He slurped from his cup to fuel up for cerebral activity. His eyes hazed. I swear his brain becomes audible. He took a deep drag of carcinogens. Blast off.
‘Bexon. An old geezer? Great Hawkham?’ he remembered finally. I nodded. ‘Only rubbish.’
‘No paintings?’
‘None. Rough old furniture, ordinary modern junk, Couple of carpets.’
‘Find out about Bexon, Tinker.’ My heart was in my boots.
‘Is it urgent, Lovejoy?’
‘You just don’t know.’ I gave him one of my stares and he nodded. It’s his job to be concerned about whatever I’m concerned about. It’s more than his job – it’s his life. Barkers are scouts for antiques dealers, the foragers, the pilot fishes questing ahead of the predatory shark . . . er, sorry, that last analogy’s unfortunate. Skirmishers, perhaps. ‘And try for an antique embroidery frame, Tinker.’ A few quid from Lennie wouldn’t come amiss,
‘Very hard, Lovejoy.’
‘Nothing from the robbery up for sale?’ I asked helplessly, really scraping the barrel.
Yobbos had hit our Castle museum a couple of weeks before, nicked some ancient British-Roman gold coins and used most of them in slot machines for cigarettes. This is akin to using a Kakeimon bowl for afters or clicking a La Chaumette flintlock from curiosity. The intellects our local lads have. Hopeless. If you stood them outside St Paul’s Cathedral they’d see nothing but a big stone bubble. I’m not being cruel. Most can’t tell a gold-mounted glass Vachette snuffbox from a box of aspirins. I mean it. The only gold-and-glass snuffbox ever discovered in our town made by that brilliant Napoleonic goldsmith was being used for aspirins at some old dear’s bedside. Two years ago a marine barometer made with delicacy and love by André-Charles Boule of Louis XIV fame was cheerfully nailed in place to span a gap in a shelf in a local farm cottage.
You just have no idea. East Anglia drives you mad sometimes. It’s paradise to a good, honest dealer like me, but I thank heavens da Vinci wasn’t local. His silly old scribbles would have been used for wallpaper in a flash.
‘No.’
‘Any news of the coins?’ He shook his head.
About three of the tiny – but oh, so precious – gold coins were still missing, according to the papers. Of course, I was only interested because I wanted to see them returned to their rightful community ownership in the museum for future generations to enjoy. Nothing was further from my mind than hoping they’d turn up by chance so a poor vigilant dealer like me could snaffle them and gloat over those delicious precious ancient
gold discs positively glinting with . . . er, sorry. I get carried away.
‘Hang on, Lovejoy.’
I paused in the act of rising to go. Tinker was quite literally steaming. The pong was indescribable, stale beer and no washing, but he’s the best barker in the business. I respect his legwork if nothing else. And he stays loyal, even with things this bad. I let him fester a moment more, looking about.
Helen was in, a surprise. She should have been viewing for tomorrow’s auction this late in the day. One of our careful dealers, Helen is tall, reserved, hooked on fairings, oriental art and African ethnology. I’d been a friend of Helen’s when she arrived four years before, without ever having felt close to her – mentally, that is. Self-made and self-preserved. She usually eats yoghurts and crusts in her sterile home near our ruined abbey, St John’s. Odd to see her in Woody’s grime.
‘Slumming?’ I called over cheerily to pass the time. She turned cool blue eyes on me, breathing cigarette smoke with effect like they can.
‘Yes,’ she said evenly and went back to stirring coffee amid a chorus of chuckles. Lovejoy silenced.
‘Lovejoy’ Tinker Dill was back from outer space. ‘What sort of stuff did you want from Bexon?’
‘Paintings.’
He thought and his face cleared.
‘Dandy Jack.’
‘He picked up something of Bexon’s?’ I kept my voice down. Friends may be friends, but dealers are listeners.
‘Yeh. A little drawing and some dross.’
‘Where is he?’ Dandy’s shop was across the main street.
‘On a pick-up.’
Just my luck. Dandy was given to these sudden magpie jaunts around the country. He always returned loaded with crud, but occasionally fetched the odd desirable home.
‘Back tomorrow,’ Tinker added.
‘On to something, Lovejoy?’ Beck’s voice, next table. Beck’s a florrid flabby predator from Cornwall. We call his sort of dealers trawlies, perhaps after trawler-fishing. They go wherever tourists flock, usually one step ahead of the main drove. You make your precarious living as a trawlie by guessing the tourists’ mood. For example, if you can guess that this year’s east coast visitors will go berserk over pottery souvenirs, plastic gnomes or fancy hats you can make a fortune. If you guess wrong you don’t. A rough game. Beck fancies himself as an antiques trawlie. I don’t like him, mainly because he doesn’t care what he handles – or how’. He always seems to be sneering. A criminal in search of a crime. We’ve had a few brushes in the past.
