The Very Last Gambado Read online

  “Eh? Her?” I chuckled convincingly. “No, love. You’re wrong. I’ve, er, forgotten to tell Tinker something.”

  “Lovejoy.” Chris Masterson’s voice boomed, too close. "Those Northumbrian skeats. You owe me—”

  “Back in a minute, Chris,” I said, edging away at limp max. “I’ll just catch Tinker—”

  Not often you are saved by a creditor. I was too late to catch Mrs. Lonegan. Two or three cars were pulling away as I hopped out. I cursed. If it hadn’t been for Margaret and her kindly warning . . . Bloody women. I limped-ran to crank the Ruby.

  “Hello, Lovejoy.”

  Mrs. Lonegan was sitting in it, cool as a cucumber. She laughed at my surprise.

  “Ah, oh. Hello. Want a lift?”

  “Hurry up, silly. My feet are like ice. I’m freezing.”

  It’s a man’s instinct to do as the nearest woman tells him, isn’t it. They have this knack of stopping thought. For once I should have cerebrated. But I grinned oafishly at the beautiful woman, and daft as ever, hurried—toward the death of innocence. And the vanishing of her partner, Parson Brown.

  P

  OINT of info: All news isn’t. I’m the only person on the earth who’s never called a press conference. True. There’s a prevailing opinion that the world is desperate to know every detail of everybody else. It’s cock. The majority of everything nowadays is modem, hence worthless rubbish. So what’s to know?

  Yet I find even boring things are fascinating. I once had this bird—correction; she had me—who was daft on skiing. We went to this Swiss dump packed with snowy Alps, and for four days stood in a blizzard among a ululating crowd watching women ski downhill. The crowd donged little cowbells by way of applause. It was a real yawn, not an antique anywhere. But a kind of odd interest eventually seeped through: How come these birds, more or less identical sizes in sprayed-on rubber suits, went at different speeds? After all, skiing’s only standing still, isn’t it? The slope does it all. I asked Evadne this but she only laughed and called me hopeless, then got mad. She came third. Later she pointedly sent me a card from the Olympics. She ski-raced for Austria, or one of those yodel- ing countries that win all the winter golds. I'd meant no offense. But things like this prove that it’s best to ration your interest. Spend it with care, because innocent old interest can get you into hot water. Unless of course antiques are involved, and even then it’s wise to be on your guard. Inevitably, I wasn’t.

  "I got your message, Lovejoy. Scared of your mouse?” She’d seen my nervous looks as I cranked the Ruby.

  “Lydia? No. She thinks I’m in my infancy. Or dotage. I don’t tell her most deals until they’re done.” We zoomed off.

  “She’s clever,” Suki said. "Watch her, Lovejoy. Pure Little Innocence comes with claws, hooks, chains.”

  Lydia, for heaven’s sake? My foot was flat down. The Ruby whimpered up to fifteen mph. “Got anything?”

  “Miniature porcelains, a few. And personal silvers, a couple.” “Great. At Parson’s drop?” Cunningly I brought in the name of her partner.

  “No. The shop.”

  “Right.” I swung us toward Sudbury. “Been busy?”

  “Not as busy as you’ll be, filming with Ray Meese.”

  “Oh. You know him?” See? I’m cunning.

  "By repute. We’re all very impressed, Lovejoy, the company you keep. Hollywood, then the world.” She sounded strangely bitter.

  All right. No deep problem there. Parson could have sold Meese the Roman ring through a trillion intermediaries, anything. “The picture’s about the British Museum.”

  "Did you do that robbery, Lovejoy?”

  Swerve, correct. "Eh? No. Ledger had a go at sticking it on me, but being crippled’s a good alibi.”

  “You sprang into the car after cranking it, Lovejoy.”

  “I used the other foot,” I explained quickly. Caution, Lovejoy. Suki did that I’m-not-really-smiling gaze, which meant she was inwardly finding lies among my truths.

  An open Jaguar overtook us at a roar, dangerously close. I clung to the wheel as the air wake slammed the Ruby sideways. Parson Brown waved his calfskin gloves as his car dwindled ahead. Once a prat, always a prat. I didn't say so. The palpitating Ruby resumed its chug on the lonely road.

  "Here, Suki. He any good?”

  "Parson? Excellent on Regency furniture—”

  "Not as a dealer, love. I know he’s nerk at that.”

