The Rich And The Profane Page 26

  ‘No, Lovejoy. She stood me up. Is that my stage call?’ I wished him luck and left, with a growing conviction that Irma was now lurking at Prior Metivier’s house for some reason. It was all wrong.

  Victoria came tiptoeing to whisper that Irma Dominick was still nowhere to be found. I nodded, sick at heart. Irma was the only one who had any explanation. All I needed, I thought bitterly, was for Big John Sheehan to hove in.

  ‘And there’s a message from your friend.’

  ‘Who?’ I said, heart leaping.

  ‘A Mr John Sheehan. He arrives in an hour.’ Thank you for listening, God.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ I said, broken. So many friends. Time to leave?

  ‘I knew you’d be pleased. Friends are so important, aren’t they?’

  Personal history, a.k.a. friendship, costs, or have I said that?

  ‘Victoria?’ Drowning man, begging a straw. ‘Can I ask? You and Jonno . .. ?’

  ‘No!’ Her face flamed. ‘He doesn’t bother, not even with the dance girls.’ A possible consolation? My heart rose. ‘His, ah, friend is Mrs Crucifex.’ Jonno also a contender? A headache began.

  I said, shattered, ‘Could you get me a drink, please?’ She looked pleased. ‘I’ve brought you one, Lovejoy. Is house white all right?’

  ‘Ta, love. That’s me.’

  e’ve done it.’ Jimmy’s security man Stan showed me the display stands, and guessed my angst. ‘No,

  Lovejoy. They’re screwed down.’

  ‘And—’

  ‘Electronic central system.’ He kept going. ‘Fail-safe generators, if that’s your worry. No fuse, no ruse.’

  Jimmy Ozanne beamed as we went round the exhibition area. He was especially gratified when I accidentally stepped over the guide ropes and a siren gave an angry squawk, stifled by a pocket zapper.

  Splendid Sejour truly was the place. They’d thought of everything.

  ‘Unless you tell me otherwise?’

  ‘No, Stan. Fine, fine.’

  He suddenly shouted at some assistant who’d lit a fag. The man jumped a mile. So did I. ‘Now, Lovejoy. This is your exhibition area. What crooks must I expect?’

  ‘Somebody will steal one exhibit, Stan. Not all, not several. One. It won’t be an outside job. The thief will be one of you, a true Guernesiais. Somebody among the bidders.’ To their shocked faces I went on, ‘Not riff-raff, either.’

  Stan took this in silence. He was a tall assured man. He dangled three electronic bleepers, red diodes showing they were on the ball, everybody watch out. Guards material. He and Jimmy exchanged glances.

  ‘That true, old boy?’ Jimmy asked. He signed Victoria to step inside and close the door to exclude infidels. ‘Guernsey has no crime.’

  ‘I heard that.’

  ‘Can’t you say who it’ll be, Lovejoy?’

  ‘No. The thief might have a friend as decoy.’

  They saw the sense of that. I told Jimmy to announce that a legal guarantee of umpteen million zlotniks was signed, sealed and banked. It wasn’t, but the truth had failed poor Gesso, and it must be made to pay. They had four more TV appearances scheduled for Jonno in the afternoon. Already air waves were carrying chat shows about the combined variety show and The Greatest Gamble On Earth. Its capital letters were growing apace. Some billing. I was pleased that church dignitaries were hand-wringing about falling moral standards. Nothing promotes crime so much as moral outrage.

  ‘Lovejoy’s right, Stan,’ Jimmy said. ‘Live and learn, what?’

  Live and leam’s an old motto, except that folk abbreviate it. ‘Live and learn - die and forget,' I completed for Jimmy. None of us smiled.

  ‘Lovejoy, please?’ Victoria shook her hair away to peer out. ‘There are now two dozen urgent messages.’

  ‘Any from a Miss Irma Dominick?’

  ‘None of the faxes, telephone calls, care-ofs. The rest aren’t open.’

  Jimmy made me sign an inspection sheet, time, place, date, before I could leave for Victoria’s production office.

  God, it stank of fag smoke. Jonno was on the blower yelling insults. He still wore his long slicker, as if his faithful pinto was outside champing at the bit. I was glad to see him, but in the nick of time remembered that he might be one of Jocina’s famous three. I was unprepared when he slammed the receiver down.

  ‘Lovejoy, I sacked your pal,’ he said. ‘Stage call ten minutes, Victoria.’

  ‘Maureen?’ I asked in shock, as Victoria shot off.

