Dodger (43 page)

We had secured new lodgings in Whitechapel and as we came to the end of our journey Warrigal hit the roof of the carriage with his cane for it to stop and then we made our way to Flower-and-Dean Street through many dark alleys and crooked byways. Once we was satisfied that we was not being followed we crept up the outside wooden stairs and turned our key as quiet as we could. We was renting these upstairs rooms from an elderly Irish couple what lived below and around whom we did not wish to raise any suspicion. Neither of them had seemed the questioning
sort, and if they had we would have looked for lodgings elsewhere, but we still did not wish to alert them to our comings and goings. As the door inched open we entered our small corridor as gentle as we could so as to not cause any floorboard creaks. We was paying for two bedrooms and a large parlour and, although some moonlight shone in through the cracks in the curtains, the place was otherwise lightless.

‘I'll strike a candle,' I whispered as I fumbled about on the parlour dresser for a matchbox. I looked behind me to see if Warrigal was going to follow me into this room or just go straight to his bedroom but I could not hear any movement. ‘So we can talk more of this,' I explained.

‘Allow me,' said a voice then from the corner of a room as the sound of a match struck. Startled, I jumped away and saw the thin silhouette of a man sat in the studded leather chair with his legs folded. ‘I would be very interested to hear all about your recent adventures myself.'

In the corridor I then heard the sound of a small struggle and saw the glint of silver. They was cast in shadow but I could make out a figure of a woman standing behind Warrigal with a small pistol pressed against his head. In her Spanish accent she told him not to move.

The seated man lifted his glowing match up to light the three-candled lamp what stood next to the chair. In doing so he revealed his smooth hairless face to me. ‘I must say,' Timothy Pin sighed once he had illuminated himself some more, ‘I am growing heartily sick of chasing you two fellows around.'

Warrigal was pushed into the room by Calista the coachwoman and we was both told to take a seat on two wooden chairs what they had already positioned in the middle of the room facing Pin.

‘Lord Evershed's boat docks at St Katherine's some time
tomorrow,' Pin said as Calista busied herself lighting the other candles in the room. ‘Are you two even aware, as you flit about London in so carefree a manner, of the terrible consequences that face you both if the Jakkapoor stone is not to hand when he asks for it?' Pin had a tall silver cane propped up beside the chair and pointed it towards Warrigal. ‘He'll be particularly disappointed in you, good sir. Remaining in contact was very much part of your role. There will be some very unhappy scenes in Honey Ant Hill as a result of your failure, I can assure you.' He did not wait for a reply, which was just as well as I doubted Warrigal was going to give him one. ‘I sometimes think,' he sighed, ‘it would be easier doing business with a pair of monkeys.'

‘I know where the stone is,' I told him, much faster than I should have. I should have kept silent for longer, like Warrigal was doing, but I was frightened of this man who had broken into our new address what we had tried so hard to keep secret. This man, with his clean diction and rich words what he used like they was for cutting, could kill us any time he wanted to. ‘Well,' I corrected myself, ‘I know who has it.'

‘You have told me this before. About Mr Bates and Mr Inderwick.'

‘Charley did have the other empty doll,' I told him. ‘We went to see him up north – that's what we've been doing. So now I know that the one remaining must have your jewel in it and tonight I discovered where that is.'

‘Where?'

‘Fagin gave it to one of his orphans as George Shatillion wrote that he did. And she still has it now.'

‘She?' said Pin, and tilted his head in disbelief. ‘Impossible. The autobiographical fragment that Shatillion's biographer gave to me, and that I then sent to Lord Evershed in Australia, did not mention
that the child Fagin gave the doll to was a girl. It told us many other interesting things but not that.'

I regretted saying ‘she'. I had meant to get the stone off of Ruby without having to tell Pin or Evershed anything about her, but now I had mentioned it I could not see the harm. Perhaps Pin would go round to her place tomorrow and offer her money for it, more money than I could. Then he'd have the stone, she'd be better off, and I'd be free to go.

‘Fagin didn't keep girls,' I explained. ‘He kept
a
girl.'

