Dodger (26 page)

The plates of pie and mash was put in front of us and a bowl of eel soup each was placed at the side. We said not a word to each other as Mrs Cunningham fussed around us, remarking on how starving we must be to have ordered so much. ‘We'll need another chair,' I told her. ‘A lady friend will be joining us later.'

After she had left I tucked a napkin into my shirt and picked up my knife and fork to tuck in. But then I heard Warrigal cough and looked up to see that he was looking at me with his pot of beer raised.

I smiled and lifted mine again.

‘That's the spirit,' I said as we chinked them together. Then we turned back to our plates and feasted like bears.

It is no easy thing, the shadow. To follow a cove unseen through these tangled streets, what can seem dense and confusing even for us Londoners, requires a skill, speed and artfulness that few possess. Back in my youthful days, when it could be said that I knew the map of the city as well as any hackney coachman, I was often called upon by the Jew to shadow those who he took an interest in, to be the fly what hovers after you, ever unnoticed but always watchful.

But for a stranger to the city like Warrigal, who had been on these alien shores for less than three days, to shadow so vigilant a quarry as myself over such a distance was nothing short of miraculous. He was an expert tracker, this much I knew, but the outback of Australia was a vast space what never changed and where footsteps, fires and other human leavings showed up bright and could not be hid. London though was not the outback; it was loud, ever-shifting, crammed with people all heading in a multitude of different directions and at varying speeds. To track a man through that was something else and I was most curious to hear how he had done it. As we sat opposite each other, slurping up those vinegary eels and waiting for Ruby to join us, he explained what had passed since last I saw him.

‘Too much noise,' he said, with the little finger on his knife pointing over at me as he cut an eel in half. ‘Too noisy, too much moving.' This was in reference to my attempts at slipping away from him and out of the Greenwich window. I was ashamed at this as I had been under the impression my escape had been all stealth and soundlessness. It seemed that Warrigal had watched my every movement and I spied a rare smile play upon his lips as he mimicked the sound of me lifting up the creaking window and looking both ways before pushing my body through it. He then went on to explain, after sucking the longer eel half into his mouth, that rather than just grab my legs as I was halfway out of the room and pull me back in, he instead decided to see where I would lead him. He had hoped that I would take him straight to the Jakkapoor stone, suspecting that I really did know where it was, and he reasoned that he would gain more from me if I thought myself alone. So the very second I crawled out on to the veranda he dressed himself, was out of the chamber door, down two flights of steps and watching me from outside as I shimmied my way down the flagpole and into the wedding party beneath. Once I was out into the street he knew that this part of the track would be simple as he had shoes and I did not so he just kept to the shadows and begun trailing me.

‘You stole shoes,' he said then much to my shame, ‘from a beggar.' He then told of how he had seen me down by the docks, making out I was all pious as I walked among the crowds reading from the Bible. He had mingled among the homeless, always just out of view, lost among a host of dark faces, and watched as I made a hypocrite of myself for money. ‘Then you got in a cab,' he told me as if daring me to refute any of these events. ‘A cab to which nobody saw me clinging.'

I considered this to be impossible and said so. That cab ride
took me all the way to Whitechapel and, even if it was the dead of night, someone would have noticed him. ‘They did not,' he said before adding, ‘London people all eyes front.' He went on to say how he had clung to the shaded part of the undercarriage and described to me the sights and sounds of the journey. ‘Your roads,' he said, shaking his head in bewilderment, ‘are mad things.'

He seemed to think that the whole city had been designed for the very purpose of throwing trackers such as him off of their scent. He then said that after I had alighted at Bethnal Green he had shadowed me to Ruby's house and watched as I had entered. Using the outside wooden stairs of the house opposite and then the guttering, he had scaled the building and perched himself on the roof, where he had a perfect view of the old Sikes place and he watched through the window as Ruby, whom he recognised from Smithfield Market, lit the fire and ran me a bath.

‘I saw all,' he said after another chill had run through him and he had fought a sneeze. ‘Bath, kiss, man, fuss.'

‘I didn't kiss her,' I protested. ‘I didn't have time.'

‘Her man is big,' he told me and waved a finger. ‘Bigger than you. Watch yourself.'

‘So you just sat up there on that roof all night?' I asked, keen to change the subject. ‘No wonder you're in such a state.'

He shook his head and told of how he waited up there, underneath a high awning to keep him from the elements, until he saw candlelight glow in the lower room and then he climbed down and approached the ground-floor window. Peering through, he saw Ruby showing me my bed for the night and waited until she had left. Then, knowing from his own need for sleep that I would be out for hours, he withdrew from Bethnal Green and found a carriage what would speed him back to Greenwich so he could see to our things, pay the tavern and visit Evershed's man.

‘Timothy Pin?' I asked, alarmed.

He nodded. ‘Pin, yes.'

‘Why did you do that?' I cried in alarm. ‘You didn't tell him where I was, did you?'

Warrigal nodded again and told me that he had peached to him that I had tried to escape, where I now slept and, worst of all, that I had no real clue as to where the Jakkapoor stone was. In that moment any tender feelings what I may have been developing for my timely rescuer was pushed to one side and told to toughen up.

‘Well, that's just blooming marvellous, Warrigal,' I moaned. ‘What'll he do now, eh? What'll he do to me? To you? To those at Honey Ant Hill? He'll have sent a telegram to Evershed already, I'm wagering.'

Warrigal reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a small envelope.

‘Read,' he said as he handed it to me. It was unsealed, unstamped and bore my name written with a flourish across the front. There was no ordinary paper inside however but rather a small calling card, the like of which I had often found inside the wallets of flamboyant theatrical types what I had brushed against.

