The Possessions of a Lady (35 page)

'We
stay
here?' Nicola
quavered.

'We'll go over tomorrow's business. Brew up, Tinker.'

'Here, Lovejoy.' He ignored my request, somehow uncapped a beer
bottle with a flat palm against a wall. I try doing it, but it hurts. He
whispered so loudly I swayed in the decibel-riddled alcoholic gale. 'Wanda's on
her way. A bird called Mrs. Finch is here. And Aureole, she's rowed with Amy.
Those two thickos want you. They're at the Swan.'

'Ta, Tinker.' For the headache, and the new brutes. 'Nicola, brew
up, love. There's water in the well.' I was done for.

'From Lydia, Lovejoy.' He gave me a letter, watched me open it.

         
Dear Lovejoy,

                  
Despite my precipitate
departure, I am apprised by my
                           
         
employers Lissom and Prenthwaite that
I am contractually
           
         
obligated to attend your auction at
Scout Hey. My attendance
               
         
does not alter in any way my attitude
towards you and the
           
         
nefarious dealings in which you are
currently engaged. My
           
         
rescission should not be taken as a
wish on my part to resume
                
         
any relationship with you. It arises
solely from Mrs. Wanda's
                 
         
decision to change the venue of the
auction to Scout Hey.

                  
Yours faithfully.

                  
For Lissom, Prenthwaite, Co,
pic (registered for Value Added
                  
         
Tax) Lydia.

What the hell did it mean?

'Just a love letter,' I explained to Nicola, chucking it into the
fire. 'That tea ready? I'm famished. Got anything to eat, Tinker?'

'Nowt,' he said. 'Got anything to drink?'

'Well?' Nicola asked. 'Water? In a
well
?’

'The loo's in the yard.'

'Loo?'
she gasped faintly.
'In the
yard
?’

'Give me a sec, love. I'll drop you off at a hotel. They've a
vacancy at the Man and Scythe.'

I sat in front of the fire and closed my eyes. I'd had enough
italics for one day. I wanted to work out which fears to use most tomorrow.

Homecomings aren't. As Nicola muttered, I kept my eyes shut, heard
Tinker's gravelly voice explaining how he'd obeyed my orders. He'd done all
right. But had he stayed sober while doing it? We'd find out on the morrow.

33

At four o'clock—cold, frost, breath solid in the garish lights—I
was near the old Burnden football ground. The town's grotty stream runs nearby,
in a grottier hollow. Lads going down there are Up To No Good, committing the
giddy sin of Getting With Girls. Chance'd be a fine thing. I stood standing, as
local idiom says, until a sleek red motor hummed up. It halted at the kerb. I
knelt.

'What's the point of a motor this flat?' I said.

'It's fast,' Wanda said, her voice in double-whisky dawn pitch.
'No, Lovejoy. Don't get in.'

'It's not exactly secret, is it?'

'You burke. Some cars have a pose index.'

'Mmmh.' Who but Wanda could afford a one-off special tooled in
Oxfordshire?

'And it's kitted out. Here.' Her hand thrust out a black box that
piped nervously, 'Hello? Lovejoy?' I hadn't even seen Wanda properly yet, and
here I was talking to a matchbox.

'Good morning. Briony, is it?'

We exchanged reassurances. I hung on to learn that she would be
'with me soon, dear, to take up where we left off.' I quote.

'Er, where, Mrs. Finch?' My verbal unravelling.

'I'm already here, darling. Mrs. Wanda is arranging the auction at
your site. Her staff have been contacting buyers ceaselessly. Her printer is
working non-stop.'

Real news. Printers have only one rule: everything takes nine
months. I said, 'Er, why are you here, exactly?' Superfluity has ruined
everything from murder to evolution and the ozone layer. It even ruins rarity.
'I hoped you'd stay at Thornelthwaite until it was over. Be less . . .' Of a
problem? Simpler to milk her money? '. . . tiring.'

'How sweet.' Her voice softened. 'Mrs. Wanda thought it best. So
did I, after that frantic Aureole came. And that Thekla. There are some
disagreeable women about.'

