Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  By using Hannah as his purchasing agent Ikey was putting into place yet another plan. If the wholesale merchants and jewellers in New York would not take his custom then he would import all his merchandise from London. The passage across the Atlantic had been reduced to a little less than a month and the superior craftsmanship of the London and Paris workshops and their lead in the fashions would soon establish him in the forefront of Broadway jewellery establishments. He would deal in only the best merchandise, all of it initially honestly purchased. An evaluation and certificate of authentication would be issued with the more valuable pieces.

  Ikey was determined to continue to obtain his merchandise through Hannah and always without payment, forcing her to finance the orders he placed by enclosing a signed I.O.U. for the amount against the time she would arrive in America. He intended this debt to accumulate until it matched half the amount of cash in gold sovereigns which Hannah knew to be contained in the safe of their Whitechapel home. Ikey knew full well that Hannah would not accept his I.O.U.s without knowing them to be covered by his share of the gold coin.

  The deposit of thirty thousand pounds in sovereigns was by no means the most valuable part of their joint fortune. Within the safe lay precious stones: diamonds, rubies and emeralds contained within beautiful brooches, pins, necklaces and rings, and a double strand of exquisite South Seas pearls taken from the home of the Duke of Devonshire. There were also several hundred heavy fob chains of eighteen carat gold, a quantity of silver and gold plate and a dozen exquisite jewelled watches with rare movements. Finally, encased within a velvet-lined box and further protected by a chamois leather pouch, a jewelled and enamelled French carriage clock said to have belonged to Louis XIV. These objects, collected over fifteen years of fencing, represented much the greater part of Ikey and Hannah’s personal fortune.

  However, almost all the pieces were marked goods so particular in character that they dared not be presented in the London market where they would be instantly recognised. Even on the Continent they would need to be most carefully arranged within the world of the demi-monde if they were to escape detection. The best chance by far lay in the American market where new wealth was eager to acquire the trappings of an old culture and families such as the Astors and the Vanderbilts possessed the money to purchase it without asking too many awkward questions.

  Hannah did not have the experience to value correctly this merchandise, nor did she have the knowledge to dispose of it discreetly. The precious stones could be removed from their casings and sold separately and the gold chains melted down, but not without a thorough knowledge of how this should be done to prevent the attention of both the underground and the police.

  No middleman in the thief kingdom of London had the resources to pay or the foolhardiness to dispose of such a haul in under a year at the least. And even then each stone, if it were not cut into smaller specimens, would need to be entered onto the market with the greatest possible discretion. Therefore the chances of a gem stone of note being discovered and traced back to Hannah was exceedingly great. Indeed, even in America, it would take all of Ikey’s considerable skill and the shopfront presented by a thriving and outwardly respectable jewellery establishment on Broadway with a reputation for straight dealing to judiciously dispose of the contents of the safe to the richest of the American gentiles.

  In his subsequent letters Ikey decided he would increase his caution to Hannah to always buy ‘righteous’ goods, emphasising the great risk that she would be caught if she attempted to do otherwise. He knew that she would take this warning to include the disposal of the contents of the safe, this risk being even greater than the purchase of stolen merchandise should Hannah be foolish enough to try to act as a fence. Ikey was conscious that Hannah cared about her children more than anything else and the prospect of being transported and losing them was the one great fear he had to exploit in her.

  Ikey also knew that if he should give Hannah the combination to the safe she might be tempted to abscond with only the money, the value of the gold chains and the proceeds obtained from the sale of their two London properties. The rest of the hugely valuable haul she might wait to dispose of at another time in some foreign country of her choice.

  He had therefore determined on a ploy which, over a series of letters, would let her know that he was negotiating the sale of the pearl necklace to an American of great wealth. When he came close to the limit of his credit with her he would reveal this personage to be the redoubtable John Astor, said to be the richest man in America, ‘American Royalty’ as the saying went. The pearls were worth one hundred thousand pounds and Ikey was confident that Hannah’s greed would persuade her to come to America with the contents of the safe.

