The Vatican Rip

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘You bastard! You shambled the whole bloody auction!’

  ‘Me?’ I said innocently.

  ‘You! I wanted one of the lots and you stopped me, you—’

  I tried to calm him. ‘Sorry, old pal. Anyway that Chinese funereal terracotta bird shouldn’t be glazed, Chris.’ I was only trying to be reasonable, because he’s famous for coating with polyurethanes any antique that stands still long enough, the maniac. The object Chris was after shrieked authenticity. It was one of the terracotta figures from Fu Hao’s tomb, excavated at Anyang in China during the mid-1970s. Anyway, I have a soft spot for that tempestuous empress Fu Hao who lived such a stormy life. Wife of the Emperor Wu Ding, 1300 BC or thereabouts, and not above leading his armies into battle if the need arose. A real woman.

  ‘I have a right—’ Chris was storming.

  ‘You’re thick as a brick, Chris,’ I said, honestly trying to be kind.

  His eyes glazed and he grabbed me by the throat – or would have done if his rib hadn’t cracked on the stool I slammed up under his ribcage. The broken glass suddenly in my hand opened a slit down his sleeve and forearm through which blood squirted.

  ‘You should only dust terracotta figures,’ I told him as he reeled back aghast and squealing. I heard Sal the barmaid shriek. ‘And use a sable paintbrush. Okay?’

  The pub was silent, except for the quiet jingle of the door behind old Alfred. The poor bloke was like a refugee today. Chris clutched at his arm as the blood refused to stop and moaned, ‘What’s Lovejoy done to me? Get an ambulance.’

  ‘Oh Gawd,’ Tinker muttered. ‘Scarper, Lovejoy.’

  The scattered drinkers were simply looking. That is, all except one. And he was smiling, clapping his hands together gently in applause. Pigskin gloves, Londonmade. Clap-clap-clap, standing by the door. His two goons were there but simply watching.

  I slid past Chris and out of the side door. Tinker’s hunched form was just shuffling round the side of the pub on to the snowy slope of East Hill. I wisely took the other direction, slushing past the small timber yard and the Saxon church into the little square where the Three Cups pub stood. I took my time, stopping in the bookshop to price an Irish leather binding, but their prices read nowadays like light years.

  Alfred Duggins wasn’t in the Cups when finally I reached there. He’d probably given up. But the big stranger was waiting for me just inside the taproom.

  ‘Look, mate,’ I said to him. If you’re narked about the auction, say so and let’s get on with it.’

  ‘Drink?’ His voice was man-sized, cool and full of confidence.

  ‘What’s the catch?’

  ‘Catch?’ He gave a lopsided grin. ‘No catch. I just thought you deserved one, that’s all.’

  Without thinking, I said, ‘Well, ta,’ and we pushed in to the fug.

  Arcellano was instantly at home in the Three Cups, exactly as he’d been at home in Seddon’s crummy auction rooms, and just as he had seemed in the spit-and-sawdust Ship. While he ordered at the bar I glanced at him. This bloke was a hard nut and no mistake.

  Jason and the delectable Jane were just settling down in one snug corner, which failed to cheer me. I glimpsed Big Frank over among a huddle of barkers, all of whom glowered my way. Nobody waved. I guessed my popularity was lower than ever because of spoiling the auction.

  ‘Here, sir.’ The stranger passed me my pint. I crossed to the fireplace to dry my shoes. I noticed we were out of earshot of the others. A careful geezer too.

  ‘My name’s Lovejoy, Mr Arcellano,’ I told him. Oddly, my name caused no screech of merriment. It always had before.

  He said slowly, ‘You know my name?’

  ‘You bought at Seddon’s, remember.’ That was the name he had given Millon. Too late now to wonder if he’d made the name up. ‘You a collector?’

  He shrugged my question off and cautiously he tasted the beer before drinking properly. ‘You’re pretty definite about antiques, Lovejoy. Other dealers aren’t.’

  ‘Most dealers are like Chris, can’t tell an antique from a plastic duck.’

  ‘You’re famous hereabouts.’ He smiled as he spoke but with no warmth. I began to see why his tame goons did as they were told. ‘Lots of people gave me your name.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that and said, all innocence, ‘Me? Oh, you know how people are.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ He said it with utter conviction. ‘And people say if there’s an antique to be got, Lovejoy’s the man to get it.’

