The Sleepers of Erin Page 16

As long as tomorrow’s miraculous discovery goes perfectly.’

  ‘I’ve seen your kiln. I trust your people have had the sense to take it easy with the temperatures. And get the soil samples right.’

  ‘Of course, Lovejoy.’

  You can’t really tarnish gold easily. The trick is to heat it low and slow, then cool it in soil of identical composition with the site where you intend to plant it. If you do it right, the magical metal will look as aged as you can get it, and those cynical nasty-minded archaeologists will find no traces of ‘wrong’ dust.

  ‘My last worry’s fingerprints.’

  Kurt’s eyes clouded momentarily and I thought, got you, you bloody knowall. ‘Whose?’ he asked me.

  ‘The Celts. Think scientists forget them, mate? We are probably bigger and fatter than the Old People, so our fingerprints are different. First you wipe off your own forger’s prints with a shammy leather (don’t use cloth for heaven’s sake or they’ll detect the fibres you leave behind on the tips of the torc). Then you find some old geezer about ninety – the smaller the better, jockeysized if you can – and make him wash his tiny withered hands (no scents in the soap, please) and rinse them well to remove soap traces. Dry his hands in air until they look the same as usual (don’t let him touch anything, fibres again) and give him the tore to fondle. Take it from him in your shammy leather, and bury in the allotted place.’

  ‘Lovejoy,’ Kurt enunciated crisply as I concluded my explanation, ‘you have just earned your fee. We’ll see to it. Otherwise, I do assure you we have organized it perfectly.’

  ‘And Jason’s already put the sleepers there? In situ?’

  ‘No.’ Kurt lit a cigar with tantalizing deliberation. ‘I said that he had gone ahead to arrange matters.’

  ‘But somebody has to do it,’ I pointed out. The ensuing pause lasted a decade or two. My smile died. ‘Erm, any idea who’ll do it?’

  ‘Place them underground for us, you mean?’ He did a smoke ring, really thick and absolutely circular. ‘Oh. That’s you, Lovejoy.’

  ‘No deal.’ My voice had thickened, though I wasn’t really terrified of going underground into some ancient frigging burial mound or whatever it was they’d chosen.

  ‘Yes it is. Definitely a deal. Isn’t it, Kurak?’

  Kurak looked at me. ‘Eesa deal.’

  ‘Why can’t Kurak do it?’

  He put on theatrical astonishment. ‘Why, Lovejoy! How simple you are, under that brash exterior! Because only you will know which of the fifteen torcs is the genuine sleeper. And it is very, very important that it is placed with perfect precision.’

  ‘On my own? I do it on my own?’

  Ah no.’ He gazed at the tip of his cigar, smiling. ‘Kurak will go with you, to see fair play as you might say.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘I could still do it wrong deliberately.’

  Kurt laughed at that, really fell about, shaking his head ruefully at the continuing folly of mankind.

  ‘You’ll do it right, Lovejoy. You’ll see why, when we get there. Won’t he, Lena dearest?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Lena said, ‘he’ll do it. Against all his principles, wishes, inclinations. He’ll do it for us. Perfectly.’

  Each syllable fell on my eardrums like the clap of doom. I’d been collected. ‘Then congrats again,’ I managed at last.

  We rose, and Kurt said we must all have a quiet, peaceful day, because tomorrow we had work to do. All I could think of was how the hell you put a gold torc into a hole without excavating into the bloody thing.

  Lena wanted to show me the library afterwards. I was almost sure one of those marital signal-glances was exchanged between Lena and Kurt but paid it no heed. Everything was beyond me by this stage. What was one more problem?

  She kept her arm linked through mine as I admired the books. Both of us were a bit tired by now. She said very little to keep the conversation going and seemed more listless than she ever had.

  ‘Who keeps your leather bindings intact?’

  She shrugged. ‘Kurt sees to that. The maids, I suppose.’

  I ran a finger on a book’s spine hard enough to squeak. ‘Why do they use lanolin in neatsfoot oil? A lot of American book collectors don’t like the British Museum formula because of its beeswax. Maybe Kurt thinks it blocks the penetration. The old London restorers often just use Propert’s saddle soap. You’d be surprised how effective it is—’

  ‘Lovejoy.’

