For the next three chapters, the rating will be for a reason.

That Jack is a man of some considerable skill when it comes to the plying of his chosen trade, Oliver is thoroughly convinced, but he nevertheless endures several days of worry. If Jack were to be caught, that night of all nights - if the house were to awake, the alarm to be raised - the blame would rest squarely upon his own shoulders, unchanged by the fact that Jack had been as eager as he, and had, indeed, proposed this particular visit. Even now, on the occasional night when he fails to drift into sleep as quickly as usual and lies looking into the dark at nothing, listening to the quiet creaks and knocks of the settling house, questions and possibilities about another episode in his past have rolled on more than one occasion through his mind. If he had not volunteered to carry his uncle's books that morning...if he had not cost Nancy those few crucial seconds, at the bridge, by turning to embrace her, and she had been able to run, to a place that would give her shelter... Far down the years, the guilt knaws at him, like a cancer, that he had been the catalyst in the events that had led to her death. If Jack were to be taken, while executing the plan that they had devised together, Oliver doubts that he would be able to live with the fact. He finds himself pacing the floor a good deal, unable to rest for long periods at a time.

He also feels, frankly and undeniably, randy.

He's been without an arrangement for some time, it being something that he seems to have drifted out of the habit of seeking; something that feels as if he were no longer being quite honest with himself, nor with his potential female friends. Although he has few pangs of conscience about relieving his own needs - all that he has ever observed having convinced him that masturbation is harmless in moderation - there are limits to the satisfaction that it supplies. In the past, he's been driven to speculate whether, despite the numbing ecstasy of climax, he would not rather fuck and be prevented from spending, than achieve a release of sperm but be denied the same heart-deep joy of sliding his cock into a glove of warmth and feeling it drawn in and welcomed; of simply being cradled in the arms of a lover. Strange as it is, he fumbling like a blind man around the motions and etiquette of romantic interaction between males, Jack's unashamed desire is stoking a similar need in him.

Oliver had been eminently practical as a boy, though far from being ruled by his head; compassion had been strong in him at an early age. He'd been practical in the respect that he had never been able to understand the value in denying that which is so for the sake of politeness. Upon receiving instruction about what the sexual act entailed, through boys' talk both implied and crude, and books smuggled hurriedly from hand to hand and hidden beneath coats, he had not been overly shocked or confused, merely curious. Newly fascinated about the workings of the human body, that procreation should occur in the way that it does had seemed largely logical to him almost from the start. The most surprising thing about it had been its reported ease, and he had set out to educate himself of the finer details as fully as was possible without having gone through with the deed. At eighteen, a friend in the same straits suggested that they go together for courage to a bawdy-house, but Oliver had hesitated, fearing disease. One of the kindest and bravest women that he had ever known had been - he knew, by then, his innocence long gone - a prostitute, yet the sores and stinking genital emanations that it was bandied about were caught from fallen women filled him with horror. The prospect of satiating himself under the knowledge that the woman wanted only the coin in his pocket; that the only attraction that he had for her might be as a means to keep from starving, had, in addition, thrown cold water upon his enthusiasm. From the beginning he had felt as though the entrancing ache that he felt should be mutual.

The propensity of prostitutes to have their occupation recorded on the police books as 'milliner' or 'seamstress' is so widely known that both are almost a byword for the girls, communicated with a snigger and a wink. She had been a milliner, or the assistant of the same, with no secondary meaning; an honest girl; as soft and fragrant as a flower herself in his gaze, among the festival of ribbons, fowls and blooms that adorned every size of hat and bonnet imaginable. She had smiled so sweetly at him through the window of the little shop as he stood transfixed before it, with no suggestion that he was simply an amusement to her, that Oliver, wavering on the unsteady brink of adulthood where selfish urges vie with a man's wish for companionship, had been suddenly taken with the idea that he would like to speak to her, to sit with her a while, and know her. Astonishing himself with his impulsiveness, he had gone into the shop and asked her name. It was Polly.

