The Possessions of a Lady Read online

'No.' He brightened. 'Not spoken since. He's under the shrinks. Do they get better?' he asked hopefully, 'or do they relapse and pop their clogs?'

  'Rodge. Why did Faye accuse me?'

  'She must think you're pals with a woman who's after Viktor Vasho.' Orla?

  'These antique dresses, Rodge. Who has them?'

  'Mmmh? Oh, he's got a vast collection. Faye knows. He links up with museums, does displays.'

  Now, turn-of-the century dresses are in vogue, but cost peanuts. There's been a little upsurge, but nothing like what I think they're worth. Endless hours of detailed stitching, the work in each one. To see perfect fin de siècle evening attire sold for a few pence—I'm not kidding—at junk sales is heartbreaking. One day, folk will realise, then it'll be too late.

  'The Bethnal Green blokes burned his designs on Wandsworth Common.' Roger smiled at the thought. 'Did a charity gala, fireworks, sausages, cake, lemonade.'

  'Aren't people kind, Rodge.'

  'Heartwarming.' He stared morosely into his glass. 'Pity it didn't have a better outcome. Now Faye's hunting for vengeance.'

  'Just like a woman. Tut tut.' It was a scenario I was well out of. The safest option seemed to be catching the train to wherever it was, looking for Vyna. 'About that trip.'

  'You'll go, then?'

  'Deal,' I said. 'Where to, Rodge?'

  'Destination and money in an envelope when I've made some phone calls.' He rose and left, pleased.

  Two deals in one night. One a cinch—a valuable Pascal replica for nothing—and the other a doddle.

  'Where to, Lovejoy?' Tubb perched on the vacated stool. 'Portenta says Libras will win this week's lottery. You're Libra, right? Carmel says to drop by.'

  'Eve, love,' I called. 'Got an aspirin?'

  'Oh, what a shame, Lovejoy. Got one of your heads?'

  'No, love,' I said, broken, as Tubb began to explain about lottery odds and the zodiac. 'Three.'

  12

  Tubb followed me to the railway station. I wouldn't say where I was going. He stood with me on the platform.

  'I'll pay on the train,' he explained cheerily. 'Carmel’ll courier us the sand job details, where we're staying.'

  Ever secreterer? 'Tell Carmel I resign.'

  'Will we be hunting antiques as we go, Lovejoy? Finding antiques is just luck, right?'

  His superstitions. Why do people believe in luck, when there's no such thing?

  'There's a million ways to find antiques, Tubb.'

  He intoned his creed. 'Luck.'

  Much he knew. Waiting, I tried to explain.

  Finding them's the battle. Sometimes they conic wholesale. Like, years ago the space shuttle Challenger beamed out radar shots and pinpointed the fabled lost city called Ubar, astonishingly in Oman. Archaeologists are going about saying that these ancient places, heaving with theft-worthy antiques, became windswept ruins because Dark Ages climates went berserk. So if you've an Endeavour shuttle handy, find the exotic lost cities on the Great Silk Road, beat the Yanks to it.

  That's one way. Or you can thieve, with fewer resources. Knowing where that Rembrandt portrait is in Salisbury, Wiltshire, you steal up with a seventeen-foot ladder and smash the wooden shutters . . . except it's been done. The smash-and-dash. Incidentally, trust to speed, never mind alarms.

  Burglars have three friends. One's carelessness—leave your window open, tell tipsy friends about your priceless Chippendale Chinese-rail chair. Another is those sophisticated electronic alarms, that kid you all's secure. Third is insurance—is it really wise to tell strangers exactly what treasures your Auntie Nelly's got? Local antique dealers like Suffolk Frank (silver, multiple bigamist, thick as a plank, friend) love insurance—for everybody else, because they've all got insurance clerks on their payrolls. Bribery's cheap; it's work that comes dear.

  Or you can have a notable ancestor. Like Lord Northesk's, whose illustrious forebear was Nelson's sidekick at Trafalgar. This provenance is valuable, when you finally sell that lock of Nelson's hair, your ancestor's sword, his gold Trafalgar medal, and the rest. Your certificate triples the antique's auction value.

  Or you can invent any of the above, bake a fake porcelain, daub a dud Leonardo, whittle a mediaeval carving. Everybody does it. A local yokel called Stats is our numbers guru. He says that thirteen times as many antiques are sold each year as were ever made in history. Get it? The world'" awash with forgeries. I help, make plenty.

  'See, entrails show life's magic forces.' Tubb made a flowing gesture as the train bucketed in.

