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

by Jonathan Gash

  Vintage Communications, mere bygones, leads the way. The trouble is they're so bulky.

  You can only get two Hi-Fi Wurlitzer Stereo jukeboxes in the average living-room and still breathe. Also, some people - include me, please - wouldn't want them at any price.

  On the other other hand, though, they're soaring in value. Get a hand-cranked gramophone for a few pence, varnish the wood, give the turntable a quick wipe, you can sell it for a good week's wage. The best vintage gramophone shop is at Mildenhall, in Suffolk, beloved of American buyers. Jukeboxes? Well, Hymie here had a good supply, but he'd got real competition in Berkhamstead. Me? I was hard put to keep awake. Crud isn't real antiques.

  'Ever go to the National Vintage Communications Fair, Hymie?' I asked with reverence.

  'Sure do, Lovejoy!' He almost fainted from the thrill, another living person having heard of it.

  'I'd love to go myself,' I said, wistful. 'Except, you need to go with somebody who knows the difference between a BAL-AMI and an Ecko Portable TV, what, 1958?'

  'Three years out, Lovejoy,' he chuckled. 'Nearly right! I'm restoring a genuine Philips 834 radio!'

  'Not…?' I gasped, nearly yawning. I could hear Wrinkle hauling something across the workshop floor. An extractor fan began its whirr.

  'Indeedy!' Hymie cried. 'Historic 1933 vintage!'

  'You clever swine,' I said, with envy. Nobody can resist admiration plus envy. Even the Emperor Nero was desperate for underlings to admire his inept warblings. So desperate, indeed, that when Nero fell from his chariot early in the race they actually declared him victor.

  'Come with me, Lovejoy,' Hymie said airily. 'In a couple of months we're going to do a mighty big spend.'

  'Hymie.' Honor's quiet word felled Hymie's pride like an axe. He paled, gave me a look of sorrow, and vanished into his office.

  'What?' I was indignant. 'This stuff is rare. They're tomorrow's antiques!'

  Honor drew me to the window, her hand a clasp of iron. We stood there. Traffic moved past. People looked in, drifting by. It was some beats before she spoke.

  'Lovejoy. Learn something vital.' She gazed at me, small and venomous. I felt a scary twinge. This lady was attractive, but on a crusade. 'I've scoured Europe for a treasure like Wrinkle. Don't think your goodness-gracious act with Hymie will do you any good.

  Wrinkle's collection is mine. So is Wrinkle. Understand that.'

  Stoically, I didn't shiver. 'Fine by me, Honor. It's just that I'm broke. Wrinkle owes me.

  His collection. If I got somebody interested, would you pay me commission?'

  'On a sale?' She almost laughed. 'You've a nerve, Lovejoy.'

  'Look, love. What if somebody paid up, and you didn't deliver?'

  She breathed, 'You mean, sell the collection twice?' A smile began, widened.

  'First, to a mark I want to hurt. Then you can sell it again after I'd gone.'

  Her smile dazzled as understanding lit from within. 'Lovejoy, that's beautiful! We sell Wrinkle's collection to some idiot, then default?'

  'It would only leave me legally liable,' I said modestly. 'Not you.'

  'Leaving me with Wrinkle's valuable collection!' She was thrilled. 'I get the profit, you take the risk?'

  'That's it.'

  'Glorious, Lovejoy.' She would have come closer, except we were in the window. 'It's a deal. Do you have to show them to the mark first?'

  'One or two pieces at least, to hook them.'

  'I want forty per cent commission, Lovejoy.'

  'Ten,' I gave back.

  We settled on 30 per cent, which was criminal extortion. I was narked, even though I'd no intention of going through with it, because even a duckegg like me has pride. What worried me was that Honor talked as if Wrinkle got nothing. He'd somehow slipped out of the reckoning.

  'Where is Hymie in all this?' I asked.

  'He does what I tell him,' she said, laughing at me.

  I went red. 'About the money Wrinkle owes me. Can't your brother Hymie lend it? I'll need a bit to bring the mark.'

  'Okay. I'll fix it with Hymie. He's the only one with keys.' Her gaze held me, threat in there. 'No tricks, Lovejoy, right?'

  Which was how we left things. Me to bring my mark - aka Dieter Gluck, though I wasn't going to tell her his name - to see Wrinkle's glorious work on the sly, and Honor to make sure Wrinkle didn't hear about it.

  'Don't let me down, Honor,' I begged.

  'Likewise,' Honor said, no smiles this time.

