Dodger (16 page)

Because he cared about me, I wanted to reply. Because I was his favourite and like a son to him. But this was something a love-less old fool like Evershed would never understand and so once Warrigal had lit my own cigar I just leaned back in the chair and winked at him.

‘You've come to the right man, Your Lordship,' I said. ‘I'll get that jewel back for you, don't fret yourself on that score.' Evershed leaned over to me, his eyebrows raised.

‘Do you mean to tell me,' he asked, ‘that you know where it is? That you were the child it was given to?' I puffed out the smoke and had a little cough before answering. I wished Warrigal would open a window.

‘I don't like to say,' I replied at last, as I was concerned that if I told him where the jewel was he would just telegraph this servant of his back in London to fetch it and I would be cheated out of my liberty, ‘but if you can see to that full pardon you spoke of earlier –' I shrugged – ‘then I can guarantee satisfaction.'

Evershed nodded and stiffened in his chair. The room was becoming most smoky now and I knew that we was not outside because this was the most secret part so far. A bargain was being done what not even the birds could listen to.

‘Very well,' he said without smiling. ‘Then you will be freed from your penal servitude and engaged on an errand, Mr Dawkins.'

I took another puff on my own cigar and smiled. Things was going my way at last.

‘You will return to London cast as a gentleman. I will provide you with everything required to make this seem plausible. Warrigal will accompany you, posing as a servant so that his appearance is not questioned either, and once the stone is retrieved you shall hand it to him to bring back to me. You will then be allowed to go back to your old life in London.'

With the cigar in my teeth I clapped my hands and let loose a cry of joy.

‘That's very well, that is, Your Lordship!' I laughed. ‘I like that very well indeed!' But Lord Evershed did not join me in celebration.

‘But mark these words,' he said instead, and pointed the cigar what was held in his left hand at me. ‘Do not think about failing me. If you have the jewel, as I suspect you do, then you will take it to be verified by my servant in Greenwich. If you should be so foolish as to try to run off with it, then Warrigal here will play sheepdog and return you to the pen.'

I looked to Warrigal, whose expression said nothing.

‘If you are lying to me,' he continued, ‘and there is no jewel, or you cannot find it, then there will be severe consequences. Warrigal knows this as much as anyone. You are very much his responsibility.' I could not tell from looking at him whether or not this was the first Warrigal was hearing of this.

‘Warrigal has killed men at my command on previous occasions,' Evershed continued looking to Warrigal as he spoke. ‘And furthermore, he knows that while he may be out of reach from me in London –' he took one last strong draw from the cigar – ‘his people will not be.'

He then snuffed the rest of the cigar out into an ashtray.

‘It is in both your interests that the jewel is found and returned. I'm a vengeful man, Mr Dawkins,' he said as he breathed out the last of the smoke. ‘And nobody who has ever crossed me is currently living.'

*

An hour later Warrigal was sent over to Government House to get a signature and an official seal for my pardon. I had made the deal and was going home.

Warrigal sneezed.

‘Bless you,' I said, and handed him one of the many handkerchiefs I had pinched during my short time back in London. ‘Only next time, be a good fellow and do that into this. We don't want your snot all over this fine upholstery, thank you very much.' We was racing through the London streets in as sleek and as sporty a cabriolet as I could whistle down from Smithfield Market, and I was enjoying the ride much more than he was. As we galloped through the city streets, past St Paul's and down to Monument, I remarked to Warrigal that this was exactly the sort of carriage I was going to buy once I'd stolen enough to pay for it. ‘Either this or one of those tall phaetons,' I said, pointing at one coming the other direction over London Bridge. ‘But custard-coloured with red stripes and a horse as lean as this one.' Warrigal just carried on emptying the contents of his nose into my fogle and said nothing. ‘Get used to that,' I told him. ‘It happens all the time here.'

