The surface of my beer trembled. The glass rim chattered on my teeth and I saw George MacNeish glance slowly along the bar from where he was wiping up. I tried to make my momentary quake resemble thirst.
“Nice drop, George.”
“…search moved north. The vehicle was found abandoned but undamaged at a roadside halt frequented by long-distance…” She read it so chirpily, holiday camp bingo.
I went to do the best I could with Mary’s calories.
Seven o’clock Jamie brought his van. Shona, he said, was tired. I left the tavern clutching my curtain material, a hermit to the wilderness. It could always make bandages.
“Can we stop at the, er, klett, Jamie?” I said as we trundled inland. “Lovely view.”
“You’re keen on our bonny countryside?” Jamie waxed enthusiastic, changing gears.
“There’s grand scenery beyond that wee loch…”
Ten points on the creep chart, Lovejoy. The trouble was I’d painted myself into a corner. Crooks in East Anglia trying to do me in. Maslow would put two and two together when the police report stimulated his aggressive mini-brain, and hasten into Edinburgh to help his neffie brother peelers. All the traveling folk on the bloody island were out. And here I was at the very tip. Hardly possible to run any farther. That’s the trouble with being innocent. You get hunted by cops and robbers. Even the worst crooks on earth only get chased by one lot. No wonder people turn to crime.
« ^ »
—— 14 ——
Houses are fascinating, aren’t they? The house at Tachnadray was superbly positioned for light, setting, and appearance. Grudgingly, during the first few days of labor on Duncan’s Sheraton look-alike, I came to admire the place. Catch it any angle and you get an eyeful. The old architect might have had delusions of grandeur, but he’d got it exactly right. Pretty as a picture, was Tachnadray. It brings a lump to my throat just to remember how it all was, in my serene encounter with the clan-and-county set. The surrounding moorland somehow seemed arranged for the purpose of setting off the great mansion’s style. Hardly “antique” in the truest sense of the word, pre-1836, but lovely all the same. The creation of an artist.
Very quickly I learned that routines were almost Teutonic in Tachnadray. The first afternoon I wandered across the grand forecourt to chuck some crumbs into the stone fountain. Goldfish sailed in its depths. I’m always sorry for fish because they have a hard life, no entertainment or anything and scared of every shadow. I’d saved a bit of russell roll and was busy shredding it into the water livening up their wet world when my own dry world was suddenly inverted. I do mean this. It honestly spun a hundred and eighty degrees and I was crumbing the atmosphere.
“What the fuck you doin?” a cavern rumbled in my ear. Giant hands had clutched my shoulder and spine and tipped me upside down.
“Feeding the fish,” I yelped. “Please.”
“Who the fuck said you could?” the cavern boomed.
“Down, Robert.” Elaine to my rescue. Wheels crunched gravel. “Down!” Like you say to a dog. Then something in a language I didn’t understand, slidey-smooth.
The world clouted my left knee. He’d simply dropped me.
Groggily I clambered upright. My trouser leg was ripped. The big kilted man stood skywards over me. Another McGunn, I supposed wearily, making yet more instantaneous assumptions about good old Cousin Ian. He marched off on his great hairy legs. A knife hilt protruded from his stocking.
“You came just in time, love.” I was wheezing. “I’d have put him in hospital.”
She laughed, applauding. Robert turned his maned head, but kept going.
“Don’t mind Robert, Ian. He’s big for the cause.” She wrinkled her face at the scudding clouds. “Rain soon. The anglers’ll be out as far as Yarrow Water.”
A distant clanking tapped the air, Duncan calling work on the iron rod which hung by the workshop door.
“My free hour’s up, Elaine,” I said, but hesitated before sprinting back to the treadmill.
“Another time, Ian,” she said. “Not on your first day. Turn me round, please.”
“Chieftainesses of distinguished clans shouldn’t have to ask.”
She glared up at me. “Oh yes, we should!”
Some women have a terrifying knack of seeming to move their faces suddenly nearer you without stirring a muscle. They do it in love or in fury. I’ve noticed that. Elaine was the best at it I’d ever encountered. The images of physical love and the poor paralyzed girl juxtaposed in my mind.
“Penny for your thoughts, Ian,” Elaine said slyly as I obediently set off along the drive to Duncan’s workshop.
“Just how fascinating people’s faces are,” I lied. “I’m good at faces.”
“Women’s especially?”
“Mind your own business.”
She was back to laughing then, swaying in her wheelchair. It was one of those oddish moments when the environment conspires. She was there beside the fountain. The sky behind her had darkened. Thunder rumbled. Yet a watery sun picked up the gray-yellow gravel, her white blouse, the colors of the old tartan. Lovely enough to mesmerize. Lucky I’m not easy to manipulate, or a girl this lovely could have me eating out of her hand. A terrible desire rose within me. My body’s a hostage to hormones, but with a lass who couldn’t walk—
“Actually,” she said, as we parted, “we cripples have different ways of making… music, Lovejoy.” Another super-correct guess what I’d really been thinking about.
She left me so preoccupied that I hardly noticed Duncan playing hell with me for skiving instead of getting the bureau’s drawers undone. Elaine was disturbing. Weirdly swift to guess what you were thinking—far too swift for my liking. Only supposition, of course. I don’t believe in telepathy or whatever it’s called. But I didn’t like this idea of not being alone in my own head.
Duncan put me at the old piece. He watched me like a hawk as I tapped and listened and set about marking the wood components. I’d got some self-adhesive labels from the Innes stores in Dubneath.
“A waste of money, Ian,” Duncan disapproved.
“Oh?” I cracked back sardonically. “So you’re the daft faker who pencils his illegal intentions all over the finished product, eh?”
He surrendered with a chuckle and lit his pipe to watch. He’d had to concede. Simplest tip on earth: When you’re thinking of buying antique furniture, take a glance at its inner surfaces. There you might see measurements indicating the faker’s reduction factor—
inches cut off, even types of wood to be used.
“One goon I know in Newcastle even writes it on in felt-tip,” I told Duncan. “I ask you.”
“You know a lot, for a wandering cousin.”
Caught. “Ah,” I stammered. “We had to learn all that. At the London College.”
“Very thorough. Have you a family, Ian?”
“No. Except now you lot. My erstwhile spouse had found my transparent honesty too much to cope with.”
Duncan helped me to upend the bureau. The base was in a better state than I’d hoped.
“You should use Newcastle, Duncan,” I panted, struggling to tilt it on a block support.
“Handy for Liverpool, without being too direct.”
“Aye, we tried…” He ahemmed and reamed his pipe. I’d caught him, but absently worked on. Aye, we tried and failed, is what he’d been about to say. He’d discovered, like many antiques fakers, that there are folk pathways in dirty deals. New dirt’s distrusted. Old schemes have a kind of inbuilt security. That’s why a woman chooses a particular color, fancies a special perfume: It swept Cecil off his feet, so why not Paul?
It’s the reason crooks stick to a particular modus operandi even when they know it hallmarks their particular chain of robberies. And a painter faking Cotman’s genius, like Big Frank’s mate Johnnie does in Suffolk, would rather polish off a dozen Greta Bridge phonies and sell them to that same fence in Hamburg than paint different ones every time.