Dodger (31 page)

After that Pin made me talk him through what I had learnt in the toyshop. I explained that I had just discovered that there was two more dolls made just like the one what contained the Jakkapoor stone and it seemed that Fagin had done this to throw any jewel-hunters off the scent. Timothy Pin seemed most interested in this new information and after I had finished speaking he admitted that neither he nor Lord Evershed had known anything about this.

‘What a puzzle this Hebrew was,' he mused after giving it some thought. ‘So there is a chance that the jewel was given to a child, but that the child was not you.' He tapped his fingers on the desk. ‘That would explain a few things.'

I told him I would not find it difficult to track down my old friends and before long I would be able to work out which of them was given the jewel and get it off them.

We was sat in that room for the best part of an hour going over the particulars and I made a good show of looking confident. But
the more I thought about the chances of me ever finding this jewel the more impossible the task seemed and I had to work hard to not let the doubt show on my face.

After some time there was a knock at the door and the coach-woman Calista called through to say that she had fetched Warrigal and he was waiting for me downstairs in the bar.

‘Very good,' said Pin, and he went to unlock the door. ‘Calista has taken your trunk and bags from here to your residence in Bethnal Green. The aborigine is now here to ensure that you don't get lost on the way home. He is the man that you should fear if you fail to find the jewel, Mr Dawkins. Do not mistake him for a friend.' His eyes then dropped to my hands. ‘Planning on taking that, are you?'

‘You said I could,' I replied, holding up the newspaper. ‘That is, if you or that coachwoman don't want it.'

‘Calista can't read English,' he said as he unlocked the door. ‘And I favour
Blackwood's
. Now, make sure you understand what I have told you in this room, Mr Dawkins. Get the jewel. Get it quick. Bring it here.' He opened the door and ushered me through. ‘Nothing else matters,' he said, before shutting it after me. Then, after a second, it opened again just a little. ‘And send Calista up,' he said through the crack. ‘I want her now.'

Downstairs I found Warrigal propped at the bar drinking a jar of porter ale. He was perched on the stool in a manner much less tense than was usual for him and he seemed healthier than he had the day before. Calista was stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting to be told she could go up. I gave her the nod and up she went.

‘Drink up,' I said to Warrigal as I approached. ‘We've a priceless Indian jewel to find.'

‘Finish this,' he said, and took another swig.

‘You're looking better, Warrigal, I'll say that,' I pointed to the
bar's large mirror with a whisky advert scratched on it so he could see for himself. ‘Colour in your cheeks. Good night's sleep, was it?'

‘Good sleep.' He nodded.

‘What room was you in?'

‘Room below theirs.'

‘Greta's room?'

Warrigal nodded. ‘Owe her five shillings,' he said as he drained the dregs of the pot.

Never before have we seen an instance of burglary attended by so callous an act of Murder. The sleepy village of Riverhead, in rural Kent, is a quiet place ordinarily and yet an act of violence has occurred there that has –shattered the peaceful idyll forever.

At the home of Mr David Parsons, a gentleman of large property, entry was forced on the night of Friday, 28th November, by two masked men brandishing pistols. Mr Parsons and his family were away on this particular night and the only person in residence was a servant girl, a Miss Fanny Cooper, who was bound by the hands with garden cord as the two ruffians proceeded to pillage The Cottage.

They were interrupted in their looting spree however by a Mr Colin Lees, a gardener who dwelt at the lower end of the property. Mr Lees, by all accounts a decent, God-fearing man, came to Miss Cooper's aid and fought with the intruders but, for all his bravery, he was fatally beaten upon the head. The murderers then –clumsily attempted to bury his body in a vegetable patch.

It is strongly believed that the perpetrators of this wicked act came from London. Scotland Yard have –therefore appointed their best Detective to track them down within the Metropolis. ‘These are men of desperate character but they will be brought to Justice,' said Inspector Wilfred Bracken when questioned by reporters. ‘The maidservant, Miss Cooper, is already helping us with our enquiries and I am confident that arrests will be made shortly.'

We wish the Inspector luck with his investigation and are hopeful that the two men will soon be apprehended and hung by the neck until Dead.

‘Jem!' I shouted as I bounded up the stairs of his house, clutching the paper. ‘Georgie! You around?'

Greta had let myself and Warrigal in and had said that the two of them was in the upstairs kitchen still recovering from the previous night's revels. Ruby, we was also told, was still in her bedroom reading a book and she was unhappy with Jem on account of the stink he had brought home with him from the Cripples. If she was out of sorts with him now, I thought, as I threw open the door of the kitchen and found the two wanted men sat eating bacon and eggs together, this new development was unlikely to improve her disposition.

‘Back again?' said Jem as we entered, in a voice rough and dry. There was a bruise on his chin from where I had punched him the night before and he had a look on him that said that he was readying himself for the counter-blow. ‘Ain't it time you and your valet pissed off and found your own crib?'

Georgie, whose mouth was full of breakfast, nodded me a more friendly hello but he seemed to be rattled by something. Then I remembered that he had not seen Warrigal before.

I strode up to their table and threw the paper down. Jem had his mug of coffee in his hand but stopped himself from drinking when he saw the headline. ‘Someone needs to start packing their bags, Jemmy,' I said, ‘but it ain't me.'

Jem grabbed the pages, holding the paper close to his face so he could read the tiny print below the headlines. His lips was moving along with the words and when he got to the part about Miss Cooper helping with enquiries he began shouting every swear word he could think of.

‘Something up?' asked Georgie, still finishing his plate. What he imagined Jem was getting so angry about I could not say but he did not seem to think it concerned him too. His was not the keenest of criminal minds, I reflected, as I watched him lick the grease off his knife.

