The Very Last Gambado Read online

  These Scottish dirks have an orange stone at the top of the hilt.

  Folk call it a Cairngorm. "Genuine orange glass, Hal. Sorry. They’re just set on silver foil, which shines through. You almost never find a genuine stone.” Fakers use the same trick nowadays for ‘the beautiful and elusive lady,’ as Aussie miners call the opal. So watch out.

  The worst part of antiques is handing out bad news. He went, downcast. But why? He’d got a genuine Argyll and Sutherland officer’s dirk, well over a century old. What does a bit of glass matter if it’s the real thing? I got narked. People want jam on it.

  Me and Meese went to the Three Greyhounds off Cambridge Circus for a bite. He was beginning to have doubts, firing questions about my story, so I got fed up and decided to have done and tell him.

  "Flaws, Ray? There have to be.”

  “Have to be?” He almost fainted.

  “Yes. The balloon ploy doesn’t have to work, see? The real gambit’s elsewhere, from within.”

  “Two assaults?” He went still.

  “My story has a traitor within the gang. He pulls a lone scam, maybe with some tart along for love interest. You can still have your shoot-out, Stef and Saffron can do their stuff, but it makes the balloon's flaws credible, even desirable.”

  “Hey, Lovejoy the natural! What’s the other heist?”

  “Didn’t want to tell you while Gabriella was there. More of a test for her security services if we keep it secret. You and me, eh?” He looked at me. I looked at him. Suddenly we were both pleased, I hoped for different reasons.

  “Agreed, Lovejoy. We may not need the second scam, though, right?”

  We did more smiling when I said, “Alternatively, we may.” He seemed to live on pink gins. I began to worry in case I hadn’t enough gelt for my shouts. During the next hour he became maudlin. I asked about actors, something to talk about. He unbent.

  “Frigging cattle, Lovejoy. Ninety percent of them are trash.” He tapped my arm. “Know what that cunt-struck aging Romeo costs me? Double.”

  "Double what?” He meant Stef Honor.

  “Double the book costs. He wants some popsie hired as his makeup girl—we hire her. You know that fucking trailer he has, his private living quarters? It’s his old derelict. I’ve to rent it from him for him, two thousand a week. Would you believe it? A has- been like him, thinking he's here on talent. Yesterday’s news. Truly truly. Had to fight his agents like hell. Those vampires wanted a percentage of the gross. He came aboard on a fixed salary, thank Christ.”

  There was more of this, all infighting. Vance was always stoned. Max didn’t know his arse from his elbow. Saffron Kay was nobody’s news. Stuntmen were bleeding him dry, technicians’ unions were subversives who made anarchists look like clergy.

  We parted vowing eternal friendship, mutual support, respect, and total commitment to the cause. He was almost in tears, so moved was he by the alcohol consumed. Lorane’s limo arrived about twoish and he was whisked away. As he entered the car, though, something odd happened, which stuck in my mind. Ray said a word or two to her. She paused, slim and trendy, holding the limo door, looked back at me, and smiled. I hadn’t known she could. That’s all. Not much, but odd.

  With time on my hands I crossed to the British Museum and had a wander. Beautiful. The best acreage on earth. In fact I was so entranced by those satisfying vibes from everything that I almost forgot to suss out possible Russian antiques for the film to let’s- pretend steal. With less than an hour before my train left I did a sprint along the upper floors, the entrances, and the ground floor.

  And found what I’d been looking for, in the tiny little temporary exhibitions room, thirty-one. Its walls and display cases glittered with priceless dazzling icons, silverware, illuminated gospel manuscripts. All were ancient Armenian. And Armenia's a Soviet Russian Republic.

  Rejoicing, I headed home, caught my train in good time to be arrested, for complicity in the disappearance and probable murder of antique dealer Walter Brown, aka Parson.

  m

  E

  VER noticed, Lovejoy,” MacAdam asked as I nearly made the town bus at the railway station, “how patterns recur?”

  “Yes. In antiques, they’re often constant. Furniture designs, artists’ use of color, Celtic jewelry designs—”

  MacAdam smiled, nodded. He doesn’t go in for this pacing game Ledger adopts. He just sat there in his police car, too pudgy even for a peeler. “Aye. In behavior, too. Yours.”

  He was obsessional as only a Stirling man can be. I wished he was none of those. Also, I wished he was elsewhere.

