The Sleepers of Erin Read online

  ‘Explain what?’ I asked innocently, thinking: These bastards know about me.

  Heindrick deliberately dropped ash on my threadbare carpet. ‘You are a financial wreck, Lovejoy. Your antiques business, Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., is a deplorable front for this derelict hole. You have no fewer than eleven sets of impressive calling cards claiming – quite fraudulently – you belong respectively to Sotheby’s, Christie’s or Glendinning’s of London. Your liaisons with women—’

  ‘Now look,’ I said weakly.

  Mrs Heindrick leaned over and pressed my arm. ‘Shhh. You’re interesting.’

  Kurt sailed glibly on. ‘Your liaisons with women cross all known marital boundaries. Currently you consort with Mrs Sally E. Dayson, a magistrate’s wife of Dragonsdale village.’ He twinkled a mischievous smile, the swine. ‘And with Mrs Margaret Dainty, antique dealer of the town arcade. And with Miss Lydia—’

  ‘Look,’ I snapped. ‘Where’s this leading?’

  ‘And sundry others,’ he cruised on, ‘as far as your perennial poverty permits. You own one jacket and two frayed shirts. You live and look like a filthy tramp on the bread line. Apart from the . . . shall we say donations given you by these undoubtedly generous women, you shun affluence. Your one associate is Tinker Dill, a senile drunkard who sleeps in the town doss-house, on the rare occasions he is not destitute, and cinema doorways and pub yards when he is.’

  I said defensively, ‘That’s not my fault. I give him what I can.’

  ‘Curiously true,’ Heindrick said. ‘You are the only antique dealer who we could find who pays his barker fairly. Yet you live in squalor. And it gets worse. Your police record covers dozens of shady—’

  ‘The police are biased.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said politely. ‘But your record includes an alarming number of fights, thefts, disturbances, wholesale robberies, and several deaths.’

  ‘Those were accidental.’

  ‘Naturally. We know that most sincerely. Don’t we, my dear?’

  ‘Most sincerely, Kurt.’

  You couldn’t help looking from him to her. Sincerity was very, very lacking.

  Heindrick’s voice hardened as he continued. ‘It all adds up to a shady, penniless antique dealer scrounging a meagre living off any woman who wants ravishing by an unshaven shabby down-and-out crook.’ He nodded with sadness. ‘Oh yes, Lovejoy. You’re worse than the rest of us. Much, much worse.’

  The silence lasted a fortnight while I mopped my forehead with the sleeve of my good hand. The bare bones of Heindrick’s tale were true, but I’m not as bad as that. And none of anything’s really been my fault, not when you look at things honestly. Events get distorted in the telling. Everybody knows that.

  Mrs Heindrick pressed my knee. ‘It’s a matter of record, Lovejoy.’ The hypocritical bitch had the gall to sound sympathetic – most sincerely, of course. Irritably I pushed her hand away.

  Kurt crossed to stand before me, a curiously threatening picture of affluence. ‘On the other hand, Lovejoy, you’re better than the rest of us.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Better how? You’ve just proved the opposite.’

  ‘Because you’re a divvie, Lovejoy.’

  I should have guessed. They knew all the bloody time.

  ‘Divvie’ or ‘div’ means different things to different people. To teenagers the word divvie means a numbskull, a stupid nerk. To a housewife it’s a shopper’s discounted dividend. But to antique dealers a divvie is somebody almost magical. I can’t even explain it myself.

  The nearest I can get is saying that something happens inside you when you come into the presence of a real antique. Maybe its love reaches out to touch you, that secret recognition each of us carries inside.

  You ought to know first that most antique dealers, in addition to supreme and unadulterated ignorance, possess a blind spot for antiques. The tale of Sid Greenshaw will help to explain:

  Sid is our local faker. He paints ‘priceless’ early English watercolour paintings. One day he was commissioned by a Paris gallery for ten copies of an eighteenth-century painting by an artist called Cozens. This sad genius isn’t heard much of nowadays, but the mighty Constable, the immortal Turner and that bobby-dazzler Tom Girtin thought him the greatest genius ‘that ever touched landscape’. And he very nearly was that good. Check for yourself – his stuff’s in the galleries.

