Spend Game

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Can I look?’

  ‘I’ll get the key.’

  These older terraced houses are admittedly small, but whoever built them had his head screwed on. There’s a narrow stone-flagged cellar under each. You enter through a doorway set below a few steps leading down from the yard. There’s no window, only a solid wooden door. Val had persuaded the publican to have it metalled with iron strips and linked by a warning bleep in case he ever needed it for extra storage of bottled spirits. When I met up with Val again and incorporated her in my famous arrears system of payment I let Leckie use the same facilities. Antiques dealers call this sort of arrangement a ‘cran’, just as other gangsters call it a drop.

  Val and I went down with a flashlight. She always takes time fumbling with the lock because there’s no outside light. Only a few weeks before, George had rigged up a light bulb on a perilous flex to cast a feeble glimmer on our valuables. My phoney eighteenth-century oak chest was ageing usefully still. Unless my luck changed I’d soon have to auction it, a terrible admission of failure for any self-respecting antiques dealer. There was an ebony flute in its case, distinguished by that grim little-finger D-flat key, the size of a small springboard, they had before the Boehm system let the modern instrument makers have some restful nights. Flautists must have had digits a foot long before 1850. And there was my famous non-painting, an oil copy of Il Sodoma’s ‘tailor’ portrait, of that skilled type which abounds in the country areas of England. I’d bought it for a song from a German tourist who had paid the earth. (Tip: never buy a painting without measuring it. If the size of the real thing is well known, and the painting you’re considering buying is thirty square inches too small, it follows that the latter is probably a copy – a legitimate copy perhaps, but still a copy.)

  Leckie had a few pieces of lustreware on the one shelf we’d rigged up and two of those Lowestoft jugs I hate. But no escritoire, no doctor’s bag, and no book. Now there’s a thing, I thought. How very odd.

  ‘Lovejoy. Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ She pulled me round to face her. ‘I’ve never seen you like this, except for that time.’ That time was a dust-up everybody ought to have forgotten by now. Only women remember fights, their own included.

  ‘Nothing, love,’ I said jovially.

  ‘Lovejoy?’ She kept hold of me. I saw her eyes change. ‘Dear God. Is . . . is it Leckie?’

  I felt my chest fall a mile. Her face was suddenly white as a sheet. Things clicked horribly into place. I now remembered that holiday she had taken last year with an unnamed friend to the Scillies. Leckie had been away too, by an odd coincidence. After that he’d had more money to buy with. His trade had looked up. Twice he hinted at a silent partner. Christ Almighty, I thought, suddenly weary as hell. It never rains but what it pours crap. Sometimes I’m just stupid. Val and Leckie, for gawd’s sake.

  ‘Tell me, Lovejoy.’

  ‘It might have not been him, love,’ I said desperately. She drew back and looked at me, up and down and up and down. She shone the flashlight.

  ‘That’s mud.’

  ‘There was an accident . . .’

  ‘Leckie?’

  ‘It . . . it looked like him, love, but –’

  She walked away towards the wall and stood there a minute.

  ‘It was a car, Val. He got . . . got . . .’

  ‘Killed,’ she said, turning. She fumbled for the key and held the door. ‘And the first thing you could think of was what antiques he’d left here, in case there was a chance of making a few pounds.’ Her eyes were streaming.

  ‘Not really, Val,’ I began, but she wasn’t having any and gestured me up the steps.

  ‘Take your stuff out of here first thing tomorrow, Lovejoy,’ she said in a monotone. ‘You’re not nice any more. Don’t come here again.’

  ‘Look, love,’ I tried desperately. Val and Leckie. How was I to know?

  She dropped the key on its string and went into her house, just let the key fall there on to the steps and walked off, leaving the cellar door open and me standing there like a goon. I had to feel around before I could find it, and even then it took a while to lock up. I put the key on the lintel. I knocked a couple of times, half-hearted. She must have heard but didn’t come to the door.

