The Tartan Ringers Read online

  THE TARTAN RINGERS

  The Lovejoy series

  The Judas Pair

  Gold from Gemini

  The Grail Tree

  Spend Game

  The Vatican Rip

  Firefly Gadroon

  The Sleepers of Erin

  The Gondola Scam

  Pearlhanger

  The Tartan Ringers

  Moonspender

  Jade Woman

  The Very Last Gambado

  The Great California Game

  The Lies of Fair Ladies

  Paid and Loving Eyes

  The Sin Within Her Smile

  The Grace in Older Women

  The Possessions of a Lady

  The Rich and the Profane

  A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair

  Every Last Cent

  Ten Word Game

  Faces in the Pool

  Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by William Collins and Sons Co. Ltd., 1986

  This edition published by C&R Crime,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2014

  Copyright © Jonathan Gash, 1986

  The right of Jonathan Gash to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-300-0 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-301-7 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover design by Simon Levy

  A story for Lal and Richard,

  Our Kid and his, and Susan

  The ancient Chinese god Wei D’to, protector of books against unscrupulous borrowers, indolent librarians and other forms of corruption, this book is humbly dedicated.

  – Lovejoy

  ringer n. informal

  A person or thing very like another Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1980

  Chapter 1

  THIS STORY STARTS with criminal passion in a shed. It descends into sordid corruption. But all along just remember one thing: love and antiques are the same. Hatred and evil are their opposite. I’m an antique dealer, in bad with the law, and I should know.

  There’s nothing antique dealers hate worse than fog and rain. Ellen agreed.

  Three o’clock in the morning on a foggy rainy bypass Ellen was tired – only the same as anybody else daft enough to be awake at this ungodly hour, but women are very self-centred.

  ‘How much longer, Lovejoy?’ she moaned.

  ‘Couple of minutes.’ I’d been saying this since midnight.

  We were in Ben’s hut. He’s the vigilant night watchman hired to watch for thieves who habitually steal the roadmenders’ gear. He’s never caught any because he mostly kips in front of the portable telly his daughter bought him last Easter. Me and Ellen had made love and the old bloke hadn’t even stirred from his glowing stove.

  ‘I’ll get into trouble,’ Ellen whimpered.

  I quaked. ‘Er, your bloke isn’t . . . ?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow. That old bitch from the vicarage has a filthy mind.’

  Ellen’s husband is heap big medicine, being a Customs officer. Mercifully a kind chancellor had sent him to patrol the coasts and keep a lookout for dark deeds. Meanwhile my own particular dark deed was thrombosing in the fog while Ben snored his old head off and me and Ellen swilled his rotten tea. Who’d be an antique dealer? I ask you.

  ‘What are we waiting for, a fake, Lovejoy?’

  ‘A reproduction bureau,’ I corrected coldly.

  Ellen shivered, a lovely sight even when she’s indianed in a moth-eaten blanket. ‘Why couldn’t they send it by train?’

  She’d reached the repetitive stage. I sighed wearily. Women get like this. They believe that if they say something often enough it becomes true. ‘Nobody in their right mind sends antiques by proper transport. The whole bloody kingdom uses a night lorry.’ For a few quid on the side, of course.

  ‘But isn’t that illegal?’ the poor little innocent asked, turning her beautiful blue eyes on me. Old Ben broke wind, as if in criticism.

  ‘It’s safer, and surer.’ Most antique dealers have their barkers down on the bypass all over the country collecting and loading up. This fraudulent system has the merit of being beyond the reach of tax.

  Huddled over the brazier, we waited dozily for the signal from out, in the rain-soaked night. I thought of her and me.

  Men are amateurs; women are professionals. And that’s in everything: love, life, greed, hate, all the emotions. And why? Because we blokes have animal souls. Oh, I don’t deny that every so often some bird thinks she’s educated us out of being primitive, but it’s only imagination. Women never seem to realize this. Like now.

