Dodger of the Dials (31 page)

‘You deserve to die!’ a rough voice cried out from behind me.

The condemned prisoners had been walking in a line – with me at the front – as the turnkeys escorted us back to our cells. But now there was a sound of a struggle and I turned back to see Murdo Meehan – one of those prisoners what I had stripped of his possessions at gambling – and he had broken away from his guard and was running for it. I thought, at first, that he was making an admirable, if unlikely, dash for his own freedom. But this was not the case, I realised, when he came running in my direction with his teeth bared and his manacled arms outstretched.

‘You deserve to die, Dawkins!’ he said as he made it past the turnkeys and collided into me. His legs was not chained like mine and his hands was around my neck as I was pushed backwards against the wall. ‘Mouse Flynn would still be alive if it weren’t for you! You deserve to be hanged!’ I struggled against him as he tried to spit in my face but I was unprepared for the assault and it was left to Turnkey Max to get him off me.

‘Restrain that man,’ Max told two other guards as they grabbed Meehan and pulled him away. ‘And take him back to his cell first. I’ll remain with Dawkins until he’s locked up.’

I looked on in confusion as Meehan was forced down the stone staircase towards the condemned cells and the rest of the prisoners was marched past. They all gave me evil looks as I waited with Max until last.

‘I didn’t know,’ was all I could think to say, ‘that they all liked Mouse so much.’

‘They didn’t,’ Max said as the last convict disappeared down the steps and we waited to be told that it was clear for us to follow. ‘They just bloody hate you. And Meehan there,’ he pointed after my attacker with his truncheon, ‘has good reason to. Know why?’ I shook my head. ‘Every Monday morning we hang three
condemned prisoners in public viewing if there are three to hang. But no more than three. Any more than that – some feel – would be obscene.’

‘Obscene?’ I replied in a dry voice. I had not drunk any water for hours and my throat hurt after having had Meehan’s hands around it. ‘Just one is a grotesque. But why …’ but then it dawned. Mouse was dead. So there was a space on the gallows.

‘Right,’ Max nodded. ‘Your little antics the other night have shaved a week off that man’s life. He wasn’t due to swing until next week.’

‘But that can’t be fair,’ I said, horrified at the injustice. ‘Shouldn’t a lawyer be stopping it or something?’

‘Oh, yeah, he’s notified a solicitor,’ replied the turnkey. Underneath his moustache there was a small smile what he did not even attempt to hide. ‘Who will receive the letter early some time tomorrow. There’s a reason why we hang people early Monday mornings, Dawkins,’ he winked. ‘All the meddlers are not at work until the deed has been done.’

Then he grabbed me by the arm and began tugging me back to my cell and I knew that here – as if I needed it – was one more thing to feel rotten about before they killed me.

*

For the next hour or so I was locked up and alone and the only sound I could hear was that of Meehan swearing all manner of vicious curses at me from over in his cell. I did not shout back – indeed I did nothing but count the chimes from the church bells outside – but I cannot pretend that hearing his abuses did much to improve my black mood. Then, at some point in the late afternoon, the door to my cell opened once more.

‘Gentleman to see you,’ grunted the turnkey. ‘On the Sabbath as well. Must have paid a pretty penny.’

‘Oliver Twist?’ I asked, sitting up with a sudden alertness what I thought had died in me. I could feel my beaten spirit being recalled to life by the very thought that my long-lost childhood acquaintance had returned with good news. I was in the rum position of feeling nothing but fond thoughts towards this boy who I had, until last night, detested.

But as soon as I was led into that arched visiting chamber and I saw the lone figure waiting for me behind the grille I knew that it was a not a friendly visit. The man stood there with one hand in the pocket of a thick and flashy pea-green coat and he wore a matching hat and a red waistcoat. I tried to break away from the turnkey – as Meehan had broken away from his – so I could run down the length of the chamber and try to smash through the grille to get at him. But my manacled legs prevented me and the turnkey kept good hold of my fetters as he led towards me the fiend.

‘Oh dear, Jack Dawkins,’ smirked Weeping Billy Slade as the turnkey drew me near. ‘How sad to see you appearing so wretched less than a day before they hang you. It’s a tragic scene this but, I must admit, not an entirely unexpected one. You always were the hangable sort.’

‘I know what you are, Slade!’ I roared at him through the grille. ‘You’re a thief-taker! You’re in league with the police and setting up hard-working boys such as myself. I’d spit at you if I weren’t so bleeding parched!’