  Anyhow, so far so good for Sid Greenshaw. Faithfully he set to work copying from an actual original which the Paris gallery thoughtfully sent over. Sid is painfully slow doing Cozens fakes because, right up to the moment that John Robert Cozens died insane, he used a strange monochrome underpainting technique as if painting in oils. It takes an inordinate length of time to fake a Cozens, not like a Samuel Palmer or a Constable, which have to be done at speed.

  So Sid contentedly worked on between other jobs in his attic, leaving partially completed ‘Cozens’ for the monochrome underpaint to ‘fix’, as we say, and doing a cracking job on the phoney frames. He’s a real craftsman is Sid, one we’re really proud of along the estuaries of East Anglia. Anybody will tell you where he lives – and usually how he’s getting along with his latest creation. He’s no secret except to the poor buyers.

  Well, the time came when, after months of skilled labour, Sid began to send off his fakes to Paris. (We ship them crated up as unsigned ‘Reproductions’, the signatures usually being done by specialist forgers on arrival.) Now this French lot decided to get Sid to do them because of his famed ability, which was a mistake, because naturally, while the money was coming in, Sid did what every other forger does: he made a ‘foreigner’ – one fake just for himself. In time he dutifully sent off the ten fakes, plus the Cozens original, and sold his extra fake to a pal in Lavenham for a few quid. There was one slight snag: the stupid goon had sold the original Cozens painting to his pal by mistake. He’d sent eleven fakes to Paris.

  It was a real laugh, especially for Sid’s pal in Lavenham who made a fortune once the truth dawned. You can imagine. The Montmartre gallery did its nut because they now had eleven fakes instead of ten plus their priceless original. Sid’s name was mud. He eventually bought off their heavy mob by giving them three years’ free hard labour making fakes – under close supervision. That way, he kept his hands and feet. Which for such a daft mistake was a bonus.

  I tell you this amusing story to explain what a divvie is. A divvie could never make a mistake like Sid had, because a genuine Cozens – a genuine anything – shrieks and clangs and hums like a chime of cathedral bells. A fake just hangs there, a splatter of paint on paper rimmed by strips of wood. A zero. A dud. No sound, no magic melodious clamour. The odd thing is that a divvie like me quivers with these mystic emanations just by being in the same room as a genuine antique. You hardly need bother to look. God knows how it works. Just as a water-diviner doesn’t need actually to see the water before his twig writhes with the magic vibes of the subterranean river, so it is with me. Had Sid called me in, the siren song of the genuine Cozens would have been unmistakable. Needless to say, a divvie is worth his weight in gold – to anybody with enough money to buy genuine antiques, that is.

  Like, it seemed, the Heindricks.

  ‘Yes. I’m a divvie.’

  They exhaled simultaneously, exchanging a glance. Kurak stirred. Quite honestly, that was the first time I felt queasy in their presence, and was not pleased. Others call it worry, but to me it’s fear. Lena Heindrick was looking at me with undisguised interest now. Kurt’s attitude was one of curious relief. I tried to suss out Kurak but by the time my eyes swivelled he had arranged his expression accordingly and revealed nothing. Where had I seen him before?

  ‘Then you are the one we . . . desire, Lovejoy.’

  That ambiguous line from Lena. I said, ‘Me? What for?’

  ‘A little trip. To find something old and valuable in the ground.’

  ‘Lena, my dear,’ Kurt warned.

  ‘Trip? Where to?’

  ‘You will be
told as soon as you are fit.’ She smiled. ‘Foreign, but you need no passport.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere, love.’

  That smile moved its wet mouth and I heard, ‘Then I’ll phone Detective-Sergeant Ledger and tell him you blackmailed me into providing your alibi.’

  ‘Blackmailed how?’

  ‘I’ll think of something, Lovejoy. A woman’s always believed when she makes an accusation concerning sex or money.’ We all paused, considering. Hardly a proposition from Wittgenstein, but still food for thought.

  She collected her gloves, saying, ‘That will be all so far, I think. Kurt?’

  There was something curiously displeasing in the way she had taken over. Kurt stood there exhaling smoke and smiling most sincerely. She rose to go and we all moved obediently. I knew from the way we were avoiding each other’s eyes that she knew my sudden hunger. The trouble is, women always end up the boss. She pressed my arm, smiling into the middle distance.

  ‘Do get better soon, Lovejoy. We have so much to do.’ Kurt patted my good shoulder as he passed.

