Moonspender (32 page)

Her stare makes honesty difficult. "I have greater need of
your estate than ever." How true, I thought. Luckily she misunderstood.

"
Shhh
." She smiled and pressed
my fingers.

Ledger spoke, too. Mrs. Ledger, all pearly homeliness, was
surprisingly a musician, cello and keyboard. She argued quite well how
reputations were chancy—like. Bach was more famed as a player than a composer
in his own day, and better known for being a jailbird than for fathering twenty
children. I countered by asking if she had any antique musical instruments. She
hadn't, but her husband Ledger played the Boehm flute, another shaker. You
never really know people, do you.

At nine the place was rearranged for the telly show under Sandy's
direction, with Goldie's assistants arguing and Suzanne going anxious. They did
it with models, attired from Beryl's museum, for each alleged period. I was
made referee, and sworn to good behavior. Ro captained the bride's team and Big
Frank the bridegroom's. Helen, Liz Sandwell, and Margaret—lovely in a
limp-concealing long dress—opposed Harry Bateman, who can only recognize
antiques by their lack of a digital clock. Brad, and
Mannie
(who'd conformed by displaying a carnation on his caftan). Sandy paraded each
antique on, which was galling to the cameras, but on the whole it went well.

Goldie really seemed to come alive during the filming. Of course
she was all excited from having done a full commentary on an antique real-life
Victorian wedding ("The very priest is genuine, viewers!") but even
so I was astonished. She had a battery of signals to direct the cameras, for
example to focus on
Mannie's
bare feet; I saw it come
on the monitor. And she was witty enough when folk applauded in the wrong
places or dropped a glass, making jokes to gain a covering laugh.

She introduced me at halftime, and I bumbled about a Norwich
school painting, giving tips to the unwary purchaser, like at least measure the
damned thing and all that.

By the second half most of the antique dealers were tipsy and
laying heavy bets, and every bad guess was greeted with a storm of clapping or
boos. They had extra blokes to flag everybody quiet so Goldie could speak. What
with the cheering I began to think. Oh, hell, another rollicking for Lovejoy,
but oddly enough the day kept giving out surprises, for when Ro's team won and
Goldie finally closed the transmission, calling "Good-bye, viewers!"
over a storm of yelling and stamping, she came running over to me and hugged
me. I pulled away because she looked rotten in that makeup but no, she dangled
on me patting my face.

"Lovejoy! Superb! We've never had ... oh, God! It was real
real
 
real
!
"
As bad as Lize.

And the T-shirt brigade were all round saying Oh darling, things had
nearly gone wrong. I'd assumed Veronica would be wild because some of the panel
were still attired in the early nineteenth century and some not, but even that
was somehow a plus. They're a loony lot.

It was some time before I could get away and sit out on the
balcony in the cool. The day had long since burned out. Ledger came by after a
second, as I knew he would. Once a peeler, always a peeler.

"Something out of Sherlock Holmes, Lovejoy." He
chuckled, gesturing. Him in his dinner jacket, me like a caped Dracula, music,
light, and chatter from the tall windows.

"What're you doing with an antique flute. Ledger?"

He laughed, wagging. "I knew that would irritate you,
Lovejoy. But question is, what're you going to do with a valuable Roman bronze
in Long Tom Field, isn't it?" I snickered a mental snicker. Only me and
the killer knew it was in the New Black.

"Lize's speculative reporting? Give over, Ledger."

"Oh, aye. She gave me a written statement. No grammatical
errors, Lovejoy, but a pack of lies all the same." He glanced over the
balcony. "See that glowing cigarette? That's a constable." He gave
his a sardonic grin, half lit from the ballroom. "Truth is, Lovejoy, a
worm couldn't get into the field where George was killed. Let alone you. Or
your opponent."

"Opponent? Don't talk daft." The silly old coot left
then. I wrapped myself in my cloak and sat on a balcony seat for a doze.

