Read The Body in the Fog for Free Online Page B

stench made Alfie gasp for a moment, but the noise of the cellar bolt creaking was enough to make him drop immediately down into the water that rushed along at the bottom
of the underground passage. He landed on his feet, skidded and then fell into the water, just managing to keep his face out of the slime and filth that floated along on its surface. His hand
grabbed a protruding piece of brick and, as he hauled himself back to his feet, Alfie saw a rat running up the steeply curved wall of the tunnel.
    Jack managed better, grabbing an iron ring set into the brickwork of the tunnel and lowering himself cautiously down once he had pulled the cover into position again.
    Alfie drew in a deep breath. So this was the sewer below the cellar of the White Horse Inn. Further down the tunnel a faint glow was coming from somewhere. He stood for a minute, allowing his
eyes time to become accustomed to the dimness, and then he began to move cautiously down the sewer. He could hear Jack splashing behind him, but he kept going steadily, trying to hold his breath as
long as he could. The stench was more horrible than anything he met in his daily life – worse even than the stink around Smithfield market. But after a few minutes he no longer noticed and
began to breathe normally, concentrating on the dim light ahead of them.
    ‘Pitch torches,’ said Jack from behind him. His voice echoed weirdly, bouncing off the brick walls of the tunnel and coming back to them as if ten boys had spoken.
    ‘How do you know?’ Alfie tried to whisper, but the hissing echo was even more sinister.
    ‘Bert the Tosher told me. Remember that time I dragged Jemmy off him? When he met me later on he thanked me. He offered me a job working with him and his family. He told me a lot about
working down here. Said that it wasn’t as bad as people thought.’
    ‘I remember.’ Alfie nodded. He wouldn’t forget easily that spectacular fight down by the river a few weeks ago.
    Jack and he had been gathering pieces of coal from the shallow waters of the river and had moved downstream towards Whitehall, as there was not much left around the Hungerford Stairs where so
many poor people scavenged a living. They were nearly there when Bert the Tosher emerged from the Tyburn sewer.
    Bert had washed his face and hands in the river water, dabbing with his sleeve at a large cut on his forehead. Then he had taken something from his pocket and cleaned it carefully. Alfie and
Jack had been near enough to see a flash of gold and had looked at each other, wide-eyed. It was known that men like Bert did the dangerous and dirty work of keeping the sewers flowing, not just
for the low wages they got, but for the occasional finds – a gold watch or maybe some jewellery – that were washed down from the privies or carried off with the sink water from the old
inns of London.
    But gold! Here was a find! Two large squares of gold, each the size of a sovereign and held together with a gold bar. Bert had been gazing at it lovingly when Jemmy had erupted from the tunnel,
brandishing one of those heavy sticks that toshers carried to drive the rats away from around their feet. In a moment, he was on top of Bert, knocking him to the ground and beating him unmercifully
with the stick.
    Alfie had winced at the sound of the blows; each one of them was enough to break the man’s skull. Jack, however, did not hesitate. He launched himself at the tangled figures on the
water’s edge and hung onto Jemmy’s arm with all his might, twisting it upwards while Alfie snatched the stick and flung it far out into the river. And then both of them had moved away
quickly just in case Jemmy turned on them. But he didn’t . . .
    ‘Funny, wasn’t it, how they lost the gold thing in the mud and then the two of them immediately began searching the mud together like they was the best of friends?’ Alfie
grinned at the memory.
    ‘Not such great friends,’ said Jack, sloshing through the water