A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair l-21 Read online

  Tut tut, those terrible drinkers hard at it. I bought him another pint, took the Cantonese bowl off him for one-ninth of its market value, and had the precise night location of Colette Goldhorn, Lady of Saffron Fields Manor. I would use the antique bowl as an excuse to talk to Colette. See how cunning I am? A little think, you get there. And now Flymo owed me. I was pleased with myself, forgetting that confidence is just another name for stupidity.

  13

  GO UP SHAFTESBURY Avenue from Piccadilly Circus, the fire station's on your right nearing Cambridge Circus. Left, you pass Soho's old church of St Anne's. Facing it, quite a narrow street, you see a minute churchyard. Couple of benches, not much greenery, overlooked by nearby theatres and back office windows, it's one of those tiny refuges with which London abounds.

  It's also a place where deadlegs kip of a night. Nothing against them - I've been one, done it - but it's no place to meet your Gran in the lamp hours.

  Seven or eight folks were distributed about. One or two drank from bottles concealed in brown paper bags. Others eyed them with envy. Others kipped, supine. There's enough light from the streets to see. One thing, London's always crowded, folk moving past with laughter, shouts from taverns, still one amazing fruit barrow busily trading.

  Incidentally, if you don't know the places I'm telling of, the distances are mere paces.

  I'm not talking miles. London's a place for walking, not taking taxis.

  Gingerly, I went from figure to figure in steady drizzle. The dossers were under plastic, wrapped in newspapers beneath. One glistened in black dustbin liners. I excluded the alert drinkers, which left five. One was a man, from his massive Wellington boots. Two separate plastic-sheeted figures emanated giddy smoke. Surely Colette couldn't be a druggo as well, for Christ's sake? That left two. One was snoring, choking on every inhalation. Colette snored but kind of forgetfully, not serious.

  One left.

  The figure was huddled in a corner. It had a cushion, and sat lopsidedly on the end of a stone step. A black cloth bag bulged nearby.

  The drinkers on the benches were watching. I cleared my throat. Ready, steady.

  'Stay, pay, and make hay?' I asked it. I knew better than use her name.

  No response. I tugged its bag string. The figure exploded, unravelled, came alert spitting, then froze.

  'Smear me into a grease blob. Wasn't that what you said?'

  The apparition was like nothing on earth. She sat there looking seventy years old, hair matted. I realized I'd recoiled, tried to apologize with a pace forward. She wore thick dungarees now, stuffed into old boots.

  'Oh, Lovejoy,' she said. 'You came.'

  'Think I wouldn't? I'd have come sooner.'

  'Too late.' It was only half-nine, but she didn't mean o'clock.

  'So come along all the quicker.'

  She simply rose and walked with me, not even looking towards the other dossers. Her bag dangled. She used to take two hours to get ready, even for an auction. Things change, or have I said that?

  We went to a sandwich nook near Old Compton Street, still jumping - well, hopping a bit. I had a good gape at her in the light, ignoring the askance looks the counter girls gave Colette. I ordered a reasonable amount of nosh, mainly butties, soup, bakewells, a battenburg for her because she likes, liked, sweet victuals.

  She ate in a desultory way, me keeping up from politeness.

  'Going to tell me, then?' I said after a while, narked. 'I found Arthur.'

  'You can't say grave, Lovejoy?' she said quietly. 'You never could look things straight in the eye. Get me a pole screen, William IV, rose finial, tricorn base, rococco shield design. It would save my life.' There's an old Lancashire proverb - women, priests and poultry never have enough - but here was a tided lady who'd given everything away. I lose faith in proverbs.

  'Not asking much,' I groused. 'Crowned heads of Europe queue for those.'

  'He'll sack me otherwise.'

  'This Dieter git?' I judged her. Her features were lined. She looked pavement tribe, unwashed, lines down her cheeks in that most telling of grooves from eye to upper lip that is the nightmare of the Sloane Square sheilas. 'Let him sack you. I'll give you a job.'

  Thus spake Lovejoy the indigent pauper, on his welts and having to scrounge off his apprentice to keep going. Me, get her a job? Maybe it would be as good as mine.

  'I mean I'd try, love.' I might con a dealer as a favour.

  'It's no good, Lovejoy. I'm like you, a street lover. I can't do without antiques. I'd die if Dieter sacked me. I mean it.'