  ‘We could be somewhere warm, Lovejoy,’ Ellen’s blanket muttered. ‘You make the best fake antiques. Everybody says so. What’s the point of sending to Caithness?’

  ‘Shhh.’ I said. Old Ben’s principal asset is that he’s bent. He often helps with loading, especially when German buyers are scouring soggy East Anglia spending like drunks. His conscience only costs a pint, but I still didn’t want him learning too much. I whispered, ‘Nobody local’ll know it’s a fake, see? I’ll sell it as genuine.’

  ‘Matthew will be cross if he finds out, Lovejoy.’

  See what I mean? She ignores the fact that she’s literally shacked up with a grubby antique dealer riddled with lust and perishing cold. See how they shift the blame?

  ‘Your husband can get knotted.’

  ‘That’s not a very nice thing to—’

  Ben stirred, woke, spat expertly into the stove’s grille. ‘It’s here, Lovejoy. Far side.’

  There are two lay-bys down the road. They’re about a mile apart. I shrugged. The lorry should have been coming from the other direction but I knew better than argue. These old roadmen have a third ear. ‘Best get going, then.’

  ‘Can we go, Lovejoy?’ Ellen asked hopefully.

  ‘No. I need your car.’ It has a roof rack. Ben’s hut always holds ropes and tools for neffie schemes like this. ‘Drive into Colchester, then back here and into the lay-by this side. I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘But it’s foggy! Can’t I just—?’

  ‘No. The bloody lorry’s stopped on the wrong side.’

  ‘Stupid man.’ She cast off the blanket with a whimper.

  ‘Cheers, Ben,’ I said, and opened the hut door.

  ‘Here, Lovejoy.’ Ben was listening, past me into the blackness. ‘There’s two engines in the lay-by.’

  Silly old sod, I thought, and stepped out as Ellen’s car pulled away up the gravelly path. God, but the night was opaque. The way down the long slope to the road was familiar. There isn’t quite a footpath. You find bearings by hawthorns and brambles. Usually there’s enough light from passing cars and the distant town’s sky glow. Tonight there was only this horrible graveyard opalescence.

 
Ellen had thoughtlessly forgotten to bring a torch. Typical. I skittered down, brambles plucking at me, until the level road surface jarred my heel. No traffic sounds, so presumably safe to cross.

  Listening nervously, I loped over, climbed the central crash barrier and thankfully made the opposite verge. Left turn, keep within reach of the grassy slope for safety, and plod until the road margin indented the steep bank. Then a huge car started at me of a sudden, roared off, all in one instant. I had a vague swirly image of two figures, one familiar, then silence. Bloody fools could have killed me.

  The wagon when I came upon it looked enormous. Oddly, its lights were dowsed. I almost walked into its radiator in the damned fog. The heat-stink of the cooling engine drifted at me.

  ‘Hello?’ Fog muffles sounds, doesn’t it? My call hardly went a yard. No answer. ‘You there, mate?’

  The cab’s door was ajar. I swung myself into the driver’s seat, feeling at altitude. A fumble for the keys, there sure enough, and a half-twist for beam headlights. The dashboard’s fluorescence cast a ghostly apparition on the windscreen, losing me a heartbeat till I realized it was my own nervy face. A square white card was lodged in the corner of the thick glass. I turned the card over. A black capital L. My signal, so this was the right wagon. But stillness is stillness, and there was a lot of it about. The size of these night haulers is daunting. I levered down, leaving the lights on. A car swished by steady and fast heading for the coast. The driver was probably having a pee, or gone looking for me.

  ‘Hello,’ I called. My voice warbled. I cleared my throat, called again as unconvincingly. No sound. I walked the length of the vehicle. It seemed all wheels. The rear doors were unlocked, one leaf swinging ponderously open at a pull. Interior lights came on, like in a fridge. Empty.

  ‘Hello?’ I shouted. The place was giving me the spooks. Now, the one thing a night haulier never does is leave his wagon. Gulp.

