Dodger

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Everyone who is nobody knows him.

Anyone who is anybody doesn’t.

He used to know his future; it involved a lot of

brick-lined tunnels and plenty of filth.

But when he rescues a young girl from a beating,

things start to get really messy.

Now everyone who is anyone

wants to get their hands on Dodger.

To Henry Mayhew for writing his book,

and to Lyn for absolutely

everything else

CHAPTER 1

In which we meet our hero, and the hero meets an orphan of the storm and comes face to face with Mister Charlie, a gentleman known as a bit of a scribbler

THE RAIN POURED down on London so hard that it seemed that it was dancing spray, every raindrop contending with its fellow for supremacy in the air and waiting to splash down. It was a deluge. The drains and sewers were overflowing, throwing up – regurgitating, as it were – the debris of muck, slime and filth, the dead dogs, the dead rats, cats and worse; bringing back up to the world of men all those things that they thought they had left behind them; jostling and gurgling and hurrying towards the overflowing and always hospitable river Thames; bursting its banks, bubbling and churning like some nameless soup boiling in a dreadful cauldron; the river itself gasping like a dying fish. But those in the know always said about the London rain that, try as it might, it would never, ever clean that noisome city, because all it did was show you another layer of dirt. And on this dirty night there were appropriately dirty deeds that not even the rain could wash away.

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