  It was just then that the phone rang and everybody else froze. I jumped a mile. Kurt gave me the nod. I went to answer it, Kurak balefully letting me pass by twisting his gigantic torso.

  ‘Wotcher, Lovejoy!’ Tinker, phoning in the hubbub from some pub orgy, clearly delighted with himself and three parts sloshed as usual. ‘I found Clarkie and Sam! They’re in the A12 caff.’

  ‘Good evening,’ I said politely. ‘Thank you for your enquiry.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ll try to arrange matters accordingly,’ I said smoothly. Kurak loomed at my elbow to listen.

  Tinker got all peeved at my apparent disinterest. ‘You told me to find the bleeders, Lovejoy!’

  ‘Excellent, sir,’ I warbled. ‘I’ll attend to it.’ Quickly I replaced the receiver. Kurt was behind me, suspicion creasing his brow.

  ‘Who was that, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Tinker Dill, ringing from the boozer.’ I pushed past him back into my room. ‘He’s found an antique I was looking for.’

  ‘Business as normal, then?’ Kurt said pleasantly.

  ‘Almost.’

  Lena Heindrick gave a woman’s careful riotous nonsmile at my bitter reply, and cruised calmly past out of the cottage. Kurak smouldered his way to the Rolls, vibing pure hate in my direction. The end of a riotous party. Kurt strolled behind the wheel of the Bentley.

  As the Rolls crunched away Lena Heindrick’s window wound down.

  ‘Make it soon, Lovejoy,’ she said, still not looking directly at me. ‘We’re in a hurry.’ Kurt just smiled.

  I said nothing, watched them off and did not wave.

  Then I tore back to the phone. Ted, the White Hart barman, fished Tinker from the maelstrom of the taproom.

  ‘Tinker? Lovejoy. Get me a lift, sharpish.’

  ‘Here, Lovejoy,’ he croaked tipsily, peeved. ‘What were all that?’

  ‘Never mind. Hurry. Try Helen or Maud or Margaret. Anybody but Patrick.’ He would scream the house down at the first sign of aggro. I’m going to bend Clarkie and Sam.’

  ‘Oh Gawd—’

  I said, ‘You heard,’ and went to brew up while waiting, but my tea bags had been nicked. Bloody police. Nobody thieves like them. If it wasn’t for them there wouldn’t be all this crime about.

  Chapter 5

  It was getting dark by the time we reached the nosh bar on the A12 road. Clarkie’s motor was among the cars and lorries, so we settled down in the car park for a long wait. Rain tapped on the roof and fugged the windows.

  ‘Can’t I go in for a pint, Lovejoy?’ Tinker asked hopefully. He’d gone almost an hour without.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The boozers will be closed soon,’ he grumbled.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, what are we doing here, Lovejoy? It’s pouring.’

  Janet Erskine had been the only lift Tinker could get me. Approaching her forties, she was even more scatterbrained than the rest of us antique dealers. She says she specializes in ‘All kinds of antiques and things’, which reveals all you need to know about her brain power. Be careful with Janet, though. Her ignorance of antiques is mindbending. Oddly enough, her good humour and her luck were a legend. I had often wondered if, beneath that frilly gear and blowsy exterior there didn’t beat the soul of a secret divvie, but finally decided statistics were against that theory. She is always highly scented, very flouncy and feminine. I like her. We could have done worse. Her husband works in an ambulance depot somewhere in town, playing billiards and swilling tea.

  ‘Waiting.’

  ‘Frigging Clarkie’s in there getting sloshed with Sam—’

  ‘Tinker,’ I said over my shoulder, ‘give me your boot.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your boot.’

  Mumbling indignantly, Tinker passed his old army boot over. I tilted to examine it in the light from the caff. It ponged to high heaven.

  ‘What on earth!’ Janet exclaimed.

  I stopped her switching on the interior bulb to help, and chucked the boot behind me to Tinker. ‘Cut the tongue out. And give me both your laces.’

  Tinker knew better than ask daft questions like what for. ‘I’ve only got one. But you can have me belt, Lovejoy.’

  ‘What’s going on, please!’ Janet cried.

  ‘I said laces, you stupid berk.’

  ‘It’s string.’

  I nicked Janet’s manicure set and made Tinker pierce four holes in the leather tongue with her nail scissors. Under my instruction he threaded the lace and the string through.