They had shared the joke of how they could make a rhyme together with their names, and any remaining ice had been broken.

He had called on her after hours for two months with small gifts from his allowance: flowers, sweets, books, handkerchiefs. Sometimes they would take strolls, and once went to a tea garden, Oliver still being not altogether sure of the sorts of places that would appear decent while still affording the moments of privacy that might allow him to express himself. She had had a sweetheart who abandoned her, but, in her words, was not as kind as him. On the last day of the second month, she had led him upstairs to a garret room above the shop with a narrow wooden bedstead and a wool mattress. He had helped her to spread a blanket upon it, and they had fucked. It had been simple, so simple that Oliver could hardly believe, following that first attempt, that it had really occurred. His body had seemed to find its way and move of its own accord. More valuable than the pleasure of the scent produced by his own intimate flesh combined with another's, and that of his cock being so closely and completely enfolded, had been the first discovery that his instincts would always prove a truer path to him than what he might find written down in books.

It was during this same period in Oliver's life that he had begun to see Jack about more often than he'd been accustomed to, although whether it was a case of Jack putting in more frequent appearances, or only that he had begun to notice them more, he found impossible to determine.

In bed now and at ease for the first time that day, with the candle not yet extinguished for sleep, he lies in thought, exploring these memories in detail, watching the shadows alternately grow and die on the wall. Beyond where the light is thrown, the room melts away and vanishes with the rest of the house, leaving him alone, unconnected to the world, adrift in dark heavens all his own. Oliver stretches, flexing his spine, and allowing the vague, undefined tension that's been present to begin to uncoil; to become an undeniable erotic urge. Simply knowing at this point what is soon to follow is arousing in itself; the knowledge in his as yet still rational mind that he fully intends to touch and satisfy himself. After a time, he moves the top sheet and blankets aside and draws up his nightshirt, bunching the fabric above his stomach. The cool air in the room raises pleasurable goose-skin among the hairs on his abdomen and thighs. A light tingling begins to develop in his balls, the earliest hint of erection, and he reaches down to caress them lightly before cupping his cock in his hand, simply enjoying how it feels to hold it. That arousal drives away all modesty, humility and intellect, and it becomes a source of enormous gratification merely to possess a penis, is, he's been forced to admit, inevitable. He relaxes quietly for a time, simply letting it build, waiting as the desire begins to rise; his heart to beat a little harder.

He handles himself, slowly at first. A wonderful feeling of heaviness grows as his cock does. It's as if there's suddenly something very much present that he's usually barely aware of. The chill becomes less noticeable as he continues; he feels comfortable. By the time that he finishes, the comfort will have turned to sweat. The response of the body to sexual stimulation is akin to fever, and the mind, to delirium. He approaches and tips over the precipice of the point at which his cock moves beyond his control and continues to fill and stiffen despite any way he might try to stop it.

Oliver presses back into the pillows, liking the contrast of the cool material at the nape of his neck and the heat between his legs. He wraps his hand around his cock and slides the loose skin back and forth, delighting as always at how it simply glides over the smoothness of his glans; how, even when the latter is beyond touching with the barest fingertip, the foreskin is still gentle and perfectly suited. Perhaps the sole advantage over fucking is that he's able to watch this occurring from beginning to end, rather than only feel it. Seeing his body perform fills him with a strange, primitive pride incomparable to any other achievement.

He permits his thoughts to wander, shifting from one to another picture; some recalled, some that have only ever existed in fantasies conjured at these moments, some a mingling of both. There are things that he would not find acceptable in a calm frame of mind that seem both acceptable and attractive when aroused. Oliver sometimes has the fancy that he's leaving a theatre in Covent Garden, and a gay woman in a gaudy satin dress propositions him. Instead of politely refusing, he lets her lead him into a low alley, away from the street and respectability, deeper and deeper into the shadows until he has to grope for her in the blackness, and then he pulls her skirts up and takes her against the soot-blackened wall, hard and urgent. Often he imagines a lover not only accepting but begging for the attentions of his cock, and using the bawdiest words to do so. He would undoubtedly be shocked out of the moment were a woman to actually do this, but here, in his privacy, he craves such things.

