spoke to Dickinson who followed him in behind.

‘You are correct,’ Bracken said with his fixed eyes on mine as I was sat on a wooden chair. ‘It’s Dawkins. The same man who showed me a pardon he had received two years ago telling me that he was a reformed character. This turn of events is unsurprising.’

‘I’m not guilty, Inspector,’ I said knowing that it was useless to
go on pretending I was someone else any longer, ‘the dead man was there already. I was just burgling the place. I’m an innocent man.’

A third policeman walked into the cell as I said that and tutted my given name as though in a disappointed manner.

‘John Dawkins,’ said Horrie Belltower with a sad and insincere shake of the head. ‘Come to this. What would our dear mother say if she could see you now?’

‘It ain’t how it looks, Horrie,’ I pleaded with him. ‘I ain’t the killing kind. You should know, we’re brothers after all.’

‘Half-brothers,’ he returned without a smile. Then he looked over at Mouse and pointed at him with his truncheon. ‘This one’s name is Mouse Flynn. And he’s always been a troublemaker an’ all.’ Mouse groaned in the chair next to me and I told Horrie he was a disgrace to the family.

‘Splendid,’ Dickinson remarked and clapped his hands together. ‘That’s all we needed confirmed. Now, we’ve inconvenienced you and your constable for long enough, Inspector, so I shall let you both get back to your own division. Me and my constables can see to things from here. He’ll get his comeuppance, don’t you worry about that.’

But Bracken did not move. ‘S Division, I see?’ the old Inspector said slow.

‘That’s right, sir,’ the younger man replied and again pointed to his numbers. ‘That would be the Hampstead station.’

‘But you’re not in Hampstead now?’

‘No, sir,’ Dickinson replied. ‘We were sent to the Embankment following an anonymous message received by our commanding officer.’

‘An anonymous message?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ the sergeant nodded and gave a small chuckle. ‘Don’t know who sent it but then that’s the anonymous for you.
Heh.’ Then he stopped laughing under Bracken’s stony gaze. ‘Tragically, we were not in time to save the life of Mr Rylance,’ he continued in an altered tone.

Bracken turned back to me and sniffed. ‘You did however manage to apprehend one of this city’s most notorious criminals. Be sure to congratulate your commanding officer for me.’ I was getting the impression that Bracken was a little jealous that he had not been the one to fix the cuffs on me.

Sergeant Dickinson then followed Bracken out of the room and Constable Belltower made to follow. ‘Hold up!’ I shouted before Horrie could shut the cell door after himself. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’

‘You’ll be put before the judge, John,’ said Horrie with a heavy sigh, ‘and God help the pair of you then. You know what the punishment for murder is.’

‘But ain’t we entitled to a lawyer or something?’

Horrie seemed to think about this then as though nobody had ever troubled him with that question before.

‘In all truth, John,’ he smiled as if amused by his own ignorance, ‘I have no blooming idea. Sleep well.’ The door swung shut and the locks was turned.

*

We was kept in that cell until the courts was ready for us and we had little communication with the outside world save for some visits from a lawyer who Barney had sent down on our behalf. All other visitors was banned but Horrie popped his head into the cell on the morning of our trial so he could show us something. It was a cutting from a halfpenny broadside what was circulating the city and would have been found pinned upon the walls of pubs and coffee-houses for all Londoners to enjoy. It went like this: –

Fair people all, do steel your hearts, to hear of horrid violence

Of that which fell upon the crown of honest fellow Rylance.

Alone he sat, while hard at work, of danger unaware,

But to his home like rats did creep a vile and wicked pair
.

Two burglars came, with hearts of black, they stole into his house,

The first was Dawkins, first name Jack, the second went by Mouse.

These two thieves of much ill-fame (for their names they are notorious),

Behind poor Rylance sneaking came, to commit a crime injurious
.

A deadly blow! An armed attack! The reporter he was done for,

And now with blood upon their hands they tried to make a run for –

Liberty! And so they fled, to the window for release,

But who should burst into the room but some swift-footed police!

And so to trial these wretches go and justice has one hope,

That the judge of the Old Bailey will give these boys the rope!

Horrie seemed to find the verse very amusing but, seeing as he was not a strong reader, he got one of the other constables to read it out to us. I was glad when he at last buggered off home.

*

The judge was a shrinking walnut of a man and I had a suspicion that I had seen him somewhere before. He took a hostile attitude towards Mouse and myself from the start and became most impatient with my fellow defendant when he told the court what his name was. Mouse was not a nickname but the only one my friend had ever known and he had never seen a birth certificate what might prove otherwise. When asked if it was his mother what had named him after a tiny rodent, Mouse just shrugged and replied that he
had never even met the woman so he couldn’t be sure. This did nothing to endear us to the jury what already considered us close to vermin and our solicitor – a cove named Jacob Slaithwaite – became even more pessimistic about our chances than he had been already.

This Slaithwaite was the same ancient and gin-sodden man of the law what had defended Fagin against charges of being a fence and a kidsman eight years prior. Neither of those crimes was punishable by death so he had very much excelled himself in getting the old Jew the drop for it regardless. But, to his credit, Jacob had also represented me after I had been taken into custody following the Evershed affair two years before and had been successful in securing my freedom on that occasion. He also possessed the admirable virtue of hating the new police as much as any criminal, which I hoped would prove beneficial in this situation. I had a deep distrust for most other solicitors as there was many a dark tale about backhanded lawyers what worked against their clients for profit. Jacob, at least, was one of us.

The high-walled but sweaty room was full of spectators eager to see how the much-publicised Dawkins and Flynn trial would unfold. In particular, the press bench was crammed with noisy scribblers, none of which seemed sympathetic to our plight. Some of them called out for the judge to give us the rope before the trial had even begun. Of course Anthony Rylance had himself been a court reporter so I suppose that we could not have expected much even-handed coverage from that quarter.

The first person to give testimony was the arresting sergeant and he explained to the court how he had been sent to check upon the safety of Anthony Rylance. His superior officer, so he claimed, had received an anonymous message saying that the man was in deadly danger that very night and so he ordered Sergeant Dickinson
to gather some constables together and proceed to the address forthwith. He then told how he and his men had forced their way into the property and discovered Mouse and myself still there with the fresh corpse of the murdered man. There was two pistols on the scene – the one what I had used to smash in the victim’s head and another found on the floor of the front room what Mouse must have dropped.

‘Untrue!’ I cried, enraged by his words. ‘We never carry barkers, you can ask anyone! They was there before we arrived.’ The judge banged his gavel at this outburst and told me to quieten myself, and I then turned on Slaithwaite to ask why he was not making these sort of objections on my behalf. He advised that it would be better for us to just appear as docile as possible but as he spoke I could smell the alcohol on his breath.