  I swallowed and left through Wrinkle's workshop. It was a galaxy, him already hard at it. His wonderful fakes were around the walls. His three genuine originals stood on a dias, under one brilliant redwood canopy. It looked like red eyne wood, that dealers call soymida. I was desperate to feel the wood, because red eyne rubs oily to the finger, dull yet smooth. Its pale streaks give it away. Tough as nails, and insects give up.

  'Nice workshop, Wrinkle,' I praised, on my way.

  He just grunted, labouring. He was doing a rotary cut veneer from a piece of red eyne.

  It looked lovely, though it's hellish difficult because of its knots. Furniture made from it costs the earth. Beauty, like vengeance, doesn't come easy.

  I left through the yard, noticing two Chubb locks, standard deadbolts, the fingered interlocks, the electronic alarms. I had a cup of coffee at a corner caff, wondering who I could get. I'd only got tonight to burgle the place. Not long.

  Tinker was the man. Hardly the quietest crook on earth, but I wanted reliability. Billia and Dang could help me, because nobody knew them much in the antiques trade.

  Worth a go? 32

  WAITING FOR TINKER in the Nell of Old Drury, I thought how odd life can be. It's people's attitudes.

  I loved this lady, once. Every time we met behind the auction sheds in Stowmarket for a snog, though, I had the uneasy feeling we were being watched. Her bloke was notorious for jealousy, which scared me, but she only laughed. Risk, she kept saying, adds spice. This is my point: The only time I felt safe with Marsha was in Stratford-on-Avon one weekend, and it was exactly then that her aggressive fiance turned up. I escaped by the skin of my teeth. Going to meet Billia and Dang, I felt secure because the stout bowler-hatted geezer wasn't around any more. Was I wrong?

  Tinker entered, coughing his way through the throng of complaining actors. He was merry as a sparrow, instantly into the two pints I had ready.

  'Wotcher, Tinker. Look sharp. We're meeting Billia in Covent Garden.'

  'Why not here, Lovejoy?' he grumbled. 'Daft plodding through London when we're already boozing.'

  Pubs and taverns to Tinker are like stepping-stones across life's stormy waters. It was only five minutes' walk to Covent Garden, a distance he saw as the Hellespont. He slurped up. We started out, but not before I loudly asked him what Dang had done wrong. Several people must have overheard.

  Tinker was still explaining as we headed up Russell Street. 'Dang dived in the fourth round. The backers'd told him the third. No brains, see.'

  'What's the threat, then?' I was glad Dang was thick as a plank. My plan needed two dupes. Dang could be one.

  'He's got four days, to pay back the bets they lost on him.' He told me how much. It set me spluttering. 'Or Dang'll get blammed. The fight was a championship eliminator.'

  'Who are they, Tinker?' Dang would accidentally die in some hit-and-run accident.

  'Cockneys.' Tinker slowed hopefully outside a pub. Cockneys? I needed Sturffie. But was he already in the enemy camp?

  Billia and Dang were sitting on the benches in Covent Garden watching a juggler. A nearby carousel whirled gaudily. The Transport Museum was flourishing, crowds surging. It's one of my favourite places.

  'Hello, Lovejoy.' Billia budged up, gave me room.

  She sounded really down. Dang sat massively there, a vacuous grin on his face. He gasped when the juggler's wooden balls vanished one by one then magically reappeared.

  'Wotcher, love.' The crowd applauded. A girl entered the space to catch ski
ttles. Tinker stood by, forlorn, without ale. 'I'm going to do a lift in Dulwich. I'll need Dang. No,' I said hastily as her eyes widened in alarm. 'No scrapping. Just carrying stuff. I've done all the donkeywork. It's tonight.'

  'Will you be there?' She shushed me as some colourful Americans came to enjoy the show.

  'Yes,' I whispered. Honest to God, we were like joke Russian spies in a West End farce.

  'The money's good. It'll pay off Dang's gamblers.'

  'How soon?' she asked. Dang gaped as the juggler balanced a huge beachball.

  'Pay day immediately after. Coin of the realm, love.'

  Dang clapped, huge hands flapping. I tried not to think of a circus sea lion. Not for the first time, I wondered about the attraction between this gormless hulk and the dainty lass seated by me. Could it be solely bedwork? Or was it something deeper, the need of a pretty bird to protect an inept monster who couldn't even count? Enough. I'd sown the seed. In Covent Garden, we were secret as a broadcast. No need to be more explicit. I slipped Tinker a note, told him I'd join him later in the Eagle, the pub of 'Pop goes the weasel' fame.