  She stared out over the fields trundling past. "As a person he’s a bit. . . undecided, what he wants. Can’t settle.”

  Oh, dear. That bad. Worse than I’d feared. Partners to the ultimate. Suki’s really nice, keeps within herself. She and I made smiles one Christmas, and I have a soft for past smilers. This isn’t true for birds, though. I knew this woman a year gone who— "You’ve gone past, Lovejoy.”

  “Eh? Oh, sorry, love. Daydreaming.”

  The shop’s smallish, fronting the road with no pavement like in so many in East Anglian villages. I parked at the side of Parson’s liner. My Ruby looked ashamed, especially when this girl laughed at it. Lavina is Parson’s daughter and was just on her way out, dolled up as only a sixteen-year-old can doll. She propositions me, sometimes; I’m holding out. She looked a blizzard at Suki, eyed me smiling.

  “Out of prison again, Lovejoy?”

  “Shut your teeth, you little cow. It was a misunderstanding.” She swept past on her stilt heels, her perfume wilting trees for miles around. Suki sighed, gave me a bleak smile.

  “Lavina’s a problem, Lovejoy.”

  “Mmmmh.” I’d heard. I honestly don’t know what happens to females between sixteen and twenty-two, but it’s odd that the younger batch always hates the other, and v.v.

  “Mam, Lovejoy called our Lavina a cow!” a little lad bawled. “She called me a felon, Jules,” I bawled toward the back yard, where a wooden fence encloses a patch of grass with a swing and a shed. "Fair’s fair.” Jules’s six, Parson’s second attempt to purify the race. The Browns live at the rear, a brick cottage. We went through. Jules was digging to Australia, his head showing as he flung soil up. I went to look. He was down to gravel and clay. Trench? Atom shelter? Maybe these littles know something we don’t.

  “Do come in, Lovejoy.” Winnie Brown I’ve never seen without her apron. She’s forever wiping her hands in it. Desperation’s in her like the spring in clockwork, essential and generating tension. She’s late thirties. “Walter’s just gone through. Hello, Suki.” “Hello.” Suki hurried ahead.

  “Here, Winnie.” I paused. You sometimes never really see people properly until circumstances project them into relief. There’s a farmer in Ardleigh, not far, who never knew of an ancient pre-Roman burial circle of the Trinovantes on his land until freak weather caused his crop to fail, whereupon a circular patch of wheat grew tall and beautiful. Passing motorists spotted it from the road and one called to ask. See? Circumstances. Winnie had mechanically returned to doing the washing and turned back to me, anxious. “What were you?” Suki and Parson were talking in the shop. “What was I? When?”

  “Keep calm, sunshine. Before. Teacher? Typist?”

  “Oh.” She gave that woman’s half laugh, brushed hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. "You won’t believe it. I was a dancer. Professional. Equity card and everything.”

  "Do you do it now?”

  “Of course not, silly. Where on earth would I get the time?” She was laughing, piling clothes into the machine plumbed in by the sink. Her eyes kept checking Jules.

  “Hello, Lovejoy.” Parson emerged. “Trolling for minis and silvers, eh? Sorry, but we’ve nothing in that line.”

  “Already sold them, eh?” I shrugged, pretended a glare at Suki, who was being all uncomfortable behind Parson. “Treacherous, that’s the trouble with you dealers.”

  Parson laughed to show his clean even teeth. He seemed straight off a vast country estate, pink gins at the hunt ball. “Sorry, Lovejoy. Our turnover’s picked up a trice. You’re too slow. Now
, an hour ago . .

  “Aye, aye,” I said, sarky. "Anything else I might, er . . . ?” “No, sorry.” He was so affable. And firmly between me and the entrance to his shop. “Sold out. Container, export order to New York. Better luck next time.”

  "Woe, woe. You jammy arab. Why does it never happen to me?” I said tara to Suki, avoiding my eyes, and to Winnie, smiling from her sink, and left past Jules’s obsessional dig. “Oh. Did you hear I’ve got a job on a film, Parson?”

  ‘‘They said at the pub. Any idea what it’s about?” “Something about the British Museum.”

  “Good grief, Lovejoy. You’re in the money!”

  “Aye. I’ll expect it when I see it.”

  “Sorry about the antiques, Lovejoy.” Suki came beside Parson to wave me off.

  “Next week I’ll have a thirteenth-century English wooden crucifix, Lovejoy. Genuine. I’ll keep it for you, eh?”

