Dusk had fallen. Far off down the Thames estuary where the waters deepen into the trench that marked the subterranean barrier between England and its old enemy France, a thick fog was forming, its sinister intent to engulf London.

Fishermen, out from Mucking Creek and Foulness in their bobbing peterboats looked warily over their shoulders. Fearful of being caught in the rushing tidal waters by the fog they called to one another over the black rippling waters and hurriedly hauled the last of their crab pots with fingers bent crooked with cold. Lighting lanterns to spill fountains of radiant gold across their bows they set their sails and headed for home.

Swiftly, silently the rolling wall of whiteness engulfed them. Consumed in the milky paleness the tiny fleets, sensing the movement of the shifting tides like blind men sniffing the air, set their course for home, the fishermen's coats now sodden with the clinging fog.

Along the coastal villages wives stood huddled together by fires set on the beaches to guide their fisher folk back home their tarred wooden clad huts. They watched fearfully across the flat seas as the fog consumed the grey sky turning the sea into a solid wall of greyness, a rolling canvass of impenetrable gloom.

Within minutes the fog had trolled up the solidified waters of the river and spilled into the narrow lanes of the city, slunk over the cobbled squares and turned the conurbation into a foggy necropolis of strange, looming, tomb shaped buildings. The elements, having achieved their menacing purpose, settled on the lungs of their victim and resolved to asphyxiate him.

The shrouded veil of crinoline darkness tightened its purposeful grip on the slender streets, clinging to everything it encountered. Gas lamps, road-side sentries standing tall and thin in the gloom, appeared and disappeared at will, hissing reproachfully at those who ventured too close. Coughs, shouts, short shrill screams erupted unexpectedly from the dimness and then faded away into the leaching mist. In a world of shifting shapes and fleeing shadows, dark forms loomed and dissipated into the gloom, startlingly passer-byes, who, heads down, anxiously sidestepped each other and hurried pass.

On the south side of London Bridge, Bermondsey Market stood entombed by the sickly murkiness, the drying tanner's hides, flapped eerily in the gloom, unnatural shaped scarecrows blown to corpulent size by the sea breeze.

Off the piazza, away from the evil smelling reek of the Market, lay The Mouse and Owl, the haunt of the worst of London's wastrels and lowlifes.

Through the smoke filled tavern the noise of the costerman, porters, mudlarks and petty thieves rose and fell in hearty waves, raucous laughter occasionally breaking and surfing the uneven swell of sound. Gin swilling chattering girls in smeared rouge lipstick, hiding worn leather shoes beneath dirty petticoats and flouncy dresses fluttered their eyelashes at men with canes and cudgels.

Away in the far reaches of the labyrinth of fugue filled rooms, a young boy was playing a penny pipe for money and groups of nut tanned sailors muttered mutiny over pints of pale beer and incredible tales of far off lands.

By the hearth, a stooped man with the scrofulous face of a weathered gargoyle sat with an enormous hound on a wooden bench silently contemplating the fellow customers, his brooding features enough to warn off the heaving mass of spendthrifts, thieves and murderers that crowed around him. For he held, like the King of the Thugs, the pride of the place of the disorderly establishment, a table in front of the febrile log fire who's trickling flames gave up barely any warmth other than the acrid aroma of human wretchedness and odour of damp sawdust.

The gargoyle screwed his face up and addressed his hound with an accusing finger, 'You bite me again, Bisbee and there'll be trouble, you'll see. Don't take no account of the surroundings, it'll kick off. Here and now. A pork pie 'an gravy was the only pie they had and a pork pie 'an gravy what's you got. I ain't going up there again an asking for anything lardy –di-da like bacon a la wat'sit or pheasant quiche just cos you've got a delicate constitution!'

Crabbe glared at the dog sitting on the bench next to him, a big black bruiser of a thing and gave it a pronounced nudge in its beer barrel ribs with his elbow.

'You listen'ng to me, Bisbee?' he roared over the noise in a voice that suggested he was half deaf. His odd tone hid an impenetrable accent that was as happy yelling insults that lifted the roof in Latin, Arabic, Persian, Indian and any number of languages known and unknown to the publican's customers.

Through its thick metallic eyes the dog studied its associate for a moment.

Crabbe was thickset, ruby lipped, cauliflower eared, with a put out eye that rolled unnaturally in his head like an oversized freshwater pearl spinning through muddy water. His dress appeared as a Victorian thug out on parole; moleskin suit, muddy boots and a monstrous bearskin coat with frayed collar and cuffs.

Frowning, he turned his attention to the table before him, dapping his bread into a plate of sausage and mash swimming in gravy he stuffed it into his mouth with a loud gulping noise. As if remembering something he stopped chewing and fixed his attention on the animal. 'Ah said, are you list'n to me Bisbee?'

Bisbee, the hound, shrugged his heavy shoulders in resignation and tucked into his pie, chasing the meat filled crust round the plate with his leathery tongue.

