I honestly didn’t do a thing, not me. I mean, the best of intentions. I was simply going to turn them in, maybe make a statement to the peelers. And I wasn’t thinking vengeance. I don’t believe in it, never have. Civilized man can’t. It was accidental. My caftan really did catch on the brake - else why did the caravan go? A horse-drawn vehicle’s brake is only a single stick, for God’s sake. All in a split millisec. I saw it. I still do, on bad nights. I lay there stunned. The caravan passed - it didn’t race, leap, shoot, merely passed in a gentle glide - into the air a few yards away. I saw, maybe thought I saw, Vana’s aghast face at her window. The caravan rotated with slow grace, in space, down and down. To smash into the lake with a horrendous lack of noise. Like in a silent film where the ratchets make do for sound.
Olwen was screaming. I stared appalled at Dimity.
‘Didn’t deliver, huh?’ she said knowingly.
‘Shut it, silly bitch.’ I could feel my face drain as the implication entered by thick skull. She knew, had seen, maybe could turn me in, when I’d done nothing wrong. Everybody who knows me’d say that.
‘You got it, man,’ she said. ‘That police?’
Calvin was babbling into some car phone. The police car at the engulfed rehab unit was wahwahing. Olwen was screaming still. Calvin shouted her his one question.
‘You got it? You got every fucking frame?’
‘No,’ she babbled.
He hit her, shouting abuse. Really cruel. I mean, she’d been taken completely by surprise. I hate cruelty to women. It’s totally wrong. He’d have kicked her if he’d been able.
Me and Dimity slid down the scree. I shoved her first because skittering on fragments of granite would have cut my feet even more. This way, she was useful.
It took a horrible long minute to make the first vehicles. We were sharing somebody’s grotty porridge when the Old Bill came stumbling after with their daft questions. Me and Dimity answered in a yeah-man-wowee lingo, me copying everybody else.
They gave up, and left grumbling at the climb back to the scene of the crime - no, accident, pure and simple. I told Dimity I needed to find Sister Cruza, and was conducted through the impi of wondering travvies all asking what the Old Bill were doing at the lake end of the camp when the road block was at the other. I told everybody there’d be a camp meeting at eight o’clock.
By then I’d be off, Deo volente. Let them hold a durbar. Count me out.
If you go to Leptis Magna, in beautiful Libya, there is a forum place that looks so-o-o distinguished. Stone benching all round the open city centre space. Sit, and chat across to your neighbours. The giveaway clue lies underneath. A runnel, gulley. The marble benching has significantly shaped holes. Because it’s simply a loo, a public public lavatory where Romans sat and read newspapers - on wax - while slaves poured jars of water beneath. Cool, those Romans. Nearby are immense baths - cold, tepid, warmish, hot - where travellers were soaped by delectable birds. I used to marvel how it must have felt. Momenta showed me.
They were just mobile when I reached the Temple. Dimity didn’t want me to go in, but I had an alibi to see to. Momenta’s acolyte was on his dawn smoke.
‘Momenta?’ I shook her, a lovely experience. ‘The plan’s changed. Sty won’t need you. I’m to take his place. Bath, clothes, breakfast. Okay?’
‘Yes, Lovejoy.’
She took over, moving among the throng, rousing serfs. It took some time before I was in a bath - carried in, cleaned of chicken dung and two rabbits. Perfumes, soaps from fantastical bottles, and I was stripped and lowered into the scented water. The Temple Vestals, seven strong, gently washed me free of blood and muck and earth. One even did my nails. They washed my hair, had a hair drier. They cooed with pity over my feet.
They towelled me dry, dressed me in a cotton singlet, silk shirt, jodhpurs. I felt and smelt like a fencing master. I commanded a breakfast alone with Momenta, and told the rest of the kulaks where to produce a motor car, sparing no expense. The grub was a serious disappointment, cereals, water, unleavened bread, tea made from dubious grass. If this was religion, give me paganism. Momenta sat
on the floor, me on a canvas throne thing. She wore her Greek set, her exposed breast distracting me.
‘Momenta,’ I said when we were alone, ‘I have serious news. The master, my, er, partner, Sty, has ascended.’ I felt a prat saying it, but the acolytes were already chanting and clinking handbells. They must have heard.
‘I suspected it, Lovejoy,’ she said, without a qualm. ‘Consort with evil, evil takes you. Are you in his place?’
‘Er, yes.’ I brightened at the lie. ‘I require all the places where Sty had dealings. You understand?’ I added hastily, a bloody lentil stuck in my teeth, ‘To undo the wrong done.’