  ‘—on these ponderous Victorian half-calfs when the hinges weaken—’

  ‘Lovejoy.’ She turned me round. I thought for one frantic moment she was going to start undressing again but it was only warning time. She leant against the shelving, staring absently at my face, oddly like some child not wanting to start the next compulsory lesson. ‘You won’t do anything silly, will you?’

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Kurt has plenty of men, armed men. They have cars, boats, horses, guns. They know the whole district, inch by inch.’

  ‘What is this, Lena?’

  Her eyes lifted to mine. ‘There’s no choice, Lovejoy. Understand that, please. You’ll go along with Kurt’s plan, or you will be simply lost in the countryside. Everybody will assume you’ve simply gone home. The point is, I want you around after this is over.’

  ‘I’ll go along. I’m not daft, love.’

  ‘Then you’ll be mine. For ever.’

  I nodded. ‘Your people collection.’

  ‘Don’t make it sound Purgatory, darling.’

  ‘What I’ve experienced so far has been . . . bliss, Lena.’

  And don’t sound so worried. Kurt understands. He won’t mind our meeting again in the summerhouse late tonight.’

  I swallowed. ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ she said as we resumed our strolling inspection. ‘About your friends.’

  ‘Mmmh?’

  ‘Your two friends.’

  ‘Did you know your library ladder’s a genuine Taylor Patent?’ I stopped us to examine its smooth leather-and-brass-studded exterior, lovely mint condition. ‘It adapts into a long shelf-ladder. They cost a fortune nowadays. If you unclip it, you’ll see the patent date and stamp on its hinge—’

  ‘That dowdy woman and her weird relative.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, them. They just gave me a lift.’

  She smiled a wintry smile. ‘That’s all right, then,’ she quipped. ‘They left the hotel an hour ago. On the Dublin road, in a hired car.’

  ‘Really?’ I said absently. ‘Incidentally, is it true that the Hunt Collection out on the Dublin road has the world’s best collection of Methers? Those two-and-four-handled wooden drinking mugs are not all that uncommon. Lots of places have some pretty fine examples, so the Hunt Collection must be really something worth seeing . . .’

  She let me prattle, watching me carefully not watching her. My heart was in my boots, but I kept the chat going on and on and on . . .

  Chapter 21

  Before making my famous non-escape I lay on my bed, thinking of Shinny, of her lunatic suitor Gerald, of Lena, of Kurt, of poor old Joxer, of Jason. But most of all about antique dealers like good old Kurak/Joe. And money.

  Way back in the days of yore, before priests got guitars and charities went bent, people actually were what they seemed. I mean, Caligula appeared somewhat antisocial, so naturally you wanted to keep out of his way. And, right up to comparatively recent times, town councils – apparently composed of respectable, trusty gentlemen – were respectable and trusty. And so on. Must have been an odd world.

  Phase Two happened very few years ago. Money did it, going funny when politicians invented ever-dafter schemes guaranteeing themselves undying places in history. Well, they succeeded. Us poor goons got cyclic inflation in exchange. Which, you remember, sent everybody a little strange in the head. Blokes who were by nature Above Thoughts Of Sordid Gain practically killed in the hedgerows for inflation-index-linked pensions. Women, never creatures to quibble about inessentials, zoomed w
ith unerring aim at anything possessing a guaranteed value.

  The Great Antiques Boom was born.

  Those twenty years from 1958 to 1978 were the heyday, and we are in its tail-off. The modern antiques scene is the spreading train of sparks behind Haley’s Comet – apparently greater than the originating force but in fact full of rubbish that deservingly is destined for outer space. And let there be no mistake: your friendly neighbourhood antique dealers were in ecstasy during that G.A.B. They practically had a licence to print money – and some did even that. Mostly they laughed in their Jags and fluid-drive Rolls Royces and bought and bought, triple-priced any antiques as a matter of course, and howled with outrage if some elderly widow refused to part with her grandmother’s heirloom Sheraton commode for less than a dud shekel.

