Dodger

really did. But friends don’t spy on friends, do they?’
    Dirty Benjamin stood frozen in front of Dodger, and after a bit of effort managed to get out, ‘They is saying as you killed that barber – you know, the one with all them dead bodies in his cellar, yeah?’
    Dodger hesitated. Life was so much simpler in the sewers, but he had learned something lately, which was that the truth was indeed a fog, just like Charlie said, and people shaped it the way they wanted it to go. He had never killed anybody, ever, but that didn’t matter, because the fog of truth didn’t want to know that poor Mister Todd had been a decent man who saw so many terrible things in the service of the Duke of Wellington that his mind had become as twisted as the corpses of the men they placed in front of him. The poor devil was indeed more a candidate for Bedlam rather than the gallows, though any man with any sense but no money – oh, not those of the poor who did go to Bedlam – would choose the hangman any day. But the mist of truth didn’t like awkward details, and so there had to be a villain, and there had to be a hero.
    Although it was a wretched nuisance, right now at least it could make itself useful, and so he looked at Dirty Benjamin sternly and said, ‘Something like that, but not all that. Now, if you are my friend you will tell me why you were following me, because if you don’t I will make cold meat of you.’
    It was a rotten thing to do to Benjamin, who he knew of old as a snow-dropper, who mostly stole ladies’ underthings off clothes lines – being a man of no ambition whatsoever apart from being alive tomorrow – and ran errands for anyone who had some money and was bigger than him. He was the kind of person who would make a body want to wash their hands after meeting him; the man was a worm. Yes, all he did was wriggle. He was one of the lost souls, one of the people who were behind the door when God went past; they just grazed on the world, hardly disturbing it a bit, and were always scared of something.
    Right now, Dirty Benjamin looked very scared, and Dodger relented, saying, ‘Well, maybe it won’t be cold meat, because I know you, Ben, and I’m sure you’re going to tell me who sent you to follow me, am I right? If you do that, I won’t hurt you.’
    Both Dodger and his captive turned as the shadows changed to reveal Mrs Sharples peering round the corner with Simplicity next to her. The housekeeper said, ‘I am sorry to interrupt your little concussion, gentlemen, but I think it is time for us to go home, if it’s all the same with you?’
    Dodger turned back to the hapless villain in front of him. ‘Benjamin,’ he said sternly, ‘I have no beef with you. This is your last chance. Tell me who you are working for and why, and I will never let on it’s you.’
    Dirty Benjamin was crying, and not just crying by the smell of it. He slid to the ground in a pitiful heap.
    And Dodger leaned over and whispered, ‘I have in my hand the razor of Sweeney Todd the barber, and at the moment I haven’t opened the blade. But it calls to me; it calls to me to use it . . . So now, Benjamin, I strongly suggest you tell me who you are working for.
Do you understand?
’
    The words came out so fast that they tumbled among themselves. But Dodger made out: ‘It was Harry the Slap from Hackney Marshes, but the word is there’s important coves wanting to know where you are, and if you’ve got some girl with you. That’s all I know, honest to God. There’s some kind of reward out.’
    Dodger said, ‘Who set up the reward?’
    ‘Don’t know. Harry the Slap never told me nuffin’, just to tell ’im. Promised me a cut of the profit, so he did.’
    Dodger stared at the face. No, he wasn’t lying. Benjamin was easy meat, and so he said, ‘Well, Benjamin, as a friend, I rely on you not to tell Harry the Slap that you have seen me.’ There was a frantic nodding of the head from the wretched little man on the ground. ‘And, of course, there is just one other thing I must do. I did say that I would not harm you but
this
’ – and he swung his boot – ‘is from Mrs Sharples. Sorry, but she asked me to.’
    He was rewarded with a deep groan from Benjamin and, amazingly, a huge and horrible grin from Mrs Sharples, who said, ‘Well done, young man, do it again!’
    Dodger thought, This is the time to be the man who saved the world from Mister Sweeney Todd. So he said quietly, ‘Simplicity, and you too,