The Grail Tree (21 page)

‘Please, Lovejoy –’

He was finally persuaded by the unmistakable logic of my argument. I left him alone, satisfied now.

I examined the lovely chair. Mahogany was a delectable gift – one of many – from the New World to the Old. The most precious mahogany’s Cuban. It’s a dark, deep and heavy wood which furniture forgers have only recently learned to imitate with anything like accuracy. If you have the moving experience of handling old Cuban mahogany you’ll see it doesn’t plane into ordinary wood shavings like, say, pine. It
flakes
, as if you were trying to cut a bar of chocolate with a kitchen knife. Unjointed furniture made of Cuban mahogany over three foot widths is rarest. Nowadays original Cuban mahogany is practically impossible to get hold of.

This chair was practically black – the shade Cuban mahogany eventually takes up – but its eminences and edges shone brilliantly with a deep hot-toned russet that must be world’s most exquisite colour ever seen
on any antique. Sheraton preached that brickdust in a linseed oil base was the way to get that final finish exactly right, and I won’t argue.

Jimmo and I agreed to swap the Satsumas for the lovely antique chair, though he moaned a lot. When Lydia returned I was sitting proudly but gently on the beautiful object. I listed a bit but I’d stopped my face bleeding and made sure my teeth were still in place. My right orbit was bulbous and I couldn’t see out of it. You can’t have everything. I tell you it was bloody hard work just sitting.

A worried CID youngster came and took down the details – how I’d been strolling by when I’d seen my friend and colleague Jimmo struggling with two evil bandits, their faces hidden by scarves. Brave me, I’d gone to my friend’s rescue and been injured. They’d finally taken flight on the arrival of Lydia from next door. He took it all down.

‘She’s a really game girl,’ I praised, giving Jimmo the bent eye.

He glanced from me to Lydia and back again. He began to cerebrate. Slowly, but definitely.

‘What is the, er, relationship,’ he asked carefully, ‘between yourself and this young lady, sir?’

‘Apprentice,’ I explained. Even the ambulance men paused at that. Jimmo was being put on to the stretcher. The CID man gazed at Lydia, who nodded.

I spelled helpfully, ‘A-P-P-R –’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He wrote and turned to Lydia. ‘Can you describe either of these assailants, miss?’

Decisions are funny things. I could feel Lydia’s decision struggle with her training until it rose coherent and immutable. She avoided my eye, still full of conscience.

‘In a way, Inspector,’ she began earnestly. ‘The tall one wore an old duffel coat and had brown gloves –’

I shrank back in a sweat of relief. No use phoning Maslow about the killer yet. He’d have us making statements and dithering till the Last Trumpet. I only wanted a bit of justice. And, make no mistake, justice includes reparation, punishment. In my book that doesn’t mean two years in clink with ten months off for good behaviour. It means that one of us had to get finished when we met to settle the matter.

I came to with a tired houseman examing me.

‘You’re not too bad. We’ll sort you out in Casualty,’ he said. ‘Come with us.’

‘No,’ Lydia said suddenly, and added uncertainly when the doctor looked, ‘if it’s all right I’ll bring him. We have a car.’

As Lydia drove, I watched her face in the early street lights of the encroaching evening. She said nothing and I wasn’t up to talking much. Anyway, I was thinking of what to do now I knew. Trust Jimmo. A precious, glowing, delectable antique throbbing and singing in his own back yard, and there’s him trying to compete with an educated clever murderer like Dr Thomas Haverro. Don’t people get on your nerves?

T
HAT NIGHT
, L
YDIA
made my divan bed up and went to fetch a hot meal in from town. We had it before the fire, by which time I’d made up my mind. You can’t muck about with killers.

‘Greed undid it, Lydia.’ I told her what Sarah had said about the Grail. ‘Only an antique pewter cup. A reputation as a local religious relic. Sarah’s husband was loyal to the idea of preserving it by having generations of gold- and silversmiths add to it. Old Henry protected it, too. Wires to the bedroom and everything.’

‘It must have been a terrible temptation,’ Lydia said. ‘Almost as if it was a genuine Chippendale.’ Her eyes glowed with relish.

‘Er, quite.’ I tried to distract her from furniture. ‘Thomas Haverro just couldn’t restrain himself. When he realized Henry was consulting a divvie –’

‘You.’

‘– it was too much. Maybe he worried about Henry selling it on the quiet.’ I had to smile ruefully at the very idea of Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. offering enough to get it photographed, let alone buy it.

‘Shouldn’t you tell that nasty inspector?’

