Faces in the Pool Page 16

  Arona got her coat. We went to sit in St Botolph Without – its proper name. I proved my sincerity by putting some gelt in the box. I love the old place. Baby John Keats was baptised in its font, which I always touch, hoping his gentleness will rub off on me.

  Gentleness hasn’t reached me yet, but there you go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  rounder: a fake antique sold repeatedly at auction (trade slang)

  We sat in the old London church. A few city people were in. They looked holy while plotting the assassination of rival banks. Arona whispered in the voice of love – not for me, but for gems.

  How strange people were. Attractive and brainy, gems to her meant money.

  ‘Supposing, Arona,’ I began in a whisper she leant to hear, ‘a friend told me he’d seen a group of gems in settings proving they were centuries old.’

  ‘How many? What stones? Which country? Where?’

  ‘Hang on. I’m only supposing, right? Say, four hundred.’

  ‘What, big? Little? Which?’

  ‘One was a massive diamond. Bluish, from where I… where he was standing.’

  ‘Your friend, right?’ She nodded. ‘Draw me how big it was.’

  On her palm I drew a rounded outline shaped like one of those balloons barmy people fly in.

  She shook her head. ‘Your friend is having you on, Lovejoy. No such thing. Except the bluish Koh-I-Noor. And that weighs 105 carats.’

  ‘Plus a cushion-shaped brilliant-cut diamond half as big again.’

  ‘What grade? P3?’ She sneered. Gemmologists hate stones crammed with inclusions.

  ‘River. Over Wesselton Top.’

  ‘Good God, Lovejoy. Your pal was drunk. Look. The way pure gems are cut is critical. No modern gemmologist would cut a highest grader into a cushion-shaped brilliant.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, all innocent.

  ‘There are fashions in cutting. We opt for the brilliantcut now. Like, the elongated step-cut is a truly ancient way of cutting emeralds. It fell out of fashion. Now?’ She smiled, well into her subject. ‘Now we call it the modern cut! Hilarious!’

  ‘Hilarious,’ I agreed gravely, because there had been at least three step-cut rectangular emeralds on Stand 149. ‘What’s the biggest diamond you’ve ever seen, Arona?’

  ‘Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Lovejoy.’ She chuckled at her witticism. ‘Oh, I went to see the Orlov in the Kremlin about ten years since. Dome-shaped, named after…’

  Named after Count Orlov, yet another lover among Catherine the Great’s thousands. Arona told me the tale, 189.6 carats of dome-shaped diamond as big as a quail egg.

  ‘Really?’ I said, going all impressed. ‘I thought that was the Regent.’

  ‘Don’t, Lovejoy.’ She shivered. Never mention the spookiest diamond on earth to a gem expert. ‘Lucky we’re in a sacred place, Lovejoy. It used to be called the Pitt Diamond. It’s still in the Louvre. An Indian worker in 1701…’

  …cut his own leg open, to smuggle the diamond out of the mine where he worked. A British sea captain murdered him and sold it for a fortune to Tom Pitt, who governed Madras. The sea captain took his own life from remorse. The stone went to the French Regent, Prince Philippe…

  ‘They say it’s evil.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Look, I’ve to get back. I’ve examiners coming today.’

  ‘One last question. Alexandrite, Russian setting, eighteenth century. Were they cut in cushion shapes back then?’ cunning, cunning Lovejoy asked innocently.

  ‘You’ve got that wrong, Lovejoy.’ Her eyes grew dreamy, as did mine at the thought of the seven-carat alexandrite gleaming among that massive shoal of jewels.

  ‘Why, Arona?’ Still innocent.

  ‘A peasant called Maxim Koshevnikov first found some emeralds under an uprooted tree in the Urals. They dug, and found alexandrite too. Nordenskjold named it for Prince Alexander, who became Tsar Alexander the Second. It’s beautiful. Every woman longs for one. Pure emerald by day, by candlelight a lovely ruby. Think how a woman imagines herself, entering some banquet wearing one! As night candles shine, the stone turns into passionate scarlet…’

  She ahemed and looked guiltily at the high altar.

  ‘It’s pleochroic,’ she went quickly on. ‘Chromic oxide, replacing other chemicals of the chrysoberyl group…’ and so on.

  My mind switched off. This superb gem is rarer even than diamond, and shows the odd phenomenon of twinning, two crystals joining as they formed millions of years ago in the Tokovaya River region of the Urals. The one I’d seen was still in its twin form, something I’d never even seen.