  Of the two of them, Ikey was the more vulnerable. Hannah would continue to exist whatever might happen, for Hannah hated not herself, only everyone else, and Ikey was simply the incarnation of everything she despised. Ikey, despite the fact that he might yet make a new and separate wealth in America, saw Hannah’s determination to rob him of his fortune as an action more hellish in its nature than if she had plotted to murder him. If she were to succeed in stealing his fortune she would have won, not just his wealth, but his very existence. Her victory, and the hate contained within it, would destroy him completely. Victory over Hannah and therefore over himself lay in his retaining the contents of the safe. Hannah was playing a game with her husband for his money and because he was the perfect focus for her extraordinary resentment against the world. Ikey was playing a game with his wife for his very life.

  Alas, the best laid plans. . .! Ikey was not to know that his luck was on its way to Van Diemen’s Land and, at the moment of Hannah’s receiving his letter in London, it was dangling freely on its gold chain about the scrawny neck of Tiberias Potbottom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The London police records of the time show that a large consignment of watches, said to be more than one hundred, were stolen from the premises of a wholesale merchant in Cheapside. This coincidence was to completely change the lives and luck of Hannah and Ikey Solomon.

  A theft of such proportion would soon be known in the Whitechapel markets and in Rosemary and Petticoat Lanes and around the Haymarket, where there would be much discussion as to who might have brought it about and who might be capable of fencing such a ‘delicate’ haul.

  It might at first be supposed that it would be simple enough to bring a consignment of new watches back on to the market, but such was not the case. The numbers and markings of the watches were all furnished to the police, being available from the manufacturer, and so each watch would need to be carefully ‘christened’, that is, the number altered and the name upon the face carefully removed or the face itself replaced. This was a task which took some skill and, moreover, time and was not often worthy of completion on a fob watch that was not of gold or silver. The watches taken were of a varying assortment, but mostly at the cheaper end of the quality market. This meant that such merchandise, while cheaply procured by a fence, was difficult to place into circulation - a trickle placed here and there in market towns and country fairs and all of this over a lengthy period of time, so that the risk of discovering the source of the trickle was greatly decreased.

  Hannah, hearing of the theft, was quick to realise that it matched almost precisely the consignment Ikey had commanded her to obtain. Accordingly, and contrary to Ikey’s instructions that ‘ . . .none but “righteous” watches be sent and not to touch even one what has been gained “on the cross”’, Hannah sent for Bob Marley.

  It was late afternoon when Marley knocked on the door of Hannah’s Whitechapel home. He was dressed as a regular toff, ready for an evening of jollifications in Drury Lane and the Haymarket, and did not even bother to remove his top hat as he entered the house. This was an intended insult, designed to go along with his failure to greet Hannah as he brushed past her into the familiar parlour. Here he appropriated a glass of the good brandy Hannah had got in and took a
bagel from the plate. He commenced to chew with his mouth open; his two gold eye teeth showed clearly as he stared blankly at Hannah, who had followed him silently into the parlour.

  ‘Long time no see, eh, Bob?’

  Marley took a gulp of brandy then pushed what remained of the bagel into his mouth. He did not acknowledge her greeting, sucking the crumbs from his fingers as he continued to stare at Hannah.

  Hannah smiled ingratiatingly. ‘Now, don’t be like that, Bob, it were only business.’

  ‘Humph!’ Marley grunted.

  ‘Ya done me one in the eye when they made the raid on Bell Alley, ya took me money under false pretences!’ Hannah shrugged. ‘So I got me revenge.’ She grinned. ‘That’s all, it were tit f’ tat!’

  Marley swallowed, his Adam’s apple bouncing. ‘Ya made me look like a copper’s nark! That’s not the same thing! Me, a man o’ me word, I gave Ikey me word, I took his contract!’ He paused and took a slug of the brandy. ‘Ya done in me fuckin’ reputation!’

  Hannah laughed uneasily, but then brightened. ‘Well Ikey escaped anyway, no ‘arm done, in the end ya done ‘im a big favour, know what I mean?’