A memory flits abruptly and unexpectedly through his mind of Jack sitting in front of him, talking about fucking and pricks. Instantly, he feels his stomach tighten and a surge of new excitement in his cock. His mental picture shifts, and suddenly it's Jack that he's watching in the sexual act, his rigid shaft rhythmically appearing from and disappearing into the woman's slippery folds; Jack whose lusty sounds his imagination is stubbornly conjuring up. Unbidden, Oliver begins to lengthen his strokes. Does Jack ever fondle himself so shamelessly, he thinks, and the image that follows, of Jack alone on his bed, thrusting his hips and fisting his stiff cock, causes the flame inside him to burn the longest and hottest that he's ever known. Jack touches the bodies of other men in ways that he never should; has taken this pleasure with them.

Oliver might have attempted to build a case in his defence. He's alone with his own nakedness, he has his hard cock in his hand, and he's urging himself closer and closer to his climax. Everything about the scenario is purely male, and he could claim only a short step from enjoying his own body to speculations about the experiences of fellow men. He could try to think of it that way, as fleeting curiosity. But he would be feigning.

His breathing grows harsher until he's huffing lightly through his nose. The time for gentle coasting on the waves of pleasure has passed now, and his want deepens. Blood throbs through his shaft, and his hand moves faster of its own accord. A deliciously wet, sticky trail is slowly emerging from the tip of his cock that heightens the sensitivity still further. Oh, more. More. Oliver grips tighter, milks harder, feeling every stroke. He remembers the teasing flicker of Jack's tongue over his, and the press of a body as strong and hard as his own, and feels an instant pull in his groin in response. His balls are beginning to tighten.

His cock pulses steadily, rhythmically; first one, then two, then one, two, three. The warmth begins to rise swiftly up his shaft - filling, coming - until he finally convulses in a white-hot rush of overwhelming feeling. He stills his hand and allows his hips to do what they wish to do and thrust madly into it as he spends warm, wet sperm onto his stomach. He feels as if he could sob in these all too short moments for the sheer relief. Even after the spurts diminish into nothingness, his cock continues to pulsate, and his body to twitch and shudder. It continues for what seems like a long while, but is, in truth, no more than a minute or so. Finally - finally, he rests.

After a time, Oliver reaches for the handkerchief waiting beside the pillow and cleans and dries himself. He'll rinse it discreetly in the wash bowl the next morning before he sends it for the laundry. The drowsiness of comfort and intense physical gratification is starting to flood his brain now. He covers his newly soft, quiescent organ with his nightshirt again and straightens the bedclothes. Then he snuffs the candle, plunging the room into the calm of night, where silence reigns and each man is alone with the most secret of his wishes and dreams.

On Wednesday, as he's making his way through an early luncheon before leaving the house, he hears from the hall the smart single rap of the postman upon the door. Presently, Sarah comes in in her clean dress, apron and cap, and with a letter on the tray. Oliver's glance at the slope of the pen that formed the address as he accepts it is habitual, but as he does so this morning, a flicker of heat stirs reflexively in his abdomen. Opening the envelope, he reads, in Jack's hand:

My dear Dr Brownlow,

I am delighted to confirm that on this past Monday I saw fit to call on our mutual acquaintance, and that my visit was altogether a great success.

I sense that our acquaintance will not be an easy man to do business with, but I have all confidence that my natural skills will prevail and I shall be able to complete the transaction in question very soon indeed.

