Spend Game (12 page)

She pulled out an envelope. It crackled slightly, a beautiful and melodious sound. I felt dizzy. I always do when money raises its exquisite head.

‘For your expenses, Lovejoy.’

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. ‘Expenses?’

‘Yes.’ She dropped it on the table. She watched me and I watched the envelope. ‘I’ve read your file –’ She stopped me with a gesture when I drew breath. ‘Let me finish. You’re a violent man. Some of the things –’

‘Not my fault,’ I got in quickly, hating all this. Women are easier when they’re mad at you.

‘Of course not.’ Moll gave me that level agreement which means just the opposite. ‘I know you’ll try to kill
them, Lovejoy. You’ll do it for Leckie, for you, for all of us. I know it. Take the money. It’ll help.’

‘Rubbish,’ I said cagily. ‘Anyway, you’re a cop’s wife.’

‘It’s not a trick, Lovejoy.’ She half smiled as I backed off. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to weep all over you, though I suppose I ought to. I’ve been very stupid. Just take it. I realize now I was only wanting to play cops and robbers.’

‘No.’ Saying it took a bit of nerve and a lot of idiocy.

She waited, thinking. ‘I expected that.’

She walked about, looking and occasionally touching what passes for furniture. I suddenly wished I hadn’t had to sell my last good piece, a small mutton-fat finger jade, early Ch’ien Lung. It was the only thing I’d had in living memory worth looking at. She’d have been really impressed if I’d had that to show her. As it was my cottage looks like a doss house.

‘Lovejoy. You first come to my place looking for some precious antiques Leckie had just bought.’

‘I got them, but they’re duff.’

‘Duff?’

‘Wrong. Not worth anything. Maybe they’re not even the ones he started out with.’

‘Very well.’ She walked past me to the front door, pausing to pat her hair at the mirror. ‘Find them, then. Find the real ones. That money’s the commission.’

‘It can’t be,’ I explained. ‘Commission’s –’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Lovejoy.’ She opened the door herself. For once there was no woman on the doorstep. ‘Find the – the unduff antiques. I’ll buy them, or it. Whichever it turns out to be.’

Unduff, for gawd’s sake.

‘But how can you buy them, if we don’t know what it is?’

‘I collect unidentified objects,’ she said serenely. ‘I’ve just begun, today. And I’m employing you. Get on with it.’ She clicked down to where the gravel begins.

‘What if it’s too dear?’ I called after her, wondering what was going on.

‘I’ll make the price up to you somehow,’ she said over her shoulder but not looking.

And that was that. Her car weaved its way back to the main road in second gear, the blackthorn hedges scraping her paint all the way. I stood, listening. Sure enough, it changed up to third by the chapel. Satisfied she now had her handbag dangling correctly from the gear lever, I went in to go over the evidence. I decided to look up obtuse in the dictionary. I’d get mad with her again if it turned out to be an insult.

In the bath I did some thinking. Not really cerebral stuff, but feeling my way outwards into the bloody mix-up. I’d honestly tried to keep out of it, hadn’t I? But Maslow was going to do sod all, and there wasn’t anybody else but me to keep faith with fairness in this mad tangled world. I’d have to do it – yet where the hell do you start?

Leckie’s lovely blonde missus kept forcing her way into my mind, but why? All these events were all somehow connected. And the connection was through Leckie, now deceased by violence. I splashed my toes against the taps, though it always makes a mess over the side. Sue does her nut and moans about having to mop the floor.

So Leckie and Doc Chase were friends. My mind went: first, Doc Chase dies (but when and how? Maybe I ought to ask). Then, some of his rubbishy odds and ends are disposed of in a tatty local auction, Virgil’s
dump in Medham. They’re always scouring the villages for stuff to sell on commission, so no mystery there. Then Leckie bids and wins it. Maybe his blonde wife learned somehow from Leckie that Chase’s effects contained something precious. She then disclosed it to, say, Black Fergus or Jake Pelman or the jittery Nodge – or all three? Maybe they then tried to ‘chop’ (this is dealers’ slang: to share profit and risk) with Leckie, and he refused. They then decide on hard aggro. Leckie’s killed. They realize the stuffs still at Virgil’s. They go back during the night hours, tell old George to get lost and break in. They rummage about and whistle Chase’s stuff up, but did they find whatever was precious hidden in it? If I’d guessed right they hadn’t found a bloody thing, judging from Nodge’s nervous face and Jake Pelman’s clumsy shadowing – always assuming they were the baddies.

