concerning murders and executions—with which he had been forcibly fed. Johnny knew a few additional facts of his own: it was in the Saracen’s Head that Nicholas Nickleby had met the one-eyed Wackford Squeers.
Dickens, who’d started out as a newspaperman, was Johnny’s idol. He had been introduced to him at school by Mr Stanley, otherwise known as Moggy. The English teacher had returned from the Great War with an artificial leg which his pupils took to be mahogany. As Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend would have said, he was “a literary man—with a wooden leg.” Moggy’s lessons became the highlight of the week. Dickens’ stories were funny and scary and he was writing about the place where they lived. He had walked the same streets, passed the same buildings, seen the same things. He made Johnny want to be a journalist. Even today, a part of him still could not believe he was writing for the newspaper that Dickens had once edited.
His most treasured possession was a mildewed set of Dickens’ novels that he’d found one Saturday afternoon on a second-hand bookstall in Farringdon Road. He’d paid for it with the money he had made hanging around Collins’ Music Hall on Islington Green with Matt, collecting discarded programmes and selling them on at bargain prices to the punters going in for the next show: the better the clothes, the lower the discount. He’d continued faithfully working his way through the set all the way through school and college.
Dickens’ work provided a living map of the capital. He did not care if it was out of date; the characters lived on in his mind and the echoes reverberated each time he visited a location which had featured in one of the novels. The Old Bailey, for example, had been built on the site of Newgate prison; in the confines of its stuffy courtrooms, whiling away the hours as lawyers argued and judges jawed, Johnny could not help but recall Dickens’ “horrible fascination” with the gaol which featured in Barnaby Rudge; in whose condemned hold Fagin awaited his end; and where, in Great Expectations, Pip viewed the Debtors’ Door through which doomed culprits were led to be hanged.
It was inconceivable to Johnny that anyone could be bored by Dickens; but Matt—lulled by Moggy’s droning and the hissing of the gas-lamps—would invariably drift off to sleep. The English master took a sadistic pleasure in twisting Matt’s ear as slowly as he could, seeing how far he could go without waking him, and then, having fully regained his attention, dragging him to his feet and rapping him on the knuckles with the edge of the ruler, all the while continuing to read. Moggy never lost his place; Matt never made a sound.
By now, Johnny was drawing near to the Rolling Barrel—a favourite watering hole for many of Matt’s colleagues. The pub was said to have derived its name from a local legend: the site was apparently notorious for a gang of tearaways who used to snatch unsuspecting little old ladies off the street, stuff them in a barrel and roll them down the hill.
Finally he reached St Sepulchre’s churchyard and the Viaduct Tavern came into view, just across the road on the corner of Giltspur Street and Newgate Street.
A Victorian gin palace glittering with cut glass, painted mirrors and plush seats, its regulars were mostly off-duty postmen from the General Post Office in King Edward Street. The ornate clock behind the bar told Johnny he was five minutes early.
It was only when he had been served and wriggled his way through the crowd—without spilling more than a few drops of Ind Coope Burton—that he saw Matt sitting alone at one of the small, round tables at the back. His friend was staring morosely into the empty glass in front of him.
“Penny for them.”
Matt looked up. His handsome face, white with exhaustion, did not bother to smile. The liver-coloured welts under his eyes seemed to have deepened.
“Evening. One of those for me?”
“Who else?”
Johnny handed him a pint. He downed half of it in three gulps.
“That’s better.”
“Bitter, actually.”
“Jack the Quipper strikes again.” Matt drained his glass. “Refill?”
“Hold your horses—what’s the rush?”
“D’you want another or not?”
“Go on then.”
Johnny watched, concerned, as his friend lurched off towards the bar, the mass of bodies miraculously parting before him like the Red Sea. Matt was too big to argue with. It looked as though he’d downed a few while he was waiting.
With Lizzie’s words of the previous evening running through his mind, Johnny lit a cigarette and leaned back on the banquette, watching the smoke spiral towards the high, intricately patterned ceiling. Its once white mouldings were now stained the yellow of bad teeth.
“Here we are.” Matt suddenly reappeared with two glasses, took a slurp from one and smacked his lips. “I needed that.” He flashed a grin that was half-grimace. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise.” Impatient as ever, Johnny cut to the chase: “So, what have you got to tell me?”
“Nothing about a cop dying, if that’s what you mean. I checked the Occurrence Book.”
“Oh.” Johnny could not keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“I told you yesterday, I haven’t heard anything.”
It wasn’t like Matt to clam up this way. One of the things he loved about police work was the range of characters it brought him into contact with—the suspected burglar who turned out to be a doctor on his way to deliver a child at three in the morning; the incontinent woman who wandered the streets in a coat made from the pelts of her pet cats; the boy who thought he was a Number 15 bus. Usually he couldn’t wait to describe his latest odd encounter to Johnny—but not tonight. Clearly there was something else that he needed to say, something he could not say to anyone else.
Whenever Matt needed advice, Johnny was invariably his first port of call. He’d always been clever, and since he’d gone into journalism he’d begun to build up an impressive network of informants and experts and people who owed him favours. His contacts book, scrupulously maintained and augmented throughout his career, was one of his most prized possessions.
Resisting the urge to fire questions at his friend, Johnny took a pull on his drink and waited. But it seemed Matt still wasn’t ready to get to the point:
“On the other hand, there’s been quite a bit of talk about your friend Mr Simkins,” he stalled.
“Go on,” coaxed Johnny.
“Mrs Shaw—the murderer’s wife—killed herself last night. They found her this morning. It looks as though she drank a bottle of bleach.”
Johnny put down his glass. He couldn’t imagine a more agonising death; her vital organs dissolving bit by bit in the chlorine. As if she had not been in enough pain already, what with her husband confessing to the murder of Margaret Murray. Murder rarely involved just one victim.
“I feel sick,” he said.
“Me too,” said Matt. “Back in a tick.”
He certainly looked queasy as he picked his way through the crowd, making a beeline for the gents. Matt was not squeamish—in his job he could not afford to be—and