‘Decent of him,' I said as I handed the card back to Warrigal, ‘to show such me concern.' Warrigal took the card and put it back in the envelope. ‘So, you're in his line of work,' I went on. ‘When do you think he'll want to kill me?'

‘Doesn't,' Warrigal replied. ‘Not yet leastways.' He returned the envelope to his coat.

I sighed and took a swig of beer to wash down the mash. Warrigal was looking more tired than ever. ‘Ain't you been to bed yet?' I asked with real concern. Warrigal said that he had not even had time to shut his eyes back in Greenwich as Pin sent him straight back in a carriage to watch over me. He was concerned that I might have moved on while he had been away, but when he crept up to the window where he had left me he saw I was ‘underneath a big woman, going nowhere'. A wider smile as he told me this.

He then went on to tell, his manner getting lighter as he spoke, that he had hidden all morning outside Ruby's house until she and I emerged to go finding. Then he made straight for the carriage what Pin had sent him back in, and what was still waiting in a nearby street, and told the driver to follow our omnibus. Once we alighted at Tottenham Court Road he left the carriage and followed me on foot but my wanderings, as I picked my many
Soho pockets, was too haphazard and unpredictable to shadow me unobserved. So he climbed up on to a tall building, using wooden stairs what zigzagged up the side, in order so that he could watch me move through that small vicinity from above. Whenever he needed to he jumped from one building to another or, if he had to he would climb down one and then spider up the next. Nobody seemed to spot him or, if they did, they did not know to warn me about him. Near Oxford Street he watched from a much lower rooftop as I tried to kiss Ruby and where he thought she had seen him. Then he managed to keep pace with me as I tore through the streets away from the peelers. He sprinted over the rooftops, making bold jumps between them where possible and on occasion almost failing to make the distance. One gap between these two very high houses was too wide for him and he fell short of it and tumbled downwards towards the street below. But he managed to grab on to an open window underneath and haul himself into a room where a screaming old man was squatting over a pisspot and tried to throw the contents over him in fright. But Warrigal was out of the door, down the stairs and out into the road in time to see me get grabbed by the cross-sweeper. He positioned himself around the corner so the peelers could not see him and then threw his boomerang. Then he headed off in the other direction so he could meet me on the other side of the fence.

‘Bravo, Warrigal,' I said. ‘I'm impressed.'

‘Should be,' he said, and drained the last of his beer.

Just then, as I was set to remark with sympathy upon how terrible he was starting to look, I smelt a strong feminine scent come up from behind. It was one I had smelt somewhere earlier that day and I got out of my seat, as a gentleman should, and turned to greet Ruby and enquire as to what had kept her so long. But instead I found myself facing a different female, far larger
than Ruby and in a blue dress what was all flashy and loose. She was sailing through the tables in Cunningham's towards us and smiling at the many girls what worked there as she did so. As she reached our table the smile disappeared from her face and was replaced with a threatening scrunch. ‘You got my five shillings yet?' she asked. I hadn't recognised Greta with her clothes on.

‘What you doing here?' I asked, all rude. ‘Where's Ruby?'

‘Ain't coming,' Greta sniffed. ‘I ran into her three corners away, and when she heard that I was on my own way here she asked if I would come and see you instead. She wanted to get back home to read some book.'

I pulled a chair out so she could sit with us and I counted out ten of the coins I had pinched and I placed them in her hand. ‘That's double,' I said and, in a decided effort to ingratiate myself with her, added, ‘and you was worth every one of them.'

She smiled as she tucked them down a pouch hidden in the top of her dress and, with a little dip of the head, said, ‘Thank you very much, kind sir.' She softened then, after being paid her due, and shouted to one of the girls she knew to fetch her a drain of whisky and water.

Once Greta had taken a few sips she told me that Ruby had a warning for me. Then she turned her head to Warrigal as if just noticing him. He was still wiping his nose and looking like Death was a close relative who could pay him a visit at any time. She moved closer to me. ‘She says there is some dark fella following you about on the rooftops. This'll be him, I suppose.' So that was what Ruby had meant when she said we was being followed. ‘Your old servant what tried to kill you, so she said.'

‘This is him,' I confirmed. ‘But he ain't my servant no more. He's a pal and he would not hurt a fly.'

Greta turned back to him, smiled to say hello and asked why,
if he was my friend, was I letting him suffer like this. ‘He's got the vapours on him,' she observed, and indeed by now Warrigal's black face was closer to ash than to coal. ‘You should get him resting before he dies here in front of us. It's only human.'

On this we agreed and so I thanked Greta for the message and told her we would head back to Bethnal Green forthwith. She, in turn, thanked me for the shillings and said how she very much looked forward to doing business with me in the future. Warrigal stumbled a bit as we left Cunningham's. His eyes was heavy and he looked like he was ready to pass out at any moment. He must have hardly slept since we was at Saffron Hill, had been outside with a head cold on his first winter's day in England and, to top it all, had spent the afternoon running around the rooftops like a madman. He was starting to look somewhat overcome by it all. Once out on the street I managed to hail us a cab what would take us back to Bethnal Green and we climbed inside, and out of the bitter cold. I wanted to spend the journey back in discussion of how we could set about finding the Jakkapoor stone but it was no use. Warrigal was asleep before we had even left the Dials.

‘Cur!' roared Sikes, louder than any other. He was in the grip of a violent frenzy, red-faced and mad-eyed, with spittle hanging from his mouth. ‘Get your teeth in, for gawd's sake! Come on, you wretched creature, 'ave 'im like you 'ad the others!'