‘Is that you, Beck, old pal?’ I asked delightedly into the fumes of Woody’s frying cholesterol.
‘Who’s Bexon?’ he growled across at us.
‘Naughty old eavesdropping Big Ears,’ I said playfully. Not that I was feeling particularly chirpy, but happiness gets his sort down.
‘Chop the deal with me, Lovejoy?’ To chop is to share. There’s nothing more offensive than a trawlie trying to wheedle.
‘Perhaps on another occasion,’ I declined politely. I could see he was getting mad. The dealers around us were beginning to take an interest in our light social banter. You know the way friends do.
‘Make it soon,’ he said. ‘I hear you’re bust.’
‘Tell the Chancellor,’ I got back. ‘Maybe he’ll cut my tax.’
‘Put that in your begging-bowl.’ He flicked a penny on to our table as he rose to go. There was general hilarity at my expense.
‘Thanks, Beck.’ I put it in my jacket pocket. ‘You can give me the rest later.’ A few laughs on my side.
We all watched him go. Local dealers don’t care for trawlies. They tend to arrive in a ‘circus’, as we call it, a small group viciously bent on rapid and extortionate profit. They’re galling enough to make you mix metaphors. Take my tip: never buy antiques from a travelling dealer. And if there are two or more dealers on the hoof together, then . especially don’t.
‘Watch Beck, Lovejoy,’ Tinker warned in an undertone. ‘A right lad. His circus’ll be around all month.’
‘Find me Dandy Jack, Tinker.’
‘Right.’ He wheezed stale beer fumes at me.
I rose, giddy. A few other dealers emitted the odd parting jeer. I waved to my public and slid out. I was well into the Arcade before I realized I’d forgotten to pay Lisa for my tea. Tut-tut. Still, you can’t think of everything.
As I emerged, Janie signalled at me from near the post office, tapping her watch helplessly. Duty obviously called. I must have been longer than I thought. Through the traffic I signalled okay, I’d stay. I’d phone later. She signalled back not before seven. I signalled eight, then, I watched her go, and crossed back to the Arcade. Now I’d drawn a blank over Bexon, poverty weighed me down. I meant to go but you can’t avoid just looking at antiques, can you? Especially not in the Arcade. Patrick yoo-hooed me over to his place before I’d gone a few windows. I forced my way across
the stream of people. He always embarrasses me. Not because he’s, well, odd, but because he shows off and everybody stares.
‘Just the little
mannikin
I’ve prayed for!’ he screeched, false eyelashes and fingers all aflutter. ‘Lovejoy! Come here this
very
instant!’ Heads were turning and people gaped at the apparition posturing in his shop doorway. ‘This way, Lovejoy, dearie!’ he trilled. I was a yard away by then.
‘Shut your row, Patrick.’ I entered the shop’s dusk. ‘And must you wear a blue frock?’
‘Ultramarine, you great buffoon!’ he snapped. ‘Everybody pay attention!’ He did a pivot and pointed at me in tableau. ‘Lovejoy’s in one of his moods.’ The trouble is I always go red and shuffle. I can only think of cutting remarks on the way home.
‘Don’t mind Patrick, Lovejoy.’ I might have known Lily would be there. I don’t have time to tell you everything that goes on, but Lily (married) loves and desires Patrick (single and bent). Lily insists – in the long tradition of women hooked on sacrificial martyrdom – that she’s just the bird to straighten Patrick. As if that’s not enough, both are antiques dealers. You see the problem. ‘He tried to get a museum expert over,’ Lily explained, ‘but he’s gone to Norfolk.’ She spoke as if Norfolk’s in Ursa Major. Our locals are very clannish.
‘This way, Dear Heart!’ Patrick sailed to the rear followed by the adoring Lily. Three or four customers hastily got out of the way of someone so obviously and flamboyantly an expert as Patrick. I trailed along. ‘
Regardez!
’
It was a stoneware bottle. A large fish swam lazily in brushed iron design under the celadon glaze. I reached
out reverently, chest tight and breath dry. My mind was clanging with greed and love as I turned the little table round to see better.
‘Pick it up, Lovejoy,’ Patrick offered.
‘Shut up.’
‘Oh!’ he snapped petulantly. ‘Isn’t he absolutely
vulgar
.’
