The smell of beef, mutton and apple-sauce comes strongly through the door when opened; trotter and bacon, stewed tripe and onions, for the Holly Bush Tavern is a chop-house. Straight-backed wooden seating is arranged in boxes, in order that a group of diners might enjoy a modicum of privacy for their meal, smoke, or game of draughts or dominoes. The table linen is blue and white. On the wall by each box is a rack into which customers can slot their hats, hanging them upside down by the brims. A plate of mutton chops proves to be eightpence, with potatoes and carrots at twopence; Davy asks for bread and Gloucestershire cheeses and buttered scones at extra, and half-pints of porter to wash it all down with. Two-pronged forks are brought along with their plates. The hot food is well-cooked and more than palatable.

Davy objects to Oliver's company not in the slightest, asking him how he does and about his current state of affairs. Having witnessed an examination and diagnosis first-hand, he shows a good deal of curiosity about his work. "You make a tidy living at it, then," he says, as he munches.

"Comfortable, but as much at the moment from an advanced inheritance while I build up the practice, I'm not ashamed to say. My uncle put my name forward to most of my first patients, and I'm fortunate that their admiration for him extends to me by proxy. But I've managed a fair number of personal recommendations since then."

"Word soon gets about if a feller's good at what he does. Ain't no use for those what can't afford him, though."

"Anyone can afford me."

Davy grins in a very crude fashion. "Really? Do a lot of business in Hyde Park, do you?"

Oliver rolls his eyes. "I don't wonder that you're a friend of Jack's. I feel as though it's him who I'm sitting here with. I ask people for what they have," he adds. "What I charge the patients who can easily afford it makes up for what I lose elsewhere."

"There's a lot of 'em about the Rats' Castle what ain't got nothing."

"Then, that's what they'll be asked to pay." Oliver pursues a small potato around the plate, and spears it. He eats a few mouthfuls, then puts down his fork. "If anyone needs a doctor," he says, "send a message to me. If I'm not at home, my housekeeper will accept it and tell me as soon as possible. I'll come. I give you my word."

Davy pulls a foot up onto the bench, resting the crook of his elbow on his knee and studying Oliver, the smile still hovering about the corners of his mouth. He could be taken for a boy squatting there, but for his knowing manner. "I said you was a rum one, and you're definitely that. But if I wasn't strictly a ladies' man, I might be starting to catch on to what it is that makes you worth fretting about so much."

"I think that I fret about Jack a good deal more than he does me. If I were all that I supposedly am, I should have reported what I know, a long time ago. But instead, I've always found myself protecting him."

"Jack can look after himself."

"So can I. But I don't 'risk my arse', as he once put it to me, on a regular basis."

"You ain't got any idea, have you?" Davy says. "You really ain't."

"About what?"

"Ain't you never wondered how you get home from some of them kens what you get called to without having been nobbled?"

"I do look over my shoulder from time to time when I think that it's necessary. I'm not quite as green as I used to be, despite what certain people think. What are you trying to tell me?"

"Only that Jack's fond of putting it about who you are, and that if any bludger gets ideas about laying a finger on you, he'll peach 'em all the way up to the Lord Chief Justice. Or he'll dewskitch 'em, personal, like."

"That's absurd."

"That's what Mags Lewis said, more or less."

"Who's that?"

"Feller with a broken nose, and some teeth what he misses something terrible."

Oliver stares at him for a moment, then shakes his head. "Jack said that he'd peach?"

Davy nods. "Put the finger on all 'of em, if he got pushed to it."

"But he can't bear informers."

"No, he can't."

"If Jack led the police to any of the men he knows, it would make him an outcast. It would seal his own fate. Nothing would stop their friends peaching him in return, and he'd be sentenced within a week. He'd need to be mad to do something like that," he says, and then stops, as these last words seem to echo over and over again, as if coming through sleep, or water. He recalls having a thought akin to this very recently, and, moreover, he remembers who it concerned.

"Some fellers go mad with it, and some go madder than others," Davy says, and turns his attention innocently to the fat on his chops.

