The Possessions of a Lady (14 page)

'Faye? You're after Faye? What's the problem?'

He stared at me so long I got anxious, but he was only amazed at
my imperception, the way lovers are.

'She isn't crazy about me, you ignorant prat, Lovejoy,' he said
courteously. 'That's the problem. She's crazy about Viktor Vasho.'

'Ah, I follow.' I sounded like Cradhead, which suddenly intensified
my migraine, force cubed.

'You don't, Lovejoy. Viktor Vasho's a superb designer— fraudulent,
of course. Simply takes old Victorian night clothes, sex wear, and churns them
out in modern materials. He's from Mayfair. Organises antique shows, ancient
dresses.'

Quad force now. Migraine screwed my face up. I remembered Orla of
Mayfair, and said nothing.

'So you tried to top him?'

'Well, it was reasonable,' explained this scion of virtue and
logic. 'I didn't just go pell mell. That would have been wrong,' he explained
with an air of injured piety. 'I'm not that sort of person.'

'Good lad,' I said. 'Got an aspirin?'

‘I hired some Bethnal Green blokes to nick Viktor Vasho's design
collection. I thought he'd top himself—they do that, very emotional, see? Then
he'd be out of the way. It was a beautiful plan. Nearly worked.'

He blinked away disappointment. What with him choking back sorrow
that his murder had gone awry, and me trying to see, we made a right pair. I
vowed not to tell Cradhead this, cancelling my earlier vow, Pascal Paradox or
no.

'Good thinking that, Rodge.'

'Faye found him. He'd taken an overdose.' He went all bitter.
'Another hour'd have done it. Some bastard of a doctor saved him. Why don't
they mind their own frigging business?'

'Tough, Rodge. Maybe next time. He's okay, then?'

'No.' He brightened. 'Not spoken since. He's under the shrinks. Do
they get better?' he asked hopefully, 'or do they relapse and pop their clogs?'

'Rodge. Why did Faye accuse me?'

'She must think you're pals with a woman who's after Viktor
Vasho.' Orla?

'These antique dresses, Rodge. Who has them?'

'Mmmh? Oh, he's got a vast collection. Faye knows. He links up
with museums, does displays.'

Now, turn-of-the century dresses are in vogue, but cost peanuts. There's
been a little upsurge, but nothing like what I think they're worth. Endless
hours of detailed stitching, the work in each one. To see perfect
fin de siècle
evening attire sold for a
few pence—I'm not kidding—at junk sales is heartbreaking. One day, folk will
realise, then it'll be too late.

'The Bethnal Green blokes burned his designs on Wandsworth
Common.' Roger smiled at the thought. 'Did a charity gala, fireworks, sausages,
cake, lemonade.'

'Aren't people kind, Rodge.'

'Heartwarming.' He stared morosely into his glass. 'Pity it didn't
have a better outcome. Now Faye's hunting for vengeance.'

'Just like a woman. Tut tut.' It was a scenario I was well out of.
The safest option seemed to be catching the train to wherever it was, looking
for Vyna. 'About that trip.'

'You'll go, then?'

'Deal,' I said. 'Where to, Rodge?'

'Destination and money in an envelope when I've made some phone
calls.' He rose and left, pleased.

Two deals in one night. One a cinch—a valuable Pascal replica for nothing—and
the other a doddle.

'Where to, Lovejoy?' Tubb perched on the vacated stool. 'Portenta
says Libras will win this week's lottery. You're Libra, right? Carmel says to
drop by.'

'Eve, love,' I called. 'Got an aspirin?'

'Oh, what a shame, Lovejoy. Got one of your heads?'

'No, love,' I said, broken, as Tubb began to explain about lottery
odds and the zodiac. 'Three.'

12

Tubb followed me to the railway station. I wouldn't say where I
was going. He stood with me on the platform.

'I'll pay on the train,' he explained cheerily. 'Carmel’ll courier
us the sand job details, where we're staying.'

Ever secreterer? 'Tell Carmel I resign.'

'Will we be hunting antiques as we go, Lovejoy? Finding antiques
is just luck, right?'

His superstitions. Why do people believe in luck, when there's no
such thing?

