London's bobbies traditionally go about their duties armed at most with truncheons. In a kind of underworld version of old-school-tie sportsmanship, the bullyboys and tearaways in "The Smoke"−as England's capital is known to its criminals−reciprocate by settling their private differences in an equally quiet way, with razor blades half-buried in potatoes or the point of a razor-sharp shiv. Last week London's sensational penny press was black with scare headlines suggesting that gang warfare of a cruder type had come to The Smoke. Four men had pulled up in a car before a...
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