‘Yes.’ But I’d hesitated too long.

‘I suppose that means you’re not going to.’

‘Yes.’

She slammed the dishes down and marched across to face me. ‘Then you’re wrong, you stupid man.’

‘Am I?’ I tried to speak gently, without rancour or anger but only succeeded in sounding tired.

‘Have him arrested. They’ll put him in prison.’

‘For a week or two –’

‘Life.’ She walked about holding her elbows, the picture of any woman wanting a serious issue avoided whatever the cost.

‘If convicted, Lydia. Any lawyer will make our evidence look fraudulent. And the Grail. Think of that.’

‘It won’t vanish. It’ll still be . . . well,
somewhere
around.’

‘In the hands of Dr Thomas Haverro. He’ll be out in a couple of years at most, and pick it up from where he’s put it. And then?’

‘Don’t, Lovejoy. Please.’

‘I want the Grail Tree off him.’

‘Lovejoy.’ She sat with me and almost made as if to take my hand for an instant. ‘Don’t. I know what you want to happen.’

‘I don’t want to kill anybody,’ I said. ‘Honest.’

‘Then tell Maslow.’

‘No.’

It was almost midnight when I phoned Haverro. He sounded as if I’d got him out of bed. I was nervous.

‘Lovejoy here.’

‘Oh, hello! How –’

‘Cut it, Thomas, you bastard.’ I let the hatred sink into his ear long enough. ‘You killed Henry.’

‘Killed? Don’t be absurd! What an extraordinary –’

‘The Satsumas were cover to pay Jimmo, Thomas. To keep him quiet. He saw you.’ I added a bit more, about Hal in Drabhanger and the Grail Tree, to show him it was all up.

‘A . . . a mad tale you crooked antiques dealers have cooked up, Lovejoy.’

‘I knew you’d say that, Thomas. It’s not a bad defence.’

‘So why ring me?’

‘Because I want the Grail Tree.’

A pause. ‘I haven’t got it.’

‘Liar. You want me to call Maslow?’

‘Very well,’ he said, cool as you please.

‘Okay, Thomas.’ I was as smooth as him. ‘And when Maslow gets a search warrant to see if you’ve anything hidden anywhere . . .’ We waited some more. This is killing my phone bill, Thomas.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’ He sounded strangled. ‘We can leave it till tomorrow.’

‘Tinker’s already watching your place with three others,’ I lied confidently. ‘We don’t want you sneaking off to hide it, do we?’ A long, long think.

‘What do you suggest, Lovejoy?’

‘Give it to me, Thomas. Sarah told me about it in detail. It’s too precious for the likes of you.’

‘So Sarah’s sided with you. The stupid bitch.’

It took another five minutes, round and round the same sentences. The threat of Tinker’s mythical arrival at the nick to tell Maslow finally did it. He agreed.

‘Call Tinker off, Lovejoy.’

‘No. Just in case.’

He wouldn’t dare taking any risks, in case I actually had Tinker’s mob scattered in his bushes. I swear I heard his thoughts. Actually heard them, felt their very
substance. He would agree to meet me, but it wouldn’t be to give me any precious antique. He had a different intention in mind.

‘I’ll meet you, Lovejoy. Your cottage?’

‘Not likely,’ I said cockily. ‘Too lonely out here, Thomas.’

‘Then . . . in town?’

I’d already thought it out ahead of him. ‘The Castle Park. Tomorrow. And no funny stuff. I’ll have a bird for witness.’ I was meeting Lisa there.

‘You’re off your head, Lovejoy. The fireworks. There’ll be thousands there.’

‘Not
in
the Castle there won’t.’

‘Inside? But the attendants –’

‘At dusk, Thomas.’

‘It’ll be shut.’

‘Try just the same,’ I said cheerfully. ‘There’s only one way in. Across the old drawbridge to the main keep door.’

‘Will it be guarded?’

I sighed with relief. He was beaten and I had him. In the palm of my hand. Him, and the Grail Tree.

‘Let’s hope, shall we?’ I put the receiver down gently. ‘Lydia, love. Call a taxi. Go and tell Martha Cookson all about it. That’ll be one person less on our side to worry about.’

Needless to say, Lydia’s mother rang just after Lydia left. I put on my voice to say of course I wouldn’t detain Lydia at the cottage on her own so late. I pleased myself by getting in a hint that anyway I preferred slightly older women. Only I said mature, not old. For once, we parted friends.

Then, tired as hell, I turned in. It was going to be a hard day in the morning.

