“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.
The articles from the York house had been taken by a thief not only of taste but also of some literacy, and would have been fenced similarly. They were luxuries that could not be converted into anything useful to the patrons of dollyshops.
He made his way back through the tangle of passageways uphill away from the river towards Mayfair and Hanover Close. Thieves usually worked their own areas. Since he could not trace the goods, the best place to start was with those who knew the patch. If it was one of them, word of the theft would probably have reached the old hands. If it had been an outsider, that too would be known by someone. The police had investigated at the time, it had been no secret. The underworld would have its own information.
It took him half an hour after reaching Mayfair to track down the man he wanted, a skinny, lop-legged little man of indeterminate age called William Winsell and known, contrarily, as the Stoat. He found him in the darkest corner of a tavern of particularly ill repute, staring sourly at half a pint of ale in a dirty mug.
Pitt slid into the vacant seat beside him. The Stoat glared at him with outrage.
“Wot you doin’ ’ere, bleedin’ crusher! ’Oo d’ya fink’ll trust me if vey see me wiv ve likes o’ you?” He looked at Pitt’s fearful clothes. “D’yer fink we don’t granny yer, just ’cos yer aht o’ twig in them togs? Still look like a crusher, wiv yer clean ’ands wot never worked, and crabshells”—he did not even bother to glance at Pitt’s feet—“like ruddy barges! Ruin me, you will!”
“I’m not staying,” Pitt said quietly. “I’m going to the Dog and Duck, a mile away, to have lunch. I thought you might like to join me in, say, half an hour? I’m going to have steak and kidney pudding, hot; Mrs. Billows does that a treat. And spotted dick, made with suet and lots of raisins, and cream. And maybe a couple of glasses of cider, brought up from the West Country.”
The Stoat swallowed hard. “Yer a cruel man, Mr. Pitt. You must want some poor bastard cropped!” He made a sharp gesture with his hand at the side of his throat, like a noose under the ear.
“Perhaps, in the end,” Pitt agreed. “Right now it’s only burglary information. Dog and Duck, half an hour. Be there, Stoat, or I shall have to come and see you somewhere less agreeable—and less private.” He stood up, and without looking backwards, head down, he pushed his way through the drinkers and out into the street.
Thirty-five minutes later he was in the more salubrious parlor of the Dog and Duck, with a mug of cider, bright and clear as an Indian summer, in front of him, when the Stoat crept in nervously, ran his fingers round his grimy collar as if easing it from his neck, and wriggled onto the seat opposite him. He glanced round once or twice, but saw only dull, respectable minor traders and clerks; no one he knew.
“Steak and kidney pudding?” Pitt offered unnecessarily.
“Wotcher want orf of me first?” the Stoat said suspiciously, but his nostrils were wide, sucking in the delicious aroma of fresh, sweet food. It was almost as if the steam itself fed him. “ ’Oo’re yer after?”
“Someone who robbed a house in Hanover Close three years ago,” Pitt replied, nodding over the Stoat’s head to the landlord.