‘That chit of yourn,' Jem shouted, and threw the paper at him. ‘I knew we should have settled her too. Settled her like we did the gardener!' He got up and paced the room before stopping at the closed door what led into the bedroom.

‘What's all this?' Ruby's voice piped up from within her room. The door opened and she stood there with her hair down and that book,
Teppingham
, in her hand. ‘Who's done what to who now?' Heavy footsteps could be heard running up the staircase and then the other door of the parlour was thrown open with such force that it almost came off its hinges.

‘Everything all right, Rube?' asked Greta, with a mean look in her eye. ‘He at you again?'

‘Fanny Cooper!' Jem said her name like it was curse. ‘Georgie's girl from Crackity Lane.'

‘Cheap Jane's sister?' asked Ruby.

‘Yeah. She's splitting on us.'

There was astonishment from both ladies but Georgie, who was a weak reader but could make out the name of his sweetheart when he saw it in print, just shook his head. ‘It don't say that, Jem,' he protested. ‘It don't say that.'

‘What else does it mean?' he roared. ‘They've got her! They know it was a put-up job!'

‘She won't talk,' Georgie insisted. ‘Not my Fanny.'

‘I'd wager that they've been to your crib already,' said Jem, still pacing about. ‘The only reason they ain't here is that she don't know the place. Someone'll tell them though, mark me.'

‘You'd best get out of London, boys,' I told them. ‘This peeler, Bracken, is a terror. Warrigal and I met him the night we docked in England and he's a like a pit-bull terrier once he's got the scent. I should be very wary of him catching up if I was you.'

‘He the one you beat up in the stables, Jack?' asked Ruby. I could feel, without looking at him, Warrigal's head turn to me. I fought hard not to catch his eye.

‘That's the one,' I said. ‘All the more reason to stay out of his way. He would not look very favourable upon finding the two of us here either.'

‘We need to dash, Georgie,' Jem agreed, and he picked up a bag and started stuffing it with clothes. ‘Jack's right – London ain't safe. They'll hang us like it says in the paper.'

‘Hang you?' Greta scoffed. ‘For burglary?' She went over to the table and picked up Ruby's red hat what was acting as a fruit bowl for all the apples she had collected from the market yesterday. ‘Don't worry yourselves. Transportation most like. You'll end up in Jack's old bed, I expect,' she chuckled as she offered an apple to Warrigal. ‘Nah. They don't hang burglars unless …' and she paused.

There was a silence in the room what Ruby, as low as a whisper, broke.

‘Jem White,' she said. ‘What have you done?'

She then walked over to where Georgie sat and snatched the paper out of his hand. The second she read the headline she gasped in fright. ‘Murder?' she cried. ‘Oh, Jem, you've killed a man!'

‘It weren't me,' Jem wailed with impressive heroism. ‘It was 'im!'

‘Me?' asked Georgie.

‘You! You and your rotten Fanny. What with your crashing about and her calling you Georgie, I had no other choice but to smash his head in.' The rest of the room went quiet. We all stared at Jem in silence. ‘Don't give me that,' he said to us. ‘What would you've done? There isn't one among you what woulda done it any different. I had no choice but to kill him.'

I reached over to the hat of apples what Greta was still holding and chose myself the ripest. Then I rubbed it on my shirt and took the seat he had just left. ‘Well,' I said, ‘as I believe I mentioned the other night, Jem. If I'd been there I'd've suggested offering the fellow a bribe to keep his trap shut. Also, I can't imagine thinking it would be a good idea to bury him in the garden of the same place in which you killed him. Still,' I said before raising the apple to my mouth, ‘that's just me though. You're top-sawyer after all.' And I crunched into it all noisy, never losing hold of his eye.

Jem looked like he wanted to throttle me. His eyes was bulging with animal panic and his face reddened as he spat back, ‘What you know about it? How many dead bodies have you had to get rid of?'

‘None,' I replied. ‘But Warrigal has. He does it for a living back in Australia and he ain't ever made the papers.' All eyes turned to my companion, who was leaning against the wall eating his own
piece of fruit. Georgie and Jem was already afraid of him and I was enjoying making them even more unsettled. Ruby looked at Warrigal in horror for the first time. The news that there was now two killers in the room, one of them the man what shared her bed, was not sitting well with her. She had gone pale in the face and her fingers was raised to her mouth as if holding in a scream. Greta, however, did not seem rattled to hear about Warrigal's line of work.

‘Is that right?' she said, sizing him up anew.

‘I told him about your messy business on the way over here,' I told Jem. ‘Asked him his professional opinion. He thinks you made a right old shambles of it.'

Warrigal nodded. ‘Vegetable patch,' he tutted.

This was when Ruby stopped holding it in. ‘Get out!' she screamed. ‘Get out of here, all of you. You
murderers
!'

That word, when screamed by a hysterical woman, did nothing to lower the tensions of the room. Jem turned his anger from me to her.

‘Don't you use that word on me, my girl,' he threatened, pointing at her. ‘I've had me enough of loose-lipped women and, if I have to, I'll cut that tongue out of your pretty head.'

‘You don't scare me, Jem,' Ruby shouted back. ‘You sicken me. I regret ever having anything to do with you. I hope you burn in hell for what you've done! I hope you hang!'

She should not have said that. Jem reacted as though she had just set fire to the curtains. He strode towards her, fist raised, and Greta from the other side of the room shouted, ‘No!' and made to stop him. But before he could reach Ruby I was out of my chair and landed an almighty punch into his chest. He doubled over and cursed me.

‘That's the second time you've hit me since you've been back,' he moaned.