Dodger of the Dials (29 page)

I stopped my pacing then and breathed out strong. All of a sudden I felt much better than I had in weeks. I sat down again, lighter for the outburst.

‘You wasn’t even any good at picking pockets,’ I remarked as a final kick.

Oliver did not respond for a time and it was clear that my words had landed hard. At last he raised one of his white-gloved hands up
to his mouth and let out a little cough. Then he pulled off both of his gloves and placed them aside.

‘When my now adopted father and I visited Fagin on that night all those years ago,’ he began at last in a quiet manner, ‘it was not to gloat. Nor am I here to do that now. Quite the opposite. Whatever else you might think of me, Jack Dawkins, believe that.’ I held his gaze and said nothing. ‘In fact, the reason for my visit to this cell all those nights ago was to ask your friend for information pertaining to my true identity. And in spite of the mad and frenzied state in which we found him, I am glad to say that Fagin was able to provide us with it. I come to you tonight for similar reasons. I see that you, as he was, are in the grip of a mania that I can only imagine and do not envy you for. But I also find that you are at least lucid and so perhaps there is a chance that we can converse sensibly once you have calmed yourself.’ He picked up his notepad and poised the pencil over it as if waiting to write my words down.

‘You want information?’ I replied. ‘Pertaining to your true identity? Well, I’m sorry, Mr Twist, but you’ve come to the wrong cell. It’s not my intention to do you any favours. I don’t care who you think you are, you’ll always be a shivering street-turd to me.’

He sighed as if he were in the presence of a belligerent child. ‘I know my own identity now, thank you, Dodger. I seek information from you regarding a quite different matter.’ I did not respond to that. I wanted to hear him speak. ‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much time together and I’m keen to press on. But I’m sorry you feel such animosity towards me. I did not expect to be greeted by you with open arms – even if they weren’t manacled. But I did not imagine that you bore me as much ill will as this. In my defence I only say that I do indeed feel great guilt about my part in Nancy’s demise. She was one of the bravest women I have ever
known and it was in her efforts to save me that she fell foul of the savage monster who killed her. As for the monster himself,’ Oliver bore his back up straighter as he spoke of Bill Sikes, ‘I am glad that he died. He alone among your community deserved to.’

This was where Oliver scored his first point. I too was glad that Bill was dead, so here was something what we agreed upon. But I did not want Oliver to see that he had echoed my own feelings however – I was too keen to show some of that criminal solidarity what he lacked so much – and so I just stared back at him as he continued to counter.

‘With regards to Fagin, my feelings are more complicated. He did, as you rightly say, invite me into his home and show me kindnesses without which I may have perished. He also tried to corrupt me into turning into a pickpocket. He wanted to transform me into someone like you and that is not a service for which I could ever thank him.’

A return parry. It seems the boy did still have some fight in him after all. I recalled now that he was never one to be bullied and he had stood up to Charley Bates and myself on a number of occasions when we had tried to dominate him. I braced myself for more of a bout than I had given him credit for and I went in for another swing.

‘Turn you into me? Don’t flatter yourself, Twist. You think that Fagin expected that a flat like you could have such potential as that. He was never fool enough.’

Oliver picked up his pencil again and began scratching onto the notepad. ‘A quote from the man in the condemned cell,’ he said while looking down at it.

That was a mean uppercut and it caught me off guard. But I was soon back on balance to deliver my graceful rejoinder.

‘Why don’t you fuck off out of it, you pox-ridden prick,’ I
returned. Oliver stopped his scribbling and looked up to me. ‘There. Put that on tomorrow’s front page.’

He shifted in his seat. The defiance was leaving him now as fast as it had come and his face resumed its former softness.

‘You don’t care for me very much, do you, Dodger?’

‘Getting that impression, are you?’

‘Well, you can continue to hate me. It’s not for me to tell you how to spend your final days. But it took a great effort to convince the prison authorities to grant me an audience. You’re a hard man to see. Other journalists of my acquaintance tried to secure an interview with you earlier in the week and were turned away. They wanted to bring in illustrators with them to draw a sketch of you to use in publications. You’re considered quite the commodity in Fleet Street.’

