Prologue
London, early April 1887
Corbin Ediker spat through the bars into the hallway, the brown stream of tobacco juices widening a damp patch on the bricks he’d been working on for a while now. T’weren’t much else to do in lock-up. The guards didn’t like him or any of the other inmates spitting on the floor, but it wasn’t as though there were anywhere else to aim.
‘Cept the pisspot, Corbin supposed, but he wasn’t inclined to turn his head in that direction.
In any case, the guards’ apoplexy was far more intriguing. Prison was hideously dull, even though Corbin had never been in more than a month at a time. This particular stint at Holloway had run about two weeks now – yes, thirteen days – and he wasn’t even in gaol proper yet. No, he and a few of his crewmates (and their patsy) had been collared just a fortnight ago and were awaiting the conclusion of the trials. If convicted, all six of them would be heading north on life sentences of hard labor.
Their patsy would hang.
As the plan had gone the last three or four times, this wouldn’t happen. Well, the boss’s red herring still would get his neck stretched. After all, that was his purpose. But the rest of them would slip free. Somehow, the case against them would fall apart and onto the patsy’s shoulders, and Corbin was looking forward to the trial’s conclusion.
The boss had picked a real sharp one this time to take the fall. Normally, the patsy wasn’t too bright, but setting up a chap to eat a murder charge? The kid was a guaranteed imbecile. Like as not, the dolt wouldn’t realize what had hit him until the noose pulled tight around his neck. And then, what for it? He’d be dead moments after.
Corbin just wished the boss could’ve found another method for evading the police besides having members of his crew – namely, himself – arrested from time to time. ‘Course, the boss was a fair amount smarter than he was. In fact, the man had to be a bloody genius. Else, who could run such smashing cons under the nose of the law? Corbin had never known anyone who could wreak such havoc, prop up someone or some other gang to take the blame, and emerge on the other side without the public being any wiser.
This time, from what Corbin had learned since his arrest, the boss had set up some old London crime family – the patsy’s family, in fact. With the patsy at the center of the public’s attention, that family sure seemed to be drawing the city’s ire.
His boss had to be the most infamous of unknown men, and Corbin would make no claims above his station.
Need a few heads bruised? Bones broken? Shops torched? Corbin’s your man. Just keep the pay nice and steady, and no questions asked.
And since the boss kept his end of the bargain, only requiring those few distasteful stints behind bars, Corbin wasn’t inclined to grumble much.
He even got visitors and a steady supply of tobacco.
…True, the prison food was awful, and there was no bed, no privacy, and the boredom….
He wouldn’t grumble too much. Or too loudly. Mustn’t let the boss think Corbin was dissatisfied; otherwise, he might find himself alongside the next patsy.
Corbin drew back from the bars as one of the guards started clanking his nightstick on the iron as he made his way down the hall. The clanging warned blokes to step back and not try anything, else the club would happily be brought down on flesh and bone, rather than unfeeling metal. Seeing this happen once was enough for Corbin.
‘Sides, why make this temporary stint anymore unpleasant than it already was?
The bobby had someone in tow – a visitor, most likely. Though it was much too early in the day for Corbin’s mate Fred to come by, Corbin leaned close to the bars (still out of the bobby’s reach, though) in interest.
Most visitors were weeping or ranting family, the occasional physician, or the frequent solicitor, but sometimes a chap like Fred would turn up. Not that Fred ever said what the boss was up to in the Queen’s English (he and Corbin weren’t fools: ‘shaw! that’s what codes were for). But not everyone was as smart.
In which case, Corbin would listen and then pass along what he heard to the boss. Last time, when he’d been working a job for the boss in Portsmouth and the local constabulary played into the boss’s hand, Corbin had managed to overhear plans one of their rival crews had been putting together. Once he’d passed along this information, the boss had not only managed to squash the other gang, but also made them his patsy. Magicians would’ve been in awe of the boss’s sleight of hand.
Sodding idiots. That’s what codes are for, Corbin thought to himself with a remembered sneer.
He plucked the spent wad of tobacco from his cheek with brown-stained fingers and flicked it onto the floor of the corridor, trying to provoke an outburst from the guard. Recollecting his rivals’ past stupidities had gotten Corbin’s blood pumping, and he felt a confrontation with the guards wouldn’t be amiss.
But the bobby – a rotund, wheezy, sallow-faced fellow with bad breath and a squint – didn’t notice. He’d stopped across the hall with the visitor and one cell short of Corbin’s, and he wasn’t facing Corbin’s direction.
No matter. The visitor should prove entertaining enough. After all, he appeared to be a doddering old fool of a man, his lined face creased in concern for whichever poor sod he was calling on.
A moment, though.
Now that he was looking well and good at the old, bow-legged chap, Corbin thought he knew him. He peered closer through the dim glow the lamps in the corridor afforded, brow furrowed. When he realized the fellow was speaking with the boss’s dolt of a scapegoat, Corbin was sure of it.
What’re you up to, old Frank? he wondered, straining his ears to hear the low-pitched conversation. He wished he could yell for the other prisoners to shut their yappers, since the usual yammering and arguing commonplace in the cells continued unabated. But that wouldn’t be smart. Yelling would only encourage more yelling, and the conversation would be even harder to hear.
So he held his breath and listened carefully, trying to tune out every other murmur and wail and curse.
As what he heard over the next quarter hour of the patsy’s halting stutter and old Frank’s raspy grumble sunk into Corbin’s brain, he felt his blood chill.
If ever the boss’s plans could fail, sending Corbin, all his crewmates…maybe even the boss himself…to jail or the noose, this would be the time. That conversation would be the death of them all, should the proper authorities learn of it.
Had old Frank’s escort realized what was happening? No, that tub of lard was scratching a sweat-stained armpit, uncaring.
But the patsy still had ample time to share his tale in court where there were bobbies and magistrates who did care – old Frank, too – and the thought made a cold sweat prickle on Corbin’s skin.
Then he almost laughed aloud as the panic abruptly broke.
Fred had yet to come by today. And the two of them could speak in code. In code.
Assured he could pass along whatever information the old chap and the patsy were so stupidly divulging, Corbin leaned against the wall separating his cell from the next and continued listening.
The boss would have plenty of time to set up a counter scheme, and, as he’d done in the past, the genius rewarded loyalty such as Corbin’s most handsomely.
Yes, Corbin thought this turn of events could actually spell a turning point in his career. Maybe even win him his own team and a con or two to run himself. After all, thinking a little – just a very little – was something the boss prized almost as highly as unquestioning loyalty.
Corbin smiled.