  ‘No. Nightmarish. I’m flying in a group from Aberdeen.’ ‘Oh, right.’ I thought I saw one of Big John Sheehan’s blokes walk past the window. ‘Er, look, Jonno. I’ve to attend to these messages. OK if me and Victoria do it somewhere else? Only—’

  We made it, among rehearsing dancers, a fairground area and marauding toddlers in sandpits. We examined the messages in the safety of Cambridge Park. They were all dull, apart from Big John’s. It said he was teaming up with Michaelis Singleton. I handed them back to her. She was aghast.

  ‘We must answer them all immediately, Lovejoy!’ she cried. ‘Bidders from Berlin, Marseilles—’

  ‘No interest to me, love.’ I looked at Guernsey’s trees. Trees fascinate me. They’re in one place for good, yet they wave about, always busy. Autumnal shedding, burgeoning buds. I like them. Same as birds, really. I reckon you could get a lot of consolation and even love from trees and birds if you stood still.

  ‘Yes, I think that,’ she said gently. Whoops, talking thoughts aloud. ‘Lovejoy? You took desperate risks to bring Jonno’s show and set up the exhibition to help Prior Metiv-ier’s priory. Why don’t you bother about urgent calls?’

  I said nothing, watching the trees.

  ‘It would be like Jonno setting up a West End show, then not caring.’

  A little lad was trying to fly a kite. It reminded me. I’d watched a kiddie fly one somewhere long ago. Me?

  ‘I had a mate once, Victoria. He had this ambition. A massive roadside caff. Actually got one. You know what? He ordered all traditional things, beef, burgers, made it grand - and nobody came. You know why? The weather temperature went up, from 19°C to 20°C. He went bankrupt.’ I looked at her across my shoulder, leaning forward, elbows on my knees.

  ‘Well, I do sympathize, Lovejoy—’

  ‘You don’t see, love. Everybody else knew that that one degree up to 20°C stops East Anglian folk eating meat, beef, pork, burgers. They change their foods. It’s common knowledge.’ She was still doubtful. ‘Like, every woman knows that Good Queen Bess had a thirteen-inch waist -what’s that, thirty-two centimetres is it? Achieving it is the problem.’

  ‘Thirteen ... ?’ she gasped, then concentrated. ‘Are you actually speaking of the exhibition, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Aye, love.’ I tried to smile. ‘Cope with the messages. Tell Jimmy and Stan I’ll need a security van at four o’clock tomorrow morning, OK? Give me your mobile phones numbers.’

  She watched me stand and stretch. I bussed her so-long. She looked so forlorn, clutching her sheaf of vital messages.

  ‘Lovejoy? Where will you be?’ She coloured, went for it. ‘If you have nowhere to stay tonight, you can, ah, stay ...’ I started towards St Peter Port. ‘Ta-ra, love. Another times. Thanks for all you’ve done.’

  ‘Not at all, Lovejoy,’ floated after me down the slope.

  She was forlorn? She should have been in my shoes. From the stern rail of the Weymouth ferry, I watched Guernsey recede. I spent the whole journey thinking of the antiques I’d found restored so badly in the Guernsey antique shops, especially Rita’s. Couldn’t get them out of my mind, as a matter of fact.

  Back in East Anglia by late afternoon, I went to see Desdemona.

  She’d moved to her auntie’s, only three doors along. She was glad to see me. I asked what Gesso’d been up to when she’d seen him last.

  ‘I don’t know, Lovejoy. Remember, we’re separated some time.’

  ‘What work did he do for Albansham Priory?’ I asked, not knowing wha
t the hell I was up to. My plan was in Guernsey, bubbling to the boil, while I was home gnawing at a non-existent bone. Daft.

  ‘He did a lot, Lovejoy.’ I took her hand. She pulled away. ‘No, Lovejoy. Not now. The children will be home soon. Another time?’ I said yes, but I’d said the same to Victoria.

  ‘Can I see his toolshed?’

  She took me into the back garden. The shed looked untouched, just a few trinkets lying about, a tube of paint, brushes, a dusty canvas. Nobody had worked here for ages. Powder in jars, a midget electric kiln with a temperature slab drooping like a Dali watch. I gave myself a splinter feeling along the window ledge.

  ‘Was he well paid?’ I wanted to ask if Gesso had happened on some scam of Prior Metivier’s, like a fool hunting for motives, when motive is always dud.

  ‘I never knew,’ she said, aggrieved, ‘after he took up with Irma.’

  ‘Irma who?’

  ‘Irma Dominick. Him and her. That’s why I went to Little Henny - I met you there, remember? They had a holiday chalet.’

  We returned to the house, leaving the shed door ajar. ‘Did Gesso ever go to the Channel Isles, find anything there he shouldn’t?’

