His horse, spattering saliva everywhere, was nuzzling me for grub. Christ, I thought, the damned thing was worse than Henry, and he was a double-ended fountain. I was drenched in spit.
'I promise not to.' The beast's nose was like a sponge the size of a bolster. It had somehow stuffed it into my pocket. Thief, like its master. 'Look, Brig. Maud's married.
I'm not allowed to betroth a lady who is wed. It's a law.' Lot of law about today.
He smiled a wintry non-smile.
'That's never stopped you from consorting with ladies similarly placed,' he said. 'The mayoress? The wife of a certain magistrate? The mother of Mortimer? I can't pretend to have them all off by heart, but I have a list.'
'What if I did?' I bleated, spirits failing. 'Start seeing Maud, I mean. Quaker's big in antiques. He might turn nasty.'
'That would be irrelevant,' he said, cold. 'Once you and Maud take up together, Quaker will leave the equation. Just mend your ways somewhat.'
He spoke carefully, glancing round from under his bushy eyebrows. I think these military types cultivate them to look like hoary old campaign veterans.
'Your conduct with other women must be proper. I couldn't allow you to roam freely quite as you presently do. Maud must be assured of your fidelity. However, should a temporary dalliance become essential in your antiques operations, then I should turn a blind eye.'
He amplified this for a few sentences, all meaning the same thing: he'd neutralize Quaker's interest, and I should be Maud's constant paramour. I'd have to toe the line and not betray Maud's trust, unless it was absolutely essential for antiques. I heard him out, wondering uneasily whether he knew that Maud and me had made smiles in the past.
'Can I have my antiques back, Brig?' Pathetic worm that I am.
'Not without total agreement to my suggestion.'
'Right.' I tried my luck. 'I'm broke. I'd need—'
'Your credit is sound,' he said with a smile filled with sudden glee. Once a hunter, always a hunter. He lobbed me an envelope. It fell in the mud. More money? I must be worth it, but for what? 'Obey commands, Lovejoy.'
'Yes, Brig,' I said, like I loved subjection.
Not proud, I wiped the mud off the envelope. It held a good two months' money. I walked into town and caught Alanna at the broadcasting studios.
We drove to Vestry's barn, the place where he'd been found hanging by FeelFree and Horse. Something I should have done a long time back.
33
'TINKER'S COMING TOO?' Alanna asked, shocked, as I reached Benjie's Motor Caff.
Tinker, wheezing and bedraggled, climbed in, the lorry drivers still swigging Benjie's outfall, whistling at Alanna.
'He's vital,' I told Alanna, pulling away and giving the drivers a regal farewell wave.
'What about Vestry, Tinker?'
'Got a drink, Lovejoy?' The car filled with alcoholic fumes. He stank of dank.
'We'll stop soon,' I told him, like we were in the Gobi desert. 'Wotcher find?'
'Vestry was daft, son. Into a big export, after that Sotheby's cock-up. Lucy Ann summert. Remember that packing case?'
'Lucien Freud,' Alanna translated.
'Aye, luv.' Tinker sounded pleased. 'You're quite bright for a bird. Here, luv. Isn't that bint Marjorie your muwer? Lovejoy used to shag—'
Thank you, Mister Tact. I interrupted before Alanna could lob him out. 'What big export?'
'The Countess. Vestry'd bought one of her Grade A shipments to the Continong.'
'Who from?' Vestry never, but never ever, had funds.
It was all right for Alanna to hear, even though she was now grafted to her Cambridge plod. She knew enough about the local antiques trade to keep mum – sorry, no pun intended – or I wouldn't have asked her along.
The Sotheby's shambles over Lucien Freud's painting was famed in song and story, and had initiated more frauds than paltry. A simple enough mistake, but horrendous. Two Sotheby's whifflers blithely destroyed a packing case – only to realize, aghast, that its contents hadn't been removed. The contents? Tragically, an original work by none other than the great Lucien Freud. It was worth a fortune. Red faces all round.