Wrong, but you can't disagree. Briony had the bit between her
emotional teeth. 'The antiques, Mrs. Finch?'

'Briony, please. I'm to vouch that it's all there when the auction
starts. Mrs. Wanda is most proper.'

'I'll hand you back to Wanda.'

'Over and out, Finch,' Wanda snapped. 'Happy, Lovejoy? Get in.'

'Er, the antiques?' I had to know.

'In my pantechnicons, at . . .' She waited, then made me leap a mile
by screaming,
'Wake up, you idle bitches!
Where where where?'

'Yes, Wanda!' the frightened dashboard blurted. 'Affetside!
Waiting at Affetside! You want the map reference?'

I nodded to answer Wanda. 'No.' Wanda's charm is strictly
utilitarian.
'Keep awake!'

'Yes, Wanda.'

Getting seated in her motor felt the reverse of being born. I
wondered if there was a word for it. Unparturition, perhaps? Undeliver? Wanda
gunned us into orbit.

'Know what that little cow's bonus is?' she yelled over the
engine's howl. 'Dance class,
two years
.
Ballroom English waltz champion year after next, she reckons. Am I a walking
charity? Which way?'

'Straight on. The town's mostly one way now.'

'What thanks do I get? Lazy mare. What's the game?'

'There's junk, loosely described as an antiques auction, at a
disused chapel called Scout Hey. And some fashion show. Both widely advertised.
Telly, newspapers, dignitaries, the lot.'

'Fashion awards day? Antiques the attraction.' She gave a wintry
smile. I could see her face sideways on in the flickering lights. A female Big
John Sheehan. 'Which I have killed myself to catalogue, Lovejoy. For peanuts.'

'For money, love. And,' I dismally reminded her of the plum in the
pudding, 'me.'

'At last! Which way?'

'Left fork. It's the old toll gate. In 1827, the toll charge for
six sheep

'Lovejoy, shut it. What's your angle?'

'Trying to keep clear of falling objects, love. Anybody been
sniffing around?' I meant police. She surprised me.

'Some tart wanting her feller's wheels back. Gave her short
shrift.'

Vernon Sleek, sending Ruby after his Braithwaite. People really
exasperate me. Okay, so I'd borrowed his motor. What was it, a crime?

'There's one difficulty, love,' I said, still horizontal. 'Those
five good antiques I promised you. The organiser's husband Terence Entwistle
has nicked them. I can get them back.' She accelerated up Scout Hill in
darkness. 'Only . . .'

'Only they're not yours to give?'

'They're the mayor's. He's donated them. True lust will out. He's
daft over Mrs. Entwistle.'

'And, Lovejoy?' she prompted. 'Don't forget I know you.'

'I'm in trouble.' I told her about Spoolie, sprinkling multiple
disclaimers. She listened in silence, a novelty.

'Cradhead?' she guessed. 'He's been perched in my driveway for
yonks, comes in for a cuppa. Quite a lady's man, him. Says nothing. Smiles at
my girls. Into fashion.'

Cradhead? Lady's man? Fashion? Smiles? Worryingest of all, silent.
'Turn right.'

'Here?' She protested, steering round the farmyard searching for a
way out, 'Can't be. It's an empty farm, Lovejoy. Ugh!'

'Brake, when you feel inclined.'

The rain was sweeping off the moors towards the town. Wanda
alighted, rushed up the steps calling hatred of weather. Tinker had left a
lantern. I followed, daring myself to think. I mean, a massive town in the
bowl-shaped vale, an eighth of a million folk. In the entire kingdom, thousands
engaged in antiques. And I finish up on a bleak moorland with Wanda. I'd asked
help from several bulk dealers before phoning Wanda, that day at Briony's
manor. Had I been lucky to get her? Or had she put the black on everybody else,
thus guiding me into her pen? She had the communications to do it. Maybe she'd
engineered her own enlistment, when all along I'd been thinking how lucky I'd
been to get so perfect an ally.

'Who else is coming, Wanda?'

'Bertie. My team, girls, seven whifflers, drivers. That idle cow
in the commo van.' She stood shivering before the peat fire, trying womanlike
to prove it was perishing. Our voices echoed. Tinker had gone. I stood, hands
in pockets, wondering what felt so wrong. She misunderstood. 'Commo van?
Communications mobile link-up. Are you always this thick, or just having a bad
night?'