  “Great, Parson. Love to see it. Cheers.”

  “Up, up, and away,” he joked as I cranked the Ruby into a promising clatter and limped—limped, note—into my blast-off position.

  And off a-trundle towards Sudbury’s squarish church tower. Well, all in all a casual, if vaguely disappointing, unimportant journey. That’s what happens every day in this game. You go miles because X has promised to keep you a luscious antique, and when you get there he’s sold it to Y. Tough luck, and struggle on. Except sometimes.

  The drizzle began again and I had to stop to light my headlamps—I carry matches—because of a sea fog coming in. The hood doesn’t quite reach all the way to its latchings, so I tie string through its holes. This all takes about twenty minutes. By the time I was back in action I was soaked and perished. Air squeezes in through every crack and orifice when the old crate’s moving, so I didn’t get any warmer as we clattered homeward.

  “It’s really strange,” I told the car, for somebody to talk to. I’m not one of those who give names to objects. Whimsy’s pestilential. But explaining to a void’s daft, and I'was alone in a wet gale. “Suki leads me out there to see some incidental antiques. Why? Parson pretends he’s no longer got them, yet I know he’s not done a container shipment for weeks. And he implies he has no idea what Meese’s film’s about. Yet Miracle said Parson sold that Roman ring to Meese—whose film plans are as secret as the nine o’clock news. Worse, Parson and Meese didn’t even speak in the pub. Why not?

  "There’s one thing this creaking old kingdom of ours lacks, pal,” I pratded into the sewing-machine noise as we made the A133 roundabout. “And that’s a genuine English wooden crucifix of the thirteenth century.” There’s none in the UK. The nearest one’s in Norway. The reason is that history’s thugs served God—the Puritans, Lollards, the destructive Catholic Franks of the Fourth Crusade licking their lips as they entered exquisite Byzantium in A.D. 1204. Had they all ignored Him there'd be more of mankind’s superb artistry left. God’s zealots burned and smashed religious artifacts—statues, paintings, buildings. And wooden crucifix figures. It’s called holiness, though definitions vary.

  “Parson got that phony idea from some magazine,” I muttered on. “He must be desperate to keep in touch with me.” But why did he say next week? I wasn’t doing anything except hang around Meese and his cameras, a real bore. And wasn’t it an odd coincidence that Parson had streaked home to be there, really casual, when I arrived with Suki? "Yes,” I answered myself—and promptly forgot all about these musings in the search for Sam Shrouder. ,

  Okay,, I admit I was worried about this film business. I didn’t know what to expect, and I’d heard they were all lunatics. Anyway, emissaries from the antiques underworld began to turn up about then. And a lovely lass called Laila.

  Guess who was most trouble.

  E

  VERYTHING, I long since decided, is worth more. Like, Shakespeare got five pounds for Hamlet. Five measly rotten quid for a whole play. Not being literary I’ve no way of gauging its value, but it must be worth at least double (joke). Van Gogh’s masterpieces you could have got for less than fifty dollars—once. And most of the antiques I’ve sold were underpriced because I was starving and needed luxuries like food and warmth. And I mean just look at the effort I was putting into buying Laila’s horse glass— “cheval” glass, if you want to sound posh. This is a tall rectangular mirror, over five feet tall, pivoted about its middle within a lovely mahogany frame. A really good one will have ebony inlay and be on four genuine casters. Some antique dealers can be diddled into selling a cheval cheap because the rectangle is only half-filled with glass. Innocents assume there’s a piece missing, that it’s a cheapo, or something’s broken. Wrong. All things being equal, it’s worth four times the value of a full-glassed model, because it’s older and cleverer and, therefore, of course, more beautiful. The glass slides up and down on counterweights like old-fashioned sash windows.

  The reason is that sheet glass was difficult to make. By 1820, though, tall horse glasses were being made full length. Laila's lovely piece was a half-glassed affair, mint and delectable. I’d spotted it in her bedroom, never mind how.

  There was a lot of urgency about Laila’s cheval, because her husband wanted to sell up and move house to where he could fit out some suburban nook with new Scandanavian pine grot. Laila was fighting a desperate delaying battle. And so was I. I knew a good dozen dealers who’d snap up the mahogany mirror and marry the legs to a mahogany plank for sale as a “genuine Georgian mahogany sofa table” (the usual trick, so watch out). They’d make a fortune, and yet another glorious antique would be lost forever. To me, loving Laila was a crusade for righteousness.

