—— 1 ——
This story starts with criminal passion in a shed. It descends into sordid corruption. But all along just remember one thing: Love and antiques are the same. Hatred and evil are their opposite. I’m an antique dealer, in bad with the law, and I should know.
There’s nothing antique dealers hate worse than fog and rain. Ellen agreed.
Three o’clock in the morning on a foggy rainy bypass, Ellen was tired—only the same as anybody else daft enough to be awake at this ungodly hour, but women are very self-centered.
“How much longer, Lovejoy?” she moaned.
“Couple of minutes.” I’d been saying this since midnight.
We were in Ben’s hut. He’s the vigilant night watchman hired to watch for thieves who habitually steal the roadmenders’ gear. He’s never caught any because he mostly kips in front of the portable telly his daughter bought him last Easter. Me and Ellen had made love and the old bloke hadn’t even stirred from his glowing stove.
“I’ll get into trouble,” Ellen whimpered.
I quaked. “Er, your bloke isn’t…?”
“Of course not. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow. That old bitch from the vicarage has a filthy mind.”
Ellen’s husband is heap-big medicine, being a Customs officer. Mercifully a kind Chancellor had sent him to patrol the coasts and keep a lookout for dark deeds.
Meanwhile my own particular dark deed was thrombosing in the fog while Ben snored his old head off and me and Ellen swilled his rotten tea. Who’d be an antique dealer? I ask you.
“What are we waiting for, a fake, Lovejoy?”
“A reproduction bureau,” I corrected coldly.
Ellen shivered, a lovely sight even when she’s Indianed in a moth-eaten blanket. “Why couldn’t they send it by train?”
She’d reached the repetitive stage. I sighed wearily. Women get like this. They believe that if they say something often enough it becomes true. “Nobody in their right mind sends antiques by proper transport. The whole bloody kingdom uses a night lorry.” For a few quid on the side, of course.
“But isn’t that illegal?” the poor little innocent asked, turning her beautiful blue eyes on me. Old Ben broke wind, as if in criticism.
“It’s safer, and surer.” Most antique dealers have their barkers down on the bypasses all over the country collecting and loading up. This fraudulent system has the merit of being beyond the reach of taxes.
Huddled over the brazier, we waited dozily for the signal from out in the rain-soaked night. I thought of her and me.
Men are amateurs; women are professionals. And that’s in everything: love, life, greed, hate, all the emotions. And why? Because we blokes have animal souls. Oh, I don’t deny that every so often some bird thinks she’s educated us out of being primitive, but it’s only imagination. Women never seem to realize this. Like now.
“We could be somewhere warm, Lovejoy,” Ellen’s blanket muttered. “You make the best fake antiques. Everybody says so. What’s the point of sending to Caithness?”
“Shhh.” I said. Old Ben’s principal asset is that he’s bent. He often helps with loading, especially when German buyers are scouring soggy East Anglia spending like drunks.
His conscience only costs a pint, but I still didn’t want him learning too much. I whispered, “Nobody local’ll know it’s a fake, see? I’ll sell it as genuine.”
“Matthew will be cross if he finds out, Lovejoy.”
See what I mean? She ignores the fact that she’s literally shacked up with a grubby antique dealer riddled with lust and perishing cold. See how they shift the blame?
“Your husband can get knotted.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to—”
Ben stirred, woke, spat expertly into the stove’s grille. “It’s here, Lovejoy. Far side.”
There are two lay-bys down the road. They’re about a mile apart. I shrugged. The lorry should have been coming from the other direction, but I knew better than argue. These old roadmen have a third ear. “Best get going, then.”
“Can we go, Lovejoy?” Ellen asked hopefully.
“No. I need your car.” It has a roof-rack. Ben’s hut always holds ropes and tools for neffie schemes like this. “Drive into Colchester, then back here and into the lay-by this side. I’ll be waiting.”
“But it’s foggy! Can’t I just—?”
“No. The bloody lorry’s stopped on the wrong side.”
“Stupid man.” She cast off the blanket with a whimper.
“Cheers, Ben,” I said, and opened the hut door.
“Here, Lovejoy.” Ben was listening past me into the blackness. “There’s two engines in the lay-by.”
Silly old sod, I thought, and stepped out as Ellen’s car pulled away up the gravelly path.
God, but the night was opaque. The way down the long slope to the road was familiar.
There isn’t quite a footpath. You find bearings by hawthorns and brambles. Usually there’s enough light from passing cars and the distant town’s sky glow. Tonight there was only this horrible graveyard opalescence.
Ellen had thoughtlessly forgotten to bring a torch. Typical. I skittered down, brambles plucking at me, until the level road surface jarred my heel. No traffic sounds, so presumably safe to cross.
Listening nervously, I loped over, climbed the central crash barrier, and thankfully made the opposite verge. Left turn, keep within reach of the grassy slope for safety, and plod until the road margin indented the steep bank. Then a huge car started at me of a sudden, roared off, all in one instant. I had a vague swirly image of two figures, one familiar, then silence. Bloody fools could have killed me.
The wagon when I came upon it looked enormous. Oddly, its lights were dowsed. I almost walked into its radiator in the damned fog. The heat-stink of the cooling engine drifted at me.
“Hello?” Fog muffles sounds, doesn’t it? My call hardly went a yard. No answer. “You there, mate?”
The cab’s door was ajar. I swung myself into the driver’s seat, feeling at altitude. A fumble for the keys, there sure enough, and a half-twist for beam headlights. The dashboard’s fluorescence cast a ghostly apparition on the windscreen, losing me a heartbeat till I realized it was my own nervy face. A square white card was lodged in the corner of the thick glass. I turned the card over. A black capital L. My signal, so this was the right wagon. But stillness is stillness, and there was a lot of it about. The size of these night haulers is daunting. I levered down, leaving the lights on. A car swished by steady and fast, heading for the coast. The driver was probably having a pee, or gone looking for me.
“Hello,” I called. My voice warbled. I cleared my throat, called again as unconvincingly.
No sound. I walked the length of the vehicle. It seemed all wheels. The rear doors were unlocked, one leaf swinging ponderously open at a pull. Interior lights came on, like in a fridge. Empty.
“Hello?” I shouted. The place was giving me the spooks. Now, the one thing a night haulier never does is leave his wagon. Gulp.
A car crawled into the lay-by, spotlighted me in its beams. Ellen to the rescue at two miles an hour. “Darling?”
I walked round and got in, trying hard to disguise my relief. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Charming,” she said bitterly. “It’s hundreds of miles to the Marks Tey turnoff. Where’s your cupboard?”
“It’s four miles. And it’s a bureau. Gone.”
“Then ask the driver, dear.”
“He’s gone, too.” I peered uneasily into that black-gray smirch.
“How very thoughtless. I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”
You have to forget logic with Ellen. She was moved to aggro, actually starting to get out to ballock a vanished lorry driver, when I stopped her. “No, love,” I said piously.
“I’ve kept you out in this awful weather long enough. It’s time I considered your feelings.”
“Darling,” she said mistily. “You’re so sweet.”