Ten Word Game Page 14

  “This was made by a skilled faker. He probably ground his lapis and green malachite on granite with pig iron. Quite correct. Old Russian artists believed the stones they powdered, to mix the paints, were touched by sanctity. They thought the colours remembered the stones from which they came, and could resume the form of the original stones. God did it, so Russians who became blind in old age could touch the surface and still understand the sacred image.”

  “What a lovely thought!” Delia cried.

  I went on, “The faker correctly used linen stretched on the wood with fish glue, covered in gesso in egg yolk. Then red clay and beeswax mixed with white of egg. It’s a lovely forgery.”

  A small crowd had gathered. I went red.

  “If everything about it is right, why is it wrong?” Fern almost shouted. She was itching to take a swing at me.

  “The idiot’s put gold tears on the ikon’s face. The old genuine ikon painters wouldn’t make that mistake, because all light must emanate from the image itself in dark Russian winters.” I thought a second. “Go to Walsingham. There’s a side chapel in total permanent shadow. The gold alone shows brilliance.”

  “You’ve just got it in for Henry Semper!” Fern raged.

  “Think what you like, love.”

  Time to leave them to their discontent. I pushed away. I wish folk weren’t so against. It’s like they wake up and look about for things to hate. Imagine how an antique must feel, living with a sourpuss like that silly cow.

  Is it any wonder that sometimes someone somewhere dreams of living with antiques, the only materials that can give ecstasy? I felt sorry for Delia Oakley. She seemed kind. I wish I had time to dissuade her. Opening an antiques shop is the road to rusty ruin.

  A woman I knew once was bonny, married, and a classical linguist, whatever that is. She was bossy as hell, always finished her husband’s sentences so he quickly learned to shut up. She had his answers ready whenever anybody spoke. Megan knew it all, decided their home, decorations, and ballocked poor Wilf without mercy. She drove him mad about the garden – plant this, don’t touch that you fool, an endless tirade of denigration. Megan would ask him for an idea, then pour scorn on it, ridiculing him before anybody. It was embarrassing, and I stopped going. He bought a few handies off me – our name for small antiques you can conceal in a palm. Some folk collect nothing else, and some dealers specialise in them. Wilf paid me the odd groat for antique lessons. I’d take him round auctioneers’ viewing days, boot fairs of a Sunday, street markets if I was going on to Bermondsey. He’d pay travel and nosh. Pretty dull bloke, really, and couldn’t tell a chalice from a chip pan.

  One day he won a small football pools thing. Not much. He came in while I was repairing an Art Deco dressing table. It was marked Liberty & Co and was genuine, but who cared? I wouldn’t give Art Deco house room, even if I could afford it, because it’s no excuse saying furniture serves a useful purpose if it’s crud. And it’s more or less modern, named after the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which set the fashion. I thought he’d come for another brief lesson, and immediately started up, “Wotcher, Wilf. See this rectangular pattern? Spot that, even on a Liberty piece as bright as this, and you can buy yourself a good used car – ”

  “No, Lovejoy,” he said. His eyes were glowing. “Megan gave me an ultimatum this morning. Told me outright. I’ve to make something of myself, get membership of the golf club, extend the house, bring in more money with a better job, or she’s going for a divorce.”

  “Don’t tell me, Wilf,” I said sadly. “You’ve decided to leave her to it?”

  “Yes!”

  “And you’re going to become an antiques dealer.” Sadder still.

  “Yes! I can’t think why I’ve taken so long to decide!”

  “Wilf,” I said with sorrow. “Take up duelling. Be a mercenary. Go after the Great White Shark in your nip. But don’t ever do anything really risky, like becoming an antiques dealer.”

  The world’s streets are littered with derelicts and mumpers living rough. They’re all ex-hopefuls who thought that owning “a nice little antiques business” would be bliss. Like dreamers who think the same about “a lovely little country pub”, they’re doomed to fail. I told Wilf. He didn’t hear a single word, just sailed out with the light of eagles in his eyes.

  Now he lives rough in Lincoln’s Inn, London, in a cardboard box. The Salvosh feed him most days, the church at St James’s Thursdays and Saturdays. The usual cycle of beginners in the antiques trade. Others get abducted to Russia to rob the frigging Hermitage and never know why.

