The Lies of Fair Ladies (9 page)

"Know anybody called Godbolt, Lovejoy?" Drink water's
clacking pot teeth asked. Twitch. Ear flick. "No. Live around here, does
he?" "Note that, Cradhead."

The other ploddite said right, almost as if he'd been taught to
write. Really lifelike. His name is variously pronounced.

We drove out to the river Deben. The police motor was full of misgivings,
mostly mine. There's a bridge not far from Shottisham, and a small uninhabited
island. We alighted and peered at the soggy countryside. I’d had enough of the
wretched stuff today. I blame the government. What's wrong with concreting it?
Mother Nature's had her chance for a quadrillion years, and failed
spectacularly. Look at the damned stuff.

“Into the dinghy, Lovejoy."

Cradhead couldn't row to save his life. Lacked coordination.
Prerequisite for his job, I suppose. Fearing the goon would drown us all, I
took the oars myself. I’m not much good, but can get by.

"Upstream, Lovejoy." Drinkwater Of The Rolling Main.

Not easy old downstream, oh no. We went about a hundred yards,
Drinkwater saying "Left a bit" and all that. I was puffed out.

"Stop here," the nerk actually commanded.

"Reach the brakes, Drinkie, there's a pal."

He glared. I glared back. We drifted a moment, clumping gently
into the islet. That is, we would have, except we banged into something solid.
I looked over into the water. Cradhead reached past, almost upsetting the boat,
to grab on—to a 1713 brass chandelier, beautiful and genuine. Strapped on a
semi-sunken raft.

"Comments are invited, Lovejoy."

Here's a definite antiques tip: A brass chandelier is English or
Dutch. It'll have an ugly-looking globe with waggly brass radii curving out for
the candles. Travel half a day hereabouts, you can see half a dozen churches
where they still dangle. I think they're horrible, but antique they are. Oh,
and some public buildings have them, too. Minus one, Cornish Place, I guessed.

"Brass chandelier, Drinkwater. Very collectable. London
decorators are always after them from redundant churches." I rested on my
oars. "That it?"

We waited. I scanned the river. Something splashed with evil
intent, like all countryside splashes. A little black duck with a yellow beak
chugged by. I yawned. It was all happening.

"I want more comment, Lovejoy."

"Well, these chandeliers often have a little brass dove for a
finial, if it's from a church. I've never seen one with a coat of arms, but
here in the Midlands—"

"You dross. Why is it bobbing in the river?"

"Why ask me, you prat?" I yelled back, just as if I was
really annoyed instead of frightened to death for Prammie Joe. "There's a
thousand antique dealers in East Anglia. What the hell's got into you,
Drinkwater?"

"Robbery's got into me, Lovejoy." He sat staring with
his eyes just like Geronimo's. His pot teeth clacked, his ear twitched. “This
brass thing's from Cornish Place. The raft is described as one possibly
belonging to Joseph Godbolt. Who finds and sells antiques.''

"Can I go home?" Biased police records, mostly false.

"The mayor's wife'll wait, Lovejoy. I don't suppose she'll
behave any different from your other tarts. Godbolt was known to be of this
locality, no fixed abode."

"Why not make the bloke who found this thing take you to this
Godbolt, if he can recognize his flotsam?"

"Angler, Lovejoy. Works in a sawyer's yard near Woolverstone.
He sold Godbolt this wood. It's marked."

I drew breath, but said nothing. Woolverstone isn't even on this
river. It's south, opposite bank of the Orwell, above Harwich. Where the
ferries leave for the Continent.

"Clues?" I suggested idly. "Fingerprints? You must
have . . . Godbolt's down at the nick." I nearly said Prammie.

Cradhead spoke. A cultured bloke, fair of hair and plum of voice.
You just know he's got friends in Whitehall.

"Can you, ah, contribute any personal knowledge, Lovejoy? Of
any, ah, scam of such, ah, quantity as Cornish Place?"

Ah, no. Which troubled me too. I found myself being looked at
directly by Cradhead, first time. It wasn't pleasing. Maybe he wasn't a nerk at
all. I mean, a handful of idiots like him, with exactly this casual offhand
manner, had run empires.

