Dodger

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