The Sleepers of Erin Read online

  Smiling, I drew breath to answer, then said nothing. I’d been there to make surreptitious love with Sal. Sister Morrison was looking again. ‘There is that, Ledger,’ I said at last.

  They went about eleven o’clock. I’d no idea there was so much paperwork to getting arrested. Nothing but forms. Last time they’d only had handcuffs.

  ‘See you in court, Lovejoy,’ Ledger said from the door.

  ‘It’s a date,’ I called cheerily back, trying to be pleasant. At least they hadn’t told me to shut up.

  Sister Morrison was oddly terse, silencing my two companions and drawing my bed screens when I said I was tired. She sent some atrocious nosh along at noon but otherwise saw to it that I was left alone apart from one frantic episode in the early afternoon when a gang of nurses invaded my sanctuary, hoovered me and reemed me out, then flung me back gasping like a flounder while they went to punish old Smith in the same way.

  All that day I thought hard. My mind was still a bit soggy from the anaesthetic but it began firing on the odd cylinder at last. What had seemed an innocent – well, nearly innocent – dust-up with Clarkie and his tame knife-throwing goon Sam was now disturbingly complicated. Worse, it had become two separate problems. First, I was under arrest for theft. That bit I could understand. But the second bit was crammed full of evil vibes I hated even more.

  To start with, Clarkie normally wouldn’t get in my way at any price. And Sam Veston, for all his bravado with his pet knife, usually walked very carefully round me, after a slight disagreement he and I had had in an auction room two years ago when I’d cracked a few of his ribs. Yet Clarkie had actually hesitated, foolhardy youth, when I’d told him to scarper. And Sam had dared to do me untold harm. The point is that normally neither of them would have dared anything of the kind. I remembered that look of despair on Sam’s face, and his plaintive cry, ‘We’ve got to, Clarkie!’ Why? Antique dealers don’t have to do anything, except survive.

  Of course I’d have to crease Clarkie and Sam when I got sprung from hospital, human nature being what it is. An antique dealer of zero resources just can’t afford to be knocked about without at least grumbling a little. Weakness is all very admirable – in others. Nothing teaches you this like the antiques trade. But somebody – somebody ‘skilled’, Ledger had told me – had opened the vestry door and presumably cracked the safe in there, ferried off the church plate, entered my cottage, popped a paten in the cistern, then bubbled me to the Old Bill. Again, why? But most of all, what was I doing in all this mess?

  At four o’clock I thought, right. When the rest of the ward were watching the match on telly I got Sister Morrison to let me use the trolley phone in the anteroom. She sent a nurse to wheel me down. I knew the number well enough. Naturally with my luck it was good old Geoffrey who picked up the receiver.

  ‘Horsham Furniture here,’ I said briskly. ‘Could I speak to Mrs Dayson, please?’

  ‘I’ll get her.’

  A door closed, then Sal came on, puzzled but guarded. ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Listen, love—’

  ‘Don’t you “love” me!’ she blazed. Obviously good old Geoffrey was now elsewhere. ‘Where have you been, Lovejoy? If you’ve been with that bitch again, I’ll—’

  ‘That bitch’ was Helen, an antique dealer I’m, er, friendly with – or any other woman Sal cares to think of in the same context. There wasn’t time for one of Sal’s special one-way discussions so I broke in and told her I was in hospital. The beeps went twice until she came down through the superstrata.

  ‘Listen, love,’ I said urgently when she was coherent. ‘This is important. Did anybody see you leaving the church?’

  ‘No, darling. Oh God. What have they been doing to you?’

  ‘What about Geoffrey? Did he . . . ?’

  ‘No. He was in court,’ she said impatiently. ‘Oh, darling—’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘He sits on the bench. Stay there. I’m on my way.’ I thought, now she tells me. That was all I needed, Sal’s old man the local magistrate. I’d be lucky not to get shot.

  I rang round three pubs before I got Tinker at the Queen’s Head.

  ‘That you, Lovejoy?’ he croaked blearily into the phone against the taproom noise. ‘Where the bleedin’ hell you bin? Everybody’s goin’ daft lookin’ for you. I’ve got one of them carved wooden geezers carrying two ducks waitin’ up Sudbury way—’

  ‘Jesus.’ The moan came out involuntarily. There had been rumours for months about a German limewood figure. They’re worth a fortune, if you can lay hands on them. Tinker’s my barker, the best sniffer-out of antiques in the business. Now he finds it.

