The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  The door had a porthole glass. Inside, I drew the curtain across it, hoping the vigilant constable wasn’t. One bed, the occupant dozing. He didn’t look ill.

  ‘Wakie wakie, Des,’ I said quietly.

  He zoomed awake with horrified eyes. ‘Wha ... ?’ He looked for his police protection, then quietened as I shook my head. I was pleased there were no bleeps and dripping tubes. Hospitals make me shudder. ‘Who’re you?’

  ‘Stay cool.’ I was disappointed. Other people say these Americanisms, they sound really good. When I say them I sound pathetic. I saw contempt rise in his eyes. He had me sussed. I drew up a chair and sat. If the peeler bothered to return, he’d see me sitting, posing no threat, though that wouldn’t stop him from battering me senseless in the pursuit of his calling. ‘We want the word, that’s all. Blow by blow.’ I leant forward. ‘Your version. Not... ’ I nodded at the vacated bed.

  Understanding crept in. You don’t need to make blokes leap to conclusions. Half a chance, they leap with abandon. Look at Dolly.

  ‘What’s Sass been saying?’

  I put on a show of innocence. ‘What do they tell me?’ I did my lean again with a wintry smile. ‘Just imagine I’m ... Fraud Squad.’

  He smiled at that, raised himself with a wince that I felt. ‘Sass wus on time. We did the wheels okay, sussed the pub just right.’ I looked at the floor, nodding. It was all a bit Fagin-in-the-loft, but the nerk kept going. ‘The dollybird fingered the bloke. We starts the scrap all right. It’d have gone brill, but for this poofter who starts screaming.’ ‘You sure she fingered the right bloke?’

  ‘Leave orff,’ he said with weary scorn. ‘I bin doing rumblows ‘fore you wus outer yor egg, son.’

  A rumblow is a fight that isn’t a fight, to provide distraction. But why exactly? All I know was, some Brummy blokes started a scrap about some finds from Suffolk.

  ‘Nothing else?’ I did my over-the-shoulder glance.

  ‘Look. Sass chats the bint up. She says the one they call Wolfie got the Stonehenge. We do the deal. He makes to scarper. Sass sez not on your life. This Wolfie geezer does his nut, this poofter starts screaming. Some gorilla moves on us. Sass pulls his shiv. The rest is in the papers.’ He sounded bitter. ‘Tell Si we did it to the letter, okay?’

  Stonehenge is ancient treasure. ‘The right bird, though?’

  ‘Tits, red hair, miserable cow that Meg. Tarts oughter be in school.’

  ‘True,’ I said, rising. ‘I never came, right?’ Too much. I’d done too much. Actors say: Enough is too much; wanting more is just enough.

  Suspicion clouded his eyes. ‘What’s the name?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s mine,’ I said, trying for Maudie Laud’s laconic manner and missing by a street. I reached the door. ‘I’ll tell Si it sounds to me you did right.’

  He glared, not knowing if I was from his boss. Si, Simon?

  Feeling I was catching up at last, I stayed and played with the children scattered on white ward linoleum. I played them bowls, but the little sods beat me hands down. I complained to the nurses that they cheated, but they only laughed. The infants laughed. Kiddies and birds take no notice. But it’s not fair to cheat. I never do, except when it’s vital. I’d have won ten-seven but for a little swine called Jerry.

  ‘Get on with you,’ the sister scolded when I grumbled.

  ‘My wood was in!’ I groused. ‘You’d have to be blind - ’

  ‘Jerry nearly is,’ she said, like she’d told me he was tall for his age. ‘He’s good, isn’t he?’

  I swallowed, said I had to go. I told the children so long. They shouted to come back and they’d play me bowls again. I left feeling utterly down. Some days it’s always big snakes, little ladders. Or even no ladders at all.

  Meg is Imogen’s pal. Now, Im is Gee Omen’s lady. And Si, Simon, is Gee’s partner. He hired the two Brummies, Des and Sass, to go to The Ship and buy the precious pre-Roman finds illicitly excavated by the night hunters. Mistakenly - Meg’s mistake - they’d approached Wolfie who, of course, is the only undercover bobby our town’s got. He’s so undercover, in fact, that he’s practically famous. No wonder he’d started swinging when this Sass bloke pulled out his sly knife to enforce a deal. And no wonder Raddie started screaming. Which had made Chuck put the miscreants severely into hospital. Okay, except for one thing.

  Where did all this treasure-buying money come from? And why Simon? Or was it his own gelt, or his pal Gee’s, diamond sight- holder? Was it to corner the market? But who in his right mind went chasing diamonds when the international market had fallen like a, well, stone?

