Dead Ringer (18 page)

And their bellowing rose to a crescendo as some fifty rats were let loose from the wire cage.

The rats behaved as perhaps threatened humans would: they huddled together, gathered in a panicked crowd, rushed to the far corner of the pit away from the cage, and bundled into a mass, those at the outer edge frantically climbing one over another to reach the presumed safety of the centre of the writhing, squeaking pile. But the bull terrier was upon them in a trice.

He was an experienced killer and worked with a ferocious sense of purpose, a committed determination, champing methodically with his wide, blood-streaming jaws, snapping backs and necks with a rigid conviction, throwing each stricken rat over one shoulder in almost the same movement as he turned and snapped fiercely at the next. The vermin made no attempt to break from the pack, stream about the pit, attempt to confuse the attacker. They snapped back, squealed in terror, but held their place as the bull terrier methodically chewed his way through the black, heaving, squealing mass. As bodies and blood flew in the air, spattering some of the onlookers baying above the pit, and as the black and brown corpses began to litter the sanded boards of the circus the remaining rats began, finally, to scatter, and voices were raised, timings being called out, a crescendo of excitement thundering against the slates of the tawdry roof.

I turned to Gully, part-nauseated, part-excited, part-appalled. ‘This tumult … won’t the police hear it? Is there never a raid?’

‘The peelers won’t be coming down into Moorgate when the rat-catching is on. They know better.’

As I stared at him I realized he was not watching the killing in the ring. Instead, his gaze was fixed on a man leaning on the paling at the other side of the pit. Nor did his gaze waver. It was as though he was willing the man to raise his own eyes from the rat-catching, meet his glance, recognize him and acknowledge Ben’s presence.

Through the haze of greasy smoke in the spluttering gaslight I could see that he was one of the better-dressed among the baying fraternity, albeit a little flamboyant and perhaps out-moded, a man seeking to keep up with fashion by buying second-hand clothes discarded by wealthier members of society. A silk handkerchief drooped casually from his yellow waistcoat, the green coat had once been of a stylish cut, and his wristbands were slightly grubby. His hair was black and long, composed with a careful disorder, combed forward, divided nicely so as to allow one greasy lock to curl on his forehead. His eyes were as black as his hair, I realised, as he looked up at last, caught Gully’s eyes on him, and stiffened, holding the glance.

I thought I detected a certain enquiry in the man’s black eyes, a concern, but the glances of the two men seemed to be locked for several long seconds before some agreement must have been reached, quietly, without words, for Ben suddenly turned aside, touched my arm lightly, and murmured, ‘Come, Mr James. Let’s go back downstairs.’

I was glad to follow him, escape down the ladder, get away from the whistling, cheering, raucous crowd and the stench of stale beer, cigar smoke, blood, excrement and human sweat. We stood side by side in the dim light at the foot of the ladder. Several minutes elapsed but Gully said nothing. Above our heads the stamping and shouting could be clearly heard: it would no doubt have echoed the length of Bunhill Row but people who lived in this area tended to mind their own affairs.

At last the steps on the ladder creaked above our heads and the man with the greasy locks made his careful way down to the ground floor. As he did so, Gully drew me away so that we were standing in the dark shadow of the narrow corridor, where only stray gleams of light filtered through from the floorboards above. In those gleams motes of dust drifted down lazily, escaping the thundering feet above. I stood beside Ben as the
man reached the bottom of the ladder, and looked about him, then came forward.

‘Strauss,’ Ben said carefully, in a low tone.

‘Mister Gully.’ The man called Strauss spoke in a high-pitched tone, a foreign accent, slightly broken. He held his head to one side, at a curious angle. I wondered if he had ever survived a garrotting, or even a hangman’s noose. ‘I didn’t know that you was a follower of the sport.’

‘I ain’t,’ Gully replied gruffly.

Strauss leaned forward, bending slightly at the waist and peered curiously in my direction. ‘And who might your friend be, may I ask?’

‘No need to ask,’ Gully snapped, bringing an end to the enquiry.

‘A gentleman, perhaps, come to see some new sights,’ Strauss suggested, with no clear expectation of obtaining an answer. ‘Still, Mr Gully, if you ain’t come to see the rats, maybe you come to see me. Now why would that be?’

‘I have some questions.’