  The rain had eased off. I cranked my zoomster into feeble bronchiectatic life and rattled back through town towards my own village. It’s three miles off to the north-west. Three-quarters of an hour before closing time, the town hall clock said as I trundled past. It would be touch and go, because two miles are uphill. My old crate sounded worn out. It feels these sudden strains, same as me.

  Chapter 2

  THERE’S NOTHING so welcoming as a good pub and nothing so forbidding as a bad one. We’ve some repellent ones, but the White Hart’s as kindly as they come. I stood in the porchway pretending to be preoccupied with my coat, but really sussing out who’d got back from the auction. Tinker Dill was there looking like a derelict straight off the kerb in his tattered mittens and rubbishly old greatcoat. He was standing among a group of other thirsty barkers, all runners for us dealers. Tinker might be the shabbiest barker in the known universe, but he’s the best by a street. He’s also the booziest. He saw me and came weaving through the crowds, not spilling a single drop. A barker only lets go of his glass under anaesthetic.

  ‘Hiyer, Tinker.’ I spoke quietly. ‘Get my stuff from Val’s.’

  ‘Eh?’ He goggled.

  ‘You heard.’ My eyes were everywhere. ‘First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Sunday: Bleeding hell.’

  ‘That’s what she said.’ We fought to the bar. I chipped out for a refill and snatched at the barman’s eye for my usual. Tinker grumbled, but that’s nothing new. He hates merely shifting stuff. His job’s sniffing out antiques wherever they lurk.

  ‘Where do they go?’

  ‘Tell you later when I’ve arranged something.’ The four people crammed nearest us were dedicated anglers talking about massacring the next bream run on the Ouse. Ted was a mile down the bar and his wife Jenny sprinting between the two bars. It looked safe enough, but I kept my voice down. ‘Don’t gape about, Tinker,’ I said casually, ‘but tell me who was here when you arrived.’

  Tinker measured the clock and turned round to lean his elbows on the bar. There’s never any problem about space round Tinker, not with his pong.

  ‘Helen?’ I began, smiling and nodding at the familiar faces in the bar mirrors. I like Helen, long of leg and stylish of manner, shapely of fag-holder and quick of mind. She saw my eyes and nodded a quizzical smile. She does English porcelain mostly, and does it well with profit. Her eyebrows said, Come over here a minute, Lovejoy, but I was busy and frightened.

  ‘She was here,’ Tinker growled. ‘She’s asking for you.’

  ‘Aren’t they all?’ I looked round some more. ‘Jean?’ Jean Plunkett’s a middle-aged woman who suddenly metamorphosed from a mild housewife into an aggressive dealer about four years back. Continental silver and tooth and nail. Big Frank from Suffolk’s been after her for a while now, seeing her as a potential third spouse to add to his bigamous affairs which litter the surrounding countryside. He was busy now, plying her with clever alcoholic combinations. Both Jean and he were smiling happily. He’d bought a copy of a Ravenscroft glass at the auction – unusual, because he’s mostly silver and furniture.

  ‘Her and Frank reached the pub before me,’ Tinker said jealously. I said to keep calm, we’d buy a helicopter.

  We seemed to have the usual crowd, in fact. A score of dealers and barkers, with a couple of tough-looking vanmen to do the lumber in case any dealer infarcted at the thought of having to do any lifting.

  ‘The vannies, Tinker?’ I suggested. He grinned a no.

  ‘They came straight here – with Jill.’

  Worn out with the worry over Leckie as I was, I just had to smile. Jill was talking slagware to Brad, a real mismatch if ever there was one. Brad hasn
’t thought of anything except Regency flintlocks since he learned to read and write, and Jill couldn’t tell one from a ballistic missile. She’d been at Medham and bought a good pair of blue saltboats in that odd opaque slag glass which you either hate or crave. Early Victorian furnace workers were allowed to skim off the metalled surface ‘slag’ at the end of the working day. They used to make what they called ‘foreigners’, little pieces of art to sell or give. The artistry is often pretty cumbersome and really rather crude, but sometimes varies between the merely natty and the exquisite. It was the only perk glassworkers got in those days besides silicosis. Jill has an eye for such knackery, especially when prices are blasting off as they are at present. She also has an eye for the male of the species. In fact, she’s known for it. I’ve never seen her on her own in ten years, nor with the same bloke twice. She carries a poodle the size of a midget mouse, the focus for many a ribald jest.