  ‘I can’t hold her for ever, Lovejoy,’ Tinker gravelled out. I heard somebody shout across the bar if that was Lovejoy on the blower. ‘Yes,’ Tinker bawled back. ‘Here, Lovejoy. I’ve found a Yankee Windsor chair, I reckon, but funny wood—’

  ‘Shut it, Tinker. Listen. Get over to the County Hospital, Charrington Ward – no!’ I almost shouted the command to stop his repeating the instruction all over the pub. ‘Say nothing. Just drink up and get over here. But one thing. Find out where Clarkie and Sam Veston have disappeared to. I’m going to dust them over on the quiet.’

  ‘Right, Lovejoy.’ He gave a gulp. ‘Where’ll you be?’

  ‘Waiting,’ I said sourly and rang off.

  It was when I was reaching up to ring the bell to be wheeled back to bed when I noticed there was an open wall hatch ajar nearby. Through the gap I could see Sister Morrison’s head bent over the day’s reports in the ward office. Quickly I wondered if she could hear. Not touching the bell, I said carefully, almost in an undertone. ‘Sister, please.’

  ‘Yes?’ She didn’t look up.

  ‘I’m ready to go back now.’

  ‘I’ll take you.’ She got up and walked round to come for me. She must have heard every word.

  Her face was ice. Great, I thought bitterly. Now I was not only a church plunderer, but a self-confessed adulterer and a murderous revenge-seeker as well. Win friends the easy way, I always say.

  The rest of that day was not too good so I won’t dwell on it. Sal came in, lovely and perfumed and dressed to the nines, frantic with worry and demanding to know every detail. She wept a bit like they do, and told the staff nurse that no expense was to be spared. ‘Thank you,’ Sal got frostily back, ‘but Lovejoy is being paid for out of our taxes.’ Surreptitiously she gave me a handful of notes in case I needed to send out for anything. The trouble was she became distinctly cool when I said what had happened.

  ‘Police?’ she gasped faintly. ‘You mean, really? In actual court?’

  ‘Yes, love. Somebody must have planted a piece at my cottage to bubble me.’

  Sal said, ‘Oh, darling,’ but it wasn’t her usual voice, full of possessiveness and humour. It sounded ominously like the sailor’s elbow. ‘Not . . . not in the newspapers?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her cheerfully. ‘I’ll sort it out—’

  She fingered her red amber beads, Chinese nineteenth century. I’d got them for her fairly cheap in a local antiques auction before Sac Freres dragged them off to their Bond Street lair.

  Sal is beautiful, really stylish. I was so proud of her there in the ward with the nurses enviously eyeing her gear and Sister Morrison going thin-lipped at the sight of such glamour. I mean, after all Sal was my visitor. The only good thing to have happened to me for ages. To my dismay Sal suddenly discovered she had to be going. She kissed me, full of courage about it but clearly taking to the hills. She said she would phone morning and evening, that final psychotherapy of a departing lover putting the boot in. I watched her go, saw her pause and wave from the door before the flaps swung to. Over and out.

  In contrast Tinker’s appearance can only be called earthy. He stood there, peering hesitantly into the ward. Imagine an unshaven, clog-shod old stick of a bloke approximately attired in an old army greatcoat, holed mittens and a soiled cloth cap, looking every inch a right scruff. Now doub
le it, add an evil stench and you have Tinker Dill. Sister Morrison was instantly hovering on guard against mobile filth. I could tell that plagues and other epidemics had sprung to mind. I admit he’s no oil painting but I still wasn’t having anybody taking the mickey, so when Gastric Ulcer opposite exclaimed, ‘Gawd almighty!’ I smiled one of my specials and clicked an imaginary pistol gently at him, which perforated his next witticism. He looked away.

  Antique dealers have barkers like armies have skirmishers – to nip around and suss out the scene. Boozy and shabby Tinker may be, but I wouldn’t swap him for a gold clock. He sat beside my bed, ponging to high heaven and toothily agog at the ward bustle and the nurses, but mostly at the spectacle of me with my limb trussed up.

  ‘Gawd, Lovejoy,’ he croaked out. ‘What the bleedin’ hell you done? I thought we were doin’ a deal.’

