Sharpe shook his head. “You’ll see my money when I see the girl.”

“Getting particular, are we?” Hocking sneered, though he did not insist on receiving any deposit. “What do you want, Major? A redhead? A blackbird? Fat? Skinny?”

“Just young,” Sharpe said. He felt dirty even though he was merely pretending.

“She’ll be young, Major,” Hocking said and held out his hand to seal the bargain. Sharpe took the hand and suppressed a shudder when Hocking held on to it. Hocking gripped hard, frowning. “It’s strange,” he said, “but you do look familiar.”

“I was raised in Yorkshire,” Sharpe lied. “Maybe you were up there once?”

“I don’t travel to foreign places.” Hocking let go of Sharpe’s hand and stood. “Joe here will show you where to wait, but if I was you, Major, I’d watch the dogs for a while.”

Joe was one of the two young men and he jerked his head to show that Sharpe should follow him through the tavern’s back door. Sharpe knew what to expect there, for when Beaky Malone had been alive Sharpe had helped in that back room which was little more than a long and gloomy shed raised above the yards of three houses. It stank of animals. There were storerooms at either end of the shed, but most of the space had been converted into a makeshift arena of banked wooden benches that enclosed a pit twelve feet in diameter. The pit’s floor was sand and was surrounded by a barrier of planks.

“It’s in there,” Joe said, indicating one of the storerooms. “It ain’t luxury, but there’s a bed.”

“I’ll wait out here,” Sharpe said.

“When the dogs are done,” Joe explained, “wait in the room.”

Sharpe climbed to the topmost bench where he sat close under the roof beams. Six oil lamps hung above the pit, which was spattered with blood. The shed stank of it, and of gin, tobacco and meat pies.