  She'd got it bad. I noshed mechanically. I've never known dedication except for two reasons. One, sex. Two, antiques. Dunno which order, probably joint winners. She didn't look as if she'd got two Chippendales to rub together, so I reckoned that she and this Dieter Gluck…

  'Silly cow,' I said, in a caring, compassionate way. 'You've no longer got an antiques business. You've nowhere to kip, no clothes. You look like you've not eaten for a fortnight. You're ferreting in dross with the lowlifes. Haven't you taken a look at yourself?' This was a once-stunning woman I used to make exuberant smiles with.

  'I must stay with my antiques trade.' She said it flatly, like her soul had been starched rigid in emotion.

  'Are you and Gluck, y'know?'

  'Were.' She smiled bitterly. 'Until he'd got Saffron Fields and our firm.'

  'I know. I went. The vicar told me about the funeral.'

  'I've been stupid, Lovejoy.' She spoke on quickly as I drew breath. 'But I must stay here, and work for Dieter.'

  'Street grubbing isn't working. It's dying.' I thought a bit. 'What are you protecting, love?'

  Her smile went bitter. 'You suspicious sod, Lovejoy.'

  I gave her the Cantonese bowl. It looked even tinier in the sandwich bar's glarey lighting. 'Got it from Flymo. He was too spooked to find you in the churchyard. Didn't,' I said pointedly, 'want to sink so low in society.'

  'Oh, Lovejoy.' Her eyes filled. 'I've made such a mess of things. It's no good. There's no way out. I was dreading you coming to interfere. I pinned my faith on Tinker being in gaol.'

  True. With Tinker banged up, I wondered how many more tragedies I'd not heard of lately.

  'There's always a way out, love.'

  'Arthur used to say that. I've learned different.'

  'It's Dieter Gluck, isn't it?'

  'I trusted him. Arthur didn't, of course. But then,' she said sadly, 'Arthur also had your number. From the start, he knew about you and me. Never said a single word. A gentleman.'

  Her eyes went past me, widened in alarm. I heard the door go with that sucking swish they make. A hand grabbed my neck and lifted me bodily from the chair. The other customers stared. Colette's expression became fright.

  In the reflection of the chrome coffee urn - the girls ducked behind it, sensing trouble -

  I saw that Bern bloke, carrying me to the door like a rabbit.

  'Komm!' he barked to Colette. Obediently she shuffled after, bag a-dangle.

  Out in the narrow street he shook me, saying loudly, 'Thief! Not steal from old lady, ya?'

  I managed, 'I were just trying to flog the old biddy an antique—'

  Across the thoroughfare I glimpsed Gluck's face. He was smiling from the window of an enormous Bentley, a pretty blonde beside him also enjoying the show. Moiya December, also not rushing to my aid. Bern flung me off the pavement bellowing guttural accusations of thievery. I scrabbled upright. A passing gent and his missus tutted. Bouncers from a night club hovered angrily.

  'Should be flogged,' said the gent. 'Get a job like any decent—' etc.

  'Thief!' Bern boomed. 'Stop thief!'

  Is anything more of a stimulus, to an innocent? I eeled off down Peter Street, dodged into Ingestre Place, back down Lexington Street like a whippet, and in seconds was strolling, oh so casual, into the bright illumination of Regent Street, struggling to make my gasps look normal breathing. I went south, behind the Royal Academy.

  Plenty of e
vening crowds still about, taxis, buses, youngsters lounging round Eros, gay old London Toon on the go. I was still hurting from my first encounter with Dieter and Bern. Sulks were coming on, really sorry for myself. No doubt about it, I was in a worse state than China - or are you not allowed to think that any more? I went into a tavern and sat. Flymo, rotten swine, must have bubbled me to Dieter Gluck. I owed Flymo for that.

  Who, I wondered, in her right mind exchanges wealth, antiques business, her home, her possessions, in order to become a London dosser? I had no doubts any longer. She was the scavenger I'd seen humping stacks of old vinyl records in Bermondsey.

  Everybody else must have known it was Colette except me.

  Some lads sat nearby, joking, smoking their heads off, eyeing the girls on the bar stools. From their chat they were theatre scene shifters. I used to do that in the Albury.

  'It's too frigging little,' one was saying. 'Like a sewing box, innit?'

  His mate argued. 'It's only bones and ash.'

  'Rotten sodding play,' another groused. 'Here, is this best bitter or what?'

  Bones and ash? They were talking of a reliquary. I said, 'Bones and ash?'