I shouted the words loud enough so that anyone close could hear the damning accusation but considering there was only a handful of turnkeys within earshot, most of them on his side of the barrier, I may as well have been talking to the bricks. Slade knew it and shrugged at the man what was now preparing to lock me in the cell with him.

‘Would you warrant it, Gaoler?’ he sighed with his good hand
holding onto a bar. ‘He’s berating me for being a decent citizen and informing the police about his criminal activities. As if that were something to be ashamed of. What a warped system of values this sorry creature has. No wonder it should have come to this.’ But I had no intention of letting him get away with that flam so easy.

‘You arranged for an innocent man to take the drop for Constable Wingham!’ I shouted for the guards to hear and he flinched in surprise. ‘Just as you set me up over the killing of Rylance. So spare us this “good citizen” act, Slade, because you’re the worst there is!’

I saw some of the turnkeys exchange glances then but Slade had regained his composure and was sighing at me. ‘What sad fictions a desperate and worn-out mind will come up with. I pity you, Jack Dawkins, I honestly do.’

The turnkeys then left me in that chamber with my enemy which was all right with me as I had some more forthright language what I intended to direct his way.

‘When the rookery boys learn what your true business is, Slade – and they’ll learn soon enough – you’re going to lose more than your other fingers. Gangs like mine, and like yourn an’ all, don’t care for those what deal with the police, and their punishments is worse than those of a court. I’d rather face the noose than what you’ll suffer through when it all comes out. You won’t be all smirks then.’ Slade did not seem at all unsettled by this however.

‘Your gang is my gang now.’ He was leaning into the bars close and whispering. ‘But you’re right, they can’t abide collaborators. So it’s just as well nobody is going to live long enough to tell them, eh?’ His wolf grin spread.

‘The truth gets around,’ I replied with a snarl. ‘I’ve been telling everyone who’ll listen about how a peeler has made a bitch out of you. Even after I’m dead those words will travel.’

The grin vanished and his voice was all threat. ‘Well, that’s
why I’m here, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Or did you think I came all the way down to Newgate just to gloat like some clumsy villain in a stage melodrama? No, Jack Dawkins, I came to find out what you know and it seems to be quite a lot. Whatever rumours you may have overheard about the unfortunate demise of Constable Wingham I cannot guess at. But that’s not important, as you’re to die tomorrow. What is of uppermost importance, however, is who you yourself have been peaching to? That is what I came to learn.’

We locked eyes then and I said nothing. I would never reveal what allies I might have on the outside and he must have known that. But he pulled a questioning face for a moment and I flashed him some defiance before his sly smile returned.

‘And I already know the answer!’ he announced with glee. ‘Two names. Mrs Mary Dawkins and Mr Oliver Brownlow. Written above mine in the guest ledger over there. Now who on Earth are those people, I wonder?’

I cursed him again and he laughed at me. ‘Distant relatives,’ was my weak reply. ‘And they don’t know nothing about nothing.’

‘Your dead mother was called Kat,’ he spoke as though he was thinking his way through some child’s riddle just for fun. ‘So Mrs Dawkins is not her. More likely it was either one of your two fancy women disguising herself as your wife. If it was Lily Lennox then there is no problem – she’s been dealt with. And if it was the strange one – the chit in trousers – then that will be dealt with too. I’ve dispensed with much tougher characters then that unnatural tart in the past.’

My hands was on the grille and I rattled it hard. I swore so much at him that a turnkey had to come over and threaten me with a truncheon if I did not settle myself. But I was distraught to hear that Tom Skinner’s life was now in forfeit and even more distressed about Lily. What did
she’s been dealt with
mean?

Slade bit his lip and looked away from me until the turnkey left us alone again.

‘It’s this Oliver Brownlow character who troubles me more,’ he then continued, thinking aloud. ‘He came here late last night, so the ledger says, outside of visiting hours. Now, I know every name in the criminal world and I don’t know that one. Which means he isn’t from the criminal world.’ His eyes flicked back to mine then. ‘Who is he, then, Jack Dawkins,’ he demanded, ‘and what is his interest in you?’

