Faces in the Pool (19 page)

Nothing on the walls. I felt panic begin. Could I get out through the hall? I tried to recall the layout of the place, but couldn’t. I’d been too anxious to take stock.

Ten minutes, they’d said. Did they need that length of time to get away, be elsewhere in some tavern perhaps? Maybe the Faces had called the police, to collar me here alone?

Then I noticed: not a single vibe any longer. There wasn’t a single antique left in the entire building, just space. And me.

Solid flooring, parquet blocks. The ceiling? A single flex. I felt trapped. Laura had got me here, with Donna da Silfa and her team setting me up. How could Mortimer and Lydia land me in this? My frightened imagination ran riot. Me trying to steal some great haul of antiques, maybe getting into some dispute with friends, foes, anybody, and coming to grief, a rumble over the missing antiques. And
Lovejoy alone in a great empty building.

Good plan, I thought. Except bad, because I was in it.

Then, thank God for mercy, I heard feet clumping, staff moving in the great hall where the wedding reception had been. I almost fainted from relief. I wiped my sweating brow and sat still to wait. Everything was going right at last. How stupid I’d been to mistrust them. After all, I was the one essential.

There came a faint racket of people talking, ‘Mind that trestle,’ with ‘I’ll go in first, OK?’ and ‘Is that pot thing second?’ showing the usual level of perception of the vannies. Except…

Maybe I was wrong. Everything had seemed authentic, the wedding business, Laura’s all-loving gaze. They’d said ten minutes, hadn’t they?

Another minute passed. I tried the door handle. Still locked. I didn’t make a fuss, crossed to try the opposite door. Same. Doubtless some natural mistake. They’d be along any sec, no worries. What floor was I on? Still no windows.

The Faces were, I remembered, cold-blooded killers, and had left me here with hired staff, presumably bringing the antiques in from storage. It felt like hide-and-seek. ‘Coming, ready or not,’ we shouted before starting.

In myself, I felt around for the divvy feeling. Nil. It hadn’t come back. Not one single chime. Hadn’t it stifled me as I’d arrived? Was I sloshed and couldn’t sense the vibes? No. I was sober as a judge. At gatherings, I hardly
ever touch a drop. I always pretend, and leave drinks untouched. Often I finish up the only sober bloke. It’s the only sensible way. Fine, stand your round if you have the dosh, but boozing all blinking night is the road to rusty ruin. I’ve seen it happen. My great-great-something Grampa Turner of Preston had practically founded the teetotal movement, family legend says. He’d have been proud of me – maybe.

Mental fingers drumming, my breathing going just that bit faster, I was on edge. Either the antiques began coming, the way Laura said, or it was time to get the hell out. If I went out, I could always come back in saying I’d only wanted a breath of air, couldn’t I? And appear the same smooth Lovejoy. Ten minutes? I’d already spent that long daydreaming. Bad thought: maybe the place was due to fill with Blackpool’s finest any second. Or, God Almighty, explode?

My mouth dried all of a sudden. I almost whimpered. If the mob of serfs outside in the main hall was real, I’d look a prat. But better a living prat that a dead sprat. I shouted. No one answered. I knocked. The noises stayed constant. Seriously wrong?

Sweating, I looked for tools. I needed tools. The glass pen was easy. I held it in my jacket, snapped it into four, edges sharper than any knife. The chair was an el cheapo with a false wicker seat. Shakily, I wrapped the heavy brass inkwell in severed wicker strands I cut with the glass, and swung it at the door’s middle oak panel. I’m not the strongest geezer on earth, so hefted it like an olympic hammer thrower chucking that heavy ball. The inkwell thudded against the panel.

No change in the noises, people still clumping and calling instructions about bringing antiques in the right order. Nobody exclaimed, ‘What the hell was that?’ They just kept on listing antiques, saying ‘You go eighth, Bert.’ It began to sound oddly made up, a panto crowd. Nobody shouted, did I want to be let out?

I swung my brass missile again. The panel splintered. I warmed to the work, knotting more cane strips when the first lot snapped. The panel gave on the seventh swing. My hands got cut from clawing at the wood. It took fourteen smashes to get one panel out. By then I was a gibbering wreck. I shoved an arm through and felt. No key. They weren’t daft. I peered through. Nobody in the hall, just a couple of music centres with red LEDs glowing. The crowd sounds came from them. They’d planned well, which meant the place would go up in ten minutes – Christ, how long?

The main struts of the door were too thick. Now into frank terror, I stripped my top off and wriggled through the space I’d made. By the time I was out among the wedding debris, my back felt tarry with blood from scraping through the scagged opening. I didn’t care. I had splinters, but I was free – sort of.