‘Harmony.’ She nodded, a lovely moment. ‘All seventy-nine addresses are in my memory.’
Seventy-nine! A gold mine! Remembering the caravan falling, I wished I’d not thought that. I meant a lucky break.
‘Write what antiques Sty would have collected. Mark which are paid for, which are not. Then leave. Take two acolytes. I shall be with you in, er, spirit, and see you in East Anglia, at the Temple meadow. Collect the antiques as you journey on.’
‘Who will rule there?’
‘Me,’ I said, spirits soaring. I’d be good at it, with Preacher, part time, for hymns only. ‘Have you funds?’
‘Yes. Plenteous instruments of sordid commerce.’
Did she mean money? ‘Take half, give me half. Leave about noon. The others must wait here for, er, orders.’
‘Very well, Lovejoy. And the antiques we gather up?’
She sounded like the Old Testament. ‘You will keep them for me. One thing. I want a written message taken to the American officer named Farahar. You know him by sight. Urgent, within minutes. Possibly up near the landslide.’
She got me a jacket. I said to her, ‘ You have duties. Go.’ I think from a Charlton Heston feature. ‘Someone will come alone, wanting to speak with me. I might need four stalwart acolytes nearby in case I call.’ I almost said to gird up their loins.
Momenta went with my scrawled message. I waited for the foe to drop by. He had to. Somehow I couldn’t see Farahar killing Liffy. I could see Sty, or Doussy and Sty. Which left Doussy.
*
He came after about an hour, me by now hungry and wanting- at least another lentil. The tent flap went, and there he stood. He looked, came slowly in. I’d had a good go at making myself look in charge.
‘Lovejoy?’ As if he still couldn’t believe it.
‘Doussy?’ As if I could.
‘God.’ He sighed in reluctant admiration. ‘You’re a sod to get...’ Get rid of, he wanted to say.
‘You’re not on tape. Chat’s safe today.’
‘What now? A deal?’
‘Aye. You pay Dashboard twenty years’ salary, for killing Liffy. One-off or drip feed, I don’t care.’
He thought a bit, standing there. A less decisive bloke would have made out he wasn’t to blame. He said, ‘Very well. I’ll pay him one sum.’
‘Do it, or you’re for it.’ I saw a glimmer in his eye, and smiled. ‘Anything happens to me or Dashboard, you’ll have one hour before the sky falls in.’
He hesitated, wondering if it already had. ‘These people are Sty’s. He was my ally, not yours.’
‘Your scam slew Liffy, Vana, Sty.’
‘Not everything was me. Vana and Sty were accidents.’
‘Oh, aye.’ I didn’t want my one listener to reach the right conclusion. ‘Whose scam was it? Who’ll get the profit?’
‘My syndicate, my idea to include Farahar.’
That was what I wanted. I relaxed. ‘The Roman gold mines lie under this very ground, eh?’ I drew a circle. ‘Two miles northwest of Glan-y-nant, the old lead mines. Silver at Llywemog. But nothing quite like Dolaucothy.’ I cursed myself for trying to threaten with Welsh pronunciation. ‘Except for places like Mynydd Mai, eh, Doussy?’
The blighter actually smiled cheerfully. ‘Well, the temptation, Lovejoy! The scam screamed to be played. Can you imagine? Reopen the old Romano-Celtic gold mines here, clandestinely. Small amounts. We craft the artefacts, plant them in Farahar’s Suffolk lands. We “accidentally” plough them up. And sell to the highest bidder. We mine ten gold ounces in Mynydd Mai, they become six million dollars overnight.’
I heard him out, the murdering sod. ‘Is it worth deaths?’
‘Don’t be foolish. Liffy stole my motor. I couldn’t take the risk of you having the Kungsholm. You’d have traced the legit owner, realized it was a plant.’ So Liffy had tried to nick the Swedish glass, and not told me. Well, I’d have done the same. Doussy spread his hands. ‘You’d have done the same.’
See? They go off their heads. No wonder Jessina Mosston had mouthed a sorry, she with the husband who owned East Anglia’s posh motor concession. ‘Churchill said once that even if a strategy’s beautiful, you must occasionally examine the results.’
‘My results justify it all, Lovejoy. Easy to hire travvies with explosives, Lovejoy. Obliterate the heath unit, to get - ’
‘ - the travvies blamed and moved out, leaving the valley free.’ ‘Concealing the gold workings that Farahar rediscovered in the fly-over photographs. Welsh gold mined today is pricey, yes. But Welsh gold made into ancient artefacts authenticated by a divvy ... well.’ He was in heaven. I swear he almost floated.
