Mr Sikes carelessly tossed the still-warm liver to the cobbles, where it landed with a heavy, wet splat. Immediately, the white, mangy shape of Bullseye pounced on it, devouring the piece of glistening red offal in one noisy, squelching gulp.
“You enjoy that, boy,” Mr Sikes said in a voice that echoed off the blackened brick walls that loomed either side of this narrow alley. “He ain’t gonna be needing it no more.”
Mr Sikes glanced casually towards the shadowy doorway, where the mutilated remains of a street urchin lay in a heap of broken limbs and torn flesh.
“That better not be one of Fagin’s lads, Mr Sikes?” Mr Crackit sniffed, his boots tapping as he approached, his blue frock coat swinging around his knees with each step. “He’ll have you strung up if it is.”
“Let’s see him try,” Mr Sikes sneered back, wiping his bloodied hands down his trousers. “Don’t be soft, Mr Crackit. He was just some mudder skulking around for scraps. Bullseye was hungry, and he just so ‘appened to come strolling on past. I left the heart and kidneys, if you’re a bit peckish?”
“Gentlemen do not eat dead whelps, Mr Sikes,” Mr Crackit said, watching the horde of flies that had already begun to swarm over the shredded, congealing strips of skin and filthy cloth. “Anyway, we’ve got bigger fish to fry, Mr Sikes. The boss has got themself into a right proper twist because we let Dickens and that nurse give us the slip.”
“The boss can bluster all they wants, Mr Crackit,” Mr Sikes growled, drawing a scarred thumb across his still dripping butcher’s knife. “Dickens and Nightingale was never part of the deal. The game was to bag a bunch of government toffs, nothing more.”
“The deal has changed, Mr Sikes,” the wiry man said, rubbing his temples. “They didn’t get out of the Blossom on their own, did they? One of the dolly-mops helped ‘em.”
“And the boss wants us to slice her gizzard, Mr Crackit?” Mr Sikes said, tossing his knife into the air, end over end, and catching it as a dark grin twisted his lips.
“You got it in one, Mr Sikes,” he replied with a nod. “It was little Mary Jane Kelly, as it turns out. And we reckons that Dickens has her shacked up with that Polly Nichols and the rest of his bunch of snitches.”
“Kelly,” Mr Sikes spat. The name tasted like sour ale in his mouth. “I know her, always floating around with her airs and graces like she’s some sort of lady, rather than the two-penny drab that she is.”
“The one and the same, Mr Sikes,” said Mr Crackit. “She knows too much, and no doubt about it, she’s been blabber mouthing everything to the rest of ‘em.”
Suddenly, a low growl rumbled up from Bullseye. He’d heard something, and Mr Sikes heard it too. A dry rustle from behind them.
The leather soles of his boots squealed against the granite cobblestones as he spun around, his fists balled tightly, causing the white scars criss-crossing his knuckles to stand out starkly against his weathered skin.
His eyes darted left and right, scanning the soot-stained walls, peering into the rows of filthy, cracked windows, watching for the slightest twitch of movement. But there was nothing. The alley remained still and deserted, thick with the stench of piss and shit and the cloying tang of that urchin’s blood.
A stray gust of wind rattled the loose window shutters above them against the brickwork.
Another grumble from Bullseye grabbed Mr Sikes’ attention. The mutt wasn’t looking up at the window. Instead, his scarred snout was pressed firmly against the base of an old cellar door.
“I’m reckoning someone’s got their peepers on us, Mr Crackit,” Mr Sikes said, striding towards the battered hatch, his eyes fixed on its roughly hewn slats.
“I think you might be right, Mr Sikes,” replied Mr Crackit. “Perhaps you’d like to do the honours of revealing whoever might be the owner of those peepers?”
Raising a heavy boot, Mr Sikes violently kicked the hatch, splintering the rotten timber with a damp thud. The hatch slammed back into the brick wall, sending a deafening crash echoing between the buildings on either side of the narrow alley.
The big man held out his gigantic, mallet-like fists in front of him, ready to stove in the skull of whatever gutter-padding rapscallion had been nosing on them.
“Well done, Mr Sikes,” said Mr Crackit, clapping his hands slowly. “If the blue bottles didn’t know we were ‘ere before, they sure as hell will do now.”
Mr Sikes ignored his associate, his formidable muscles tensing, his legs bracing for whatever twitching lunatic was about to charge into him from the inky shadows.
Instead, a remarkably fat, one eared rat sat blinking on the top step. It looked up at the mountain of a man in front of it, twitched its scarred snout, gave a flick of its short stub of a tail before letting out a tiny, unimpressed squeak.
It didn’t even have enough sense in its tiny mind to look scared.
“Well, well, Mr Sikes,” Mr Crackit said, leaning forward with both hands folded over the top of his walking cane. “It looks like Her Majesty’s finest are finally onto us at last.”
“Shut yer trap!” Mr Sikes retorted.
Lifting his knee high in front of him, he slammed the heel of his boot down firmly on the head of the vermin, its skull exploding with a wet squelch. Slowly, he lifted his foot from the dark stain on the top step and wiped it clean against the side of the wall.
“Please be careful, Mr Sikes,” said Mr Crackit. “I really don’t want any of that mess on my trousers. They were spotless when I pulled them off that butler’s corpse this morning, and I would like them to stay that way for a while.”
“C’mon, Mr Crackit, there are some nice ladies in Whitechapel who we need to pay a little visit to,” Mr Sikes said, striding towards the end of the alley and straight through the wet mess that had been the street urchin, tugging his heavy woollen cap down lower over his brow.
Bullseye gave the body one last, disinterested sniff before padding up to his master’s heel.