Chapter Fifteen #2
Very much aware of how tightly Phoebe was hanging onto his coat tails, he scanned the assembled faces for that of the man he wanted.
It took a while in so crowded a hostelry, but he finally spotted him lounging at a table in a far corner, a flagon of ale in front of him and his battered straw hat pushed far back on his balding head.
He appeared deep in conversation with a burly cove in a black coat and cocked hat seated with his back to the room.
Towing Phoebe after him, Gabriel shouldered his way through the crowd and approached the table.
Abner O’Hanlon, Gabriel’s fence, spotted them coming, his dark, beady eyes fixing on Gabriel more than a little avariciously, and no doubt wondering what gewgaws he might have hidden about his person.
The cove he’d been talking to rose with a grunt and sloped off into the crowd, keeping his back turned as though he didn’t want Gabriel to see his face.
There were a lot of men like that here. Men who liked to keep themselves to themselves and took immediate offense if you looked at them for more than a second or two, suspecting you might be in the pay of the Runners.
Not that a Runner would dare to show his nose even on the outer edge of the rookery.
Far too dangerous for them. So the rookery criminals were in the main left to themselves. Which suited Gabriel to perfection.
He sat down in the chair the other man had so recently vacated and felt it shift and creak under him.
Probably wood-wormed. With a nod, he indicated to Phoebe to take a seat on the high-backed bench beneath a very small and dirty window.
Instinct must have told her the best way to behave, for she perched on the edge of the seat and hung her head in a manner indicative of a wish not to be noticed.
Just as a boy should in a place like this.
“Guv’nor,” Abner said, with a grin that showcased his alarming lack of teeth.
“Ain’t seen you for a while. Bin takin’ your lurries to some other hedge, have you?
” He wiped his hand across his long, hooked nose, handily removing the drip on the end of it.
“Nah, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.
But don’t go expectin’ any favors from me after leavin’ me high an’ dry fer so long. ”
Gabriel grinned, conscious of the fact that he himself possessed an extremely well-cared-for set of teeth, hardly in keeping with the locality.
“I just haven’t had any business for you in a while.
” He stretched out his long legs and glanced at Phoebe, who hadn’t moved, but whom he could sense listening to every word that was being said.
Right at the start of his endeavor, he’d come to the conclusion that trying to speak like the inhabitants of the Rookery was out of the question.
He’d only have sounded silly and fake and they’d have realized straightaway and not been pleased about it.
So instead, he lowered his voice and roughened it as much as he could, but hung onto the grammar he’d been brought up with.
No one so far had questioned him, and if they did, he planned to say he’d been educated at Christ’s Hospital, that London institution not far from St Paul’s which chose to educate poor but bright boys, often for army or navy posts.
They might well be deeply offended that he’d decided his alter ego had attended their hallowed portals.
“That so?” Abner said. “Sayin’ as I b’lieve you, p’raps if you’ve somethin’ good fer me terday, I might see my way to an exchange of some sort.” He rubbed thumb and fingers together.
Gabriel screwed up his face as though considering this offer.
“I might have,” he said, as noncommittally as possible.
It didn’t do to come out with what one had, or wanted, straightaway with men like Abner who were always out to squeeze the last penny out of you in a deal.
But he was used to haggling now, and Abner knew it.
The fence’s beady eyes roamed the room as though he thought there just might be someone amongst the crowd who would take it into their head to steal any money or goods if they were to make an exchange here in the tap room of the tavern.
Not that they ever did. That would have been foolish.
Abner never went anywhere unarmed and had eyes as sharp as an eagle.
Gabriel controlled a chuckle. Every single one of the occupants of the Rat’s Castle, from the small boys squeezing between the men at the bar down to the old man snoring in a chair by the hearth would cheerfully have cut their throats for what he had in his pocket.
Best not to tell Phoebe that, though. She looked frightened enough already.
“Not here,” Abner said. “You an’ your boy, get up an’ leave an’ I’ll give you five minutes and foller. My place. Same as usual. Make damn sure you ain’t follered by no one.”
Gabriel jerked his head at Phoebe. “Come on, lad. Gotta move. Now.”
This time he made no attempt to check she had hold of his coat, but without looking back hoped she was following him.
Fear was probably fixing her to his back like a limpet on a seaside rock, but he wasn’t about to look and check, much as he wanted to.
That would have looked odd in a place where boys were ten-a-penny and easily replaceable.
Once they were out in the street he paused to let her come up beside him. “Where are we going now?” she asked, keeping her voice down as it was still busy. “And who was that awful man?”
He grinned. “Abner O’Hanlon, my fence. I don’t do business in there though.
No one with any sense does. Too many criminals who’d think nothing of cutting your throat for a shilling, and we’ve got more than a shilling on us.
We’re going to his place.” He paused. “At least we’ll be off the streets. This way and keep close.”
He led the way along the bit of Ivy Street they’d not yet traversed and out onto Dyot Street, passing, as they went, gin shops so crowded they were overflowing into the street.
There was always somewhere you could drown your sorrows for a few pennies in St Giles.
Not that he’d ever done so, although, on occasion, he’d taken a drink with Abner.
Especially in the early days of their business arrangement.
Abner lived alone on the top floor of a rickety building in Plumbtree Street, a slightly, but not by much, superior area of the Rookery. This road opened up onto Broad Street which in turn became High Holborn, so perhaps that had something to do with its attempted air of gentility.
At least it was a little less crowded with men who looked as though they might at any moment offer a challenge to those slightly better dressed than themselves.
People with their own boots, for example, so, on the whole less inclined to want to steal the ones you were wearing.
And the road was also less filthy, as it had a bit of a slope to it so rain had a chance to clear it from time to time.
Abner’s building was halfway down on the left at number 6, where the street narrowed into nothing more than a noisome alley.
Gabriel pushed open a door from which all paint had long ago peeled, and started up the twisting staircase in a jog.
Behind him the clump of Phoebe’s boots on the creaking treads seemed oddly loud.
Perhaps it was due to her enthusiasm, but he was feeling prepared to do some more sleuthing.
And, once their deal was done, what better place to start than with Abner, a man who knew not just the rookery but the surrounding area like the back of his hand.
Up until now any trail his real mother might have left twenty-three years ago had long gone cold, but, now he had the revised description of her, he felt a renewed zeal.
Perhaps a new pair of eyes and a new brain to puzzle his mystery out might help.
And Abner had lived in St Giles all his life, the rather bizarre product of his Irish father, hence his surname, and a mother of French Huguenot descent.
Whether that made him Protestant or Catholic, Gabriel had no idea, but he was that rare thing, a trustworthy fence.
And the fact that he also knew an awful lot about the rookery and the surrounding slightly more salubrious streets had drawn Gabriel to him in the first place.
But fruitlessly, as the description he’d been working with had been all wrong.
On every narrow landing they passed closed doors before finally reaching the top.
Only one door here as Abner had the whole of the top floor, or rather the attic space, in the house.
Taking the tail end of a piece of grubby string, he gave it a pull which lifted the latch on the inside, and let himself in.
Phoebe followed behind him.