  But the end of the G.A.B. caught antique dealers on the hop. Their flat world went round overnight. No longer could you hire any old pantechnicon, load it to its panelled ceiling in Coggeshall, Norwich, Sudbury, Reading, and sell its load of ‘old household furniture’ in any lay-by on the Dover Road for cash. Gone were the days you could place a Daily Mail advert (‘Wanted! Antiques For America! Will collect! Pre-1930 Clothes . . . !’) and expect the owners of rare antiques to beat a path to your door. Suddenly, the supply of antiques dried up.

  The public had learned.

  They learned that anybody on earth is perfectly entitled to pop an heirloom into Christie’s. That they could play off one dealer’s offer against another. That they too could advertise. They learned how to use the reference library. How to hang on, stall, even (forgive me, please) lie a little or even a very great deal to ‘authenticate’ a shabby piece. The results were often ludicrous, frequently shambolic, occasionally disastrous. But mostly they paid off, in solid cash.

  Antique dealers were appalled. Some went out of business. Some even got a job. Still others became more careful, and these survived. Oh, they did the usual – fake, cheat, fabricate, steal, forge, pull the auctionring gig in every auction on earth, fiddle, pretend, lie, thieve, and all that jazz. But survive they did, despite monumental ignorance, in the maelstrom. It was in that turmoil that the ‘sleeper’ scam came right back into its own.

  Of course, in antiques there’s nothing new (Tinker’s joke, this: in the antiques game there is probably more newness than anybody dares suspect). And in any case, they say old wine is best.

  There are as many scams as there are antiques. A scam’s a lucrative illegal exploit based on deception more far-reaching than the trusty old con trick. The sleeper is one of the best and oldest scams. Michaelangelo himself used it in his time. So did Hitler with his paintings – though with rather less success. And even famous museums have dabbled in this ancient (but far from extinct) trick, especially when trading items with other august and honourable institutions. Remember this: no museum in the world is blame-free when it comes to owning up where its treasures came from and giving honest-to-God accounts of provenance – and here I’m not specially knocking the Boston Museum of Fine Arts about its famous 137-piece gold breastpiece, or that weird business they indulged in during December 1969 with that Raphael attribute portrait, or the British Museum, or the Washington Dumbarton Oaks 1960s purchase of Byzantine religious silvers found in Asia Minor by the peasants of Kumluca village. No, honestly I’m not. Nor am I knocking collectors. I mean, it’s great that people care enough to crave possession, I always say, and lustful possessors have always been great preservers. But a collector’s craving is very, very big stuff. They’ve even been known to kill in order to possess.

  What I am getting at is this: Your actual dealers don’t often kill. They’ll do anything else in furtherance of their latest purchase’s career. But kill? No. And the most desperate dealers are the legits, those with posh addresses off Piccadilly and dinky offices in Rome, yet even these will not go about murdering. Terrible with reputations and bankruptcies, but they somehow never reach for the arsenic or the revolver.

  I turned over, listening. Somebody was coming along the corridor, one of their regular heavy-footed patrols. The mansion was so well protected it was a rural Devil’s Island. I listened them out of earshot and thought on. If antique dealers did not murder, and Kurak was really only a certain kind of antique dealer with a superdooper knack of pulling successful sleeper exploits, then Kurak did not crisp Joxer, no? And Jason, also a dealer, was therefore not above deception and a little honest thievery, but he too was excluded.

  Ergo, Lovejoy, look among the fine upstanding collectors of this world for you real dyed-in-the-wool killer, not among the crummy load of inept nerks who constitute mankind’s antique dealers. And that meant the Heindricks.

  Well, I’d escaped from the hotel. It was time to do the same from Dotheboys Hall here. I swung off the bed, ready to go.

  My plan – such as it was, I thought in disgust – was to steal down to the summerhouse at midnight to meet Lena, and take off if the opportunity arose. Lena’s acquiescence had been full of pleasure, if somewhat guarded. I’d had to assume she still believed me to be in ignorance about those curtains in her circular rotating elegant wooden summerhouse.

  To escape down, you climb.

