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

by Jonathan Gash

  'There are no shadows round the building, Lovejoy.'

  I sighed. She was a bloody nuisance.

  'There will be,' I said knowingly. 'At midnight.'

  'Who are the insiders? And how do we get the paintings away?'

  Had she no imagination, for God's sake? As for helpers, I'd just made them up.

  'Two false police vans will come to the front of the building,' I invented impatiently. It was the best I could think up on the spur. 'Okay? Load up and drive off.'

  'Where to, Lovejoy?'

  Jesus, but I was worn out. Coldly I stared her down until she coloured and started to apologize.

  'Who's lost sleep to help you?' I demanded. 'Who's spent a fortune phoning, er, Amsterdam, just to pay off those Cockney fight-fixers?' I waxed indignant, thinking what a martyr I was and what ungrateful bastards friends were.

  'I'm so sorry, Lovejoy. I didn't mean—'

  'It's all right,' I said, broken, a real sob in my voice. 'All I need is honesty.'

  She promised. I said fine, and went to find a friend.

  Judith Falconer's the world's most desirable radio reporter. Her station doesn't rival the BBC, being a decaying mansion outside London. I've hungered for her some years, with no luck. Every time I've drawn breath to suggest she takes me on holiday to Monet's Giverny and ravages my poor defenceless body she just makes casual conversation.

  She was waiting as arranged facing Eros, gorgeous as usual. We did the usual coffee fencing then got down to it.

  'Want a scoop, outside broadcast? Judith, you can be the saviour of the nation.' Okay, so I'd promised Lisa. But was she here? No.

  Judith was unfazed. 'Do you know how much an outside broadcast costs?'

  'A titchy dictaphone will do. The only thing is, you don't air it until next morning.'

  Her lovely brown eyes held me. 'What do you get out of this, Lovejoy?'

  'Nothing,' I said, no acting needed. 'But if you'd come to Giverny with me, no obligation, I'd be glad.' She said nothing.

  Being scooped by TV is the radio reporter's greatest fear. Her eyes sparkled.

  'Can I trust you, Lovejoy?'

  The world was low on trust today, I said. She smiled, said okay. Nothing about Giverny, selfish cow. See what I mean? Help others, you get nothing back.

  We parted amicably. I walked round the Tate until the vibrations from the paintings made me feel queasy. I phoned Saintly, told him about the forthcoming robbery tonight at an unnamed art gallery.

  'I'll phone you about ten o'clock tonight,' I said blithely. 'By then, I'll have sussed out who's doing it and where.'

  'Is this on the level, Lovejoy?'

  'Straight up,' I said. 'If nothing happens, you can arrest me. Incidentally, don't make too much noise or they might get away. And don't arrest a reporter called Judith who'll be describing events from the bushes.'

  Lovely feeling, being honest to the police. I'd never done it before. I felt holy. In spite of my new-found piety I didn't call into St Paul's for a quick prayer as I went past. No sense in risking the She Wolfs ghost at this late stage. I rang St Thomas's Hospital.

  Tinker was stable. They wouldn't give me any news about Trout. I insisted I was his brother, but they were adamant. It betokened bad.

  The trains were running on time. I made it to East Anglia, got a lift from an old lady who'd just come from the dentist. She gave me a cheery monologue on the most reliable adhesive for dental plates, should I ever reach false teeth. I said ta. She told me she collected antique hat pins. Don't laugh. You can buy handfuls for a farthing at any boot fair - today, that is. Tomorrow, nobody knows. If I'd spare change, I'd buy up every old hat pin in sight. For less than an afternoon's wages you could have a massive display - ivory, Edwardian silver, Victorian, early plastics (soaring, unbelievably rare), unique porcelain-headed hat pins made in craft potteries. We'd just got talking when she dropped me off at Best River Outcomes, Ltd. I was sorry to see her go. 'Come to tea, Saturday, Lovejoy,' she offered roguishly. 'I'll have my new teeth in.'

  'It's a date, Tranquillity.' I waved her off. Her collection sounded worth something.

  She'd described several original Art Deco pins.

  Alone, I surveyed the canal. After London the stillness was unnerving. The boatyard was soporific, the water motionless. It looked painted by a stoned artist. Three longboats lay canted on the bank, to voyage no more. Others rotted in the yard pool, one down at the stern. A moorhen chugged out of a half-submerged window. Only one longboat looked worthy. No wonder developers like Talleyton and Gluck had itchy fingers. It was an investor's dream - a pittance now, for a fortune tomorrow.

