Moonspender (13 page)

"Honest, Lovejoy? Sixty quid for it?" He saw my
hesitation and pleaded, "The frame's worth that, for God's sake."

"Thirty." I scribbled an IOU, and called, "Fixer.
Tell Tinker we've paid a fortune for this old blackboard."

"Okay, Lovejoy." Fixer Pete nodded, came along with me.

I left, with Nev grinning all over his face. I'd try the sunlight
trick after cleaning it. He was right about the frame, but the painting was
worth a try.

"What's the job, Lovejoy?" Fixer asked. He's a tiny
smiley man with a
tash
off a silent film. His Chaplin
walk is quite natural. I like him. He takes orphanage children on outings in
his brother's taxi when the London cabbies convoy to Yarmouth. His own three
kids are grown up.

"Fix a wedding, Pete. Somewhere posh; the George, say. It's
Rowena's and Big Frank's."

"For how many?"

"Dunno."

"When for, Lovejoy?"

I rounded on him and yelled, "Fixer! I've given you the
frigging job, now get frigging on with it."

A few fuming strides down Red Lion Alley and I was mercifully free
of his wailed reproaches. Honestly, some people. Where's their self-reliance,
for heaven's sake? Why do I always have to decide every bloody detail? No
wonder you lose your rag, even a patient bloke like me.

Maybe it's associating with so many other antique dealers that
makes me stupid, but it took time for the penny to drop about George Prentiss.
I'd be wondering yet if it wasn't for meeting Clive as I came out of our local
post office. He's our local "hanger." A hanger is an antiques con man
who makes a well-heeled living from smuggling antiques (fakes included) into
exhibitions. No, I haven't got that wrong and yes, I do mean he wangles things
in. To be explicit, a hanger simply adds one. His only ally is our greed, so
his scam works every time.

Clive is a flashy bloke with an air of being momentarily short of
a chauffeur. Hangers are always rich.

"You don't change, Lovejoy," he said. "Saw you
pinch that extra stamp book. Comb trick. Works every time."

"Eh? Not me, Clive."

"No, no," he said hastily, but still grinning. Well, the
post office has the monopoly, so where's the harm? One lousy stamp book, for
heaven's sake. "Glad we met, Lovejoy. Ready for a hanger job at the
Minories?"

"What's to be hung?" We were in the High Street.

"A little nef, probably. Thought I'd ask you first." He
saw my thoughtfulness. "There's time to arrange a buyer."

"You mean the Local Antiques?" The town gallery had been
trumpeting its forthcoming exhibition. A nef's a little ship on wheels. Don't
make the terrible mistake of thinking it's a child's toy, as I've seen happen.
It's a really valuable table ornament, usually gold or silver gilt. Lift the
deck and you'll find condiments or little spice holds inside. Some nefs have
guns, rigging, even musical boxes.

"Here's my bus, Lovejoy." Clive made it sound as if he'd
ordered the damned thing. "You in?"

"In," I said. "Only I'll decide what you hang,
Clive. Right?"

"Great, Lovejoy." He bought the stamp book off" me,
half price.

Carrying Toffee, ever heavier, I crossed the road among hooting
traffic to buy her horrible tinned muck with the money. I'd tried to educate
her palate to pasties but she was basically a very unrefined cat and
steadfastly turned up her conk at my delectables. Nor would she eat custard,
though I'd made her two jugs of the bloody stuff". I'd concluded that
moggies are basically obstinate.

An idea was forming. The hanger con trick has mucked up more
exhibitions and auctions than you'd ever imagine. Clive could be useful.

The hanger brings in an antique of his own and, by bribery,
stealth, the use of accomplices, or sleight of hand, installs it as a proper
exhibit, complete with notice card and number. Me and Clive did a good one up
Lavenham
way a year back, inserting a Sevres porcelain standish—
inkstand to us commoners—into a manorial lord's exhibition. The catalog printer
is bribed, of course, to prepare half a dozen separate catalogs wherein the
mysterious addition is magically legitimized. I'd invited a Sevres collector
from London that time, and he bought the standish a month after the exhibition
closed. If a hanger's any good, the hanged item can be sold for twice, three
times even, its street value by virtue of being associated with a posh
exhibition. Mind you, I don't believe these people like Sykie, who claims to
have
hangered
Sotheby's and Christie's, though
everything's possible, no?