Crabbe pulled his flat cap down and scratching his flattened nose with the prongs of his fork, returned his attention to his plate, slurping and gobbling his fare like he had been bought up at a pauper's orphanage, underfed and overworked.

Rubbing a dollop of gravy from his chin with his stained sleeve and shifting in his seat he turned his sluggish glare of his one good eye on the women up at the bar and coughed through a mouth half full of pie.

'Cor, look at er! She don't know what she looks like does she? What a state. Eh? Ain't seen the like of her since that harem at the Sultans Palace at Topkapi, they'd slap it all over till you couldn't tell if it were a boy or a girl. Mind you could have been either for all they cared. What do ya think, Bisbee? Remember Suleiman the Great, he was a lad, eh? In those silk pantaloons and that big hat of his. Now take me back again to those days eh, Bisbee? Good times!'

Crabbe sat back and belched, long and loud, waving away the irritated looks of the people around him away with a flash of his ring laden hand. 'All this weather we're hav'n, reminds me of Hannibal's elephants. Cor that was a job, Bisbee, getting them over those Alps,' Crabbe held his hand under his nose and roared like an elephant. 'I'll never forget that sound, the sound of a dying elephant. First time I ate elephant meat though and it was better than that pie of yours I'll warrant. Haw, haw, hee, hee.'

He pushed his plate away. Lighting a cigar he rolled it round cracked fingers full of the dirt of East London churchyards before shoving it between his fleshy lips, all the while twitching and talking like a man possessed. 'That Hannibal was alright though, decent bloke if you ask me. Remember Cortes getting the Aztec gold out of Mexico. The man was mad with gold lust and he didn't take to you much. Said you were the spawn of Satan and wanted to tie you up and cook you nice and toasty over a barrel of hot coals? No sense of humour those Conquistadors. I'd take Hannibal over Cortes any time.'

The dog paused, looked sideways at Crabbe and nodded.

'What about the Crusades?' Miming a sword fight in the air with his red tipped cigar he chuckled, 'Boy those boys could put up a show and leave enough pick'ns once they'd swept through for us to have become the King of Abyssinia twice over. Didn't do too badly over there. And we got a few drachmae for John the Baptists head didn't we, eh? All three of them! All three of them! Ha Ha!'

Crabbe wiped the grease off his mutton hands down a chest as thick as a side of beef. The skin on his forehead prickled as he sniffed the air.

'Good god, Bisbee is that you? You devil. I'll swear more foul air comes out of you than Lucifer's underpants.'

'Hey, look,' he nudged the dog again. 'Over there. Yes you see him, the tall thin one with pretentions. The cock of the fair he thinks himself, all preening like. Up at the bar with a brandy in his hand, ooh a brannndddyy! Trying to impress the ladies, he is. Not take much in here, show em a shilling be enough I'd recon to lift their skirts and his purse with it too. Twizzle him round and put a high heeled boot to his skinny behind and kick his airs back to wherever they came from.'

He picked up his beer, roared with laughter and suddenly stopped. A grim look flickered across his face. Dropping his voice enviously, he muttered. 'And ain't he a dapper one with his Saville Row coat and moleskin suit. All filched of course. I'll bet he purloined that coat from that sneak Jagger's over at Borough Market. But that moleskin waistcoat with gold buttons, it's too big for him. More my size don't you think, Bisbee?'

Winking at Crabbe, Bisbee scratched one enormous paw on of the back of his skull, making a sound like sandpaper on block of rough wood.

Thrusting his fingers into the dog's face he said. 'Robb'in graves ain't no job for us, Bisbee, not like back in the day when the proper ladies would be buried in all there fineeee-errrr-rrrrrryyy,' he scowled, rolling the vowels round his mouth like he was tasting a fine red wine. 'Back then it was easy pickings.'

He sat back and sighed. 'Robbing with the Crusaders, sacking Rome with the Visigoths, pulling teeth from bodies stuck in the blood soaked mud of European battle fields. We've had some times Bisbee, no doubt. Who was the worse? Genghis?' he slapped his hand on his thigh. 'No, Ivan! And he was my sort of looter to boot. Get in, do the job and get out, no procrastination, no nuff'in. Just the loot.'

Suddenly bored, Crabbe looked around and banged his stick on the wooden floorboards in impatience drawing the attention of everyone within earshot and scowled 'Here see this eye.' He pointed to his bleached ocular. 'Yes, well it don't see you. HA HA! It don't see you!'

A laugh like a hyena, shrill and feckless filled the pub until Crabbe shut his mouth

Shaking his head in disapproval the hound looked heavenward before returning to his food, his ear mopping up the gravy as he pushed his pie round the plate.

Alerted by a blast of cold air, Crabbe looked up. The door of the snug had flown open up and was swiftly kicked shut. His eye followed the path of the newcomer, too small to pick out in the crowd as it pushed its way through the mob toward him like a minnow through weeds.