I am, Dr and Dear Sir, Yours Truly

J Dawkins

-oOo-

In the vaulted nave of St George Bloomsbury, Oliver watches his uncle from his seat beside him on the pew bench as the older man follows the lesson. Since he was a boy, the service has been to him as much of a time to contemplate Edward Brownlow as it is God. His strong-jawed profile and silvery head inclined thoughtfully over his prayer book has always seemed to Oliver to be the same personification of dignity and wisdom that he had held in his mind in the workhouse when he imagined a true gentleman. After he had taken him into his home, his uncle had become, in Oliver's mind, more of a seat of righteousness than had a God who had seemed to have closed his eyes to countless others like him for so many years. God had once abandoned him; Edward Brownlow had cared for him unhesitatingly without paying any heed to the fact that the boy, despite being his natural great-nephew, was a stranger to him. And with this, Oliver had taken his first steps towards humanitarianism and the belief that men have a responsibility to one another that may not be dismissed with a wave to the Almighty to provide as and when he sees fit.

He wonders if it's only by coincidence that the first publisher of atheist literature in the country was a physician. The understanding of man as being at least partly an earthly organism goes a considerable way towards building compassion for that aspect in the here and now, rather than seeing suffering only as a way of fitting the soul for heaven.

The second reading ends, and he obediently accompanies the other worshippers in the response: "This is the word of the Lord. All thanks be to God."

Although now living in the parish of the second St George in Holborn, he's still affiliated with the church where he was first taken to pray, and the great baroque arches are long familiar. As a respectable and moderately wealthy man, Oliver has an obligation to attend church to set a good example to the less fortunate than he, but the Sunday Evening Prayer enables him to visit his uncle's house to dine first and spend a little much-valued time together before journeying out as a family. As they sit straight-backed, side by side, he aches with the awareness of Edward Brownlow's pride in him, the pride of a father to a son. If anything were to make him feel ashamed, it would be this weight rather than that of the scriptures.

And yet - his uncle had moved swiftly to make amends and see true justice done when Oliver was wrongly accused. When the dishonesty of the Bumbles had been discovered, his anger, usually slow to rise, had been unleashed. And, most pertinently of all, he had loved, once, hard and faithful; the fiancee of his youth had died before their wedding could ever take place, and he had locked her away in his heart forever. Beneath the surface, he, too, is passionate. Perhaps the fire in one man might let him comprehend it in another, surfacing though it has done in different forms.

The recitation comes of the Nunc dimittis with following Gloria Patri. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Oliver had found the canticle pleasant and comforting as a child. Despite his loss of faith, he finds himself looking for comfort in it again this evening, asking himself for acceptance for whatever he may do; not, this time, in Richard Manns's house, but in Jack's room. Asking himself to accept his desire, and his emotion. And the response comes, swift and sure: if either were truly wrong, and an aberration against his intended nature, could they seem so good, and so right?

He doesn't feel wrong. He feels as though, at last, he's been granted the ability to see an unexpected gift for what it is.

All is bustling outside on Bloomsbury Way when they emerge back into the secular world, passing between the church's high colonnades and descending back down to the street, pausing to shake hands and exchange a few pleasantries with a fellow parishioner here and there. As they reach the foot of the steps, a working man, hovering beside the railings, breaks away from his post.

"Doctor -?"

Oliver stops. "I'm Doctor Brownlow. What can I do for you?"

"They said at your house you was gone to church, sir, so I waited outside -"

Edward Brownlow lifts a hand as the man looks from one of them to the other, as if unsure whether he should intrude. "It's quite all right. Doctor Brownlow and I are family. What brings you here?"

"My wife, sir - she had a baby come last night. Boy's fine; couldn't be better - but she's been having pains again since this morning. There's blood -"

Oliver glances to his uncle. "Uncle, I'm sorry. I have to go."

The older man touches Oliver's shoulder briefly. "Your duty is clear, Oliver. You have a calling, and you must obey it. Take my carriage, and I'll make my way on foot."

