Faces in the Pool (7 page)

Starvation has one good feature – it’s cheaper. From town, my cottage is five miles as the crow flies. ‘Except,’ like in the Humphrey Bogart film, ‘they ain’t crows.’

Nobody in my cottage when I reached Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. The
For Sale
sign was cancelled by a red
Sold
stripe. I said a nervous hello to the empty garden, and no silent son appeared from the mists. Safe, I slipped inside. The gibbous moon’s light was that slanting hopeless stuff, so I did a lot of blundering for a candle. The candle was put into my hand. Like a fool, I said, ‘Ta,’ then screeched in fright. A match struck, showing Mortimer. I blistered him while my heart resumed its normal service, what the hell, etc.

‘I came because of that lady, Lovejoy.’

He gave me fish and chips with mushy peas, a loaf, and a flask of tea. I fell on them, my eyes on him in case he wisped into the ether. His stealth comes from living in a wattle-and-daub hut among reed warblers. For God’s sake, he owned the whole frigging manor.

The kilojoules kicked in. ‘What lady?’

‘The headmistress, Miss Farnacott. She’s hired Terminal.’

Gulp. I’m scared of so many. ‘
Terminal
? Jesus. What for?’

‘To track you. She is cousin to Judge Jeffries.’

Double gulp. Judge Jeffries is famed. Innocent or guilty, nobody gets off when he’s on the bench. He once reported himself for a minor traffic violation and demanded the police take action. They lacked evidence, so he actually fined himself and docked his own driving licence. Miss Farnacott proved Charles Darwin was right. Genetics will out.

‘Maybe it’s time to emigrate.’

‘Terminal’s at the Queen’s Head. I’ll tell you when he leaves.’

East Anglian countrymen know the lore of leafy lanes. Mortimer goes one better. He knows things
without
knowing them, if you follow. Once, I had to meet him down Maldon way, loveliest of harbours. Mortimer was lying on the greensward, eyes closed, as I arrived and explained I was on trial again. Meanwhile, a yacht out on the North Sea started off in a new direction, sails flapping, and I wondered vaguely why boats did that. Mortimer – eyes still closed – said, ‘The wind’s veering, Lovejoy,’ quite like we were in mid-chat. I said, ‘How did you know what I was going to ask?’ He said, ‘The waves sound different. And your thoughts show.’ Sure enough, the breeze changed. He once saved my life by this rum business. I think he’s creepy.

‘Do I deserve Terminal? Little me?’

‘She thinks – excuse me – you are rubbish. It’s her father.’

Shouldn’t sons protect their dads, even if illegitimate? Terminal is a killer – he’s said to have executed a paedo in Soho.

‘Look, Mortimer. Things are out of hand. I worry about Eunice Whorwood, and suddenly Tasker is in the arena. I help Veronica at the Antiques Arcade, and some fat lawyer berk threatens me. I speak to old Smethie, and Terminal, who can break my back with an eyelash, haunts my hedge? I want out, Mortimer.’ I spelt it for him, O-U-T.

‘Miss Farnacott has forbidden you to visit Mr Smethirst. She hired Terminal to ensure your compliance.’
Admin-speak
. Mortimer would be great on some council.

‘That’s OK. I won’t even try.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but—’

He maddens me. He folded the chip paper, wiping the table down with a serviette. I hoped for pudding. He just looked about for a waste bin. None. Mortimer was well brought up.
Requiescat in pace
, Arthur, you raised a tidy lad.

‘Why the fuss?’

‘Because Mr Smethirst has asked for you, Lovejoy. Side Ward 3A at the Beeches. He thinks he’ll die soon, though the doctor says he will recover. He keeps trying to smuggle messages to you. Two guards stop him,’ Mortimer added. ‘Terminal’s men.’

This meant yet more people wanting my help. I said so.

Mortimer leant forward. Here came something from the heart. ‘Lovejoy. You really must get a waste bin.’

I blew up. ‘Almost as important as a frigging waste
bin, is the problem of seeing Smethie without Terminal marmalising me.’

