Potato Factory

by Bryce Courtenay

  It was fortunate that it was Christmas and much of the goods, usually kept in the attic above the brothel, had been ‘doctored’. That is, the monogram and other forms of identification removed and the goods sent back into the marketplace or to the continent, this time of the year being most expedient for the disposal of expensive merchandise. If Ikey could get the two lads back in time and the load of contraband away, at the very least, they would not be able to charge him for receiving.

  Ikey was a deeply frightened man as he turned his key in the lock of the rear door of the Bell Alley premises and slipped quietly into the scullery. The house was still. The last customers had long since been sent home by carriage, and the girls put to bed with a hot brandy toddy into which Mary always mixed a sleeping draught.

  He decided not to tell Mary of the events to occur but simply to say that he was unwell with a stomach ache and wished to take her ledger home with him so that he might go over it later. This had occurred once or twice before and she would not be overly suspicious at such a request. He would explain the removal of the stolen goods from the attic as goods sold in a bumper Christmas season.

  However luck was on Ikey’s side in the event that he discovered Mary asleep in her chair as he crept silently into her parlour. She was still seated in an over-stuffed chair wrapped about in a comforter with her chin resting on her chest. On the small table beside her was her ledger and to the side of it stood two pewter tankards and an open bottle of good claret wine. Ikey moved to the wall and turned the gaslight lower, then quietly lifted the ledger and one of the tankards together with its doily from the table and stuffed them into a pocket in his great coat.

  Ikey worked quickly, using a bull’s eye lamp he’d trimmed in the scullery, to move the stolen goods from the attic down to the small back room leading into the alley. He left a large square parcel carefully wrapped in oilcloth until last. Ikey was forced to rest several times as he struggled with it down to the scullery and, despite the cold, he was perspiring profusely by the time he heard the low pre-arranged whistle of one of the lads. The cart, the noise of its wheels padded by the six inch fall of snow, had arrived silently at the rear of the house. The two boys stood rubbing their hands and blowing into their mittens as Ikey opened the scullery door.

  With the help of the boys the goods were quickly loaded, placing the square oilcloth parcel into the cart last before covering the whole load with a blood-stained canvas, the cart having been obtained from a mutton butcher at the Garden. Ikey gave each lad a shilling, with the promise of another to come, and asked them to await him at the Pig ‘n Spit.

  Ikey then let himself into the basement quarters down a short flight of stairs and through a door within the house to which only he had a key. Upon entering he became aware of a deep and resonant snoring coming from behind a curtained partition at the far end of the large room which his partner kept as his own quarters. He had no need to concern himself with careful movement since Van Esselyn, the deaf and dumb master forger, would not awaken unless shaken.

  Ikey knew the room off by heart, having often enough visited it before dawn. The remainder of the room contained the engraver’s bench with etching tools, a large lock-up cupboard for storing the special paper and precious inks procured from a source in Birmingham, a general work bench, hand press, guillotine, and finally the splendid Austrian-manufactured printing press.

  Ikey quickly crossed over to the beautiful press and, kneeling beside it, he pushed down hard on what appeared to be a knot-hole in the floorboard. The board immediately snapped open an inch. Ikey repeated this with similar knot-holes in adjacent and parallel boards until the ends of four short boards stood raised an inch above those surrounding them. Ikey then removed the loose nails and lifted the boards to reveal a steel safe set into the floor, its door facing uppermost.

  Ikey quickly worked the combination and removed five copper plates etched with the markings of Bank of England notes of various denominations. The etching for the Bank of England five pound note he immediately placed back in the safe. Then he removed all the counterfeit notes from the safe, save for a small bundle of five pound notes. He locked the safe again and carefully replaced the floor boards, clicking the knots back into place and pushing all but one of the nails back into their slots, so that it was once again firm underfoot. The nail he placed not quite beside the empty hole into which it belonged so that even the most careless searchers might eventually become suspicious.

  Ikey spent several minutes more looking about the room and then quietly left, carrying the etching plates and counterfeit notes under his arm. He collected a hemp bag, into which he placed the copper plates and the larger denomination forged notes taken from the safe. Dipping into the interior of his coat he added Mary’s ledger, the pewter tankard and the doily, and killing the wick of the bull’s eye lamp, he returned it to the scullery, whereupon he let himself out into Bell Alley and back onto Winfield Street. He had less than an hour left before dawn, when the raid was due to take place.

  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!’

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bsp; 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, ha
ppy 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.