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inside for the whole of B Division. A blue plaque informed passers-by that it stood on the site of the Saracen’s Head Inn. Matt, who often had to endure the protracted company of Philip Dwyer, a desk sergeant who fancied himself something of a local historian, would occasionally regurgitate the fascinating facts—especially concerning murders and executions—with which he had been forcibly fed. Johnny knew a few additional facts of his own: it was in the Saracen’s Head that Nicholas Nickleby had met the one-eyed Wackford Squeers.
    Dickens, who’d started out as a newspaperman, was Johnny’s idol. He had been introduced to him at school by Mr Stanley, otherwise known as Moggy. The English teacher had returned from the Great War with an artificial leg which his pupils took to be mahogany. As Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend would have said, he was “a literary man— with a wooden leg.” Moggy’s lessons became the highlight of the week. Dickens’ stories were funny and scary and he was writing about the place where they lived. He had walked the same streets, passed the same buildings, seen the same things. He made Johnny want to be a journalist. Even today, a part of him still could not believe he was writing for the newspaper that Dickens had once edited.
    His most treasured possession was a mildewed set of Dickens’ novels that he’d found one Saturday afternoon on a second-hand bookstall in Farringdon Road. He’d paid for it with the money he had made hanging around Collins’ Music Hall on Islington Green with Matt,collecting discarded programmes and selling them on at bargain prices to the punters going in for the next show: the better the clothes, the lower the discount. He’d continued faithfully working his way through the set all the way through school and college.
    Dickens’ work provided a living map of the capital. He did not care if it was out of date; the characters lived on in his mind and the echoes reverberated each time he visited a location which had featured in one of the novels. The Old Bailey, for example, had been built on the site of Newgate prison; in the confines of its stuffy courtrooms, whiling away the hours as lawyers argued and judges jawed, Johnny could not help but recall Dickens’ “horrible fascination” with the gaol which featured in Barnaby Rudge ; in whose condemned hold Fagin awaited his end; and where, in Great Expectations, Pip viewed the Debtors’ Door through which doomed culprits were led to be hanged.
    It was inconceivable to Johnny that anyone could be bored by Dickens; but Matt—lulled by Moggy’s droning and the hissing of the gas-lamps—would invariably drift off to sleep. The English master took a sadistic pleasure in twisting Matt’s ear as slowly as he could, seeing how far he could go without waking him, and then, having fully regained his attention, dragging him to his feet and rapping him on the knuckles with the edge of the ruler, all the while continuing to read. Moggy never lost his place; Matt never made a sound.
    By now, Johnny was drawing near to the RollingBarrel—a favourite watering hole for many of Matt’s colleagues. The pub was said to have derived its name from a local legend: the site was apparently notorious for a gang of tearaways who used to snatch unsuspecting little old ladies off the street, stuff them in a barrel and roll them down the hill.
    Finally he reached St Sepulchre’s churchyard and the Viaduct Tavern came into view, just across the road on the corner of Giltspur Street and Newgate Street.
    A Victorian gin palace glittering with cut glass, painted mirrors and plush seats, its regulars were mostly off-duty postmen from the General Post Office in King Edward Street. The ornate clock behind the bar told Johnny he was five minutes early.
    It was only when he had been served and wriggled his way through the crowd—without spilling more than a few drops of Ind Coope Burton—that he saw Matt sitting alone at one of the