The Gondola Scam (2 page)

"A friend," I corrected quickly, in case she developed a
craving.

"Excuse us, please," he said with courtesy. I could tell
he was frosty. "Lovejoy. I wanted you for the Flemish marquetry cabinet
the northern dealer was putting in the ring. The one with the metallic-paint
effect."

"It's genuine." I'd told him this a hundred times, but
London antique dealers are as thick as those from anywhere else. And after
today's performance, maybe thicker. "Antwerp, say 1670, 1680. And while
we're at it, that metallic paint is chip mother-of-pearl."

"I failed," he said, stone-faced. "The bidding went
quite extraordinary after you left—"

"Almost as if the others were ganging up?"

"That's right. I'm not blaming you, Lovejoy— "

"No, Mr. Malleson. But
I'm
blaming
you
," I gave the handle
a savage crank and the engine spluttered obediently. If it hadn't, I’d have
kicked it to bits, the temper I was in.

"Me? Why?" The duckegg was honestly amazed. I ask you.

"You hired me to suss out genuine antiques, right?"

"Of course. You have the reputation of being a divvie. A very
valuable gift."

"Which means I can feel genuine antiques, right?"

My car door falls off if you pull the handle, so I stepped over
the door and slid behind the wheel.

"Well, yes. That's the supposition, Lovejoy."

"Not supposition. Truth. I tipped you that painting is modern
phony, and you still bought it."

"That was your opinion, Lovejoy."

"Wrong, Mr. Malleson." My frost was at least as cold as
his. "A divvie just knows. That's very, very different from a mere
opinion."

"I see. Offended pride." He gave one of his wintry
smiles, clearly the London zillionaire dealer coping with troublesome
provincial riffraff. "Tell me, Lovejoy. Are you an expert on formalisms in
Tiepolo's composition?"

"No."

"Canvas microscopy? Spectrographic analysis of paint? Chemicals?"
He went mercilessly down a formidable list, getting a denial every time.
"It may interest you to know, Lovejoy, that I am an expert on all those
topics. And there's one other proof." He eyed me and my zoomster.
"The fact is that you are threadbare, frayed, generally ill-attired, and
clearly subnourished. Your obsolete car is falling apart. I, on the other hand,
have the best from each year's motor show. Three London tailors work very hard
to please me. Do I make my point?"

"You'll not be the first expert art dealer I've visited in
clink, Mr. Malleson," I said evenly, and gunned my half-pint engine as a
hint. "Sell that fake, and Scotland Yard's fraud squad'll come peering in
your window."

He was examining me curiously. "You're so sure?"

"There's no question. That gunge was painted this side of
Easter."

He smiled a disbelieving smile and pulled out a bolster-sized
wallet. "We can only agree to disagree then. Here's half your fee."

The sight of the notes he held out made my heart fill with
longing, but to my horror I felt my stupid head shake. My voice said, "No
thanks, Mr. Malleson. I won't help you defraud yourself."

The engine wheezed and the little Ruby trundled off leaving him
standing there. A couple of dealers cheered derisorily and Linda gave me a wave
from the saloon bar's window. I saw the ash blonde by that elegant lemon-tinted
customed DeLorean. She must have heard every word. As we clattered out onto the
main Edmundsbury road. Cram-pie tried flagging me down. His real name's
Cramphom, but with a name like Lovejoy you learn discrimination at an early
age.

"Can't stop, Crampie," I bawled over my engine's din.
"On my way to a deal."

"Get stuffed, Lovejoy," he yelled back. "Thought
you were in a Rolls-Royce, not a sewing machine."

"Lovejoy!" Connie was scandalized. "He's your
dealer friend! You can't leave him standing in the cold wind."

Honestly. People are so innocent. Ben Cramphorn's a roadman—that
is, he procures lifts pretending he's on his way to buy his poor dying friend's
priceless antique. His "poor dying friend" is fit as a flea, because
it's his partner, Phil Watmore, made up to look ailing. The
"priceless" antique is any old chunk of dross they can't sell. The
aim is to get the kindly motorist interested in buying the antique and driving
to Phil's auntie's house in Wivenhoe, which is the place they usually work
from, seeing she pays the rates, rent, and all other costs. Sounds very dicey,
doesn't it? Surprising how often it works.