  'Take Dang, Tinker. I'll go over the details with Billia.'

  'Right, Lovejoy. Come on, mate.'

  Dang left, looking back. The juggler bowed to applause, was replaced by a robot dancer. His pretty girl went round with her hat for nobbins. The crowd instantly thinned, stingy as all crowds at free street shows.

  'Now, love,' I said quietly. 'Here's what. Ten o'clock tonight you and Dang walk down College Road, Dulwich. The art gallery's well signposted.'

  And so on. I made her repeat the plan over and over. Count the windows, sketch the exits. Look for burglar alarms. She asked pertinent questions until she started to get on my nerves and I had to speak sharply. I mean, it isn't as though you can trust a woman, is it? Ten minutes, I chucked some coins into the robot dancer's cap, and told Billia to tell Tinker I'd changed my mind and gone instead to find Sturffie in Bermondsey. I made her repeat that, too. If she and Dang didn't get arrested tonight it wouldn't be for want of trying. No harm in making sure when you want friends to get something really wrong.

  I like plenty of people. I've already said how my Gran warned me against pretty women

  - 'A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair'. Well, aye, but take Billia. Truly bonny, for all her daftness about Dang. And you couldn't beat Lydia (no pun) because despite her primness she was everything a bloke could crave. I've only to walk her into the Antiques Arcade for the lads to set up a communal groan that really narks Giselle who runs the coffee stall. Likeability works with blokes, too, but different. Like, Tinker's a mate. He'd go to gaol for me (he has) and I for him (I haven't; pressure of time). And I've already said how I owe Sturffie, who saved me from a mangling. You just have to like folk.

  Sturffie I eventually found sorting through some stuff outside the antiques place, top of Bond Street. His van's distinctive when it's his. At other times, Sturffie changes its signs, logos, and colour so often you're never sure. Without a word I climbed into the van and started helping. He seemed pleased to see me.

  'Lovejoy! Tell me if any of this is genuine.'

  'It's all dross, except one piece. On your own?' A policeman put his head in and told Sturffie he'd got ten minutes to move on.

  'Right, mate. Ta.' Sturffie stared at his wares. 'Which is it?'

  'That.' An ordinary chair, looking like some suburbanite's idea of an imitation throne. I couldn't help smiling. Like meeting an old friend unexpectedly.

  'You sure?' He stepped over to it, curious. 'Isn't it chipboard? It's still got the bar code on it. I only took this off the dealer's hands to make up a price.'

  'It's so square it has to be wrong, Sturffie. Look at it.' Some DIY enthusiast had tried to make a wooden upright armchair. The back had three panels, the middle one slender, knobbly and darkly overpainted. The two lateral panels were modern chipboard. The seat was all wood, too, but its dark triangular centre had been squared off by the addition of chipboard edges. I looked below. The original back stretcher had been sawn off and replaced by a modern broom handle. The whole chair had then been varnished nearly black. It was an execution. The antiques trade is a vale of tears littered with murder. Is it any wonder I hate people?

  'You all right, Lovejoy? Sit yerself, mate.' I slumped on a chest optimistically marked

  'Early Georgian'. I felt the familiar strangeness.

  'It is chipboard, Sturffie, but built onto a caqueteuse.' When I try to talk a French word, it comes out a mockery. Unintentional. We all do it. Like most dealers, I can only say cack-tooze, rhyme with hack-booze.

  'I thought cacktoozes were Scotch, Lovejoy.' No wonder Sturffie was mystified. He'd bought a chipboard modern 'filler', as dealers call worthless pieces bought for the sake of bodying out their wares, and seen me, the only true divvy he'd ever known, go queer over it. In the sixteenth century, Scotland started copying French styles of chair. The caqueteuse is called from a French word meaning, they say, to chatter. Triangular seat, narrow panelled back, widening arms, it's made for ladies to sit and gossip. Somebody had tried to improve a truly antique chair, pre-dating the Armada, by nailing pieces of chipboard onto it. It was just lucky the maniac hadn't had enough carpentry skill to improve it to extinction. I shivered at the thought, my teeth rattling like dead bones.

  'Here, Lovejoy. Come and have a cuppa.'

  He fastened the van. We got in and drove out and along Piccadilly, round Trafalgar Square and managed to stop in Charing Cross Road. Sturffie put a note saying Urgent Medical Deliveries in his window, and we walked to St Martin-in-the-Fields, the one place we'd not be snooped on. We got some nosh in their crypt caff, the one that has art exhibitions done by talented prisoners.

