The Shelby Company Limited betting shop was controlled chaos when Jimmy arrived at four o'clock. Men shouted odds, phones rang constantly, cigarette smoke hung thick enough to cut with a knife.
It was the opposite of Jimmy's carefully organized office—loud where his was quiet, crowded where his was solitary, aggressive where his was contemplative.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, adjusting his spectacles, feeling profoundly out of place.
A Peaky Blinder he didn't recognize—flat cap, razor blades sewn into the brim—looked him up and down with naked contempt.
"You lost, professor?"
"James Cartwright. I have a meeting with Mr. Shelby."
The man's expression shifted from contempt to wary respect. Word traveled fast in Small Heath. By now, everyone would know that the fixer had saved Arthur Shelby from the gallows without firing a shot.
"Upstairs. He's expecting you."
The second floor was marginally quieter but no less intense. Jimmy climbed the narrow stairs and found himself in an open office space where several Peaky Blinders worked at desks, counting money, making phone calls, updating ledgers.
Everything was surprisingly organized beneath the surface chaos—Tommy Shelby ran his criminal empire like a business, with accounting and strategy and careful planning.
A woman's voice cut through the noise. "Mr. Cartwright, I presume."
Jimmy turned and found himself facing Polly Gray.
He'd heard of her, of course. Everyone in Birmingham had heard of Elizabeth Gray—Polly to those who knew her, terror to those who crossed her.
She was the matriarch of the Shelby family, Tommy's aunt, and by all accounts the only person in Birmingham that Tommy actually feared.
She stood beside a desk covered with ledgers, a cigarette in one hand, her dark eyes assessing Jimmy with the sort of cool calculation that made him distinctly uncomfortable.
"Mrs. Gray," he said, keeping his voice respectful. "A pleasure."
"Is it?" She took a drag from her cigarette. "Tommy says you're clever. Clever enough to make Inspector Davies destroy evidence in a murder case without leaving a trace. I'm curious what kind of leverage makes a man do that."
"The effective kind," Jimmy replied carefully.
"Hmm." Polly's gaze didn't waver. "Clever answers too. But clever isn't the same as trustworthy, Mr. Cartwright. And in this family, trust matters more than intelligence."
"I understand."
"Do you?" She stubbed out her cigarette. "Tommy's in his office. Don't keep him waiting. And Mr. Cartwright?" She paused. "I'll be watching you. Closely."
It wasn't a threat, exactly. More a statement of fact.
Jimmy nodded and moved past her toward the private office at the back of the floor, feeling her eyes on him the entire way.
Tommy's office was surprisingly spartan. A large desk with neat stacks of papers, strategic maps of Birmingham pinned to one wall, a whiskey cabinet, and little else.
The man himself sat behind the desk, writing something in a ledger, a cigarette burning in an ashtray beside him. He didn't look up when Jimmy entered.
"Close the door."
Jimmy did, then stood waiting. Another power play—make the visitor stand while you finish your work, establish dominance through small gestures.
He'd seen it a hundred times in solicitors' offices. It was less effective when you knew what was happening, but Tommy didn't need to know that.
Finally, Tommy set down his pen and looked up. "Sit."
Jimmy took the chair across from him, noting the positioning—Tommy's chair was slightly higher, the desk between them a barrier and a statement.
Everything in this office was calculated to make visitors feel small and powerless.
"Arthur wanted to come," Tommy said, lighting a fresh cigarette. "To thank you properly. I told him to stay home and keep his head down for a few more days. The magistrate may have dropped the case, but whoever framed him is still out there."
"Have you determined who that was?"
"Working on it." Tommy leaned back, studying Jimmy through the smoke. "But that's not why you're here. You're here because we made a deal. You saved Arthur, I give you information about Mary."
Jimmy's throat tightened at his sister's name, but he kept his expression neutral. "That was the agreement."
"Before we get to that, we need to discuss the future." Tommy pulled a folder from his desk drawer and set it between them.