'Is that how you contact Carmel?' A guess.

'Yes.' She said outright, then she realised. 'Among others.'

'Who others?' I heard my voice shake. 'I was molotoved a few hours
back.'

'Not my doing, Lovejoy.' She hugged herself, glared sourly about.
'This
place
. I'm freezing.'

'Was it you, love?' I asked, chilled to the marrow.

'No.' She chucked the shivering act, cool. 'I didn't even know. If
they'd asked me, I'd have vetoed it.'

'Ta.' I checked myself. Thanking her for not having bothered
enough to prevent my being executed? 'You're in on it, though. Who with?'

'You'd know soon enough, I suppose.' She tried to sound weary,
finally letting me in on their game. But if she knew me, I knew her. Wanda has
been acting so long she can't stop. 'Carmel once worked for me. She's always been
into fashion. She had an idea of pinching designs. It's massive business,
Lovejoy, if you guess right about next season's styles.'

'Isn't this show too small to bother with?'

'Yes.' She smiled. 'But fashion has to be hunted, not followed,
Lovejoy.' I told her I didn't understand. 'Think hard. Suppose a fashion diva
is interested in a newcomer. What then?'

'What what then?' To me fashion's an invented whim. Dig below the
tinsel, you find tinsel. Wisely I didn't share this with Wanda.

'Then that diva would sponsor his display. Right?' She drifted
close, in firelight silhouette. 'And make sure he triumphs.'

Wanda stroked my face with a fingernail. Was it, too, synthetic?

'So?'

Well, she laughed until tears streamed down her face, helpless.
She clutched at me for support, which I gladly lent.

'Sponsors provide the judges, Lovejoy. So she'll decide the
winner. Who is . . . ?'

'Her boyfriend?' I guessed, shrewd. 'So Carmel is only somebody to
front the sponsors?'

'Thank God you got there, Lovejoy. I'm one backer for the fashion
show. The charity auction's a smokescreen, like they always are.'

'Who're the others?'

'Does it matter? One was poor Viktor Vasho. Thekla's another. Come
to bed, Lovejoy. Is it aired?'

'Er . . . ?' I asked.

'Aired.' She was exasperated. 'Dry, warm, clean.'

'It's straw, in front of the fire.'

'Straw?' She moaned. 'Bolt the doors, Lovejoy. And windows. Make
sure there're no draughts.'

Fastest ever draught exclusion. I made up a straw pallet— God,
sleeping on straw's noisy—and found eleven blankets.

With those, the warmth of the fire, and me, Wanda made it through
the night. Until seven o'clock, when her gadgets started pinging and talking. I
had the grace to say thanks, in case there'd not be time later, and also in
case I'd been lied to.

One thought kept recurring. Roger and his archaeology had no real
reason for coming north. Local archaeology wasn't worth much. Two old mills
survived as museums. We have hundreds of ancient stone circles. Nothing else.

Tinker came at half past with some beans, eggs, bread, for an
elegant repast. He didn't comment on Wanda's presence, and she did not notice
his. Dreaming after Wanda and me'd made smiles, I'd thought about what antiques
had chimed my bells in the derelict mansion at Scout Hey. Terence's stolen
mirrors, Lodge paintings, for sure. There were simply no others. Terence would
be keeping watch, so I'd have to time it right. Then Wanda roused and chimed
some bells of her own, and that was that.

Calm, I told Tinker to find me a rot hound. By then Wanda was
outside in her car, yammering.

'Rot hound, Lovejoy? They're rare.'

'Then get going. Don't let on to Wanda.'

A rot hound is today's reverse technology. Insurance firms and
surveyors use electronic devices to trace woodrot. Silly old them. Modern
technology finds dry rot with amazing accuracy, a triumph of science. A trained
dog, your actual rot hound, can accurately case any building for dry rot
ten times faster
. Also, a manky old dog
can be a pal, ally and guardian. Electronics can't be anything but a yawn. I
gave Tinker four hours.