  * * *

  Ivy caught me as I went past the theatre and handed me a heavy book in a brown paper bag.

  “I thought you would like to look at this, Lovejoy.”

  “Eh? Oh, ta.”

  “It’s the Hermitage catalogue. Lovely pictures. Seeing you’re so good at antiques.”

  “Very kind, Ivy.”

  She took a long time speaking her next words. “I’m so glad you’re here, Lovejoy. And on the same table.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “No need to tell Billy I’ve lent it to you. He gets so …”

  I gulped. “Right, love.” Jealous? Of a frigging book? More maniacs. I went quickly on my way.

  Chapter Twelve

  The ship’s berth in Oslo was almost a parking space on the quayside beside a mound topped by gardens. Touristy buildings sold cards, woollens, carvings and various liquors. I was delighted to see how easily you could walk into town, up the slope and soon among buildings and traffic. Clean place, Oslo, but they’re not early starters. It was nine o’clock on a bright Sunday morning when we were freed. Nice, friendly, and a whole capital to vanish in.

  Nobody minded when I made my way off the ship, though I was on edge. I was compelled to shove Lady Vee’s wheelchair, the dreaded Inga drifting immensely along with cell phones dangling from her hip. The comedian Les Renown accompanied me, still cracking jokes (“There’s this giraffe goes into a Tel Aviv brothel, and a crocodile says …”) with Amy the dancer. They didn’t look like police, Fraud Squad or not, but some never do. They were chatty and so-o-o friendly. I talked too much, nervy at the idea of lamming off as soon as I found a side street. I tried a few moves, including almost boarding a coach for a city tour, but no go. Les and Amy helpfully stood in the way while I consulted a city map and tried to point out places to Lady Vee.

  Disembarking passengers complained darkly of Scandinavia’s inordinate expense and Oslo’s terrible credit-card charges, all above my head because I’m not credit-worthy. I could see it might matter to people who were. My chance came on the waterfront when Les and Amy stopped for a coffee in a small caff with coloured tables and chairs. Lady Vee wanted to go to the shops. I insisted on coffee, and ordered. Les and Amy wanted to sit apart, which was good, and Inga took the opportunity to go shopping in the godowns. Kevin and Billy passed, Kevin yoo-hooing and waggling his fingers. That left me and Lady Vee.

  “I suppose this is where you, what’s the word, Lovejoy… scarper? Take it on the lam?”

  “Me?” I said, all innocent. I’d been eyeing alleys.

  “Your heart isn’t in loyal friendships, is it, dear?”

  “Truth is, Lady Vee, antiques invites nutters. Like you daft people. You dream of finding Old Masters on market stalls. Antiques bring greed. I hate it.”

  “But you’re greedy, Lovejoy. Everybody is.”

  Narked, I gave her my bent eye.

  “There’s nothing wrong with finding treasure, you silly old sod. It happens even on Henry Semper’s telly show. Like that Richard Dadd painting scrunged up for years in somebody’s attic, that finally the British Museum collared for a king’s ransom. Like that geezer’s silver hoard in cardboard boxes under his bed. His folks sold it all for a fortune. And that teapot in Liverpool, sold for enough to buy the lady her own house. It’s fair game.”

  “Then what isn’t?” Her eyes took on that
youthful dazzle. The sun trickled weakly from behind cloud just then, and I realised I’d been had. She only looked old because she wanted to appear so. Previously, I’d actually thought how young she talked, and how women change their appearance with a ton of cosmetics. “What?” she said again, and I realised even more. Her old age voice was put on. And it was more and more like that of the lady with the Norfolk lantern at Gotham’s manor house, the night I’d robbed it of my fake painting with Belle.

  “Eh?” My mind didn’t go that fast.

  “What isn’t fair game?”

  “Robbing somewhere I could get killed,” I managed to say, staring at her face.

  Psychiatrists say all kind of things about faces nowadays. Asymmetrical faces imply jealousy, but symmetrical features show you’re naturally trustworthy. This is why publishers always slide a hand mirror across publicity photos; the best photo is the one showing the same honest expression whichever side of the face the mirror conceals. Lady Vee’s was even, trusting, symmetrical. But can women balance their faces up by rouge, lipstick, mascara, eye shadow? St Jerome, vitriolic master of women’s vices, thought they were always up to something along those lines (sorry for the pun).