  Not only that. It was set into the surface of an iron vase. After his wars, Peter the Great switched the Tula munition works to making domestic things like candlesticks. Catherine the Great, resting briefly from her lovers, kept the factories going, but that all ended with her death in 1796. The ironworks had developed a clever but unmistakable rosette pattern. The blinding alexandrite on Stand 149 was set so. Priceless doesn’t even come close.

  Now, if it was only discovered in 1830, how come it was in genuine metalwork made in the previous century? That single fact would change the study of precious stones for ever. And the Ekaterinburg mines were almost exhausted in the 1920s, so the world depends now on lower-quality finds in Sri Lanka and Brazil. I felt ill from greed.

  Arona was still rabbiting on about different ways of cutting gems: ‘…so if your friend saw an Old English double-cut, which we call the Old Star, he must have billionaire pals! So wasteful…’

  ‘Arona,’ I interrupted. ‘Do people still use Wood’s alloy?’

  ‘Old-fashioned gem-cutters do. Why?’

  ‘Ta, Arona.’ I rose. ‘My friend was making it up. Can you believe some people?’

  Uncertain, she said, ‘Lovejoy?’

  And I walked out. The dot on the floor of Ted Moon’s shop had become as fluid as mercury. Wood’s alloy melts even in hot water. At least I’d had the nous to spot one clue on my own.

  To Blackpool, I thought, and the World Champion Sex Pole Dancer.

  On the train at Euston, I listed the females who were likely World Champion Sex Pole Dancers. It was difficult, for all women are beautiful to start with.

  Lydia was out, though spectacularly gorgeous. Fionuella was a good possibility, though she specialised in, er, a more direct approach to eroticism. I counted ten, maybe eleven, who would perhaps rise to the occasion, but some were busy, one was in clink, and the rest had problems of their own.

  Veronica? She couldn’t hack it. Tansy, poor Tansy, was not available. Yet it had to be somebody I’d met, for Mortimer knew her. Who? I kept thinking of women I had known at the various places along the route. Like, Watford meant a pretty dentist whose hobby was illegal hare coursing and who bought early silhouettes. These paper cut-outs are highly valued if pre-1815, the year Miss Barbara Townshend published her little book on the art of making ‘shades’ and ‘profiles’.

  Macclesfield to me was Rafaela, who collected Victorian photographs and who built sculptures of fictional murder scenes. I really liked Rafaela. To my indignation she married a schoolteacher from Whalley. Crewe was Isobel, a night-school lecturer on the Spanish Civil War who sold houses to visiting ambassadors, hated taxmen but loved sexual fetishes.

  There was one point worth more than Arona’s views. Blood diamonds – you’ve to say ‘Conflict diamonds’ now, so the UN can carry on betraying truth with its phoney Kimberley Process scheme – are illicit diamonds sold to finance murderous wars. The KP has forty-five nations, plus the EU, certifying diamonds as ‘clean’. Ancient gems would predate the blood diamond wars, right? The price would soar beyond counting.

  Blearily, I woke at Manchester and changed for the stopping train to Blackpool, the Coney Island/Las Vegas/Atlantic City of our industrial north.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  to mogga: to mix randomly

  Blackpool. I felt pushed from pillar to post as I went along the seafront looking
at the changes since I was a little lad. Back then, the great thing was Pablo’s ice-cream. No mills, no moors, just the Big Wheel, Pleasure Beach, the Tower so like the Eiffel, piers sticking out to sea, crowds hustling on the promenade. It’s up for a World Heritage Site nomination.

  It looked grander yet grubbier. The streamlined electric trams always fascinated me, looking straight out of Flash Gordon’s wars versus Emperor Ming. Fishing fleets used to sail from Fleetwood, but no longer. There wasn’t the same passion to revel, just a passive drift to boozers and shows.

  The shows seemed curtailed. Like, some comedian’s GIANT SEASON was billed as running ‘Ten Whole Days’. Once, favourite stars filled theatres for twenty continuous weeks, no break except for Sundays. Now, I saw with resentment, each entertainer was labelled Television’s Own Superstar!!! Without TV, stardom did not exist. I sat on a waterfront bench near the New President Hotel, wondering why I had come. I’d been had by everyone. Three deaths, all avoidable if I’d been bright enough. All my fault. All ‘accidental’.