Practicing medicine, Oliver thinks, or embracing Jack: when the heart speaks, there's nothing that can be done but answer in kind. He's still turning it over in his mind while he attends to his patient with a strengthening tonic and a decoction of oak bark to stem the emissions, and when he climbs back into the landau, and asks his uncle's coachman to drive him home again.

The evening, however, it seems has not yet been put to rest.

A visitor awaits him in the spaces between the vista of the lamps, where the gaslight is lost in and swallowed up by the swirling, woolly darkness. He's sent the carriage on its way and is about to approach his door, when he suddenly becomes dimly aware of a figure perched opposite upon the edge of the little stone wall that runs beneath the iron railings of the square's garden. Another patient? Oliver supposes that he should take it as a distinct compliment to either his medical skills or his bedside manner that clients are prepared to loiter to see him rather than go in search of an alternative physician, but it's, nevertheless, almost ten o'clock. The selfish side of him would sooner have retreated inside and locked every door against the outside world in favour of a light tea and a long, dreamless sleep. Yet he feels it against his principles not to speak.

"Sir," he says, aloud, "you ought to have announced yourself with the door-knocker. My housekeeper would have attended to you and asked you to wait. Do you need a doctor?"

"Just one what I happen to know." The voice that floats across the street is immediately recognizable as belonging to Davy Gilpin. Hopping up from his seat, he trots over with his hands stuffed deeply into his pockets, the lamp changing him abruptly into a man rather than a silhouette. "You get about a bit for a Sunday, dontcher?" he says, shifting from one foot to another in the way that encourages the circulation. "I've been freezing my ballocks off waiting here."

"I do have obligations - social and professional." Oliver frowns a little, still surprised. "I also wasn't expecting either you or Jack. Is anything wrong?"

"No. The contrary, as it happens." Davy cocks his head to one side. "Have you got too many of them obligations late tomorrow afternoon?"

"I don't believe so. Why?"

"Oh, no reason. Only that Jack's at something of a loose end, and he was thinking how he might pass the time with this one particular robbery what he's been considering."

Instantly, Oliver feels his heart start to beat a little faster. Something worms in the pit of his stomach, a strange mixture of nervousness and - yes - excitement. He glances about them, half-expecting to see his own conscience in the shape of a policeman loom out of the night to clap a hand on his shoulder. None appears, but he lowers his voice all the same. "Jack's ready to make his move?" he asks.

"Both of us are. That's if, you ain't changed your mind."

Rather than merely teasing him, Oliver realizes that Davy is in fact giving him a final chance to do exactly as he says: change his mind. He's being offered a get-out clause, and if he chooses to take it, there will be no hard feelings harboured; nothing to pay. If he chooses, he can bid Davy goodnight here and now, cross the street to where the welcoming yellow light streams determinedly through the arch of leaded glass above his door, and go back to his ambitious but ultimately very safe life. He can go back to being simply a gentleman physician. But that isn't him, and never has been. If it were, he would have peached Jack, a long time ago, and therein lies the rub.

He looks at his house once again. Then he turns away, and steps further into the shadows.

"If I'm not home by half-past ten," he says, "my housekeeper knows to lock up. And I mentioned to her earlier, as it happens, that there was a possibility that I might spend the night at my uncle's house. There won't be a surgery in the morning. Is there a place where we can talk?"

"Plenty of 'em," Davy answers. "Want to come and find Jack with me?"

"I have the distinct feeling," Oliver says, "that he may be as likely to find us."