  And I’d seen Meg before somewhere.

  When I got outside I didn’t see Dolly. Mind you, you’d miss that tiny car of hers if it was parked near a brick. Gone home in a temper? I sighed, caught the bus.

  ‘Liffy!’ I spread my arms wide, as if he was a narked cow.

  The window slid down. ‘You rotten sod, Lovejoy.’ He’s got one of these nose-picker’s faces.

  I was a picture of innocence, there between the lane’s hedgerows. ‘I got pulled in by Maudie. Sorry. Anyway, didn’t I put you on to the Bentley? It’s worth a mint. Get it over the Channel, lad. Blondes, beds and bullion.’

  ‘Nearly got me done, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Listen, Liffy.’ I got heated. Why do people never trust me? ‘I was in Dolly’s motor, right? But I act as decoy, let them take me in, knowing you were waiting here. They do me over, but do I complain? I’ve still blood on me.’ I yelled, working up. ‘I get myself done over rotten - ’

  ‘Okay, Lovejoy. I owe you. Sorry, mate. And ta.’

  That cooled me, but only a little. I saw my cottage door ajar, and guessed Tinker had been. Me, the iceman. ‘You left this Bentley in my undergrowth, right? Then they’d blame me if they called, right?’ ‘Don’t go on, Lovejoy.’

  ‘That’s two you owe me. Any antiques in it?’

  ‘Nothing, Lovejoy. It’s clean as a frog’s arse.’ Grumbling, he disembarked. I undid the boot, the bonnet, searched the glove compartments, the wine cooler, radio, doors.

  ‘I did the door panels, Lovejoy.’ He shrugged at my quizzical look. ‘Foreigners and drugs, what not, you know?’

  ‘No tom? No documents, Liff?’

  ‘These.’ He pulled out some travel documents, a Hook of Holland ferry pass, a small notebook, insurance, tat. I handed it back, disappointed, but kept the notebook to shufti.

  ‘Liffy. Were you at the ceilidh in The Ship?’

  ‘The Brummies as got knifed?’ He grinned at the thought, an undercover peeler scrapping out of a crime. ‘Yeah. Saw Wolfie fight for his honour. A laugh. He’d have got knifed like a colander but he hacked Raddie’s legs. Then Chuck, and the sky fell in.’

  A laugh indeed. ‘Any witnesses?’

  He fell about. ‘We all had our eyes shut.’

  ‘See you, then, Liff. And ta.’

  ‘Pleasure, Lovejoy.’ He grinned at me from the opulent interior. ‘Here. Your plump little tart. I wouldn’t mind having a chew, when you’ve done.’

  East Anglia’s never short of Beau Brummels. ‘Cheers, Liffy.’ ‘Cheers, Lovejoy.’

  The great saloon car drifted away looking like a church in search of a parking space. I sighed. I sometimes really wish there was such a thing as an antique motor car. They’d be beautiful, if they weren’t modern crapology. ‘I’ll keep you in mind, Liffy,’ I said, like some sad epitaph, and went in to wait for news from Tinker. He should have bought the Parian ware from Raddie for Florence by now.

  Inside, I read Untracht on jewellery until the day closed and I had to hunt for candles. Long after dark I remembered I’d been going to see Imogen. And Florence. But I was worrying about Liffy. I kept seeing his face grinning cherubically, saying his Cheers Lovejoy and driving off.

  Had I done wrong?

  Dolly came, bringing seven pasties and a primus stove with tea, milk, sugar, bread and butter, which staved off one hunger at least until nightfall and time for her to
satisfy a second hunger. She checks the windows for an hour before she rapes me, in case non-existent hordes not stalking the lanes stop to look. She wedges chairs at the door, for the same non-reason. I don’t mind. It’s what they do. But didn’t my urging Liffy to nick the silver Bentley put him terribly at risk?

  Odd, that a woman’s best gift is sometimes oblivion. That night, it didn’t come.

  It was early. I woke to a patter of rain. Still dark, the room cold. Dolly was sleeping with the woman’s intensity, a serious job to be done.

  Hands inside for warmth, I stared unseeing at the ceiling. Why do we? We might as well keep them closed. I couldn’t get Liffy out of my mind.

  It was time I saw Mrs. Arden. I wasn’t sure why, because I’d finished with her. Yet she seemed the prime mover. There were other mysteries. I mean, what did elusive Deirdre Divine have to do with anything? And Mrs. Frances Bledsoe’d pointed her rich lady friend at me then cleared off, no longer associating with riffraff like Lovejoy.

  Not only that, the Swedish glass piece with its priceless air had vanished from the silver Bentley. So where was it? Nobody would leave a thing like that in a parked car. Yet they had.