  ‘Wotcher, Tinker. Sam and Clarkie.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, aye. Gone to King’s Lynn.’

  ‘Wise lads,’ I said. ‘You tell me the minute they’re back, right?’

  ‘What if they don’t come?’

  I grinned. ‘Then I’ll go and get them.’

  ‘Like that, is it?’ He lowered his head confidentially for his favourite phrase. ‘Here, Lovejoy. We in trouble?’

  I told him the glad tidings step by step, him groaning and muttering every inch of the tale. When I came to the bit about Sam slinging the knife at me he stared.

  ‘Sam? Him? Gawd, I thought he knew better than try you, Lovejoy.’

  ‘You’ve spotted it, Tinker.’ I listed the mysteries one after the other. ‘Neither Sam Veston nor Clarkie would push their luck that far. Then there’s the question who actually did do the cloth job. And why they bubbled me for it.’

  Tinker ahemed at that and glanced about. We were speaking softly because we always do in the antiques game. Old Smith in the next bed was apparently dozing and the bloke to my left had been gruesomely cocooned in a crinkly transparent tent full of tubes ever since I’d arrived, but Tinker was right to be careful.

  ‘Here, Lovejoy,’ Tinker muttered. ‘You didn’t do it, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  He thought a minute. ‘Then who did?’

  ‘Whoever’s got the rest of the church silver, you thick berk,’ I explained wearily, getting out the notes Sal had left. ‘Look. Here’s some gelt. You’ll have to manage till I’m out. See Helen, and Margaret Dainty. And Jason in the arcade. You’re looking for any church silver, okay?’

  ‘Somebody new, or somebody old?’

  That was a point. ‘I reckon it’s a newcomer. A clever antique collector.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  I asked, ‘What’s the least expensive church silver, Tinker? Chalice, ciborium, monstrance, paten?’

  ‘Paten,’ he said straight away. ‘Only weighs a twentieth of a chalice at most.’

  ‘So he drops the cheapest on me, and keeps the rest, Tinker. See? Couldn’t bear to part with it.’

  I sent him off after telling him to check my cottage now and again till they let me go. Not that there’s anything valuable in it. Things had been bad lately in the antiques game. It was one of those times when everything seems to be owned by everyone else.

  One funny thing happened as he rose to say so long. Sister Morrison came up and said there was a cup of tea and some cake in the ward office for Tinker if he wanted. Now, this really was odd because women usually want to get rid of him as fast as possible. He went all queer at the invitation because non-alcoholic fluids send him giddy but I gave him the bent eye and he accepted.

  ‘See you, Lovejoy, mate,’ he croaked and shuffled off after her.

  ‘Cheers, Tinker.’

  Sister Morrison kept Tinker in the office, pouring for him and talking. I could see them through the ward glass. She didn’t even make him take his mittens off when passing him the biscuits, an all-time first. I saw him wipe his mitts on his cuffs the way he always does and she didn’t even wince. They took a hell of a time over one measly cup of tea, so long in fact that I began to get edgy. I’ve never known Tinker miss the pubs opening and time was getting on. Maybe she was giving him a talk on hygiene or something. Irritated, I buzzed my buzzer but only got the staff nurse who came and gave me an injection with a syringe like a howitzer. When my bum had been rubbed sore and I was allowed to sit up Tinker was not there any more and Sister Morrison had gone off duty.

  Next morning the newspapers were full of it. I was a celebrity.

  Not a hero, but definitely a celebrity.

  Chapter 3

  Being stuck in hospital is grim enough. Being the baddie in the black hat as well is terrible. For some days they gave me the full treatment. Even Gastric Ulcer opposite sent me to Coventry, while old Smith read out loud everworsening reports about me in the local rag.

  It was a real gas. Nurses belligerent, physiotherapists sadistic. The X-ray people who did my arteriogram were obviously disgruntled at having to handle so repellent a specimen of degraded humanity. The surgeons were unchanged, though, merely concentrating when they came round on my repaired artery and telling me to shut up. It was a hell of a life, relieved only by Tinker’s somewhat erratic appearances when he called to report the problems in the normal antiques world outside. Curiously, in all this only Sister Morrison showed any sort of balance about me. Her attitude came to light in a way I found embarrassing but it brought her into the problem on my side so I’d better tell it as it happened.

