I’d have to find him first, though. For now, I couldn’t see him and cursed myself for losing him. I didn’t have long to spare if I wanted to make it to work on time. After a minute I spied him talking to a thin rat-faced man who had the look of a survivor. When the two men had finished speaking, Crillick moved off. That he knew where he was going was clear, for he didn’t waver or pause. I could follow him, but something told me I should speak to Ratface first.

Ratface was overseeing the loading of barrels on to a cart, but I felt his eyes on me as I walked up to him. Close up I could see his skin was pockmarked, his teeth rotten. It was nowhere near lunchtime, but when he spoke there was rum on his breath.

‘That man in the tweed,’ I said.

‘What about him?’

‘I want to know what you talked about.’

‘Want to come here and ask me my business, do you? Man’s talk ain’t for the likes of pretty little things like you. Now piss off.’

I jingled the remaining coins in my pocket, hoping to make it sound like there were more than there were. I had little enough to spare, but if I had to pay for information then so be it.

‘I don’t need all the details. The gist will do me.’

Ratface turned away and called over to the loaders who’d slackened from their work while he’d spoken to me. I needed something else to make him talk.

‘It’s for my master,’ I said. It had worked well enough to get me down here.

Ratface looked me over, weighing up who my master might be.

‘One of Black Bill’s girls, is it?’

I flinched at the name, and Ratface smiled, believing it was confirmation that he’d guessed right.

Bill Dixon was the leader of the Blackbirds, celebrated in the penny bloods as the King of St Giles. He ruled with an iron will over the Rookery’s alleys and its cathouses, its pubs and its slums. If there was any racket going from Bow to Kensington, you could be sure him and his gang were behind it. House-breaking and thieving were the Blackbirds’ special skills. But Bill wasn’t above getting his hands dirty. He wore a leather belt with a sharpened silver buckle, and word had it that his crew and enemies alike feared its gouging lash. Don’t think of Bill; you know what it leads to. But it was too late. Eustace’s face was also in my mind now – not cocky and handsome, as I liked to remember it, but swollen and purple as he fought for breath at the end of the rope.