Spend Game (2 page)

‘Don’t get shirty, Lovejoy,’ Tinker whined. He has a specially humble stoop for whining. I could see him doing it now.

‘And a crummy doctor’s case, Victorian?’

‘Bleeding horrible it was,’ Tinker cackled indignantly.

‘Bloody prices –’

‘And that book.’ We paused, thinking. There had been seven hundred items auctioned at Virgil’s auction house in Medham that day, a long stint relieved only by ecstasy, beauty, excitement and the scent of profit. A typical country auction in a typical country town. I avoided mentioning Leckie’s accident. They would hear at the White Hart soon enough, preferably when I was there. And I’d make certain I looked as astonished as everybody else when the bad news came.

‘That’s all, Lovejoy.’

‘Sure, Tinker?’

‘Yeah.’ Another pause while his brain swam out of its alcoholic fog. ‘Here, Lovejoy,’ he croaked in what he imagined was a secret whisper, ‘we in trouble again?’

‘No, Tinker. See you in a minute or two.’

I left the caff and drove with the rest of the traffic towards the orange sky-glow. The rain was easing now and the cars fewer. I would reach the pub a bit later than usual but the other dealers wouldn’t notice because we turn up at all hours. First, I had one job to do.

Leckie’s one of those people who never seem much while they’re knocking about, yet when they depart leave a rather depressing space. We’d been in the army together for a spell, in one of those nasty little wars we used to have going on simultaneously in a dozen places. Leckie and I were in the same artillery unit. He’s
one of those odd calm Englishmen you get now and then who look great on camels and are naturally full of linguistics whether they come from the slums of Moss Side or a duke’s stately home. Leckie always managed to convey the impression that no matter how accurate the desert snipers were the main problem was having sherry trifle properly served when the bishop called for croquet on the lawn. I was posted to a snowbound war as punishment for getting malaria. I never saw him after till he turned up here.

I found myself smiling as I drove, remembering his arrival. He was a Keswick man, thin and pleasant. He took as naturally to tweeds and hand-sewn leather shoes as a duck to water. It was a noisy Saturday night when he’d sailed in, found me and strolled across. We said hello and chatted. He was out of a job.

‘What’s the local industry, Lovejoy?’ he’d asked, forcing himself to like the gin. It was labelled
BEST LONDON BRANDS BLENDED
, but only for the sake of appearances.

‘Well, we’re mostly antiques dealers,’ I told him. He grinned, shrugged and looked us over, in that order.

‘That’ll have to do,’ he said casually, as if the whole of East Anglia had made him an offer and he hadn’t much else on that day.

‘Know anything about antiques, Leckie?’ Mind you, most antiques dealers are utterly clueless about antiques. And the good old public comes a close second.

‘No. What does one do?’ He watched me grin and shake my head. I told him he hadn’t changed. ‘I suppose it’s buying and selling, something in that line?’ he’d gone on, still not batting an eyelid.

That was Leckie all over. Didn’t care much about
difficulties, knowledge and education. He just knew his attitude would carry him through. Most times he’d been right. Like the time our platoon went into a high scrubland plateau where the tribes spoke a weird private language of clicks, hisses and croaks. Within a week he was our official translator, having absorbed the language by a sort of osmosis.

We were never really very close once he started in antiques, just casual competitors in a fierce trade. I don’t think I had any special affection for him, even though I’d known him some years. You just don’t get many Leckies to the pound, not these days.

I turned off the motorway into town. Our two cinemas and fifty-seven pubs were still hard at it, but the shops had that benign retirement look which all showy glass fronts get after the Saturday rush. A few people strolled, or waited for the buses to take them out into the countryside or down along the estuary to their cold sea-sprayed cottages on the harbour walls. Our town’s one official tart was already out, well wrapped, by the furniture shop. I wagged an arm and shouted, ‘Wotcher, Jo,’ to show I wasn’t biased, then put my ancient little crate, every erg agog, hard at the slope below the preserved cathedral ruins. It spluttered bravely up towards the garrison.

