The Potato Factory (13 page)

The snow storm seemed to have abated, the wind had dropped and now everything lay quiet, covered in a blanket of fresh snow. But Ikey, his yellow boots crunching on the carpet of white, saw none of the new innocence of his surroundings. Nor did he appreciate the crispness of the clean air which the wind had punched through the rookeries, replacing the foulness which lingered all year, trapped within vile-smelling yellow smog, until the first big snowfall froze the stench, covered the filth and banished the smog. Ikey's mind was otherwise occupied with the problems which lay ahead. In his entire life he had never faced a more difficult situation. If he were to be arrested and convicted on a conspiracy to defraud the Bank of England through forgery, he would be fortunate to escape the hangman's noose. But should this misfortune be avoided it would most certainly be replaced with 'The Boat'. He was sure to get life and be transported to Botany Bay or the new prison island of Van Diemen's Land.

It had been Hannah who had persuaded Ikey to deal in counterfeit money. Ikey recalled how he had at first been most reluctant, but eventually became pleased with the suggestion for all the wrong reasons, the major one used by a nagging Hannah being that the notorious Van Esselyn was deaf and dumb. This, to someone of Ikey's cautious nature, had been what had finally persuaded him.

At first Ikey had insisted on the most basic equipment for the forger, such as could be quickly disposed of in an emergency, but the Liverpool contact grew too greedy and demanded too great a share of the resultant notes. The decision to add the latest in printing machinery finally came about when Ikey discovered a method of obtaining the very paper used by the Bank of England. Furthermore, he had also located a source of inks from Birmingham which closely matched those needed for all the denominations of Bank of England banknotes. The temptation to print on his own had simply been too great and Ikey set about obtaining, mostly from Austria, the machine parts needed for a highly sophisticated press. The only drawback was that such specialised and large equipment could not be easily dismantled, or moved, nor could it be passed off as a press used for printing works of the usual everyday kind.

Ikey cursed his carelessness and his vanity. The location of his forgery business was another of his exquisite ironies. Often a rich banker would be in the process of dalliance, his fat bum pumping up and down, while directly under his squeaking mattress, separated only by a wooden floor, was a sophisticated printing press in the hands of one of Europe's most skilful engravers and designed to rob the very institution to which this pompous and randified gentleman belonged.

Ikey once confided in Mary that he had invented the three 'f' system of profit: 'A modern economic marvel, my dear, fencin', fuckin' and forgery. We take profits from the bottom, the middle and the top, an excellent arrangement, do you not agree? In the basement we make money, in the house proper we employ your plump little pigeons to make riches from downed breeches and at the very top, we store plate, silver and gold taken from the rich by the bold!'

Ikey, although in shit deeper than that which flowed from the two hundred sewerage outlets which spilled into the River Thames, was far from witless in this matter facing him. For example, he had all the documents of rent and receipts for the printing machinery made out in Van Esselyn's assumed name, this being Thomas Thompson. These were all signed by Van Esselyn. Nor did Ikey's name appear, other than as landlord, on any other documents of a formal nature. In the event of a raid, Abraham Van Esselyn, alias Thomas Thompson, would take the blame and Ikey would assume the unlikely role of a rather stupid absentee landlord, hugely astonished to find his premises, hired innocently to a simple printer, so ill-used by this rapacious and untrustworthy foreigner. The fact that the printing press was of such a specialised nature that it immediately condemned its owner as a high-class printer of banknotes he would claim was beyond his limited knowledge of mechanicals and machinery.

Ikey's genius for avoiding disaster was revealed in his arrangements to have the bank's people find Van Esselyn not only with the machinery to print forged notes but with a plate for a five pound note, the mixing inks and some of the notes themselves, though no paper. Van Esselyn was known to the Bank of England, and should he be found with the printing press but with no other evidence of forgery such as engraving tools, at least one etched copper printing plate and some samples of the completed notes they would be forced to conclude that Van Esselyn was not acting alone. That he was being supplied from elsewhere with the further materials needed to create forged banknotes.