He smiled. ‘Your solemn oath to Miss Farnacott did not last, Lovejoy.’

‘You sarcastic sod. OK, when?’

‘Terminal has started out for here. Come this way. No noise.’ He snuffed the candle. When I dowse wicks they stink the place out. Not for Mortimer.

His hand grasped my forearm with surprising strength, and I was guided into the moonlight. Boards creaked over the door, presumably him replacing the slats. We went into the lane. I was tempted to sprint, but he stayed me. We moved through a marsh, then over somebody’s lawn where Mortimer whispered to quieten some fool of a dog. We emerged into the light of our village’s three street lamps. He hauled a bicycle from a ditch.

Me straddling the seat, he rode with silent intensity past our old church. He didn’t even slow among the trees of Friday Wood, scaring me to death. We alighted at Fellham near the Fox & Stork.

‘Go that way.’ He pointed. ‘Three miles, five furlongs is Mrs Fenwright’s cottage. Knock. She will give you a truckle bed, and breakfast tomorrow.’

‘Ta, er…’ I once tried to call him son, but it came out wrong. Mrs Fenwright’s cottage had to be on Mortimer’s manor of Saffron Fields. ‘How do I get in to see Smethie?’

‘Morning, at four o’clock. You will be Male Charge Nurse Hargreaves.’

I said, stricken, ‘That’s bloody ridicu—’

Moonlight. I was talking to moonlight. One day, I seethed, this worm will turn. The first people I’d clobber
would be bossy sons, illegitimate or not. I took the best part of an hour to wobble to Mrs Fenwright’s.

There, I can report that Male Charge Nurse Hargreaves passed a restless night in an outhouse.

Dawn happens before it should. It had no right waking me at three o’clock on a cold frosty morning, urging me to a chill bath (‘You won’t melt, Lovejoy. Mortimer said you’d be full of silly complaints,’ etc) and giving me an enormous breakfast. The attractive Mrs Fenwright stood me by the gate at ten to four. Even the moon looked knackered.

‘Is Mortimer coming himself?’ she asked, all eager.

‘Dunno, missus.’

‘You take care of him, d’you hear?’ she said in the threatening way women have. Message: protect Mortimer at all costs. Lovejoy doesn’t matter. ‘Here he is!’ she squeaked. A car appeared.

Mortimer alighted. No courtesy light, I noticed. We were secret. Mrs Fenwright beamed at Mortimer, then opened his jacket with a woman’s proprietorial vigilance and tutted. ‘You’re getting thin. Don’t people feed you?’ She glared at me like I’d stolen the lad’s grub. ‘Won’t you stay for breakfast, love?’ Him, not me.

‘Yes, please, Fenny. Have you any potato cakes?’

‘Yes!’ she shrieked, and rushed in. I hadn’t been offered any. There’s fascist discrimination about.

Mortimer ordered, ‘Change into the male nurse’s uniform in the motor, Lovejoy. This car will collect you after fifty minutes. The senior sister will simulate booking you on duty.’

Silently he shut the car door on me. How did he
do
that? We drove towards town, me donning a horrible blue-striped uniform complete with a name tag. I felt a right prawn.

The Beeches is a smallish private hospital, new as a pin and shaped like a child’s drawing. The driver said nothing, except when he stopped near a hedge footpath.

‘Main door down there. Fifty minutes.’

‘What if I get held up?’

‘I’ll break your legs. Mortimer wants you at the casino by eight.’

Casino? ‘Of course he does.’ I thought, Now what?

Rudely, he snatched the ball I’d made of my own clothes and drove off. I reported for duty to a senior sister in the staff office, and she signed the staff register. She didn’t even look up, but asked if he was all right. Assuming she meant Mortimer, I said, ‘Yes, fine.’ She gestured me away. In the corridor I examined a wall chart. Side Ward 3A was two floors up. I didn’t use the lift in case I met doctors barking commands in Latin.