  Once in desperation from hunger I’d done a couple of jobs as a handyman’s mate. Old Cedric was a jobbing builder, and I’m still convinced he only took me on because I was so useless. Still, Cedric and the world’s worst handyman’s mate (me) installed a series of thyristor switches, and automated a posh manor house down on the estuary. It had automatic everything down to cupboard doors and loo plugs. You could run that house by flicking an eyelash. Which particular eyelash Lena’d used while we loved in the summerhouse I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t dumb enough to believe that a woman committing the ultimate indiscretion would fling open the curtains to the gaze of all and sundry. Therefore Kurt not only knew. The question was how far he walked the well-trodden thoroughfare to Lena’s heart . . .

  It was obvious the circular summerhouse could be openly seen from all top-floor windows, which was one floor up. Ten past midnight, and the mansion cooling into quiet the way these old places do. There was enough light corning up the staircase from the hallway to let me see. All I needed was to bungle my way into the staff quarters or Kurt’s bedroom. In either case there’d be some painful explaining to do.

  Double doors faced the top stair, which was a good indication of a drawing room rather than a bedroom. Good panelled oak, maybe 1850, with the original handles. Reluctantly I opened one blade of the door. Even if you aren’t really scared you can frighten yourself by imagining all sorts. I slipped inside, closing the door behind me and simply standing there, my chest thumping and sweat on my forehead.

  It wasn’t as dark as all that. A slender rib of light showed beneath a connecting door to the right. The three high grey rectangles directly ahead must be the windows. I felt my way towards the central one, hands slowly sweeping ahead of me in case I damaged a Chien Lung vase – more of a risk than getting caught in this place.

  At first I thought it was a gun, mounted there on a swivel tripod with armrest and two chrome levers. The banked array of electronic gear, with its palpable arrays of knobs and sliders, gave it away as some kind of complex recording gear, maybe video-tape or the like. I stood as if to operate the gun thing, feeling along the barrel. Too thick for a gun, but like a . . . telescope? I put my eye to one end. Nothing. Yet it was directed at the summerhouse or very close to it. Apart from the flowers and the kiln there was nothing else to see down there.

  Video-tapes are thicker than others. Feeling along the shelf, I naturally guessed the last one, fallen flat, would be the most recent. I inched my way across to the screen, thanking various electronic gods that screens pick up any old trace of luminescence to show intruders where they are. The only noise was the deep click when it slotted in and connected. I had the sense to turn down all knobs, and only rotate them slowly one at a time as the screen began to glow.

  It was Lena all right. And me. By the time I got
the picture right we were halfway there, and in glorious colour. Odd experience, watching your own body behaving in complete disregard of anyone. And you learn things, too. Lena looked as dazzling as I knew she was, but I was a revelation. I’d always assumed I was a gentle, considerate bloke to my birds, kind of polite. The screen Lovejoy was an animal.

  Great. For a second I stood there in a fury, then switched if off and turned to go and almost started the whole lot crashing down by falling over a wire. My pathetic luck held. I made the door on hands and knees, regretfully feeling the carpet’s knottage – number of knots to the inch, measured along the fringe, though properly you compare oriental carpets by the count: knots per square inch. It felt as if it would count out at 250, maybe a Kashan. Somebody moved out in the adjacent room, probably Kurt the movie-maker getting ready, so I scarpered into the corridor.

  Well, it seemed everybody in the vicinity was expecting a new performance of the Great Snogging Picture Show II, so what the hell. I strolled confidently downstairs, past my own landing, and on out of the main door. Naturally I made it look coy there, eeling outside after switching off the hall light. Give Kurt another smirk or two, that surreptitious touch. Let them think I hadn’t guessed.

  Breathing a regret to Lena, I moved off the gravel among the beds of bushes and flowers. A particularly vicious cluster of heathers gave me a nasty moment, cracking and swishing like hell, but they were between me and the kiln so there was no way to avoid them. Nobody was around. I made the kiln – still warm it was – and clambered up to its roof, shelling my jacket. The flue chimney was metal of some sort. I held on to it to lean across the space between the kiln and the wall. A six-foot gap, and the wall topped with a crust of broken glass embedded in concrete. My rolled-up jacket lay across the glass, which was the best I could do. The trouble is, my hands cut easily on anything.

  I was just about to risk the leap when something scraped over the wall and I practically infarcted, thinking, Sod it. One of Kurt’s armed men. Caught good and proper. I might make it to the summerhouse if I got my jacket and denied everything . . .