I sighed and stood up, dripping water. The best thing about having a bath is getting out of it, except when Sue’s in it too. It seemed I couldn’t escape from Leckie’s last request no matter how hard I tried. There seemed nothing for it. I decided to start by breaking a couple of fingers, one on Nodge and then one on old George. I whistled absently as I dried, pleased now that matters were out of my hands.

Start as you mean to go on, I always say.

N
ODGE IS ONE
of those antiques dealers who are called ‘caley’ men in our part of this lunatic game. Somebody once told me it started out as ceilidh, Celtic for dingdong, a spree. Nodge goes along for months nervous as a trout, never buying without agonies of indecision and worried about selling. Then he’ll buy everything in sight, good and bad, spending like a drunken sailor and plunging into debt.

Once every six months he ends up with a ton of pseudo-antiques nobody in his right mind would look at twice. It’s all hit or miss. You’d be surprised which world-famous collectors – I include museums – are run on the caley principle. Why people go along like this, hoping that ignorance might in fact actually turn out to be bliss in the end, nobody knows.

It took me an hour to find Tinker. He was in our local bookie’s with his mate Lemuel (not ‘Lem’, except at your peril). Lemuel’s an asthmatic and grubby old soldier who breathes like my car. He gambles his – and possibly others’ – social security money as long as it lasts, then cadges the rest of the week. Social workers are good to him, though. They bought him a wheelchair last Lady Day. He sold it after an instantaneous and
miraculous recovery from his limp. He wears an old forage cap without badges.

The bookie’s was just crowding up before the afternoon races. I caught them both there in the planning stage.

‘Nodge?’ Tinker thought a second. He always offers to roll me a corrupt cigarette on one of those little pocket machines.

‘He comes in here sometimes, Lovejoy,’ Lemuel wheezed. He took the first fag off Tinker’s assembly line.

‘Nodge isn’t in town yet.’ Tinker’s verdict.

‘How long will he be?’ You can ask Tinker things like this. He always knows.

‘Not long. Ten minutes. In here.’

‘I’ll wait.’

They lit up, spluttering and wheezing on the ends of their respective Tinker-made monstrosities. Tinker’s fags are better-looking after being smoked than when they start off. I watched, marvelling. Never had so many lungs managed so little.

While Tinker and Lemuel unerringly sussed out today’s losers I gazed round at the maelstrom. Our town’s gambling fraternity is an assorted bunch. I don’t often come in except for the Derby and the Grand National, maybe the St Leger. There are housewives, layabouts, neatly dressed blokes fresh from selling insurance, confident hard-faced ladies with Jags left running at the kerb, the whole gamut. They all seem to smoke. My eyes run after a few minutes. I listened, bored to death, seeing those mysterious numbers being chalked up on the boards. Lemuel, advised by Tinker, was filling in papers with a pencil stub. It was a real drag. So one horse
runs faster than another. Who cares? And yet water-colours of Georgian and early William IV racehorses, not to mention the Victorian, are soaring in value. The prints as well, so be on the look-out. Always go for fame: Eclipse, Hermit, Hyperion, even as late as Airborne. For heaven’s sake, though, make sure the print you buy is
named
(horse, owner, the race and jockey if possible). The rule is: the more factual detail the better. If you merely want to invest and you don’t care about real antiques much, go for the best such paintings or prints you can buy at a good dealer’s. Anything up to and including even the Brown Jack era should reap rewards. When buying originals, demand certificates of provenance – that is, what the painting’s been up to since it left the artist’s lilywhites. Don’t worry so much about provenance if it’s a print, because they’re not being forged yet. I mean so far. It won’t be long.

Nodge came in hunched and forlorn. He was startled to see me among the muttering, obsessed crowd. I was across in a flash, pulling him in and smiling. I didn’t let go.

‘Over here.’

Tinker and Lemuel were huddled in a corner. There aren’t any tables or chairs in these dumps, only mounds of fag-ends and possibly a shelf to write on. Tinker gave me a bleary glance then carefully took no notice. I could say what I like. He’s on my side. Lemuel’s not, but he’s not daft.

‘Nodge,’ I said in an affable undertone. ‘You heard Leckie got done?’

‘I heard.’

I smiled at him. ‘I think it was Fergie, Jake Pelman and you.’

‘Me?’ His yelp made a few heads turn for a second. ‘Me?’ he hissed, white.

‘Any two of the three of you.’

‘I wasn’t even in the bleeding car, Lovejoy.’

‘What car, Nodge?’ I saw the penny drop. We were muttering in the corner like punters, buffeted by preoccupied people pushing all around.

‘Er – it was a car accident, wasn’t it?’

‘Don’t try covering up, Nodge.’