Nobody was about except one nurse bent over her desk, screens flickering constant vigilance. Mr Smethirst was in a lone side ward. I slipped in and stood, feeling daft. He was like a pale, wizened fly in a web of polyester tubes. He had a medley of screens. I moved experimentally, saw myself appear on the nurse’s monitor, and slyly shuffled out of the camera’s view.

‘Wotcher, Lovejoy,’ Smethie startled me by saying.

‘Er, wotcher, Mr Smethirst.’ I tried for casual, but failed. Everybody spotted me before I knew where I was myself. ‘Just visiting. You OK?’ He looked terrible.

‘Thank heaven you came, Lovejoy. I’ve not got long.’

‘Got to keep out of the nurse’s screen, sir,’ I explained. Why had I called him sir? ‘Want anything?’

‘Get the recorder.’ He gestured feebly. I found a matchbox-sized device. ‘Press the red dot. Put it by my face.’

I obeyed, and sat on the floor among dangling bottles. I never trust gadgets. Batteries go wrong when I’m around, and I’m death to digitals.

‘Lovejoy, I’m sorry about Laura.’

‘No harm done, sir.’

‘Stop that, son. Just listen. You mustn’t join their daft plan, d’you hear? Don’t be talked into it.’ He struggled for breath. I watched anxiously, but he got going again. ‘We’ve forgotten white tribes are doomed.’

‘White tribes?’ I thought I’d misheard.

‘That’s what history calls us. Why d’you think we came to England?’

‘Er…’ Did he want answers? I didn’t even know the frigging question.

‘Listen hard. The centuries have marooned us all. Like tide pools, full of strange creatures who should have left with the receding oceans. Instead, we live as anachronisms. Us tribes even taught our young to be full of hate. It’s not right. You follow?’

‘’Course,’ I said. ‘Tough luck.’

‘No, you don’t, son. Keep recording. We forgotten tribes are everywhere in the Third World, though you’d be hard put to find us. Can you believe, we’re even in America?’

‘Good heavens,’ I said politely, like you do when old people ramble.

‘You’re too thick to understand. No offence.’

‘None taken, Smethie,’ I said, well narked. I wasn’t going to call him ‘sir’ after that crack. I’m not thick, just forgetful. I settled down. It was starting to sound like a chemistry lecture.

‘Take the recording. Guard it with your life.’

‘Promise, Smethie.’

He sighed. ‘That’s a load off my mind. You’re hopeless, Lovejoy, but you’ll keep faith. My tale will take twenty minutes. I was born…’

And off he strayed. It was a funny old drift, talk of Dutch folk (I think), Confederate battalions (I think), French-speaking Polish troops of centuries ago, whole countries betrayed by the League of Nations, diamond fields, South African politicos I’d never heard of, Namibia, and forgotten wars.

Coming to, I realised the clock had moved on and old Smethie was still whispering. I must have dozed.

‘See, Lovejoy?’ he was going on. ‘Even the Great Silk Road left traces. We can’t abandon duty.’

‘’Course not.’ I tried to sound indignant. ‘I always think that.’

‘I’m done, son. Take the recorder. Transcribe it.’

‘Right, sir.’ Sir was back again.

‘Good luck, Lovejoy. You’re not bad, son. Just a pillock.’

‘Thank you.’ Thank you, for
that
?

‘Their mad scheme, son. You can’t take on the world for the sake of a few tide-pool tribes who don’t even know they’re extinct, can you?’

‘How true, sir.’

‘I knew you’d see sense, you daft bugger. Goodbye, son.’

Was that it? ‘Ta-ra, sir.’

He did his long sigh, I took the recorder and I slid along the dim corridors to the outside world. I didn’t sign Charge Nurse Hargreaves (i.e. me) off duty, which caused me not a flicker of conscience.

Four minutes from getting my legs broken, I boarded the car. I changed as Leg-Break drove me to a lay-by on the A12.

‘That footpath to the railway,’ Leg-Break said. ‘The casino’s there.’

He drove off without another word, miserable sod. I walked to Belfast Jim’s tea-and-wad nosher, a transport container in which Jim feeds drivers hauling south from the Hook of Holland ferries. I had a stack of toast and marmalade. It felt like years since I’d had a bite in Mrs Fenwright’s. I got a lift to town. Casino, indeed.

