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Posh folks and proper society think we’re all a pack of dogs in these streets, runnin’ wild with no rhyme nor reason to our lives. But it ain’t like that. Gangs got rules same as anybody, even if they’re not proper-society’s rules, and I’ve followed ‘em since I went from swiping spuds from Eye-tie pushcarts to playing gang lookout to luring pidgeons for the boss.
Rule One is Don’t Peach, everyone knows that one. You open your gob, you get a cut throat.
Rule Two is you don’t ever kill or bad-hurt a copper or you never get seen again. Even just bruising a copper in a fair fight is dangerous – Crazy Nick kicked a peeler in the leg when they caught ‘im and they laid on their sticks; he came back from chokey silly in the head and weren’t ever the same after that.
London gangs have some rules all our own. Our Rule Three is you don’t mess with Sherlock Holmes. Most civvies are fair game, but not him. Can’t miss ‘im, a tall posh dark-haired bloke who looks like he takes tea with Her Majesty every Tuesday but throws a punch like the best scrapper in the pit. He sees things coppers can’t, and he’s got peelers for lapdogs. So we treat ‘im same as we do the peelers – hands off.
And Rule Four might as well be Rule Three – Don’t mess with Dr. Watson. He’s the bull-pup walks behind Sherlock Holmes like he was his shadow, but he walks like a bloke who’s killed a man and ain’t that cut up about it, and he’s got a pistol more times than not when they’re both down here.
We all understand that down here – those two are a boss and his bodyguard, on the proper side of the law. But I heard ‘em talk to each other, once, when I was sitting lookout for a crib-cracker as a blind beggar-boy; couldn’t see ‘em good but I heard ‘em fine. That’s not how bosses talk to their lieutenants – that ain’t even how posh gentlemen pals talk to each other. It was more like brothers talking (brothers who didn’t hate each other’s guts), where if you hurt one you’re as good as dead if the other catches you.
Now the trouble was, when Dr. Watson's by ‘isself there’s nought to remember him by – regular-looking bloke, regular size, regular clothes – not like Holmes. When they’re together you just see Holmes. And you just don’t see one without the other, so when you see that one apart it’s out of place, hard to pinpoint. And at night everybody looks the damn same.
So that’s the only reason we River Streeters targeted that fella with the nice doctor’s bag that night. Hell, he was on our turf after dark, he might as well have worn a “ransom me” sign round his neck. Musta gotten lost, only doctor-types in our streets is the drunk quacks what take care o’ the knapped whores or sell cures for the clap. Shoulda known when he fought back like a pit-scrapper hisself, took five of us to knock him down. And we really shoulda known when he snapped that he was Dr. John Watson, the associate of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Except that when he’s the fourth pidgeon that week who said he was a pal of Sherlock Holmes to try to scare us into letting ‘im go you’re not gonna believe ‘im are you?
Me mam always said I had the smarts to be a gang chief if I didn’t get meself hanged first, that I was good at smelling trouble coming. Maybe that’s why I was uneasy about us bunging him in the hole – even half-naked and shaking and beaten, he was calm and quiet as a gentleman when he talked to us. I wondered, see. Mebbe this one really was who he said he was.
I looked harder at him, down there scrunched up like a corpse. Ordinary-looking bloke. But I’d seen ‘im before, I was sure of it. Then I remembered where.
I can’t read for toffee, but I got a friend reads them crime stories in the Strand to us so we can get a good laugh from ‘em. The Sherlock Holmes ones got pictures, and damned if thissun wasn’t the spit-image of that ordinary-looking bloke behind Himself.
I felt meself go cold, thinking of what Himself would do to all of us if it turned out we’d nobbled ‘is bull-pup.
Big Jake would knife me if I left without lettin’ him know, and if it was nothing, and he caught up with me. But he wouldn’t listen to me would he, I was a pidgeon-herder who was just shaving-age. If I left and it was nothing, it was the knife. But if I didn’t leave and it was something, it was the rope.
I did the right thing, and got the hell out of there, went to one of my hiding-holes.
Mam was right. Turns out I left an hour before the peelers swarmed the place like hornets and caught a bunch of the gang, Big Jake too. And it was that Dr. Watson in the hole.
Big Jake broke Rule Number Four; so if they don’t hang him it’s prison for years and years for that bastard.
Won’t he be surprised when he sees who’s running the River Street gang now.