Through the throng of bodies a small boy, his spiny body adorned in a threadbare coat covered in a layer of caked mud appeared before Crabbe's table accompanied by a breath of shivering air. He regarded Crabbe silently though a pair of soulless eyes set deep within a waxen face so white it could have been baked in flour.

'What do you want, sewer boy?' Crabbe growled in sullen recognition, averting his eyes from the wretched figure and to his fare which he pocked at with the edge of his fork as if his appetite had suddenly evaporated. 'Me's an Bisbee's hav'in dinner and you've gonna spoilt it for us. You fallen out with Father Thames again, eh?'

'No I ain't. River's frozen, can't get back in.' said the boy, plaintively. As he spoke his body spasmed uncontrollably as if gripped by an unrelenting chill.

'So what do you want, you mollusc.'

'HE wants to see you.'

'Who wants to see me? Speak up you gurning fool. You've been swimming with muck so long it's addled your cauliflower brain.'

'HE wants to see you,' the boy gurgled, a thin line of black slime dribbling from the corners of his mouth. Laying a damp newspaper on the table he poked it with a digit so shrivelled, it appeared more skin than bone.

'What's this?' Crabbe threw his fork down in disgust and picked up the paper.

'From him, he wants an explanation.'

Crabbe eye swept over the newsprint. As he read his face turned down, his forehead creased with disbelief. 'So what, so...so what. It could be anyone.' he stuttered.

The boy said nothing. He shuffled forward though the rancid pool of water that had formed around his feet and leant across the table until his gummy nose almost touched Crabbe's. 'He said you were to do a job and he paid you to do it. The deal is rescinded until you can prove it's not her. The girl in the ice.'

'He can't rescind the deal, it is done.' snarled Crabbe. 'Go and tell him that, you filthy little worm.'

To boy coughed, and then from his blackened lips he spat out a glob of putrid gloop on to Crabbe's plate. He grinned. 'But he has, Crabbe, the deal is recanted. Why, I think you're looking a little older already, Crabbe. A little more mortal than a moment ago. You should take more care of yourself. Why not eat up?'

Crabbe swore loudly, with a flash of metal he snatched up his knife, and thrust it up under the boys jaw. He held it fast and a rivulet of blood as black as ink trickled down the blade. Crabbe skewered it into the boy's flesh, his eyes blazing in delight, his fingers twitching under the pressure on the silver handle as the cold blood oozed over his fingers.

'It would not be beholden to HIM, should anything happen to his emissary, Crabbe, remember the precarious nature of your predicament now the deal's been rescinded.' The boy hissed between his gritted teeth, unflinchingly.

'Even if it's her,' said Crabbe eyeing the boy's blood dripping onto his plate. Regretfully withdrawing the tip of the blade from under the boy's jaw he tapped the paper with it as if to emphasise his point. 'She's dead, it says so here.'

'Prove it,' whispered the urchin wiping his chin distastefully with the back of his hand. 'He's waiting for you now. Don't be late. Time is pressing, I'm sure you feel it, ticking away the minutes of your life... tick, tock, tick, tock.' He leered. 'Enjoy your meal, Crabbe,' and he added with a dark wink, 'see ya Bisbee.'

Crabbe glared after the departing ghoul, stubbed his cigar angrily out on the table and then stamped his palm flat on the embers, grinding them into the woodwork with his fist.

Aware of the accusing eyes of the dog resting silent on him he spat out angrily. 'What yer you looking at, Bisbee, she's dead. You were there, you know it. It can't be her it just can't.' His voice slowed as if he were not convinced by his own vehemence. 'It just can't be her.'

For a while he sat ruminating angrily to himself, watching the moleskin suited man under his craggy eyebrows while gnawing at his cracked fingernails with his grave stone teeth.

'Com'on Bisbee, he's leaving. We're going.'

Bisbee looked at the remnants of his pie and shook his cannonball head in despair.

Crabbe stood up, kicked away the chair and threw some loose change down on the table. Some bent shillings, a hobo nickel bearing a skulls head engraving and two tarnished pennies showing the face of Queen Victoria.

Pushing his way through the throng he turned at the door and shouted. 'With me, Bisbee. Finish up, there's graves to be robbed. They won't dig up themselves ya know!'

Through the roiling fog, Crabbe and Bisbee walked down the cobbled alley by the pub, following their mark. For a moment they paused under the yellowing glow of a gas lamp, the hoary breath of the great dog billowing into the air.

Crabbe's expression, black as a coal scuttle, twisted into a scowl. 'I don't suppose he'll give up much of a fight, he looks like the weak hearted type, one sight of us will probably be enough to turn him into a frozen stoat.' He held his cracked hands up, stuck his tongue out sideways, dropped his head onto his chest and fluttered his one good eye like a dying animal. 'Come on, let's get him. I want that waistcoat. He'll not be need'n it in a few moments.'

The dog stopped and licked the drool from his slavering jaws. 'You know what, Crabbe?' it growled.

'What!'

'You talk too much.'