Dodger of the Dials (37 page)

‘You need to change first,’ Oliver replied. ‘I have some water heating in a pot and a bathtub through that door. Once washed you can borrow a suit from me. We look to be the same size near enough and they will fit you a lot better than these old clothes seem to.’

‘Ain’t got time for that,’ I told him.

‘Jack, you look like an escaped convict and, frankly, you smell very conspicuous. Do you want to be recaptured within the hour? If not, then go to the bathroom and undress while I fetch the water.’

The soap what Oliver Twist handed me as I sat in his bathtub was of a much gentler and more fashionable sort than the rough blocks I had been given in that cellar in Old Seacoal Lane and, before long, I was sharing the aroma of an English garden in springtime. Oliver spoke to me from the other room as I soaked and rid myself of the Fleet.

‘I must ask, Jack,’ he said as I heard him searching through his wardrobe, ‘what you intend to do once we have recovered this Lily of yours?’

‘I’m leaving London with her,’ I replied without a beat, ‘and I ain’t returning.’

‘I thought you might say that,’ he sighed. ‘I must ask you not to.’

‘What else can I do, Twist?’ I shouted through to him. ‘I ain’t going back to Newgate and if I loiter in this city long enough then they’ll catch me. I’ll head to the continent. New life, new name.’

‘But what about proving your innocence?’ he said and he brought me in some towels and left them on a chest beside the tub.
‘And getting justice for Anthony? You’re a key part of proving that Mills is guilty.’

‘We both know that’s never going to happen,’ I told him as he left the room, and I got out of the bath. ‘Nobody believes the burglar. My only chance of survival is clearing off out of it, so don’t you try and stop me.’ I wrapped the towels around me and again I could not help but notice the quality of his luxury possessions. It seemed as though our Oliver liked the finer things in life as much as I did and, even though he acquired them in a more legal way then I ever would, it was something else we had in common.

‘I’m helping you with some degree of personal risk, Jack,’ Oliver called through as I dried myself. ‘And I’m doing it for a reason. I need to mount a case against Detective Mills and Slade – two highly dangerous men – and I’m currently gathering enough evidence to present to the right policeman before either can intervene and kill me. I’m very close to having all I need but someone has to verify my claims. You’re not an ideal witness but your story supports mine and that will help your Inspector Bracken take me seriously.’

‘You want me to talk to Bracken?’ I exclaimed as I stepped back into the living room, wrapped in the towels. ‘He’d sooner see me hang than anyone.’

‘Not if it means toppling Mills, he wouldn’t,’ Oliver insisted. ‘Earlier today I discovered that Bracken and Mills are rivals in career advancement. If Mills were to fall then Bracken’s own prospects would elevate fast. He could become commissioner, perhaps, with no one to challenge him. So he’ll want to believe us as long as there is enough there for him to act upon.’

I was still not happy about placing my life in the hands of a man what had lied to me about my own mother being dead, and so I shook my head at him.

‘I can hide you somewhere until it’s time to go to trial,’ Oliver
continued. ‘By then it will be too late for the state to execute you as the truth will be out. You might be gaoled for burglary but your life would be spared. Jack, these are my terms. It’s what I want in return for helping you to rescue this Lily woman.’

He stood there with a tailor’s hanger in his left hand. The suit hanging from it was dull grey and not unlike the one he himself had on. I wondered if he had a wardrobe full of clothes all of the same colour. He held it out for me to take but there was a sense that in doing so I would be agreeing to this foolish business of cooperating with a policeman what I knew hated me. But then it was true that Oliver’s assistance was proving invaluable and I was unsure if I would be able to rescue Lily without it. If ever there were an opposite of making a deal with the devil then this was it.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said as I reached for the hanger and took the suit from him. ‘But if I get the slightest sniff that my life is in danger then I’ll be off like a gunshot, Twist, I tell you that.’

‘That’s all I can ask,’ he said as I begun to put on the clothes. ‘Oh, and one other thing?’ I asked him what as I started buttoning his shirt and marvelled at how well it fitted me. The whole suit was a beautiful piece of tailoring but was far less flashy than I was accustomed to. ‘Please stop calling me Twist. I haven’t used that name since I was a child.’