‘Let me go, Lovejoy.’ He was desperate now, lips trembling and sweaty. A punter tried elbowing past to reach the betting slips on the shelf, but Tinker got in the way with studied absent-mindedness. The punter swore and moved off. Tinker never even looked my way. A good lad.

‘You did Virgil’s warehouse, right?’

Nodge’s eyes widened. It warned me he was going to try it on so I snapped his finger. His attempted rush for the door halted before it was begun. He squawked and doubled up.

‘Here, you lot.’ The bouncer started out from behind his false grille. I have him one of my looks through the smoke and he hesitated. ‘Less of that. We want no trouble.’

‘Just going.’ I called, smiling over the heads. The bouncer dithered.

‘
Christ.
’ Nodge was nearly fainting. There’s nothing so painful as a broken digit. It matters which digit, of course.

‘Yes or no, Nodge?’ I helped him into the vestibule and stood between him and the street door.

‘They’ll kill me.’

‘You did the warehouse?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What were you looking for?’ I helped him a little. ‘Come on, Nodge. I know all about Doc Chase.’

That let him off the hook of conscience, such as it was. ‘They weren’t sure what. Summat hidden in his things. Fergus said it would tell us where the stuff was hidden in Scratton.’

‘Come on.’ I indicated the door.

‘I’d better go out on my own, Lovejoy –’

‘No, Nodge,’ I said contentedly. ‘I want you in trouble with Jake and Fergie.’

‘Please, Lovejoy –’

I nodded to Tinker and Lemuel and we barged slowly towards the door in a mob. ‘Out, Nodge,’ I told him. We left Tinker and Lemuel in the smoke and babble. I pushed Nodge out on to the pavement but kept hold. We had to be seen together. The smog of the market square seemed fresh as milk.

Jake Pelman was across the way, coming forward among the stalls. He saw us and stared.

‘Jake’s always out shopping these days,’ I said pleasantly to Nodge. He groaned, more from seeing Jake than his finger.

‘You bastard, Lovejoy. They’ll do for me.’

‘We can but hope, lad. See you.’ I stepped away, still smiling for Jake’s sake and waving casually to Nodge. ‘It’s a deal, Nodge,’ I said loudly, nodding.

‘Jake!’ Nodge shouted urgently, beckoning.

I felt rather than saw them come together among the shoppers. Nodge would have to do some quick explaining or go the way of all flesh. Jake would assume we’d done a private deal. Nodge was for it. I went whistling towards the pub. Happiness makes you peckish.

I called in at the Three Cups for a drink and a pasty,
happy that things had started moving. I’d learned not only who’d killed Leckie, but that they were no nearer finding the valuable item than I was.

Jean was in the saloon bar. I was glad. When one thing cheers you up lots of other things join in the jollity, don’t they? I’ve often noticed that. Here was Leckie’s mystery practically solving itself, me with a wodge of gelt in my pocket and Jean buying me a drink. She had a rare piece of ‘toy’ porcelain from the Girl-in-a-Swing Factory – look for
tiny
figurines with streaky brown hair, minuscule mottoes with atrocious spelling, and you’re halfway there.

I perched on a stool, elbows on the bar and gazed at the lovely piece. Sit down when you meet a genuine antique. I do. Don’t rush. It wants friendship. It needs company. Hang about for a few minutes and listen to its viewpoint, because it’s got civil rights just like you. Take your time and acquaint yourself with its exquisite truth. Just as women are the living instruments of the sacrament of love, so are antiques their counterpart, only a little more inanimate at first sight. I sometimes wonder if antiques are really a vigil between different women. Or maybe vice versa. Anyhow, you get the idea.

To get the price down I told Jean it wasn’t genuine, but she could see how breathless and quivering I was, and only laughed.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ She doesn’t actually know much, so we had a good chat. I told her how Charlie Gouyn had slammed out of Lawrence Street full of Huguenot temper in 1749, leaving his partner Nicholas Sprimont in the lurch, and started up the Girl-in-a-Swing Factory. We don’t know its proper name. We dealers actually call it that nowadays from a little piece in the Victoria and Albert. The funny thing is that Gouyn was a superb
silversmith, yet often put gold mounts on his tiny scent-bottles, figurines or chain-seals. My own trick is to see if the lassies’ dresses (usually whitish with a red-rose pattern) are lined with deep rose or yellow, and see if the base has a rose on patterned leaves. You can’t really go wrong because they’re so exquisite. Jean’s delicious piece was three luscious ladies leaning against a tree stump. Charlie Gouyn’s buxom wenches often do that. I wonder about the symbolism sometimes. I bought it off her there and then with the expenses money Moll had given me. Well, I’d tell Moll I used a lot of petrol.