  ‘Him? Stick-in-the-mud?’ She started laying for tea. I heard the school bus arrive, whoops and shouts. ‘That plainclothes bobby came asking the same.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ I said, casual. ‘I was just checking he’d, er, asked the right questions.’ I made for the door. She plucked at my sleeve.

  ‘I meant it, darling, about another time.’ She smiled, coming close. ‘I’ll promise you, if you promise me. Yes?’ Her two children burst in, flinging satchels. I zoomed to town, only a few hours left. Why do women and promises go together? Maybe because promises aren’t for keeping anyway. What policeman exactly? I hadn’t dared ask who, in case it gave me scarier thoughts than usual. Gesso was Irma’s mate, and Gesso got killed. Had Irma in fact stood to gain most from his death? What Gesso’d found out about the Priory’s cache of war loot, Irma must also know. And I knew from Michaelis that she was among the merry holidaymakers on Guernsey. Had she led Gesso unsuspecting to his doom at the priory?

  I was beginning to sound like the Black Hand Gang myself.

  Jutta was in the Antiques Arcade, hair still unbridled. I was relieved the dealers had left. Racing at Doncaster, the results in at Penny Dev’s, bookmaker of this parish. I said hello.

  ‘How’s Guernsey, Lovejoy? Did you hear Gesso’s gone walkabout?’

  ‘Nice, and yes. How’s Damnation Dougal?’

  She was dusting her rotten antiques so they’d look buyable. Some hopes.

  ‘He’s wonderful, Lovejoy. Maybe one day.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, Paula’s on the warpath after you. You stole a George the Fifth silver and sold it to Harry Bateman. She’s livid.’ ‘I’ll call in and see her,’ I said pleasantly. ‘Look. Did you ever see Irma Dominick? She was that girl who—’

  ‘Fortune on wheels, that one.’ Her vigorous dusting almost sent her items flying. ‘I hate a rich buyer who won’t buy when she should, stupid bitch.’

  Which flabbergasted me. Into Jutta’s voice had come That Tone, a whine dealers use to blame punters for not throwing money at their tat. What set me on my heels was rich. Irma? R-i-c-h rich? Or merely got a bob or two?

  ‘Can’t be the same lass, love. This Irma was virtually broke.’

  ‘That’s her, smarmy cow.’ Jutta threatened me with a duster. ‘You stupid sod, teaching her how to shoplift when she could buy every auction house in the Eastern Hundreds.’

  ‘Eh? But she jumped bail.’ I almost whimpered it, lost. ‘Typical rich, that is. The mare.’ She came close, fingered my lapel. ‘Lovejoy. Could you show me that technique we tried once at your cottage? Only, this Friday I’m in with a chance. Reverend Dougal has asked me—’

  Typical. Starving for lack of a woman, I start getting offers wholesale when I’ve no time. I promised, hand on my heart, etc., etc., and fled to Florida’s home, a little cot in the Suffolk meadows.

  Her home occupies vast tracts of prime farming land, which explains the shortage of grain products, but the splendid mansion, the gardeners slogging at the verdure, make you trust Florida’s profane contention that wealth is justifiable - as long as it isn’t wasted on worthless social causes like the poor.

  ‘Remember he’s an ex-cop,’ I told myself, knocking. A maid let me in, made me wait in the marbled hall. I’d been in smaller cathedrals. The staircase soared up in spirals to a majestic domed belvedere.

  ‘Lovejoy? Eddie Champion. Come in. Drink?’

  Gentry aren’t often pally straight off, so I trod warily. He poured me orange juice, had whisky in a beaker that made me groan. Eddie Champion chuckled. He was the man I’d seen leaving Vesta’s Emporium. Now, he looked kindlier.

  ‘So it’s true, eh? Genuine antiques do make you gag?’ ‘Only an idiot could mistake that yellow.’

  An expert decorator of porcelain in old Vienna was Anton Kothgasser, who lived to well over eighty. He loved colour. His pal Gottlob Mohn showed him his new palette of transparent hues - Gottlob’s dad had developed them long before 1815, when he popped his clogs. The shock of all time was this brilliant clear yellow. They’d used it for painting window glass, and Anton fell in love with it. Glass which the Mohns did for the Austrian Emperor is more pricey, but for me Anton’s is second to none. I winced as the beaker clanked gently on Champion’s teeth. Signed, with his address, a Kothgasser beaker names its own price.

  ‘Irma Dominick gave me this,’ he said wrily. ‘The only antique I own.’

  ‘Quite a present.’ From a lass who’d begged me to teach her to steal a cheap necklace free of charge.