28

It was ten before I missed Ryan in the crush. My heart gave a
nasty lurch. Naturally I'd checked every so often through the blue haze to see
nobody had slipped off to wait in the woods—that was my ploy, not anybody
else's. Quickly I reentered the mob and mingled cheerily, watching. Candice was
missing, too. Grinning and
caUing
greetings, I made
my way to the men's loos. No sign. I talked a bit with Ro and Big
Frank—enthroned in state before their going away—and managed to escape after
Veronica Gold laughingly demanded my autograph. Sandy was holding court,
waspish jokes about practically everybody. Pierre advised me about a private room
to have a lie-down for my sudden headache, off the corridor lounge.

Minutes later I was through the double doors and prowling
Suzanne's house. I'm too clumsy to be a really good prowler, but with common
sense you stand half a chance. My mind reasoned: Ryan's a friend of the major;
is he also close to Candice?

The house was quite small, nothing like I'd expected. Lights had
been left on. A television was going somewhere. I made the upstairs without a
tremor. Only one room had voices, Candice going on at Ryan with the occasional
riposte from him. I was so relieved he was still here I hardly bothered to
listen at first.

". . . not a question of getting the stuff out of the ground,
Candie
," he was giving back. "It's doing it
so we keep the takings."

She: "You're Like dearest Christopher." The name was an
expletive. "Caution's for old men."

"It's for successful men, silly cow."

"Oh. Forceful, is it?" She went little-girl voluptuous.
"Want to pick a page, sailor? A drawing? One of the figurines. . . ?"

"I've a lot on tonight." Same words I'd used.

"Switch the bed on? Start the mirrors? Or are you getting
Like groveling George?"

Ryan's voice sounded suddenly uneasy. "George was none of my
doing. You know that." Oh, aye, I thought sardonically. Keep up the
innocence, lad. See how much good it does you.

"Do I?" Candice's voice had thickened.

She gasped, laughed. There was a sudden stirring inside, so I
eeled
away. It looked Like I'd found where George was
taking the book; Candice was the collector of erotica. It only dawned on me as
I scurried along the corridor that if I'd had half the sense I was born with I
could have asked Big Frank when meeting him on the London train that day. He'd
been collecting erotica for a "local lady," wouldn't say who. He'd even
asked me to find him a fertility pendant. I'm thick.

George had probably been caught—by Clipper's men, hard at their
electronic wizardry? He must have been trying to approach this house unseen,
hoping, poor fool, to contact his former wife and please her by a gift right up
her own street. No mistake there, from what she'd so enticingly revealed.
Candice and her bedroom gadgetry would occupy Ryan long enough to give me a
head start.

For the sake of appearances I nipped back into the restroom, from
which I planned to emerge, whistling noisily. Bentham looked up drunkenly from
the couch.

"Lovejoy. You've been with Candice."

"Not me." I kept cool. A rumpus now would spoil things.

"Don't he, you bastard." He tried to rise, fell back.
"She fancied you from the outset. A tramp." His head wagged in
drunken mystification. "I can't handle her, Lovejoy. She frightens
me."

"Take what you can get and scarper. A bird like her."

"You're an animal. I'm an officer and a gentleman."

Aye, he looked like one, with puke stains down his red mess
jacket, and drunk paralytic.

Ledger too had gone from the reception throng. About time.

Pittsbury Wood was silent. I'm sure there are different sorts of
silence. This particular night's silence was heavy, oppressive, though usually
all that means is that the weather's turning sultry. Tonight was cold. No
breeze. No rain. A moon was having a hard time of it, lifting its chin over
cloud rims, then down again. That highwayman poem came to me from school as I
stood waiting: "The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas . .
." Romantic twaddle. Anyway, Boothie was around, with Decibel. I'd saved
his life that day, so he'd not let me down. The old poacher's invisible
presence warmed the chill from my spine.