‘Fair enough, Brownlow,’ I replied hitting both syllables heavy enough to accentuate the gentility of the name. I was sure that the name Twist must have aggravated him as it would have acted as a reminder of the humble origins he had tried so hard to distance himself from.

‘Not that either,’ he replied as I continued dressing myself in this outfit what was starting to make me look like his brother. ‘I would prefer it if you just called me Oliver.’

*

Daylight had still not broken over the city as the curricle what Oliver was driving raced around the walls of St James’s Park heading west. This vehicle was a two-wheeled high-flyer, sleek and beautiful, and it was pulled by a single strong horse. It did not belong to Oliver however – we had stolen it from a nearby stable.

‘We have
borrowed
this, Jack,’ he corrected me once we was out onto the long stretch of the King’s Road. ‘And we’ll return it as soon as our business is done. We’ll also pay for the damage you just did to that stable door.’

The sporty and fashionable vehicle belonged to a neighbour of Oliver’s and it was him what had at first suggested that we take it on account of how it was sure to move faster than any hackney carriage we might hail at this hour. But he had wanted to waste more time by knocking on the door of this neighbour to ask his kind permission and I worried that this would slow us down if said neighbour proved difficult. So instead, I grabbed Oliver’s walking cane from out of his hand and showed him what else it was good for. I took one strong swing and it smashed into the weakest looking plank of wood on the stable which woke the horse inside up. His cane, much like the ones my gang and I used to parade around in, had a silver tip only this was one was shaped like a T. Its protrusion was not quite as effective as my beak-cane was at peeling off the damaged plank but it did the job and I had soon crawled into the stable to unbolt it from within and smash away at any other obstructions. Oliver pretended to look scandalised by the efficient and speedy way in which all this was achieved but I could tell I had impressed him. He had always found my artfulness to be brilliant no matter what he might tell you to the contrary.

In turn, I was impressed with how hard Oliver was riding this curricle and we both began bumping up and down in our seat as the
horse gathered pace. As we bounced, Oliver was full of questions about what the scene we was heading towards.

‘So this brothel has an outhouse at the bottom of the garden?’ he said with his hands gripped on the reins and his eyes fixed upon the road. ‘Which is where Slade beats his victims. How do you know about it?’

‘He took me there once to show me the violence he’d done to some others,’ I replied and Oliver’s lip curled in distaste. ‘I was disgusted by it too, Twist – I mean Oliver. Slade mocked me for not having the stomach for such damage like he had. He called me unblooded, which was true at the time. But if he’s hurt Lily – or little Scratcher as he might have done – then that won’t stay true for long.’

‘Why?’ asked Oliver as he negotiated Sloane Square and managed to pass some carthorses what was slowing us down, ‘What will you do then?’

‘I’ll kill him.’

‘Jack, don’t,’ Oliver pleaded with me. ‘Not now. Not when we’re so close to proving you innocent of one murder.’

‘The courts of this country have proven themselves my enemy more than once, Oliver. So there’s only one form of justice for me, and it’s an eye for an eye.’

‘You sound like Bill Sikes,’ Oliver said with some contempt in his voice. ‘Billy Slade murdered my friend too, remember. Or arranged for someone else to do it. And I don’t want him dead, I want him brought to trial because that is the way of a decent society.’

‘If they charge him for murder then he’ll be sentenced to hang like I was. So there ain’t much separating the way of your decent society and my way, is there? So what’s the bleeding difference?’

‘The difference, Jack,’ Oliver replied, ‘is that nobody will hang you.’

Soon I was directing Oliver through the streets of Hammersmith towards the house of Molly Gay. Oliver did not seem that shocked to learn of the existence of a high-class bawdy house in an affluent district as I thought he might have been and I wondered if he were in fact more familiar with this place then he was letting on. A monied and genteel cove like him was, after all, just the sort of clientele that this brothel catered for. As we turned into the street we was after Oliver looked out for a convenient place to tie up his horse where the curricle would not be noticed but I doubted that it – or us in our smart suits – would look too inconspicuous outside this establishment at such a queer hour. Still we left it just a few doors down from Molly Gay’s, close and concealed enough for us to get back to in a hurry.

‘Should we go to the front door and knock?’ Oliver asked as we approached Molly Gay’s. ‘Or would you rather make straight for this outhouse where you think she is held?’