  'Entrails means something's dead.' My headache had gone, leaving a lightness, everything at a distance.

  Tubb nodded enthusiastically. 'But forces are captured! You spread entrails

  Entrails, all the way to Norwich? 'Wrong train, Tubb,' I said. 'It's the next, ten minutes. Look. Get us a cuppa. The buffet's there.'

  He pondered, was superstition against it? The train squealed to a stop. Doors banged.

  'It's bad luck, starting a journey without a warm drink,' I told him. 'My grandad was adamant.'

  'Is it?' He was shocked, thinking immediately how many times he'd taken that fearsome risk. 'Christ.'

  Off he went. I got aboard, ducked, and didn't sit up until the train was well out of the station. Another week before Carmel's sand job, was it? Plenty of time. And Roger had promised I'd be home in a day. I closed my eyes, alone. Bliss. My headache faded as the town, Aureole, Carmel, Faye, fashion, Orla of the fancy surname, Thekla, Oddly (failure), Tinker (failure), me (failure), faded from consciousness.

  Norwich is a pleasant city, give or take areas of vandalism executed by the city fathers. Dunno why, but every new batch of councillors instantly hatches some plan to flatten the town's middle for a new mega-storey car park. They install vast supermarkets. This eliminates all known vegetables from everybody's diet because they've eliminated the greengrocers. You don't believe it? Go to any town centre. Park your motor on some seventeenth floor. Wander, listing the shops. Then answer this: what is missing? It's the poor old greengrocer, with his spuds, cabbages, carrots. Buy a lettuce now, it's been flown in plastic from Africa.

  Norwich has car parks, a castle, a weighty history, a football team (its fans allege), and ancient hotels bravely enduring against the odds.

  And Tee Vee Rydout, who owed me a painting of the Norwich school, or the money from its sale. He lives with a yodelling banjo-playing uncle on the river.

  At the railway information desk, I asked Roger's question of a wizened old duffer. 'Any message? Mr.. R. Boxgrove.' He told me no.

  'No young lass, Aussie accent, leaving a packet she'd failed to deliver for Boxgrove?'

  'No, sir.' That was that, then.

  So I booked in at a hotel, anger on hold.

  Up at sixish, I bathed, shaved with the little razors hotels provide, didn't use their corrosive sublimate of aftershave that peels your chin skin, used their folding toothbrush, and had a ton of breakfast.

  It's not far to Tee Vee's boat, a mile or so. I approached the TeeVee from downstream. A dog barked, dozily uncaring, from the line of moored boats. The TeeVee was a highly decorated longboat, 'barge' as folk wrongly say, a truly clever disguise for the best counterfeiter in the Eastern Hundreds. No banjo being plectrummed in the dawn, so I clambered aboard and stomped on the cabin by way of greeting.

  'Jesus Aitch frigging Christ! Who's that?' And up glowered Tee Vee from below. Mane of a lion, features almost acromegalic, prognathous jaw, immense body, you could clothe him in Bond Street, he'd still look off the road. He said, 'It's only Lovejoy.'

  Only? He'd rue that. 'Morning, Tee Vee. Got it?'

  'God, Lovejoy. Let me wake up. What time's this? Come in. I'll brew up.'

  'Ta.' Stooping, I entered the fug. What's with these nautical blokes? Maybe it's our island air. Everywhere in our creaking old kingdom's seventy miles or less from the sea. Whatever, boats are as boring as tennis and golf, which is saying a magnitude.

  For a start, there's no space. The ca
bin's airless. Cook anything, the pong lingers. Also, rivers are unpleasantly rural, go through leafy countryside, and I love only towns, where antiques come from.

  'Er, morning, love. Sorry.'

  'What bleeding time d'you call this?' the gorgeous girl on the bunk said. Blonde, without visible attire.

  On another bunk Tee Vee's uncle snored. He's banjo mad.

  'It's urgent,' I explained. Nowhere to sit except on the bunk, and friendliness can be misconstrued.

  'If we're not on fire, it's sodding well not,' said the charmer. She belched. My mind reverted to purity.

  'Got it, Tee? Third time of asking, note.'

  'Got what?'

  He flopped down, making the girl abuse the world in blink-bleep lingo. She huddled, snored immediately.

  'The money, Tee. For that Norwich school painting.'

  'That was fake,' he said piously.

  'So were your American dollars.' I raised a hand to forestall interruption. 'You commissioned a fake. I didn't commission counterfeit money.'