  "Nice philosophical point, Mac, but I’ll miss that bus.” “You’ve missed it, Lovejoy. In, please.”

  I got in the rear seat. He’s something below Ledger in those unknowable ranks they have, but plainclothes. He rated a driver. “Give you three guesses where you’re going.”

  “I’m not psychic, Mac.”

  We drove down the coast road. A strood runs to Mersea Island, passable at low tide. The car paused on the island side. There, where the road runs up out of the estuary onto dry land again, another police car waited. A photographer was pondering. Plods measured and marked. A Jaguar, familiar, was half-embedded in the muddy swark below the roadway.

  “Is that Parson’s motor?” I asked.

  “Aye, laddie. With blood on the inside.”

  “Is Parson okay?”

  “He’s missing, Lovejoy. This was reported, midnight. Its lights were on, doors open. A Peldon man going home from the Rose pub. No sign of Walter Brown, Esquire.”

  “Swam out to sea? Made it home?”

  "No, laddie. Coastguards have combed and swept, hunted and trawled with all the skills at their command.” He descended, beckoned me after. We walked up to where the road curves right to West Mersea village, paused to look down at the sea. The tide was swirling fast about Parson’s car. “Tides are funny things, Lovejoy. All imperceptible changes of speed, direction. Look away a minute and it’s up your legs, marooning, rushing, aye, and drowning. Terrible swiftness. Get the picture?”

  “No.”

  He pointed. “Somebody knocked unconscious in a crash—or clobbered senseless by a criminal, let’s say—can easily vanish for good in yonder ocean.”

  “And I went calling at Parson’s house?”

  "Guessed first time, laddie!” He moved to the gaggle squad. I walked with him. “The phone number was his car. His wee wife passed on the message about your desirable antique cross. I’m reliably informed there’s no such crucifix, Lovejoy. Brown told his wife so in no uncertain terms. She gave us chapter and verse. And timed your visit by a telly program. Bit late to be making a routine visit, wasn’t it?”

  "Antiques never sleep, Mac."

  “You procured a lift from town, Lovejoy. To inquire after a rare crucifix that doesn’t exist. There’s not a rare thirteenth-century crucifix in the whole Eastern Hundreds.”

  “Well, that’s saved a penny or two.”

  “Watch it, laddie.”

  “Best find Parson and ask him what’s going on, Mac. Hasn't he a partner?” My heart was in my mouth, where it tends to be most days. "You could call on her.”

  “Suki Lonegan. Aye, a pretty lass. She was hostessing him last night, supper cum business, her place. He never turned up, Lovejoy. She dined alone, retired early.”

  Tension lessened somewhat. “And the dealers?”

  “Neither hide nor hair, last sighdng around sixish. The town antiques Arcade.” We reached the place where the car had plunged off the roadway. “Course, Lovejoy, there’s always some hero decides to streak across the strood at high tide. Silly accidents happen. But blood front and back seats? It’s almost a flagrant exhibition of a nonaccident. Some murderer announcing to the rest of his associates: Watch it, keep in line.”

  “Who, though?” I said, all innocence.

  “You, maybe.” He leant on the rails, foot lodged on the bottom strut. "You got an alibi, Lovejoy?”

  “For
when? I caught the last bus into town from Parson’s. Then I went . . Whoops. Suki had deprived me of my alibi. Ensured her own safety, of course, in doing so. A dear girl, but costly. “Home. Had to walk. I’d missed the last bus.”

  "No car, Lovejoy?"

  “An accident burnt it. The fire brigade has records of exacdy when.”

  The sod knew. “And your cottage all smashed to blazes." He tut-tutted.

  “Vandals. I went for a walk down the lane, and some vandals broke in, ruined the place, set my motor alight.”

  “So you hired Jacko’s coal wagon to run you to the Great North Road. With your budgies." He judged me, patient. "Got rid of them to some lorry driver, I hear.”

  “I’d forgotten.”

  “Let me try this, Lovejoy. Parson did over your place, burnt your Ruby. You threaten him, give his missus some cock and bull message. You follow him, gain access to his motor, bludgeon him to death. And rig this.” He indicated the marshes, the car.

  “Holes all through it, Mac.” He knew it, too. “I spent the night peacefully at my cottage, trying to clear up.”

  "Aye. That’s a point in your favor. The place is the worse for wear, but cleaned up all right. Must have taken a few hours. But you’re in here somewhere, Lovejoy."