  ‘Do they indeed?’

  ‘Sure do. In fact,’ he added, ‘they seem to talk pretty guarded when I asked about you.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that, either. In fact, I wasn’t at all sure I liked the man, but he seemed like a customer with money and I was sick of living on fried tomatoes and what I could scrounge from bored housewives when I was forced to go on the knocker. Things had been really terrible lately. So I smiled affably. ‘Take no notice.’

  ‘Oh, but I have, Lovejoy. You’re hired.’

  ‘I am?’

  He smiled at the irritation in my voice. ‘For lots and lots of money.’

  The dull world exploded in a blaze of gold fireworks. The muted mutter of the taproom soared into heavenly cadences. The entire universe was once again a magnificent carousel of dazzling lights and brilliant music. I was suddenly aware of how pleasant a bloke he actually was. I cleared my throat and squeaked, ‘Have another, Mr Arcellano?’

  I reeled back to the bar and gave Jean a weak grin. She’s the barmaid, sometimes cooperative. ‘Trust me, love. Stick it on the slate. I’ve a deal on. Pay you back tonight.’

  She drew the pints and slid them over, holding my stare. ‘I’ll hold you to that, Lovejoy. I finish at eleven.’

  ‘You’re wonderful, Jean. I’ll come, love.’

  She smiled mischievously. ‘I might hold you to that, too, Lovejoy.’

  The big man was lighting a cigarette when I rejoined him. I’d never seen so much gold in my life. There were rings, the lighter, watch, tiepin and collar clips, teeth. He didn’t offer me a smoke. So I was already one more minion. I’m no smoker, anyway, but the message was there.

  ‘Hired for what?’

  ‘To get me an antique.’

  He probably meant for me to bid for him in an auction. ‘You want it valued?’

  ‘I already know what it’s worth. And where it is. I just need it collecting. You see, I own it.’

  My brow cleared. A simple vannie’s removal job. Well, in my state I wasn’t proud. ‘That’s easy.’ For some reason I’d been getting anxious.

  ‘It isn’t, Lovejoy.’ That horrid smile was worrying me. The more I saw of it the less I liked it. ‘But I saw the way you broke the auctioneer’s arm—’

  That got me mad, because people have no right to go suspecting things people don’t want suspected. ‘I did no such thing!’

  ‘You did,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ve used the same trick myself. Pretend to help somebody in a brawl and put their elbow backwards over the edge of a desk. It never fails.’ His face was expressionless now. I noticed his eyes were always on the go, flicking glances here and there as we talked. My brow cleared and I thought, oh Christ. What have I got into?

  He continued, ‘And that dealer in the pub. Big and tough. But you sorted him out. Never seen anybody move so fast in my life. You’re the man I’ve been looking for.’

  ‘To do a vannie’s job?’ He looked puzzled till I explained. Vannies are the humpers of our trade, mere shifters. A right mob of brainless old boozers they are too.

  He heard me out and shook his head. ‘Nothing that simple. You see, Lovejoy, somebody else has got my antique. And I want you to get it back.’ His voice chilled me, and I’m not easily chilled.

  He’d said ‘get’. Not buy, not bid, not collect. Get. As in rob?

  ‘Why can’t you, erm, get it, Mr Arcellano?’

  ‘Because it’s risky. I might get caught.’

  I thought, bloody hell.
It’s a rip. The bastard actually wants me to do a rip. Not him, note, because it’s frigging risky. I rose, full of bitterness. It had all been too good to be true. Back to the cold snow and a quick rape over Ann’s lace in the village. Maybe there was a slender chance of fitting in a quick hot nosh, though other times I’d called round I’d had to nick what I could from her fridge while she went to the loo.

  ‘Sod off, mate.’

  ‘Sit down, Lovejoy.’ His face lifted. His smile was there again. I’d never seen such an unhappy smile. ‘You just risked gaol for that old man—’

  ‘Tinker’s my barker,’ I said. My chest felt tight. I was in some sort of scrap and losing fast. I’m responsible for him.’

  ‘And Margaret?’