  A car crawled into the lay-by, spotlighted me in its beams, Ellen to the rescue at two miles an hour. ‘Darling?’

  I walked round and got in, trying hard to disguise my relief. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Charming,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s hundreds of miles to the Marks Tey turn-off. Where’s your cupboard?’

  ‘It’s four miles. And it’s a bureau. Gone.’

  ‘Then ask the driver, dear.’

  ‘He’s gone, too.’ I peered uneasily into that black-grey smirch.

  ‘How very thoughtless. I’ll give him a piece of my mind.’

  You have to forget logic with Ellen. She was moved to aggro, actually starting to get out to bollock a vanished lorry-driver, when I stopped her. ‘No, love,’ I said piously. ‘I’ve kept you out in this awful weather long enough. It’s time I considered your feelings.’

  ‘Darling,’ she said mistily. ‘You’re so sweet.’

  True, but I’d better get rid of her sharpish after dawn because Liz was due about ten with a genuine pair of mid-Victorian nipple jewels, sapphires set in diamonds. I joked nervously as we pulled out. ‘Promise not to ravish me again.’

  ‘Very well, dear,’ she said seriously. ‘Look, Lovejoy. The lorry’s left its light on. It’ll waste its electricity.’

  ‘How careless,’ I said uneasily. ‘No, love. Don’t stop.’

  Next morning I had three jobs. First was Liz, chatty antiques dealeress from Dragonsdale that I was conning into selling me those lovely nipple drops – think of earrings with bigger loops for dangling pendantlike from the pierced nipples of interesting Victorian ladies. Liz had found a set with their accompanying large gold sleepers. I’d been banking on profit from the bureau to afford them.

  My second and third jobs were easy, now I was broke. Two lithophanes of erotic couples, and a pride of tortoise-shell seamstress scissors, 1840, were in the auction. I’d hate seeing them sold to some flush swine, but I could no more keep away than fly.

  Ellen fried me a good nosh. She brings supplies because I’m always strapped, and leaves little labelled packets in the fridge – ‘Boil 10 Mins In Slightly Salted Water’ and all that. I never do it, because it always goes wrong. I got shut of her at a safe nine o’clock. She always wants to strip the bed and hang sheets on the line, God knows why. What good are they waving in the breeze? I lied that I’d do it, to make her trip home to Ipswich less of a rush. She said I was an angel. Modestly I waved her off, concealing my relief, and got down to sussing out The Missing Bureau Problem.

  First, however, remember this ratio: five to one. Not a Grand National bet, but the number of phoney/fake/reproduction bureaux to the genuine. Five times as many fakes as genuine. And that’s here, in rural East Anglia where habits – and furniture, and paintings and porcelain – don’t change. I have figures for most antiques. Jewellery is eight to one; pearls twenty; pre-Victorian oil paintings three fakes to one genuine. So, all in all, the odds are heavily against the honest buyer and heavily in favour of the crook.

  It stands to reason that you’re on a loser. The dice of honesty are loaded against you, the poor unsuspecting customer.

  Lately, though, I’d been having a bad patch. Even though I’m a very special type of antique dealer – tell you more in a minute – it was pathetic. Sometimes, antiques vanish like snow off a duck. Buyers evaporate. Collectors get a collective flu. Money zooms into the Inland Revenue’s coffers untouched by human hand. In other trades things never become utterly hopeless. I mean to say, a farmer at least still has the good earth if his crop ails, and doctors can always look forward to a really great epidemic if their patients strike a depressingly healthy patch. But in the antiques game there’s nothing. An antique dealer with no antiques feels a right prune. A hungry prune, because when you’re broke the chancellor simply refuses dole. No, subtract antiques from the great equation of life and all is zero.

  Well, nearly zero.

  Because there’s fakes. And frauds. And counterfeits, reproductions, marriages, twinners, naughties, copies . . . I finally found my note about the bureau in a heap of paper clippings that makes my tatty armchair a hell of comfort:

  Jo: Teddy repro b. split m/u, Inv. T. fix Thurs. M.