Warrigal had begun complaining of the cold just after we had said goodbye to Ruby Solomon at Smithfield Market and was now turning as pale as someone of his complexion ever could. This
did not surprise me, considering the chill of the city. Even I, a boy what had suffered through many a London winter growing up, was finding the weather a shock after six years in sunnier climes so what effect it was having on Warrigal I shuddered to think. ‘Don't you worry,' I assured him. ‘The moment we get to Greenwich we shall book ourselves a room in some cosy tavern and have ourselves a nice hot meal. And then we'll smash open our friend there,' I pointed to the doll still sticking his head out of Warrigal's coat pocket. ‘He won't be smiling so much then.'

My failure to procure a metal saw off John Froggat or to pinch a cleaver from the market meant that the wooden prince was still in one piece. If the late Lady Evershed had somehow hidden the jewel inside then there must be a way of opening it but I could not fathom as to how. We had tried cracking him open with our hands, but the Indian wood was too just strong. We had also considered placing him in the street for a shire horse to step on but, fearful that this would damage the jewel within, we had decided to wait until we was safe inside.

We was under instructions to take the jewel to an address in Greenwich where this servant lived for him to inspect. The servant was called Timothy Pin, and once he was satisfied it was the real Jakkapoor stone he would message Evershed, let me go and send the jewel back to Australia with Warrigal. So both of us to was keen to make our way straight there. I was looking forward to this journey as I have always loved a good train terminal and London Bridge is one of the finest. It's loud, dirty and bustling with sleepy travellers from Kent who would not notice if their spectacles was removed from their noses, so distracted are they by the shock of the city. I could not wait to get among them and begin practising my old art again. However, as our driver reared up outside the station doors I saw something what challenged the
romance of train travel. There, among all the many comings and goings of the station, I spied several of these blue-uniformed fellows in their hats striding about as if they owned the place, all eyes and suspicion. These new bobbies had become the scourge of London while I had been away and I was vexed with my fellow Londoners for allowing this to happen. I was old enough to recall the old Bow Street Runners, and although they was a joyless bunch of bleeders at least you knew where you was with them. They was just the fat, wheezy dogs to our nimble, clever cats and they would usually give up the chase if we made it hard work for them. But these peelers, like that bastard Bracken we had run into, they was taking it all far too serious. I watched two of them force some luckless prig through the doors of the station and then march him off in the direction of a police office. I would have to tread lightly, I told myself, if I was to get on in this faster, crueller London.

‘We should avoid the train,' I said to Warrigal after we had inspected the inside of the station for a short time. ‘It'll be crawling with more of these peelers looking for pickpockets and we don't want the attention. We'll get a riverboat to take us to Greenwich instead. You'll enjoy that,' I promised him. ‘It's a lovely way to see London.'

But Warrigal did not enjoy the boat ride much. An evil wind whipped up the river and lashed our cheeks as we rowed and, while they helped to speed our journey along, these blasts did nothing to improve Warrigal's humour or his health. He coughed and spluttered and violent shivers began to run through him and, as we passed the Tower of London, he could not have been less interested as I told him about the ravens. Instead he just held on to the rudder lines and watched myself and the waterman do the rowing.

‘Sorry about my valet, Gaffer,' I said to the strong-armed
waterman who was sat behind me and whose boat it was. ‘Colonial servants are never much use on English soil, I tend to find.' He just huffed and carried on rowing these long strokes in time with mine. It was a long journey, considering the boat was carrying not just the three of us but also our heavy trunk, and it took us most of the afternoon. By the time we got to Greenwich darkness had begun to settle and Warrigal looked paler than I had ever seen him. As the waterman and I helped him out of the boat, I told Warrigal that I was sorry that I had made him take the river-boat now. If I had known, I said, just how sick the river would make him, then I would have suggested some other form of transport. But in truth I had guessed full well what a torment the river ride would be for him and I was glad to see that he had gone through five handkerchiefs on the way down. He looked ready to pass out, while my aching arms had grown good and strong with all the rowing. For the first time since I had met him I had the feeling I would be the favourite should the two of us come to blows.