  'It's frigging hard, Lovejoy,' he grieved, scratching his belly. He wore pyjamas, gold, pink, yellow, orange. 'Them Yanks don't play fair.'

  'Meaning what?'

  'Counterfeiting's hard, Lovejoy.' He was narked. 'Them swine've started putting mixed polyesters in dots and strips. When you counterfeit, the frigging ink doesn't take.'

  'How unfair,' I said politely.

  'Un frigging fair, Lovejoy?' he cried. 'Every sodding image blunts! And the USA's experimenting with different polyesters. And trace elements!' He almost wept, the American Treasury so unsporting.

  They did a survey a couple of years back. Russia, China, Latin America, and sundry punters round the globe held—the US said—up to 30 billion dollars in untraced accounts, tin cans buried in the yard. Wrong. The figure's well over 70 thousand million. Any Russian, or anyone slipping from the Baltic to our fair East Anglian shores, pays in bundles of 20, 50, and 100 dollar notes. Whatever the US government estimates is wrong times three.

  'You owe dollars, Tee,' I said. 'There's nigh on four hundred thousand million genuine dollars about. No hard feelings. I'll take coin of the realm.'

  He wheedled, 'There's two hundred million fake dollars about, Lovejoy. What's a few more?'

  'Pay,' I asked, calm. 'Last chance, Tee.'

  'Haven't got it, Lovejoy. You could have it.'

  'Dear me.' I went and hauled Uncle Bat awake. He roused, reached for his banjo. I'd just have to bear the din.

  'Morning, Lovejoy.' He was instantly awake. His frame showed only bones, his face infolded. He rummaged in the bunk, found his teeth and shoved them in so his face expanded and I recognised him.

  'Morning, Bat. Do you sleep with those things on?'

  He had plectrums on all but the last digit. 'Name a tune, Lovejoy.'

  'Give Me A Ticket To Heaven. Know it? By way,' I added, 'of farewell.'

  He strummed a chord, and eyed me. He didn't sing instantly, an all-time first.

  'Farewell, Lovejoy? Whose?' He knew me.

  'Tell me, Bat.' Tee Vee was listening hard. Reckoning time had come. 'How come your nephew looks like a movie monster, yet pulls these exquisite birds?'

  He chuckled. 'You're the same, and pull as much.'

  'Here, Bat, nark it,' I said, indignant. I'm grotty, but spotless underneath.

  'And he's got money, son!' Uncle Bat fell about.

  Not quite true. Tee Vee has phoney money. Antiques is merely his cover. He's a foomer—buys only forgeries, and sells as real. Like, he'll buy a fake Norwich school painting from me, sell it somewhere on the Continent as genuine.

  Uncle Bat, skeletal and toothless banjoist of Norwich's waterside cafes, is Tee Vee's counterfeiter, brains of the outfit. Tee Vee's his natural son. Uncle's only 'Uncle' because he was a pawnbroker.

  'Counterfeiting going well, eh. Bat?' I felt sad on account of what I was going to do, but I was getting tired with being bollocked for nothing. Not long ago I wasn't homeless or penniless. Now look.

  'Pretty well, son,' he said. 'I'll have this polyester blot problem ironed soon. I'm working on a modified shedding screen—image refraction, o'course.'

  'Of course.' As if I understood.

  'It re-melds the electronic focus by light resonance, gets the picture back. I know what you're thinking, Lovejoy.' He was dead serious. I tried to look like I was pondering electronics. 'That it should be a purely chemical elution process.'

  'Well,' I said, lost, 'first things first, eh?'

  'Wrong, son. Sod microscopic techniques. It's got to be image refraction. Wouldn't work with us—we've too many different notes, see?'

  'Good thinking. Glad it's all okay. Toodle-oo.'

  'What about your song, son?'

  'Sing as I leave. Cheers, Tee Vee.'

  'Cheers, Lovejoy,' he said warily, from underneath his bird's blanket. How the heck he manages to fit in (I mean the bunk) I can't imagine.

  Jumping down to the riverbank, I undid the mooring ropes. On board, I heard the banjo strike up. Uncle Bat's voice warbled, 'Give me a ticket to heaven / That's where Dad's gone, they say . . .'

  It was two furlongs to the boatyard. Hardly anybody awake on the river, though a woman splashed a bowl of water over the side of a craft downstream. I chose a moored boat, sleek with a high prow. It looked tough enough. I gave its nose a shove and hopped aboard. It started to drift with that laziness only boats manage. I searched it for people. Fine.