  Marley jumped suddenly from the chair and grabbed Hannah by the throat with one large hand. ‘Fuck Ikey! It were me reputation ya destroyed! Me a copper’s nark, a fuckin’ informer!’ He shook Hannah, almost lifting her feet from the ground. ‘Ain’t nobody what trusts me no more!’ His fingers tightened about her neck and Hannah’s face grew purple, her eyes almost popping from their sockets. ‘Don’t never try that again, ya ‘ear? You’ll be dead meat!’ Bob Marley released Hannah, who sank to her knees clutching her neck with both hands, forcing herself not to sob. Bob Marley held an open razor in his right hand.

  Marley flicked the razor closed and placed it in the pocket of his coat, then threw back his head and swallowed the rest of his brandy. He thumped the glass down upon the table and started towards the door.

  ‘I trusts ya, Bob,’ Hannah said in a hoarse voice, rising slowly to her feet. ‘Please wait.’

  Bob Marley turned at the door and gave a short laugh. ‘Ya trusts me! Well ain’t that a fuckin’ caution!’

  Hannah moved up to him and touched him on the sleeve. ‘Please?’ she smiled again, her throat aching. ‘G’warn, ‘ave another brandy, a nice bagel, do ya good. I can explain everyfink, honest.’

  Marley, eyeing the bottle of excellent brandy, hesitated. ‘Explain what?’ He crossed back to the bottle. ‘Ain’t nuffink to explain, ya fucked me reputation, that’s all!’

  ‘It ain’t true, Bob. You is the best. Ya always was, ya still is. The best there be. Ikey always says, “‘E’s the best, ‘e is, always use the best, Hannah”. I says so too, the best o’ the best!’

  Bob Marley looked up at Hannah, his expression slightly mollified. ‘What’s ya want?’

  ‘Watches!’ Hannah removed Ikey’s letter from within her bodice and waved it. ‘Ikey wants watches in America.’

  Despite himself Bob Marley was impressed. ‘Jesus! ‘E made it, eh? Cunnin’ bastard!’ He poured more brandy into his glass and glanced up at Hannah. ‘Fencin’ then is ‘e?’

  Hannah was reluctant to explain. ‘Yeah, sorta.’ She replaced the letter. ‘Them watches what’s been lifted from Cheapside, know anyfink?’

  Marley shook his head. ‘Too ‘ot, ‘Annah, they’s got to cool down first, ain’t nobody goin’ to handle them yet. They’s numbered and all, mostly cheap shit, not worth christenin’.’

  ‘Could ya find ‘em?’ Hannah asked. ‘Make a good buy? I’ll take the lot if the askin’ price be right.’

  Marley shook his head. ‘Too dangerous. I told ya, watches be too ‘ot to touch!’

  ‘I’ll pay fifty per cent o’ the shop price,’ Hannah said quickly, knowing this to be a generous offer, also knowing that she would charge Ikey the full retail price for the watches.

  ‘Sixty! Sixty per cent o’ the retail, take it or leave it. And I’ll need twenty sovs down payment,’ Marley said emphatically. ‘There’s expenses, ya understand?’

  Hannah nodded but inwardly she was concerned that Marley was losing his grip, that perhaps he had lost his reputation and therefore his old, greedy confidence. His sudden attack on her had left her frightened, but in the peculiar way of villains, it had also given her confidence in him. You knew where you stood. She’d fully expected to pay sixty per cent of the full price of the watches, but she’d also set aside fifty gold sovereigns as the down payment.

  ‘Sure, I understand,’ she said. ‘Gimme a mo’, I’ll fetch it fer ya.’

  ‘Mind, I can’t take no chances,’ Marley said. ‘It may take a while to get to them yacks.’ This was said almost as an aside.

  Hannah turned at the door. ‘Not too long, Bob. Ikey ‘as great expectations.’

  Marley frowned and shook his head slowly. ‘If I ‘as to take chances, make indiscreet enquiries like, that’s no good fer me ‘ealth! Pigs is everywhere, the Lane’s tight as a duck’s arse!’ He looked over to where Hannah was standing and sighed. ‘ ’Fraid that kind o’ haste is gunna cost you forty sovs extra on the down.’