  Dolly sighed, turned over. I dragged the blankets back. That Sunday jaunt seemed to be growing in size, time, variety. Horses had been mentioned. Any horse was bad news. ‘Caravan’ means camels, a mobile home, or a gypsy’s painted dawdler that poets write sonnets about. I was definitely no gypsy type, campfires and roasted hedgehogs, squirrels for pudding and nettle soup.

  No, thank you. I’d reluctantly agreed to go, thinking it a kind of posh ramble in a charabanc, a pint at a tavern before the evening snog. But a fortnight? Not only that, but Nurse Lin had hinted that I was somehow responsible, kulak to gauleiter at one bound.

  And my lustful dream of a trip with some elegant ladies had vanished. Now I’d be lumbered with nutters, loonies from the booby hatch. Doc Lancaster had given me funds, very kind of him, seeing he desperately wanted me to go while he did sod all.

  That word echoed in my cavernous skull. Hang on, I thought with

  sudden interest. Doc Lancaster desperately ... Mrs. Arden desperately wanted me to go, didn’t she? Imogen wanted me to go. And Raddie. And Nurse Siu Lin, but she was crackers about Doc Lancaster so she would. And Dolly, also desperately, because it would be sweet and other Dolly-type words that were her irrefutable logic.

  All that desperation. Why did the world want me off with the crazies? It didn’t make sense. The other worrying point was that Maudie Laud with her Keystone Kops was gnawing the same bone. And wherever I went Simon Doussy seemed to be already there, smiling, nodding. And Gee Omen. Odder, these big buyers had all suffered lately: Gee in diamonds; Twentyman in Lloyds’ insurance tumbles; Simon Doussy - didn’t Big Frank say he collected Impressionists? If so, Doussy had lost fortunes skating on that thin ice.

  Then this rumblow, at The Ship inn. The Old Bill’s undercover man Wolfie brawls with crooks, yet I get questioned. And all about some ancient golds dug up hereabouts that I hadn’t yet seen. And Meg, Imogen’s friend, chats up the ubiquitous Simon Doussy, and happens to point out to the Brummy knifers the wrong bloke. So who was the right bloke?

  Suddenly it’s like I’m watching a kabuki play blindfold with commentary in lost Tasmanian. I gazed in the pitch to where Dolly slept beside me. She of the upright, uptight morals always helped. Being entirely woman, her help was peculiarly hit or miss. Her reasoning was a strange mutant all her own, but she was all for me. Hers was the weird type of help that people give children, like those Thermogene pads slapped on your little chest to itch you to distraction, or those lunatic ointments that ran down to sting your eyes. My Gran used to say, Lord, spare me my helpers. I know how she felt.

  Right. Reason assuaged by having realized it was all beyond me, I cast my leg over Dolly - lucky they have a waist, just right - and slept the sleep of the just.

  Then Dolly woke me with some terrible news. It was Sunday.

  She wouldn’t drive me to Mrs. Bledsoe’s. I honestly don’t know what gets into Dolly sometimes, because Mrs. Bledsoe belongs to the same clubs, societies.

  ‘Bloody great.’ I was bitter. Dolly dumped me in town. ‘It’s a matter of life and death.’

  She gave me her glare, which is truly horrendous, a frown and a tut together. ‘Please do not give my regards to Mrs. Bledsoe.’ She gunned her engine, preparing to drive our town traffic mental.

  I gasped in outrage. ‘Dolly! You’re so, well, blunt!

  She said defiantly, ‘Mrs. Bledsoe harbours ... feelings for you.’

  Reeling at such frankness I said, ‘Dolly, I’m shocked - ’

  ‘Please excuse me, and be at the start by two.’

  Off her motor crept, causing vehicular consternation for miles. Well, he travels fastest who travels alone. I’d no intention of being anywhere near the start. I wasn’t going.

  Tinker was sloshed half out of his mind at the Welcome Sailor. He grabbed my arm, ordered three pints on me, and drew me furtively down the taproom bar.

  ‘Lovejoy, for Gawd’s sake! What you been up to?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said in a panic, quickly reviewing my blameless life. ‘The Old Bill hauled me in, but - ’

  ‘Women,’ he proclaimed in his foghorn whisper. ‘They’re gunning for you. Oughter be in church, the lot.’

  ‘Amen.’ I agreed. ‘Any idea what for?’

  ‘Jessina Mosston, snooty bitch. Florence; she come earliest. That lass who’s always no frock on.’ He meant Imogen. ‘And her redheaded girl, Meg. Dunno what you done, Lovejoy, but I’d steer clear of her for a coupla year.’