Strauss considered his reply, mulled it over with a slight shake of the head. ‘Questions, questions. Them as ask questions expect to receive answers, that’s my experience. But you know, Mr Gully, I ain’t in the business of giving out answers.’

There was a short silence. At last Gully spoke in a quiet but firm tone. ‘I know what business you’re in. I’ve known you a long time, Strauss. Done you some favours, too, even when you didn’t deserve them.’

Strauss bobbed his head carefully, weighing up his reply. ‘I don’t deny—’

‘There was that business of the strangling at the penny gaff, for instance.’

‘Now, Mr Gully, there’s no call to dredge up that old business.’ A pleading note had entered the man’s voice. I realized he was older than I had first appreciated. And unsteadier.

‘And I never said a word to the swell mob about the shiv that went into Tom Shepard’s back, that time at Lambeth.’

Strauss whinnied, and gave what seemed a little shuffling dance of protest. ‘Now you know that was none of my planning, Ben,’ he pleaded. ‘The stuff he tried to fence me, it was perilous and he wasn’t honest with me …’

‘Since when was the biggest fence in Clerkenwell dealing with honest folk?’ Ben sneered. ‘But no matter. This ain’t a matter of negotiation. Like I said, we’ve known each other a long time. Something’s come to my attention. I been asking around for a week. Talking to certain of my acquaintances in the rookeries around St Giles way. Mainly without success. But, finally, a whisper came to me. And the whisper, it leads finally to you.’

‘What you talking about, Ben?’ the old fence queried in a sullenly querulous tone.

‘A watch.’

There was a short silence and when Strauss finally spoke there was a note of incredulity in his voice. ‘A watch? This about a watch?’

‘Story is you fenced it.’

‘So, but a watch? What’s so special about it?’

‘That’s my business,’ Ben Gully replied grimly. ‘And relative to the watch, I’ve got a couple of questions that need answers. Where did you get it? Who fenced it with you?’

Strauss glanced uneasily in my direction, shrugged, spread his hands. ‘A watch? I mean there’s a deal of stuff comes through my hands …’

Ben thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the hunter. He held it under the nose of the doubtful receiver. ‘It’s a gold watch. There’s an inscription on the back. A name. Joseph Bartle. I know who you sold it to, but I want to know who it was fenced it with you, Strauss. And I want to know
urgent
, like.’

It was more than a little while before Strauss replied, peering carefully at the watch, weighing up options open to him, no
doubt, and concluding that Ben Gully was not a man to be trifled with, and to argue with him was a game not worth the candle.

It was then, finally, that he told us about the Puddler.

Much has changed in the City these last forty years. I saw many changes on my return from New York, after my ten-year sojourn there. The old rookeries swept away, vast areas of country built over in response to the hunger for houses among the growing middle class, the marvel of the underground railway. … And change continues. It was all so different in the 1840s.

Living in London in those days meant you could never avoid the poor and wretched: they were ever present in the streets and after all only a few paces from the houses of the wealthy in Regent Street lay the teeming rookeries of St Giles whence most of the criminal classes eked out a precarious living among their fetid courts and rubbish-strewn, sunless alleys. I mean, you were certainly
aware
of them, even if you avoided them like the plague. And the main streets in the metropolis in those days teemed with the lower classes, tending to geese and ducks being driven to market past stables and dairies, cowsheds and
abattoirs
: even in the Strand there was a cowhouse in a cellar under a dairy. They used to lower the cows down by ropes as the packed traffic rumbled by.

So I’d seen a deal of London, was familiar with its sights and smells and its swarming humanity, but when Ben Gully took me with him in our search for the Puddler I entered a new world. I was of course a denizen of several different worlds already: I was familiar with the splendours of my grandfather’s house at Combe Park; I still visited the village in Herefordshire where I had spent my early years before my father transferred his law practice to Bucklersbury; I had personal experience of the theatre
stages in the West Country, particularly Bath, where as a young man I did a short stint in front of the lights, and I had come to know the Inns of Court, Westminster Hall, the Strand, Regent Street. I even had more than a nodding acquaintance with the St Giles rookeries : there had been occasions when a few of us in our cups had ventured down its reeking alleys in search of adventure of the whoring kind. But I’d only
heard
of Jacob’s Island by reputation, and had never felt the desire to venture there. But that was where Gully took me a few days after meeting Strauss at the rat-catching.

