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

  A sofa table is a lovely light thing, two drawers facing you and a small flap each side.

  Its bifid legs join by a single stretcher. The genuine article's lovely.

  'You poor thing,' I told it. 'Who did it to you?' I rounded on the woman. 'Was it you, you rotten cow?'

  'What?' She recoiled, looking to her husband for protection. I'm a fiend, frighten small women any time.

  'You took the legs from a cheval mirror, and a plain old Victorian dressing table's body.

  You ignorant bitch. You chucked away the dressing table's legs, rims and back. Then added the flaps from a genuine old Pembroke table. And finish up with a bastard hybrid instead of three respectable honest pieces. Just for money? Missus, may you rot in hell.'

  'Of all the…' She petered out, aghast.

  I crouched down, spoke quietly to the fraudulent sofa table. 'Look, mate. I'm sorry for these oafs. I'll rustle up the money and come back for you. Try to hang on.' I peered at the price tag. It was in the old SUTHERLAND code, one letter for each number. The Goldhorns had stupidly put the GOLDSCHMIT code on the ticket as well, like the Swiss in Geneva secretly use. A kid could read it. I almost fainted at the price, but I'd promised now. 'Keep it for me, please,' I told the Goldhorns. 'Have you still got the pieces of wood you stole?'

  'Stole?' Colette Goldhorn cried.

  'Lady,' I said harshly. 'You stole the cheval mirror's main frame. You butchered back, sides, and legs of the Victorian dressing table. And you thieved the rest of the Pembroke table. You're a frigging air raid, you horrible bitch.'

  Arthur came forward, puffing benignly. 'All right, son. Yes, we did it. We still have the pieces. Pay the market price, we'll sell you the lot.'

  'Deal.'

  Ten days later, Colette silently arrived at my cottage with the forged sofa table and the remaining pieces of wood. She handed them over, on condition that I divvied some rubbish mock pewter she'd just bought. It was a pretense, though like an ape I worried my way through the pewter, giving myself a terrible headache.

  Arthur, it seemed, had gone to the Continent to do some auction buying and Colette was on her own for the next five days. I said she'd have to go to a hotel because I was broke.

  'I'll stay, pay, make hay, Lovejoy,' she said. I can see her now, standing there in my candlelight. Odd how women glow in the dusk.

  'I've only one bed.' I remember clearing my throat.

  'Then we'll share.' She locked the door. A great one for doors. 'I'm older but bolder.'

  'Your pewter's junk.'

  She started to undress. 'Lovejoy,' she said with a sigh. 'Just shut up. There are other things in life than antiques.'

  Clearly a nutter. That was how Colette, er, came into my life. Arthur never suspected, or he pretended. Are they the same thing? Me and Colette even went to Holland together once, and Norway. She was jealous and hated other women sight unseen, but a model of propriety when Arthur was around. I liked them both. Colette was my friend for obvious reasons, mostly the overwhelming gratitude a man feels when a classy lady gives him herself. Arthur was my friend because he was always a gentleman. Now he was dead, and Colette was vanished.

  Before the dawn I was up making tea. I drew some well water into a jerry can, dug a small hole in the garden, put old rags in it. I chucked a drop of petrol on, lit it and stood back. I found two old dried-out used tea bags in the waste. No milk, so I crushed garden cob nuts to a paste, and used that the old way. Sitting naked in the garden, I spooned in my last bit of honey. Nectar.

  The birds start chirping about five o'clock, and came on the scrounge as usual. Crispin my hedgehog - the dirty little sod lives in the compost heap - ignored me when I explained I'd have some grub for him tomorrow. I thought of Colette.

  She had belonged to a minor showbusiness family. But Arthur was a Suffolk scion whose folk owned his land for centuries. It adjoined a vineyard a score miles away. I could do it today, lay Arthur's ghost, and try and help.

  Time I did. She'd been good to me, until the Great Farewell. Maybe I'll tell you about that. I creaked upright, washed and dressed, and hit the road to the auction before the village woke.

  8

  THIS PARTICULAR AUCTION I'd last visited when my don't-get-tricked-in-antiques book came out. I'd gone because of a spate of stolen antiques. Grudgerham and Daughter Auctions Ltd wasn't long established, as auctioneers go, which in East Anglia means this side of Queen Vic. Local dealers joke that Grudgerham is simply the original founder, recycled. He looks it, mistrustful old devil. His daughter Shirley's a different matter. She knows a few antiques especially, rumour has it, those stolen in the Home Counties.

