‘Gone? You mean you sold it?’

Molly shook her head. ‘No. I would never do that… not when old Sal made me promise never to part with it.’

‘Then where is it?’

‘Snatched from round my neck by Justice Crowther.’

‘Crowther!’ Mick recoiled in disgust. That was a name to foul anyone’s lips. ‘How in God’s name did you tangle with him? Most folks know how to steer well clear of that particular devil.’

Molly told him everything: how, when she was very young, she’d found Justice Crowther’s grandson dazed and wandering, and how he fell into the canal and would have drowned if she hadn’t dived in and saved him. ‘I didn’t know who he were, till I took him to the cabin to recover… he didn’t look like no gentry to me… dressed in filthy rags he were, and looking like the worst tramp.’ Then she explained how it turned out that he’d been set upon by ruffians who had stripped him of his own posh clothes and swapped them for the rags he wore when she found him. ‘Only a few days before, old Sal had left this wicked world and was lying in the mortuary… waiting for a pauper’s grave unless I could come up with the money to bury her properly. Well, it were like Lady Luck smiled on me when she led that gentry lad to my door.’ Molly told how she had contacted Justice Crowther’s wife, and been reluctantly paid for the return of her grandson, Edward Trent – ‘a really nice lad he was’. While Mick listened, enthralled and astonished, she went on to describe how Justice Crowther then blamed her for kidnapping his grandson, and hunted her down without mercy. ‘It was the very night when he seized me and burned old Sal’s cabin that he snatched the timepiece… when I was escaping from the prison-cart with Jack-the-Lad. He saved me, my Jack… kept me with him all the time we were on the run, even though I slowed him down and might have been the cause of both of us being captured and clapped in irons for the rest of our miserable lives.’

Mick shook his head. ‘The story of how Justice Crowther’s grandson was “brutally kidnapped” went far and wide… I remember something of it when I was working the Manchester waterways. But, my God, Molly… I didn’t know… why haven’t you ever told me all this before?’

‘Because it’s a dangerous thing to let loose. I’ve a feeling in my bones that if Justice Crowther were ever to find me… he’d still get pleasure from clapping me in irons. I only told you so you’d understand how much I owe Jack, and how he’ll always come back.’

Mick nodded, though he was not convinced about Jack’s loyalty. ‘You say the timepiece was snatched from your neck, Molly?’ When she nodded, he went on, ‘Are you sure of that…? I mean, could it not just have been accidentally broken in the struggle, and fallen to the ground?’