The Potato Factory

She waited until she felt her breathing grow calmer then placed her hand on Sparrer's shoulder and gave it a tiny squeeze. Sparrer turned his head and looked up at her.

'Come!' she whispered and, turning about, began to retreat down the muddy alley. She walked ahead of Sparrer until they were well clear of the buildings. Not a soul had appeared in all the while they had been in the vicinity of the derelict row of houses. The part of the island they were on seemed to be totally desolate and their footsteps showed clearly in the snow, but it had begun to snow lightly again and they would soon be concealed. A low pewter-coloured sky added to the sense of isolation and misery of the broken-down surroundings. Ha

'Ya sure that be it, Sparrer? Gawd's truth, that old ware'ouse be Ikey's deadlurk?'

Sparrer looked hurt. 'Yes, missus, 'course I is. I knows these parts like the back o' me 'and. Before I growed up, Jacob's be where I come from.'

Ha

'Ya never seen me, ever, ya understand? If ya tells a single livin' soul about Ikey's deadlurk I'll tell Bob Marley ya followed 'im and 'e'll come after ya with 'is razor and cut yer bleedin' throat from ear to ear!' Ha

'Ere, for yer trouble. Now disappear, scarper, I never seen ya, whoever you are.'

Sparrer placed one of the pound notes between his lips which were begi

Then, his breath making smoke in the cold air, Sparrer sca

'I must 'o been dreamin',' he declared in an exaggerated voice, '

'cause I could o' sweared there was a woman standing right 'ere in front o' me not a moment ago!' He turned and began walking away from Ha

Ha

Chapter Fourteen

Ikey was arrested by the City police in the early afternoon of the day Ha

'Oh shit! I 'as been shopped!' was all he was heard to cry when the fake soft was found. The senior constable, who went by the unpropitious name of George Smith and who had searched him, looked disgusted. A notorious old hand at the searching of suspects, he was known to any who had 'passed through his hands', as 'The Reamer', for he would delight in prodding his victims. Two great sausage-like fingers with fingernails grown long and filed sharp as a mandolin player's thumb entered their rear passage with a jabbing and stabbing that left them bleeding for days.

'Yer full o' shit, Ikey! But clean o' contraband!' he'd exclaimed in a booming voice, much to the delight of the constables who were holding down the screaming, blubbing Ikey with his breeches pulled down below his ski

Ikey immediately concluded that Bob Marley had betrayed him and by means of half a sovereign placed into the hand of a turnkey sent urgent word for Ha

Ikey's more private incarceration was not intended to indicate his superior status but rather his notoriety. It was designed to keep him from being murdered in a public cell where drunke

It is an English paradox that prisoners who are flogged and starved in the name of the Crown and treated far worse than a barnyard pig by the society in which they live, remain loyal subjects to the King. The scurrilous and exaggerated stories of Ikey's attempt to bring financial ruin to the Bank of England were as well known in the dark public cages of Newgate as elsewhere, and should he have been thrown among these poor wretches it was feared that he would not live to face the full force of British justice.

Ikey, always the perfectionist, was as much dismayed as the senior Bow Street constable had pretended to be that someone had managed to plant the two five pound notes within the tear on his coat. He cursed himself bitterly for neglecting, after escaping from the coach in Birmingham, to immediately sew up the offending rip. It was just such lack of attention to detail which leads to downfall and, Ikey told himself, if a mistake of the same magnitude of neglect had occurred with one of his urchins, the young tooler would have been most severely punished.

Ikey's disappointment in himself was therefore profound. He prided himself on being alert to the lightest of fiddling fingers. So how had Bob Marley managed to plant the fake soft on him? Ikey knew Marley was no tooler. The slasher's fists were ham-like and would not have had the skill required to plant the notes within the coat.