  Some twenty dealers and casuals drifted among the furniture and assorted junk. The former always try to look disinterested. The latter - called 'women' in the antiques trade, irrespective of actual gender - always reveal their fascination. It's only when they find what they're hoping for that they pull themselves up, look guiltily around like they've been caught out. Then only do they pretend casual, dart into a corner and make surreptitious notes. People are lovely. You have to smile.

  Heaven knows why, but every drossy auction rooms has a tatty notice board with clippings tacked there to brown and curl with age. Today, I stood reading them trying to keep a straight face. 'Up To Ten Thousand Reward', was blazoned in massive type.

  Beneath was a line of minuscule print saying subject to the usual conditions. This is the ultimate con trick, because what exactly are 'usual' conditions? Who defines them?

  Answer: the advertiser, that's who. He can invent any old conditions he likes. Think of the small print in insurance policies - then distrust 'usual' conditions a little bit more.

  Equally wounding was a display from some trade paper: STOLEN from a residential property in St Edmundsbury were a large number of fine antique propelling pencils in gold, silver, porcupine, with various writing ancillaries. These are now highly sought by collectors. Everybody has an old fountain pen they don't want, because maybe it doesn't fill properly or the nib's no good. Take a minute to look it up in the public library, and you might be the proud owner of a Dunhill-Namiki floral-lacquered fountain pen worth at least two months' holiday in posh European hotels. Called 'scribiana' or

  'postiana' by those strange folk called collectors, it's anything to do with writing, desks, ink, even postal weighing scales.

  'Seeing if your own ill-gotten goods are posted yet, Love joy?'

  'Wotcher, Shirley.' I turned smiling. Everybody likes her.

  Shirley actually runs the auction. The lads take the mickey, of course, as a means of concealing their inveterate lust while she gavels away on the rostrum. She takes no nonsense. I wish she would. She dresses old-tyme, pinafore dress, high neck, starched white apron, stiff samite cuffs, with a lace bertha and a maid's mob cap. It brings publicity. She's always in the local papers demonstrating treasures. Oddly, she has a degree in economics, and jokes that she's now going straight, har har.

  'These aren't the ones nicked from Archway, then?' I asked casually.

  'Who knows, Lovejoy?' she said demurely. She meant who cares. 'I hear you're doing Dosh a favour. How come?'

  'Poverty, love.' I glanced around at the trestle tables. She had a hundred pieces of furniture in, two dozen paintings, and some ten score 'bandies'. These last are antiques you can hold in a palm, anything from a small carriage clock to a channel-mounted ruby nipple ring, an amber brooch or a necklet.

  She smiled. Only women can do this amused I-know-you expression. It's why they're always one up even when they aren't, if you follow.

  'Yet you're here to buy, Lovejoy?' She increased the watts in her smile. 'Such trust!'

  I nodded at the adverts. 'Chartered Loss Adjusters. Good tide.'

  This is the other side of the coin. If you get burgled and want your antiques back, swarms of Chartered, Affiliated or Certified teams will leech onto you. Of course they'll say it's to 'mobilise resources in your interests'. My advice? Tell them to get lost. If your spe
cial treasure was a two-handled Sunderland loving cup of 1825 left you by your Auntie Faith and it got stolen in some smash-and-grab, the chances are it'll have been sold three times before tomorrow midnight. So what chance have you? None.

  And if it's a collection of antiques - lead soldiery, models, porcelain dolls, jewellery, scent bottles - the whole lot will have been 'sold on' only once, but to a specialist

  'wallet', the person who commissioned the robbery. Crooks who fund burglaries of collectors' homes pay a tenth of the burglar's fee up front, and the rest on safe delivery of the stolen goods. Such bludges, as they're termed, are arranged in every tavern in East Anglia. They're talked of loudly in every tap room, no secrecy worth mentioning.

  It's a horrible world.

  'You're just cynical, Lovejoy.'

  She interrupted herself to answer a few questions from Vern Cappuchin, a rogue from Stowmarket who sells antiques he sees in Sotheby's auction catalogues. He's utterly fraudulent, never been prosecuted.