‘The outhouse,’ I said as we came to the front garden and positioned ourselves behind the high part of the front wall so I could inspect the house unseen over the evergreen shrubbery. ‘If she’s still in there and unharmed then I’d prefer to just steal her away than risk confrontation.’

None of the windows of that house had much light shining behind them and it was still dark enough to creep into the front garden and work our way through the shrubbery and around to the side of the house. I asked Oliver if he was up for some sneaking about.

‘For your information,’ Oliver whispered as I pointed out to him what the most hidden path to follow would be. ‘I’ve burgled a house before.’ I gave him a look of genuine surprise. ‘It was with Sikes in Chertsey.’

‘Then you should be even better at this than I had hoped,’ I said as I pulled him by the arm and we made towards the front gate.

‘Unlikely,’ he whispered just before we darted into the front garden. ‘I got caught, remember?’

Despite Oliver’s uninspiring record as a cracksman, the two of us was across the large front garden, sticking to the shadows of bushes as we went. We then headed down the side of the path with silent ease and crept into the back. All these houses had deep gardens what dropped down towards the Thames and I wondered if Slade had chosen this location as the place where he would torture his enemies on account of how easy it would be to dump the bodies into the river after a fatality. The entire garden was surrounded by a high fence though and as we moved halfway down it, I pulled Oliver into a bush so we I could show him the outhouse where the Turpins had been tortured what sat shadowed among some overhanging tree branches. From this angle, the windowless brick building looked as bland and as characterless as evil things often do.

‘Someone is coming out of the house,’ said Oliver then and I turned to see that he was right. From the parlour entrance of Molly Gay’s, a man had emerged with a tray of food. We edged further down into the garden so we could watch without him spotting us and I hoped that it would be the man himself so I could pounce out on him from the darkness. ‘Is it Slade?’ Oliver whispered but the moment I saw this stooped and thin figure shut the door after himself, I knew that this could only be one person.

‘This is Morris Bolter,’ I whispered to Oliver as I watched Slade’s underling turn and walk in our direction all slow and careful so as not to drop his tray. ‘He’s a worm with limbs.’ The advantage of darkness was just starting to desert us and the morning light would reveal our movements if he were to walk up to us too quick. So
before he got close, we scudded around to the space behind the outhouse so we could hide there unseen from him or from any of the windows up at the main house.

‘This person works for Slade?’ whispered Oliver as Bolter was still coming down the garden path and through the low hanging branches around. ‘He looks familiar.’ Only then did I remember the day Bolter came to visit me in Soho with a newspaper under his arm.

‘You’ve met him,’ I whispered before Bolter got too close to us. ‘He told me so.’

‘Really? I don’t recognise the name.’

‘He comes from the same part of the country as you. Mudfog. He boasted that the two of you once had an altercation and he gave you a hiding.’

‘I’ve been in few fights in my life, Jack, but I’ve won them all,’ Oliver replied with steely confidence. ‘This Mr Bolter is a liar as well as an imposter.’

I was about to ask what he meant by that but Bolter was nearby now and I wanted to peer around the walls of the outhouse so I could get a better sense of what he was doing. He was whistling a little tune as he walked towards this hidden building and I could now see that his silver tray had one bowl and one mug on it while a bunch of jingling keys was attached to his belt. He must be taking breakfast to someone who was locked in the outhouse, I realised, and I was glad to see it because it suggested that Lily was still alive at least. I then heard Morris place his tray down on the ground by the corner of the building on the opposite wall to us. Oliver and myself crept around to get closer to him and I saw the bowl of what looked gruel and water. We heard him address the person inside.

‘Gerrup, sniveller!’ he was saying as he opened the door and
bent down to collect the tray. ‘Yer’ve had yer punishment, now here’s a treat!’

He entered the outhouse but I dashed in behind him before he had a chance to shut the door. As I stepped into the dim light of that musty and ill-lit room, Bolter spun around and dropped the tray in shock. The gruel and water clattered to the ground and he made to shout but I prevented this by punching him in his objectionable face good and hard. His head jerked backwards but he had enough fight in him to strike me with the tray which his left hand still had hold of. This did not hurt much however, and I grabbed him by the coat lapels and forced him further inside and away from the light of the door.