They trudge east into the City. Near the top of Shoe Lane, they ease their way down a narrow unpaved passage and through the door of a drinking den therein with a low ceiling, hardly higher above street level than a wine cellar. This is an altogether rowdier place than the Lamb and Lark, and while it had surprised Oliver to find Jack's residence of choice a criminal abode, this surprises him not at all. While Tom King might excel at putting up a reputable front, the proprietor of these premises makes no such effort. He feels more than a few suspicious, or perhaps covetous eyes flicker over the tailoring of his clothing as he threads his way through the room at Davy's heel; a brief word here and there from his companion appears to communicate to them some degree of reassurance. His own public house is lively in the evenings, but the raucous banter from the assorted thieves, gamblers and Irish navvies in this room and shouts for another jug is jarring rather than welcoming; it feels a physical assault upon the senses. The tobacco-cloud is so thick and smarting to the eyes that it seems a mimicry of the smoke outside, as if the underbelly of London were reflected here on miniature scale. Gay women, undoubtedly finding it a more preferable haunt to the damp street, drape themselves about prospective clients' shoulders as their men sit deep in conversation. Oliver had also been less taken aback than he would have imagined by the young males loitering about the alley as he and Davy had passed, whose presentation of themselves and unsubtle glances had marked them as being in the same trade. Here, if he could ever have imagined it, is the opposite side of the coin to his own life.

His apprehension is clearly on display, as Davy touches his shoulder before drawing him to a table half-hidden under the stairs.

"Don't stare about, mind your own affairs, and you'll be all right," is his advice. "The fellers come here for business transactions. Some of 'em's ruffians, but if you're with someone what they know, you won't get no trouble off most of 'em. Don't try coming around on your own, that's all what I can say."

"And do they know you?"

"Everyone knows me," Davy says, easily.

Oliver cautiously takes his seat. "That was what I heard, before I came looking for you. That there wasn't a villain north of the river whose name you weren't familiar with."

"Familiar don't mean doing business. There's villains and there's villains. There's honest prigs what are just after making a few bob like me, and there's ones what I wouldn't touch if you was to give me twenty sovereigns for it."

"Jack neither?"

Through the smoke, Davy looks at him in a sympathetic way. "Jack neither."

Their place has been chosen well. It affords both of them a good view of the room without being overly conspicuous themselves, and Oliver, seated beneath the slope of the staircase, is the least visible of all, something which he takes to be in no way accidental. In discreet voice, a few more of the personae non gratae present are pointed out to him. There's Bill Tucker, a pal of Jack's, who's done 'a couple of jobs in the West End' with him, beaming with his arm around Sally, his lady-bird. Near at hand is Boots Malloy, whose nickname is not difficult to fathom the origin of, given the quite enormous nailed boots he has propped upon a vacant chair. Ned Bowen, with his head of wild hair, has just been released from the gaol at Horsemonger Lane. Tom Dainty and Will Cat's-Meat can hardly show their faces after being almost caught during a robbery, hiding in desperation up the chimney, and exiting the property black from head to feet: "The kinchins still shout, 'Sweep..!' after 'em," Davy adds, in great amusement. And there Oliver sits, in the midst of these, watching them scheming and exchanging news and looking altogether like the choicest band of reprobates ever to crawl out of a gutter.

It never truly occurs to him to think on how the anonymous hand recorded in the newspaper as having slipped a wallet from a pocket, or turned a skeleton key in the lock of a jewellers' door might belong to a person; a person called not only Jack, but Ned, or Will, and the notion makes him feel a little better, or, perhaps, a little worse. He's distracted, however, from either possibility when a body moves behind him and a voice says, "Oliver," into his ear in a confidential way that focuses his attention so instantly and acutely that it seems impossibly loud over the background of noise.

"Jack," he replies. This is becoming a game, of sorts.

"Did you run the gauntlet outside, then?" Davy says.

"Nice to look at. Shame a prick on fire for six weeks ain't so pretty." Jack pulls out a chair and slides into it. "Don't mind me, will you, Oliver?"

"Not at all. I could treat you with mercuric salts."

"Spoken like a man of his trade." Jack turns to Davy. "Given him the low-down yet?"

"I thought how I'd let you have the privilege," Davy says, amenably.

"Well, I do feel privileged tonight. A safeful of gold crying out to be loved like what it should be, and two quality mates next to me. Makes a feller all warm inside." Pressed in between the two of them, Jack shifts all the tighter against the one. "What about you?" he enquires.