  It was on a Tuesday morning when the library lady came round. By then I was desperate for anything on antiques. Tinker had failed at the town library because they’d slung him out for being filthy and having no fixed abode, and I was rereading a bundle of old issues of the Antique Collector. These glossy magazines give me heartburn at some of the careless things people say about antiques. They speak of them almost as if antiques have no soul, which only goes to show.

  The promised visit of the library trolley finally came, to my delight, with a splendidly plump matronly bird, all tweeds and blue rinse, parading grandly down the ward dispensing books right and left. I was in ecstasy, because I’d asked for a text on Ming underglaze blue of the Wan-Li period and the new monograph on the London Clockmakers’ Company in Queen Anne’s reign. You can guess the state I was in, excitedly watching the elegant lady trundle nearer and nearer between the rows of beds. She came, smiling and chatting, handing out the books and writing her little green cards which said who wanted what for next time. A real Lady Bountiful. She gave Gastric Ulcer his, a thing on greyhounds, and left old Smith his book about pigeon breeding. Then she turned away and went on.

  I’d been left.

  Apprehensive, I called, ‘Erm, excuse me, please.’

  ‘Yes?’ she managed, preoccupied with the books and her list. She didn’t look up.

  ‘Erm, have you any for me?’

  ‘Subject?’ she said absently, still not a glance.

  I felt my face redden but got out, ‘Antiques, please.’

  ‘I’ll check,’ she said smoothly, still so very busy. Then she went on to the next bed. Not a word.

  Great. Umpteen days trapped in a rotten bed, no antiques anywhere and me suffering withdrawal symptoms worse than any addict. I turned my face away. Bloody hospitals. The difference was that heroin addicts and alcoholics would be knee-deep in intense young sociologists, empathizing like mad, but I was a pariah.

  Then a gentle Irish voice uttered my name. ‘Have you Lovejoy’s books, Mrs Williams?’

  ‘I must have forgotten them, Sister.’ Determinedly casual.

  ‘Really, Mrs Williams?’ The voice was still soft and enquiring. ‘And will you have time to bring them?’

  The ward’s customary din went quiet. The nurses froze. A couple of old blokes woke up in alarm at the unexpected silence.

  ‘I’ll have to see, Sister.’ The reply was offhand, but with that familiar flint-hard core of self-righteous sadism only the pure at heart can manage.

  The gentle voice
became a bandsaw. ‘Nurse!’

  Feet pattered. ‘Yes, Sister?’ dimply little Nurse Swainson bleated.

  ‘Collect all the patients’ books this instant, and escort that person from the ward – now!’

  ‘Yes, Sister!’

  Nervously I sat up again. Already the centre of World War Three, the last thing I wanted was the fourth to happen along so quickly. Sister Morrison was calmly dialling at the central phone.

  ‘Excuse me, Sister,’ I called nervously. ‘Can’t we leave it, erm—?’

  ‘Shut up, Lovejoy.’

  Her pleasant voice returned. ‘Hello? Sister Morrison here, Charrington Ward. Why have my patients been ignored by the library services, please?’

  ‘Sister!’ Mrs Williams exclaimed, scandalized.

  ‘Erm, Sister,’ I pleaded in a quaver, thinking, Oh Christ. Little Swainson and another junior nurse were scampering about the ward snatching everybody’s books and flinging them back on the trolley. It was pandemonium. The two old geezers, relieved the ward’s usual cacophony was back, nodded off happily again.

  ‘My charges,’ Sister Morrison continued, ‘are no better and no worse than any others in this hospital. If you are not able to provide . . .’ It went savagely on for a full minute, about ten lifetimes. Finally she slammed the receiver down and turned.

  ‘Nurse Swainson, Nurse Barton, Nurse French,’ that alarming voice rasped. ‘I thought I told you to escort that person out forthwith!’

  ‘Yes, Sister!’ voices chorused. A trolley rumbled. Books flew and thumped. We cowered in abject terror. Old Smith grumbled to a fraught Nurse Swainson and practically got castrated for his pains as his pigeon book was ripped out of his hands.

  Mrs Williams, as she was being bundled unceremoniously out of the place by a gaggle of nurses, tried a last desperate rearguard action. ‘I’ll complain to the highest authorities about your conduct, Sister!’ But she lost that one as well.

  ‘The best possible thing you can do, Mrs Williams! Lies are not the sole prerogative of the hospital library! Kindly go!’