  A half-hearted hammer struck metal. 'Wotcher, Kettle,' I called.

  'That you?' a voice quavered.

  'Can you be more specific?'

  'Hello, Lovejoy.' The old bargee emerged with his little grandson Jack.

  'Can I take my pick of these longboats?'

  He hid his astonishment. 'Jack, show Lovejoy the engine.'

  'This way, Lovejoy.'

  Little Jack took my hand as if I were senile. He's six. At the non-sinking boat he held up his arms. I lifted him aboard, clambered after. Old Kettle sat on a bollard and lit his pipe while Jack showed me starter, forward, reverse. I heard him out and said ta.

  'I want to go to Saffron Fields, Kettle. Tonight.'

  He spat, tamped his pipe and wiped the stubber on his trouser leg. 'Not allowed night journeys on a canal, Lovejoy.'

  'But I'm a crook,' I said, narked.

  'The canal's blocked up,' Jack said. 'It tried to reach the sea but doesn't.'

  I looked at him. 'Don't be a nosey little sod, you.'

  'Lovejoy swore, Grampa.'

  'There's three locks, Chelmer style,' Kettle said. He used to make barge ware from sheet tin. I helped him to paint his jugs, kettles, tin vases, in the old style. We sold well to tourists, but he lost heart as his longboats failed. 'The last lock's our terminus.' He spat, eyed me. 'It's two fields from the sea estuary.'

  'Why're you telling me this?' I asked, indignant. 'Think I'm going to smuggle a barge load out of the country, onto some blacked-out ship like they used to do in olden days?'

  'Course not, Lovejoy,' Kettle said evenly.

  Four o'clock in the afternoon I went back to my cottage to nosh on bread and fried tomatoes, have a sleep. It would be a long night. 36

  ABOUT SEVEN I rang Gluck from the phone box by the chapel. It seemed impossible that he wouldn't hear my blood rushing in my ears.

  'The news of a gallery theft breaks soon. The eastern promise is set up.'

  'Where and when?'

  'Dawn. All one shipment.' I made myself sound shakier than I was. 'I can get the lot to your manor. You'll get a legit bill of sale.'

  'Wait.' He spoke to somebody, muffled. I didn't catch a word. 'Legit?'

  'Above board. I deliver the antiques. You're allowed thirty days to pay.'

  'It sounds good.' Yet he sounded wary. I thought, Dear God, must I lead everybody by the nose? Any dealer'd jump at it. I could see I'd have to make difficulties, to make him bite harder. I looked outside. The light was fading.

  'There's a problem, Gluck. The eastern promise just arrived offshore.'

  'Offshore where?'

  Hooked him. 'Can't you guess? It'll all soon be on your land. But there's a risk.'

  'I don't like risks.' His speech became guttural. He hated risks.

  What the hell did I say now? There was no risk. With Billia and Dang under arrest soon, Judith the broadcaster observantly recording every detail in Dulwich's dark ditches, with Wrinkle and Honor fornicating among Jack the Ripper's ghosts in Spitalfields, every menace was safely neutralized. There wasn't even a risk for me, an all-time first. My brilliant planning had finally triumphed.

  'The risk is I might need to get a van from somewhere.'

  'Silence.' He actually said that, like a schoolmaster. 'It will be dark. You will have the excess items covered. No vam.

  Okay, I w
as to see it didn't rain. 'Right, Mr Gluck. When you have all the antiques, you will leave the lad and the rest of us alone?' He said of course. 'Where do we meet?'

  'The end lock, in three hours.' He sniggered. 'I shall be strolling on my canal path, looking for trespassers.'

  Don't sniggers sound unpleasant? I was wet with sweat. I went to get the longboat from Kettle.

  'Going far, captain?'

  'Avast me hearties.' Normally I'd ignore repartee because I'm no good at it, but as I clambered aboard I had a crazy impulse to ask the old man to come too.

  'You all right, son?' He passed me the heavy iron key. 'Don't lose it.'

  The engine started first time. The best thing about these old canal longboats is they stay put. Until you engage gear there's no motion, because a canal isn't a river. No current, no parking problems. You want to stop, just glide to the bank and switch off.