‘Valerie Arden’s first husband was a chemistry don. Was it a genuine mistake, those Brummy lads - Des, Sass - picking on Wolfie in The Ship?’
He laughed, rueful. ‘Mistaken identity, Lovejoy. Meg.’
‘And me?’ I answered myself. ‘On camera, picking out the one genuine gold. Vana Farahar inveigled me in to be filmed doing it. An advertising video for you, Sty, Vana, your syndicate. You planned to eliminate me under the landslide. So you could say I was still alive somewhere overseas, providing certificates of authenticity for each antique.’
‘True, Lovejoy.’ He was in agony at how things had gone. ‘The video tape went over with Vana.’
‘You want me to film it again?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t believe you were still alive!’
‘Then you’d kill me a second time?’
‘Now, Lovejoy.’ He was placating me. ‘God murders us all and gets away with it.’
‘What do I get?’
‘Five per cent.’ The answer was ready. ‘Every single “find” on Farahar’s land, you get cash on the nail.’
The argument took a while over the percentage, Doussy beating me down. We settled on eight, as if I cared. It was only to convince him I was sincere. I told him to leave first and I watched him go, disdaining the people all around. He actually leant away when somebody spoke.
‘Bye, Simon,’ I said to myself. ‘Remember me to Liffy.’ And slowly counted to a thousand. ‘Colonel?’
He stepped from behind the hangings, thank God.
‘I heard.’ He was pale, overweight, sweating. He’d thought himself in control. ‘Lovejoy. I must know. Was Vana - ?’
‘All women are faithful,’ I said. Like hoping there’s a God.
‘It was a fraud, then? Vana included?’
‘Only to prove your theories,’ I lied gravely. ‘Pity Doussy was so evil.’
‘That arrangement with him, Lovejoy?’ he asked heavily.
‘I had to pretend along. He killed Liffy, a pal, by burning him. I’ll try to get even. After he’s paid up.’ I sighed. ‘A self-confessed murderer, of Liffy, your wife, Sty.’ I made my voice bitter. ‘He’ll walk away scotage-free. Killers do.’
‘Do they?’ he said, white, intense.
‘Every time.’ I was so sorrowful. ‘Report him to the police, he’ll have alibis. Some innocent bloke will get sentenced instead.’ I swallowed. Horrible thought.
He said, ‘How long did you say?’
‘A week. I’ll tell you when Dashboard gets his gelt.’
‘Do that, Lovejoy.’ I wondered how he’d do it. It wouldn’t matter. He’d settle Simon Doussy’s hash. He looked outside through the flap. ‘These people, on holy ground. It amazes me. All nogoods.’
‘Why don’t you do something else, beside buy East Anglia?’
‘Like what?’
‘Cut a new Stonehenge from the Welsh mountains. Transport it to the USA. Set it up, a tourist attraction. Use it to teach America about Wales. Books, tours, university lectures, magazines. It doesn’t have to be genuine. Look at the famous story of Llewelyn, who left his dog Celert to guard his baby son. Came home to blood everywhere. He killed the dog, mistakenly fearing the worst - to find his baby safe under a wolf’s body. It’s all made up, pinched from a Norwegian folk tale ... ’ I halted. He’d got that Meg look. ‘Er, such romantic stories!’ I ended lamely.
He stood for a long time. ‘The Vana Farahar Memorial!’ His eyes ran tears. I wondered if I’d get a percentage. The USA successfully sells do-it-yourself coffins. Yanks are brilliant salesmen. ‘Thank you, Lovejoy,’ he said.
Momenta came with a small canvas case. It contained money, more than I’d every seen at one go. And this was half? I bussed her, whispered an infinity of promises, and sent her off. I waited a good span, then walked through the camp and up to the road. It took about twenty minutes. Police were blocking off the entrance to the valley. A queue of yet more lopsided vehicles filled with several species of refugees from civilization waited.
It took me some time to reach where the three caravans stood among swivelling police lights. I talked to an Old Bill. He gave me enough gist to alibi my knowledge of events. No Dolly. Her so-say message must have been false.
Luke inspected me gravely. ‘Safe then, Lovejoy.’
Aye, I thought, no thanks to anybody. ‘Anybody hurt?’
‘No.’ We were apart from the rest. Boris wasn’t about, just Humphrey with the rescue people looking down at the lake. Tudor, the turncoat, sat by Humphrey. It looked away. Can you believe it? ‘You heard about Mrs. Farahar and Mr. Stivanovitch?’