This would immediately cast suspicion on his landlord as a known fence and receiver. But if they found the complete means of achieving a forged banknote under the one roof, and evidence that the process was undertaken alone by a known master forger, any barrister defending Ikey could argue that no proof of a conspiracy between the two men existed and that Van Esselyn had acted on his own accord.

Furthermore, while forgery of high denomination notes, those above five pounds, carried the death sentence, this especially for foreigners, the making of notes up to five pounds in value only carried a protracted prison sentence. Ikey had saved Van Esselyn's neck from the hangman's noose and at the same time probably his own.

It was nice planning, for in the eyes of the law and the officers of the Bank of England who wished to be seen accountable to their depositors, Van Esselyn's arrest would effectively put an end to the forgery operation and conveniently supply both a foreign victim and a successful prosecution. A foreign villain was always better news, and one who could be construed as French even more so. With a bit of luck the City might, in time, give up the quest to get Ikey arrested and even if not, once again, in the hands of a good barrister (Ikey could afford the very best), his prosecution in the Old Bailey could be made to look like blatant victimisation.

Ikey's relationship with Van Esselyn had, as far as he knew, never been witnessed by any other person. Though Mary knew of it, she had never actually seen the two men together. So only Van Esselyn and Mary could testify to the connection and both could, if the need arose, be declared hostile witnesses and have their evidence discounted.

Ikey knew full well that no judge would possibly believe this, nor any jury for that matter, but he knew also that the letter of the law was often in direct contrast to its spirit. In the hands of a talented King's Counsel, all the evidence could point to his being the
innocent
landlord. The paper submitted for scrutiny by his defence, the leases, receipts and ledgers would show clearly that he'd acted only as a property owner hiring his premises for commercial purposes. In fact, it was essential that Van Esselyn do all in his power to implicate Ikey as his partner in crime. In this way counsel could demand evidence to support this assertion, a receipt, note, possibly a witness who had seen them together. Even if the jury convicted Ikey, he would take his case to the Court of Appeal where his 'technical' innocence would be almost certainly upheld by a judge. Ikey's cool head and knowledge of the law had on more than one occasion saved his skin. But he had never before been up against the Bank of England.

Though he was most hopeful that he could make a case for his innocence regarding the printing press and Van Esselyn's forgery practice, the same was not true with Mary's occupation of the premises. While she too carried documents testifying that she rented the premises from him and that she was the sole owner of the business which she conducted within the house, it would be almost impossible to prove himself unaware of the nature of her vocation.

However, Ikey was almost certain that the City police would not be interested in arresting Mary as a brothel keeper. The premises were outside the City area and they were unlikely to stoop to such menial policing matters as the arrest of the mistress of a brothel. Besides, in the case of this particular house of ill fame, there was no knowing on whose potentially awkward toes they might be treading.

All things considered it was a neat enough arrangement, but by no means a plan without obvious flaws. Several occurred to Ikey's untrusting nature at once. For instance, who had shopped him? Would they appear as witness for the prosecution? Was Bob Marley reliable, or a part of the conspiracy? How drastically would Hannah react when she heard about the goings on in the house in Bell Alley and the existence of Mary? Ikey grew pale at the thought of her anger, for he feared Hannah almost as much as he did the law.

Ikey determined that he would secure the contents in the cart at his Whitechapel house and leave on the early morning coach for Birmingham, waking Hannah only to inform her that he would be gone for some time.

In Ikey's experience, a little seeking and finding always cooled matters down. The hullabaloo which the capture of a notorious international forger would make in both
The Times
and the penny papers would be sufficient initial glory for the bank, and he hoped they might keep his name out of it until they had more concrete evidence of his involvement, by which time he felt sure he would have constructed a web of outrageous circumstances to meet every question, legal or filial. But everything depended on the Bank of England police being forced to accept that Abraham Van Esselyn, alias Thomas Thompson, was a lone operator free of Ikey's influence.