  Best holiday in the world, a canal longboat. Every mile there's steps up to some tavern for your dinner. And canals pierce our towns and cities. Go up canal stairs, you're astonishingly in the middle of, say, Birmingham, Manchester, with glittery shops.

  Hell, but a canal's quiet in the country. And black. Apart from the muted thump of the engine, nothing. Fields invisible, trees looking at you thinking who's this interloper. It's like night unmasks countryside's hidden menace. I had a torch, shone it all about.

  Nobody. Something splashed ahead. I hate night splashes. I hate daytime splashes too.

  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that all splashes are bad news.

  Longboats on canals, some old law, are restricted to four miles an hour, the walking speed of a barge horse, so all engines are governed. Two miles from the boatyard, I passed a pub and chugged under a disused bridge. I knew the bridge. Only cows use it, crossing between pastures.

  By then I'd remembered how to steer. The tiller's just a stick. Move it slowly.

  Remember that the barge weighs tons and has no brakes.

  I came to the first lockgate, cut the engine. A canal lock's a place for lovers. Maybe that's why night travel's against the law?

  'Night travel's against the law,' somebody told me a yard away.

  I screeched in fright, almost dropped the huge lock key.

  'You stupid sod!' I shouted. 'Scared me witless!'

  There was an angler on the bank. It wasn't Clatter. I shone my light. He was encased in oilskins. Rod, folding stool, wicker baskets, keep net, and a small green tent. Maniac, at this hour.

  'Night barges spoil fishing,' he groused. No lovers, only mad anglers. I ignored him.

  A canal lock is basically a box of water, doors at each end. This box was empty. Open the uphill door, it fills and you can sail into the box. Close the uphill and undo the lower door, and out you sail. Into more empty darkness.

  In five minutes I was missing the bad-tempered loon angler. A car went along a distant road, bouncing jauntily behind its cone of light. Lovers off, I thought bitterly, to heavy breathing among the bulrushes, selfish sods.

  The second lock came and went. I began to glimpse seashore lights through trees and heard the long moan of a distant ship. Under another bridge. Nobody. Then the straight overgrown stretch, so long my torchlight wouldn't reach to the end. Trees closed in, the waterway becoming silted. Logs, branches, scraped my longboat's tin hull. Twice I felt the longboat tug on the canal bed. I was near the canal's sealed extremity.

  No more lights now, just the skyglow from a town miles up the coast. A faint yellow sheen reflected on a cloud as the Hook of Holland ferry headed inshore. But space and time are a coast's deceivers. What looks like a mile can be a few paces or a league, and a short friendly path can be an endless quagmire. Give me streets every time.

  The keel grounded. I reversed the engine, managed to slowly back away. Ahead, my beam revealed only tangled foliage with maybe a hint of a solid structure somewhere within. I'd reached the last lock, where ancient builders had finally lost to the railways.

  No need to moor the longboat. I struggled ashore into a mass of brambles, branches nearly poking my eyes out. No footpath. I just had to flounder. The lock wasn't even completed, its seaward gate bricked up, like everyone had wearily thought oh what the hell. Beyond, a small copse and the dark closed fields between the canal and the estuary. The tide was in. I could hear it. I stood on the mound watching a river cruiser's lights about a mile away. I could hear music, screams of laughter. It turned south, following the coast, lights and noise receding. Lucky folk.

  Three hours, was it, since I'd spoken to Gluck? I let the torch lead the way directly to the sea. I was there in no time. I know an old poacher who counts his steps, reckons he never gets lost.

  The hard was rimmed with sea. The tide now covered the mud flats, a few boats bobbing in the bay. One or two wore lights, thank God, but nobody was about. The cottages further along looked in bed, with a couple of lamps as reminders.

  No cars. No sign of Gluck. Had there been some mistake, me misjudging the time?

  Maybe I ought to have listened to the traffic news for congestion on the London road.

  One niggle: I'd rung Gluck on his mobile phone. Maybe he was already in East Anglia. I looked about, saw nobody. I walked slowly along the foreshore by the line of hawthorns. And back.

  About here, was it? I stood looking at the waves. Strange to think the sea covered that lonely dead pilot in his plane under the mudflats only a few strides away. I shone my light, just making sure no ghostly figure was rising from the waters. I noticed that a pram, a small rowboat, and a nearby river coracle were no longer moving. The tide must be on the ebb. A cutter too was listing idly, ready to flop over like a dog for a kip until the next tide.

