Born to Trouble by Rita Bradshaw Read Free Book Online

knowing McArthur had long fingers, but had hidden it for the time when they left Sunderland for good. That’s what he’d been working towards. Getting the family away down South where they could make a new start.
    ‘Well?’ The Inspector leaned slightly forward over the table and Seth noticed how cold his eyes were. Glassy almost. Like a fish. ‘What do you say now?’
    His mouth was dry. He had to swallow before he could say, ‘My brothers weren’t with me. They’ve never been with me.’
    ‘Get him out of here.’
    The Sergeant nodded at the policemen behind him and the next moment Seth felt himself hauled backwards out of the room. Despite his protests that he could walk by himself they didn’t relinquish their grip on his arms until they thrust him back into his cell. When the door banged closed behind them Seth stood for a moment with his eyes tightly shut. Then he opened them and walked across to sit on the wooden pallet-bed which was devoid of even a straw mattress. Besides this there was just a bucket in one corner and it stank to high heaven.
    Would Fred and Walter do what he’d told them and keep to the story that they were innocent of all charges? He sat gripping his knees, his mind racing. They had to – it was the only hope for Pearl and his mam and the babbies.
    Perhaps he’d been crazy to think he could do anything without McArthur finding out, but he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams it would result in this. A beating from one of McArthur’s thugs perhaps, even a kneecap job, but not this. And of course McArthur would have known he wouldn’t have dared to try to get rid of the stuff through the network offences in the town, so he’d probably assumed it would be in the house somewhere. Damn it.
    Seth dropped his head in his hands. How could he have been so stupid? Better to work for McArthur for ever and a day than this. The three of them banged up together. What was he going to do?
    In the event he could do nothing. Three weeks later, on a bitterly cold February day, Seth, Frederick and Walter Croft were sent to prison for eight years apiece.
    Kitty had left Pearl minding the children and gone to the courthouse to hear the verdict, at which time she caused such a commotion she had to be forcibly removed from the building. It was Constable Johnson who told her on the steps of the courthouse that she could count herself lucky; but for the fact that the judge’s wife had presented him with a bonny baby boy the night before, her lads might well have received fifteen years or longer. And now her best bet was to go home and look after her family, he added grimly. If the judge hadn’t been in such a good mood, she would have found herself in contempt of court and in the cells with her lads.
    Kitty watched the constable as he made his way back inside the building, rubbing her arm where his fingers had gripped her as he’d manhandled her out of the court. Stinking copper. She spat on the ground. All alike, they were.
    Pulling her shawl over her head, she began walking home, the grey afternoon made more miserable by the freezing fog which had enveloped everything in a shroud. She wasn’t far from Low Street when, on passing one of the rough, spit-and-sawdust pubs in the area, the door opened and a burly sailor half fell into the street, righting himself by holding onto her shoulder.
    ‘Hey, get off, you,’ she began, only to stop and peer at him. ‘Seamus?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’
    ‘Kitty?’ Seamus had had more than a few. ‘The fair Kitty? Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’ He belched a gust of beer fumes into her face. ‘Your lads around, are they?’
    She knew what he was asking. And the idea that had begun to take shape from the day Seth and the others were arrested, crystallised. ‘No, they’re not around. They’ll not be around for many a long day.’ Swiftly she explained what had happened, adding, ‘So things’ll be a bit different from now on, lad. I’ve