Pin glared at me hard. I saw a violence growing in his eye as he was no doubt wondering if I was lying to him.

‘Her name is Ruby Solomon,' I went on regardless. ‘Ruby like the jewel. And Fagin always treated her like one. I used to think she was his daughter, he used to guard her so close.'

‘Ruby Solomon,' Pin repeated the name slow. ‘She sounds Jewish.'

‘She is,' I replied. ‘Or at least her mother was. Now she even lives in Fagin's old house in Saffron Hill with no idea she has the jewel. It's still in the wooden doll as it ever was. Warrigal and myself are going round first thing tomorrow to try to get it off her.'

‘Will she give it to you?' asked Pin.

‘Oh yeah,' I nodded. ‘We're in love.'

Sat beside me I could feel Warrigal's head turn to look as I said this.

‘She has relatives, you say,' said Pin. ‘But the child that Shatillion wrote of was an orphan.'

‘Her mother is dead and there was an uncle what she never sees no more. I don't know about the father. That orphan enough for you?'

‘An uncle?' asked Pin. He leaned back in his chair and crossed
his hands as he seemed to think. ‘Would that be an Uncle Ikey by any chance?'

‘Uncle Ikey, that's it!' I cried aloud. ‘That proves it – she's always on about him.'

Pin grinned then and clapped his hands. ‘It sounds like we have her all right. She sounds like the one.' He stood up then and began to pace the room. ‘Ruby Solomon,' he said the name again, warming to it. ‘We weren't expecting a girl, but Shatillion's document refers simply to a child so she might be the one. If she has the jewel, as you think she might –' Pin stopped pacing and appeared to address no one in particular – ‘then my employer's torment will at last be at an end.'

‘Hurrah for that,' I said, glad that things was at last going so smooth. ‘Then it's happy endings all round. When Evershed gets here, myself and Warrigal will have fetched the jewel off her and we'll say no more about the whole messy business. There's a bottle of wine in the parlour – we should all have a drink to celebrate.'

Pin turned on his heels to face us and pointed his cane at me. ‘You and I shall be inseparable until the jewel is recovered, Mr Dawkins. We shall visit this address in Saffron Hill together so I can see the jewel with my own eyes. Then we'll take it to Lord Evershed. I had planned to meet his boat at the docks in the afternoon but I can leave that to Mr Bungurra.'

‘And who might Mr Bungurra be?' I asked, not liking the sound of him.

‘Mr Bungurra,' Pin sighed as if struggling with his patience, ‘is the gentleman sat to your left.' I turned to look at Warrigal and he gave me a tiny nod to confirm that this was he. I had been travelling with him for over six months and it had never occurred to me that he might have a surname of his own. ‘He will no longer be required to keep you on a leash, that happy task now being
mine. And should it transpire, sir,' he said with his hands now resting upon his cane, ‘that this girl does not have our jewel after all –' he glanced over at Calista, who was still holding the pistol – ‘then your employment will be terminated very swiftly.'

*

Should any of the poor people of the Warren, the part of the rookeries where Fagin once lived, have peeked out of their windows before sunrise on the very next morning then they would have seen something moving through the fog what would have appeared to them like a phantom. The black private coach of Timothy Pin, what was so opulent and unnatural for this part of the city, crept its way through the broken-down district, pulled by a horse what was just as menacing and as black. I looked out through the red lace curtains as I sat beside Timothy Pin and I told him how it was possible that Ruby would hear of our coming before we got there, as slum-dwellers was known to shout about any irregular carriages what approached by way of warning. This, I said, could be good for us as it would alert Ruby to the affluence of the man about to make her an offer on her old doll and she would be inclined to take him more serious. Pin said nothing but just looked out of his window at some dirty kinchins what was gambolling in the street and seemed alone in his thoughts. Then, when we was just two streets away from her address, his cane hit the roof, the carriage stopped and he leaned out to tell his driver Calista that she should let us alight here so we could continue by foot.