"No. Not heard a thing."

"Shut it, Cradhead." Drinkwater gestured for me to row
us away. "Tell the lads to bring this brass thing in." He caught
himself. I grinned. He'd almost said for questioning. "Lovejoy. We know
you talk to that poofter on East Hill. And other dealers in that thieves'
Arcade. You tell me anything you learn, hear, get hinted. Right?"

"And if you find Mr. Godbolt, ask him ..." Suddenly I
wished to make no merry quips about Prammie, went quiet.

"Yes, ah, Lovejoy?" from Cradhead.

"How come you aren't doing this, Cradhead?" I said
nastily, getting the oars. "Didn't you row at Oxford?" I was narked.
They'd let something terrible happen to Prammie Joe. "That
Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race is a fix, anyway. It's always—"

"—the same two teams reach the final?" he capped,
smiling.

The problem was, careful watermen like Prammie Joe don't let rafts
of ill-gotten plunder go drifting downriver towards the cold

dark sea. Not unless ... I backed oars, put our prow into the
bank.

Cradhead knew I knew something. Nasty bloke. He was new to the
district. Maybe he'd not stay long, with any luck.

They gave me a lift home, a driver who lectured the world on the
problems he was having with his bird, a pub dancer in Manningtree.

That evening, Joan Vervain cornered me, and we had a supper filled
with Chinese nourishment brought in by the chauffeur. She was disappointed I
had no television, light, electricity, gas, running water.

"You see, doowerlink,'' I said with heartfelt sorrow but
unyielding take-it-on-the-chin pride. “I won't come to you as a pauper.''

"But darling," she cooed, hands cupped beneath her chin.
God, but women's tactics are unfair. And candlelight's treacherous. Everybody
knows that. "I already pay for—no. I didn't mean I pay. But I can't see
you ..." She licked her lips. Her eyes were huge. ". . . go hungry,
can I?"

We managed to make smiles, though, in spite of her husband's
unavoidable radio absence. I found to my horror, as I woke from that terrible
moribundity of after-love, that I'd promised to leave with her the following
week. We were going to Monte Carlo, to live forever in a state of sexual
ecstasy and wealthy wassailing. Our address was to be the Caribbean in
midwinter, Geneva in summer, San Francisco and Florida for in-betweens. I
roused blearily into panic.

"What are London and Hong Kong for?" She has ten homes.

"Shopping, you silly darling!"

She had brought blankets and some heavy coverlet that heated up
when you pulled a strip thing. Breakfast was delivered by a lass in a small
white van. No hairs in the bacon.

It was seeing Joan off that Luna arrived. I won't say caught us,
because she didn't. Why is it that women always make you feel as if they've
caught you red-handed?

"Your jobs are two-fold, Luna," I was giving out as she
drove us to the auction. Oliver had let her have the car.

"Isn't she well known?" Once a woman leeches on to
another woman, you can't prise her off. "I've seen her in the paper."

I scotched this right at the outset. "A lot of people think
that. I was asked only yesterday if she was the mayor's wife!" I chuckled
merrily at the idiocy of some people.

"Impossible, Lovejoy. “
I’m
the mayor's wife.”

Headaches, like age and lawyers, never come alone. "Go to
this address.” I passed her the teacher's card. "Tell him the Sotheby's
agent he gave a lift to says there's no market for his coffeepot, but buy it.”

She was thrilled. "We represent Sotheby's? Oliver will—"

"No, love. We lie. Otherwise they won't trust us."

Adjustment took ten minutes of analysis. "I know I said to
tell him there's no market, but ..."

Makes me wonder how folk do it. Where I come from, she'd starve.

"Second, go to the auction. I'll be there. I'll bid for a
beautiful tole tray, I forget the lot number. Make sure you come in late, all
casual. When you see me shake my head, there'll be only one bid left. You bid
then. Okay? Make sure you get it, but look worried."

"How will I know how much to bid, Lovejoy?"