F
IRE DAY DAWNED
clear and blue. I sang as I shaved, keyed up and wheezing from my scrap, but confident.

The Castle is not quite a ruin. It’s a square, now covered in by a flat roof of ugly tarred concrete and lovely red pantiles capping the four corner towers. To save electricity they’ve put a central glass roof over the main bit. The stone is flint, like so much Norman building in East Anglia, with a crude mortar welding the stones. The Normans who were the builders of the keep – all that’s really left of the original castle – were fairly useless architects. Bishop Odo (a nasty piece of work who got his just deserts at the hands of Rufus) built it on the ruins of the Roman temple to Jupiter and made his builders pinch Roman tiles and bricks for corners and reinforce the walls in clumsy lines. These flashes and columns of deep ‘mandarin’ red give a warmth and character to what would otherwise be a formidable and excessively grisly keep. It’s a museum nowadays, with a main door reached by a fixed wooden bridge from a paved terrace mound constructed as a pleasant walk between rose gardens and flowerbeds. The rest of the ruins – Roman, Norman, practically everybody else you can think of – outcrops like a sea-washed
cliff among the grass. Children and pigeons occasionally play there among the stone mounds, which pleases me.

Every year our town has a huge firework festival. Nowadays we call it a ‘gala’ day, or seek some local or national jubilee to justify it. Last year it was the Anniversary Firework Festival, but after weeks of arguing none of us was quite sure which anniversary we were commemorating. Not that it matters. The point is that, like the rest of Merrie Olde England’s festivals, it’s entirely pagan and likely to remain so no matter what we pretend.

The Fire Night, as our locals call it, starts with a parade of torches and morris dancers into the plain below the Castle at dusk. There we build a great pile of wood and rubbish. The dancers and marchers as they arrive in turn sling their torches on to the heap, creating a massive bonfire which I’ve known burn for three days sometimes. Anybody can make a torch and simply join the procession, which makes a lovely sight winding from across the river or down the slopes to whirl in a slow circle round the bonfire. All this is done to a crescendo of fireworks. By then we’re all gathered on the Castle Keep’s huge soaring mound, sitting on the grass and watching the exploding colours and gushing fire fountains marvellously reflected in the river’s blackness. It’s a major spectacle, as you can imagine. I hate to wonder how it all began.

It’s more pretty than sinister now, of course. A little illuminated fairground brings roundabouts and catch-a-penny stalls near the bowling greens, which adds to the general gaiety and allows parents to come with the legitimate excuse that they’re only taking children to the festivities. Needless to say, Fire Night is always
crowded. The town turns out
en masse.
Villages empty into Castle Park from as far as the Norfolk borders and the bigger fishing ports. Today they could have it all, from start to finish. I was only interested in one spectator. And he and I would have our own personal fireworks.

I have this system each morning. Up, radio to see who we’re at war with, switch it off for sanity, bath, get mad because socks have gone missing again, breakfast from horrible powders and gruesome packets, and cut up some cheese for the robin. He’s a tough nut, waiting by my unfinished wall scattering competitors. I feed him on my arm because I’m interested in how he manages to make so much noise. It’s a really lovely sound, a thick mellow fluty singing made without effort. I mean, he never seems to breathe in or anything like that. Sounds just keep coming.

‘The benign Dr Thomas Haverro,’ I explained to his beady eye. ‘He’ll try to do for me tonight.’

He gave me a tilted stare and bounced up and down my arm to keep a couple of intrusive sparrows off. You never expect their feet to be so cold.

‘The question is how. I’m younger than Haverro is, Rob. And fitter. And tougher.’ He patrolled my arm, singing. ‘He can’t bring a howitzer and blow me to blazes, or good old Maslow will come sniffing. So what will he do? There’ll be people everywhere. Picnics on the grass. And I’ve got to get into the Castle before he comes. Easy enough.’ I’d done that before, to weigh and do specific gravity tests on various Bronze Age artefacts on the Prehistory Gallery. Our curator had said no, but true love will find a way. ‘It’s got to be an accident, Rob,’ I explained. ‘He could push me off a gallery. There’s a Roman mosaic in the central area. I wouldn’t bounce
much. Maybe an old club or a sword from a display case.’ But that would be useless. I’d hear him take it out, and then I’d be warned and could arm myself. He was stout, obviously slow. I could make rings round him. ‘None of the bows is in working order. No strings in the crossbows. The flintlocks are all in the barred case and can’t be lifted out even if you break the glass.’ It seemed just him and me. I said all this to the robin. He seemed unconvinced.