Oliver feels a little warm about the collar and brow, not least because his personal madness over the past days has consisted of the recurring thoughts of Jack that his head has been full of; Jack's quick fingers that had led up to their teasing, enticing kiss. Although nothing explicit has been said, he finds himself glancing from face to face around the tavern, searching for signs of a reaction. Relief steals cautiously over him as he determines that their conversation is going either unheard, or possibly just ignored. This is not the world that he's accustomed to, where every minute of a man's life is under constant scrutiny, and he might risk setting off an endless round of gossip, discussion and speculation with a mere word or gesture. Working men, as make up many of the tavern's regulars, simply have more practical matters with which to concern themselves most of the time than strangers' business. Davy's joke about Hyde Park had been precisely that in context, but those that circulate about the Guards, with their weapons in hand, are more than insinuation. The young soldiers, like certain others of their class, are said to care little for propriety.

"Exactly what has Jack said? About madness, that is?"

"Jack says a fair bit after he's been on the gin."

"And does it trouble you?" Oliver asks, hesitantly.

"Why should it? It don't make no difference to the quality movables what he brings me. I always thought that one thing he likes about fellers was that most of 'em don't want him to make the living arrangements permanent like what some of the girls do, anyway. But I wouldn't be much of a businessman if I was to turn down cash just 'cause my source is as partial to cock as he is to cock alley."

Oliver has the perception of watching himself sink lower and lower in his seat under the weight of embarrassment. Davy's grin reappears, and he fishes in his coat and pushes something square and silver across the table. "While we're talking of movables. Nice keepsake what I suddenly found in my pocket while we was working. Can't imagine how it happened to get there."

With abject horror, and greater speed than he's ever realized that he's capable of, Oliver whisks out his handkerchief and drops it cleanly over the object, which he just barely registers as a snuff-box before it vanishes from public display. Throwing a severe frown in Davy's direction, he lifts the hem with thumb and forefinger, and steals a glimpse beneath. The box is weighty, with a relief of exotic flora on the lid, and it comes as no great surprise to him that it might set light fingers twitching. "Then you're the only one of the two of us who can't."

"Fetch seven or eight shillings, that will. Sort of thing what finds its way back in the end to the cove what lost it. There's some hock-shops in Covent Garden what the toffs make a bee-line for after they've been robbed to look for their own goods."

Oliver turns the snuff-box upside down under cover of the handkerchief. Immediately, he notes that the bottom bears a somewhat worn emblem. He pushes it a little further into the open, until he makes out the rampant lions of the East India Company, bearing up their shield and staffs. "This is army issue," he says, a little surprised. "Or privately engraved for a veteran."

Davy shrugs. "Family trinket, p'rhaps."

"Perhaps," Oliver agrees, yet for some reason he isn't immediately believing of the fact. He moves the box around the table cloth, trying to angle it into the light, then grasps at it, the letters that he sees suddenly making him far more intrigued than concerned about their pickings. The owner's name has been engraved on the box just as it is on the case of his own watch, but it identifies him as one Thomas James, First Bengal European Regiment, rather than one of the paternal Manns family as expected.

Oliver feels more and more curious. It stretches his imagination to its limits to picture Manns as hoarding sentimental mementos, yet he wonders if the snuff-box owner is, or was, a relation. He wouldn't object in the slightest to the opportunity to pry open the cupboard of their mark's unknown past a little way.

"Davy," he says, "may I ask another favour?"

"For another sovereign," Davy says, straight-faced. When Oliver begins to reach for his wallet once more, he laughs out loud, and darts out a hand to stay Oliver's own. "You might not be as green as you was, mate, but you've still got a way to go. What can I do for you?"

"Don't sell this snuff-box just yet. I want to investigate it further."

"All right. Where d'you intend to start?"

"Why not at East India House?" Oliver says. It seems a simple enough matter.

This proves to be not entirely true, but he finds himself no less astonished by his discoveries.