"I've been building files on everyone in Birmingham for five years. Politicians, policemen, businessmen, criminals. Anyone with power or influence. This folder contains everything I know about you."
Jimmy didn't reach for it. "I assume you've done your research."
"You assume correctly." Tommy opened the folder. "James Cartwright, age thirty-four. Born Bordesley, scholarship to King Edward's, apprentice solicitor's clerk until the war. Served in France as administrative clerk—processing death notifications, if I remember correctly. Rather grim work."
"Someone had to do it," Jimmy said evenly.
"Returned to Birmingham in 1918, back to solicitor work. Then in 1919, you were disbarred for forging court documents to save a man from hanging. The man was innocent, the evidence against him fabricated, but forgery is forgery."
Tommy looked up. "Except that's not quite the whole story, is it?"
Jimmy's jaw tightened. He knew where this was going.
"The man you saved, Robert Walsh, turned out to be less innocent than you thought." Tommy's voice remained conversational, but his eyes were sharp.
"Six months after you got him acquitted, he was arrested for assaulting a child. Sentenced to fifteen years. Currently rotting in Winson Green Prison."
"I didn't know," Jimmy said quietly. "When I forged those documents, I genuinely believed he was innocent. When I learned the truth—"
"You reported him to the police anonymously," Tommy finished. "I know. The information came from a mysterious source that the coppers could never trace, but it was detailed enough to secure a conviction. That was you."
"Yes."
"And you've been living with that guilt ever since." Tommy closed the folder.
"The man who prides himself on vetting his clients, on having principles, on being better than common thugs—you helped a child predator walk free. Even if you didn't know, even if you fixed your mistake, it haunts you."
Jimmy wanted to deny it, but what was the point? Tommy Shelby was right.
The Walsh case had haunted him for three years, a constant reminder that intelligence and good intentions weren't enough. That sometimes, despite your best efforts, you ended up helping monsters.
"Why are you telling me this?" Jimmy asked.
"Because I need you to understand something." Tommy leaned forward. "Everyone in Birmingham thinks I'm the monster. The gangster. The killer. The man who solves problems with bullets. And they're not wrong. But you, Mr. Cartwright—you tell yourself you're different. Better. More civilized. You don't kill, so you're not like me."
"I'm not," Jimmy said, though his voice lacked conviction.
"Aren't you?" Tommy's smile was cold. "You destroyed Inspector Davies yesterday. Oh, he's still walking around, still going to work, but you broke him. Whatever leverage you used, it was devastating enough to make him commit career suicide. That's a kind of killing, isn't it? Slower than a bullet, but just as final."
Jimmy thought of Nell Morrison's words in the library. At what point do you stop and ask yourself if you've become exactly what you claim to oppose?
"I don't expect you to approve of my methods," Jimmy said carefully. "Any more than I approve of yours. But the difference is that people can recover from what I do. They can rebuild. You can't rebuild from a bullet to the head."
"True enough." Tommy stubbed out his cigarette. "Which is exactly why I want you working for me. Violence is easy, Mr. Cartwright. Any fool can pull a trigger. But what you do—finding leverage, exploiting weaknesses, destroying enemies without leaving bodies—that's an art. And I need an artist."
"One job," Jimmy reminded him. "That was the deal. Arthur's freedom for information about Mary."
"And I'll honor that deal. But first, I want to make you a better offer."
Tommy stood and moved to the maps on his wall, Birmingham divided into territories colored and marked with pins.
"The Peaky Blinders are expanding. We're moving beyond Small Heath, beyond illegal betting. We're going legitimate—or as legitimate as men like us can be. But that requires solving problems that bullets can't solve. Legal problems. Bureaucratic problems. Problems of reputation and perception."
He turned back to Jimmy. "I need someone who can forge documents that will pass any inspection. Someone who can blackmail councilmen and intimidate judges without throwing a punch. Someone who can make problems disappear on paper so we don't have to make them disappear in the canal."
"You need a fixer," Jimmy said.
"I need the fixer. The best in Birmingham. Working exclusively for Shelby Company Limited." Tommy returned to his desk.