  And I was baffled by this World Champion Sex Pole Dancer. Yet Mortimer, arrogant little know-all, gave the impression that I too must know the lass he’d told the luscious Etholle to fetch. And he’d been cool enough to send for Etholle to check that poor dead Tansy wasn’t her sister – presumably the famous lass? Leaving aside whatever reasons Mortimer needed an exotic sex performer for, somewhere along the line I’d been duped. The speeddaters? That attractive Joanna? Chloe, or somebody from the Arcade? My guesswork was never up to much.

  Another niggle. Etholle seemed scared the dead girl might be her sister. How come she needed Mortimer and me to identify the dead girl? Mortimer had been in touch with the coroner beforehand. Not yet adult, he’d needed me to sign for Tansy – or did that still apply, now infants were adults without growing up?

  One other thing. Why was Tansy in a dangerous choir loft? And where was Fee?

  Everybody pretends they are something they’re not. Like Fee, say? A French geezer on the news won 6,000 euros in a casino, and felt invincible. He gambled on – and lost half a million. He is suing the casino ‘for not stopping me gambling’. True story. He saw himself as Lucky Luke, when he was Dudley Duckegg. Pretending. We all do it.

  And take the Dutch. Holland is ram-jam packed with soulful eco-friendlies. Didn’t they turn out Vincent van Gogh et al? News item: a hundred Dutch enthusiasts laid out 23,000 dominoes, to claim some record for making a bonny falling pattern before cameras. Planning took a month. A sparrow flew by and collapsed the pattern. They shot the sparrow. See? Compassion is good for reputations – until it’s inconvenient, then vengeance rules.

  A bill poster was busy pasting up a notice: ONE NIGHT ONLY!!! OUR VERY OWN WORLD CHAMPION SEX POLE DANCER!!! The venue was a famed tavern between the Tower and North Pier.

  Crossing over, I asked the bloke, ‘Who is she?’

  His eyes glazed. ‘Miss Erosa Sexotica? Only the best sex-dancer bird ever.’

  ‘I think I’ll go.’

  ‘You’ve had it, wack.’ He resumed his brush-and-paste work. ‘Sold out in ten minutes. There’s ticket scalpers about, already charge ten times the face value. Watch out for forgeries.’

  ‘For a pole dancer?’ I made sure of our wavelength.

  ‘You’ve never seen her,’ he said. ‘I have. Shift your feet.’

  My feet shifted, I found the New President had booked me in. The manager reverently passed me an envelope. Inside was a ticket for the Miss Erosa Sexotica, World Champion Sex Pole Dancer. Unbelievably, the ticket was embossed in genuine gold leaf. I thought, God Almighty, the ticket alone was worth it. I went and bought some new clothes, hang the expense. But, I thought uneasily, who exactly was paying? Debts give me hell. What if the benefactor turned out to be Mortimer himself? I assumed it would be those Faces. Any one of their precious gemstones could buy Blackpool.

  Up in my room I slept a while, unfortunately dreaming of a group of pale faces floating in a deep pool where slowly they were dragged down… I woke drenched in sweat. Not fear, just knowing that if anything happened to Mortimer I would kill the perps and giggle while they drowned. And after what they did to Tansy and Old Smethie, even worse. Paltry was a traitor, but who was I to judge?

  At four o’clock, I rose, had a bath, and got more or less togged up for the show. By five I was on the starting line. Then a message slid under my door.

  Nobody there when I looked out. The message read:

  Dear Lovejoy,

  You and I have never actually met. I am the ‘murdering swine’ – you know, the supposedly missing dead girl from East Anglia? I understand you work for my ex-wife. I appreciate your efforts to locate my whereabouts. Could we meet? I shall try to run into you at tonight’s show, when Miss Erosa Sexotica comes out of her enforced retirement.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ted Moon

  It was signed and dated. This was serious evidence. He was a careless murderer to write a confession. Unless…

  That ‘enforced retirement’ troubled me. How could the most worshipped sex performer in the world be forced to retire? Didn’t such dancers merely hang up their spangled G-strings and buy a Greek island? And what power was great enough to swing her back into action? I was impressed. Whatever had been set in train by the three murders it must be heap big medicine.

  The hotel gave me a proper meal. Once, all grub in Blackpool used to be fish, chips and mushy peas with a Knickerbocker Glory. It was sophisticated now. Posh grub is something of a minefield. You never quite know what’s going on in rare dishes. Still, it made me match-fit. Two hours to go before the show.

