“Good. In that case, I’ll get back to my counting,” Sawney said. He separated out a pile of coin and passed it across the beer-stained table. “This week’s storage fee.”
Hanratty scooped the money into his palm and closed his fist. His fingers were stubby and the skin over his knuckles was crisscrossed with scars. His nails were ingrained with dirt and bitten to the quick.
Sawney looked up. “Chances are, Tate and Murphy did their job, otherwise there’d be a mob of Charleys outside,’ ammering on the door. There ain’t, so it looks like we’re still in business, right?”
“Right.” Hanratty pocketed his cut and nodded.
Sawney watched him go. Perhaps it had been a mistake, going after the Runner. There again, Sawney reminded himself, he had a livelihood to protect. He had responsibilities – and they didn’t come cheap. Maggett and the Ragg brothers didn’t work for him out of the goodness of their hearts.
And there was Sal, of course. Had to keep her happy. Though Sawney had had the feeling for some time that Sal wasn’t in it for the money. She was in it for the excitement, the thrill. At times it was almost as if she craved it.
Sawney recalled more than one occasion when, after a night’s successful retrieval, Sal’s excitement had manifested itself in a way that had left both of them bathed in sweat and hotter than a farrier’s furnace. When Sal got excited, she got inventive; and Sawney had to admit that an inventive Sal was almost as enjoyable as cash in hand. She had stamina, too; there had been times when Sawney had found himself hard pressed to keep up with her.
Sawney accepted that Sal went with other men. In fact, he found her independent streak a relief after some of his other liaisons. Sal needed sex like some people needed alcohol. She thrived on it. She was a whore; it was her nature. Sal would laugh and say that she needed the exercise. Besides, she said, it helped keep her supple, and she knew that Sawney liked her supple. Supple like an eel.
But Sawney drew the line at police officers. Sal had told him she’d been joking when she’d hinted that she fancied the Runner, but for a second there he hadn’t been so sure. There had been a light in her eye that suggested she might have been half serious. Sawney’s threat, on the other hand, had been real. He’d rather she entertained Maggett than a bloody Runner. Having seen the way Maggett looked at her sometimes when he thought no one was watching, Sawney wondered if the two of them hadn’t been at it behind his back anyway. He wouldn’t have put it past them.
They’d met a year or so back, when Sawney had picked her up in Covent Garden one night. He’d just sold a brace of cadavers to an anatomist over on Webb Street, south of the river, and was feeling flush and looking for company; right place at the right time, as far as he was concerned. Sal had been on the game for a while by then, working out of a three-storey brothel on Henrietta Street. The place had catered for clients who liked them young, and Sal’s looks, smooth skin and firm body had meant she’d rarely been without company, although she wasn’t as young as she led her customers to believe. Even now, Sawney wasn’t sure of Sal’s true age. He wondered whether she knew it herself. Twenty or thereabouts, he reckoned, though she had an old head on her. She told him she’d lost track of the number of times she’d been passed off as a sweet virgin looking to be deflowered by a kind gentleman. It was amazing the rewards that could be enjoyed by concealing a tiny balloon of sheep’s gut filled with pig’s blood in the palm of the hand and puncturing it with the sharp edge of a ring at just the right moment.
In reality, she’d lost her virginity at the age of thirteen, to one of her father’s drinking pals, a labouring man over in Shoreditch. Her father’s mate had told her not to tell anyone, that it would be their special secret. So Sal had never told a soul, until she told Sawney. She went on to reveal how she’d slit her abuser’s throat with her father’s razor before emptying his pockets and heading for the bright lights. Sawney wasn’t entirely convinced that she’d been telling the truth; you couldn’t always be sure with Sal. She had a temper on her, no doubting that. He’d witnessed it often enough, usually at the expense of some luckless moll who’d made a play for one of Sal’s regulars.
The first time she’d gone with Sawney she’d asked him about the set of teeth he’d been folding into a handkerchief as he got dressed. So beguiling was her expression that Sawney told her.
After their third time together, she asked if he’d take her with him on the gang’s next job.
“I could be your lookout,” she’d told him. “No one’ll suspect a girl.” Then she had grinned and taken him in her mouth. Sawney, breathing heavily, had decided it might not be a bad idea.
Convincing the others had been the challenge. Unsurprisingly, the initial reaction of Maggett and the Ragg boys had been somewhat less than positive, but the more they went at it, the more the idea seemed to grow, because no one
Since then, they had never looked back. Sal had proved her worth. In any case, she was Sawney’s woman and Sawney was top dog and his word was law. That was all anyone needed to know.
Sawney finished his counting. The others would be along shortly to divide the spoils and plan their next sortie. With the anatomy schools well into the stride of the new term, the demand for bodies was bound to increase. Sawney felt a warm tingle of satisfaction at the thought and treated himself to a sip of porter to celebrate his good fortune and the promise of profits to come.
“You are Rufus Sawney.” It was a statement, not a question.
Sawney started in his seat. He had not heard anyone approach. He turned.
The figure behind his right shoulder was standing straight and eerily still. One hand grasped a walking cane, the other hung by his side. The face was colourless, the skin drawn so tightly over the cheekbones and jaw, it appeared almost translucent in texture. And yet it was not the outline of the face that caught Sawney’s attention but the colour of the man’s eyes. In contrast to the pale flesh that encased them, they were the deepest set, darkest eyes Sawney had ever seen. So dark it was difficult to determine where the pupils ended and the irises began. Their raptor-like gaze was made even more pronounced by a triangle of hair that was combed back from the high forehead like a sharp, pointed beak.
It occurred to Sawney that the stranger must have been seated in the adjacent booth, concealed behind the dividing wall. How long he might have been there, Sawney didn’t know. He wasn’t sure why, but he found that thought, rather like the alluring quality of the stranger’s voice, vaguely unsettling. He took a quick look round for reinforcements, but Hanratty was nowhere to be seen.
Sawney found his voice. “Who’s askin’?”
“My name is Dodd.”
Sawney didn’t like being blindsided, especially in what he considered to be the heart of his personal domain. What was that stupid sod, Hanratty, doing, letting a stranger get so close without so much as a by your leave?
“You
For a moment, Sawney was tempted to deny it, but if the stranger had been in the next booth he’d have overheard his conversation with Hanratty and would therefore have been well aware of his identity before initiating the enquiry.
“What’s it to you?” Sawney asked truculently.
“I wish to hire your services.”
“Is that right?” Sawney’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And what would that be for?”
“Procurement.”
Sawney blinked.
“That is your forte, is it not?”
“My what?”
“Your area of expertise.”
“Nah,” Sawney said quickly, shaking his head. “Sorry to disappoint you, squire. You’ve got the wrong man. Not sure I know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Really?” Dodd looked genuinely surprised. “I had it on very good authority that you