  'Wotcher, Lovejoy,' he said. 'Got enough to buy a teapoy?'

  'Ta, Vern.' I wasn't having any. 'Nice picture, is it?'

  He's always got some moan, which is a nerve, since he doesn't own the things he sells.

  Just picks up an auctioneer's catalogue, does a reverse print of any photograph and alters the colours by hand from a paintbox. Then he shows his photo around, hoping to take a deposit. It's astonishing how many people get taken in. I've seen Vern accept money deposits from as many as three customers in one afternoon in the same auction crowd, all for a photographed antique that some famous London auction house hadn't even auctioned off yet. It's as if folk are simply desperate to get tricked.

  'No, Lovejoy. It's rubbish.' He showed me a picture, a lovely genuine teapoy. 'I'm honestly wondering whether to write and complain to Christie's. Their colours are simply wrong. It's just not good enough.'

  See what I mean? Yet he drives a Jaguar, holidays in the USA, has a yacht on the Deben, golfs at Lytham St Anne's. I'm going wrong somewhere.

  'No box, though,' he grumbled.

  'They didn't have, at first, Vern,' I told him, from kindness. 'It's only in modern times that hostesses served tea from one table. In the late eighteenth century, each visitor was provided with her own separate small table. Like that one.' I nodded at his - well, Christie's - teapoy photo. 'Lift it with one finger, it's so light. Simple pillar-with-claw construction, two feet six inches tall, the surface's width only half that.' I admired the titchy table's elegance.

  Now, though, dealers alter these rarities into a plant stand or a larger table. They do it because they're mesmerized by dimensions. The early, and rare, teapoy table - so light, so plain - is worth a fortune. Cackhanded forgers routinely mangle them into some different monstrosity. The teapoy - originally tipai, 'three legs' from Hindi and Persian -

  is among the most common of murdered antiques. Like the pole screen, like the old plain stool. I honestly don't know why the teapoy doesn't make a comeback. They're such lovely pieces. Interestingly, elderly ladies who lived out east in the Raj still provide you with your own little table with everything on it for teatime, but the gracious habit is dying out. Now, all meals are plop, slop and hop.

  Vern glumly wended his way. Shirley grimaced.

  'Wish I'd one of those to auction, Lovejoy.'

  'Want one?' I asked, serious. 'Take me a fortnight, if you'll buy the heartwood.'

  'Deal,' she said. 'On commission, or buy outright?'

  'Buy.' We shook hands. 'Catalogue it as you want. I'll see it's aged right.' I smiled. 'You know what they say about a fake antique. First auction, it's a forgery. Second time, doubtful. Third time round it's genuine.'

  Shirley didn't even blush. She's famous for carouselling antiques, changing their fictional history. This way, nobody's ever quite sure if the 'antique' they're inspecting is the one they saw last week or something completely different. Her catalogues are balderdash, of course.

  'I was surprised you're doing Dosh's job, Lovejoy.'

  One of her whifflers was signalling, should he ring the bell to start. She gave him the nod.

  'How is Dosh, Shirley?' I asked, seeing every dealer in the place was drifting our way, wondering what we'd just agreed. She'd been Dosh's lass for about a year, swapped herself over from a wild Welsh cabinet maker from Carmarthen who got gaoled for hijacking antiques vans on trunk roads.

  'Just the same,' she said. A trace of bitterness in there? This was the reason I'd stopped by.

  'No legal trouble, Shirley.' I pretended relief. 'I'm glad.'

  She gestured swiftly to the whiffler stop bothering her. Some of the dealers were catcalling, whistling the old refrain Why are we waiting?

  'He's had some lawsuit, Lovejoy.' The acidity became anger. 'If he's…' She gave up, shoulders drooping, and gave me a wry smile. 'Don't get your fingers burnt, Lovejoy, will you?'

  'Me?' I went all innocent. 'Look, love. If I do you a set of ancient casts of rare golds, Romans, Greek, some medals, would you caravan them for me? Half and half?'

  Her I-know-you look is a better smile than the wounded sort. To caravan is to move antiques in one lot and sell to a different part of the country via some friend. Shirley has plenty of crook auctioneer pals, being a crook herself.

  'You're a chiseller, Lovejoy. You know that?'

  'Yes,' I said seriously.