  'Eh? Yeh, mate. No wonder the takings are down. They've this little tin box—'

  They argued on, not really caring either way. I left then, walked down through Pall Mall and Trafalgar Square to Charing Cross, and sat on the Embankment looking across the Thames. The drizzle had mercifully stopped. I needed Tinker to get going, but he'd be beavering away, bar to taproom, indefatigably doing my bidding looking for Floggell.

  Reliquary? Somewhere was reviving Murder in the Cathedral, trying to cash in on the publicity about Thomas a Becket. I could feel the fibrillation of the Tube trains under my feet. Well, I'd cash in on publicity too if I owned a theatre.

  Which made me strive to remember.

  Thomas a Becket was an unpleasant man. Fraud, traitor, greedy moneygrabber, friend to embezzlers, he gets my vote for being eminently non-holy, though I should talk. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury, slaughtered in his own cathedral by four knights soon after Christmas in 1170.

  When he'd, er, died, Thomas's relics were put into what's properly called a chasse. This is sort of a fancy little chest, with embossed figures in gold relief, the richly coloured enamels pointing up the importance of the relics therein. Was all this decoration, back in the Middle Ages, a waste of time and money? Not on your life, because saintly relics were highly marketable. People scrapped, bribed, forged, all in the name of holiness, filthy lucre being behind it all. I often joke that filthy lucre isn't as filthy as all that, but it definitely rules. The tourist trade - back then called pilgrimage - depended on your monastery having more saintly relics than rival abbeys in the next county. Shops, inns, roads, merchants, cities, whole towns even, all thrived where holy saints led.

  I'm not being cynical, just wondering if I'd found the answer to Gluck.

  The St Thomas chasse was thought to have been commissioned originally - I'm talking centuries - for Peterborough Abbey. It wandered hither and yon, then surfaced in St Neots. Finally the 1980s dawned and the British Railway Pension group collared it. It wasn't holiness that switched ownership. It was money. Genuine saints in superb genuine twelfth-century caskets don't come cheap. They change hands for millions. The thought of selling some saint's bones is sordid, gruesome and horrid. But it's what we do, because we're rotten.

  Cut to now. The chasse notched over four million at auction. Hypocrisy instantly hit the fan. People who'd never been to church for yonks went ape. Politicians pontificated about heritage. Patriotism was invoked. Newspapers hinted darkly at subversion. The kindly Canadian who'd successfully bid at Sotheby's graciously withdrew, and the National Heritage Memorial Fund smoothly snaffled the copper-and-gilt chasse with St Thomas a Becket inside, so that it could be ignored for ever in the Victoria and Albert museum. No, honest, I'm truly not a cynic. But where are the other forty-one chasses?

  For, in those darksome troubled days eight centuries agone, forty-two such chasses were made. So let me ask this: Did you see one last Sunday at Evensong? Think hard, like they did in Hereford Cathedral - where they found a similar chasse in their crypt.

  Can Hereford be blamed, if their thoughts lightly turn to 4,180,000 zlotniks, as they seal their new discovery in their Mappa Mundi museum? Politics, as ever, comes to the rescue for as long as it suits. Then people eventually forget, and think oh well, what the hell, sell it and who cares anyway.

  Rumour claimed there were nine similar St Thomas reliquaries elsewhere on our unholy old island.

  Now, nine's a lot.

  I remembered what I'd written on the card in Colette's - okay, Dieter's - office at Lovely Colette Antiques. Some quip about Sorbo being back on the vodka. Sorbo is Arthur Goldhorn's engraver, lives in Streatham Hill. I had the fare. The 159 bus goes right by his door. It was getting late, but I'd come this far with only slight injuries. I had to have something to tell my team when we assembled tomorrow. I was sure they'd turn up with scores of solutions. If they didn't, I would.

  14

  SORBO'S HOUSE FACED a school in a leafy lane three furlongs from Streatham Hill station. The area was quiet, apart from restaurants resounding to competing Elvis impersonators, traffic sedately trundling goodnight London.

  Steps ran up between huge pot plants that ought to have lived honest lives in Kew Gardens. Lights were on. I knocked, and here came Sorbo, sloshed as a newt. He's like Tinker, never drunk, never sober.

  'Jesus H,' he said, swaying in the paltry light. 'Or is it Lovejoy?'

  He cackled, heaving his immense girth up and down, a Mr Bumble in an old bottle green frock coat straight from Dickens. I've known Sorbo years - well, five - since he engraved some Victorian drinking glasses for me with tendrils and grapey things, converting them from the tenpenny cheapos (incidentally, never pay more than one zlotnik per dozen) to a week's wage each. Sorbo's old-fashioned, meaning skilled. He's also dishonest, also meaning skilled.

