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Breaking the Law 20/1
My name is Charles Carter. I am a police officer in Her Majesty’s Constabulary. For the last fifteen years, I have been certain that a local East End pawnbroker – one Mordecai Gold – is more than a simple business man, working out of a jeweler’s shop on Fournier Street. To the man in the street, he’s a real philanthopist, looking after abused wives and husbands. Restoring their self respect. Giving orphans their first job. But it comes at a price. A favour needed, a little carrying job to be done. And before you know it, you are caught in his web. Trapped. Tattooed with a crow. Part of what he calls his Impereye. Dear Gods, anyone would think he was the bloody Tsar, or Kaiser, or Victoria; the way he carries on.
I believe he is responsible for some – if not most – of the organised crime in Whitechapel. Oh not directly. He is too sodding clever for that. But he has people who protect the fourpenny street girls, for a price. Those who clean up the streets of undesireables, rivals, troublemakers. Leaving them in the Thames to bob down to Rotherhithe, where they become just another floater. Just another bloody statistic.
He has the publicans, den owners, doss house superintendents in his web. And all of them are soo sodding loyal. Don’t crack. Won’t crack. Can’t crack. He provides safety and certainity in changing times. The widows bloody mite is safe; as is the girl on the street corner. There’s been no Jack since he took up residence in Fournier Street.
I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s charming – on the surface. All smiles. Scrooge after the ghosts. But if you look closely, there’s a hardness in those eyes of his; a smile that rarely leaves his mouth. A cynical way of looking at the world. But you can see why people, fall into his world. Why I am in danger of becoming yet another of his conquests. He’s doing all of this for his amusement. It is a game he invites us to play. A taunt. Catch me if you can. Dance with the devil and survive. He knows I know his crimes; like the headless corpse we found down Rainham way. He knows I cannot prove it, and how he sodding laughs at my expense.
He’s after my cousin, this Mordecai Gold. Using his weakness for pretty clever girls, to trap him in that web of his. But he won’t succeed. I know his bloody game. I’ll beat him at it. One day.
More than a Cat 