I sat and let the beauty wash from the brilliant work of art into the shop. The master had coated the bottle’s body with a luscious white slip. It was lovely, a lovely miracle. The ninth-century Korean pots are very different – those imprinted with hundreds of those tiny whorled designs in vertical rows tend to get me down a bit. This was from a much later period.
‘It’s genuine, Patrick,’ I said brokenly. ‘Superb.’
‘You perfect
dear
, Lovejoy!’ he whooped ecstatically.
‘Korean, about latish fifteenth century.’
Excited, he dragged me away and showed me a few other items – a phoney Meissen, a modern Hong Kong copy of a Persian-influenced Russian silver gilt tea and coffee service, supposedly 1840 (it’s surprising, but modern eastern copies always give themselves away by too rigid a design) and suchlike. We had a final row about a William and Mary commemorative plate. He was furious, wanting everything he showed me to be genuine now.
‘It’s a genuine blue-and-yellow, Lovejoy!’ he protested.
‘I’m sure it is, Lovejoy.’ That from the anxious Lily, unbiased as ever.
‘It’s modern,’ I said. I touched it. Not a single beat of life in the poor thing. ‘They always get the weight and colours wrong. The yellow should be mustard. The blue should be very blue.’ The dazzling loveliness of
that Korean bottle was making me irritable. I added, ‘You know, Patrick. Blue. Like your frock.’
He wailed into tears at that. I left, feeling poorer than ever and a swine. For all I knew, ultramarine might have been his colour.
Still two hours to wait for a bus home. And still all blank. I strolled towards the Castle museum. It was time I saw what sort of antique coins had been stolen, in case. The town museum is in the Castle. Its curator’s a small, tidy man called Popplewell. I got to him by telling a succession of uniformed opponents I wanted to make a donation to the museum. One even tried to charge me admission, the cheek of it. People take my breath away sometimes.
‘Donation?’ I told Popplewell, puzzled at the mistake. ‘I’m afraid one of your assistants got it wrong. I said nothing about any donation. I’m here about the robbery.’
‘Ah,’ he said dismally. ‘Insurance?’
Now, to digress one split second. Insurance and I – and I strongly urge this to include you as well – do not mix. As far as antiques are concerned, forget insurance. Concentrate what money you have on the antique’s protection in the first place. Don’t go throwing good money away.
‘No,’ I said, rapidly going off him. ‘I’m an antiques dealer.’
‘Really,’ he said in that drawl which means, I’ve met your sort before.
‘I want to know what was nicked in case it gets offered me.’
‘Is that so?’ He eyed me suspiciously, reclassifying me as a lout.
‘Yes. They’ll start looking for a fence,’ I explained.
‘They may take the goods to one of us respectable dealers.’
‘I see.’ He came to a decision. ‘Very well. I’ll show you. This way please.’
I didn’t tell him Lovejoy’s Law for the detection of stolen antiques, which runs: any genuine antique offered to you at a third of its known price has been stolen. Blokes like this curator chap are just out of this world. You need somebody like me to amass a collection, not a dozen committees.
We puffed on to the Roman landing. Popplewell halted at a sloping case. He removed a board and its covering beige cloth. The glass beneath was shattered and the display cards all awry. The legend card read
GOLD COINS OF THE ROMAN PERIOD: BRITAIN
. Popplewell took my stricken expression for criticism.
‘We haven’t had time to establish a substitute display,’ he said. ‘And the police have taken scrapings and photos for prints.’
‘Could you be more specific about the items?’
‘A set of Roman staters. Gold. Claudius. And some silver.’ He saw me reading the cards scattered in the case. It had been a rough smash-and-grab. ‘Those are Mr Bexon’s own labels.’
‘Er, Bexon?’ I sounded hoarse all of a sudden.
‘Top right-hand corner.’ He pointed. ‘The donor wanted his own labels retained. Quite incorrect, of course, but . . .’ He shrugged.
I read them through the broken glass, careful not to touch because police can be very funny about fingerprints. The cards all said the same:
GOLD COINS, ROMAN PERIOD
. Then a curious sentence on each: Found by the donor, Roman Province of IOM,’ I read aloud.
‘Was he serious? Isle of Man? But the Romans –’
Popplewell shrugged again. ‘He was a somewhat eccentric old gentleman. He insisted that we adhere to that wording exactly, though we all know that the Isle of Man never was colonized.’ He covered the scene of the crime. ‘We have the most amazing conditions appended to our gifts sometimes, t could tell you –’
‘Thank you,’ I interrupted hastily. ‘One thing. Were they genuine?’
‘Of course.’ He got nasty. ‘If you mean to imply this museum doesn’t examine properly and in detail all –’