The nurse glared. The monitors bleeped. I left, saying so-long. Hugo?
Downstairs as we headed for the main concourse Petra spoke to one of the doctors.
Mrs Giverill was on life support. They spoke for hell of a time. He looked a frazzled ten-year-old. I saw his name on his white coat and remembered it.
By the time he'd finished and Petra Deighnson looked round for me I was among the parents in the paediatric queue, crouching down and chatting with a titch bent on unscrewing his toys. We mangled two, to the little lad's mother's amused tut-tutting. I heard the doctor's bleep go and he hurried off. Sickened, I eeled out, went down past the mortuary where nobody ever checks the exits, and opened the wooden door into St Mary's Lane. I hurried through the back doubles, thinking straight and fast for the first time. What I'd learned was dire, grievous, horrid.
All previous plans – if I'd had any – had to go. I phoned from a public phone box by the multi-storey car park behind the hospital. I had to dash back into antiques, where I could make / break some rules of my own and let everybody else's go hang. I needed a lot of small, neat thefts of exemplary accuracy. It wouldn't matter whose antiques got nicked, as long as they finished up in my sack. When your own skill runs out, hire the very very best. The greatest thief in the Eastern Hundreds was downing her pink gins in the Welcome Sailor. I got her on the phone.
'Alicia? I need help, love.'
'Who gives a toss, dear?' she purred.
'Money does.'
'Money?' She sharpened her mental claws. I could hear them honing on her stony heart, swish swish.
'Multo bunce, doowerlink. Some of it's for you.'
'For little me, dwahling?' She giggled. 'What do I have to do?'
Pubs have ears, so I said, 'Come out of the side door and walk down to the war memorial. I'll want you to do an antiques sweep, like we said. I know that some of your pals use that new shoulder – whatsername, Confetta from Manchester – but I want proven class like you, Alicia.'
She made a sharp intake of breath. I heard it. Now I knew that she had a rival
'shoulder' (read thief) she'd be less inclined to blow the gaff. That was the best persuasion to secrecy I could manage, over the phone.
'See you in twenty minutes. Take note who's in the pubs you pass, okay?'
'For you, anything!' she cooed, and rang off.
The one thing that proves irresistible to any skilled artisan is asking them to display their expertise to an admiring throng. Even if that throng is only me, it still attracts the skilled thief. Nobody could steal like Alicia.
Like I say, an expert. She was there on time. She was carrying her little dog Peshy. She held it up for me to kiss. I turned aside.
'Oh, pwease say hello to daahling Peshy, Lovejoy!' she trilled. It growled. I gave it a half-hearted pat. It snapped. Normally animals love me, spotting a pushover, but this canine must have thought I was muscling into its ample niche.
'I hope Peshy's on form, love.' I was in enough trouble without a bad-tempered mongrel the size and shape of a cheap brooch.
'Of course!' she warbled, clasping the animal to her bosom. 'He's a pure bred. And he's a Bichon Frise, Lovejoy, not an it. He helps mumsy-wumsy to borrow such lovely shinies from those nasty greedy dealers, doesn't he?'
Keeping a weather eye out for Petra Deighnson and her plod squad, I walked Alicia to her husband's motor and told her the name of a farmhouse near Norwich.
'It's where we're going for a few days, love,' I explained. 'If you can nick as I want, then we're partners. If you get caught, that's your lookout. Agreed?'
'Caught!' She said the word like I'd mentioned some distant asteroid. 'I've not been caught since before you were born, Lovejoy.'
'Then don't start now, eh?'
'You'll be delighted with my performance, Lovejoy.' She fondled her dog, gazing into its eyes. 'Won't he, my little woofie?'
'We're going to assault a number of auctioneers and antique shops, Alicia. We'll raid the whole of Suffolk and Norfolk, et al. I've allocated a fortnight.'
Her eyes closed in rapture. She said huskily, 'And you'll pay? Lovejoy, bless you from the bottom of my heart. You've just promised paradise!'
She chuckled all the way to my village. I like Alicia, always have, but being with her makes me sigh. Times were getting rough when the one person you could trust was an arch thief. Mind you, the Lord found that. Am I right or am I right?
23
ALICIA DROPPED ME at the chapel. I skulked down the lane. I'd told her to pack, tell our destination to nobody, then drive to the nosh van on the Ipswich road.
No bobbies lurked among the hydrangeas, no sudden rustling in the ivy. The door was fastened by the same old twists of wire I always used. La Deighnson hadn't caught up with me yet. Safe! I eeled in, smiling, and halted.
The woman stared at me. Same person, ankles primly crossed, gloved hands on her lap. I thought, I've seen you before.
'Good day, Lovejoy.'
She spoke like teachers used to, fingers drumming. 'I'm waiting...'
'Er, refresh my memory, please.'
Even as I spoke I thought, she's the bird who asked me to guard that painting I'd forged, wanted a report every day, week, whatever.
'Look, missus,' I began, clearing my throat. Making dud excuses always makes me nervy. 'I've had a lot on. I think you'll have to find somebody else. I've to go away a few days.'
'You have entirely forgotten, have you not?'
She actually said it like that, Have (pause) you (pause) not (pause), then a long time afterwards came that ? I was left admiring, but conscious that I'd been soundly told off.
She was the woman who'd given me my forgery of Geof-freye Parlayne's wife, Lady Hypatia Parlayne of that ilk. I plundered my feeble memory through mental murk. This was the woman who believed that her – my – forgery was in fact a Cromwellian masterpiece. I was to protect it against thieves. My headache came like a wolf on the fold, slamming my temple and making my eyes uncertain of gaze.
'Er, certainly not! You're, er. . .' She wore a wedding ring. Hadn't she said she was a neighbour of Darla Vullamy? Something like that.
'I am Mrs Thomasina Quayle. I paid you to protect my rare antique portrait. The contract is legally binding.'
'Er, sure it is!' I said brightly through a mask of pain in half my head. 'You want to see it?'
'If you please, Lovejoy.'
She followed. I led the way to my workshop, asked if she'd wait a sec as I went in. I crossed to the far end and hauled up the old flagstone. It isn't a trapdoor like the one in my cottage. It's just a simple flat paving slab with an iron ring in it so you can lift one end. There's nothing beneath except a level metal tray, for whatever canvas or antique I choose to lay in it.
Nothing.
I stared, my heart banging. I lowered the slab with a thud, retraced my steps, returned, lifted the damned thing a second time, gaped. Zilch. Nil. Empty.
I thought back to when she'd come. What did she actually say, that day? 'It's already in your . .. shed,' when I'd asked her where her portrait was.
After she left, I'd gone to the workshop, seen it leaning against the wall. I'd examined it, still thought it pretty neff, then gingerly laid it down, covering it with a pink bedsheet some bird had left. Now, there was the selfsame sheet neatly folded on the old beech easel I use for landscape forgeries. (Folded neatly? Moi?) The security tricks I normally use –threads on the earthenware floor, dust sprinkled around the easel – were undisturbed. So how in God's name had the thief nicked the portrait, in its frame, from beneath the flagstone? The cobweb I'd layered over the iron ring hadn't been disturbed. You get the cobwebs on dewy morning grass, and it's a good trick – until now, foolproof. It was just gone.
'Yes, Mrs Quayle!' I cried, emerging brightly. 'There it is! Perfectly safe!'
She didn't move, stood there by the door.
I said gaily, 'I didn't even offer you a cup of rosy. Let me make amends!'