With water pouring off him in every direction, the captain of the growler growled, ‘The hell you say!’
‘The hell I do indeed, sir!’ said Dodger. ‘And if I find that person before the peelers do, it will be the worse for him, and incidentally of course there will be a reward in all of this for you.’
The coachman, trying to keep the horse under control with lightning flashing around them, gave Dodger a sideways look in which was mingled anger, intrigue and uncertain disbelief. ‘Oh, so he’s got more to fear from you than the peelers, does he? They have damn big sticks, as I very well know!’ He opened a mouth in which there appeared to be just one solitary tooth, adding, ‘We certainly know when they want to get their point across, those bastards.’ He spat, increasing the storm by the equivalent of about three raindrops, and gave Dodger a pitying look, then growled with another toothless grin, ‘Well, how will you be worse than the peelers, my little lad, do tell me?’
‘Me? Because the peelers have rules. I don’t firkytoodle around! And unlike the peelers, when it comes to bashing, I don’t have to stop!’
The growler, though, had come to a stop. A dead stop, and its driver cursed under his breath. ‘Piccadilly Circus, guv, all fouled up ’cos of the rain. To tell you the truth, I can’t tell which of these buggers is the one you’re after, chief, ’cos people are cutting in like Christmas dinner. I don’t know why they’re always messing about with the roads, but I reckon it’s the four-horsers that are causing this lot – they shouldn’t be allowed in the city! People are walking around in the road too like they own it, ain’t they got no sense?’
It was true; there were people dodging between stationary vehicles, and Piccadilly Circus was a pattern of umbrellas spinning through the growing host of rain-soaked vehicles, none of which could move until the others did. Now the horses were beginning to panic, and yet other coaches, cabs and one or two brewer’s drays were piling in. Then somewhere in the damp, jostling, frantic cauldron of frightened horses and bewildered pedestrians, someone must’ve stuck part of his umbrella up a horse’s nose, causing what previous centuries would have called a hey-ho-rumbelow, but what the growler captain called it could not be put on paper because it would have immediately caught fire.
After that, there was nothing else for it. As the growler coachman said, ‘If they want to get everybody out of there, they need to drag out one or two coaches and dismantle the whole damn mess.’ With that, the sun came out, bright and shining in the clear blue sky, which made it even worse, because every human or horse who wasn’t already steaming began to steam.
Even Dodger could see they had lost their quarry with very little chance of finding it now. No point. Solomon was looking at him from the vehicle’s window, holding up his huge pocket watch and pointedly showing him what the time was. Dodger groaned inwardly. If he gave in, then maybe, just maybe, when this seething fiasco was eventually unravelled – and hopefully before any more fights started – he might be in the right place to hear the dreadful screeching wheel scream again. If he couldn’t find out what he wanted from Mister Sharp Bob, of course. But right now it was Solomon who looked as if he was likely to be the one doing the screaming.
Dodger looked back at the coachman, shrugged, and said, ‘How much, mister?’
To Dodger’s surprise, the man gave him a sly grin, waved his hands in the air to demonstrate that the progress of horse-drawn transport in this vicinity was a bucket of sheep droppings, and then said, ‘You really the geezer who brought down Sweeney Todd? You look like a liar to me, but then so does everybody else. Ho-hum, never mind, just give me your signature on this little page I have here, making a suitable mention of the fact that it was indeed you what done it, and we’ll call it quits, how about that? ’Cos I think it’d be worth some money one day.’
Well, thought Dodger, this was Charlie’s fog again; if the truth wasn’t what you wanted it to be, you turned it into a different version of the truth. But the man was waiting patiently, with a pencil and a notebook. Taking them up and sweating, Dodger very carefully scribed, one letter at a time: It woz me wot took dahn Sweeni Tod. Dodjer and that iz troo.
As soon as he had handed it to the coachman, he was dragged to the kerb by Solomon, who was frantically trying to open an umbrella – a black and treacherous thing that reminded Dodger of a long-dead, but nevertheless large, bird of prey and could take your eye out, if you let it. Dodger pointed out that right now, at least, it wasn’t necessary – except, of course, for protection from the horses all around them, which were doing what horses regularly do and doing it slightly more because they were in a state of panic.
They headed on foot to Savile Row. The side streets were more busy with pedestrians than usual because of the tangle that they had thankfully left behind them. They arrived, wet and warm – which can sometimes, as in this case, be worse than wet and cold because it includes sticky and horsy – at the shining, polished door of Davies & Son, at 38 Savile Row, leaving Onan at a lamppost and on this occasion with a bone brought along for the purpose, in the company of which he was oblivious to the world.
Once inside, Dodger tried not to be awed at the world of schmutter. After all, he knew there were swells that had much finer clothes than he ever wore, but seeing such a lot of it in one place would have been overwhelming if he let it be so. As it was, he tried to look like somebody who barely glances at this sort of thing because he sees it every day – although aware that the cleaned-up but still quite fragrant shonky suit might be a clue that this was not entirely the case. But after all, a tailor is a tailor and all the rest of it is just shine.
Eventually, they were handed into the care of Izzy, small and skinny but nevertheless possessed of some inner nervous energy that would in other circumstances have turned a mill. He appeared like an arrow between Dodger and Solomon and the front-of-house man who opened the door for them, talking all the time so fast that the best you could do was understand that Izzy would take care of everything, had anything, and everything was in hand and if everybody left it to Izzy, everything would not just be all right but also extremely acceptable in every possible way, and at a price that would amaze and yet satisfy all parties – if, and this was important, Izzy was allowed to get on with the job, thank you all so very much. He fussed Solomon and Dodger into one of the fitting rooms, never at any time ceasing to worry, fret and apologize to nobody in particular about nothing very much.
A long cloth tape measure was whisked around his shoulders and Dodger was pushed gently but firmly to the centre of the room, where Izzy looked at him with the expression of a butcher faced with a particularly difficult steer, walking around him, measuring by the pounce-and-run-away method. And in all this time the only words he said to Dodger were variations on the theme of ‘If you would just turn this way, sir?’; and sir this, and sir that, until Dodger was seriously in need of refreshment. It didn’t help matters either when the spinning, dashing Izzy, apparently now with no alternative left to him, finally stopped with his mouth in the vicinity of Dodger’s left ear, and in the tones of a man enquiring after the whereabouts of the Holy Grail, whispered, ‘How does one dress, sir?’