-oOo-

Numbers eleven to twenty-one Leadenhall Street are a hive of activity. Civil, military and naval personages mingle on a daily basis in these corridors of power that oversee a full half of the world's trade and a fifth of its population, and make it difficult not to be at least a little awed by the notion. South, east, and west and up many staircases from the large circular hall are a multitude of offices and apartments: the Grand Court Room; the Room for the Committee of Correspondence; the Old and New Sale-rooms. Portrayed in white marble on a plinth, Britannia herself reposes on a globe amongst the waves, while Asia, Africa and India pay homage, these respectively leading a camel, presenting an open casket of jewels, and with a hand resting upon the head of a great lion. Oliver ascends to his appointment at the military department beneath the painted gazes of the Marquesses Cornwallis and Wellesley. Other canvasses depict far-off coastal scenes of Madras and Calcutta, with lines of East Indiamen dashing towards them in billowing sail to claim their treasures. Everything is intended to speak of the exotic; of conquest and splendour, so as to attract the Honourable Company's shareholders.

At the first floor, he asks his way and is hurried efficiently down many passages towards the back of the building and finally left at a sturdy door with a brass nameplate. A knock, a slightly muffled reply from within, and then he enters into a wood-panelled room packed floor to ceiling with countless volumes and an equal quantity of letters both opened and unopened. The clerk, a Mr Hanley, greets him from behind an equally strewn desk and invites him to be seated. Even here amongst the paperwork, Oliver imagines that he can smell cloves and cinnamon; musk and ginger.

Hanley reads from a letter that Oliver recognizes as being his own.

"Your correspondence has been passed to myself as chief clerk, Doctor Brownlow. I trust that you're happy for me to assist you?"

"Of course, Mr Hanley. I appreciate your sparing me the time."

"Well, I hope to be able to provide you with at least a few answers to your questions. Are you a doctor of medicine, sir? Or of theology or law?"

"Medicine. I practice in St George, Holborn."

"I see. Is the man of ours that you wish to enquire about a relative of your own? A patient?"

Oliver shifts in his seat. "A patient," he says, "indirectly. I'm asking on behalf of his widow, having been physician to the family for some years, and quite close. The lady, Mrs James, has requested that I represent her."

"Ah." Hanley emits a small sound, and inclines his head respectfully. At the crown of his hair, there's a sprinkling of grey amongst the dark, as if dust has settled on him as it does on the highest shelves. "Eheu fugaces labuntur anni. Please do offer my condolences to the relatives."

"It was some years ago now, sir. In fact, she and the living children have always believed her husband killed in battle. She's a proud woman and has never been one to accept charity, but the family have unfortunately fallen on difficult financial times, and she wishes to know whether he was registered for a pension under the Lord Clive Fund. It would make her eligible for assistance."

Oliver has formulated his story carefully, and rehearsed it in his mind several times before satisfying himself that it sounds plausible. He feels a little guilty in using the badge of his trade in his mild deception, but the fact remains that there's a certain degree of respect awarded to it almost by default; it spreads about him like a mantle, invisible to the eye but unquestionable by the mind. Trust is immediately placed in Doctor Brownlow and his word, despite his relative youth, that a mere Mr Brownlow would find more difficult to gain.

Hanley nods again, although now there seems to be a slight doubtfulness about it. "It's certainly quite possible that he might have been accepted to the Fund even if he were a common soldier. A good many deserving men who find themselves in need are. The company prides itself in caring for our employees, military and civilian. But it would be difficult to provide you with access to the right papers, Doctor. We close files to the general public; the financially-related, personal records... The best option for the lady would be to submit a letter of application to us. We would be happy for you to assist her as advocate, but..." He lets another sentence hang, the remainder of the words implied.

Oliver feels his brows pucker faintly, although he had half-anticipated the response. All is not lost, however. "I can understand that," he answers. "Perhaps I might be able to look at the muster rolls for the regiment in the meantime, to confirm the details?"

"That would also be difficult. They would be restricted by the Keeper of Records."

"Even the casualty lists would be of use, I think. The family might be able to gain a sense of closure at last, if he were listed as one of the fallen."

Hanley looks quite unhappy. He shakes his head. Oliver's frustration is only compounded by the knowledge that the man is simply carrying out his duties. He considers pressing further, then changes his mind and exhales, looking across to where through the window he can see the roofs of the butchers' market through the dark afternoon drizzle from a forest of firing chimney-pots. He turns back. "Then I should apologize for wasting your time, Mr Hanley."

"On the contrary, Doctor Brownlow, I think that it's you who deserves my apology. I wish that I could assist you."

"Is there no way, sir?"

The other man spreads his hands, somewhat helplessly. "But, please," he adds, "encourage your patient - Mrs James? - to contact the company. We'll try to confirm her husband's death during service and whether or not he was in potential receipt of an allowance. I'll be more than glad to look into it personally."

Standing outside in the passage again, Oliver considers his options. Short of finding a more unscrupulous employee than the polite Hanley, and offering him a monetary incentive to permit him a glance at the papers that he wants, there appear to be few. Despite everything, some remaining strength of character still recoils at this last idea. Their plans have not been affected, and, indeed, are progressing with a quite shocking ease, yet he cannot help the disappointed feeling that he's failed to learn something that would have interested him a great deal. He's built up an appetite, only for it to be left unsatisfied.

He's about to commence retracing his steps, when he hears a gentle, slightly Irish voice saying, from somewhere behind him, "Doctor Brownlow? It is Oliver Brownlow, isn't it? My son's friend?"

Oliver turns to see a tall, elegantly rangy man standing there. He wears a neat black cravat fixed with a pearl pin, and has a long nose that supports a pair of wire spectacles. Smiling, he continues, "I feel sure that it was not so very long ago that we encountered one another, although briefly. You might remember me. Stephen Treacy."

Surprised but pleased, Oliver reaches out to shake the hand that he's offered. "Yes, sir, of course. We met at Martin's wedding last year. It's good to see you again."

"As it is you, although I must say that I'm wondering what it is that brings you here." Treacy leans closer. "A change of profession? Are you after joining up?"

Oliver returns his smile, unable to help feeling somewhat lighter at heart. "I'd like to see the Orient one day, sir, but I'm not sure that I have the mettle to wear the uniform. I think that Martin and I are more suited to serving Britain with linctuses than with rifles."

"And it's proud he is of his vocation, as should you be. But I shouldn't have thought to see you in my department, or at the India-house at all. Is it a function that you've been invited to, or are you about a business matter?"

Oliver outlines his predicament. Treacy listens to the tale, and then taps the side of his nose in a confidential manner. "All things are possible, Doctor Brownlow, when the right doors are opened. And sometimes it is merely a matter of asking the man who holds the keys. The names on our casualty lists belong to men who are proud of their scars, or whom God has taken beyond caring, and I do not see the hurt in a trustworthy man wanting to assist an impoverished woman. We will find out whether I can use my influence on your behalf."

"Mr Treacy," Oliver says, sincerely, "I hope that I might properly thank you for this in time."

"A good deed done for a family friend is thanks enough." Treacy holds up a finger as if to say, 'wait, please', raps smartly upon the door that Oliver has just quitted, and enters. There is some quiet conversation within. Several minutes later, he emerges, smiling once more, and beckons. "Come with me now."

In a little high-windowed room located at the dead end of a corridor that overspills bound files, Oliver is presented with a junior clerk who is instructed to offer him any assistance required. He exchanges another warm handshake with Stephen Treacy before the other takes his leave. His contrition at lying so blatantly to the father of a good friend almost makes him decide to reveal the existence of the snuff-box after all and simply state that it came to him by way of a benefactor - which, taken in a certain way, is not entirely untrue - but this sudden change in his story would, he's forced to admit, cause a good deal of surprise and perhaps suspicion in even a trusting acquaintance. In the centre of the room is a large square table where he might sit to read.