  “Eh?” I’d left my cottage in a shambles.

  “So you’re under local arrest.” He sighed wearily as I drew breath to speak. “I know there’s no such thing, Lovejoy. And so do you. But you are. Understand? Set a whisker out of the Eastern Hundreds and I’ll arrest you on a hundred and one charges.” “All right, Mac. But can I visit security at the British Museum?”

  “Aye. But phone me first.”

  “Ta.” I glanced around at the remote marshes. "How do I get home, Mac?”

  He too scanned the estuary. “God knows.”

  As I started walking, I thought that my visit to Big John Sheehan was long overdue. And a call in on Hymie the goldsmith was becoming at least as urgent.

  Lydia for once must have helped right. Sheer accident, of course. I got to my village by a succession of buses and lifts, reaching there on time. I'd put a note in the Arcade for Tinker to drop word down the vine to Big John Sheehan, could I see him about nine, urgent.

  Sure enough, Snow White’s little forest animals, or Lydia, had done the necessary. The cottage was swept. New bulbs cast light. A new kettle replaced its crushed predecessor. Food supplies had been replenished. The phone service was miraculously restored. I checked with the operator. Yes, sir, the outstanding bill had been paid. I celebrated by telephoning Lydia, her answering machine only. I said to find me soonest, that I’d be at Hymie the goldsmith’s in Wyre Street at five, and hoped to meet Big John later.

  She’d left me three pasties. The oven was working and spotless, though battered. I hotted them up, made two pints of tea, filled myself, fed the sparrows their afternoon cheese, put out pobs for Crispin the hedgehog, loaded up the net sock with peanuts for the bluetits then hit the road worn out.

  Hymie the goldsmith works in a shed off Wyre Street. He’s an escapee from Whitechapel’s fraternity of artificers in precious metal. His workshop’s quite small, in a wooden upstairs in an outfitter’s yard. You go through a narrow ginnel to reach it. If you don’t know Hymie’s down there, you’ve no way of finding it. He wants it that way. You ring an old clonker bell by pulling a string, then knocking patiendy at intervals until he yells to come in. You don’t dare vary this, because his work is precious, sacred, and very very private. He was fifteen minutes letting me in.

  "You hiding a woman in here, Hymie?”

  “Women make idle. I’m a busy person, Lovejoy.”

  “That’s the spirit, Hymie. Romance all the way.”

  His workshop could be straight out of a Diderot engraving of the eighteenth century. The bench has bays scooped out, with brats, leather aprons, fixed to the underside of each bay to catch the lemel—filings of precious metal—in his lap. The flooring around the traditional oak workbench was covered by claies, wooden grilles. Gold dust and chips which happen to fall settle into the claie openings. They also scrape any valuable lemel that sticks to the soles of his leather slippers. Every year, Hymie lifts them—the grilles are still made over in Montreuil—and recovers enough to make a wedding ring.

  I sat on the floor away from the claies and watched. He’s a lovely worker, methodical and tidy. Lydia would approve. Like all good goldsmiths Hymie is precision incarnate. He has six different patterns of Bunsen—fans, straights, side-vents—for various work. Three tiny bench kilns, umpteen lens systems and lights. He’d do as Father Christmas for a yuletide card. He works with a MacArthur microscope, sensible man that he is. I know for a fact he paid a fortune to have MacArthur himself make a special, up in his Cambridge cottage. It’s no bigger than a box of fags, and does everything but predict the derby winner.

  "Well, Lovejoy?”

  "Got the time to make me a gold antique?”

  “The time God allows. The gold you provide.”

  “A Russian samovar, tray, the lot. Orthodox saintly and patriotic inscriptions.”

  He stared. “Russian? And saintly? Lovejoy, you not heard about Jews and Jesuits? Russians and refuseniks? Oy vey! In he comes, wants I should make for the czar already!”

  This is only Hymie’s way of saying talk gelt. “Don’t give me this crap, Hymie. Yes or no?”

  “And anti-Semitic, yet.”

  "I will be when you tell me your price, Hymie.”

  “Lovejoy. Dear idiot. Listen to Uncle Hymie. Gold plate is—” “Solid gold, Hymie.” That shut him up, made him stop work. He was doing battle with a lovely cream jug, splendid with Regency elegance. My chest quivered and hummed. Genuine. “That Sheffield plate, Hymie?”

  “Yes.”