  'Lovejoy.'

  'Hello, Gluck.' He must have approached from the bushes. Where was his car? And his bruiser? I wanted him here mob-handed, all in one bag.

  'Where are my antiques?'

  He ought not to sound so amused, holding in a laugh.

  When people do that it's always at my expense. He should be worried sick, sensing treachery. I suddenly felt alone, but had to go along with it and say my prepared line.

  'I've got them, Gluck. Where you'll never find them.' My plan was simple - tell him that Wrinkle's collection was stashed in our town's crummy Antiques Arcade. Anybody tried to rob it, the lads would descend like the Keystone Kops.

  'Really, Lovejoy?' He clicked a cigarette lighter, lit a fag, inhaled, still suppressing chuckles. He had something in his other hand. It glinted in my beam. Gunmetal blue.

  He palmed it, smiling. 'Only a two-two, but hollow-drilled nose rounds. Well? Where are they?'

  When I said nothing, he tutted. 'You wouldn't betray me, would you? The arrangement is you provide me with the oriental antiques you showed me. I write a promissory note to pay for them.' He looked about, really enjoying playing his part. 'Yet you have no antiques.'

  'You've checked the longboat?' I knew he would have. Was that angler his new bruiser, Kenelley, the one who'd done Trout and Tinker?

  'Of course. It is empty. We watched you arrive, Lovejoy.'

  We is plural. I didn't like the thought of being followed in the gloaming.

  'I've already hidden the antiques, Gluck.'

  'Dear me.' He wasn't at all distressed. 'What's your price?'

  Stick to your plan you can't go wrong. I kept telling myself that.

  'Tomorrow, you sign over the manor house and Saffron Fields to Mortimer, Colette's son. In exchange you get the antiques.'

  'And Dulwich? I'm counting on that.'

  'It's all in hand. Agreed?'

  He finally laughed. It was like a dam bursting. He rolled in the aisles, fell about. I watched, astonished. He cackled, guffawed, blotted his eyes, bellowed.

  'No, Lovejoy,' he said, choking.

  What was wrong? 'No what?'

  'No deal. No deception. You have no antiques.'

  Yet some of Wrinkle's were genuine, and Wrinkle's fakes would deceive any dealer. A fortune by any othe
r name, for heaven's sake.

  'I admit some of the pieces are—'

  'Tell him,' Gluck gasped, wheezing.

  A woman stepped from the tree-lined darkness. I thought, eh?

  'You're a fool, Lovejoy.' Honor was calm as a pond. 'I told you I'd combed the world for a real opportunity. Dieter jumped at me.' She gave an ugly giggle. 'I mean my deal -

  among other things.'

  'You're in with Gluck,' I said dully. 'What does Wrinkle think?'

  'He's not going to think any more, Lovejoy.' No regret in her querulous voice. 'He was so fucking boring.'

  Wrinkle, past tense? Which meant my thinking days were also already over. Gluck sobered, took my torch.

  'Come, Lovejoy.' The outrage was that he sounded kindly, a sadistic teacher's benevolence. 'It won't hurt. We'll do it properly. No hard feelings?'

  Honor nagged, 'We should have brought the auto down the side road. Those shitty fields.'

  I quaked. 'Look, Dieter,' I said, my voice trembling. 'I've some antiques worth a mint, if only—'

  'No, Lovejoy,' he said with regret. 'No more ifs.'

  We left the shore. I gave a desperate glance at the receding tide, the sluggish boats, the tilting dinghies. No ghost rose from the sea to rescue me, Mortimer's only helper.

  Gluck gestured me to turn round. I felt something cold click on my wrists. Handcuffs?

  'Walk on,' he purred. They say that to horses. 37

  WE CUT OVER ploughed ground. Like a fool I lost my bearings from lurching to my knees. Every time I stumbled Gluck did his laugh. I realized he was quite mad. He'd slipped a rope under the handcuffs, thought it was a huge joke to yank me sideways, bring me down every few yards.

  Away from the sea the night grew darker, the shushing of the waves quieter. I could only hear my laboured breathing, Gluck's lunatic cackling, and Honor's perennial grumbling about the chill. I hadn't a notion where we were going. A car in the distance, some selfish sod off to the boozer.