‘If you’ve hurt Lily,’ I warned him, jabbing my finger into the metal what separated me from his face, ‘I’ll—’

‘You’ll do nothing,’ he said sharp. ‘You’re beaten, come to peace with it.’ Then something appeared to happen to his face. The smirks and grin fell away and I saw him, mask off. He came even closer then so he could hiss at me. ‘Don’t you know why I hate you so much?’ he asked. ‘Why I befriended you just so I could one day orchestrate your ruin? Because when DS Mills asked me to provide a burglar to take the blame for the murder of that journalist I could have picked any cracksman, he wouldn’t have minded which. But I wanted it to be you. It had to be you.’

‘Why?’ I asked in genuine bewilderment. ‘We was in business together. I was making you big money.’

‘You stole from me, Dodger,’ he replied in a flat voice. ‘And nobody steals from Billy Slade.’

At first I was at a loss to imagine what he thought I might have pinched. During the months of our business arrangement I had – on occasion – handed over less than half of my gang’s real earnings to keep the difference for myself. But that was not a hanging offence. His disfigured hand was now out of his pocket and he was pointing it in my face.

‘The whore was mine,’ he said and there was pain in his voice.
‘She was a Slade girl and one I valued highly. And then, one night, she just steps out to work at the Haymarket and never returns. Just vanishes into thin air and when I at last discover where she has ended up I am told that she is living with some flash chancer called Jack Dawkins.’ His nose was pressed against the grille and his eyes was fixed on mine. I got the sudden sensation that it was he and not myself what most wanted to tear down the barrier between us.

‘Is that it, Slade?’ I cried out in disgust at him. ‘All this fuss over romantic rivalry? You’ve gone and arranged my arrest and execution just because I ran off with your woman? That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard. You should be ashamed of yourself!’ Slade backed away again and I saw the small marks of the grille still printed there on his nose. ‘Grow up, Billy,’ I continued. ‘I mean, couldn’t you have just moved on to someone else like every other broken-heart in the world? That’s what I did when my first love left me for another. I just stepped out and met someone prettier. I didn’t go around dreaming up dark plots like a mad person!’

It was Slade’s turn to rattle the grille. ‘Well, you picked a dangerous substitute, eh?’ he spat, and I took a step back. He no longer seemed to care what the turnkeys might overhear. ‘Because Slade girls come with a price. A price both you and she are now paying!’

‘What have you done with her?’ I cried out. His voice returned to a whisper and he contained himself once more.

‘I investigated,’ he announced. ‘Discovered where she had run off to after your arrest. To some ungodly place in the country, it turns out. Rochester! Some of my men have just returned from there with her in the carriage and they found something else while up there. That little boy you said you’d done away with – Scratcher you called him – alive and well and attending some Ragged School.
I knew you hadn’t killed him, you don’t have the heart for it.’ He spoke like he thought me pitiful.

‘I’ve heart enough to kill you, Slade,’ I shouted back at him. ‘I’d ring your neck like a chicken.’ The nearest turnkey looked over and told me to quieten down. ‘I’ll feed you to the dogs!’ I continued. Slade’s response was loud enough only for my ear as the turnkey’s came closer.

‘Lily’s in my outhouse now, Dodger,’ he taunted. ‘The one I took you to, remember? Where I kept those suffering Turpins? I’ll decide what’s to become of the cheating whore when I get home. After I’ve discovered who this Mr Brownlow is, of course.’

I became most hysterical and I tried to grab at him through the grille. Then a turnkey hit me in the back of the legs and I crumpled to the floor in agony.

‘It appears that Mr Dawkins here has become quite emotional,’ I heard Slade say above me to the turnkeys. ‘And can we blame him with what he’s to face tomorrow morning? Best to take him back to his cell, I think, gentlemen, so he can prepare himself for the big event. He’ll make a handsome corpse, we’ll give him that.’

*

After I was taken back to my cell, my neighbour, Murdo Meehan, was quick to resume his campaign of abuse against me from his. But I shouted out – in a voice much fiercer than his – that I would bust into his cell and finish him even earlier if he did not knock it off fast. Meehan went quiet then and I did not hear another peep out of him.

Billy Slade’s visit, as ironic as it might seem, had been just the tonic. Because before he had come and taunted me with his success I had been all out of fight and had even started to prepare myself for death. But now, all fired up after hearing what he planned to do to my friends and loved ones, I was back to my old self and
determined to break out of this prison once more. I had people on the outside – Lily Lennox, Tom Skinner, Scratcher and now, in a bizarre turn of events, Oliver Twist – who all needed me to make my lucky so I could prevent them from suffering at Slade’s mismatched hands. I was spitting mad and my mind scrambled to find some answer to my plight.