'There's a million ways to find antiques, Tubb.'

He intoned his creed. 'Luck.'

Much he knew. Waiting, I tried to explain.

Finding them's the battle. Sometimes they conic wholesale. Like,
years ago the space shuttle
Challenger
beamed out radar shots and pinpointed the fabled lost city called Ubar,
astonishingly in Oman. Archaeologists are going about saying that these ancient
places, heaving with theft-worthy antiques, became windswept ruins because Dark
Ages climates went berserk. So if you've an
Endeavour
shuttle handy, find the exotic lost cities on the Great Silk Road, beat the
Yanks to it.

That's one way. Or you can thieve, with fewer resources. Knowing
where that Rembrandt portrait is in Salisbury, Wiltshire, you steal up with a
seventeen-foot ladder and smash the wooden shutters . . . except it's been
done. The smash-and-dash. Incidentally, trust to speed, never mind alarms.

Burglars have three friends. One's carelessness—leave your window
open, tell tipsy friends about your priceless Chippendale Chinese-rail chair.
Another is those sophisticated electronic alarms, that kid you all's secure.
Third is insurance—is it really wise to tell strangers exactly what treasures
your Auntie Nelly's got? Local antique dealers like Suffolk Frank (silver,
multiple bigamist, thick as a plank, friend) love insurance—for everybody else,
because they've all got insurance clerks on their payrolls. Bribery's cheap;
it's work that comes dear.

Or you can have a notable ancestor. Like Lord Northesk's, whose
illustrious forebear was Nelson's sidekick at Trafalgar. This provenance is
valuable, when you finally sell that lock of Nelson's hair, your ancestor's
sword, his gold Trafalgar medal, and the rest. Your certificate triples the
antique's auction value.

Or you can invent any of the above, bake a fake porcelain, daub a
dud Leonardo, whittle a mediaeval carving. Everybody does it. A local yokel
called Stats is our numbers guru. He says that thirteen times as many antiques
are sold each year
as were ever made in
history
. Get it? The world'" awash with forgeries. I help, make
plenty.

'See, entrails show life's magic forces.' Tubb made a flowing
gesture as the train bucketed in.

'Entrails means something's dead.' My headache had gone, leaving a
lightness, everything at a distance.

Tubb nodded enthusiastically. 'But forces are captured! You spread
entrails

Entrails, all the way to Norwich? 'Wrong train, Tubb,' I said.
'It's the next, ten minutes. Look. Get us a cuppa. The buffet's there.'

He pondered, was superstition against it? The train squealed to a
stop. Doors banged.

'It's bad luck, starting a journey without a warm drink,' I told
him. 'My grandad was adamant.'

'Is it?' He was shocked, thinking immediately how many times he'd taken
that fearsome risk. 'Christ.'

Off he went. I got aboard, ducked, and didn't sit up until the
train was well out of the station. Another week before Carmel's sand job, was
it? Plenty of time. And Roger had promised I'd be home in a day. I closed my
eyes, alone. Bliss. My headache faded as the town, Aureole, Carmel, Faye,
fashion, Orla of the fancy surname, Thekla, Oddly (failure), Tinker (failure),
me (failure), faded from consciousness.

Norwich is a pleasant city, give or take areas of vandalism
executed by the city fathers. Dunno why, but every new batch of councillors
instantly hatches some plan to flatten the town's middle for a new mega-storey
car park. They install vast supermarkets. This eliminates all known vegetables
from everybody's diet because they've eliminated the greengrocers. You don't
believe it? Go to any town centre. Park your motor on some seventeenth floor.
Wander, listing the shops. Then answer this: what is missing? It's the poor old
greengrocer, with his spuds, cabbages, carrots. Buy a lettuce now, it's been
flown in plastic from Africa.

Norwich has car parks, a castle, a weighty history, a football
team (its fans allege), and ancient hotels bravely enduring against the odds.

And Tee Vee Rydout, who owed me a painting of the Norwich school,
or the money from its sale. He lives with a yodelling banjo-playing uncle on
the river.

At the railway information desk, I asked Roger's question of a
wizened old duffer. 'Any message? Mr.. R. Boxgrove.' He told me no.