  ‘Thought you were in Guernsey, Lovejoy. How is Florida?’

  No good trying to pretend. Everybody knew everybody else, except me.

  ‘She took a friend, Lovejoy. Dook isn’t it, this week?’

  I never know what to say when people, especially husbands or wives, go like this. ‘Aye. She’s determined to bet on some antiques.’

  Champion laughed. ‘Uncontrollable. Still, it’s her money, not mine.’ He glanced shrewdly at me. ‘You’ve taken up with Mrs Crucifex?’

  ‘I’m the one that got away, Mr Champion.’

  He chuckled, a man content with his lot. He actually looked like a retired Fuzz. ‘But you have hopes? No need to answer. And it’s Eddie, please. You gave us a lot of amusement, Lovejoy. We used to run a book on you at the station. I won three hundred quid once. Your Scotch scam. Remember?’

  ‘No,’ I said, cold. Like I said, I hate people who remember things, especially police, ex or extant makes no difference.

  He poured himself another dram. ‘You lying bastard. How can I help you?’

  ‘What’s happened about Gesso?’

  ‘Hopped it, I heard. Why?’

  ‘I’m worried he’s been topped.’

  ‘Sometimes you vanish, Lovejoy. Florida is — was? -forever hunting you.’

  ‘But I’m alive.’

  He stared into his Kothgasser beaker. The decoration on the lovely glass was St Stephen’s Cathedral, which Anton used to walk past in Vienna. I like the ones with playing cards on, though collectors mostly go for his glasses showing children, views, bouquets.

  ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Lovejoy. Gesso’s tough, worked at Albansham Priory. It’s hardly the life of a harum-scarum, is it?’

  Him and his Kothgasser. I wondered if I should tell Pedalo, our slinkiest cat burglar, to come night-stealing and claim commission on the theft.

  ‘Irma Dominick’s a friend of yours? I’m looking for her too.’

  ‘Mmmh. I still think they should have taken her offer.’ ‘What offer?’

  ‘For the priory. Send the monks packing, make a great hotel complex. At least it would endure, instead of falling into ruin.’ He lit a pipe, puffed lazily. Nice aroma, pity about the arteries. ‘Village lads’ll have the lead off the roof any day. After that, rubble time.’

  ‘To
buy it? Irma?’

  ‘Yes. Irma was grateful because I set up the meeting -Irma and Prior Metivier - in this very room. Irma offered to buy the priory, freehold, grounds and all. I used to be in Company Fraud when I was in the police. Irma wanted me to be there when she did the deal. She offered cash. Jocina found out - Metivier told her - and went berserk, called her a scheming bitch outright.’

  Instead, the whole priory becomes empty as a ghost village. With a choice of money or ruin, I think I’d take the gelt. So why hadn’t Prior George?

  We parted amicably. I quite liked him. I noticed that the housekeeper, a pleasant lady his age more or less, looked at home. As I left, they stood together to wave me off. Well, fair’s fair.

  That night I stayed with Jutta, in serious training for her final assault on Reverend Dougal’s hellfire morals. Next midday she drove me all the way to Weymouth. I gave her the Jersey Lily/Oscar Wilde Budge teapot. Not in payment, you understand, just for peace of mind. I knew now that Prior Metivier, alarmed at Irma’s offer to buy him out -denuding him of his charity scams and gambling - had had Gesso killed. Had Gesso threatened to tell the other fundraisers, and so sealed his own fate? I was satisfied. I had the motive.

  24

  After interrogating the reception lass in the depot about Miss I. Dominick’s journey - she was helpful when I explained that Irma was my diabetic sister - me and Jutta parted like fond lovers. She thanked me for showing her how to thrill Reverend Dougal, should she ever get close to him in a state of undress. I wished her luck. Jutta was on a loser, a hiding to nothing. I’d say our confidence levels were about equal.

  At st peter port I let everybody else get off. I chatted up the stewardesses, and asked if they knew Irma. No luck. I ambled to the Esplanade, where I sat in the gathering dusk. The show would open in two hours. Jimmy and Victoria would be demented, but I had questions.

  What lass, rich as King Thingy, wanted a scruffy reprobate like me to show her how to steal from an antiques auction, and then goes and balls it up? Any dealer would have nicked it for a tenner, not batted a lid. As if Irma’d wanted to get caught. And what lass, so filled with antiques lore that she unerringly picks a precious - meaning violently precious - glass beaker made by an all-time Viennese great, then donates it to some ageing gent, Eddie Champion, who’d done her a favour? Last, and most ominous, what enviably rich bird, clearly an antiques expert herself, wanted a priory?