  Drifting's quite pleasant. No more peaceful holiday than on a boat, though tranquillity wears you out before you've gone a mile. This thing had an engine that promised molto action. It had an easy starter.

  The sound of Uncle Bat's plink-plonk came over the water as my boat drifted close to Tee Vee's barge.

  'My Daddy worked upon the line, but when I went tonight / to take his tea, he lay there . . .'

  I sang along, filling up at the Victorian song. There was a great pole thing. I dug it into the river bed, began slowly to bear onto the Tee Vee. Even if you slip a longboat's mooring it moves inchwise, even on a river like the Yare.

  Counterfeit's not bad, when you think. I mean, what is inflation but a secret change of money? We ordinary mortals don't inflate the dollar, yen, dinar, whatever. Governments do it.

  I ran here —I hope I’m not too late . . .' I warbled the little girl's plight.

  Look at the Donations of Constantine, dated 30th March, AD 315, by which Emperor Constantine gave to Pope Sylvester the Holy Sees of Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and all the churches in the world. For good measure the Emperor chucked in Rome, all Italy, and the regions of the west. Saints were beatified on the strength of it, countries swapped or given wholesale. Then it was proved a forgery, done by a Lateran priest for Pope Stephen III. It was exposed by a brave papal aide called Lorenzo Valla in 1440. Its political effects are with us yet. That's the trouble with forgery; do it big, you can get away with it. Little, you're doomed.

  Look at sex, I thought, busily poling. There's Aureole, making a great living from chain dating. Those sex surveys they're always doing say that men have three times as many lovers as women. How come? Do women underestimate? Do men exaggerate? See what I mean: phoney truth, fake research, or what exactly?

  I poled my drifting boat towards the TeeVee. Remember that Leonardo da Vinci hand-written Codex—72 pages written in Big L's own lilywhites? It was knocked down to a secret bidder for over a cool 30 million US dollars. The bidder's identity was kept under wraps. (It was Mr. Gates, the American computer wizard, but pretend he's still incognito. It's his own business.) No, pretence is fine.

  Unless you don't pay up.

  Then things happen. If you have a banjo-playing uncle—a genius counterfeiter, who works under cabin floorboards in your longboat—to pretend that you're a lucky antique dealer, then you are vulnerable in ways that, say, Roger Boxgrove isn't. Or Aureole. Or crazy Faye. Or, even, me. Because some annoyed bloke like me might nick a high-powered boat, tie your mooring ro
pe to the stern of said powerboat, and, singing a sentimental Victorian melody, quietly hot-wire his engine into life.

  'The station-master said, "Come, little one, I'll see you right". . .'

  The engine boomed, settled to a steady thrumming. I shoved into gear, moved forward until my boat took up the strain, then headed into mid-stream.

  Faintly I heard somebody yell. I creamed along as fast as power allowed, singing the joyous ending.

  'Though injured, Dad'd not been killed! And oh! her heart was glad . . . Come on, Tee,' I bawled. 'Join in.'

  He was trying to claw his way forward, in his glitzy pyjamas. I waved, friendly.

  'She said, "If I lose Dad again, I'll come to you and say . . ." chorus now, Tee. Show the townsfolk, eh?'

  Houses began to appear. We passed a little school, children in the playground stopping to wave. I waved back.

  'Mister,' one yelled. 'Why's he got jammies on?'

  'Er, his mother's not up yet,' I yelled, all tact.

  'He'll be late!' they shouted. They love others' disasters. 'He'll catch it, won't he?'

  'He will that!' I bawled. 'Likely from the Excise.'

  'Lovejoy!' Tee Vee bawled. 'You can't!'

  I carolled back, 'Give me a ticket to heaven / That's where Dad's gone, they say . . .' and steered towards the weir.

  With average luck I could maroon his ponderous longboat crosswise. The hull would crack. Which would call out the fire brigade or whatever. Whose report would astonish Norfolk's authorities, at the vast array of counterfeiting machinery.

  The river authorities would be angered by 100-dollar notes bobbing among their ducklings. The Customs and Excise would perforate their morning ulcers . . .

  'Please, Lovejoy! Please

  The boat slowed a little when I cut the engine. They don't have brakes. Ocean liners have to simply go round and round until their motion peters out, I've heard. The TeeVee loomed closer. I'm not scared of boats, much, but didn't want the longboat running me down. Moving fast, a speedboat's great. Slowed, it's thin-skinned.

  'Can't hear you, Tee. Sorry.'

  'I'll pay you,' he screamed. His beauteous bird appeared, screeching her head off. 'Real money!' He waved handfuls of conviction.