We went by boat, just the two of us, and Ben Gully himself did the rowing. He’d removed his jacket and the muscles bulged in his shoulders and arms as he heaved on the oars. There was a damp, meagre mist on the teeming river, curling slowly upwards and ship sirens boomed plaintively along the length of the turgid stream. The air was cool, but Ben was soon sweating at his exertions. I huddled in my coat, feeling slightly nauseous. It was not merely the river … though the smells were bad enough. It was the thought of our destination. I had met in the courts various denizens of Jacob’s Island: it had an evil
reputation
.

After a half hour rowing against the flow of the river, Ben sculled us into a gloomy, mist-shrouded, branching creek. The entrance to the narrow stream was screened by tiers of ancient, battered colliers, disused now and moored to rot along the shoreline; the littered banks were lined with decrepit, shuttered warehouses that had long since fallen into decay: their
half-destroyed
walls, gaping onto the side of the muddy stream, were gap-toothed, green, odorous and slimy. The creek would have been supplied at one time by clear streams from the Surrey hills, but the ravages of man had changed all that: the creek was now an open drain for the refuse that spilled from what houses remained inhabited on Jacob’s Island.

For Ben Gully I was aware it was a return to his early years: I
could hear him muttering as he rowed along, almost to himself. At one point he glowered at me from under frowning brows. ‘I remember well how I escaped this as a young lad … the place still smells of the graveyard.’

My thoughts were elsewhere engaged. I closed my eyes and thrust away the surrounding images of Jacob’s Island as I hunched in my cloak and ruminated upon events that had brought me here, and not least the burning desire to get my revenge on that scoundrel Lord George Bentinck. I was becoming more and more convinced that it was he who had put pressure on Joe Bartle, perhaps bought him off, so he would give no evidence in support of Levy Goodman. I was certain it was Bentinck who had also arranged for
Running Rein
to be spirited away. My conviction had been growing ever more firm since Bentinck had showed the extent of his malice by blackballing the proposal for my membership of the Carlton Club after I had refused to turn aside from my investigations into the Derby fraud.

The skiff lurched and I heard a grinding noise. I opened my eyes. Ben was pulling the skiff in at the side of a broken,
weed-encrusted
jetty. He tied the painter to one of the supports; I eyed it uneasily, wondering whether the jetty was capable of holding the boat, let alone supporting our weight, but though it creaked and groaned in protest when Ben scrambled onto the sagging planking, it held well enough. He turned, held out a hand to me and I heaved myself up reluctantly beside him. When I grasped the slippery timber of the jetty for support it left a coating of green scum on my hand.

Gully took a deep breath, looked about him with a reluctant eye, perhaps dwelling on old memories, then jerked his head silently, and led the way. Our boots echoed on the crumbling timbers of the jetty and we struck out across crazy, rotting bridges, clearly familiar to him for he showed no hesitation. I am forced to confess that I glanced down nervously as I stumbled
along: the bridges spanned reeking ditches where the water was covered with a thick scum and floating masses of green weed. Floating in the water near the bridge posts were malodorous carcasses, swollen with putrefaction, unwanted cats and dogs as far as I could make out, and on the muddy shore were piles of stinking fish bones and oyster shells, sticking up like pieces of discarded slate from the mud.

It was my first time on Jacob’s Island, and the place made a vivid impression on me. So much so that after all the intervening years, I can still taste the acrid reek in my throat, experience again the disgusting smell in my nostrils. Stumbling behind Ben Gully with a handkerchief held to my face, I looked about me at the staggering wooden houses behind the disused warehouses: they had been erected half a century ago with their galleries and sleeping rooms at the rear, standing on rickety, rotting piles above the dark flood. The scene reminded me of old paintings I had seen of Flemish streets except that these houses flanked stinking, undredged ditches rather than canals. Some of the dwellings had been built above the narrow creek itself, with house adjoining house over the filthy ditches, or linked by lurching bridges, and there were signs that they were still
inhabited
: yellowed linen had been left hanging out to dry along balustrades or staves, or run out on a series of long oars above the slow-heaving, tidal waters, scummed with the outpourings of faecal refuse from the houses.