A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair l-21 Read online

  'As in damage, love. I need you, Gloria.' For a second I waited. 'I'll try to keep you out of any problems.'

  A gust of haw-haws made all speech impossible before she could respond.

  'You're vital, Gloria. Without you, a lad'll probably die at the hands of a proven murderer.'

  'Why am I essential?' She knew I meant Mortimer. 'My antiques?'

  I inclined my head indicating Jesson Tethroe and his adherents.

  'They're in reserve. You know high society.' I had a hard time getting the rest out. 'And I like you.'

  Sir Jesson returned, plonked himself down. 'Problem,' he said grimly. 'Some bounder's woman came with a dress above her knees, what? Trouble is, now ladies are actually allowed to row!'

  I gasped. 'Honestly?' I'd landed in some time warp.

  'Good God, man, we'll be having commercial sponsors giving us money next!' He became apoplectic at the thought. 'Folk who want scruffy standards should go to scruffy places - like Wimbledon, or the Derby.'

  'Lovejoy has a scheme he wants to discuss, Jesson.'

  His eyes narrowed, he swilled his drink. I hadn't touched my glass.

  'I'm afraid it concerns money, Jesson,' I confessed, reluctant. 'Rather sordid, I'm afraid.

  Commercial. Nothing to do with rowing, sculls, Henley.'

  'Above board, though, is it?'

  'Hundred per cent,' I said, avoiding Gloria's eye. 'It's just that the commercial side is somewhat traditionalist. They only wish to do business with gentry.' I shrugged. 'My firm isn't well connected. If only we had a gentleman in high public esteem.'

  The rest can go unspoken, if that's all right. An ingrate's lot is not a happy one. I toadied, hinted, all for the very best motives of decency and patriotism. Forty minutes later, he agreed.

  As I said goodbye, I arranged to meet Gloria next day and start the game. Sir Jesson we left by the river talking to pals.

  'Buy him a new tie if we succeed,' I joked.

  'Lovejoy.' She was laughing inside. I could tell. 'The mark of distinction here is an old tie with its blue faded to grey. Eton.'

  'Just joking,' I lied lamely.

  She looked worried. 'Will it be as horrid as you said, Lovejoy?'

  'Worse, luv.' I bussed her and left.

  They caught me at the gate and made me give the blazer and tie back. No class, some people. To arms.

  30

  THE WAR BEGAN, like all wars, with a series of blunders. First I went to Shar's office to sign a few papers, keep Law from interrupting. Shar was definitely cool, made sharp comments about Lydia. I pretended Lydia and me were just bad friends.

  'You realize what these mean, Lovejoy?' she preached, no smiles.

  'I've to behave, and leave Holloway University alone.'

  'Also?'

  'Pay you your exorbitant fees?'

  She had the grace to redden. 'And avoid trouble forever. That means steer clear of forgery, murder, and—'

  'Wild, wild women?' Easier said than done.

  Gluck's shop was being redecorated, painters outside dolling it up. Not entirely destitute, then. He was inside talking to the lovely Moiya, now permanently on his team. She gave me a cool appraising look and melted away.

  'Mr Gluck?' I was humble.

  'What the hell are you doing here?' He frogmarched me to the door and thrust me into the street.

  'I want you to visit Dulwich Picture Gallery, Mr Gluck. We've to make arrangements—'

  'I said contact me on my mobile, dumbhead.'

  The door slammed, leaving me on the pavement. The decorating men laughed on their ladders.

  'Worth a try, mate,' one called. 'That bird's a blinder.'

  Meaning Moiya. Trout joined me heading for the Tube. The ticket barriers always remind me of sheep-dips.

  'Get it?' I asked, anxious.

  He carried a camcorder. 'Yes. You look rotten on film, Lovejoy. I posted the tape to Lydia's address like she said.'

  'We'll start now, then. Where are we?'

  'Tinker's at the Camden Passage pub. Sorbo's waiting in Portobello antique market.

  Here's their mobile phone numbers.'

  'Well done, Trout.' I hesitated, worried. 'Here, mate. Who's the one of us most likely to be duff?' I meant traitor, but couldn't get it out.

  'Lydia,' he appalled me by saying. 'Sorry, Lovejoy. Seeing you're crazy about her.' We got shoved apart by commuters, found each other again. 'She'll have a ton of good reasons to shop you, Lovejoy. Morality, sympathy, suchlike crap.' He shook his head at the folly of beautiful women.

