24 June 1919
"Inspector."
Campbell stepped out from the car to Tommy's greeting, his lip curled in distaste. He had not wanted to attend this meeting and the unfavourable conditions of the night only made his mood worse. The harsh, cold rain of Small Heath was beating down on him and it was late enough at night that the city was now empty, a darkness covering the streets to be interrupted only by the dim glow of a few streetlights. It felt like he had entered a ghost town, and every minute more that he spent standing here reminded him of his hatred for this city and its inhabitants.
"Mr Shelby," he replied curtly, "you message said you have an address for me?"
"Anonymous tip-off. Stanley Chapman." Tommy held up the paper which bore Chapman's address for the Inspector to see.
"You promised me Freddie Thorne." He sighed irritably.
"This is instead of Freddie Thorne."
"No deal." Campbell dismissed, turning to walk away.
"Inspector, Stanley Chapman is a bigger fish than Freddie Thorne." Those words were enough to make the Inspector pause and turn back around, "he is currently holding 200 pounds in cash, given to the communist party by the Russian government."
Interest gained, Tommy watched as the Inspector walked over slowly, glaring in trepidation with a dark and suspicious look in his eyes. There was nothing Tommy wanted to do more than to cut those eyes from his face.
"And what is it you want in return for this information?"
The Inspector held out his hand and Tommy went to place the piece of paper in it, pausing just before the Inspector could get a hold. They stared at each other down in silence, and Tommy realised it was in that moment he finally understood what kind of man Campbell really was.
He was not a good man or a fair man. He was selfish, arrogant and full of uncontrollable rage. The Inspector was a seething, burning monster bent of delivering justice, regardless of what had to happen, or wether it was really justice at all. He was ruthless, and yet somehow still a coward that hid behind others. But there was a part of the Inspector that managed scared Tommy, because he knew that it was weakness that had created him. Weakness to submit to the easiest desires- to anger and spite- and that made dangerous, because there was no strength in him to do the right thing.
And if Tommy wasn't careful, he might just end up exactly like him.
"I need two things from you Inspector, and your word on both," Tommy looked him dead in the eye as began, "you will let Freddie Thorne and my sister leave the city, and you-"
"-Let me guess," he interrupted, smiling viciously, "you want Elizabeth Scott to be set free from prison?"
"That's all I ask. And in exchange you might even get your medal."
"You have my word on your sister, Mr Shelby, but Miss Scott is under investigation for criminal activity. To release her would go against my duty to the Crown."
Campbell drew a chair out from behind him and sat down in it, clasping his hands and laughing as he looked up. Tommy's jaw clenched and his hand itched to take hold of the gun resting in his holster.
"I thought your duty to the Crown would be finding real criminals, like Stanley Chapman," Tommy bargained, waving the paper in his hand, "not locking up innocent people."
"My duty is to do what I am told. And currently, Mr Churchill is telling me I need those guns back, or I will be replaced." The Inspector said as he leant back in his chair, "would you like to know what will happen if I don't get the guns back, Mr Shelby?"
Tommy was watching the Inspector carefully, anger building steadily inside of him. He wanted nothing more than to shoot the smug smile from his face, but had to listen instead to the unhinged words that he began to speak.
"First, I will have Elizabeth dragged from her cell and hanged till she turns blue. Then I will hunt down every member of your family and see that their heads are beaten in with spades and mallets, your aunt and sister included- the baby inside her is of no consequence to me. I will throw them all in unmarked graves, on the side of a road that you will never find. Only you and your little brother Finn will be spared. You, Thomas, so that you can watch helpless as those that you love will pay the price for your sin, and your brother so that he can be tried as an adult and placed into the part of prison where men have an appetite for boys like him. It will be a dark day when I do not get those guns back, but make no mistake: a pleasing one."
The Inspector snatched the paper from his grasp, and in one swift movement Tommy had his gun pointed at the Inspector's head. His finger balanced on the trigger, the taste of death on his tongue. He savoured that feeling, sweet and satisfying, as he held Campbell's life in his blood-soaked grasp.
"You won't shoot," was the Inspector's only response, "you need me alive."
"You have no value to me, Inspector."
He simply chuckled, smiling and walking away. Both Tommy's gun and his eyes remained focused on his fading figure, swearing to himself as he disappeared into the hazy night that one day the trigger would be pulled, and Campbell will be dead.
26 June 1919
The sun rose, as it always did, through the small square in her cell. It's coming marked her fourteenth day in prison. The time was beginning to take its toll.
For the past few days Elizabeth had barely even bothered to rise from her bed when the sun came, choosing instead to pass the time in a half-awake, half-asleep trance, thinking about everything and nothing.
To put it plainly- she was bored.
Now, if and when the Inspector entered her cell, she hardly bothered to acknowledge him. He'd come for the same reasons: to list off another endless chant of threats, to remind her how long until the end of the month, to insult or belittle or even sometimes flatter her. He'd tried everything, and yet she had not budged.
