Dodger

of . . . Roger until the coach turns up. Sometimes you get undesirables down here, well, more undesirable than what’s down here already. I’ll just have a little glance around and then come back. I’m sure it’s nothing, but with Mister Disraeli here as well, I feel a little caution is sensible.’
    Simplicity was watching him intently, Mister Bazalgette was looking somewhat dismayed, and Charlie was just strolling carefully back the way they had come. Mister Disraeli, quite surprisingly, took Simplicity’s hand. ‘Come along . . . Miss . . . young man. Frankly, I could do with a breath of fresh air.’
    As they climbed up and out, Dodger took care to say again, ‘Probably nothing at all, nothing at all, but I had best check.’ Then he dropped back into the sewer and was free, free of other people. Someone else had got into his sewer and if it were any of the work gangs there would have been a shout along the lines of ‘Bugger off, you toshers!’ – not exactly a cheerful greeting, but at least something human. No, someone
was
there. It couldn’t be the Outlander, could it? That would be too glib. But the Lady knew there were still a number of people after Dodger, and everyone knew where Dodger could usually be found. Oh well, at least he was on his own ground, sticky and stinking though it was.
    In the dark now, he heard the rattle of a coach overhead, and the sounds of voices, one of which was unmistakably that of Simplicity . He breathed a deep sigh of relief. Well, whatever happened now couldn’t happen to her. Of course, he told himself again, it almost certainly wasn’t the Outlander, who was surely just a bogeyman, after all . . . though try as he might, his thoughts dived from being optimistically cheerful to:
I’m a bloody fool
. If the Outlander has been so successful in his trade, then he must surely know just about everything concerning Dodger and Simplicity.
    That was just the start of the terrible scenarios jostling for space in front of his eyes. Pictures flashed across his mind at speed, nasty pictures. Well, would someone like the Outlander go down into the sewers? Perhaps someone had paid him enough money. And then what further scenarios could near-panic throw up? Everybody knew Dodger had gone into the sewer with his group. Who did the Outlander know? How fast did news travel? And how clever must someone like the Outlander have been still to be alive when by now he must have so many enemies in so many countries. Just how stupid had Dodger, good old Dodger, been to have thought that the threat was something he could just brush off? But perhaps it was someone else?
    Well, Simplicity was safe, for now. Then the sensible thing for Dodger to do was to be up and out of the sewer as soon as possible before the stranger caught him up, but with his heart pounding most unusually against his ribs, he considered his limited options. He
could
get out of the sewer by another drain further along, but if he took the time to get there, anything could happen, and if he tried to leave by the nearest one, whoever it was – and suddenly he felt certain that it
was
the Outlander and he was trapped down here with him – could come out right behind him.
    Then the last of the sunlight faded. He thought, This is my world. I know every brick. I know every place where if you put a foot wrong, you are up to your waist in stinking mess. He thought, Here I am. Maybe he could use this to his advantage. Make a
new
plan, a plan with a different way of getting to the same end. And Julius Caesar appeared in his mind, admittedly sitting on a jakes (an image which would stay with him for a long time) – and Dodger thought, He was a warrior, wasn’t he? A cove who was difficult to kill too. He whispered, ‘There!’ and said aloud in the gloom, ‘Come along. Here I am, mister; maybe you want to be shown the sights.’
    Looking down, he realized that someone was most definitely on his way, because the rats were running straight towards him, trying to keep ahead of whoever or whatever was coming up the sewer. Dodger, by now, was up against the sewer wall, mostly in a little alcove where several ancient bricks had fallen out (and where, he recalled fondly, he had once picked up two farthings and one of the old-fashioned groats that you didn’t see around these days).
    The running rats clambered over and around him as if he wasn’t there, and he thought, They see me nearly every day. He had never hunted