  “Nonsense, Lovejoy! You’ll be home safe and sound in a fortnight. Trust me. Why else do you think the police would let you board the Melissa with us, if it wasn’t to help us catch the perps who’re going to rob the Hermitage?”

  Indeed. Why else?

  “Honest?” I asked. My throat had gone dry. I badly wanted to know what I’d landed in, but escape called and I’m good on duty.

  She looked away, gesturing at the peaceful waterfront. Tourists strolled, people off the ship waving to each other as if they’d not seen one another for weeks when they’d just left the same breakfast table, small ships berthing here and there, cars moving. Safe as houses. She hadn’t answered.

  “See, love?” I said sadly, and got up and walked away. She called a sorrowing, “Goodbye, Lovejoy.”

  Les and Amy were too engrossed to notice. I moved casually to the alley, then ran to the far end. Nobody was after me. I dodged into a multiple stores, up and down a few escalators and out by different doors, wheezing from the good life on the Melissa. I was in a street of slick shops, only one or two open, and walked towards a garden by the tram stop. I paid a few zlotniks for a cup of liquid, perched behind a fountain to hide and took stock.

  “Oslo bad costing, yiss?” a familiar voice said.

  “Aye.”

  Then I realised. The little swine was stirring spoonfuls of sugar into his cup. I wondered how he’d got there. Amsterdam to Oslo isn’t a million miles. A plane?

  “Mr Moses Duploy, Lovejoy. Rememberings?”

  Touts follow cruise ships from port to port, doing deals, arranging amnesia in Customs. The gelt game. Some such syndicates dealt only in antiques, I already knew, and the Melissa advertised Antique Treasures of the Baltic as her theme. He looked as dapper as the day he’d handed me over to elegant Mrs Van Rijn in Holland. It seemed weeks since.

  “Okay, Moses, “I said, resigned. “Tell.”

  “Thirty per cent, Lovejoy?”

  “Agreed,” I said. This was his territory. Anyhow, promises are made to be broken, or they’d be facts, right? I keep saying that. We shook on it. “Tell all.”

  “I have a circle of friends,” he said, coming to perch on the fountain rim. “We survived many pitfalls in the Balkans. Currency smuggling, drugs, the calamitous advent of the Euro, running guns for pals, fights over girl-slavery franchises in Moravia – still the best place to buy females, incidentally, if you need dozens…”

  Suddenly his broken English was eloquent and idiomatic. He spoke it with assurance. I vowed to watch this bloke. The question was whether he was a copper, a hood, or someone between like a nark or paid informer. He might be paid as one while moonlighting as another.

  “Who are your friends?”

  He spread his hands at such an impossible question, then stood. We walked through the garden.

  “What does it matter? In your case we simply follow as your splendid cruise ship sails on. Each landfall brings you closer to St Petersburg in…” he didn’t quite sneer, concluding, “Holy Mother Russia. There are enough of us, I assure you. I am merely eyes and ears. My job is to track you.”

  “Me? Look, wack, you’ve got things wrong. I’m just – ”

  “The only divvy.” He smiled. “We used that Frog, the old man from Provence who died. Pulled off three fantastic scams. But life has moved on since then. You never met him?”

  “No. Didn’t he do the Duke of Wellington portrait rip-off? I heard he was doing some Impressionist scam when he popped off. And there’s been rumours about the Amber Room since last autumn, but news of it dried up after his death.” Moses said nothing. I didn’t like his smile. “Here,” I said uneasily. “You’re not thinking I’m going to take over any of his scams?”

  “We need a big one, Lovejoy.” He seemed so sad. “The old Frog’s linguistic ability was superb, a typical Francophone with every language except Hungarian – and who has that horrible garbage except the Finns? You are cast in the lead role.”

  I thought of the dinner arrangement, the people I’d gone aboard with, the team of coppers in Lady Vee’s Suite 1133. Friends of his?

  “I see you’re finally realising.” He gestured at the city. “Look about, Lovejoy. We have sufficient expertise to try any con trick, large and small. But think of the paltry return on such investment. Money is no longer simply money. Money is now pure expense.”

