The Potato Factory (15 page)

It must also be remembered that Ikey's potential metamorphosis did not include his wife Hannah or his children. The milk of human kindness had not entirely washed away the stains of his known and expected character and he felt no compunction about deserting his wife and children providing he could contrive to take his money with him. This Ikey knew to be an unlikely circumstance as he was made to account to Hannah for almost all the transactions which passed through his hands. Besides, she held the second half of the combination safe under the pantry floor.

Ikey's obsession with bookkeeping was his downfall. He had trained Hannah to keep books on her five brothels and these he inspected every evening before leaving home, entering the profits in a ledger of his own. Hannah, who pretended to the outside world that she was illiterate, demanded the right to see Ikey's ledgers, which she understood to a degree which often frustrated him.

Ikey could not bear for anyone to know his business and the ledgers Mary kept so diligently for him consisted only of the merchandise coming in, a stocktaking list and first evaluation of stolen and fenced articles, not a final accounting. So she never entirely knew the state of his affairs.

Ikey's ledgers were of the final reckoning of profits cross-referenced in astonishing detail; the what, why, when and where of every stolen article, so that no two articles from the same source would appear for sale in the same market. These great books were an extension of his mind, a beautiful reckoning of the results of his every business endeavour. Each ledger was a tangible proof that he existed, the strong vellum pages, the stoutly bound cover of softest calf leather with his name embossed in gold upon it, the squareness of the corners and the beautiful marbled endpapers. These all spoke of strength, respectability and an ordered and handsome masculinity.

Ikey's ledgers were everything he couldn't be and when he wrote within them in his neat copperplate hand, each entry adding to the sum of his wealth, in his mind the ledger became himself, brave, strong, valuable, clean, permanent, respectable and accepted. Ikey's ledger was an addiction as necessary to him as an opium pipe is to the captain of a China clipper.

For a man whose every instinct was to conceal his affairs, his compulsion to record everything was a terrible weakness which Hannah had exploited to the fullest. His year-end ledgers, which contained all the profits made from both his work and his wife's, were kept in a large safe built into the floor of a small basement chamber. Its casual appearance resembled a cold storeroom for provisions, being without windows and fitted with a stout iron door to resist rats, and it was referred to as the pantry.

Indeed, Hannah kept potatoes, flour and apples within it and from the ceiling hung the papery white carcasses of dried cod and a large bunch of Spanish onions. The safe was concealed in exactly the same manner as the one in Van Esselyn's printing shop and in Ikey's own study. Along with the ledgers, it contained a vast amount of paper money as well as gold, mostly in sovereigns, though some melted down bars, and several small velvet bags of precious stones worth a king's ransom. So cunningly was the safe hidden that several raids on the house had not come even close to discovering its whereabouts.

Alas for Ikey, Hannah's insistence on them each knowing only half the combination meant that neither could open the safe without the presence of the other. Thus the bulk of their fortune could never be removed from the safe without their mutual agreement.

It was against this background that Ikey found himself lost in the imaginings of escaping to New South Wales with the eventual prospect of uniting with Mary. Now, as the coach drew to a halt at a staging post to allow its passengers to take refreshment, he realised that he must have momentarily lost his sanity.

Ikey's wealth was irrevocably tied up with Hannah's, and though he surprised himself by still determining secretly to help Mary should she be arrested, there was no reconciliation possible between them. Mary would forever remain the sweetest passage in Ikey's life, but if it came to a choice between riches and sentiment then, Ikey reasoned, the short journey they'd taken together in life was already concluded.

*

Mary had spent an eventful day. She had been awakened, considerably confused by the noise in the basement and, lighting a candle, hurried downstairs to investigate, only to be met by a stout policeman shining a torch into her eyes. He promptly ordered her back upstairs, though in a remarkably polite tone.

'We'll be up shortly, madam, to search your premises, but we'll not be making any arrests of your good self or your girls. Would you be so kind as to wait upon our attentions and make a large pot of strong black tea with sugar added.'

'Tea be too expensive for the likes of you lot,' Mary retorted, 'you will 'ave to be satisfied with beer!'

Mary had hurriedly retraced her steps to her little parlour. She thought only of the concealment of the ledger and was struck with panic when she entered the room to see that it no longer rested on the table beside the bottle of claret. Then she noticed the absence of the second tankard, and with a grateful sigh concluded that Ikey had been and had removed the ledger.

But after a moment she became bewildered. Why had Ikey not wakened her? Had he known of the raid and betrayed her? Mary, her head filled with the anxiety of the moment, made her way to the kitchen where she filled a large jug with beer and set it upon the table. Then she took half a dozen pewter mugs from a cupboard and placed them around the jug. She walked into the scullery and noticed the bull's eye lamp lying on the stone sink. She picked it up - it was still slightly warm to the touch. Ikey had most assuredly been, but why would he need the lamp? A gas light was kept burning low in all the passages except the attic and he would need only to have turned these up to see his way perfectly. Besides, Ikey seemed to see like a cat in the dark while others would tread fearfully with their arms stretched out in front of them.

'Jesus! The attic!' Mary exclaimed aloud.

The police were about to search the house and they would find the attic filled with stolen articles. Mary, now fully awake, raced up the stairs leading into the attic when she realised that only Ikey kept a key to the door. Then she saw that the door was slightly ajar. She opened it and sufficient pale light filtered through the barred dormer window to reveal that the attic was empty. Not a bolt of linen or brocade, no silver candelabra or plate, or fancy clocks, nothing remained.

Mary felt suddenly completely betrayed. She was not the kind to sob, but a great hollowness filled her being. Why had Ikey not alerted her? She sat heavily upon a step on the narrow stairway leading up to the attic door. Then she recalled the officer's words of a few minutes previously,
'We'll not be making any arrests of your good self or your girls!'