Odd things happen. I was crossing against traffic in a spectacular fashion – the town’s roads are helter-skelter – when a bloke stopped me. Tall, he was impressively wizened like he was used to the torrid heat of East Anglia’s baking sun (joke). I dragged him out of the maelstrom onto a traffic island.

‘You nearly got done there. Traffic here’s all one way.’

‘Thank you.’ He held a paper. ‘Can you guide me, please?’

South African? He had that clipped, melodious intonation. Or Dutch? We get a lot on the coast. They drive on the right, whereas South Africans are lefties like sensible old us.

‘Where?’ The scribbled address was my lane, and
Ly
. For Lovejoy? Too much coincidence for me. ‘Got a motor?’ I
dithered. ‘A bus from the cinema goes every hour.’

‘Thank you.’ He had the clearest eyes you ever saw, long-range orbs of a hunter, and his skin looked pruned. Hot dry lands?

‘Not much there,’ I said helpfully. ‘No inns. Just an old church and a post office. Will nowhere else do?’

‘No, sir, and thank you.’ No sirrr end thenk yoo. Polite definitely meant Southern African. Old Smethirst had mentioned there. What had he said, though? I’d not really listened.

Lurking by the Bull Tavern, I saw him catch the number 66 village bus. A stranger looking for me, with my address, asking me – nobody else, Doctor Watson – and speaking as if he knew Afrikaans? Had he come from where they had virtually no proper traffic at all?

I vowed not to go home for a bit, let the blighter draw a blank. Ogling Truly Newly’s antiquarian window, I was found by Sandy and Mel. They told me I was to go with them. Mortimer said.

‘I always say,’ Mel snapped as I boarded their monstrosity, ‘once a harlot always a harlot.’

‘Morning, lads.’

‘Mel’s
livid
, Lovejoy,’ Sandy trilled, using a hand mirror, risking lacerating his eyeballs with mascara. ‘Because I smiled at an Italian waiter.’ He blinked a million flutters a second.

‘Watch where you’re going, duckegg,’ I said.

Mel ground out, ‘Do tarts
ever change,
Lovejoy?’

Their motor is a battleship. Inside, it is a multicoloured cathedral with a bar and TV, shimmering cerise, silver, blues. The roof wears grass (literally, that garden stuff). The bonnet is gold leaf, the body changing colour to match Sandy’s mood. Today’s hue was an electric emerald, with orange, pink and magenta streaks. The tyres are scarlet, and the windows leaded glass, stolen, Sandy says, from the Church of St Hanky-Panky. You’re expected to roll in the aisles. He wants worship for this wit.

‘Mind if I nap? I’m bushed!’

‘No time, Lovejoy,’ Sandy fluted brightly. ‘We’re due at the casino.’

Casino again? ‘What casino, exactly?’

‘Once a harlot,’ Mel raged, so I switched off. Time the Great Healer must do its stuff.

‘Butch people want you,’ Sandy carolled.

‘Harlot!’ Mel boomed.

It beats me why they stay partners. They have an old house with barns for storing Art Deco and Art Nouveau furniture. They’re great on treen. Sandy speaks a bizarrely – ‘riah’ for hair, ‘eek’ for face, ‘jambs’ for legs, and the like. His exotic mannerisms are an act, and very boring. He faints when somebody wears the wrong colours. Women love his company. Mel sulks, Sandy titters. They share extortion.

‘We’re backing your betrothed’s plan, Lovejoy.’

‘D’you mean Veronica?’

‘No, moron.
You’re
funding Veronica, remember?’

Another promise gone wrong. I’d forgotten.

‘Money out, money in, Lovejoy,’ he cooed. ‘We’re helping the shapeless Laura.’

‘Hope it doesn’t end in tears.’

Sandy pulled off Old London Road. ‘Antiques can’t lose. Hadn’t you heard?’

‘You’d be insane not to go along with Laura, Lovejoy,’ Mel said.