"Here's what I'm offering: retainer of twenty pounds per month, plus payment for individual jobs. Protection from every gang in Birmingham—anyone touches you, they answer to me. Access to my files and my network—everything I know, you know. And most importantly—"
He paused for effect. "—complete information about your sister's death. Not just who killed her, but why, how, and where they are now."
Twenty pounds per month was more than Jimmy made in a good month of independent work. Protection meant he could walk through Birmingham without constantly looking over his shoulder.
Access to Tommy's files would make him the most informed man in the city.
But exclusivity meant burning every other bridge he'd built. It meant being known as a Peaky Blinder, with all the enemies and dangers that entailed.
"If I refuse?" Jimmy asked.
"Then I give you partial information about Mary—enough to know I'm not lying, not enough to act on—and send you on your way. You remain independent, neutral, and increasingly irrelevant as Birmingham's power structure solidifies."
Tommy lit another cigarette. "Within a year, someone will kill you. Not me—I'll have no reason to. But someone will decide you're either a threat or a prize worth taking, and without protection, you'll end up in the canal like so many clever men before you."
"That's quite a sales pitch," Jimmy said dryly.
"It's the truth. Neutrality is a luxury Birmingham can't afford anymore, Mr. Cartwright. The war between the gangs is ending, and the Shelbys are winning. You can be on the winning side with protection and resources, or you can maintain your principles and die with them."
Jimmy stood and moved to the window, looking out over Small Heath. Smoke from a hundred factory chimneys turned the January afternoon into perpetual twilight.
Down in the street, children played some incomprehensible game while women hung washing between buildings and men trudged home from shift work.
This was the world he'd been trying to serve, solving problems for everyone regardless of affiliation.
But Tommy was right. That world was disappearing. Birmingham was consolidating under gang control, and soon there would be no neutral ground left to stand on.
"Tell me about Mary," Jimmy said quietly. "Enough to prove you actually know something. Then I'll decide."
Tommy was silent for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough." He returned to his desk and pulled out another folder.
"Mary Cartwright. Age nineteen. Died September 14, 1917 at the BSA factory in Small Heath. Official cause of death: industrial accident. She allegedly fell into machinery during her shift."
"I know all that," Jimmy said, his voice tight. "Tell me something I don't know."
"She didn't fall." Tommy opened the folder. "According to my sources—and I have three independent confirmations—Mary witnessed theft at the factory. Weapons being stolen from the production line and sold on the black market. She confronted someone about it, threatened to report them to management."
Jimmy's hands clenched on the windowsill. "Who?"
"The foreman. Robert Chandler. He and two accomplices were running a lucrative side business selling rifles to whoever would pay. Mary discovered it, and they killed her to keep her quiet. Made it look like an accident."
Tommy's voice was matter-of-fact, as if discussing the weather. "The police investigation was cursory because factory girls died all the time. No one cared enough to look closely."
"Chandler," Jimmy repeated, the name burning into his memory. "Where is he now?"
"That's where it gets interesting." Tommy closed the folder. "Robert Chandler isn't a foreman anymore. He's a Birmingham city councilman. Used his war profits to buy respectability—property, businesses, a seat on the council. He's positioned himself as an anti-corruption crusader, ironically enough. Wants to clean up Birmingham by destroying men like me."
The irony was so bitter Jimmy could taste it. His sister's killer had climbed to respectability on her corpse, was now using his ill-gotten position to wage war against criminals while being the worst kind of criminal himself.
"The two accomplices?" Jimmy asked.
"Dead. One in the war, one of tuberculosis. Only Chandler survived to profit from Mary's murder." Tommy stood.
"That's what I know. That's what I can prove if you need proof. And if you work for me, I'll give you resources to do whatever you want about it."
Jimmy turned from the window. "You want me to kill him."