  ‘She’s buying,’ Tinker said in a gush of foetid breath from the side of his mouth, still grinning. He nudged me, cackling. ‘They’ve got some shovelling to do later.’ One of the vanmen was tickling the poodle’s chin. A lot of meaningful eyeballing was going on. I could see Brad was rapidly getting cheesed off. Soon the vannies would have Jill all to themselves, lucky lads.

  Good old Tinker, I thought sardonically, still sorting through the crowd. Alfred Duggins was in from down the coast. He’s a benign little chap underneath a bowler. Never animated, never interrupts, just incubates thoughts behind his split lenses and sucks on the rim of a quart tankard. He’ll do prints and hammered coinage up to the Civil War. He gave me a nod and pulled a comical face at the clock. A laugh. For some reason we haven’t yet fathomed he hates going home.

  A huddle near the fire caught my attention, gin drinkers all. Two were strangers to me. The man looked a contented sort who had to be a Londoner.

  ‘Was Happiness at Medham?’ I asked Tinker, carefully looking away from the extravagant bloke.

  ‘Yeah. You must be blind, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I didn’t mean her. I meant him.’ The blonde woman had been noticeable in the auction all right. She’d sat on one of the chairs crossing her legs till we were half out of our minds. The auctioneer had even started stuttering and losing control at one point. She happened to glance up as I looked again at her through several layers of pub mirror. Thirty or so, smiling between earrings made of gold-mounted scarabs, original trophies from ancient Egypt. Even without them she’d have been gorgeous. Neat clothes, light fawns and browns. The shoes would match, million to one. Our eyes met. I turned away, but noted the startled air she conveyed. Perhaps it was finding herself lusted at by the peasantry. Maybe I looked as sour as I felt. I liked her. She didn’t care much for me. Well, that’s the way the Florentine crumbles.

  ‘That grotty escritoire,’ Tinker told me. ‘Leckie outbid him, remember?’

  ‘So he did,’ I said. ‘So he did.’

  Tinker stared hard over the bar and wagged his eyebrow for another pint. Ted streaked up with it. I watched all this, peeved as hell. I have to wave and scream for service. The slightest gesture from Tinker Dill’s like a laser. My eyes got themselves dragged into the mirror by awareness of the woman through the noise and shouts and smoke. She looked carelessly away just in time, back into the huddle of people she was with. Happiness was tapping knees and cracking jokes. The others were falling about obediently with displays of false hilarity. It had to be sham because antiques dealers are like a music-hall band – they’ve heard it all before. Other people in the bar were looking round at them with each gust of laughter and smiling.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Fergus, London. They call him Fergie.’

  Fergus, Black Fergus. I’d heard the name. Some trouble a few months back about possession of a silversmith’s ‘touch’, a metal marker for hallmarking. I’ve heard it’s quite legal in the States. Here our magistrates go bananas if you’re found with one. The fuss hadn’t done Fergus any harm, though. If there’d been any bother he looked well on it.

  He was sitting on a fender stool. Facing him was Sven, a Scandinavian originally. Sven was literally washed ashore after one of those terrifying winter storms we have here on the east coast. His ship was a diminutive freighter plying across the North Sea. They put our lifeboats out, and Sven and six others were saved. Sven refused to go home once he was ashore, just simply refused point blank to cross either by air or boat. ‘I’ll go home when they’ve built the bridge,’ he jokes when people ask what does he think he’s playing at. They say he’s still got a wife and two kids over there, writing the same sad questions to him in every Monday post. He scratches a living as a free-floating barker, side-trading as a flasher. A flasher’s not what you’re probably thinking. Nothing genital. He’ll go around antique shops sussing out what he supposes to be a bargain – say it’s a necklace of carved rose quartz. He agrees to buy it as a present for his girl or wife (note that: a flasher never says he’s buying for himself). He then gives the least possible deposit, or perhaps ‘pays’ by a dubious credit card or cheque, and goes into a nearby pub where he tries to sell it at a profit to a tourist or a dealer. If he’s successful he returns to settle up, and simply keeps the balance. If not – and it usually is not, especially with Sven – he brings it back, complaining the woman doesn’t like it or it won’t go with her new orange blouse. If necessary he’ll break a link and claim he’s returning the goods as faulty. That’s a typical flasher. It’s a hopeless game, operated entirely by useless goons who have even less clue than the rest of us. Sven’s the world’s worst, but I’ve a soft spot for him. He got me out of some complicated trouble I was having with a woman once, so I owe him a favour.