From where I stood near the edge of the wood I knew that beautiful
New Black Field lay on my left. Six furlongs distant, round Charleston's Lx)
ng
Tom Field, Ledger's police would be waiting for me and
for the murderer—in the wrong place, happily, thinking poor George had been
killed there. Only the true boss murderer, Ryan, would come to the New Black
here on the edge of the wood, for only he'd given orders that had done George
in. And where. And he'd dig the leopard up to prove it. Of course I didn't know
what to expect, but there were some certainties. One was that Ryan would come.
He had to, to protect the knowledge of where George Prentiss had died that
night. And since I'd announced to the whole wide world of the 
Advertiser
's
readership that I shared that knowledge, he had to come for me. There'd be no
witnesses. He'd arrange a mock-up road accident, something elsewhere. I watched
the big field glow in sudden moonlight, fade as swiftly into blackness.

A good idea of mine, I approved inwardly, to choose Halloween.
Local people don't wander abroad, especially in the last hour. They're not
superstitious, of course—all that spooky rubbish is for kids' toffee papers and
Hollywood matinees.

These witching hours are a godsend to a poacher. And he'd got
Decibel, loyal and silent hunter. Can you honestly think of two better allies?
I mean, anywhere? The police surrounding Long Tom Field would be chilled to the
marrow. Serve them right.

Nothing out there yet. Another quick moon rinse, then blackness
settled. I tried to think my way through the tenor part of
Rincke's
Mass, the
Introibo
, but found myself dangerously near
to humming aloud and shut up.

Ledger's police were getting paid overtime for squatting in a
ditch doing
nowt
. I was out in the same cold, cold
night free of charge. I smiled. Ledger's lads probably had their ears out for
the sewing-machine chatter of my old Ruby. Tough luck. Here in the forest
sounds carried oddly. They become distorted, every susurrus a threat.

Leaving the party at Dogpits and cutting up through the northeast
pasture had been easy. So easy, in fact, that I'd wondered if Ledger had
deliberately made it so. Unprofitable line of thought, that. No. I'd simply
been
Hereward
the Nightwalker, silently slow round
the winter wheat field. I'll bet even Boothie would have had a hard time
finding me, if I hadn't told him my exact waiting spot. "Don't move,"
he'd cautioned, "once you're in position."

Well, I wasn't moving. Movement makes noise. It makes stealthy
crackles.

I wasn't moving. So why had I just heard a crackle? I listened to
nothing. I
relistened
, very closely, to nothing. To
utterly 
absolutely
 nothing?

To a
cra-ckle
. . . then 
nothing
.

Relax, Lovejoy. Tom Booth and good old fang-toting Decibel were
around. Allies. I'd already proved that, hadn't I? Relax, because no noise is
nothing is absolute zero.

Leaf rasp. And
cra
. . .
ckle
. Now, noise is noise, no?

No snuffle of night creatures, no comforting hoots, no badgers
shuffling. 
Why not?
 I'd been standing still for
yonks
, so long that the fauna had begun to disregard me.
But now they'd gone silent. But don't they only do that when somebody is moving
in a wood?

Not 
a
 wood. 
This
 wood.

Going crackle? A pace a minute? Slower? My throat dried. Sweat
dampened my hands. I didn't move. I felt like praying, swearing I hadn't moved,
honestly God I haven't, as if that proved I'd not misbehaved.

"I can hear you, Ryan." I spoke before I could think.

The crackling stopped. Silence. A terrible wave of hate wafted at
me from the dark.

"Ryan?" I gulped. "The wood's surrounded."
Something clicked, to my right.

"Now, Councillor." A pathetic whimper. "Don't . .
."

It wasn't Ryan
. He'd
never carry a gun. His wife had told me only last week he even turned westerns
off television. And he only rented out the land for duck shoots, never went
himself

"Boothie?" I said, sweating down my back. My legs began
trembling. But you'd never hear Tom Booth click a gun hammer, not unless he
wanted you to. "Decibel?" A croak. "Here, boy."

Crackle. Oh God. Moving around. Crackle.

"Clipper?" I said louder. "Clipper?" But
Clipper and his men wouldn't come, not with the police skulking within earshot.