Honestly, women amaze me. I mean, they love spending money, by all
accounts. Yet send them along to spend some, and it's Prime Minister's Question
Time.

"I told you. When I drop out, there'll only be one bid to
go—"

"Whose, Lovejoy?" Her eyes were shining with excitement.
"Shall I make arrangements with him to—?"

''For Christ's
sake!"
I yelled. "Just do it! Stupid cow!"

"It's no good getting cross, Lovejoy. What if I pay too much?
And what is a tole tray? How much—?"

"Pull in. The auction's by the market. Park near the
lights."

"It's no trouble, Lovejoy. I'll take you to the door—"

"No thank you, Luna." I struggled down to her pace.
"We pretend we don't know each other."

Her brow unfurrowed. "I see! Ignore each other's
presence!" She blocked all the traffic. Lucky we were in dozy old East
Anglia, where motor horns never parp.

"That's it. Buy the tole. Leg it to that teacher's.”

"Leg?"

"Proceed in an orderly manner. Good luck."

She was still firing worried, but terribly thrilled, questions
after me as I walked down to the auction. I don't understand some people.

The auction went like a dream. I bid for Lot 18, the lovely tole
tray. One bloke made the running, your friend and mine Acker Kirwin. Just when
he thought the lot was going to be knocked down to him, I did my bid. The
auctioneer today was Irving, a dour Fifer with a dehydrated sepulchral voice. A
tip: Don't bid early.

Enter late, keep your nerve. Think for a sec, and you'll guess
why. It daunts the opposition. They realize that you've judged it just that wee
bit better than they have.

On cue, Luna's mellifluous but shaky voice quavered, "Yes,
please." Good girl, I thought, and left smiling to myself, but frowning in
apparent distress to show others I was upset. Now all it needed was for her to
get to that schoolteacher and buy his "coffeepot" and we'd be in
business. I'd owe her the money, of course, and pay her out of the profits.

Nine

Something was nagging. I alighted from the lorry and called
so-long to the driver—pleasant Ipswich chap, kept ferrets—and set out to walk
the last two miles to Prammie Joe's hideout. I mean, those surnames. Hopkins is
common, right? Clark's common. Godbolt? A bit uncommon. Maybe I’d heard them
together in some pantomime, a play. Old poets, the sort you have to learn
incomprehensible snatches of at school? What are the chances of any three names
coming together? I was imagining things. With a moniker like Lovejoy, I have a
thing about names.

The day was waning smartish. I found myself walking quietly. The
path narrowed, then split off the lane proper and became an old track down to
Prammie Joe's creek. You get these sudden deflections in East Anglia, usually where
the Romans built a temple, like at places called Mile End, so marching
legionaries could chuck votive offerings to some god for the success of their
campaign. Or where Middle Ages improvers built a footbridge near an old
watersplash, so making the old crossing redundant.

I walked quieter still. I've had practice, one way and another.
The path—it was hard to find, nearing the undergrowth where the muddiness
began—narrowed further. Occasional cows must come this way, judging from the
state of the ground underfoot. The hedge was tattered, losing the battle not to
become a thicket. I supposed vaguely that gravel was anciently cast into the
river here, to make the bed firm enough for wagons. Our roads have always been
abysmal. Forget the engravings of rollicking coaches bristling with
ruddy-countenanced passengers waving bottles. When Emperor Charles VI visited
Petworth, the fifty miles from London were a nightmare—Sussex stalwarts were
hired to walk alongside, propping the coach upright. The emperor was only
upended twelve times.

There was a faint hum. Hum? Up and down, like a pub singer trying
for his key before launching into his gala melody. Rasping, sort of. I cracked
a twig, hissing and sucking my finger when stabbed by a hawthorn. The humming
ignored me. I know little about countryside, but I do know its sounds go silent
when interrupted. Except some.

I stepped through the hedge gap. Prammie had made it oblique, from
cunning. Stand alongside the tangle, you've to face the way you've come even to
see it. You step through, take three paces or so, and you are in this overgrown
field with blackthorn and reeds. Your only way is down, towards the creek. And
that constant, terrible humming sound.