Mary felt herself filling up with joyous relief. He'd fee'd the law. Ikey had bribed the officers not to arrest her! Mary felt a great warmth go out towards him. He loved her! The miserable sod
actually
loved her! Mary was suddenly as happy as she had been in her entire life, as happy even as she had been on the morning Mr Goldstein had hired her as a clerk. She hurried downstairs to stoke the embers and add coal to the stove, and then to make a large pot of sweet tea for the law. Her head whirled with the discovery that someone cared about her, that Ikey had escaped before being arrested for forgery, but first he had seen to it that she was safe! Mary vowed that she would never forget his loving act towards her.

The arrest of notorious forger Abraham Van Esselyn, alias Thomas Thompson, was a triumph for the bank officers. Though they had found no evidence in the form of large denomination forged banknotes, the discovery of an etching plate for the five pound denomination, together with a small stack of freshly minted counterfeit five pound notes taken together with the implements of forgery, the Austrian printing press, inks, though no paper, was sufficient to incarcerate him for the term of his natural life. Nonetheless, the City police were bitterly disappointed. They wanted Ikey Solomon, and they knew he had escaped.

The search of Egyptian Mary's had revealed nothing, though it had been thorough in the extreme. The beds and closets of the startled girls were overturned, mattresses ripped open, floorboards removed, false walls looked for and ceilings holed and tapped. The tiniest apertures were poked into and closely examined, even the coal had been removed from the scuttle, and the peephole Ikey used to spy upon Mary's clients was examined in the hope that it might reveal some secret hideaway. But at the end of a full morning's search, accompanied by Mary's repeated protests that Ikey was simply her landlord and that she knew the business in the basement to be a printing press and no more, nothing was found in the brothel part of the premises, nothing which could connect Ikey Solomon to forgery or, for that matter, to any other crime beyond that of allowing the premises he owned to be used as a brothel and his basement as a printing press.

Under normal circumstances Ikey's landlord activities might still have been sufficient to arrest him on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the Bank of England by allowing the printing of forged notes on property he owned. But the bank's officials knew Ikey could afford the best King's Counsel London could furnish and nowhere in the world was there better to be found. They needed much more than a possible charge of complicity. They needed traceable, verifiable stolen goods and banknotes which proved to be forgeries and which were found to be in his possession or concealed on premises where he was known to live.

Furthermore, Van Esselyn seemed not in the least inclined to bear witness against his landlord, though he had yet to be thoroughly worked upon. A deaf mute who purported to write only in the French language was, at best, a dubious witness. But even if his confession proved compelling, evidence taken from a forger of Van Esselyn's reputation could, they knew, be easily negated in cross-examination by any half-competent barrister with half a wig on his head.

Late that afternoon, as Ikey's coach was rumbling across the countryside, a meeting took place at the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street between its directors and various officers and in the presence of the Upper Marshal of the City of London. It was here a decision was quietly taken that Ikey Solomon must, by all means available, be apprehended and permanently removed from London's criminal society. A decision was also passed with a show of hands, and therefore not entered in the minutes, that should any emoluments be incurred in this endeavour, they would be met by the bank and dispensed through the services of a reliable go-between, so that these 'expenses' were not traceable back to the officers of the bank nor to any person acting on their behalf.

The task of apprehending Ikey and building a watertight case against him was made the personal responsibility of the Upper Marshal of London, Sir Jasper Waterlow. Sir Jasper was a member of the Select Committee on Police which was about to look into the whole question of policing in London. There was already a great deal of speculation about the formation of a Metropolitan Police Force to replace the corrupt and inadequate magistrates' runners and Sir Jasper could see himself as the head of such a body, a position which must inevitably lead to a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. The additional responsibility for apprehending the notorious receiver and now head of a conspiracy to defraud the Bank of England was an unexpected turn of good fortune, and he was well pleased with the bank's nomination.

With this decision to persist in the hunt, Ikey Solomon became, at once, the most wanted man throughout the length and breadth of Britain, even though no actual warrant existed for his arrest.

It did not take long for Hannah to learn of the arrest of Abraham Van Esselyn and the reason for Ikey's hasty departure to Birmingham. Not more than an hour after Ikey had departed an officer from the City police had knocked loudly on the front door of their Whitechapel home. 'Name o' Ikey Solomon. Is this 'is 'ouse?' he demanded.

Hannah, who was accustomed to both rudeness and crisis, nodded calmly and invited the officer into her front parlour. 'Shall I take yer coat and mittens, officer?'

'Gloves, they's gloves,' the policeman corrected her. 'Thank 'e kindly, I'll stay put.'

Hannah smiled. 'And what brings ya out at the crack o' dawn, officer? Bit early to come callin', ain't it?' Without waiting for the policeman's reply, she rubbed her hands together against the cold, ' 'Ave a pew, officer, make y'self at 'ome, don't blame ya for stayin' with yer coat and mittens, cold as charity in 'ere, 'ang on a mo, good idea, I'll light the grate.' She said all of this with such rapidity that the policeman hadn't yet mustered sufficient wit to reply to her original question. He cleared his throat, preparing finally to answer, but Hannah turned her back on him and kneeling in front of the fire-place struck a lucifer to the kindling in the grate.

'Sit, sit, officer,' Hannah said. A tiny curl of yellow flame licked between the dark lumps of coal and a wisp of smoke followed it up the chimney.

The policeman, a stout, heavily jowled man with a bushy black moustache, lowered himself slowly into the chair. 'Your 'usband, madam, we should like to talk to 'im on a matter 'o some urgency.'

Hannah rose from the fireplace and turned towards him, her expression most conciliatory. 'What a bloomin' shame, you've come all this way for nuffink! 'E's gorn, sir, 'fraid 'e's not 'ere.'