Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel Read Online Free Page A

far?’ he offered the pottle to Timms, who declined.
    ‘Not far enough. Filthy degenerate place. It is over the bridge I am afraid. Three miles by carriage it will have to be.’
    ‘And there are other gaols?’
    Timms gave a laughing snort. ‘That is most certainly the case. Most certainly and most notably Fleet and Newgate which are close to each other. At a good stride it would take us half an hour or more.’
    Dandon raised his voice as he began to weave through the increasing bustle and traffic of pedestrians and pedlars, and as they approached more nearly the city wards. London was coming out for the night.
    ‘Then perhaps we should cover those first, Mister Timms, rather than crossing the river only to come back on ourselves again.’
    ‘Quite so. I would concur,’ Timms gasped at a trot just as Dandon came disgustedly to the bundle of paper wedged into the bottom of his cone where the rest of the cherries should have been. He tossed it away. ‘And they say I’m a pirate?’ But the street was not listening and he dashed now, Timms struggling to keep up while trying to avoid being cut down by the flying rush of coaches and people.
    East. At half a run. East into the city. To the very proscenium of cruelty.

Chapter Three

    ‘The Hellish noise, the roaring, swelling and clamour,
    the stench and nastiness, an emblem of Hell itself.’
    From Moll Flanders . Daniel Defoe.
     
    Jonathan Wild had his office, which was also his lodgings, at the Cooper’s Arms on Old Bailey itself, almost opposite the sessions house. This gave weight to his authority and some confirmation to those victims of theft and robbery in need of his services that Wild, so literally close to justice, was the man for them. Jon Wild was now a paragon of enterprise and fortune. Long gone the pimp, house-breaker and debtor he had once been.
    Now he had the law on his side.
    A few years past, the gentlemen of justice, so exhausted and exasperated by the prolificness of crime in the city, had passed a law to make the receiving and selling of stolen wares a crime in itself.
    This single enactment had ruined the daily trade of many a housebreaker and pawnbroker in the narrows and districts and it was in starvation that Wild had alighted on his plan.
    Maybe if it had only been for his own good nothing may have come of it; but he rallied his darkest minions around him and gave out his scheme. Those whose bellies were hollow and filled only with clay biscuits, who looked only towards the compter for relief, saw their future again, Jon Wild their master.
    If the buying and selling of stolen candelabras and watches were illegal then why not simply sell them back to the ones they had been liberated from?
    ‘How?’ his brothers cried.
    ‘Simple, I tells you!’ Jon Wild stood on the stage of an inn down Cock Alley at Cripplegate before a crowd of beggars.
    ‘I set up shop that I can find anything for anybody. I tells it to the constables and marshals and magistrates, bold as brass, for ain’t I a thief myself and knows them criminals all?’
    For a price, dependent on the value of the items, Jon Wild appeals to the victim to give him a few days to scratch around. He swears he has a parade of rappers, quick-talking informants who will spill their guts for a penny. Something will turn up, he tells them. The trick is that Wild already knows the whereabouts of the article, for the man who’d taken it has shown the shiny thing to him, of course.
    A split of the ransom means the gentleman has his precious articles returned, and Wild is smart enough to have no stolen goods on his premises as searches by more suspicious authorities are made. And if the thief demands more coin for his trouble?
    ‘ Why, look sir, not only do I have your goods again but here is the man that took it. We’ll hang him together. Of course he would say I was in on it with him, sir. He’s trying to switch my neck for his .’
    And, as is reasonable, Wild would keep good records of