  'Tinker?' I asked. 'Sorbo?' Then, after a bit, 'You?'

  His gaze was level. 'Lovejoy, I can see why Tinker says you're a prat. What do you want me to do?'

  'Go to the Dulwich. Get permission, and film every nook and cranny. We'll need every picture.'

  'Here, Lovejoy,' he called as I got a ticket and started through. 'Any idea when we start getting paid?'

  'Pay?' I gave back. 'With free morality and sympathy?'

  I heard his croaky laughter, and I was off on my ultimate deception. A miniature bloke carrying a camcorder round the fashionable Dulwich Picture Gallery would be a decoy if anything would. Now for the real scam, which I would do on my own. Then if my team got in trouble with the police it'd be their hard luck, and I'd get away scotage free. I felt a surge of optimism.

  Which only proved how stupid I really am.

  London's ghosts I've already told you about. Even at noon, you get some strange feelings. I'm not one of these spiritual people, omens and ectoplasm everywhere. Nor do I find portents in freak face-in-the-cloud photographs. I mean, this week's seen the opening of our kingdom's very first shop devoted to fairies (original meaning, please). I honestly wish it well. Rock on, sprites everywhere. And I'll applaud vigorously to keep Tinkerbell's little red glow burning bright. But don't ask me to stalk clanking figures on fogbound moors, or explore yon dank castle in the candle hours, please. Wander down Haunted Hollow of a midnight, you're on your own. I'll hold your coat and stay in my cottage, ta very much.

  No, I'm not spookish. I'm no mystic. People say I must be, since I feel the vibes of genuine antiques. They're wrong. It's totally different. I mean, a craftsman made that wondrous Davenport desk, not a ghost. I once said this to Lydia when we were arguing about it - she reads horoscopes. She only said, 'But that eighteenth-century craftsman is a ghost now. Don't you see, Lovejoy?' I called her a stupid cow, and stalked off. She laughed, like she'd won.

  Despite my disbelief, I stood there on the pavement outside Wrinkle's workshop with its corrugated roof and locked doors somehow knowing he'd done a bunk. Maybe it was the lack of chimes from his three genuine antique pieces of furniture, telling me? Except I can't feel them at a distance. I've got to be within chime-shot.

  I went round the back, climbed to where I'd seen Honor waggle her fingers at me as I'd gaped at her and Wrinkle making smiles, and broke in by clubbing the begrimed glass pane with my elbow. It hurt like hell. I unlocked the window, and nearly broke my frigging ankle tumbling down, missing the bench and almost braining myself on a stool.

  I puffed upright, switched on the light. Nothing but wood shavings, neatly swept mounds of sawdust ready for bagging up in plastic containers. We use heartwood remnants for infillings and other deceptions. I mean forgers do.

  From sheer fury, I almost wept. The swine had done a moonlight, probably funded by the cheque-toting Honor. Did he suspect I'd be furious because Honor's cheque had bounced, and I'd come to throttle him for the money he still owed me? Or, evil thought, had Gluck somehow got wind of my treble-bluff and somehow got to Wrinkle?

  Blokes with lifelong dreams - Wrinkle's an example - are a pest. For secrecy they are unmatched. They have more hidey-holes than a hedge dunnock. They're also loners.

  The antiques trade hasn't much time for them, because whatever it is they're up to it's too long a haul. Dealers want money now, if not yesterday. If the money's vaguely promised for next Kissing Friday, they'll laugh in
your face. This is the real problem with

  'longers', as Wrinkle's merry band of long-haul forgers are termed. If, say, a bloke is making a complete collection of Royal Doulton figures, he'll never come within a light year of completion in his own lifetime. It can't be done. And if another is faking every known painting by Gainsborough he'll run out of old canvas so there's a hitch. And so on. Antique dealers always pass them by. Occasionally you'll hear the lads in some pub having a laugh at Old Jake in Carlisle who's making, faking, forgeries of every Parian ware piece ever recorded. Old Jake's real, incidentally. I'm not making him up. He's still nowhere near finishing his epic slog. Pondering, I swung my feet over the edge of Wrinkle's workbench, on which he and Honor had cruelly reached ecstasy without a single thought for my welfare.

  Parian ware is an unglazed porcelainy stuff you make figurines and statues from. It's faintly translucent - think of greased fish-and-chip paper. Its matt surface has a satiny feel. You can't mistake it, once seen. Much hallway statuary is Parian, in fact. It came in when Copeland in Stoke-on-Trent brought it about in 1846. Soon it was made by everybody. So you'll find even genuine Wedgwood, and Minton, Parian pieces. The most pricey, though, are American Parians made in Bennington, USA, because they're rarer. Was it worth phoning Jake in Carlisle?