  'How much?' Sturffie asked. 'Thousand? Two?'

  'Sell it as it is,' I said, wincing at the thought of Sturffie getting out an electric sander to start a crazy restoration. 'The Society of Antiquaries has one chair, but English, 1585.

  Don't trade it for less than a house.' He gaped. I nodded, let him pay for the grub. Why do they always have African students serving in these places nowadays? 'Do me a favour, Sturffie?'

  'You want commission?' he asked, shrewd.

  'No, mate. I want a door opened, and alarms switched off.'

  'Christ, Lovejoy,' he said, frowning. 'That's impossible.' His face broke in a cracking grin.

  'My joke. Who're we robbing?'

  'Nobody,' I said. 'Open a door for me some time tonight, just so I can walk round for ten minutes.'

  He was even more mystified. 'Easiest fortune I've ever made! You're a real pal, Lovejoy.' For a second he looked crestfallen. 'Listen, mate. I've something to tell you.'

  'What, Sturffie?' I asked, innocently, knowing.

  'It's about some gemstones. Padpas. You come asking in Bermondsey.'

  'Aye. Dosh Callaghan's paying me to—'

  'It were me, mate.' He looked so sad I felt sorry for him. I didn't interrupt. Confession's good for the soul. 'Dosh Callaghan got me to swap some padpas - you know them odd-coloured sapphires? - for cheap tsavorites.'

  Acting time. I did a theatrical gape, almost choked myself on goulash. 'It was you, Sturffie?'

  'Dosh simply wanted a reason to send you to the Smoke, Lovejoy. He insisted on that Moiya tart pretending she was Sir Ponsonby's bird. I heard them laughing about it in the pub.'

  'Why, Sturffie?' I'd have been a star if I'd gone on the stage. I'm really good.

  'Dunno. They had a brief along, some tart with long hair.'

  'Really?' I said, acting baffled. 'Ta, Sturffie. I don't feel so bad now I know.'

  'You're okay about it, Lovejoy?' he asked, worried. 'I don't know why Dosh wanted you sniffing round the London street markets, though.'

  'Forget it. Life's just one big mystery. Look, Sturffie, about tonight. Will it be you, or some mate?'

  'Me,' he said, indignant. 'Unless it's something special?'

  Remembering what I could, I described Hymie's securit
y.

  'It'll only take me twenty minutes, Lovejoy. Is it far?'

  'No. Ten o'clock tonight okay?' Pub time is vital, this being when alibis grow on trees.

  After that, we started general talk over deals done and not done, the antique lore that makes life worth living. The one worry still nagging away was whether Dieter Gluck knew Sturffie. I calmed, laughing at Sturffie's tales.

  An hour later I waved him off, having given him a gillion warnings about his caqueteuse chair, what to say, how to offer it for sale. Then I phoned Dieter Gluck on his mobile.

  'It's tonight,' I said without preamble. 'I'll show you the stuff. You'll need an antiques expert with you.'

  'Where? I'll drive there. In my saloon.'

  'Be by your mobile phone at nine. It's London local.' I rang off without waiting. He'd be there. 33

  NOBODY WANTS WORRY. Even if there's no such things as spectres, memories create them where none existed. Since I'd never been sure where imagination begins and memory ends, I'm always half in, half out, of incipient fright.

  Tonight I unnerved myself for nothing. I mean, Spitalfields on an average London night is hardly a spooky nook. I waited on edge, wondering what I'd missed. Gluck on his way, fine. Hymie I'd phoned earlier, told him of three Japanese radio and gramophone buyers, eager to collect Columbia Grafanola machines and early Edison Amerolas, waiting, money in hand, in one of four Kensington hotels. I'd looked these names up in the public library, Charing Cross Road. 'They'll be there between nine and ten tonight,' I told him. 'Take a credit-card witness.' Whatever that was. I wanted to make sure Honor was with him. Breathless, Hymie asked me to spell the names. I rang off. Spell Japanese names? People nark me. Tell a penny lie, they want linguistics.

  I'd told Gluck to be at Aldgate in a taxi. Had I forgotten anything? No.

  Yet I was jumpy. Like I'd reminisced before, this area was Jack the Ripper's haunt. A thousand enthusiasts have written definitive volumes on the killer who'd called himself

  'Saucy Jack'. Books prove this or that, everybody a suspect. Sometimes it seems there's nobody left in Old London who hasn't been accused of being him. Only I know the really real solution: Jack the Ripper was a mortician worker at The London Hospital, down the road from here. Somebody touched my shoulder. I screeched and leapt a mile.