'No young lass, Aussie accent, leaving a packet she'd failed to
deliver for Boxgrove?'

'No, sir.' That was that, then.

So I booked in at a hotel, anger on hold.

Up at sixish, I bathed, shaved with the little razors hotels
provide, didn't use their corrosive sublimate of aftershave that peels your
chin skin, used their folding toothbrush, and had a ton of breakfast.

It's not far to Tee Vee's boat, a mile or so. I approached the
TeeVee
from downstream. A dog barked,
dozily uncaring, from the line of moored boats. The
TeeVee
was a highly decorated longboat, 'barge' as folk wrongly
say, a truly clever disguise for the best counterfeiter in the Eastern
Hundreds. No banjo being plectrummed in the dawn, so I clambered aboard and
stomped on the cabin by way of greeting.

'Jesus Aitch frigging Christ! Who's that?' And up glowered Tee Vee
from below. Mane of a lion, features almost acromegalic, prognathous jaw,
immense body, you could clothe him in Bond Street, he'd still look off the
road. He said, 'It's only Lovejoy.'

Only? He'd rue that. 'Morning, Tee Vee. Got it?'

'God, Lovejoy. Let me wake up. What time's this? Come in. I'll
brew up.'

'Ta.' Stooping, I entered the fug. What's with these nautical
blokes? Maybe it's our island air. Everywhere in our creaking old kingdom's
seventy miles or less from the sea. Whatever, boats are as boring as tennis and
golf, which is saying a magnitude.

For a start, there's no space. The cabin's airless. Cook anything,
the pong lingers. Also, rivers are unpleasantly rural, go through leafy
countryside, and I love only towns, where antiques come from.

'Er, morning, love. Sorry.'

'What bleeding time d'you call this?' the gorgeous girl on the
bunk said. Blonde, without visible attire.

On another bunk Tee Vee's uncle snored. He's banjo mad.

'It's urgent,' I explained. Nowhere to sit except on the bunk, and
friendliness can be misconstrued.

'If we're not on fire, it's sodding well not,' said the charmer.
She belched. My mind reverted to purity.

'Got it, Tee? Third time of asking, note.'

'Got what?'

He flopped down, making the girl abuse the world in blink-bleep
lingo. She huddled, snored immediately.

'The money, Tee. For that Norwich school painting.'

'That was fake,' he said piously.

'So were your American dollars.' I raised a hand to forestall
interruption. 'You commissioned a fake. I didn't commission counterfeit money.'

'It's frigging hard, Lovejoy,' he grieved, scratching his belly.
He wore pyjamas, gold, pink, yellow, orange. 'Them Yanks don't play fair.'

'Meaning what?'

'Counterfeiting's hard, Lovejoy.' He was narked. 'Them swine've
started putting mixed polyesters in dots and strips. When you counterfeit, the
frigging ink doesn't take.'

'How unfair,' I said politely.

'Un frigging
fair
,
Lovejoy?' he cried. 'Every sodding image blunts! And the USA's experimenting
with different polyesters. And trace elements!' He almost wept, the American
Treasury so unsporting.

They did a survey a couple of years back. Russia, China, Latin
America, and sundry punters round the globe held—the US said—up to 30 billion
dollars in untraced accounts, tin cans buried in the yard. Wrong. The figure's
well over 70 thousand million. Any Russian, or anyone slipping from the Baltic
to our fair East Anglian shores, pays in bundles of 20, 50, and 100 dollar
notes. Whatever the US government estimates is wrong times three.

'You owe dollars, Tee,' I said. 'There's nigh on four hundred
thousand million
genuine
dollars
about. No hard feelings. I'll take coin of the realm.'

He wheedled, 'There's two hundred million fake dollars about,
Lovejoy. What's a few more?'

'Pay,' I asked, calm. 'Last chance, Tee.'

'Haven't got it, Lovejoy. You could have it.'

'Dear me.' I went and hauled Uncle Bat awake. He roused, reached
for his banjo. I'd just have to bear the din.

'Morning, Lovejoy.' He was instantly awake. His frame showed only
bones, his face infolded. He rummaged in the bunk, found his teeth and shoved
them in so his face expanded and I recognised him.