I paid the waterman with more of Evershed's coins and we made our way to the nearby Trafalgar tavern and booked ourselves a room with supper and a warm bath included. The plan was to open the doll here, release the Jakkapoor stone within and knock on Timothy Pin's front door bright and early the next day. I asked the landlady if she could send up a hot meal as soon as possible and she said there was a table in our chamber already set for the guests. ‘It's roast pigeon tonight,' she said as if she had just described some rare English delicacy rather than a bird common enough to be found on any rooftop in the rookeries.

‘This pigeon,' I asked her, ‘is it tough?'

‘We serve the tenderest pigeons in London, sir,' she answered.

‘Pity,' I said. ‘Cos I like my meat good and chewy.'

This landlady, who was not much older than myself but carried herself like she was someone's mother, was nothing if not hospitable. ‘Well, for a few shillings more I could get some of our beef sent up instead, sir.'

‘Is that tough?'

‘As old boots,' she replied. ‘You won't be disappointed.'

‘I like the sound of that,' I said, and reached for my purse. ‘We'll need a proper carving knife as well then –' I counted out a generous amount for her – ‘with teeth like a crocodile's.'

‘We have such a knife in our kitchen,' she said as she took the coins and jingled them in her hand. ‘We'll be up with your supper shortly, gentlemen.'

*

The chamber we had booked into would have been very pleasant had Warrigal and I been a pair of fresh honeymooners rather than two rough coves who hated one another. It was decorated in the French style, like one of those rooms in the molly-house what Precious Tom used to run and where some of the softer lads would go to work. It was all crimson drapes and gilded walls, with a copper-leafed bathtub and silver candelabra laid out on the small round dining table with all this fine crockery. There was a large double bed with a pink blanket and pillows and a queer upholstered red chair what was curved at the top and long enough to lie on.

‘That there is a
chaise longue
,' said the maidservant, pleased with her own mastery of language. ‘Or fainting chair if you prefer. Your servant should find it most comfortable. There are blankets for him in the cupboard.' She curtsied and left us, and the very second the door shut behind her Warrigal and I went to business. He pulled the prince out of his coat pocket and we rushed over to the foot of the bed where we had placed the trunk and flung
it open. I found the hammer and chisel what we prised up the floorboard with the night before resting on top of everything else. I told him that we could use these to smash open the doll if the carving knife I had ordered should turn out to be of no use. Warrigal, whose brow was dripping with sweat, pushed me aside and began throwing our clothes and other possessions all over the floor.

‘If you're expecting me to clean all this up, Warrigal,' I said as he emptied the trunk of everything in it, ‘you is much mistaken.' But he just reached into the bottom of the trunk and started pressing down at the sides. Then, much to my surprise, I watched as he pulled up the wooden base and revealed a false bottom to the trunk. There, lying flat at the base, was a long sharp knife, a coil of metal wire and, of all things, a boomerang.

The sudden appearance of this secret blade, what gleamed as though it had never been used, was most unsettling. It was no Australian bush knife, what would have been good for cutting through wood, and nor could I imagine any butcher using it to carve through fleshy meat. So thin and sharp was it that the only job I could imagine it to be fit for was the kill stroke. It had been packed for me, not the prince, and I froze as Warrigal pulled it out and pointed it at me. ‘You hold,' Warrigal said as he got to his feet and walked over to the small table, ‘and I cut.' He placed the doll half over the edge with its face looking downwards like it was a French aristocrat waiting for the chop. Then he sneezed again.

‘You want to cut the doll open with
that
?' I asked.

Warrigal wiped his face with his sleeve and nodded. ‘Come hold,' he said.

‘I'll hold the knife,' I told him. ‘You hold the doll.'

Warrigal swore at me and coughed. Then he just started cutting
into it himself, one hand on the doll, the other slicing back and forth with the knife. He made it look like a right struggle and the wood kept slipping from his hand and he almost cut himself on the blade. Then another attack of sneezes took him and he staggered back from the table and almost dropped the knife, so violent was these explosions.