  I reached my cottage to find a note from her saying meet for supper at the new Italian restaurant by the art gallery. And a note from Lydia:

  Lovejoy,

  Miss Lorane of Lake Bayon Enterprises suggests that she call for you in her conveyance one hour before the commencement of the meeting. Lydia.

  Meeting? I chucked it away and forgot it. Only Lydia could call a motor a conveyance.

  Plenty of time before my evening meeting with Laila, my 1822 French-style English carriage clock said. Which gave me time to feed the budgies, play fingers with them a minute, brew up and go over some old notes I keep about likely fakes, dealers' activities, and who was ripping off whom. Only two, possibly three, hints of Sam Shrouder’s neffie activities. My one fixed point was the piece of lapis lazuli I'd got and sold him. It’s precious to all artists and fakers, being the original perfect blue; Old Master painters in their heyday accepted commissions which stipulated the actual weight of genuine true lapis lazuli they were to use in their masterpieces. It’s very rare, precious stuff.

  Thinking, I washed my spare shirt and underclothes and hung them on a string in the kitchen alcove. More pottering, then I opened the door to drive to town. Tinker should have dug out a few facts about Sam by now—

  Ben Clayton stood there. He’s your friendly soulful baldy little bloke, a born bookkeeper if there ever was one. You’d buy a used car from him any day, if Seg was there to lend encouragement, like now.

  “Why, hello, Ben!” I sounded really pleased to see him. Terror added warmth to my greeting. Seg, his trained psychopath, is given to unnatural explosive laughs and sullen glares, and puts the fear of God into me just saying hello.

  “Hello, Lovejoy.” Seg spoke with malice.

  “And Seg! Come in!” I’m pathetic. I sounded scared sweaty. Ben glared in scorn. "Not into that shithouse. Lovejoy, there’s an exhibition on. Mine. Seen it yet?”

  “Yours? Those lovely Russians?” I spoke fervently. "I’ve heard it’s really wonderful, Ben! How marvelous of you to sponsor such a tremendous contribution! I’m going to see it first thing tomorrow . . .”

  Ben shook his head. “No, Lovejoy. You’re not.”

  My chest squeezed. “No? Well, actually, I was thinking of giving it a miss . .

  "No, Lovejoy. You’re to put it out of that fucking rabbit warren of a mind you’ve got.”

  "Altoget
her,” Seg said.

  “What exhibition?” I said, smiling a cardboard smile.

  “That means no barker, no Tinker, no quiet little visits from your specky apprentice lass. Follow?”

  “Sure, Ben, sure. Honest. You have my word. Sure you can’t stay for a cuppa . . . ?”

  “Motor,” Seg said.

  “Right, right.” I walked to their car and climbed into its cavernous interior, conscious of the dusk down the lonely lane. Ben goes for big white Fords. Seg always drives, very badly, but experiences little difficulty with cross motorists.

  We drove maybe forty minutes. Nobody spoke except as we parked in some leafy lane near the main A12 where it turns coastward. Seg asked a voice box, “He still there?” It croaked a yes.

  We waited ten minutes. Another car approached, pulled onto the verge as Seg flicked our headlights in recognition. A beefy stranger alighted. Ben Clayton beamed at me while Seg and the hood talked between the vehicles.

  “You’re going to drive, Lovejoy. That.”

  "I’ve a bad leg, Ben,” I croaked.

  “It’ll hurt, then.”

  Surprisingly, it didn’t, because I was so frightened I felt nothing as I crashed gears and kangaroo-drove. The nerk sat behind me, directing by thumping my shoulders with his fist. Ben and Seg stayed behind. I was wet with terror when told to halt after about fifteen minutes of juddering through the countryside. Apart from a hamlet I didn’t recognize I was quite lost, except for the great neon necklace of the A12 trunk’s lights ambering the night sky nearby to the east.

  We were only a mile or so from it when he said, “Stop. Get out.”

  “Look, mate,” I bleated. “I’ve got money. If you let me go I’ll—”

  He slung me from the car one-handed and wedged behind the wheel. “Pathetic,” he said, and drove off. My mind went ??? but my neurons fired relief so fast I sank to the grass as my legs gave way.

  The car lights vanished. Silence. I wasn’t executed, beaten up, maimed. Just left here out in the countryside, for no reason.