We drew in beside a derelict railway siding. I couldn’t wait to escape while Sandy made his entrance. An escalator comes from the car roof, Sandy swaying down it to martial music as Mel works recorded applause. ‘Yeomen of the Guard’ began. I heard Mel shout an angry, ‘Lovejoy! Come right back!’ but kept going.

Along rusting rails stood a hotel, newly restored from
the little country railway station it once was. New trees stood about, masking the roaring A12 East Anglia-to-London trunk road.

Assuming the hotel would house the casino, I crunched along the gravel and went in. Smiling girls welcomed me. I said I wanted the casino, please.

‘Casino? I’m afraid there is no casino here, sir.’

Nobody knows what reception girls do, but there are always plenty to welcome you, then they waft about doing their nails. A display notice announced
Today: Convention of Ex. Disd Clns.
Well, I thought, hearing ‘Beaux Gendarmes’ playing to the unattentive trees, I’d try anyway, and Mortimer had said. I wanted to get this casino business over.

‘Then the convention?’ The only game in town.

‘Consultant Suite 103, straight through, sir.’

An excited girl came rushing through. ‘Sandy’s doing his entrance!’ she squealed, and the girls dashed away. One receptionist remained. She gave me a wry smile.

‘Sandy owns a third of our hotel chain, sir.’

At the double doors I heard voices, two guttural, one a melodious Latino, and a woman’s vaguely familiar voice. I knocked and entered. There were cards on a vast mahogany table, with people seated around it. Poker, was it? I never really know. Laura looked in control, her smart lime green suit showing off her colouring.

And an antique lay on the table.

‘Lovejoy!’ She gave the sweetest smile. ‘At last!’

‘Morning everyone.’ Tough guy me, no concessions. And something really strange happened. Walk into a gathering where they’ve been talking about you, they don’t
look up. It felt weird. I suddenly knew I seriously mattered to this lot.

‘I propose we introduce ourselves,’ Laura said. ‘Pierrilus?’

A stocky balding man gave a nod. ‘Pierrilus Glinsky.’ His expression warned me to watch my step.

The antique still lay there. I stared at it. It stared back, possibly thinking, What have we here?

‘Hugo Hahn.’ A tall man rose and looked me full in the face. Pruned, leathery skin. Almost skeletal, he shook my hand with a firm grip. Not the silly squeezing contest the young inflict on each other, but enough to say he could match anyone. He’d asked the way to my village. He too remembered.

The antique was still there.

Laura went saccharine. ‘Donna?’

The other lady smiled a minimalist smile. ‘Donna da Silfa.’

‘M’lady,’ I said, which earned Laura’s sharp disapproval. The lady was slender as a wand and elegant enough for putting on your mantelpiece, last seen between two lawyers at Mr Kine’s dungeons. Maybe from Gujerat, in India? Her dress was a gentle olive-coloured silk, with pearls that made my mouth water. ‘I’m hopeless with names.’

‘Francisco Polk,’ said a slender seated man. Glitzy jewellery, rings, a mouthful of gold teeth, Savile Row clothes. No handshake.

The antique on the table was curious about me. I was curious back, having never seen a Baccarat ‘sulphide’ paperweight. These delectable rarities are the ugliest dusty red, except this contained a pewter-coloured hunting scene, a hound, hunter, tree and a stag. I prefer multi-cane
‘carpet ground’ weights because they are so happy. Hunts always make me feel like the prey, never the hounds.

A hugely fat black man darted me a sharp look and returned to his cards. He smoked a thick cigar.

‘Hans Delius.’ He spoke through smoke. ‘Can we trust you?’

I tried to lighten the atmosphere. ‘Most of the time.’ Failure. Only the prune-skinned Hugo Hahn cracked a wry grin, his teeth pearly white.

The last man completed the set. ‘Rico Rousseau.’

My mind reeled from the names, all of which I instantly forgot. Rico was bony, blue-grey eyes showing a startling clarity from a darkish face. His accent owed something to French, but what did I know? Donna da Silfa, though, stayed in the eye. You couldn’t mislay her in a Wembley match.