‘Is that why you brought the pencil then, is it?’ I said and pointed to it. ‘To draw my portrait for the day of my hanging? Do me a favour and capture my handsome side.’

‘I was only admitted entrance because my father – Mr Brownlow – used his influence again with the governor here. He thinks that I want to see you – a man condemned to death – so I can write an article for the
Morning Chronicle
about capital punishment. They do not suspect my real motive.’

‘And what might that be, I wonder?’

‘I want to discover who really committed the murder that you have been found guilty of. I don’t believe that it you did it for one second.’

Well, that shut me up. I drew closer to him again but this time it was not with the intention of doing him harm. It was so that I could get a closer look of his face to see if he were in jest.

‘If you’re mocking me, Oliver,’ I then said in an even heavier tone than before, ‘then that would be your cruellest act yet.’

‘I am serious,’ he replied without a beat. He knew he had my full attention now and he laid down his pencil for a moment. ‘In fact, I am probably one of the only people in this city that believes you to be entirely innocent.’ His gaze was steady as he spoke. ‘And I mean to prove it.’

He stood up then and walked over towards the fire. I said nothing as I watched him pick up the brass poker and he gave the coals a quick stoke as I decided it would be better to let him go on speaking. Could this boy here, who I had hated so much, really be the one to clear my name? Could he even save me from the gallows? As he poked at the fireplace some plaster fell down from up in the chimney and into the grate.

‘This place is far too old,’ he complained as he stood up again and brushed the coal specks from off his rich grey coat. ‘They should tear it down before it collapses and kills every soul inside.’ He crossed over back to his seat then, folded his fingers into each other and resumed talking. He must have been waiting for me to cool down so we could talk in a more civilised manner.

‘You know, the last thing I heard about you was that you were transported to Australia for pickpocketing. That was over eight years ago now and, honestly, I never expected to see you again. I did not imagine that you would ever return to England, I’m not even sure how you were allowed to. But I’ve often thought about you, Dodger. I suppose you’re the sort of person who is difficult to forget. I was quite astounded when I heard that you were one of the two men who had been arrested for Antony Rylance’s murder. You and Mouse Flynn of course, who I remember also.’

‘You’re sat on Mouse’s bed now,’ I told him and he looked unsettled by the information. He got up, apologised and shifted himself down to its foot as if out of respect for my friend’s ghost.
He then told me that he had heard about Mouse’s fatal plummet already and he was quick to offer his condolences.

‘I know how it feels to lose a friend,’ he said. ‘It is like the death of a brother for those of us who don’t have brothers. I myself am grieving for a very close friend whose ashes I collected from the crematorium just yesterday. He was murdered quite recently.’

‘Murdered?’ I asked, and wondered if he was talking about who I thought he was.

‘My friend’s name was Anthony Rylance,’ he confirmed. ‘So you see my true interest in your case.’

Another moment passed before I responded. I just could not help marvelling at how small this city of ours sometimes was. ‘Anthony Rylance?’ I said at last, ‘The man who I am set to swing for, was friends with you, Oliver Twist?’ Oliver nodded. ‘Well, that’s a coincidence, I must say.’

‘Indeed,’ was his weary reply. ‘My life teems with them.’

‘You was both journalists,’ I said, guessing at the connection. ‘Is that how you knew him?’

‘No, my history with Anthony goes much further back,’ he explained. ‘We attended school together – Dotheboy’s, one of the oldest in England. I was sent there by my father soon after his adoption of me. I struggled to make friends at first because of the rough country accent that I still had then and, of course, my awkward parentage. And I sometimes find it difficult to trust offers of friendship.’ He threw me a rotten glance then as if that were somehow my fault. ‘Anthony was different though. He was an open-hearted lad and we shared similar interests.’

He then went on to tell me that he and his friend Anthony had both wanted to get into journalism as a profession and that together they had left university early to this end.