I’d had the presence of mind to bring my tied weight for a weapon, just in case, and my shirt. No jacket, though. I went from that building like a ferret, through the main foyer, and now I really did scent smoke. Not a single motor in the drive. The swine had gone and left me. No Ellen, no Mortimer to watch his faithful and caring dad get crisped, no Tinker, no Donna da Silfa, no Lydia. No friends. Trembling with self-pity, I huddled in the
shrubbery and watched the huge building. It began to burn.

Odd to see your own funeral pyre. After a few moments I became fascinated, almost detached, thinking, Good heavens, look at the way those flames are licking the roof. It was a spectacle, the blaze evolving from a plume of smelly smoke to a real inferno. Within minutes, I was speculating whether I’d have set the fire exactly as my murderers had.

It actually started where the wedding feast had been. That, I thought bitterly, was to prove to the fire brigades that good old Lovejoy had been carousing and somehow set the place alight as he, poor soul, slept in a drunken stupor in a side room. Lovejoy, never changing the habits of a lifetime.

The conflagration climbed up that grand staircase. I worked it out, watching the show. A wise incendiarist would lay secondary starts halfway up the stairs, so the evidence would be consumed as the ceilings fell in. They actually erupted where the stage was. I saw the kitchens go up last.

The whole building whoofed into a frank blaze. Eventually fire brigade sirens sounded across the moors. From Blackpool?

Hating everybody, I kept griping about friends who hadn’t come to help. I’m really good at sulking, keep it up for hours once I get going. You’re always on your own in life. You’re alone, so get on with it.

Morosely, in the shelter of the Somnell House shrubbery, I observed the Keystone Kops start chopping their way in, smashing windows and spraying water from the ornamental ponds. My gran used to say there were
different kinds of temper. Her special concern was cold temper, meaning somebody who would stop at nothing to punish a wrongdoer. ‘Never have a cold temper,’ she told me, ‘
because you never come out.
’ She made me promise. I did, of course.

Circumstances change things. I found myself telling the night air that, as sparks gusted aloft and firemen shouted and slices of the manor house tumbled into the fiery maw. Sorry, Gran, but tonight it’s cold temper, but whose fault is that?

Right, I thought. They wanted me dead. If it hadn’t been for the manky writing implements they’d carelessly left me, I’d have been done for, trapped in that locked room, fondly waiting to divvy those precious antiques. They’d intended me to die. Why they wanted me wed
and
dead, though, was anybody’s guess.

It came on to rain. I stayed long enough to see that no other soul started screaming from the upper windows. Somnell House lit the moors for miles around. Nobody seemed to need rescuing. In a truly ugly mood, I buttoned my bloodied shirt and set off on the long walk to the inn. I followed the roads Ellen had driven. The firelight was enough to see by. Marker constables were stationed along the route, so not even I could get lost. They held flashlights. One ploddite had the gall to accost me.

‘Out walking on this foul night, sir?’

Like, no, Constable, I’m playing golf. ‘Yeah.’

‘Do you know anything of the fire at Somnell House?’

‘No.’

He shone his light at me and seemed taken aback by my appearance. ‘Had a fall, sir?’

‘Yes. Trying to get out of the bloody way of your stupid motors. You police should obey the fucking road rules.’ Like I said, an ugly mood.

‘There’s no need for that, sir. Doing our duty.’

‘That old one?’

‘Did you see the fire start, sir?’

‘No. Have you seen my dog? Your stupid cars knocked it over.’

‘Not seen any dog, sir.’ He flashed his light to signal another police car racing up to do nothing.

‘Can you take down its details?’ I kept on. ‘It’s a brown Labrador with facial markings.’ I couldn’t recognise a Labrador if its name was written on it.

‘Sorry, sir. Not just now.’ He wanted rid of me.

I’d had to save myself from getting crisped and now had to trudge miles to where the Faces were celebrating, having pulled off the biggest antiques heist since Christie’s and Sotheby’s lost their criminal-conspiracy bosses in the law courts. I lectured the constable I’d report him for lacking sympathy. In a rage I mentioned the Dog Society, hoping there was such a thing, and the Animal Lovers’ Welfare Agency (ditto), and left fuming. The idle sod stood there shaking his head. No pity for my poor dog, heartless bastard. Rain came on heavier, a real moorland downpour. I thought of him becoming drenched to the bone. Serve him right for running over my faithful dog.

Like a drowned rat, I plodded off the hillside to the inn.

There in the car park I split my remaining usable thumbnail hot-wiring a miserable old Fiat. (Tip: VWs are said to be easiest.) By then I was apoplectic. As I drove away, my bloody shirt sticking me to the seat, I planned a
furious complaint to Fiat about their junky vehicles.