Having committed the box to memory, Oliver realizes that he has no idea of the age of it, only that it had seemed not overly worn and of reasonably modern design. He decides to begin with the lists from the turn of the century and move forward. The young clerk climbs ladders and fetches boxes from the tallest shelves. The room only possesses one lamp, and Oliver's eyes begin to ache as he ploughs doggedly through the campaigns of Bengal, Madras, Nepal and the Pindari War. The names listed as 'killed' and 'wounded' make for sober reading, though not as much as those 'missing', as if they were linens gone astray at the laundry; simply lost in native territory without trace. By the time that Oliver reaches the senior officer's report regarding the final storming of the fortress at Bhurtpore, the strings of names feel as though they're shifting and blurring into one, and he's approaching the point of abandoning his efforts when he finds himself reading the name Corporal Thos. James amongst them. There! He blinks himself awake, scanning it again. A common enough name, yet he feels a leaping conviction that this is their man. Craning over the words, he traces a finger across the page, but stops when he reaches the last column.

"Mr Abbott?" he asks, addressing the clerk.

The young man turns from his work. "Yes, sir?"

"Have I been right in supposing that the word 'ran' beside a name indicates a soldier who abandoned his post?"

"Yes, sir. Ran from battle. Some of them come back and are court-martialled, sir, and some they never see again."

Oliver raises his head from the paper. "Then I think that the man that I'm looking for deserted," he says, in surprise. Could this be the simple reason for the reluctance that Richard Manns has always had to discuss his past - family shame brought on by a near relative who left the army dishonourably? But hundreds must have done so, whether for good reasons or poor. And if the embarrassment were so acute, why keep such a reminder of it? Oliver rubs at the back of his neck, trying to ease the stiffness there, still bemused by the affair. The name, with the smear beside it, lies mutely; no further secrets to give up. He would not make very much of a detective, he thinks.

It's a linear train of reasoning that follows: detectives and police; the police station; the police newspaper. A little more than an hour later, Oliver is seated at another table, this time in the Divisional Clerks' office in the station next door to Bow Street Police Courts. Before him is an archive of the Police Gazette's Supplement, issued fortnightly and retrieved for his citizenly perusal from a store across the passage by a burly and cheerful caricature of a constable: absentees and deserters from His Majesty's Forces for the months beginning June, 1826.

This time he finds his information almost at once. Retrieving his small pocket-book and a pencil, he copies the notice onto the last pages in case any further research on it is needed elsewhere. Only then does he re-read it in order to absorb it fully.

DESERTERS FROM HIS MAJESTY'S SERVICE.
On and after this date, until further notice, the Reward given by the War Office for the Apprehension of a Deserter will be TWENTY SHILLINGS instead of TEN SHILLINGS, the object being to prevent the crime of Desertion, and to hold out a greater inducement for the recovery of Deserters to His Majesty's Service.

DATE OF DESERTION 17 June 1826
NAME Thomas JAMES
REGIMENT 1st Bengal European Regiment
AGE 28 years 1 month
TRADE Commercial clerk
BIRTHPLACE Burnley, Lancashire
DESCRIPTION 5ft. 9in. high, fresh complexion, dark brown hair, grey eyes
MARKS AND REMARKS Deserted February 1825, returned to duty, regimental court martial, charged with desertion and theft of uniform and musket, sentenced 4 mos. solitary confinement. D on left shoulder. Deserted from Bhurtpore, India and absconded in June 1826. ROBBERY AND MALICIOUSLY WOUNDING: charged with robbing and seriously assaulting the now deceased Cpt. W. LEES.

Twenty shillings! A fair and generous price, for information about deserters. And Thomas James was - perhaps still is - no common deserter, but a criminal, and a despicable one at that. Oliver is shocked. He would almost be able to sympathize with the desire to leave behind such a dubious connection did he not, privately, question whether the taste for violence is common to the family to one degree or another. Suddenly he finds himself wavering, unsure. Perhaps his line of thinking is no more than the wildest speculation, there has never been any mystery, and Manns simply acquired the box as an attractive purchase, ignorant of its past. Doubtless any warrant for James's apprehension and arrest is still valid. If the man lives, he must now be in his mid-fifties. His life for almost thirty years must have been spent as Jack or Davy spend theirs, forever glancing behind him, save that while they - or Oliver himself - might face several years in the 'Stone Jug', James's stay at Newgate might easily be a short one followed by a few steps upward and a quick drop.