He then ran a second scenario through his head, this being the possibility that he and Mary would be arrested and convicted as brothel owners. Ikey soon saw that there might be some advantage in this occurrence. He could readily admit to his partnership in Egyptian Mary's and would then be able to claim that the presence of a sample printing business on the premises was a ploy to conceal the existence of a brothel at the same address. It was a common enough occurrence, concealing an illegitimate business behind a legitimate one.

Being the silent partner in a whorehouse was a minor crime when compared to the crime of forgery of Bank of England notes. Again, with a good barrister, he might escape with a heavy fine and a couple of months in Newgate. Mary, alas, would almost certainly be transported. The female wickedness of running a brothel far transcended the loan of the finance to set up such a business, or even the crime of enjoying the profits resulting from such a loan.  Many a magistrate or member of parliament was a slum landlord, investing his money for profit and not overly concerned about the purpose for which his premises were used, whether for a Sunday school or a brothel. Profit enjoys the divine blessing of the Church and was to be worshipped without question.

In England money and property were thought to be the business of God and both received His absolute sanction. But the corrupting of the young and the innocent by a madam in a bawdy house was a crime against the Almighty and His angels of the most heinous nature. Mary, Ikey knew, would be severely punished if she was convicted.

For the first time in his life Ikey found himself at odds with a conscience which he had hitherto not known to exist. His love for Mary was directly opposed to his greed and his greed was entirely tied up with Hannah and her children.

Ikey was well used to walking the thin line between safety and disaster, but he was getting older and was very much richer and, for the first time, happy with much of his life. It was a pity that Mary might need to be sacrificed, for she was in large part the cause of his contentment. But kind regard was such a recent experience in Ikey's narrow universe of feelings that he neither trusted it nor appreciated its worth. It was a sentiment he had never once felt directed towards himself, and even his children had shown him none, their mother careful, on the rare occasions they were together, not to allow him the slightest influence over them.

Ikey's low regard for himself meant it was impossible to contemplate that Mary might care for him in the least. His nature and the world he lived in allowed for neither sentiment nor pity. Survival was the only rule to which there was no exception. And so he felt some sadness at the possibility of losing Mary, an entirely new and alien experience, but in no sense did he feel remorse. In the most unlikely event of the brothel being included in the raid Mary must be sacrificed if he was to survive.

Besides, Ikey told his recently discovered conscience, it was far better for him to be on the outside so that he could secretly pay Mary's counsel and other legal fees and, if she was convicted, to fee the turnkeys and officials at Newgate prison in order to make her incarceration tolerable. Should she be sentenced to transportation and accommodated first, as was the custom, for several months in a prison at Chatham, Bristol or Plymouth or with luck on the Thames, the many bribes, remunerations and emoluments she would require to survive this experience would need to come from his unfortunate purse. Although the thought of parting with money, even in so noble a cause, filled him with an unhappy sense of himself being the victim, he decided he would accept this sacrifice as some sort of repayment for the time he had spent with Mary.

Ikey arrived at the Pig 'n Spit where the boys waited for him, jumping up and down in one spot and hugging themselves against the bitter cold. He lifted the canvas cover and removed the parcel wrapped in oilcloth, then sent the boys on their way, agreeing to meet them at his Whitechapel home in less than half an hour.

Struggling with the heavy parcel, Ikey walked down a small alley to the side of the building and into the skittle yard at the rear of the public house. He placed the parcel at the back door and walked over to the cellar chute, where he bent down and lifted the heavy wooden cover with some difficulty to reveal a further barrier, a set of iron bars which were locked down from within the cellar. Removing his boot, he rapped loudly on a single steel bar with its heel, at the same time calling out to the cellar boy to wake up and open the back door of the public house. In a few moments a lantern appeared at the base of the chute, though it was too dark in the cellar below to see the face behind it.