‘I do not wish for her to hear us coming,' he told me as he climbed out and instructed Calista to return to St Katherine's Docks and join Warrigal, who was waiting for Evershed's boat to dock. ‘I would rather us appear inconspicuous.'

‘Then you should roll around in the dirt a bit,' I said, looking at his finely cut grey suit, ‘and leave your silver cane in the coach.'
Pin did not agree to roughing up his coat but he did remove any shiny trappings of wealth from view.

‘I still have this about my person, however,' he said, and unbuttoned his coat to show me. There, tucked into the inside long-pocket of his coat, was the small silver pistol he had pointed at me when we first met. It was small enough to be hidden in the hand and I imagine had been fashioned for secret underhand killings. ‘Remember that before you think to run from the scene.'

There was a thin slimy alley just across from Fagin's old house down which I knew lay our best path of approach. Pin and myself crept up to the end of this and we peered around the corner towards my childhood home. The house across from us, what was just to the left of Fagin's, was boarded up and looked to be empty and there was a run-down old vegetable cart positioned between us and the street what also seemed abandoned. This meant we could stay there for a while watching the house and trying to make sense of who was home.

‘It sounds as though,' whispered Pin after some time, ‘somebody inside that house is skinning a cat alive.' This was in reference to the terrible sound what had been coming out of one of the rooms and what had got louder and more strangulated after Mother Froggat was seen leaving with a big basket of laundry in her arms.

‘That'll be Uncle Huffam,' I said. ‘An old blind man what plays the fiddle.'

‘He's deaf too from the sounds of things,' winced Pin. And then he shoved me backwards as the front door opened again and two more people stepped out together. ‘Is this her, Dawkins?' he demanded. ‘Is this the girl?'

Ruby stepped out of the front door wearing a light blue dress, much less flashy and expensive than usual, and I was vexed to see
she was in the company of the man Froggat. She held open the door for him as he passed through with his hands full with that tray of metal objects he sold. The two of them stood on the doorstep for some moments and exchanged words in low voices as though they was in plot. They seemed an unlikely pairing, I thought, as I crept over to where the vegetable cart was to see if I could make out what they was saying. He was some ten years older than her and he was not what you would call handsome. I poked my head over the top of the cart to get a better look and I saw her hand raise up to his shoulder in a small tender way what she had never done with me. And then he looked up and down the street, in a manner most furtive, and leaned his tall self down towards her as if about to impart a secret.

He kissed her then, in full view of the whole street, upon her pretty lips. She did not resist him. There was no stiffening of her body, no attempt to turn her face away, like she had done with me. She had responded to his advance in a manner most warm and her hand now touched his cheek all gentle. I stepped away from the scene and returned to Pin at the edge of the alley.

‘Remind me, Mr Dawkins,' said Pin as my own hand raised up to my face, ‘did you say you were in love with this lady or that she was in love with you?'

The night before, when she had looked me in the eyes and had told me that she was not interested in no more villains, I had not been willing to believe. I had just imagined this was because the pain of Jem was still fresh and that she would come around in time. I had not believed that a man like Froggat would be able to win her hand and had assumed she was just thinking about his proposal for form's sake. But on seeing them together like this as their kiss came to its end, and then hearing that giggle of hers echo up the quiet lane, the light of my love was snuffed and done with.

‘She ain't nothing to me,' I told him in a dry voice. ‘So are you going to get that stone from off her or what?'

Ruby and her man then stepped away from the house and they crossed the street with her arm linked into his. They was walking towards where we was hidden, and Pin pushed me deeper into the alley so I could not be seen.

‘Not with this fellow around,' he whispered, and leaned against the corner of the alley as they strolled towards him, shielding me from their view. I turned myself out of their path and, as I heard their two pairs of feet coming towards us in perfect step, a sharp painful sensation ran through me and I moved back and hid further along.

‘Morning!' I heard Ruby say to Pin in a bright and happy voice what contrasted with the tone she had struck with me on the night before. I saw then that the sad face she had worn when rejecting me outside Rafferty's music hall was only a mask what she had most likely removed before her carriage had even returned her to Froggat's. I was the one upset, I now realised, while she could not care.