  How the hell did he know about Margaret Dainty? She and I have been close friends a long time. She’s not young, yet despite her limp she has that elusive style some older women carry like blossom. I glanced around. Arcellano’s two serfs were now sitting at a table by the door.

  I subsided slowly. ‘What is this?’

  He blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘Do the job and no harm comes to any of your friends – or you. You’ll not cry when you hear the fee.’

  I swallowed. ‘To nick an antique?’

  He looked pained. ‘Not steal, Lovejoy. I did say I already own it. Think of it as returning it to me, its rightful owner.’

  ‘Who has it?’ I said.

  ‘The Pope,’ he said.

  ‘The who?’ I said.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I said. ‘You’re asking me to . . . ?’

  ‘Another drink?’ he said. He was still smiling.

  Chapter 2

  I’ve always found that youth’s no deterrent to age. The ultimate proof was the Pinnacle Peak Language Academy, a big, modern but old-looking house on the outskirts of town. Arcellano had instructed me to report there, making all heads turn by snapping his fingers that snowy January day in the pub and passing me the card one of his goons whisked over. The card read Specialists in Modern European Languages.

  ‘You’re going to school, Lovejoy,’ he’d said. ‘To learn Italian.’

  ‘I’m hell as like.’ I’d hated school.

  ‘You register tomorrow.’

  This was beginning to look too organized for my liking. ‘Can’t I just buy a phrase-book?’

  ‘Not for this job.’ He rose then, a gentle picture of threatening behaviour but still smiling. ‘Your wages will be delivered every Friday.’

  ‘Oh.’ I cheered up. These language schools are all the same – a convenience for foreign students to get a visa and for our own students to go on the scive. Simply register, attend the first couple of lessons to show willing, then it’s off to the boozer with a part-time job on the side for extras. I thought what a nice simple bloke this bloke was. And a charming nature. ‘Right,’ I said, keeping the card and carefully not yelping with delight as Arcellano and his grovellers made to depart. Money for jam at last. He paused.

  ‘One thing, Lovejoy. About your wage.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ I tried to sound only casually interested, but was pleased he’d remembered the details, like how much.

  ‘It depends on how you do.’

  ‘Eh?’

  His blank smile was beginning to get me down. ‘Good progress, you get good money. Little progress, little money.’

  I thought, what bloody cheek. ‘Then you can stuff your schooling.’

  ‘And no attendance,’ he said quietly, ‘no Lovejoy. Arrivederci.’

  I watched the unpleasant bastard go. Thoughts of Margaret, Tinker, Jane and the rest rose within me and stayed. Antiques is a rough game. Antiques plus Arcellano was unthinkable. I thought for an hour before leaving the pub.

  There was no doubt left in me. Some failures were just not worth having. Back to school for Lovejoy.

  I have to tell you this next bit because it’s where I met Maria. And she became more of the rip than ever I wanted, and in a way I hate to remember even yet.

  The next morning was bright with that dazzling winter brilliance you get living near the cold North Sea. To the east the sea-marshes glistened, trees standing in spectacular white silhouette against the blue. Even the thought of schooling didn’t put me down. I’d wangled my unlearned way through childhood. A day or two more would be peanuts. And maybe they included dinner.

  I got a lift into town on a horse-drawn wagon, since there had again been snow during the night and all the modern mechanical wonder-gadgets were frozen under drifts. At such times East Anglia’s one useful vehicle is Jacko’s cart. He is a smelly, cheerful old devil, much addicted to light opera, who runs a ramshackle removal van in summer and Terence in winter. Terence is his gigantic shire horse, ancient as a church and about twice as big, and he pulls this wooden farmyard cart which Jacko, a born comedian, rigs up with nailed planks he calls passenger seats.

  ‘Is it true you’re going to school, Lovejoy?’ Jacko called as I climbed up. He was falling about at the notion.

  ‘Shut it, Jacko.’ I hate the way word gets round our village.

  But he choked with laughter all the way down to the brook and across the water-splash where the town road begins. I had to grin weakly and put up with him because he lets me on for nothing. It was a lot kinder than it sounds – I still owe him for six journeys from last winter when the black ice had blocked us in for three days.

  Jacko put us all down at the Albert tavern, from where we could walk up the slushy hill into town. I ploshed my way out to the Pinnacle Peak Language Academy, my chirpiness dwindling with every wet step.