  ‘You should be in bed, Lovejoy,’ Janet accused, with the self-righteous anger of a woman fetched out in bad weather. ‘You’ve only just left hospital.’

  ‘Tie them in loops, Tinker.’

  Cars and lorries came and went. We waited another sulky half-hour before the door flashed a slice of yellow light into the wet night and Clarkie and Sam showed. A third bloke with them turned to our right and went towards a big articulated lorry. It looked like Dickie Dirt, least reliable of our vannies, but in the darkness you couldn’t be sure. Knowing Dickie, he would have some woman waiting snoozing in his cab. He never goes far without one.

  ‘You want me wiv yer, Lovejoy?’ Tinker’s unconvincing quaver gave me a free grin.

  ‘No. Stay here.’

  Janet started up indignantly, ‘But he has no coat . . . !’ so I put the door gently to and floated through the rain among the saloons and road haulage wagons. The night air felt fresh after the boutique-riddled smog of Janet’s car. I reached Clarkie’s motor before they did, and stood in the shadow of a goods vehicle as the chatting villains approached.

  The one good thing about East Anglia’s countryside is its flint stone. Over the ages these decorative little round stones have provided temples for Rome, roads for the Early English, castles for the Normans, dazzlingly beautiful spired churches for the post-Conquest Christians, and sparks for the Brown Bess gunlocks of civilization’s biggest – and last – empire. They are attractive and smooth, and come in sizes from giant cobbles to small pebbles. Best of all, they lie everywhere, in fields and lanes. Waiting for Tinker and Janet to arrive, I had collected a dozen walnut-sized flints. If there had been enough time, a couple of practice throws with my improvised sling would not have come amiss. A bit lopsided with only one good arm, I had to let them get almost too close before letting fly with my first shot. The stone caught Sam in the throat and he fell against a small Ford, choking.

  Clarkie said, ‘What the hell . . . ?’

  I spat my next stone into the sling and held it against my chest. The remaining ten stones were in my pocket on my good side.

  ‘Only me, Clarkie.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  The poor goon was in oblique light from the caff while I was still in shadow. Sam looked in a hell of a state. For a minute I wondered if I’d done him some serious damage – after all, Goliath got done the same way – then suppressed the twinge. The
sod had nearly killed me.

  ‘Lovejoy!’

  He yelped and backed away, leaving Sam to rot and trying to shield his eyes against the light. I whirled the sling and gave him the next stone in his midriff. He folded with a whoof and fell to his knees on the tarmac, groaning.

  ‘Don’t move, Clarkie.’

  Loading the biggest stone I had, I stepped up to Sam and kicked him as insurance before carefully toeing his knife away under the Ford. He couldn’t have been all that badly injured because he had been surreptitiously easing it into action, the pig.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Lovejoy . . .’

  I punted Sam again in his groin.

  ‘Hands and knees,’ I said into his scream. ‘Both of you. Side by side.’

  Most of the bigger trunk road cafés have a footbridge over the road, joining the two sections. I herded Sam and Clarkie through the teeming rain on their all fours on to the footbridge. Nobody could see us through the gloom – I hoped. They shuffled on all fours over the bridge. Occasional cars swept by underneath, putting a gruesome wash of light across the scene. I kicked them both hard occasionally to make sure they would be handicapped at least as much as me. Well, they had four arms to my one. Fair’s fair.

  ‘Whoa, lads,’ I commanded, whirling my sling in what I hoped was a threatening manner. It went whum-whum. The world was beginning to oscillate unsteadily. I began to realize I hadn’t eaten for some time. All this aggro was draining me, so I was pleased when Clarkie vomited from pain. I needn’t worry so much if we were all ailing. Sam just lay there wheezing, clutching his groin.

  ‘What do you want, Lovejoy?’ Clarkie whispered. ‘Honest, we meant no harm.’

  ‘Clarkie.’ I stepped closer, whirring my sling. ‘You and this pillock nearly did for me. See this sling? If I let it go, it’ll go through you like a dose of salts.’

  They whimpered, scrabbling away from me along the footwalk while the cars swished wetly underneath. I edged after, still whumming my sling.

  ‘I want you to do something, Clarkie.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Lovejoy,’ he babbled. Anything.’