  She laughed and went to the rostrum shaking her head at the wicked ways of the world. The antiques trade is full of friendships sealed with love and wine. We forget love doesn't last. And wine evaporates, not like blood.

  So I went to see Harry Bateman, who lives on North Hill with, but more often without, his wife Jenny.

  Here's one of the quickest ways to fake antiques which are really worth selling. Only one, mind. There are a dozen others you can do in an afternoon, but a good forgery deserves technique.

  Harry Bateman had been holding some antique coins and medals, including ancient Roman and Greek, for a solicitor in town, supposedly to make a valuation for probate.

  The solicitor, rapacious for his fee, had had each one photographed and weighed, so Harry couldn't get up to no good.

  Who was aggrieved, and welcomed me with surliness.

  'Bloody lawyers, won't trust me an inch,' he grumbled.

  'Jenny in, Harry?' I asked, to be safe.

  Jenny, his missus, adores a bloke called Klayson who hates women. She devotes her all

  - and a good chunk of Harry's all - to serve him, and pay for his every whim. Harry can't understand it. Nor I, in fact, because Klayson treats Jenny like dirt. She just goes on worshipping, in spite. 'Nowt as queer as folk,' my Gran would say, adding after a wry pause, 'And women are worse.'

  'No.' Harry spoke with resignation. 'She's at that queer's place doing his washing. You know, Lovejoy, he beats her?'

  'Oh, er…' I'd been about to say a routine, 'Good, fine,' but words are no help. 'Help me, Harry.'

  I held up a piece of isinglass, a few pence from the chemist's on Head Street. It's gruesome stuff, being sturgeon gelatin.

  'You making copies? You'll get me hung, Lovejoy.'

  Morosely he went to his safe and opened it up. 'Don't never say I don't never help you nothing.'

  'Eh? Ta, Harry.' I was relieved. If he'd not been feeling especially down he might have refused. 'I owe you.'

  'Promise me you won't nick any?'

  Narked, I went into his kitchen while he settled down to watch the football match on telly. Everything on the North Hill slopes, including churches, houses, lintels, the lot.

  The houses and shops have a zero mortgage rating, can you believe, when they've been there nigh nine hundred years. Banks trust modern builders, but won't trust those of the thirteenth century whose edifices are proudly still here, if slightly on the wonk.

  Barmy.

  Here's how you make a decent forgery, costing only a few moments of your time and virtually no money. (Honest readers please skip this bit.) Cut up isinglass into rainwat
er in a warmed pan. Bring slowly to the boil. Stir. Scum away the surface dross - I use a washed stick of firewood. Keep it heated, de-scumming as you go. Remove it from the stove, and let cool.

  Meanwhile, I'd laid out the coins and medals on the kitchen table, touching them only with my hankie. I had to use Jenny's best pouring pans. I added a little powdered ochre to some of the goo, and poured it onto - not over -the coin to a thickness of an eighth of an inch. (Metric loons may convert, if they want.) Cool. Let it dry slowly. It comes away of its own accord, and there you have it. A genuine impression - neater than any modern setting epoxy resin can manage - of an ancient coin.

  The point? Whole collections of these impressions were once made as collector's items by gentlemen on the Grand Tour two centuries ago. So finely is the surface imprinted into the isinglass, that they were posted home. They were sold in cabinets. If I'd had the money, I'd have got some expensive colours, but had to make do with what Harry had on his shelves, malachite green, some naffie Prussian Blue (I hate Prussian blinking Blue), ochre, scarlet lake, the usuals that antique dealers, ever hopeful, always have but never use.

  In three hours I had a collection of Roman staters, a few Greek, and one real treasure.

  It was a James I gold rose rial, which is a thirty-shilling piece. My wretched honesty almost made me weep. If I hadn't promised Harry, I could have nicked the gorgeous thing. And a five-guinea gold piece of William and Mary, 1694. All in all, thirty-nine impressions. I was worn out.

  Harry was asleep in the front room, so I forgot the mess - well, what else is a kitchen for, but to leave in a mess? And Harry had nothing else to do except clean up. The medals and coins I replaced in the safe. I made a telephone call, brewed up, watched some game show where you had to guess whose face was behind a coloured disc.

  While I was waiting for Topsy to arrive I ate Harry's biscuits. He snored on.

  She beeped her car horn. I let myself out and handed the impressions through the motor window.