He calls the stout constable over. "What does it mean, mentioned this way; 'D beneath left shoulder'? A former sailor's tattoo? Are identifying marks on a soldier recorded in the papers of the court martial?"

"They brand 'em, sir."

"Brand them?"

The constable puts down his stovepipe hat on the table and squats briefly upon another chair, seemingly glad of the opportunity to take the weight off his feet. He scratches his whiskers. "Yes, sir. When the fellows are charged with deserting their posts. It's a thing with pins in it - making the shape of a 'D', like - and they put it in ink or gunpowder and brand 'em. There's another one, 'B C', for 'Bad Character'. It marks 'em for life, sir, so's that if they jump a ship and make their way home, any man that hires 'em knows what they are, or what they was."

"Is it always put in the same place, then?"

"Sometimes it's on the hands. Which is worse for 'em if you ask me, 'cause it's all the harder to hide. The ones that have it on the shoulders or the chest just make sure they don't take off their shirts when anyone who cares might be watching -" Abruptly, he stops, regarding Oliver with mild concern on his face. "If you don't mind me asking, sir, are you out of sorts? For a moment there, you looked right... well, like a fellow that's seen a ghost."

Quickly and carefully, Oliver re-arranges his features. He's aware that he must have been staring at the constable with the stunned intensity of someone who has, indeed, witnessed a phantom, or possibly a murder. He clears his throat. "No," he says, "I'm quite all right. I was just a little surprised."

The constable looks disappointed as he realizes that the visitor's attention has already traversed elsewhere. He rises with the slight exhalation of one whose considerable strength nevertheless does not quite compensate for his bulk, and makes to move off once again in the pursuit of justice. "Well," he says, "you let me know if I can help you with anything else today."

"Thank you," Oliver answers, mechanically. He manages to maintain a neutral expression, but inside, his mind is falling over itself.

Such a harmless comment, and yet, slowly at first, and then all of a rush, like bacteria dividing under the microscope, the entire story begins to take shape. The existence of the snuff-box; the wiped slate of Manns's background; his refusal to disrobe, as if he wished to hide some blemish. Oliver has always failed to place the accent that he catches playing about Manns's words, but now he recalls with sudden clarity where he last heard similar speech: a fellow medical student at the university whose family originated from Wigan, and who had not entirely lost the sound of his childhood. He would be willing to wager that if Manns's tongue is particular to one Lancastrian town, it would be that of Burnley.

And then, there's the matter of the fever.

The gaseous air of Britain's marshlands with its damp green stink lays low with the ague many who live and work in its vicinity, and Oliver had been surprised at the surfacing of the illness in a man who had, by his own account, never resided in any such area but lived a strictly urban life. Now he can hardly believe that he's never thought to ask his patient, even in innocence, if he had ever travelled to the Indies. The narrow streets of Calcutta and Mathura are said to pant with fever; the heaving ports with their sultry air to be a hotbed of sweat and plague. The ague poison has been known to live and grow in the blood for years if not thoroughly purged, returning long after the patient removes themselves to healthier climates. Whether the tincture that he prescribed will prove a cure in this case has yet to be seen, but Oliver does not feel that he's wrong.

Richard Manns is a man living under a pseudonym, as much as he had ever lived under 'Oliver Twist' or Jack 'Artful Dodger'. The two of them have managed to plan, in complete ignorance, to rob another thief.

That the entire affair could be a string of outlandish coincidences is not altogether impossible, but he doesn't believe in coincidences anymore.

Before he leaves, he begs paper, envelope and wafer, and composes a short and discreet note, to be sent care of Mr Thomas King, of the Lamb and Lark inn, Aldersgate Street, and expressing the wish of an old friend from Saffron Hill that Mr Dawkins join him at his home for dinner the following evening. There, they can discuss the turn of events. His servants are now acquainted with Jack, if not exactly with what he is. Exiting the station, he walks a short distance to find a ticket porter at his post before returning to his own day. The sun is still two hours from setting when he finishes the last of his visits, but no more than a tarnished penny behind the afternoon smoke.

Oliver wends his way home to bathe before settling to a meal that he discovers a newly robust appetite for.