Dealers rolled in the aisles, because everybody hates auctioneers. For weeks the lads went about saying things like, 'Get the picture, mate?' and falling about. Their joke meant that forgeries of the destroyed painting would instantly become available by the ton. It always happens, because who's to prove that the original wasn't destroyed? I call it the Anastasia problem. Once Anastasia did die – as she really really did that sad day at Ekaterinberg – impostors sprang up everywhere. Disproving a negative is hell.
'Some geezer from the Div. You knows him, Lovejoy.'
Footballers now, from the soccer divisions? Well, God knows they were rich enough to stash away antiques by the busload. In one ninety-minute Saturday game soccer players earn four times the average worker's yearly wage. I wonder about morality.
'Alanna. Your turn.'
'Vestry,' she began as I turned towards the coast road. 'Suicide, found hanged. Two antique dealers, FeelFree and Horse, were visiting him to propose founding a club for lady antiques collectors. The deceased wasn't in financial trouble, had good insurance, no debts. Divorced, one relative, a sister in Boston.'
Boston wasn't all that far. Me and Alicia had graciously included Neskett and Graceen's Auction Rooms on our sweep through Boston, Lincolnshire. A poor quality heist, though, except for one lattimo beaker. It was well worth Peshy's skill – wherever, I thought bitterly, the wretched glass had been salted away by the brigadier. Lattimo is milky white and virtually opaque. I don't like it much, though Venetian glassmakers claim that it looks like Far East porcelain. It doesn't, but collectors adore it. Greed promotes dross to art, just as love makes a Venus de Milo out of a Plain Jane, and why not?
'Eh?' I asked. Alanna had said something that mattered.
'Your argument with Vestry's sister doesn't help one little bit, Lovejoy.'
'Eh?' I didn't even know Vestry's sister.
'Especially now she's extended her stay at Saffron Fields.'
'Eh?'
'Would you please stop saying that? I've never known a man so infuriating—'
'Not many left from the old Div,' Tinker said wistfully, sputum bubbling up. 'My mate Chalky White passed away last autumn. Frigging chest cold took him. Did I ever tell you about that twenty-five pounder he let roll over that sodding cliff in North Africa?' He gave a cackle that set him off coughing and trying to spit out of the car windows. I stopped in a lay-by.
'You lets me gullet get dry, Lovejoy,' he gasped, choking and wheezing. 'There a pub near here?'
Division as in armed forces, my brain finally reasoned, synapses clanging, not as in football. Alanna emerged to hand Tinker a hanky. A passing motor honked approval, the lads in it whistling. She has this effect.
'We'll stop at the next, Tinker,' I promised. I went to Alanna. 'Who's Vestry's sister?'
She stared, judging the extent of my ignorance.
'Mrs Susanne Eggers. You got her some actors for tomorrow.'
'Course,' I said brightly through a splitting headache.
'Just checking.'
So Vestry's antiques shipment was going to the Continent via the Countess, as was decided by some old army geezer, bankrolled by Sandy who was funding Ferd and Norma, and back reeled my mind into a void where logic couldn't follow.
'How about we stop for a bite?' I said.
'Are you all right, Lovejoy?' Alanna asked.
'I was telling you about Chalky White and this twenty-five pounder,' Tinker resumed affably, splashing back through a puddle and getting into the car trailing a bushel of mud. 'There was our frigging battery on this bleeding cliff, see? The sergeant says—'
'I'll drive, Lovejoy,' Alanna said curtly.
Head thumping, I tried to doze while Tinker's incomprehensible tale rambled on between coughs. Alanna stopped at the Wig and Fidget in Pullingham where Tinker finally stopped moaning while he soaked up enough ale to bath in. Alanna admired the tavern's wisteria and nibbled an Eccles cake. I had sweet tea, three pasties and a stack of toast, and recovered. Not enough to take on Vestry's place, though.