But Eliza was beginning to question her stubbornness. Whilst it was enjoyable at first, to remain adamant on her loyalty, it really didn't prove much anymore. And as her execution date felt now like it was looming in the not-so-distant distance, Elizabeth was considering just accepting the Inspector's deal and finally being free of this mind-numbing prison. It wasn't like she couldn't tell Tommy about it once she was out- by agreeing to spy for Campbell it might even allow for false information to be passed to him as a way to divert his attention, or to waste his time.
Elizabeth sighed aloud, her chest heaving as every breath within her escaped. God was she bored. The only thing that was stopping her from accepting the deal at this point was her pride, and it was proving a difficult thing to get over. She could visualise the look on the Inspector's face if she agreed to the plan, gloating and disgustingly self-confident. It made her grit her teeth in frustration just thinking about it. There really was something about that man that made it so easy to hate him.
The sun had fully risen now, bathing her face in a warm glow. It was what she liked most about her days, this moment, in the quiet, as the sun caressed her cheeks with its soft rays. Before long it would be too high reach her anymore, but she enjoyed the few minutes none the less. For some strange reason, the sun today made her think of her brother.
Eliza didn't think about George often. His memory was still too painful, and she felt a kind of disconnect from him. Leaving so abruptly after his death and running away to France, where she had so little time to think about anything but what was happening in the moment, had meant she'd failed to grieve for him as she had her parents. It had been a terrible, unexpected blow to loose him so soon after she had finally gained him back. In the last years of his life George had edged away from crime and more towards the brother she remembered from her childhood. She'd finally got a loving brother back, and then lost him all over again.
He had always been closer to their mother than their father and after loosing her, the streets of Small Heath had treated him colder than they should have. He'd hardened, falling easily into a life of crime that no one would say anything about, at least not those he listened too. Before the war George and Arthur had been the driving force behind the Peaky Blinders. Back before any of Tommy's plans for expansion, when he'd been a young man uninterested in anything besides his family, horses and (only when required) occasional petty crime, it was George and Arthur's brute force that had built their legacy and power up from the ground.
Eliza was inclined to say she'd hated every minute of it but lying in her cell, where there was no reason to lie to herself, and nothing to do but face the truth, she couldn't bring herself to think that. Truthfully, she enjoyed it all. From the money they made off this life of crime, to the way she had been almost untouchable in her youth- as the sister of George Scott, and as a Peaky girl, any boy whose attention she gained was watched closely- it could be so pulse-racing at times. Even lying here, stuck in prison, made her feel important. And she liked to feel important. Whether it was the constant need for her father or Polly's attention, the way people would look at her as she walked down the street, or the knowledge that there was always a boy falling a little bit in love with her (as it happened, just like male gang members attracted swarms of attention, so did the women- paired with being untouchable, she and Ada had had a lot of fun growing up), it all boiled down to a desire to be on the fore-front of people's minds.
This worked out well in some ways. It meant she stood up for herself and spoke her mind, but more often than not it more of a detriment than anything else. It left Eliza as being tiresome or irritating on a good day, narcissistic on a bad one.
Eliza knew why she was thinking about these things. And it wasn't really as an excuse for her pride, or an attempt to put reason behind involvement with a gang, but rather because lying here in this cell made her feel more connected to George than she had since he'd died, and if there was anyone she shared this trait with, it was her brother.
Half a year before their father's death, in the summer of 1912, George had been caught by the coppers in the middle of an armed robbery. He was locked up for five months, and forced to pay a healthy fine, but really they were all grateful for that, because if it hadn't been for a spot of bribery and threat towards the coroner to reevaluate why exactly the shopkeeper had died, it would have been very likely that George had ended up in a noose instead.
She imagined him lying in her place, and what it must have been like to spend five months savouring the brief moment when the sun warms your face, instead of just the two weeks she'd had to deal with it. She missed him painfully in that moment, wondered what he'd be doing now, what he'd feel and think about her locked up, what he'd do if he was her. Would he take the deal, or would he let his pride rule over him, satisfied with knowledge that though he may be trapped in a cell, all those on the outside must be thinking of him every day.
George had been out from prison barely a fortnight before their father died. A heart attack- the doctor had said- problems he'd been having for years (though he'd never told the either of them about it) and a natural and unstoppable death. Yet her brother has convinced himself it was brought on by the stress he'd caused his father all his life, and endeavoured to change his act. He stopped drinking on week days, tried to patch up his relationship with Eliza and involved himself only with the bookkeeping, wanting no part any more with the fighting and beatings. He even had a girl he promised to marry once he came back from France. Eliza thought briefly about her, her kind smile, pretty laugh and even prettier face, wondering where she was now.
Her brother had become a better person. Not a good person- none of them were good people- but decent in his own right. And Eliza new if he was here now he'd tell her to get over herself. To bite her cheek and hold her tongue and let the Inspector lord over her all he liked, but just to get herself out of this cell, because sometimes life isn't all about yourself, but rather about those around you, and how you can help and love them.