  Madge was with them, dark-haired, swingly and flouncy in a bluish swingback swagger coat and those shoes that seem nothing but thin straps. She’s furniture and porcelain in her shop on East Hill near the Arcade and is probably the wealthiest dealer in town. Her husband has this trout farm to the north of Suffolk. Why he sees so little of her nobody knows. Madge is what we call a ‘tea-timer’ in the antiques game – she’ll take up with a knowledgeable bloke, using any means in her power, until she has assimilated most of his expertise. Then she’ll ditch him for a different interest and never again give him the time of day. It’s a very novel and worthwhile form of apprenticeship. So I’ve heard, that is. She currently had Jackson in tow, a rather sad thin elderly man who wears a waistcoat and makes models. He used to do a thriving business in militaria and engineering prototypes, including buying and selling the original designs – now a very profitable line I urge you to buy into as fast as you can. Then he threw himself into Madge’s promotions, scattering all caution to the winds. He moved in with her for a spell and the inevitable happened. He was rumoured not to have done a deal in months, at least not on his own account. Madge has thrived.

  ‘They friends?’

  ‘With Sven? No.’ Tinker looked about for some-where to spit but I held up a warning finger just in time. I’d rather him gag than pollute the rest of us. ‘I heard Madge introduce him to Blackie at the auction.’

  ‘When did they come?’

  ‘Oh, ten minutes before you.’ He lit one of his home-made fags and coughed. The taproom paused respectfully. One of Tinker’s specials takes a full ten seconds and starts a mile down the road. He subsided. Conversation picked up again.

  ‘What car?’

  ‘A bleeding great Humber.’

  ‘They know Leckie?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Tinker nudged me. ‘What’s it all about, Lovejoy? You and Leckie had a dust-up over Val?’

  Sometimes people amaze me. I stared at Tinker till he grew uncomfortable.

  ‘Well,’ he said, all defensive, ‘she’s got Leckie going because of you and Janie. Everybody knew that.’

  Janie and I had our last holocaust three weeks before all this. She stormed back to her husband in her expensive solid-state Lagonda in a livid temper for reasons no longer clear to me. She was always storming somew
here. We’d been together a long time on and off. Very critical of a man, Janie was. She’d found out about Magdalene staying at my cottage for a few days. Wouldn’t believe she was only helping me to redecorate. Now how had Tinker Dill spotted the Val-Leckie affair when it had taken a killing to push it into my thick skull?

  Suddenly I had a headache. It had been a hard day and tomorrow wouldn’t be any easier. There didn’t seem to be any clues here, I thought in my stupidity and ignorance. This was all too much to sort out just now. I cast a final glance round and saw Margaret, a cool middle-aged woman who has a neat corner in the town’s antiques arcade. I mouthed a request for a lift home. She nodded, smiling to her companion, a tall thin priestly-looking character I’d never seen before, and started to fight her way to the door. I gave the keys to Tinker.

  ‘I don’t feel so good, Tinker. Drive my crate back to the cottage, there’s a pal.’

  Outside, the night air was like a cold flannel on my face. Margaret came limping out – some childhood injury that, curiously, makes her fortyish roundness more intriguing. She told me I was white as a sheet. In her motor I lay back and closed my eyes as we moved off and the pub noise receded.

  ‘You look terrible, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I’ve got a bad head.’

  ‘I’ll make you a hot drink.’ She drove us out of the pub yard into the narrow lane between the hedgerows. ‘Come back with me?’