  It isn’t often I tog up like a tuppenny rabbit. I felt dressed to kill – no, I meant dressed to the nines. Sorry, Gran, I mentally apologised, I often make mistakes like that. Maybe.

  Though ‘maybe’ only means ‘maybe not’. I think I said that first. I’d check when I got a minute. Maybe the OED still had people who read?

  The crowds were denser, dusk intensifying the excitement and hordes streaming past North Pier. Passing trams were packed. Blokes grabbed my arm asking, ‘Here, mate. Got a ticket for Erosa?’ I lied no. The money they were offering was beyond imagination. I kept up my untruthful refrain along the promenade. Pubs were crammed, spilling out onto the pavements. Progress was impossible so I walked among the traffic, darting out of harm’s way of adventurous motors. Worse than a Cup Final. On the way I saw the world’s most fantastic thing. I saw a sun-dog.

  It stopped me as if I’d hit a wall. A sun-dog is a rare double sun. Seen at sunset, it brings good luck. Out to sea the sun was setting – except there were three. Three suns, I mean. In clear weather, you normally get two suns, one real, the other its reflection. This third sun just hangs between the two, same size and brilliance as the others. Supposedly the result of suspended ice crystals, the sun-dog is an extra reflection. Little things cheer you up. A good omen! I’d never seen one before.

  The huge building where Miss Erosa Sexotica was to dance was full of excitement, bodies jammed in doorways. The theatre stood behind its tavern, which bragged ten bars. Lights glittered on the façade in that irritating moving fashion. I asked a bunch of blokes where the stage entrance was. They laughed.

  ‘Hoping to see her, wack? They’ve got it screened off.’

  ‘Any chance of a ticket?’ I asked.

  They fell about, popping tins of beer and repeating my question like it was the funniest crack in ages. The show must hold, I believed, answers. Any day now Laura’s minions might force me into her shotgun marriage, and what then? The Faces-in-the-Pool plot would never be solved. Worse, Tansy’s murderers would get away unscathed.

  Seeing as I didn’t know what Ted Moon looked like, I was on a loser. Hour and a half to go before the eight o’clock start. Hawkers were selling beer and lemonade, making a fortune. I bought a drink for an arm and a leg. A gravelly voice hit me.

  ‘Lovejoy? Get me a swill, son.’ Tinker, shabbier than ever, his filth clearing a
space as if by magic.

  ‘Tinker? How the hell did you get here?’

  ‘Your Mortimer sent word.’ I bought him three tins of ale, paying enough for a UN bribe.

  ‘Who’d you bring?’

  Tinker grinned, revealing corrugated brown stubs of teeth in his wrinkled leather face. ‘The dancer bird.’

  I gaped. ‘Erosa?’

  Some youths looked their astonishment at Tinker, then guffawed. I drew Tinker away as the crowd surged.

  ‘She wouldn’t come till I told her it was you asking.’

  My head began splitting. ‘Where’s Mortimer?’

  He slurped, beer trickling down his old greatcoat. ‘How the bleeding hell do I know?’

  ‘I’m going in to see her, Tinker.’

  ‘She said to go to the stage door after. I’ll just have a pint out here. They’ve rigged up screens all over Blackpool.’

  ‘Who is she? Does she know us?’

  The crowd moved. Tinker was carried off in the mob. I heard him shout a name but wasn’t sure. If it was Lydia, I’d give her a damned good hiding and yank her off home.

  ‘She’s here!’ Blokes shoved round to the side entrance. I knew the performers’ entrance from seeing great old stars there – Josef Locke, Arthur Askey, Jimmy James even.

  The throng became a mass of charging people, blokes and girls screaming in the pandemonium. Police sirens wailed. All to see a girl wriggle on a pole? They’re ten a penny in Soho, cheaper in holiday camps.

  A bloke pushed me. He was limping with a crutch. I said sorry.

  ‘It’s OK.’ He smiled and said, ‘Massive crowd, eh? I’d give a fortune to see her just once more.’

  ‘You’ve seen her, then?’

  ‘Erosa? She turned down a TV contract. Lucky you’ve got a ticket,’ he said. ‘Especially not having to buy it.’

  ‘Aye, well.’ Hang on, I thought.

  He stuck out his hand. ‘Ted Moon, murderer. Nice to meet you, Lovejoy.’