‘Terrible,’ I said evenly.
He said nothing. ‘Remember we scotched the caravans?’ I said mmmh. ‘The rocks came away. It’s a physical impossibility. "The wheels’ weight holds them.’
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘What’s the plan now?’
Finally he said, ‘They’ll build again, when the travvies go.’ ‘Won’t happen,’ I said. ‘Many a slip twixt cup and lip.’
He stared in that way I hated. People are too suspicious. ‘You make a habit of guessing right, Lovejoy.’
‘Hardly.’ I tried to lighten it. ‘Humphrey’s got Phillida and Arthur. And Tudor, I see. And Mrs. Arden?’
He did not smile. ‘I was security chief for her first husband’s government laboratories. Then with the Commander.’
Lucky man to have her. ‘I should have guessed. Tell Commander Boris I hope he gets his princess. I can do him a genuine Welsh gold wedding ring, smashing price.’
He walked away. He could please himself.
Which left Humphrey. I stood by him. ‘Congrats, Doc?’
‘Well, me and Phillida thought we’d ...’
‘Take care of little Arthur,’ I said. ‘Don’t give him chocolate buttons with wrong additives, okay? One thing. How’ll you manage?’ ‘God knows.’ He stared across the lake. ‘Train all your life to become a doctor, then hand in your licence.’
‘Want a job?’ I drew him aside. ‘I’ve spotted some antiques. If they come to nothing, don’t worry. But if they do ...’
‘Antiques?’ He was startled. ‘I wouldn’t know a Sheraton - ’ ‘Same as all antique dealers, Humphrey, present company excepted. Tell Luke you’ll drive a caravan back free of charge. See you in East Anglia. I’ll give you a list, where, who to see, how much. Follow it exactly.’
‘You’re serious, Lovejoy?’
‘Shortest unemployment ever, eh? Love to Arthur.’ I gave him the notebook, with its details of antiques I’d seen on the way, with prices. ‘Keep it. Stop Phil
lida from nicking it.’
I’d lost patience. I gave him the bag of gelt, a wrench.
‘Use this. If there’s any over, there’s a pale lad called Jerry, hospital paediatric ward. See him right. The little sod cheats at bowls.’ For a few moments I paused, wondering who to go with. Momenta? She could run me to a railway station. Dimity, enthusing over my pharmaceuticals? But I’d no frog droppings, or whatever it was she smoked. Cruza would have me, but they’d soon arrest Baptation. I went down the road. Calvin was closing the interview with Meg.
She was waxing to Olwen’s camera, ‘We shall prevail. Health care is vital, see. We will conquer for social equality ...’
A sociologist praising herself means ... ‘And the sponsors?’ ‘Are firm,’ she proclaimed. She’d had her hair done. ‘The Ardens from East Anglia, Mrs. Divine, Mrs. Hughes, Mr. Gee Omen. And Mr. Doussy, whose scheme ...’
I nodded hello to Olwen, stepped over and kicked Calvin’s dangling leg. He screeched. I kicked it with my other foot. Luckily it also dented his red motor.
‘So long, Calvin. D’you film that, Olwen?’ I walked away. I had the address of the puppeteer Dylan Williams and his lovely granddaughter Ceinwen, pr. Kine-wen.
When I got home I’d have to settle with Mrs. Arden. Carl was innocent, and Deirdre Divine, Florence also. Raddie and Chuck hadn’t the brains, so I’d exempt them.
A car caught me up after I’d gone a hundred yards.
Meg. ‘Lovejoy? Get in. I’m glad you kicked him.’
‘Ta.’ We sat in silence.
‘What a mess, Lovejoy. Sergeant Corran back there wants you.’ ‘Eh? Oh, my cousin. He’ll wait. Nice chap.’
Quiet.
‘Give me a lift? I know a Punch and Judy man. Dolwar Fach.’ Her eyes burned. ‘Raping our heritage, Lovejoy?’
I sighed. ‘It’s honest. One thing, Meg.’
‘Yes?’
‘Your unit’s short of money, right? That artist who invented those phoney druidical breastplate things. Herbert Hekover, wasn’t it? What if I knocked up a few forgeries? And you sell them at the next Eisteddfod?’
‘That’s an insult, Lovejoy!’ She wanted to clobber me.
‘Then how about some of those phoney “traditional” costumes that Lady Llanover made up - wife of Ben Hall, the original Big Ben? We’d make a fortune.’
The Sin Within Her Smile Page 25