  “You replatjng a seam?” There are no seams in modern fakes. The trouble is that people worry when the base copper starts showing through where the silver layer has worn in long years of handling. Nowadays there are silver creams and electroplating methods that give a homogeneous bright gleamy color, but it’s bad news. Old Sheffield plate tends to take on a faint creamy color or even a pewterish tint that makes for loveliness. The only way to restore a worn area on a lovely original is to silver-leaf it, matching the original thickness of the silver plate with your leaf, and then wear it down anew to blend with the entire piece. It’s a man’s job. That was why Hymie had taken so long to let me in. Gold and silver leaf is applied with gentlest breath. A door wafting open gales precious metals into outer space. Tip: Examine phony joins in oblique light and you’ll spot the fakes.

  “Who made it, Hymie?”

  He nearly grinned a grin. "Boulton, Birmingham.”

  Well, I laughed aloud. It’s one of the antiques trade’s crudest permanent jokes. When Sheffield plate was invented by Thomas Bolsover in 1743, he didn’t really develop it to the full. His apprentice Joseph Hancock wasn’t so reticent and launched into fullscale rolling mills. By 1784 Sheffield platemakers were registering at their local assay office—and the great Birmingham silversmiths who started up this new manufacturing process had to register their plate at Sheffield. Birmingham’s never recovered that lost face. We still pull Brummy silversmiths’ legs over it.

  “Gold, Lovejoy, stands at a fortune an ounce.”

  “Still not cheap, eh?”

  Silence. He worked something out. “Very minimum, two hundred ounces. Thank God for Japanese calculators.”

  One gold ounce standing at an average monthly wage gives... gulp. “My cottage deeds, Hymie. My Ruby’s a collector’s item. And I’m earning good money helping out on a film. My deeds are worth the gold as a building plot alone. Land prices are through the roof.”

  He pondered, eyeing me round his shoulder. “Aren’t you in trouble with the constabulary?”

  "Not really. Misunderstanding.” How the hell had he heard? "Cost’ll be the metal plus a third.”

  "Don’t be daft, Hymie. Tenth.”

  We haggled, settled on a
seventh, the decimal points to fall on his side, thieving swine.

  “How soon, Lovejoy?”

  “Very, very fast, Hymie.” I rose, dusted my trousers, which is only polite in a goldsmith’s. "Days rather than weeks. And make the inscription about 1870. Okay?”

  “Russian Orthodox, yet!” he mourned. “One condition, Lovejoy. Don’t tell my Hester I’m working for the Cossacks.”

  That encounter cheered me up. I left promising to deliver my deeds at Hymie’s next morning, with the Ruby’s log book. Problems there, nowt new.

  Big John works from, sometimes stays at, runs, a hotel near Great Tey. I arrived in good time and was let into the long upstairs lounge folk call his office. He was in an armchair, humming along with a telly pop song. Four goons in cuboidal suits hung about plotting tomorrow’s race cards or just gaping with the vacant serenity of their kind. I waited until the song ended. He applauded genially. His nerks applauded. Wisely I joined in, though I thought it a rotten tune.

  “Ah, there’s your man Lovejoy. Sit down.”

  "Evening, John.”

  "All ready to go?”

  “Yes, John.”

  “Give him the address, Logie.” An especially truncated punter brought me a page tom from a notebook. “An estate agent. South- wold. He collects these paintings. He won’t sell us his Constable oil, will he, boys?”

  “No,” the neighborhood growled in anger.

  "We’ve tried peaceful ways. Haven’t we, boys?”

  "Yes,” the psychopathic quartet graveled, cracking knuckles. I tried to look convinced and outraged.

  “So there’s nothing for it, Lovejoy. This next weekend. Right?”

  My throat dried, my tongue pasted to my palate. I couldn’t even swallow to get going. The nerks swelled, staring at me in astonished rage. Anything less than instantaneous total agreement with Big John was beyond belief:

  "Well, John,” I croaked out, sixth go. “There's a slight problem. I would like to but—”

  He seemed amused. “But, Lovejoy? Harry, Logie. Is Lovejoy giving me buts now?”

  “He’d better not, John,” Logie said.

  “Course I’ll do it, John. Only, is it all right with Ben?” Silence so long and protracted you could hear the music downstairs in the dining room, the muted clatter from the bars. Ben Clayton and Big John’s lot are mortal enemies. I’d mentioned Satan in paradise.