You can see the way my mind was going: Supposing Clive did a
hanger job using a bronze Roman figure—say, at random, a leopard with silver
inlay—in the Minories exhibition. Big attraction for somebody.

Which, as Toffee and I left the market, set me thinking of
excavating a Roman metal object buried in some field. For this you'd need a
treasure-finder. My somnolent cerebrum voted with my feet, fetching me to our
town's one metal-detector shop.

The window was crammed. Metal detectors can cost a king's ransom
these days. Basically a detector's a disk at one end of a rod. They're only
natty mine detectors, really. The shop was blazoned with lurid fluorescing
notices: 
Audio Ground Exclusion!!
 and METER DISCRIMINATION
PLUS!!! and suchlike specialist nonsense. Local treasure-hunters call them
"
bongers
" because they perforate your
eardrums if you walk the disk over any buried metal. But most call them
mooners
or
moonies
, not because
of the disk's shape but because the game's one for night owls, the heroes we
call moonspenders.

There were six blokes in the shop when I entered. I ambled about
examining the instruments. Nine clubs had pinned notices up behind the door, I
saw to my surprise. Ten different magazines were arrayed on a rack. The blokes
talked in numbers and initials, like all elites, exchange a CS 411 for a VLF
990B and all that. I gaped affably. Customers came and went, a thriving
business. The proprietor was in his element, fags at the ready and sheets of
data stuck to the glass cabinets behind him. I'd never seen such useless
technology outside an army.

"Help you, sir?" he said.

"Cost," I gave him sadly. "I've an old cheapo. I'm
wondering whether to move upmarket."

"VDI?" he smiled shrewdly.

"Well ..." My shrug led him into more initials. He
showered me with pamphlets. I left in mild shock, promising to return.
Technology's a killer, especially this sort. More particularly, it had done for
George Prentiss. For another hour I watched the shop from across the road. All
its customers were enthusiasts, with glazed eyeballs of madmen. But on the way
home with Toffee I couldn't help thinking of the adverts on display. Half were
from collectors inviting detector freaks to get in

touch when
seUing
detected finds. No
help there, but they had all specified an interest in buying bronzes, gold, and
silver, Roman and medieval especially, and said to contact the 
Advertiser
.
Well, 
nearly
 no help.

10

Liza's our local news. Without her is made nothing that was made,
as far as news goes. She runs the 
Advertiser
, a rag issued free
with everything. She's an underpaid stringer for the town's literary Hooray
Henries
, who oversee things from a pub called the Grapes.
These print
lordlings'
Aston Martins are always
parked at the boozer, while they gut democracy for every drachm. Needless to
say, the effort's warped her. She dresses like a speedway rider, tight jeans,
studs on her denim sleeves, leather carapace on her shoulders, jaunty
cheesecutter
.

"Lize," I said, knowing it annoys. "Unpaid and
unstinting help immediately, please."

"Liza with a zed, not Lisa with an
ess
,
you ignorant fascist chauvinist." We'd recently had a row, not my fault.

"Tough luck. The song's been written." While she laid up
enormous sheets of paper I drank her coffee. Well, everybody else had swigged
mine all morning. Fair's fair.

"And shift your frigging
poxy
basket, you." Lize gave Toffee a curious glance but said nothing, as if
moggie-toting dealers were quite usual. I like her a lot, but not for
news-making. As far as I'm concerned the less of it the better.

I asked, "Here, Lize. Do you keep addresses of all of us who
place adverts?"

"Certainly not. I do too flaming much as it is. You know the
system, Lovejoy. The boxes are in the foyer for the replies. Whoever takes them
takes them."

So much for tracking the moonspenders through her. Any passing
pedestrian can reach in for the sheaf of envelopes.

She shoved me off her stool and sat. "Right, you coffee-thieving
bastard. What you want?"