Some days nothing goes right. Within a few furlongs of the Golden Mile, the petrol gave out. I coasted to a stop. The famous Tower was visible in criss-cross searchlights by the sea. Luckily I found a man’s jacket on the back seat, one pocket full of condoms. Bad planning, mate, I thought, finding a few notes. I looked like nothing on earth, but at least my back had stopped blotting everything with blood. Whimpering from pain, I plodded into town.

Nobody could see I’d been in a mess unless they stared hard. I went slowly. You can’t get lost in Blackpool. You simply head for the Tower. The Faces would finish up there, at the one venue where a couple of hundred strangers wouldn’t raise a squeak of comment. Tourism is what Blackpool is for.

It was also the place for working things out, like who were killers and who not. I approached the Golden Mile.

There used to be a zoo in the Tower. I think it’s gone now. Lifts take you to the Tower’s very top. You can hire a plane to fly round it on a good day. There is a giant ballroom for international dances. It is a palace of entertainment.

Among the evening crowds as they milled on the promenade, I thought, Now what? I had assumed that, saving myself as I had – thanks to nobody – answers would simply come. Maybe I imagined I’d simply stroll among those avaricious and astonished killers, lighting a cheroot one-handed like Bing Crosby always did in the
Road
pictures, ‘Thought you’d got rid of me, hey?’ then signal Inspector Lestrade to arrest the lot.

In reality I stood there like a lemon. Buffeted by crowds,
I stood on the corner. A limousine drew up. I ducked my head.

A man alighted with a gorgeous lady in full evening apparel, all glitzy. Slender and lovely, she was far more glammed than when she married me. I shuffled off among a mob of football supporters chanting some result or other. I looked back. Laura was successfully concealing her grief at the death of today’s husband, viz. me. The gent wore spats, would you believe, and a Ronald Coleman tash, hair slicked 1930s style. Wait long enough, fashions come back.

Uniformed minions ushered them through. If winter comes, etc, or something. There would be others. In a moment, I recognised two of Donna’s big six, including the mighty Hugo, who’d made that oh-so-amusing speech, toasting – as in
toast
, get it? – me in those witty puns. Everybody got the jokes except me. They were all posh and glamorous.

One strange thing. I went to a pub on the Golden Mile, certain none of that elegant crowd would drop in there. I went to the loo, then got mineral water and some pasties. I believe in the Duke of Wellington’s dictum. In war, pass water at every opportunity. I presumed he meant have a swig and a nosh too. They’d tried to burn me to death. That’s what war is. I thought of Laura’s escort.

Tall, elegant, suave, with a political decoration in his lapel. I cast about in my mind, and remembered where I’d seen him. My weary mind needed time to rally its neurones. Once I’d got it, I went on a recollection spree. The saloon noise receded, and for a moment I was back at one of the most famous London antiques sales of all time.

Not every collector is famous. Some were only famous for their secrecy. Like Nathan Wildenstein, a humble necktie salesman. He did well, young Nathan, bought the Hôtel de Wailly in Paris. All along, Wildenstein was fascinated by art. He bought and sold. I’m not making aspersions about that elegant Polish countess he knew, honestly I’m not. Their business, and I’m no gossip. But by selling a supposed van Dyck to her, Nathan made his number.

Buying cheap eighteenth-century French paintings, slickly selling them on for a multiple, he made serious money. From your simple want-a-tie-guv trader, Nathan became the buyer-in-chief of Old Masters in Paris.

The Wildenstein Collection grew. Nathan kept some items for himself, and annoyed rival art dealers by never showing his private collection. Nathan died in 1934 or so. His possessions included sculptures, rare André-Charles Boulle furniture. Also, a massive antiquarian library of a quarter of a million tomes, plus virtually everything else of European importance. His place became the Wildenstein Institute. Sadly, the new millennium dawned with the inevitable lawsuits. Judges hit the fan and the mightiest sale on earth began.

I’d been in the street near Christie’s on the day of that giant mega-sale. They wouldn’t let me in. I saw the buyers arrive for the viewing, and two women I’d once bought antiques for. I recognised a Yank lady who owned a theatre in New England. She refused my calls (jealous of her friend I knew). And, that soggy day in London town, I saw a movie backer I once bought Edwardian jewellery for.

The man who went in the Tower ballroom with Laura
was that same bloke. You see his name on picture credits, Nateo Dunknaister. Once, it had been ‘Call me Nat, Lovejoy.’ No longer. I wasn’t jealous, sipping my mineral water, feeling like a train wreck and wincing from the splinters in my torn back. But somebody would have to suffer. Who had to face poor Tansy’s ghost when she came asking if I’d caught her killer? Me, that’s who. And poor Paltry’s spirit? And poor old Smethie’s ghost?

‘OK, mate, keep your hair on,’ the bloke standing next to me said. ‘I only asked the score.’

‘Sorry, wack,’ I said. I must have been glaring.