"I want you to destroy him," Tommy corrected. "Which is what you do best. Councilman Chandler is a political enemy of the Peaky Blinders. He's using his position to make life difficult for us, pushing for investigations and regulations that threaten our legitimate business expansion. If someone were to, say, discover evidence of his past crimes, or find leverage that forces him from office—well, that would be very convenient for me."
"And you'd get revenge for Mary as a bonus," Jimmy said bitterly.
"I don't care about Mary," Tommy said bluntly. "I didn't know her, and I'm not sentimental about dead factory girls. But you care. And if our interests align—if destroying Chandler serves both justice for your sister and my business expansion—then we both benefit."
It was ruthlessly pragmatic and completely honest. Tommy wasn't pretending this was about justice or morality.
He was offering a transaction: work for me, and I'll help you destroy the man who killed your sister. Everyone profits except Chandler.
"I need to think about this," Jimmy said.
"You have until Monday." Tommy returned to his desk, the meeting apparently over in his mind. "One way or another, Mr. Cartwright, you're involved now. The question is whether you're involved with resources and protection, or alone and vulnerable."
Jimmy moved toward the door, then paused. "The Walsh case. How did you find out about that? Those records were sealed."
"I have friends in the court system," Tommy said with a slight smile. "And I make it my business to know everything about people who might be useful to me. Including their mistakes and their guilt."
He picked up his pen. "Monday, Mr. Cartwright. I'll need your answer by Monday."
---
Jimmy left the Shelby offices and walked through Small Heath in a daze, Tommy's words echoing in his mind.
He should go back to his office, he should eat dinner, he should do a dozen practical things. Instead, he found himself walking toward St. Mary's Cemetery, toward the grave he visited too often and never often enough.
The cemetery was quiet in the fading afternoon light, full of Victorian monuments and simple headstones. Mary's grave was in the cheaper section, marked by a modest stone that read:
MARY ELIZABETH CARTWRIGHT
1898 - 1917
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER
GONE TOO SOON
Jimmy knelt beside the grave, dead flowers from his last visit still in the holder. He should have brought fresh ones. He always meant to, always forgot.
"I know who did it," he said quietly, as if Mary could hear him. As if speaking to the dead could somehow ease the guilt of the living.
"Robert Chandler. The foreman. He's a councilman now, Mary. He killed you and used the profits to buy respectability."
The cemetery was silent except for distant factory sounds and the rustling of dead leaves. Jimmy continued anyway, needing to say it out loud even if no one was listening.
"Tommy Shelby offered me a job. Exclusive employment, twenty pounds a month, protection, resources. All I have to do is become a Peaky Blinder. Give up my neutrality. Become what I've been avoiding becoming for three years."
He traced her name on the headstone with one finger. "But he's offering something else too. He's offering me the chance to destroy Chandler. To make him pay for what he did to you."
A cold wind picked up, scattering more leaves across the graves. Jimmy pulled his coat tighter and wondered what Mary would say if she could speak.
Would she want revenge? Would she tell him to let it go, to move on with his life instead of destroying his principles for a ghost?
He'd never know. The dead kept their counsel, and the living had to make decisions based on incomplete information and compromised principles.
"I don't know what to do," Jimmy admitted to the headstone. "If I take Tommy's offer, I become everything I've tried not to be. A gangster's employee. A criminal without even the excuse of independence. But if I refuse, Chandler wins. He killed you and prospered, and I'll never have the resources to make him pay."
The silence stretched. Jimmy stayed kneeling for a long time, cold seeping through his trousers from the frozen ground, watching the light fade from the sky.
Finally, he stood. "I have until Monday to decide. I'll bring fresh flowers next time, I promise."
He walked back through the cemetery, through the gathering darkness, back toward Small Heath and Mrs. Price's boarding house and the warm kitchen where she'd have dinner waiting.
As he walked, he tried to imagine what each choice would cost him.
Take Tommy's offer: lose his independence, become a target, compromise everything he'd built. But gain resources, protection, and the ability to destroy Chandler.
Refuse Tommy's offer: maintain his principles, stay neutral, keep his carefully constructed life intact. But never have the power to achieve justice for Mary.
Some problems can't be solved with neutrality, he thought. Some problems require choosing a side.
By the time he reached the boarding house, he still hadn't decided. But he knew, deep in his bones, that he was going to accept Tommy's offer.
He'd known it the moment Tommy mentioned Chandler's name. Everything else—the principles, the independence, the neutral ground—was just delay and denial.
He was going to become a Peaky Blinder.
The only question was how long he'd pretend to himself that he still had a choice.
---
Mrs. Price had shepherd's pie again—she always made it when she sensed Jimmy needed comfort food—and she didn't ask about the meeting with Tommy Shelby.
She just served dinner and talked about safe things: the weather, the boarding house's temperamental boiler, the wedding of a neighbor's daughter.
Jimmy ate mechanically, contributing little to the conversation, his mind elsewhere.
After dinner, he climbed the stairs to his small room and sat by the window, smoking and watching Small Heath settle into its evening rhythms.
Pubs filling with workers seeking to forget another hard day. Women calling children inside for supper. Gas lamps flickering to life one by one.
His room was sparse: a narrow bed, a wardrobe, a desk where he sometimes worked when his office felt too confining. A few books on a shelf—legal texts, Birmingham directories, novels he never had time to read.
No photographs, no mementos. Nothing that revealed who he'd been before the war, before Mary's death, before he'd turned his skills toward crime.
At what point do you stop and ask yourself if you've become exactly what you claim to oppose?
Nell Morrison's question kept returning, unwanted and unanswerable.
He was a forger who claimed to have principles. A criminal who looked down on violence while employing psychological torture. A man who helped others while being unable to help himself.
What was he, really? Who was James Cartwright when stripped of his careful rationalizations and moral justifications?
He stubbed out his cigarette and reached for paper and pen. Writing helped him think, helped him organize the chaos of competing considerations into something manageable.
Reasons to Accept Tommy's Offer:
Resources to investigate and destroy Chandler Protection from other gangs Steady income (£20/month + job payments)Access to Tommy's intelligence network Justice for Mary
Reasons to Refuse:
Loss of independence Become target for Shelby enemies Compromise moral principles Known as "gangster's employee" No way out once committed
He stared at the two lists, trying to be objective, trying to make this a logical decision. But logic was just another form of self-deception.
The truth was simpler and uglier: he wanted revenge more than he wanted principles. He wanted Chandler destroyed more than he wanted to stay clean.
Everything else was just noise.
Jimmy crumpled the paper and threw it in the wastebasket. No amount of list-making would change what he already knew he was going to do.
There was a soft knock on his door. "Come in."
Mrs. Price entered carrying a cup of tea. "Thought you might want this. You look like you're wrestling with demons, cariad."
"Just decisions, Mrs. Price. Though sometimes they're the same thing."
She set the tea on his desk and settled into his reading chair, apparently planning to stay.
"I won't ask what Mr. Shelby offered you. But I will say this—you're a good man, James Cartwright. Whatever you decide, whatever you do, I believe that. You're a good man trying to survive in a bad world."
"I'm not sure that's true anymore," Jimmy said quietly. "If it ever was."
"I've lived fifty-six years and buried a husband and a son," Mrs. Price said. "And I've learned that good and bad aren't simple things. Good people do bad things sometimes because the world gives them bad choices. That doesn't make them bad people—it makes them human."
"What if the bad things I do outweigh the good?"
"Then you try to tip the scales back." She stood, patting his shoulder as she passed. "Get some sleep, love. Decisions always look different in the morning."
After she left, Jimmy drank his tea and tried to take her advice. But sleep was elusive, and when it finally came, he dreamed of Mary.
Not as she was when she died—broken and bloody in factory machinery—but as she was when she was young. Laughing. Alive. Full of promise and possibility.
In the dream, she asked him a question: What would you sacrifice for justice?
And Jimmy answered honestly: Everything.
He woke Saturday morning with the decision made. Not rationally, not through careful analysis, but through something deeper and more primitive.