Oliver feels the flex of the muscles in the other man's thigh. "Decidedly," he says. In from the cold as he is, Jack still feels hot next to him. His midnight ecstasy of a week ago had begun to seem distant and unreal, as if he must have become very briefly unhinged and then returned to sanity; as if, perhaps, the figure in his mind's eye had not really been Jack, but only some abstract image resembling the same. With the other man close once again, however, he immediately senses the connections in his brain beginning to spark; to reforge themselves. He becomes aware of his colour rising.

Davy grins. "Not too warm, if you ain't got any objections. Watching a couple of fellers bill and coo is interesting, but we got work to do. This is an opportunity you dropped in our laps, Oliver, and I ain't letting it get away."

"Man after my own heart." Squeaking his chair abruptly on the bare boards, Jack leans across the table, play temporarily ceased and all business. "Now, did you see how many servants was on the premises?"

Davy nods. "I had the chance to ask about a bit," he says, lifting his hand and commencing a swift reckon up on his fingers. "Two maids and a man chef in the kitchen and the scullery. A butler, footman, two maids and a housekeeper above stairs. The butler's married, only he ain't told his master out of fear he'll lose his place. He creeps off to see the family on his half day, which just so happens to be a Monday."

"Also a coachman and groom," Oliver puts in, "and, I should expect, a boy about the hall or the stable. It might affect the direction you plan to enter from."

Jack makes little if any effort to hide a delighted look at Oliver's ready contribution. "Six down and four up."

"The housemaid acted pretty friendly," Davy says. "I reckon I could keep her occupied."

"What's she look like?"

"Big girl - bigger than me, anyhow. I hope anyone's got a cast iron bedstead what climbs on it with her."

"Oh, yes. Looked like she might be the friendly sort, from what I saw of her."

Oliver clears his throat, pertinently. "If I call on Manns unexpectedly an appropriate amount of time before dinner, then manners will force him to ask me to stay for the meal - much as he might resent it to the core. I've dined with him accompanying my uncle, and he doesn't serve past the fish, soup and joint. His parlour maid and footman will be kept busy waiting at table if he has a guest."

"So," Jack observes, "that only leaves our lady housekeeper."

"She'll oversee the dessert and confectionery. But I'm afraid that, other than that, you'll need to take your chances. I'm sorry."

Jack rubs his chin, thoughtfully. "I need everyone away from that bedroom for at least an hour and a half."

"Will it take you as long as that?" Oliver asks. He feels faintly uneasy.

"I'm cracking a safe, Oliver, not an egg."

"How many sliders has it got?" Davy asks.

"Six. I ain't had a go at more than that when people was still on the premises."

Oliver hesitates, then releases a breath. "I'll try, Jack," he says. "If I can find any way to prolong the dinner, I will. I can't promise anything, but I'll do whatever I can for you."

"You already did, twice over." Jack nudges him, then turns to nod at Davy across the table. "Warn me if she starts getting too close."

"Four tugs on the bell?" Davy suggests.

"Perfect, mate."

Davy fishes a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper from the depths of his coat. He lays the paper on the table between the three of them, and, flattening the creases from it with the palms of his hands, begins to sketch a crude map. His tongue protrudes from between his teeth a little as he composes a drawing of Manns's house and the surrounding area. "How are you going in?" he says to Jack.

Jack reaches forward to jab an angular finger at the pencilled outline of a building a little along the street. "This here's a vacant property. I watched it. If I get up the wall around the back there, I can go over the rooftops and straight in at the garret."

"You intend to walk on the roof?" Oliver says, with some degree of horror. He knows that Jack is one of the quickest and most agile people that he's ever met, but he doubts the sureness even of his feet at the sorts of heights that are being discussed. He tries to visualize the uppermost storeys of the building, and something like a shiver passes over him. It would be a long way down. Jack would certainly break limbs, if he were fortunate enough for it not to be his neck.

"Why not?"