"Anything about my village and adjacent countryside, love.
Radius of three miles."

"Sodding frigging hell, Lovejoy." Her multichrome abuse
is natural; she did sociology. "You don't ask much. How far back? A week?
A month?"

"A year."

She went mad, calling me all the names she could lay tongue to.
Humbly I heard her out. I'm pretty patient with women. If only they'd learn
some patience from me.

"You've a nerve, Lovejoy. After standing me up in the
Marquis."

"No, Lize," I said. "When I arrived you were
already with a bloke."

Lize glared. "That 'bloke' was my dad."

"Eh?" I coughed for time to work up an escape clause.

"Didn't think I had one?" She slammed into her sheets.
She could hardly speak.

"Your dad? Lize. I'm sorry. Most sincerely. Only he looked
too young, compared with you I mean—"

"Out!" she screamed.

At William's bank I finally halted to get breath. Toffee was
miaowing
reproachfully. She hates being shaken. See what I
mean? You pay them a compliment and what thanks do you get?

Sandy and Mel's gigantic Rover was at the Welcome Sailor. Once, it
had been a respectable black. Now it dazzled even in dull November. Sequins
patterned its bonnet, roof, fluorescent-handled doorways. A silver lame fringe
fluttered above the windows. Neon lights encircled each wheel, flashing even at
rest. It played Vivaldi to itself as it waited. Chintz curtains, I noted, new,
but vermilion chintz a possible mistake. I've seen quieter circuses. I drew
breath and entered.

Sandy cried, "Oh pancreas!"

He was driving. His eyes, admiring himself in the adjusted mirror,
had caught sight of the new restaurant.

"We're going home this very minute." They were the first
words Mel had spoken since the pub. He and Sandy were in the middle of a tiff
over their antique shop. It's actually a converted Suffolk barn where, as Sandy
puts it, they live in sun. "It's 
deformed
. Home, Sandra."

"You can't, lads," I begged desperately. "Just
check whether this lady's decorated her restaurant right."

"Or not," Mel added spitefully.

Aggro, and we'd not even entered. I disembarked wearily. The car
park was empty but for one saloon. Waiters lolled; nothing so doleful as a
spare waiter, is there? Slump Towers, Ltd. Two lonely diners peered, possibly
hoping for company.

"Patience, world." Sandy was doing his mascara, some
glittery powder from a tiny pot. Lipstick, blush highlight, a quick check of
his gold-luster earrings, done. He trilled, "Ready?"

"Ready," Mel caroled. I go red over this pantomime.

"Here I come, dear hearts!"

The driver's door opened. A small gilt staircase descended. The
radiator grill churned out "You Were Never Lovelier," and here he
came in a
florentine
-striped spencer jacket
surmounted by a silver soprano cape, the burke. Lace gloves, high heels
zigzag-welted in gold thread, ultramarine cavalier hat. Jesus but he looked
ridiculous. He twirled.

"You like? Worship? Adore? Envy?"

Mel's stare dared me. "Er," I said, desperate and
sweaty, "it's really, er, original."

Mel smiled. He's the quiet one. By the time we reached the
entrance the kitchen staff, cleaners, and the band crowded the entrance,
gaping. I felt a twerp following shamefaced in the wake of these two
apparitions, trying to look like I wasn't with them. Sandy was chattering about
the Rover's music: would "Yeoman of the Guard" be more appropriate?
Then an outlandish scream made me jump a mile. Sandy had fainted spectacularly
in the foyer, in instant pandemonium. Mel was suddenly screaming for doctors,
Guy's Hospital, cardiac surgeons, oxygen. Waitresses were scampering, waiters
yelling, all hell let loose. Wearily I crossed the spongy carpet and opened a
bottle of wine. It was probably mine anyway, if I'd bankrupted the place. I sat
to watch the riot.

Sandy was whimpering, threshing, amid the attention. No business
like show business. Usually he begins yelping, a minute into Act One, Scene
One. Suzanne, white-faced, pushed through the surging horde demanding what's
the matter.