We’re a garrison town; in fact, never have been anything else since Cymbeline did his stuff and Claudius landed. You wouldn’t think it, though, because the barracks are now tidied away between the football grounds and encroaching woods, and in any case low terraced houses submerge much of the evidence. You can see the layout of the barracks and spiderhuts from the train, but only if you know where to look. I hurtled at a breathless fifteen into a
small street near the barracks and jerked my horseless carriage to a wheezing stop outside a quiet little pub. There were three other cars by the pavement, all innocent. I made sure nobody was in the street as best I could – there are only four or five street lamps there, and they’re still those old gas-mantle standards kids can climb up or use for cricket stumps. I hurried round the back street and went into the little stone-flagged yard of the house next to the pub. A knock on the window like a clandestine lover.

‘It’s Lovejoy,’ I said. The light came on over the yard door. Val let me in, her face disapproving.

‘You know the time?’ she said. I nodded and shook rain all over the carpet.

‘I’ll not be a minute, love. Has Leckie been?’

‘No.’

‘Not to leave anything? No messages?’

‘No.’ She was right to look puzzled. ‘Should he have called? You didn’t tell me. Is anything wrong?’

She gave me a nip of rum for the cold. Val and I had been friends in the roaring days of youth, learning our adolescent snogging techniques in joint training sessions in school lessons quaintly called ‘Agriculture: Methods and Theory’. Education’s gone downhill since then. She’d married George, who’s the barman at the next-door pub, an arrangement which saves on fares and leaves Val sufficiently free to run an antiques sideline. She does no dealing herself, only guards what’s given her until it’s collected. Posh London dealers have their own depositories. Lone antiques dealers either do without or have a safe lock-up arrangement with some trustworthy soul like Val.

‘Can I look?’

‘I’ll get the key.’

These older terraced houses are admittedly small, but whoever built them had his head screwed on. There’s a narrow stone-flagged cellar under each. You enter through a doorway set below a few steps leading down from the yard. There’s no window, only a solid wooden door. Val had persuaded the publican to have it metalled with iron strips and linked by a warning bleep in case he ever needed it for extra storage of bottled spirits. When I met up with Val again and incorporated her in my famous arrears system of payment I let Leckie use the same facilities. Antiques dealers call this sort of arrangement a ‘cran’, just as other gangsters call it a drop.

Val and I went down with a flashlight. She always takes time fumbling with the lock because there’s no outside light. Only a few weeks before, George had rigged up a light bulb on a perilous flex to cast a feeble glimmer on our valuables. My phoney eighteenth-century oak chest was ageing usefully still. Unless my luck changed I’d soon have to auction it, a terrible admission of failure for any self-respecting antiques dealer. There was an ebony flute in its case, distinguished by that grim little-finger D-flat key, the size of a small springboard, they had before the Boehm system let the modern instrument makers have some restful nights. Flautists must have had digits a foot long before 1850. And there was my famous non-painting, an oil copy of Il Sodoma’s ‘tailor’ portrait, of that skilled type which abounds in the country areas of England. I’d bought it for a song from a German tourist who had paid the earth. (Tip: never buy a painting without measuring it. If the size of the real thing is well known, and the painting you’re considering buying is thirty square inches too small, it follows that the latter
is probably a copy – a legitimate copy perhaps, but still a copy.)

Leckie had a few pieces of lustreware on the one shelf we’d rigged up and two of those Lowestoft jugs I hate. But no escritoire, no doctor’s bag, and no book. Now there’s a thing, I thought. How very odd.

‘Lovejoy. Is anything the matter?’

‘Eh?’

‘What’s wrong?’ She pulled me round to face her. ‘I’ve never seen you like this, except for that time.’ That time was a dust-up everybody ought to have forgotten by now. Only women remember fights, their own included.

‘Nothing, love,’ I said jovially.

‘Lovejoy?’ She kept hold of me. I saw her eyes change. ‘Dear God. Is . . . is it Leckie?’

I felt my chest fall a mile. Her face was suddenly white as a sheet. Things clicked horribly into place. I now remembered that holiday she had taken last year with an unnamed friend to the Scillies. Leckie had been away too, by an odd coincidence. After that he’d had more money to buy with. His trade had looked up. Twice he hinted at a silent partner. Christ Almighty, I thought, suddenly weary as hell. It never rains but what it pours crap. Sometimes I’m just stupid. Val and Leckie, for gawd’s sake.

‘Tell me, Lovejoy.’

‘It might have not been him, love,’ I said desperately. She drew back and looked at me, up and down and up and down. She shone the flashlight.

‘That’s mud.’

‘There was an accident . . .’