"You're awful, Lovejoy!" Connie was fuming.

“I’ll tell Ken you said that." He's Connie's husband. They
own this small chain of shops, shoes or something.

"Where's the heater on this thing, Lovejoy?" That's the
best about Connie. Predictability. Her thoughts never leave temperature for
long. "Is there no way we can stop this terrible gale? Take your hand off
my knee."

"I'll stop for a hot-water bottle," I said.

"Will you, darling?" she said eagerly. "That's a
good idea."

I glared at her, marveling. There she sat, hair streaming in the
wind, slender throat deep in her mohair, eyes sparkling, luscious lips moist,
eyes dazzling. As exciting a picture of beauty as ever a woman can be, and
still she takes a sardonic crack as gospel.

She put her arms through mine. "I hated Mr. Malleson He has
no right to speak to you like that. Even if you do look a mess, I love you,
darling."

"Er, thanks, love," I said. Some women baffle me. We
pulled into this dark layby because I was getting desperate. Only a woman can
rub out the toxic anger of a failure such as I'd endured, and Connie regarded
sex on the move as vulgarity gone mad.

Which is how we came within a few seconds of seeing the whole
terrible thing.

My old crate, wheezing and panting, was waiting to get back on the
road—no mean feat, this, because it was uphill at the layby's reentry
point—when a limousine cruised out of the darkness behind its great headlights,
and I recognized it as Mr. Malleson's.

"How lovely!" Connie cried. "He gave Mr. Cramphom a
lift, Lovejoy."

"Shut up."

I too had glimpsed two figures in the car. Narked at being
reminded yet again of my stupendous failure at the ring auction, I trundled us
out clattering into the slipstream.

So Crampie was working his antique scam on Mr. Malleson. I wished
him luck. The rate my old Ruby trundles, it would be a good hour before I
reached my cottage, where Connie would raise me to paradise and send the memory
of this catastrophic day into an oblivion it richly deserved. It was to be a
lot longer.

2

"Stop, Lovejoy! Please!"

"What for?"

"It's Mr. Malleson's car! With the police!"

East Anglia becomes a desert of country darkness after dusk. Those
roadside cafes are oases of light in the pitch night, because we lack those
natty road lamps which make towns so wonderful.

"No."

"Please! You must, Lovejoy! Your friends are in
trouble."

Nothing's so poisonous as a woman bent on Doing Good. These days
nobody in their right mind stops at these lonely road nosh bars. And you
especially don't when those irritable blue lamps are blinking ghoulishly from
ambulances and police cars. I tried explaining that yobbos had probably nicked
some dealer's antiques from his car—par for the course, really—but Connie
turned ugly.

"No love then, Lovejoy."

She didn't really mean it, couldn't in fact, and she knew it. But
what she did know was that her threat would make me dispirited. I tend to lose
heart easily. Teachers at school used to call me spineless but never taught me
out of it. I applied the brake—note that singular—and my Ruby contemplated
itself to a dawdling stop, drifting sideways as its one block persuasively
caressed its feeble motive power into clattering idleness.

"Come
on!
"
Connie was already out and trotting back towards the lights. Miserably I
followed, cursing. My instincts were to drive on with every erg my rusty old
zoomster could generate.

Two ambulances hurtled out in tandem, nearly flattening Connie and
me. Several bored police constables were hanging about. A few lorry drivers
chatted and exchanged cigarettes, eyeing Connie as we entered the ring of
lights on the forecourt.

It was a typical roadside caff. Low hut, depleted neon sign, a few
multicolored bulbs on trailed flex, dark trees crowding in beyond. A few parked
lorries, one or two ordinary cars. Mr. Malleson's car was prominently agape
nearby. Connie, with all the tact of a Stuka, rushed into the fray squealing
questions. By the time I came up, the whole world knew that Mr. Malleson and
Crampie had been rushed to hospital. Connie has a habit of repeating in a
shrill cry any answers she gets.