  Desultorily I hunted clues. It would take weeks to find Wrinkle. Think of London as a collection of villages, where gossip is common knowledge among the villagers but inaccessible to outsiders. I picked up bits of wood, shavings, scanned the browning notices tacked to the wall. Nil. I'd actually started to climb out when something struck me. One scrap was a little card, with dates of cricket fixtures. It was labelled 'MCC'. One fixture was today's date. And I remembered that Wrinkle was a cricket addict.

  We'd once argued about Len Hutton's captaincy in Test matches. I'd accidentally said Hutton was duff. Wrinkle went ballistic. I'd never seen such apoplexy. Me, I couldn't have cared less. He'd seen every Aussie match at the Oval and Lord's since Adam dressed. And the Australians were playing today! I climbed out, dropped nonchalantly to the pavement near an old dear pushing a pram load of faggots, and dashed to find Lydia. Two hours later, I was spruced up in borrowed plumage, entering the hallowed vicinity of Lord's cricket ground with Lydia, trying not to lie.

  Cricket is beyond mere explanation because it's unknowable. I was never any good, being a leg-break bowler until I went sane. As a game, cricket's got every known drawback. For a start, one Test - international - match takes five days. No kidding. Start in the morning, play until darkness rescues the world. Injuries abound. The ball hurts like hell. Exhaustion eventually sets in among spectators and players alike. My own attraction for the game, of course, is its antiques, because antiques cricketana (I'm honestly not making the name up) is priceless. Proof? Rummage in your attic.

  An elderly lady neighbour had an old husband she loved. Okay? He fell ill, needed constant nursing. She was broke. Their children were estranged, for family reasons beyond understanding. The DHSS social services thought up this solution: 'Sell your house, missus. Then, being destitute and homeless, you can buy the nursing care your hubby needs.' Enter Lovejoy. Raquel told me about them, a DHSS lass I was seeing. I booted her out, which she richly deserved, and visited the old dear in the nick of time. I looked at her furniture, trying to save her selling up.

  Thrill of thrills, I found a painting of some geezers playing cricket. Dated 1787. Elegant ladies in the foreground, players batting and fielding, it was mindbendingly dull. The old lady heard my yelp of glee and, pleased, made tea, the better to show me her grandad's cricket memoirs. The old geezer had played at the Marylebone Cricket Club in his youth. Bless him, he'd kept detailed diaries. It was a gold mine. In case you don't know, the MCC to cricket is the world centre. I came away with two more paintings, one of the first Eton and Harrow cricket match. Not important, you say? Not unless you admire Lord Byron, a club-footed titch bravely playing in 1805. (His side, Harrow, lost.) The most valuable painting was of a game in Dorset Square, the first really important cricket ground of plain Mister Thomas Lord. (Don't for heaven's sake get him wrong, or cricketers from Rawalpindi to Lahore, from Durban to Sydney, will drum you out of the Brownies.) Yorkshire Tom Lord set up in Dorset Square in 1787. Go there today, its houses on the north side are unchanged, give or take varnish. I rejoiced, and sold the paintings for enough to keep the old lady and her ailing hubby in clover. See?

  Cricketana is in. Old cricket balls, bats, boots even, caps - don't throw them away. Get me to sell them. You'll make a mint, if genuine that is. Noble me, I took no commission, and didn't steal a single thing of the old dear's. But I did forge each painting, for sordid gain. I think they were better than the originals. I really do believe that I have a lovely nature.

  'What's the score, mate?' I asked a newspaper lad on the corner opposite the main entrance. He pulled a face, the Aussies were winning.

  Lord's has Father Time, complete with scythe, stuck up there. Another quirk is a line of Sir Henry Newbolt's poem 'Vitai' Lampada' on a wall, corner of St John's Wood Road. I stood, heard the applause and groans of the crowd within. Test matches you can't get into. No hope of buying a ticket and wandering the stands. Wrinkle must be a member, so he'd be in posh. I could phone an urgent message with some heart-plucking story, but I didn't know what name he was using. Antique dealers often use pseudonyms, like crooks. I've heard.

  Wrinkle was dedicated. He'd watch until close of play. I settled. The poem was maddening. I'd learned the wretched thing at school, couldn't remember a blinking line.