  The lowering sky to the south-west was leaden, promising yet more snow. The wind was rising, the air dank and chill. I was hungry as hell, perishing cold and imprisoned in a trap of utter misery by that lunatic Arcellano. My antiques trade would vanish. My life was a wreck.

  So I went to school – and met Maria.

  From then on things went downhill.

  The so-called Academy was heaving. I’d never seen so many shapes and sizes and ages. Somehow a motley mob of people had battled their way to this emporium of learning and were noisily finding acquaintances among the press. There were kids, geriatrics, housewives, workmen, and elegant ladies obviously bolting from boredom. The Pinnacle Peak’s idea of welcome was a handshake in the form of grievous bodily harm from a bluff language instructor called Hardy (‘everybody calls me Jingo’), a sermon full of veiled threats from a geriatric grammarian headmistress, Miss McKim, and a gentle reproof from old Fotheringay. He was heartbroken because I’d never done classics at Balliol. I sympathized, because so was I.

  Jingo Hardy enrolled me in a dusty side room. I nearly fainted at the fees printed on the form. One week’s worth would have kept me six months.

  He boomed a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Lovejoy. Yours have been paid. Ten weeks of special instruction.’

  He told me to wait in the hall so I sat on one of the radiator pipes and watched Jingo Hardy, in the thick of things, inform a small disorderly bunch that they were intellectuals about to tackle Russian literature. With poisonous cheerfulness he bullied them off into a side room, leaving only a moderately-sized horde milling blindly to and fro.

  What with the warmth and the comfort I must have nodded off or something because the next thing I knew I was being criticized and prodded with a shoe, which proved I was awake again. The hallway was empty. This woman’s voice was saying sharply, ‘And what do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Waiting.’

  I blinked up at her. She was one of the loveliest women I had ever seen. Dark, slender, bright and stylish with a warm tweed-and-cardigan look. Pearl stud earrings. I fell for her. She toed me again. The crowd had vanished. A faint hum arose from the rooms all about, school now in session.

  ‘You’re a tramp, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I said. The irony was lost on her.

  ‘Please leave, or I shall call the police.’

  I said, ‘Lady. Prod me a
gain with your toe and I’ll break it. Off.’

  She withdrew a yard. ‘Why have you no socks on?’

  ‘Drying.’ I got them off the radiator and felt. Still damp, but I started to put them on. All I could do now was tell Arcellano I’d tried and they’d threatened to have me run in.

  ‘And shoes?’

  ‘Give me a sec.’ I’d sloped them on the pipe, heels down, in an attempt to dry the cardboard which covered the holes.

  She was watching. ‘Do you have far to go?’

  You can’t help staring at some people. There ought to be Oscars or something for hypocrisy. Today’s message from this luscious bird: piss off or I’ll call the police, and have a pleasant journey strolling through the blizzard. People amaze me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. Well. Where’s your overcoat?’

  ‘Still at my tailor’s.’

  She flushed then and developed the injured look of a woman wanting some man to take up this particularly cumbersome crucifix. I didn’t help by spinning out my dressing process. She stood her ground, though.

  ‘One thing, love.’ I stood and stamped my cardboard inners flat. ‘Swap that painting to the other wall.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I stepped across and lifted the watercolour down. Never over a radiator. Never in a centrally heated hallway if you can help it. Never facing what sun we get. And never where people smoke.’

  The little watercolour sketch was a Thomas Robins, the sort of thing he did before doing the proper Dutch fishing-boat scene. He liked storms in harbours. I’m not all that old, but I can remember the time four years ago when his best paintings could be got for an average monthly wage.

  ‘Take your hands off our property—’

  She came at me so I cuffed her and yelled, ‘You could have made me drop it, you silly bitch! Look.’ I dragged her near to the modern photorepro of ‘The Stag at Bay’ which I’d just taken down. ‘That,’ I explained into her stunned eyes, ‘will stand anything. This original watercolour is vulnerable.’ I spelled the word to give her cortex time to adjust to the learning process. ‘So we put your repro picture anywhere, see? It’ll not warp, change or fade in the sun. On the other hand, love, original paintings by Thomas Sewell Robins need care.’ I spelled that too, mounted the watercolour, then walked to the door.