"Before you start, Mr. Ledger," I said to the older of
the two CID men, "I must caution you that anything you say will be taken
down and flatly contradicted by my alibi."

"Lovejoy." He's not a bad old nerk, as cretins go, but
we've never gotten on. Not because he has this unshakable belief that I'm a
villain, but because I have this unshakable belief that he's a bigger one.
"Where were you?"

I walked on past while Connie squealed yet more questions. The
lorry drivers, six or seven, were being questioned in turn by a constable with
a tape recorder. The space age. I selected a squat, canny little bloke who'd
obviously got fed up and was sitting on his lorry's running board.

"One of them was my mate," I said, sitting by him.

"Oh, aye?" Rossendale accent, clean-shaven, tidy. A
family man keen on simply polishing off his congealed egg-and-chips and roaring
off northwards.

"See much?"

"Not really. There were four or so. Three heavies and a
girlish bloke in a bright suit. Sports car, but I didn't see it. Only heard it
go beyond the hedge. Stocking masks. A little van." He spat expertly.
"They drove it across the frigging intersection."

Smart that. It was illegal, so nobody could legally give chase.

"Were they bad?"

"Sorry, mate." He shook his head. "They both looked
poorly, especially the scruff who came in to phone." He meant Crampie,
doing his road trick. 'The city gent was waiting in the car. We heard the
hullabaloo. Me and my mate come running and chucked stones, but the buggers
were gone. Yon bobby says they pinched a picture."

"A painting?"

"God knows." He looked at me, offering a cigarette. I
lit up as politeness, though I don't smoke them. I’m in enough trouble.
"Here, lad. If you're going after them I'd watch yon pansy bloke. He
clobbered both your mates after his mob had emptied the car. A wrench."

“Ta, mate." I rose. "Regards to the Duchy."

His face lit in a smile. "Go careful."

More common sense in two minutes than you'd get in a thousand
years at university. If only I'd listened to the man.

"Come on, love," I said to Connie, not pausing.
"'Night, Ledger."

"Lovejoy. Where were you when—?"

Connie trotted after, holding her coat round herself as tightly as
she could in the night wind. "That was very rude of you, Lovejoy."

"Darlin'," I said. "It's very rude of Ledger to let
Cram-pie and Mr. Malleson get done in a crash-wallop. So criticize me second,
not first."

"Some men stole all Mr. Malleson's things! Did you hear? And
Inspector Ledger's police cars are already searching for the culprits!"
She was in raptures at how wonderful our police were.

"Cheapest way of getting antiques,” I said cruelly. "And
the safest. Get in."

We got to the hospital in Black Notley a few minutes too late,
though I don't suppose Crampie would have been able to tell us anything. He was
unconscious for his last moments. When I came out after seeing the house
surgeon, Connie said the police cars had just pulled away.

Connie pulled her overcoat tight round her lovely knees.
"It's freezing. Did you see Crampie?"

"Crampie just died, love. Mr. Malleson was dead when they got
here."

"Darling. I'm so sorry. That Little man we didn't even give a
lift . . .?" Tears filled her and she wept.

It wasn't any use explaining that Crampie'd not even have accepted
a lift from me even if I'd offered him one. Anyway, I was becoming exhausted
explaining every little problem to hangers-on. I sat listening to her sniffing,
watching the nurses and sisters move beyond the Casualty glass and the third
young house surgeon slumping over the desk writing up case notes. All their
training, all their labor over Mr. Malleson and Crampie, had been a gigantic
waste.

"Help me, Connie, love."

My voice must have given something away. She blotted herself dry
and nodded.

"Ready."

Connie may have cold blood, but she sees things I don't. I drove
us back to my cottage, talking all the while and explaining my slight problem.
Why would certain dealers bid themselves almost into poverty for a fake, and
antique thieves pull a raid for that same fake? Worse, at least one of them had
found a sadistic glee in needlessly making murder.