Dodger

right, your
friend
Dodger. She was a girl with golden hair and a face that was black and blue!’
    Dodger saw something like panic in their eyes, as if they thought that he had gone mad. But then Messy Bessie’s big round features seemed to shift as she struggled with the concept of something unusual, such as a thought.
    She never had many of them; to see them at all you probably would need a microscope, such as the one he saw once on one of the travelling shows. There were always travelling shows, and they were ever popular; and in this one they had this apparatus you could stare into. You looked down into a glass of water, and when your eye got accustomed you started to see all the tiny little wriggly things in the water, bobbing up and down, spinning and dancing little jigs and having such fun that the man who ran the travelling show said it showed how good the Thames water was if so many tiny little creatures could survive in it.
    To Dodger, Bessie’s mind seemed to be like that – mostly empty, but every now and again something wriggling. He said, encouragingly, ‘Go on, Bessie.’
    She glanced at the others, who tried not to look at her. He understood, in a way. It didn’t do to be known as somebody who told you the things they saw, in case those things included something they did not want to get about, and there were, around and about, people much worse than mudlarks and toshers – people who were handy with a shiv or a cut-throat razor and had not a glimmer of mercy in their eyes.
    But now, in the eyes of Messy Bessie, there was an unusual determination. She didn’t have golden hair – not much in the way of hair at all, in fact; and such as it was, the strands that remained were greasy and tended to roll themselves into strange little kiss curls. She fiddled with a ‘curl’, then looked defiantly at the others and said, ‘I was doing a bit of mumping in the Mall, day before the storm, and a nobby coach went past with its door open, you see, and this girl jumped out and had it away down the street as if she was on fire, right? And two coves dropped off the thing, right, and legged it after her, spit arse, pushing people out of the way like they was not important.’ Messy Bessie stopped, shrugged, indicating that that was that. Her associates were idly looking around, but specifically not focusing on her, as if to make it quite clear that they had nothing to do with this strange and dangerously talkative woman.
    But Dodger said, ‘What sort of coach?’
    He kept his focus on Bessie, because he just knew that if he didn’t she would suddenly get very forgetful, and what he got, after some churning of recollection on Bessie’s part, was: ‘Pricey, nobby, two horses.’ Messy Bessie shut her mouth firmly, an indication that she didn’t intend to open it again unless there was the prospect of another drink. It was quite easy for Dodger to read her mind; after all, there was such a lot of space in there. He jingled the remaining coins in his pocket – the international language – and another light went on in Bessie’s big round sad face. ‘Funny thing about that coach; when it went off there was a, like, squeal from one of the wheels, nearly as bad as a pig being killed. I heard it all down the road.’
    Dodger thanked her, sliding over a few coppers, and nodded at the rest of them, who looked as if a murder had just taken place there and then.
    Then, suddenly, Messy Bessie, the coins in her hand, said, ‘Just remembered something else. She was yelling, but I don’t know what, on account of it being in some kind of lingo. The coachman too – he weren’t no Englisher neither.’ She gave Dodger a sharp and meaningful look, and he handed over an extra couple of farthings, wondering as he did so if he could reclaim some of this necessary expenditure from Mister Charlie. He would have to keep a tally though, because Charlie was definitely not the kind of man you could run rings around.
    As he walked away, Dodger wondered whether he should go and see the man; after all, he had important information now, didn’t he? Information that had cost him money to acquire – a considerable amount of money, and possibly worth a bit more too if he put a shine on it. Although he knew it really wouldn’t be sensible to get ambitious about the amounts paid to start with . . .
    He fumbled in his pocket, a receptacle that contained anything that Dodger could punch into it. There it was: the oblong piece of