Laura was beaming. ‘Do sit down, Lovejoy, while I go over your antiques brilliance.’

I was getting used to obeying her. The players picked up their cards, and showed no interest in Laura’s eulogy. She explained I could divvy genuine antiques, and even produced forgeries of my own. I looked at the antique. It was still staring back.

Mistrust was in the air, and I’d brought in ninety per cent of it. Laura listed a selection of my exploits. Cruelly, she went into detail over my prison spells. I thought her unfair, but didn’t dare say so. Any one of them could have dusted me over. I would even have been glad to hear Sandy and Mel arrive.

‘So you see, Donna and gentlemen, he’s our scheme’s perfect assistant.’

‘What scheme?’ I asked.

Laura went on, ‘The scheme’s tickety-boo and foolproof.’

‘Er, excuse me. What scheme?’

‘Will he go along with us?’ Rico folded his cards and looked round the table. I felt narked at them for talking over me. They do that in hospitals while you’re wrapped helpless as a tuppenny rabbit. Yet I seemed to be significant. Was it the same plan as Laura’s – to recover her missing husband – or different?

‘It depends,’ I shot in.

‘Of course he will,’ Laura insisted.

Only Lady Donna spared me a look. She was so lovely. People have daft notions about older women. Magazine articles preach that youth is everything. I know different. A woman is a woman, and that’s it. Donna da Silfa was older, fair enough, but she retained her elegance and poise. She was worth a dozen younger birds any day. Well, six.

‘Lovejoy?’ she said.

Into the protracted silence I said, ‘Any antique dealer would jump at your offer. Me, I have a record. I don’t have a team. I have one part-time apprentice I owe a year’s wages to, and my only barker is a wino who sleeps in St Peter’s churchyard.’

‘Go on, Lovejoy,’ said the lady. I began to love her.

‘Two and two make four,’ I said. ‘But which four?’ I kept going. ‘Dealers won’t touch your scheme if they know I’m in on it. And they’ll all know before the day’s out.’

‘Who won the last hand?’ Hugo asked.

The antique was still on the table.

‘Me.’ Rico showed his cards. Everybody nodded. He slipped the precious paperweight into his pocket. I gaped.
They had been playing cards for an antique worth a fortune?

Also on the table was a fake. Now I stared. Ivory, with a Chinese fighting cock in silver piqué work. The giveaway was its shape – the outline of a Queen Anne flintlock pistol lock plate with a scrolled M and an L. Wrong, so very wrong. Only one bloke turned out fakes like that, Fiffo in Birmingham. Clues were crammed in it.

‘Whose deal?’ fat Hans Delius growled, puffing smoke. ‘For the Chinese antique this time.’

‘It’s not antique,’ I said. ‘It’s fake.’

This earned several nods. Oddly no anger.

‘Then my silver Georgian beaker,’ the balding Glinsky decided, obviously bored. ‘You all know it. My great-great-grandpa’s.’

They all nodded agreement. ‘Doesn’t hold much San Mig beer,’ Delius said. Chuckle chuckle. Laura and Donna watched me.

‘Fifteenth hand,’ flashy Francisco Polk grumbled in his American twang. ‘I’ve lost every one.’

‘Look, Laura,’ I cleared my throat. ‘If you’re stuck, I’ll join.’

‘Are you sure, Lovejoy?’

‘For a friend. Well, for greed.’ It was hard, hard.

‘Good.’ The whole room relaxed. Why did I think they hadn’t been playing cards at all? ‘I shall take Lovejoy in hand.’

‘Perhaps I should.’ Hugo Hahn’s casual was as phoney as my casual.

‘No.’ Lady Donna put in. Those eyes would look truly alluring over Honiton lace. ‘I shall.’ She smiled at Laura.
‘You devote yourselves to mysterious legal things.’

As if on cue I heard Sandy coming screeching down the corridor, Mel booming commands and the receptionists laughing.

Laura was bright with annoyance. ‘If you insist, dear.’

The deal was done. What deal, though? I hoped somebody on my side – Lydia, Mortimer – knew.