  Roughly translated, an Edwardian period reproduction bureau was available. I’d agreed to divide the mark-up (i.e. my hoped-for profit) with the sender, who would ship it from Inverness, a collecting centre for the four northernmost counties by these night wagons. I’d told Tinker to fix delivery for the previous night. Jo – Josephine – had been my original contact. Tinker’s my old barker, my message ferret.

  I’d better try to catch Jo, then get to the town arcade where antiques and dealers congregate.

  For a second, guilt tugged. I glanced around. The cottage’s interior was a mess: books, newspaper cuttings, a mouldering heap of unpaid bills, the divan bed I’d promised Ellen I’d make. I opened the door, masterful with guilt. I was actually smiling from the relief of having triumphed over housework, when my jubilation ended.

  ‘Morning, Lovejoy.’ Liz Sandwell stood there in the tiny flagged porch. Pretty as a picture. The trouble is her live-in boyfriend’s one of those strength-through-joy fanatics who gasp their way through our rain-soaked countryside and finish up where they started. A tough rugby player.

  ‘Morning, love,’ I said brightly, slamming the door to edge on past.

  ‘Well? Did it arrive?’

  Blankly I stared at her. ‘Eh?’ I never know what the hell women are on about half the time.

  ‘The money. From your Uncle Percy.’

  ‘Ah.’ Evidently one of my less memorable myths. Swiftly I switched to heartfelt grief. ‘No, love. Uncle Percy’s just sent a telegram. He’s ill and needs me.’

  Concern leapt into her eyes. ‘Oh, how terrible, Lovejoy. Are you very close?’

  Not as close as I’ll be to that berk of a wagoneer who lost my bureau and disappeared, I thought grimly, but said brokenly, ‘Yes. Can we postpone the deal over the nipple jewels, love? Only I’m hurrying to town to borrow the fare to, er, Llan
gollen.’

  Liz took instant charge. ‘Let me run you to the station, Lovejoy. How much is it? You can’t shilly-shally at times like this.’ A warm-hearted, lovable lass is Liz. Where the hell’s Llangollen, I wondered, getting into her car. Let’s hope it’s a fair distance. Then with that money I’d have enough to split-purchase Margaret Dainty’s Belleek porcelain trelliswork basket – no harp-and-greyhound mark, so post-1891, but lovely . . .

  A few minutes later I was mouthing gibberish at a puzzled railway clerk while watching the reflection of Liz’s departing car in the glass. She’d lent me a real handful of notes.

  ‘ ’Ere, mate. You going any bloody where or not?’ A soldier in the queue behind me was growing impatient.

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Liz’d gone. I stepped aside. ‘I can’t leave Nellie and the little uns,’ I said nobly.

  Twenty minutes later the bus dropped me outside Jo’s school. It was playtime.

  Chapter 2

  THE PLAYGROUND WAS a screaming turmoil. Through the railings I said to a snot-riddled urchin, ‘If I give you a million zlotniks, will you give Miss Ross a message?’

  ‘Piss off, Lovejoy.’

  I sighed, and looked about. Most of the little psychopaths are from my village and believe I’m a bum. ‘Lottie,’ I called. One of the tinier girls skipped closer, pigtails flying with each bounce. I used to babysit her.

  ‘Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper,’ she chanted breathlessly.

  ‘I’m going to elope with Miss Ross,’ I said. ‘Say I’m here.’

  Lottie bounced off, chanting. I sat and waited while the playground roared on. Five minutes and Jo came, red-faced and embarrassed. She’s a lovely slender faun of a woman, mid-twenties. Infants flocked round, staring.

  ‘Lovejoy! What on earth?’

  ‘Aren’t you escaping, miss?’ a kiddy asked disappointedly.

  ‘Certainly not! And get away the lot of you!’

  They dispersed with that silent scorn only infants can attain, Lottie explaining, ‘I told you he tells lies.’

  ‘That bureau, love.’ I had the scrap of paper out.