He would accept Tommy's offer. He would become a Peaky Blinder. He would destroy Robert Chandler and achieve justice for Mary, and if it cost him his principles and his soul, so be it.
Some prices were worth paying.
---
The weekend passed in strange suspension. Jimmy went through the motions of his normal life—worked on a few small cases, delivered documents, collected payment—but everything felt like playacting.
He was going through the routines of a life he was about to leave behind, saying goodbye to independence without admitting it.
Sunday evening, he visited the Garrison for the first time not as a neutral party but as someone about to choose sides.
The pub was crowded with the usual mix of workers, criminals, and people who were both. Jimmy ordered a whiskey and found a corner where he could observe without being obvious.
The Peaky Blinders were easy to spot—flat caps, confident swagger, the way people gave them space and avoided eye contact.
They weren't the most numerous gang in Birmingham, but they were the most feared. And in a few hours, Jimmy would be one of them.
"Mr. Cartwright."
He turned and found Arthur Shelby approaching, pint in hand, grinning like they were old friends. "Mind if I join you?"
"It's a free country," Jimmy said, though they both knew that wasn't quite true. Not in the Garrison, not in Small Heath.
Arthur dropped into the chair across from him, studied him for a moment, then raised his glass.
"To my freedom. Thanks to you, I'm not decorating the end of a rope right now."
Jimmy clinked glasses with him. "Just doing the job I was hired for."
"Yeah, but you did it without getting anyone killed. That's not how we usually solve problems." Arthur drank deeply, then leaned forward. "Tommy says you're thinking about joining us proper-like. Working for the family exclusive."
"I haven't decided yet."
"Bollocks. You've decided. Tommy can tell when a man's already made up his mind, and he says you have." Arthur grinned. "Welcome to the Peaky Blinders, professor. We'll corrupt you proper, just wait and see."
"I'm already corrupted," Jimmy said dryly. "I forge documents for criminals. How much more corrupt can I get?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised." Arthur's grin widened. "But seriously—thank you. For saving my neck. Tommy's clever enough to figure out who framed me eventually, but by then I'd have been dead. You gave me my life back."
The gratitude was genuine and uncomfortable. Jimmy didn't want to be thanked, didn't want to feel like he'd done something heroic.
He'd blackmailed a police inspector using an innocent girl as leverage. There was nothing heroic about that.
"Don't thank me yet," Jimmy said. "I haven't actually agreed to work for you permanently."
"But you will." Arthur finished his pint and stood. "Monday morning, four o'clock, Tommy's office. We'll be waiting."
After he left, Jimmy sat alone with his whiskey and contemplated the strangeness of his life.
Three years ago, he'd been a disbarred clerk with no prospects. Now he was the man the Peaky Blinders wanted to recruit.
It should have felt like success. Instead, it felt like drowning in slow motion.
He finished his drink and walked home through the January night, past darkened shops and gas-lit streets, through the smoke and soot that never quite left Birmingham's air.
Tomorrow he would give Tommy his answer. Tomorrow everything would change.
But tonight, for a few more hours, he could pretend he was still Switzerland.
Still neutral.
Still innocent of the choice he'd already made.
The blood seeping through his office ceiling seemed like years ago now, though it had been less than a week. Time moved strangely when you were destroying your own life.
Days felt like months. Decisions felt like drowning.
Jimmy climbed the stairs to his room, past Mrs. Price's closed door, and lay down without undressing.
Sleep wouldn't come for hours, he knew that. But he lay there anyway, staring at the ceiling, counting down the hours until Monday.
Until he stopped being James Cartwright, independent fixer.
And became Jimmy Cartwright, Peaky Blinder.
The difference between those two people seemed vast and insignificant all at once. Vast because it meant abandoning everything he'd built.
Insignificant because, as Tommy had so accurately pointed out, he'd already compromised every principle that mattered. What was one more compromise?
Outside, Birmingham settled into its uneasy night. Inside, Jimmy stared at shadows and waited for morning.
Monday came whether he was ready or not.