"Because, as a doctor, my aim is to preserve life, and this becomes increasingly difficult after a fifty foot fall."

"Oliver, let me promise you, a monkey's got more chance of falling than what I have."

"I'm putting my trust in your confidence. For God's sake, don't let me down."

Davy is writing on his makeshift map. "What time does Manns sit to dine, Oliver?"

"Five o'clock, and I can make sure that I arrive at four. He'll hardly be able to turn me away."

"Very good! He'll have already found that his man's had reason to call for the bell-hanger again, not that the feller'll be there to agree with or deny it." Davy glances up, his eyes dancing. "If I didn't have another supplier to meet here soon, this is about the time what I'd say that we oughter drink to our future success."

Jack claps him on the back, without resentment. "We'll leave you to it," he says. "Fence needs peace and quiet to look over his goods. And it ain't stopping the two of us sharing a drink, if the good doctor here feels inclined to accompany me back to my abode for a few hours."

"Are you sure that there's nothing else to be discussed?" Oliver asks, not without a little surprise, but he knows Jack's answer before the other man speaks. Pushing back his chair to rise, he flashes Oliver a brief and brilliant grin.

"Oliver, when you got the right gang, sometimes it really is that easy."

For the first time, Oliver finds himself walking a little way in Jack's footsteps. Not for them are the busier thoroughfares of Skinner Street where it leads into Newgate Street; rather they traverse warrens and labyrinths of narrow alleys through which Jack rambles as one long familiar with each and every one. The dome of St Paul's against the skyline dominates to the south; the reek drifting on the air from the square at Smithfield to the north, as the morning will see the weekly fat cattle and sheep market. Some of the streets are only poorly paved and some not at all, more of a mire than an urban walkway in the damp spring weather, and Oliver's feet would have been almost from under him in several black spots had Jack not been as quick to steady him by the arm or shoulder as he is. But not even in the shabbiest court is there silence: rather gin-fuelled singing that breaks down here and there into the scuffle of a fight, the calls of the common prostitutes, and the laughter of those bent on bargaining for their favours. These are the parishes of St Sepulchre Newgate, Christ Church and St Anne and St Agnes.

One girl, leaning out of a poor tenement window, offers to take both of them for a shilling apiece, on account of their good looks and her liking to have a cock with dark hair about it straight after one with yellow for the novelty. Jack rebuffs her amiably, but the bawdy suggestion lingers, conjuring up images at risk of taking their place in Oliver's solitary fancies. He feels as though he has seen Jack for the first time exactly as Jack's made it plain that he sees him; associated pleasure and the act of fucking directly with his friend, and now he cannot unsee it. Their previous flirtings and fondlings seem to pale against the bodily awareness of a man who carries an organ between his legs as eager as Oliver's own.

"Look like you know where you're going and what you're about," Jack instructs. There is no gas-lighting along these pavements, and in the glow of the oil lamps hung out on the fronts of buildings by residents who can do so, he looks eerily reddish. "And don't get distracted," he adds, pausing only briefly before finishing, "yet, anyhow."

He ushers Oliver ahead of him, always close enough at his rear to shove him onwards, and by and by, they emerge from the maw of a passage adjacent to the uneven flagstones of the Lamb and Lark. Heavy though the shadows under the arch leading to the inner yard are, it seems a gateway leading back to a world of some civility after the streets where danger and rude unbridled lusts walk hand in hand. Oliver breathes a little more easily as they stride beneath it. His muscles are aching a little with the tension that has been present until now, and he wills them to relax, looking forward to mounting the stairs to the comfortable, private place where he and Jack might exchange words over an ale and see the rest of the evening out in whatever fashion may come. Safe in the other man's wake, he does not immediately sense that they are not the only ones present until he sees Jack suddenly turning, suspicious and alert as a fox. Before he can react in kind, he feels the slam of a fist in his back, and is pushed so roughly forwards that he stumbles hard against the cold stones of the wall.