Ben Aaronovitch > Quotes > Quote > Jackie shared it

“Even in these days of eBay and superencrypted anonymous purchasing over the Internet, the safest way to buy stolen stuff is to meet a total stranger and hand over a wedge of untraceable cash. They don’t know you, you don’t know them—the only problem is where to meet. Every market needs its place and in London such illegal venues have been called nazareths since the eighteenth century. The goods on sale feed into the twilight economy of the street market, the secondhand shop, and the man you met in the pub. There’s more than one, obviously, and they lurch around the city like a drunk banker on bonus day—you have to know someone who knows someone to find them. When things fall off the back of a lorry, a nazareth is where they end up.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground