Pitt walked quickly, his head down and his shoulders hunched. He wore old boots with loose soles and a grimy jacket, torn at the back, which he kept for such visits. He pulled the thin collar up round his ears now, but still the rain trickled down his neck to his back, a wandering, icy finger that made him shudder. No one paid him any attention apart from the occasional glance when a peddlar or coster half hoped he might buy something. But he did not look like a man who had the means to purchase, and with face averted and body tight with the knowledge of the warmth he had left behind, he hurried deeper into the alleys and passages of the warren.
Finally he found the door he sought, its wood black with age and dirt, metal studs worn smooth by countless hands. He knocked sharply twice, and then twice again.
After a moment or two it opened six inches on a chain, stopping with a clunk as it reached its limit. Even though it was midmorning the daylight scarcely penetrated these narrow alleys, their jettied stories almost meeting overhead, eaves forever dripping in incessant, uneven rhythm. A rat squeaked and scuttled away. Someone tripped over a pile of rubbish and swore. In the distant street the wail “Ol’! clo’!” came again, and down on the river the moan of a foghorn. The smell of rot filled Pitt’s throat.
“Mr. Pinhorn,” he said quietly. “A matter of business.”
There was a moment’s silence, then a candle flame appeared in the gloom. He could see little beyond it but the outline of a large, sharp nose and the black sockets of two eyes. But he knew Pinhorn always answered the door himself, afraid that his apprentices would keep the trade for themselves and do him out of a few pence.
“It’s you,” Pinhorn said sourly, recognizing him. “Wotcher want? I got nuffink for yer!”
“Information, Mr. Pinhorn, and a warning for you.”
Pinhorn made a sound deep in his adenoids as if he were going to spit, then changed it into a bark. It expressed ineffable contempt.
“Robbery’s one thing, and murder’s another,” Pitt said carefully, not at all disturbed. He had known Pinhorn for over a decade and this reception was exactly what he expected. “And treason is a third thing, nastier than both.”
Again there was silence. Pitt knew better than to push his case. Pinhorn had fenced stolen goods for forty years; he understood his risks perfectly, or he would not still be alive, a prisoner only of poverty, ignorance and greed. He would be in one of Her Majesty’s prisons, like Coldbath Fields, where labor such as the treadmill or passing the shot would have broken even his thick, hard body.
The chain rattled as he took it off and the door swung wide noiselessly on oiled hinges.
“Come in, Mr. Pitt.”
He locked the door behind him and led the way down a passage piled with old furniture and smelling of mold, round a corner, and into a room that was surprisingly warm. A fire in an open grate shed a flickering light on the stained walls. A piece of heavy red carpet, no doubt garnered from some burglary, lay before the grate between two plush-covered armchairs. All the rest of the room apart from that cleared space was piled with dimly perceived objects: carved chairs, pictures, boxes, clocks, pitchers and ewers, piles of plates. Balanced at a crazy angle, a mirror caught the firelight and winked a red eye.
“Wotcher want, Mr. Pitt?” Pinhorn asked again, eyeing Pitt narrowly. He was a big man, barrel-chested, bullet-headed, his gray hair in a terrier crop such as prisoners wore, although he had never actually been caught or tried. In his youth he had enjoyed something of a reputation as a bareknuckle fighter, and he was still capable of beating a man senseless if he lost his temper, which happened suddenly and violently from time to time.
“Have you seen a pair of miniature portraits?” Pitt asked. “Seventeenth-century, man and a woman? Or a silver vase, a crystal paperweight carved with a design of scrolls and flowers, and a first edition of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift?”
Pinhorn looked surprised. “That all? You come all the way ’ere ter ask me vat? Vat lot in’t worf much.”
“I don’t want them; I just want to know if you’ve heard of them. About three years ago, probably.”
Pinhorn’s eyebrows shot up incredulously. “Free years ago! Yer bleedin’ eejut! D’yer fink I’d ’member vat sort of ’aul fer free years?”
“You remember everything you’ve ever bought or sold, Pinhorn,” Pitt said calmly. “Your trade depends on it. You’re the best fence this side of the river, and you know the worth of everything to the farthing. You’d not forget an oddity like a Swift first edition.”
“Well, I ’an’t ’ad none.”
“Who has? I don’t want it, I just want to know.”
Pinhorn screwed up his little black eyes and wrinkled his great nose suspiciously. He stared at Pitt for several seconds. “You wouldn’t lie ter me, Mr. Pitt, nah would yer? It’d be very unwise, as men I wouldn’t be able ter ’elp yer no more.” He tilted his head to one side. “Might not even be able ter stop yer gettin ’urt on yer little hexpiditions inter places where rozzers in’t nat’ral—like ’ere.”
“Waste of time, Mr. Pinhorn,” Pitt replied with a smile. “Same as you lying to me. Have you heard of the Swift?”
“Wot’s it yer said abaht murder an’ treason? They’re strong words, Mr. Pitt.”
“Hanging words, Mr. Pinhorn,” Pitt elaborated distinctly. “There’s murder for certain, treason only maybe. Have you heard anyone speak of the Swift, anyone at all? You hear most things this side of the river.”
“No I ’an’t!” Pinhorn’s face remained in the same tortured expression of concentration. “If anybody’s fenced any fink like vat, vey done it outside o’ the Smoke, or they done it private to someone as vey already know as wanted it. Although why anybody’d want it stole I dunno; it in’t worf vat much. You said first edition, dincher, not ’andwrit ner nuffink?”
“No, just a first-edition printing.”
“Can’t ’elp yer.”
Pitt believed him. He was not ingenuous enough to believe past gratitude for small favors would have any weight, but he knew Pinhorn wanted him on his side in the future. Pinhorn was too powerful to be afraid of his rivals and he had no conception of loyalty. If he knew anything that it was in his own interest to tell Pitt, he would undoubtedly have done so.
“If I ’ear anyfink I’ll tell yer,” Pinhorn added. “Y’owe me, Mr. Pitt.”
“I do, Mr. Pinhorn,” Pitt said dryly. “But not much.” And he turned round to make his way back to the great wooden door and the dripping alley outside.
Pitt knew many other dealers in stolen goods; there were the dollyshops, those poorest of pawnbrokers, who lent a few pence to people desperate enough to part with even their pots and pans or the tools of their trade in order to buy food. He hated such places, and the pity he felt was like being kicked in the stomach. Because he was helpless, he turned to anger as being better than weeping. He wanted to shout at the rich, at Parliament, at anyone who was comfortable, or who was ignorant of these tens of thousands who clung to life by such a frail and dangerous thread, who had not been bred to afford morality except of the crudest sort.
This time he was free to avoid them, along with the thieves’ kitchens, where kidsmen kept schools of children trained to steal and return the profits to them. Similarly he did not need to scour the slop trade: those who dealt in old clothes, rags, and discarded shoes, taking them apart and making up new articles for the poor, who could afford no better. Often even the worst rags were laboriously unraveled and the fiber rewoven into shoddy—anything to cover those who might otherwise be naked.