The Revenge of Captain Paine by Andrew Pepper Page A

one of Nash’s attributes that he saw people only as entries in a ledger book, but while he would doubtless give Cobb no further consideration, Pyke was cursed or blessed by other thoughts. The old shoemaker might perhaps drown his disappointment with a few glasses of gin in a nearby tavern and then trudge home through dark, muddy streets to his lodging house in Bethnal Green, where there would be no food for his family to eat and precious little firewood to keep the room warm. As a younger man he had probably served a long apprenticeship learning the rudiments of his craft and had been assured that these skills would be sufficient to earn a living for the rest of his days, but in recent years the arrival of the sweaters and the hiring of non-apprenticed women and children to make inferior shoes had driven down prices, wages and conditions to such an extent that the old promises counted for nothing.
    ‘What a pathetic old fellow,’ Nash said, shaking his head. ‘Now let’s get back to this business of the loan to the Grand Northern ...’
    Money was the only thing that counted, Pyke told himself. Not honour, not morals, not tradition. Men like Cobb couldn’t feed their families because they had no money, not because they had no honour or morality. Money enabled people to live their lives as they wanted to, not according to the whims of others. Without money there could be no liberty or freedom.
    Pyke closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, but an image of Cobb’s hunched figure and pleading face remained with him for the rest of the day.
     
There were many different ways to steal from people and many layers to the city’s burgeoning criminal fraternity. At the bottom of the pile were the ferret-eyed pickpockets who trawled the markets, fairs, public houses and crowded pavements for easy marks, and the rampsmen who assaulted people at random with brickbats and cudgels and would kill or maim their victims without any compunction. Then came the mudlarks who scavenged the Thames near the wharves and docks in the East End for items deliberately discarded by their associates who loaded and unloaded the ships. Next were the rushers, who showed up en masse at someone’s front door and forced their way into the home, taking whatever they could and disappearing before the police could be alerted. A little higher up the chain were the receivers and trainers who oversaw gangs of pickpockets from their flash houses and brothels, and the skilled housebreakers who broke into the upper floors of respectable homes and stole cash and jewellery. Near the top of the pile were the so-called cracksmen whose guile and equipment enabled them to break into apparently impregnable safes and strongboxes, and the flash Toms who ran brothels with iron fists and took a cut of all the illegal enterprises on their turf. But right at the top were a handful of figures who presided over a complex network of illicit buyers and sellers and who offered a service that no one else could provide: a way of transforming the proceeds of theft into untraceable notes and coins.
    Ned Villums was such a figure, and every Monday afternoon without fail he was ushered up to Pyke’s office, where he would deposit two sacks filled with stolen coins and notes. After they’d talked, Pyke would go downstairs to the vault, withdraw an equivalent sum of money, minus his commission, and return it to Villums.
    Pyke had known Villums for a number of years and trusted the man unequivocally. It helped, too, that they both knew what the other was capable of and went out of their way to be fair minded. Pyke had once seen Villums feed a man he’d caught stealing from him to a bear tied up outside his tavern and used for sport.
    ‘Does anyone else apart from you know about our arrangement?’ Pyke asked him, as he prepared to leave.
    That drew a sharp frown. ‘I know the rules as well as you do, Pyke.’ He shook his head, as though irritated he’d been asked the question.