When she'd asked him about his time in prison, George had told her the worst part about it was that his stubbornness to not take advice from his father, was what put him in there. And that meant he'd wasted the last moments of their fathers's life locked in prison instead of with him.
Eliza knew then that the next time she saw the Inspector, she'd accept his deal, and be free from here for good.
27 June 1919
"I do not understand you sometimes Tommy!" Polly seethed, one hand on her hip whilst the other gestured aggressively towards her nephew.
"And I don't understand you either Poll." He replied, leant against his desk with crossed arms, assuming a defensive position against her attack. "I gave the Inspector the address, just like you told me, so why are we doing this?"
"Doing what? Talking?"
"You call this talking?" He gestured loosely towards his aunt, eyebrows raised, "you're starting a fight- just call it what it is."
"Oh, a fight is what you want? How about this Tommy-" Polly's tone grew sickly sweet as she lathered on the sarcasm, "it's been two weeks since she was arrested and they still have Eliza inside that fucking prison, they still won't let me in to see her and now you tell me he's threatening to hang her!"
"He also threatened to smash Ada's skull in with a spade and lift Finn as a kid but apparently you don't fucking care about them Polly- all you seem to fucking care about is her!" Tommy snapped, pushing himself up and shouting at his aunt, voice hoarse with anger.
"And you don't seem to care about her at all!" Polly yelled back.
"You think I don't fucking care? I'm trying to deal with this mess, Polly, but I am also trying to do it without pissing off a copper who is more than willing to kill us all!"
"You wouldn't be in this mess if you had just listened to me and dumped those guns. What have they done but brought more trouble? All for your own selfish gain."
"So I'm selfish now?" He challenged her, taking a step closer and letting his frustration get the better of him as his voice rose yet again, "what else, Poll? Come on, don't stop. Let me know what-fucking-else that I'm doing is wrong, what you don't like about me pulling this family from the shit-filled streets we live and die in, and trying to actually make something of our lives!"
They were practically spitting at each other as they screamed, veins straining and eyes widening in wild anger. It was never simple between the two of them, never enough to air grievances civilly, but lately their fights had become far too frequent, and far too aggressive for what was typically deemed normal. Tensions were high in the Shelby household and emotions and loyalty were being pulled dangerously close to breaking point.
It had been like this ever since the boys had come back, something between them and the rest of the family forever altered, but Eliza's arrival had somehow managed to make it worse. Polly was struggling to put her finger on it. It made no sense to her that she could cause such animosity, the girl was family, and cared for deeply by all. She was in many ways like Ada, with a conscience and sweet smile too good to fit this lifestyle, but a love, or addiction, for the excitement and danger (and dangerous men) that kept them from ever straying far. But maybe it was their likeness that was the key to this new dawn of animosity.
Perhaps it was them who were inspiring this drawn-out fight. Polly and Tommy loved them both deeply, yet had such conflicting ideas on how best to present that love. Tommy wanted Ada under his watchful eye and furious command, the things that keep the rest of the family never straying far from Small Heath. However, Polly was confident that if they ever wanted to call Ada their's again, they had to let her fly free first.
The explanation for their conflict over Eliza perhaps lay best in her letters. Tommy had ignored them, and yet the girl had kept writing. He would likely refute it, but Polly knew he loved her with all his soul, and for this reason he wanted her far away. Kept from him, from this city and from where- if he lost her- the fault would be his. But she would never leave, and certainly not without a fight. The letter had been her fight, as was coming home- a reminder to him that she could always be a constant in his life if he desired.
A friend, a love, of even a heartache if need be, she thought sadly.
Polly understood persistence keenly, it was the only way she ever got through to her nephew. But she feared it might also be the spark that could light a suffocating fire- one that consumes them all. Whilst persistence might be their only way into each other, it's just as likely to be what pushes them away.
Polly grew quiet and cool as she thought, staring Tommy and inspecting his face with practiced perfection. She spoke her next words carefully and slowly, so that he didn't miss them.
"What is it you mean, by making our lives better Tommy? Bullying your brothers into submission? Arranging John's marriage-" she put a finger up to stop him, "- don't insult me by trying to deny it, I know everything." She continued icily, "or maybe you mean pushing your sister away until she can hardly bear the sight of any of us? Or what about treating Eliza like a whore at Cheltenham and then letting her be used as a pawn for your little game? What is it you like best from there Tommy?"
"And what about you, ey Polly? Playing your own games with Freddie, giving him money whilst getting secrets from our Ada? Is that your attempt at helping her, by messing with her life?"
Polly kissed her teeth at him and shoved his chest with her fingers.
"When you can come up with a half-decent response to me Tommy, then I'll listen. Until then try not to get any of the rest of us arrested," she walked across his office and yanked open the door, looking back, "though don't bother for yourself, some time to sit and think might be just what you need."
"Everything I do is for this fucking family Poll! Try to remember that!" He shouted at her as she slammed the door shut, the windows shaking in their frames.
Yet again, his last words had fallen on deaf ears.
(20/02/2021)