  Hannah smiled inwardly, her mind put at rest. She was dealing with the same dead cunning Bob Marley. She was anxious to get the watches and so impress Ikey with her diligence and continuing goodwill towards him. She was not foolish enough to imagine that he would send her his half of the combination after only one such consignment, but her heart had lifted at the opportunity his letter presented. She had high hopes that Ikey must eventually send her the combination to the safe when she pleaded impecuniosity, his debts incurred by his orders having become too large for her to carry any further on her own. Whereupon she would be rid of him forever.

  But Hannah had completely underestimated Bob Marley. She’d quickly come to see his attack on her as a show, a token effort to assert his male pride, give her a fright, as he had well succeeded in doing. She didn’t think for a moment he would have used the razor. Marley, Hannah felt certain, could always be bought with gold.

  She was wrong, however. Marley would have used the razor on her as lightly as he would have smiled. Hannah was unable to see the proud man who despised his fellow villains and thought himself quite different. She did not comprehend that, in his own eyes (and no others counted), she had damaged his reputation and done him irreparable harm. When she’d shifted the blame for betraying Ikey to the police onto him, she had delivered a blow to his pride which could entertain no possible forgiveness. Marley did business only for solid gold, for that is how he saw his reputation. And he always delivered. Hannah had compromised him, and because he always delivered, she would be no exception. The wolf would tear her flesh as well as any other.

  Bob Marley made no attempt to locate the whereabouts of the watches stolen from Cheapside, this being much too dangerous. Instead he made directly for a jeweller of his acquaintance in the Haymarket, a Polish Jew by the name of Isaac Isaacson whom Ikey had used regularly when Marley had been his snakesman as a child. It was Isaacson who had moulded and created Marley’s two gold teeth and so it came as somewhat of a surprise when his visitor bid him find one hundred mixed watches of brand new quality and all righteously purchased. They haggled at great length to finally reach an agreement of a thirty per cent reduction off the retail price of the proposed consignment.

  Bob Marley was about to leave the premises reasonably well satisfied with the negotiations when Isaac Isaacson beckoned him to come closer. He explained in an urgent whisper that he was long owed a certain sum of money for a gold and diamond bracelet sold to a Miss Myrtle Manners, the governess of a well-known brothel in the Strand known appropriately enough as ‘Girls with good Manners’. This ‘Governess o’ whores’, he claimed, had flatly refused to pay him the final two instalments, a sum of three hundred pounds, claiming he had overcharged her and pointing out, with the least amount of subtlety, that she enjoyed the special patronage and protection of a senior police officer in the Hay-market watchhouse.


  ‘You can cut, maybe a little, this person, ja?’ Isaacson enquired of Bob Marley.

  ‘Most certainly!’ Marley replied. ‘It’d be me pleasure to be o’ service, Mr Isaacson.’ He paused and scratched his eyebrow with the tip of his forefinger. ‘Though it’ll cost ya anuvver ten percent orf the cost o’ the yacks. O’ course, if ya wants a really nasty acid job, right down a cheekbone, and includin’ a little turn o’ the blade to slice away the corner o’ the gob so it don’t fit proper no more, it could be a little extra.’

  Isaac Isaacson grew suddenly pale and threw his hands up in alarm. ‘No, no! Ten per cent, no more, please, I beg you! A small violence only, if you please!’

  Bob Marley grinned. ‘Fer ten percent I can do ya a nice little job, Mr Isaacson. Gimme two days. Reckon you’ll ‘ave the yacks ready by then?’

  The jeweller nodded, hunched his shoulders and spread his hands. ‘A little cut, no more!’ he begged again.

  Bob Marley left the Haymarket and made his way to the Hare and Hounds in Rosemary Lane almost directly opposite the Methodist Academy of Light Fingers. He had not long to wait before he observed a boy leave the Academy in an old coat that fell to beyond his knees, the sleeves rolled up to fit his scrawny arms, bare feet showing below ragged trousers. The brat crossed the street to enter the tavern and Marley observed him to be snotnosed, dirty and small, with the pinched, rodentlike features of a street urchin. He appeared to be about ten years old as he placed two pennies down on the counter and ordered a daffy of gin.

  ‘Make that a shant, m’dear!’ Marley called to the barmaid.

  The barmaid and the urchin both looked up at Marley. ‘Suit yerself,’ she said, picking up a bigger glass.