  'Of the two, it's probably me,' I said, causing him further mirth. 'Still got your Samuel Nock?'

  'I have. And I'm keeping it, Lovejoy.'

  He's been bragging about this delectable double-barrelled flintlock pistol for years. He knows I'd kill for it, given a chance. Browned under-and-over barrels, worth a king's ransom, truly beautiful. I could feel it in the room, in an old leather bag by the window.

  It has its tiny powder flask, flints, and two spherical lead bullets. He's a selfish blighter, doesn't deserve an antique of such beauty.

  Sorbo's like many bachelors. He exists downstairs in one crammed room. He also cooks there - one gas ring - washes in a tin bath, dines there (folding stool for a table), has a small sink, and kips on a truckle bed. This, note, in a four-bedroomed house a family could romp through. I don't understand it. His room is also his factory, with a pride-of-place bench, racks of miniature tools, a kiln, easels that drop from the ceiling on pulleys. For a moment I wondered uneasily if it was Jane Eyre all over again, some lunatic wife up there in her nightie with candles, itching for arson. I shook myself and sat on some reference tomes stacked at bum height.

  'You took your time coming, Lovejoy.' It was blame. He sat in a wicker chair, and swilled from a Rodney flask. 'For a friend.'

  'I didn't know about Arthur, Sorbo.' I eyed the flask. A Rodney always looks as though it started out a proper bulbous shape but began to melt. Its base is massively flat.

  Admiral Rodney got it right, because no storm at sea would ever cause it to spill. But it was too light. 'Soda glass?'

  'Polystyrene sheet. I found a way to mould it. Only good for distant views of multiple fakes. Still, it has possibilities.'

  One thing about Sorbo, he's active, questing. He's called Sorbo because he once bet that any antique on earth could be faked from Sorbo, a rubbery synthetic. He's almost right, any antique can be faked from anything.

  'Dieter Gluck, Sorbo. I found Colette among the bagsters, St Anne's in Soho, but got
dusted by that Bern.'

  He swigged, didn't offer me any. My Gran had an earthenware bottle behind her speer.

  She called it her 'bronchial beverage'. We children hadn't to touch it, on pain of a sip bringing instant death and a coffin on a handcart. I mention this not because it has to do with the story, just to show how envious I am of people with stern principles. I'll invent my own soon, and be the envy of the world.

  He sighed. 'Bad news, Lovejoy. It was soon after you and Colette.' He shrugged, an immense business that took time. I noticed a good long case clock, silent, standing against the wall behind him. The room wasn't well lit, just one old oil lamp burning.

  'Where'd Gluck come from, Sorbo? A dealer?'

  'Selling various old instruments, clockworks, automata, navigational brasses. Colette was flattered, him randy as a duck. They did it even in the shop. I seed them at it.' He shook his head, baffled at the ways of people. 'Arthur was a proper gent. Said nothing.'

  'Hard to believe, Sorbo.'

  His rheumy eyes fixed me. 'Why? He did the same over you and Colette. Gentleman is as gentleman does. You can't call a gent a lowlife just because you're dross, Lovejoy.'

  Ouch. I sat, vision hard to come by. It cleared, me blinking like in a gale. Okay, so Colette was enamoured by this new handsome dealer, so clever at mechanical antiques.

  My question was, what happened to Arthur's feudal lordship of Saffron Fields? How come Dieter Gluck owned everything, so tightly that poor Arthur couldn't even be buried under his own mulberry tree? I asked it.

  'The old ploy, Lovejoy. Gold bricking, the Yanks called it in my day.'

  I was astonished. 'Arthur would never fall for a con trick!'

  'He didn't. But Colette did. Hook, line and sinker.' He examined the Rodney flask in the lantern light, swigged from it with abandon.

  'What was the brick?'

  The gold brick con trick got its name from the time of the USA gold strikes. You're on a train, puffing across the prairies. Along comes a suave bloke, very Mississippi, waistcoat, cigar. Gets talking. He's made a fantastic gold strike, and look! Here are the very deeds to his claim! And assayer's reports, the gold yield a ton an ounce. All he needs is investors. Fancy an investment, stranger? If you look especially gullible, he'd even show you a gold brick, nugget, powdered ore, take you to his mine, where you'll discover, surprise, real gold nuggets buried in the scree.