  ‘That’s enough to be going on with.’ I paid for the beer.

  ‘And that Mrs. Arden and her blokes - ’

  ‘Blokes?’ Plurals are the pits. ‘Who? Carl, big posh motor?’

  ‘No. That Doussy wally, Gee Omen, a foreigner doing his nut.’ A wally is a dealer. ‘Mrs. Arden called at your cottage.’

  Escaped by a whisker. ‘Those Suffolk gold finds. The police -’ ‘And that Mrs. Divine.’ Tinker cackled. ‘And her pal, posh bint you used to shag rotten.’ At my affronted stare he fell about, rheumy eyes streaming. ‘With the huge bristols. You used to be knackered all bleeding day.’

  ‘Tinker,’ I interrupted, broken, ‘shut your gums. Did you get that Parian ware for Florence?’

  His face became prim as a Victorian granddad’s. ‘From that poofter? Aye. Oughter be locked away. With his gorilla.’

  Homo sapiens shares 98 per cent of genes with other primates. But this only makes you wonder who’s the ape.

  ‘Raddie knocked it down to a quarter ’cos you’d sent me.’ I was astonished. The trade discount’s 20 per cent. ‘It was a lady’s mitt holding a shell.’

  Raddie, desperate to please me? Desperation was still about. ‘Who entered the glass piece at Postern’s?’

  ‘Dunno, Lovejoy.’ His expression cleared. ‘I seed Mrs. Arden’s husband with it yesterday after the Castle fair.’

  That shut me up. He hawked and spat phlegm into the tavern fire, almost putting it out with a prolonged hiss. I smiled apology at two ladies trying to chat by the warmth.

  This news gave me urgent visits to make, now I had some priority. First, ask Jessina Mosston, who’d thought up the Auction of Promises. Then Deirdre Divine, Carl Arden’s side piece. Then maybe Valerie Arden. It was too risky to confront Simon Doussy. I didn’t trust him from afar. Closer could be worse.

  ‘Here, Lovejoy,’ Tinker said as I rose to go, leaving money to ensure his survival. ‘Hear about Liffy?’

  That froze me in mid-exit. ‘Liffy?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘Got topped, son. Dropped orff.’

  ‘Liffy? Not ... Liffy?

  Tinker searched my face. ‘We friends of his, Lovejoy?’

  My chest had become a glacier. ‘Sort of.’

  He groaned. ‘Oh Christ. We gotter do summink?’

  ‘Not yet, Tinker.’ I swallowed, tried to anyway. ‘H
ow?’ ‘Stopped in a layby. He took fire siphoning petrol. Fag ash dropped in, burned him and his old Morris.’

  ‘A Morris motor?’ Liffy doesn’t smoke. ‘God rest him.’

  ‘Amen.’ Tinker piously bowed his head, then yelled at the barmaid, ‘Miss! Get off your fat arse.’

  The air on East Hill inhaled better, but only until the recollection of Liffy’s so long, ‘Cheers, Lovejoy’, came to mind. Then it was hard to breathe. Liffy never had an old Morris. He only pinched classy cars. I walked up the slope and caught a taxi from outside Mark’s to the home of Mrs. Bledsoe, she of the remarkable figure attested by Tinker. I saw Tania beckon frantically from the museum steps. She even ran after the taxi, but I’ve been chased by faster birds and still got away on crutches.

  The news sickened me. I didn’t know if I’d done it by neglect,

  murder by omission. But Liffy was gone. Where was Dashboard? Why hadn’t Liffy been puttering safely home on his motorbike?

  Mrs. Bledsoe wasn’t in. A serf spumed me at the front door, which I’m used to, but they also refused to take a message. I got the taxi driver to phone for Mrs. Deirdre Divine’s number. His call-car service found out her address, Artillery Street by the Falcon Arms.

  The area is down the Hythe, the town’s docks. Nothing like Liverpool, just a muddy estuary by flat sea marshes with samphire whiskering the sea lands. Birds hang about there, gaped at by twitchers through complicated lenses, and cold onshore winds set the tethered boats clinking like tinkers’ barrows. On the water you meet small two-thousand-ton ships from the Continent. The drab warehouses, on their last legs, line the harbourside road that heads for town with relief. It’s there that New Town begins - ‘new’ because it flourished after Queen Boadicea burnt the joint after a disagreement with Caesar. It became newer still when Cromwell spotted that the town guessed wrong in the Great Civil War. Terraced houses cover the area, two parishes only. They’re unpretentious, back gardens but nothing much in front, cobbled streets, small chapels, cramped pubs.