‘I felt keenly,’ he went on, ‘that somebody should expose the
sorts of social injustices that I had endured as a child. I thought that – through journalism – I would be able to defend and champion the poor man, and so I was able to get a job as a reporter on the
Morning Chronicle
. Anthony has not been so successful, however, and he’s still yet to make his mark in the profess—’ Oliver stopped then and he corrected himself with a wince. ‘I mean to say,’ he spoke with a sadness what I recognised, ‘that he never made his mark in the profession.’

I could tell then that the pain he felt for his dead friend matched mine for Mouse. And, in a very small way, my attitude towards him shifted.

‘Among the reasons that I superseded my friend in our chosen career,’ Oliver continued after a short exhale, ‘was that I am a hard worker. I investigate my stories during the day and type them up in the
Chronicle’s
office at night. I hardly ever go home except to sleep and I keep irregular hours. Anthony, God rest him, was, until recently, apt to be lazy in his work and I think that he resented my success for a time. But curiously, in the last few months of his life he became uncharacteristically industrious. He was working on a story – some tasty piece of scandal, was how he described it to me. And I could tell that this story was occupying all of his time and energy even though he refused to tell me what it was about no matter how much I enquired.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘I thought you and he was such close pals.’

‘We were,’ Oliver said. ‘But we were also rivals in career advancement and I fear that he was worried I might beat him to the story if he disclosed the nature of it. I did learn a few facts from him though. For one thing,’ Oliver’s eyes darted over to the shut cell door and then back to mine, ‘I know he was looking into the activities of a very powerful and dangerous individual.’

Oliver gathered his pad and pencil then and walked over to the
cell door. It looked as though he was trying to tell if the turnkey were listening in on our chat and he tested the handle to be sure that it was shut tight. Then he crossed over to my bed and sat down next to me, which considering that only moments before I had tried to attack him, was a surprising move. He was now well within my range but I did nothing but lean in to hear what he was about to say. Whatever it was, it was for my ears alone.

‘Anthony said that the person he was investigating,’ he whispered, ‘was in the
Metropolitan Police Service
.’ Oliver leaned back then and waited for my reaction. I shrugged.

‘And?’ I asked.

‘Well, doesn’t that unsettle you?’

‘Not as much as you might think,’ I replied. ‘Look, Twist, that sort of thing might be news to the
Chronicle
reader but I’m from the rookeries. Round my way it’s common knowledge that the peelers are among the biggest crooks going.’

‘But I didn’t get the impression that he was just investigating drunken constables, Dodger. Or some thuggish or bribable sergeant. No, Anthony was talking about someone much higher up. He intimated that he had uncovered a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy that led to a senior officer who was – from what I could gather – running a large portion of London’s underworld.’

I laughed in his face. ‘You’re wasted in newspapers, Twist,’ I told him. ‘You should be writing fairy stories with that imagination.’

‘You don’t think it likely? That a senior policeman could be in charge of criminals? You’ve never heard of anything of the sort?’

‘I’ve heard of police informers,’ I replied. ‘But that ain’t the same thing because other criminals don’t tolerate it. But if you mean to tell me that some peeler is running a gang of crooks, like a top sawyer would, then I can tell you it ain’t possible, no. I’d have heard about it.’ Oliver nodded for a moment before going on.

‘But what if,’ he put it to me, ‘the criminal gang didn’t know that they were controlled by such a person?’ What if another criminal acted as the agent between the underworld and their true master? Keeping the policeman’s identity a secret. Is that plausible?’

I considered that for some seconds. And then I had to shut my eyes as dull realisation broke in upon me. I thought about the mysterious man whose name Billy Slade was protecting and who had arranged for me to enter the home of Anthony Rylance. I had been impressed by how successful Slade had been at arranging for those peelers to appear at just the right time and arrest me. I had just assumed that he was manipulating them or paying them off. It had never occurred to me that the police might instead be controlling him.

‘Yeah,’ I said, fighting a sickening sensation. ‘That could be happening.’

All my of anger and hatred for Slade, what had been replaced with guilt after the death of Mouse Flynn, was quick to coarse through me again. If Oliver’s suspicions was right then my old gang was now working for the Metropolitan Police Service without even realising it and I was the one what had let the wolf in through the door.