  “I don’t do anything that risks me getting killed.” If I said it often enough people might listen, except hope’s as dud as optimism.

  “We still call these places by their old names,” he said, a little wistful. “Did you know Oslo only became Oslo in 1925? We consters still call it Christiania. Think, Lovejoy. What could we do in a place like this, to keep up our vast payments to our shippers, abductors, thieves, greedy Customs people? Do you know we even bribe archbishops to alter religious holidays when need arises? And they’re among the cheapest. The variety of payments!” He cursed elegantly in some lingo.

  “Then get organised.”

  “Oh, we’re organised all right, Lovejoy. Here in Oslo we could taxi east to Tøyen, rob the Munch Museum – where Munch’s paintings are temporarily available for public view.”

  He chuckled at the crack. Munch’s The Scream, since being stolen, had appeared in the form of fakes all over Europe, so somebody was still making money out of that famous theft.

  “Did your lot do that?” I was impressed.

  “Why bother asking?” I understood his bitterness. “One swallow does not a summer make, isn’t that your English proverb? We could steal the statues of Gustav Vigeland from Frogner Park – have you ever seen anything so ghastly? But then what? Oslo has diamond technology almost equal to your Hatton Garden in London, so we could resort to serving Sloane Rangers, those ladies who want their dead pets to be changed by irradiation and heat into diamonds, to wear as pendants or rings in memoriam. It’s all the rage. That would undercut Chicago’s Life-Gem firm who is big in that trade,” he said, “but how much trade is actually there? Who these days can afford mad money simply to wear their dead wife as a tie-pin, or their deceased Golden Labrador as an evening clasp? Such scams are mere trivia, Lovejoy. We call them tea-time trophies.”

  “With so many, er, friends, you can run a hundred scams.”

  “We do.” It came out wistful. “You don’t understand, Lovejoy. We go in groups. Haven’t you read the United Nations reports on international fraud? Or some of your famous English tabloid exposes?”

  “You have to compete with each other?” I guessed, trying to judge what he was asking.

  “That’s it. And we must achieve money targets. We’ve a team in South Africa – can you imagine the expense of that? They’ve been in Johannesburg ever since the UN Conference on World Poverty. It cost more than Jo’burg is worth. The tsotsis – Af
rican yakuza to you, Lovejoy – have all but cleaned them out.” His eyes looked suddenly pale as he said bleakly, “What’s their fate when they report back? Go on, guess.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to.

  “My team’s been scratching around for a scam good enough to get us promoted, Lovejoy.”

  “Your mob is like in a league?” I was really interested.

  “Exactly.” His eyes went distant. I followed his gaze. Nothing. “I thought up a scheme to fix the Pan-Pacific Swimming Olympics, but it’d already been done. And the Moscow Formula One motor racing concession. And the Guatemalan Recovery Programme.” He snorted a laugh. “See how desperate my team is?”

  He tasted his coffee, grimaced, simply dropped it into the fountain. The gesture said a lot about this innocent-looking nerk. I’m the sort who looks for a waste bin. I’ll carry rubbish for miles even in a country lane before I’ll chuck litter. He didn’t give a damn.

  “We’ve tried all sorts, Lovejoy. Fake Mussolini diaries, secret paintings by Saint Bernadette, plagiarised Psychic News editions, even had a go at sunken treasure galleons off those tiresome Florida Keys. Emerald mines under Scafell Pike – ”

  “Eh?” I asked, coming awake. “Was that you?”

  “Yes,” he said with some pride, shrugging.

  “It must have made almost half a million!” I said admiringly.

  You have to admire class. The Scafell Emeralds took place about two years back, starting with an Edwardian necklace and suite of pendants, all said to be from a mythical emerald mine under the highest peak in England. Scafell’s at the end of Wastwater in Cumbria. Rich people were sworn to secrecy when invited to invest. They only got a photocopy of a forged map – X marking the time-honoured spot of course. I thought it superb, especially as the dodge had exploited only insurance defaulters. Nobody gained a bawbee, except the conmen.

  “That much!” He was a bitter man. “For the syndicates it wasn’t worth the bother.”