‘Leckie?’

‘It . . . it looked like him, love, but –’

She walked away towards the wall and stood there a minute.

‘It was a car, Val. He got . . . got . . .’

‘Killed,’ she said, turning. She fumbled for the key and held the door. ‘And the first thing you could think of was what antiques he’d left here, in case there was a chance of making a few pounds.’ Her eyes were streaming.

‘Not really, Val,’ I began, but she wasn’t having any and gestured me up the steps.

‘Take your stuff out of here first thing tomorrow, Lovejoy,’ she said in a monotone. ‘You’re not nice any more. Don’t come here again.’

‘Look, love,’ I tried desperately. Val and Leckie. How was I to know?

She dropped the key on its string and went into her house, just let the key fall there on to the steps and walked off, leaving the cellar door open and me standing there like a goon. I had to feel around before I could find it, and even then it took a while to lock up. I put the key on the lintel. I knocked a couple of times, half-hearted. She must have heard but didn’t come to the door.

The rain had eased off. I cranked my zoomster into feeble bronchiectatic life and rattled back through town towards my own village. It’s three miles off to the north-west. Three-quarters of an hour before closing time, the town hall clock said as I trundled past. It would be touch and go, because two miles are uphill. My old crate sounded worn out. It feels these sudden strains, same as me.

T
HERE’S NOTHING
so welcoming as a good pub and nothing so forbidding as a bad one. We’ve some repellent ones, but the White Hart’s as kindly as they come. I stood in the porchway pretending to be preoccupied with my coat, but really sussing out who’d got back from the auction. Tinker Dill was there looking like a derelict straight off the kerb in his tattered mittens and rubbishly old greatcoat. He was standing among a group of other thirsty barkers, all runners for us dealers. Tinker might be the shabbiest barker in the known universe, but he’s the best by a street. He’s also the booziest. He saw me and came weaving through the crowds, not spilling a single drop. A barker only lets go of his glass under anaesthetic.

‘Hiyer, Tinker.’ I spoke quietly. ‘Get my stuff from Val’s.’

‘Eh?’ He goggled.

‘You heard.’ My eyes were everywhere. ‘First thing tomorrow.’

‘Sunday:
Bleeding hell.’

‘That’s what she said.’ We fought to the bar. I chipped out for a refill and snatched at the barman’s eye for my usual. Tinker grumbled, but that’s nothing
new. He hates merely shifting stuff. His job’s sniffing out antiques wherever they lurk.

‘Where do they go?’

‘Tell you later when I’ve arranged something.’ The four people crammed nearest us were dedicated anglers talking about massacring the next bream run on the Ouse. Ted was a mile down the bar and his wife Jenny sprinting between the two bars. It looked safe enough, but I kept my voice down. ‘Don’t gape about, Tinker,’ I said casually, ‘but tell me who was here when you arrived.’

Tinker measured the clock and turned round to lean his elbows on the bar. There’s never any problem about space round Tinker, not with his pong.

‘Helen?’ I began, smiling and nodding at the familiar faces in the bar mirrors. I like Helen, long of leg and stylish of manner, shapely of fag-holder and quick of mind. She saw my eyes and nodded a quizzical smile. She does English porcelain mostly, and does it well with profit. Her eyebrows said, Come over here a minute, Lovejoy, but I was busy and frightened.

‘She was here,’ Tinker growled. ‘She’s asking for you.’

‘Aren’t they all?’ I looked round some more. ‘Jean?’ Jean Plunkett’s a middle-aged woman who suddenly metamorphosed from a mild housewife into an aggressive dealer about four years back. Continental silver and tooth and nail. Big Frank from Suffolk’s been after her for a while now, seeing her as a potential third spouse to add to his bigamous affairs which litter the surrounding countryside. He was busy now, plying her with clever alcoholic combinations. Both Jean and he were smiling happily. He’d bought a copy of a
Ravenscroft glass at the auction – unusual, because he’s mostly silver and furniture.

‘Her and Frank reached the pub before me,’ Tinker said jealously. I said to keep calm, we’d buy a helicopter.

We seemed to have the usual crowd, in fact. A score of dealers and barkers, with a couple of tough-looking vanmen to do the lumber in case any dealer infarcted at the thought of having to do any lifting.

‘The vannies, Tinker?’ I suggested. He grinned a no.