  Two hours later, me as desiccated as a prune, the crowd surged out, scrambled for buses and dashed for the Tube. No Wrinkle. The mob dwindled, left me like a lemon.

  Surely I couldn't be wrong? By then I was almost in a dream, saying over to myself that bit from 'Vitai' Lampada', 'Play up, play up, and play the game!' It should have been Kipling's poem 'If, because there's more cheating in cricket than—

  'The emphasis in "If ought to be on the initial syllable.' Honor slipped her arm through mine. 'Otherwise, the closing line can't stress on the final "And". Criticism from a Yank okay?'

  'Fine.' I was so relieved. 'Is Wrinkle still inside?'

  'Due out after drinks.' She smiled. I liked her. 'What's your deal, Lovejoy? I don't fish for tiddlers.'

  'It's huge. And a matter of life and death.'

  She shivered deliciously. 'Wrinkle's told me all about you. I was sorry about last time.

  Shall we go?'

  She had a massive sports motor, the shape of a sucked toffee. I had to practically lie down to get in. As Wrinkle came into view, she spoke with intensity.

  'For years I've hunted for somebody like Wrinkle, Lovejoy. I won't sell him cheap.

  Capeesh?'

  'I really like Americans, Honor.' I smiled as I said it. When a Yank comes in at the door, doubt dives out of the window. They crave certainty. 'When do we meet?'

  'An hour after I've worn him out,' she said tersely, then switched moods as Wrinkle opened the door. 'Darling! Look who's found us!'

  He got in, stared morosely back at Lord's cricket ground. 'Where's all the spin bowlers gone, Lovejoy? I blame the bloody schools.'

  The whole journey he grumbled. I daresay I would have agreed with every word, except I fell asleep before we'd gone a yard. I dreamt of killing somebody.

  31

  WOULD YOU CREDIT it, but Wrinkle's new workshop was only round the corner from where he'd been before in Spitalfields. The window was filled with old radios, gramophones, a jukebox.

  'Cunning enough, Lovejoy?' Honor blithely led the way. 'Where do you hide a tree? In a forest. I knew you'd never find us.'

  'Except for cricket, I wouldn't have.'

  'You got lucky,' she snapped. 'I never thought to check his notices.'

  The place was astonishing. I counted at least a dozen jukeboxes, their old 78 black records stacked within, and ancient TV sets of every size and hue with tiny bulbous screens. It was a great co
llection, if you like that sort of thing.

  A sharp-suited bloke stepped straight out of the sixties from behind an array of this junk. He wore a wide-shouldered suit, drainpipe trousers, a thin tash like an old Movietone announcer, trilby at a spivvy angle.

  'Who's this, honey?' He was actually flicking a US dollar.

  'Lovejoy. An antique dealer.' I thought, so much scorn, so little time? 'Friend of Wrinkle's. Watch he doesn't pinch anything.' She glared at me. 'Hymie's my brother, Lovejoy.'

  'Indeed,' I said politely. Who was kidding, and about what? 'How do, Hymie.' You can tell, can't you, if there's something between a man and a woman. And if they're siblings. Or, as in this case, not. I shook hands like an American.

  'You're dressed like a gangster,' I told him, striving for a Class A ingrate. 'You look smart!'

  He preened. Any prat who dressed 1920s must crave admiration even from a scruff.

  'Thanks,' he said modestly. 'I go for decor. Like the place? I've only been here a month.'

  'Hymie!' Honor burst out, furious. 'I've warned you! Lovejoy's a hood.'

  'Nark it,' I grumbled. 'I'm just Wrinkle's pal.' I gazed round open-mouthed. 'Are these all yours, Hymie? Congratulations!' I wandered, acting like I couldn't bring myself to touch.

  I know next to nothing about old electricals. Dealers call them Vintage Communications and Tellyana. They're made-up words, but add to the mad prices.

  'It's not bad.' Hymie was delighted.

  'Not bad?' I surged on. 'It's the holy of holies! My God! Isn't that a Rockola?' Lucky it was labelled.

  'It sure is!'

  Hymie started showing me round while Honor tried to get him to shut up. Wrinkle morosely went through into the back. I heard a door slam, and a distant hum begin as he switched on his power lighting. Lighting is almost everything when faking. I knew the feeling. Restore your spirits by delving into forgery.

  'Hymie, you've a fortune here!' I was bored stiff.

  This is the trouble. Antiques now being so costly, folk move into 'antiques of the future'.