‘There! Well? Aren’t you proud of me? Tea in bed?’
‘I’ll arrange the knighthood. Where’s Kurt?’
She turned and put a finger on my mouth. ‘Shhh. Kurt’s a man whose only interest is antiques and art. He’s not here, which suits me fine.’
Well, pretence is everything nowadays. ‘Does he know?’
‘Know, darling?’ She stopped pouring, the spout dripping.
‘About you and Kurak.’
For a split second her nostrils flared, almost too quick to notice, but it happened and should have warned me. My only excuse for what eventually occurred is that a woman in bed is a terrible distraction to common sense. She poured the tea, stirred and carefully passed mine.
‘There’s such a thing as change, Lovejoy. Kurak’s served his purpose, now that . . .’
‘Now I’m here?’
She lit a cigarette and jerked her head to show supreme irritation the way they do. ‘Too pure, Lovejoy? Well, are you? I read your life story. Kurt had three agencies on you for weeks. Every tart, every shady deal, every forgery, those silly bored sluts of housewives pretending to be Sweet Little Alice in exchange for a good rut. It was all there, every detail.’
My life isn’t the way she made it sound, really sordid. Anyway, Lyn’s not a slut.
‘Kurak had his uses, Lovejoy, just as Kurt had his.’
‘Past tense?’
‘Certainly.’ Her brown eyes enveloped me. ‘It’s you now. Or are you too stupid to realize?’ And, honestly, she smiled as she said the words, her lips widening and her cheeks dimpling. I swallowed tea to wet my throat, suddenly dry.
‘Me for what?’
‘Two things, darling. One, we find a fortune.’
‘And two?’
She slid down, covering her shoulders with the sheet, and gave my belly a lick. ‘Finish your tea, darling.’
I can’t drink tea hot like women do, so I put it on the bedside table. The Duc de Charost actually read a book in the Terror’s tumbril, and, when it came his turn for the scaffold, calmly turned down the page to mark his place. I wish I had panache like that. It would give you some control. Anyway, he’d still got the chop, poor sod, and I was trying not to.
A click fetched me conscious.
Lena was sleeping hunched, her back to me. We lay sideways across the disarranged bed. My leg was over her waist. In sleep my right hand had reached round to hold her breast. The pillows were anywhere. It was still daylight. I kept still and listened. No further sound. Kurak. It
had
been Northampton, that auction. Only he was no Slav then. I’d seen him across the crowd of bidders and dealers.
Without moving I estimated Lena’s breathing. Regular. I stirred, moved my leg, freed my hand and rolled on my back. Lena didn’t shift. Flat out. The click didn’t come again. There was no movement in the other rooms that I could tell.
Her skin was flawless, full and smooth. It took an iron will slowly to reach the other way, and gently find the teacup. My finger touched the wet tea. Barely warm. Maybe an hour at the outside.
The edge of one sheet lay across my chest, but Lena had pulled a blanket over our legs and somehow got herself mostly burrowed under. Women do this in halfsleep, being naturally petrified of coldness.
One thing I’m a world expert in is leaving bed with great stealth. I’ve trained a lifetime. You don’t do it inch by inch. You sigh, yawn, flop a bit, because those are the natural movements a woman’s senses expect of a sleeping companion. Getting yourself vertical’s the main problem. The best way is to sigh, then, making sure your limbs are free of all encumbrances, in one movement you smoothly swing your legs over the side, simultaneously bringing your torso erect. You stay sitting there, breathing regularly so the vibes of kipping lull any alerted senses back into oblivion. Then you slowly stand up, and you’re off. Check first that your escape’s not left her more uncovered than when you were
in situ
, so to speak, or chill will bring her to.
That should have been the end of it, except my jacket and trousers lay too neatly on the carpet of the living room. Practically folded, as if the trouser crease was still traceable. Now, I didn’t like this at all because I don’t fold things. I liked it less when finding my wodge of money was gone. My gear had been cleaned out, down to the last Irish florin. No sign, though, of anybody – such as Kurak – in the flat.
Underpants, singlet, shirt (sleeves rolled up to conceal its button-free cuffs), trousers and jacket. A man feels better when dressed, probably because blokes look so daft in the nuddie. Socks were difficult, till I remembered I’d slung them off in the bedroom. Worse, Lena’s handbag was missing. And I knew it should have been by the telly where she’d carelessly laid it as she lit a cigarette. I padded over to the window. Kurak was still down in the courtyard, now smoking a cigar and much less edgy. Just as sullen, but no knuckle-cracking. Exactly like a bloke who had just obeyed his mistress’s command: nick Lovejoy’s gelt, don’t let him get away, and wait outside until you’re told different. Well, I now knew how persuasive Lena could be. I was hooked on her myself, daft sod. Silently I floated into the bedroom, and found my tatty socks near the dressing-table.
Lena had turned over. She now faced the corridor door, and I was sure she was still sleeping . . . I think. Suspiciously, I waited a few moments but there wasn’t a quiver from her eyelids. Her handbag wasn’t in the bedroom either, That took a minute, which was fatal. The bed sounded, too sharply.
‘Lovejoy? What are you . . . ?’
I’d clocked her one before I could think. She exhaled and slumped on the bed, moving slowly, in a daze from my blow. The recollection still makes me embarrassed, but what else is new? Anyway what can you do when it’s courtesy or survival? Instinct takes over then. Nothing actually to do with thinking or behaviour or conscience. Another choice was on me now – keep on searching for the odd groat, or scarper. I settled for escape in poverty and hit the road.
The door had a simple lock. Kurak was a nerk to have let it click – you pass any modern lock with a comb or a few celluloid toothpicks. He ought to have known that.
The kitchen clock said two o’clock. There was part of the day left, but it was now much less promising. I left by the back door, climbed a wall and in an hour had walked into Dublin town.
Not a farthing, no help, no car. I sat on a bench in draughty old Pheonix Park, thinking, unable to go home or reach Kilfinney two hundred miles away. Hunted by vengeful Heindricks, trapped into immobility by poverty. And you need money to finance the kind of war I was in.
The quickest way of course is roulette, though it’s a mug’s game. Mind you, there’s an infallible system – or, rather, there used to be. Clever Victorian Joe Jagger spotted it in the Monte Carlo casino by hiring clerks to sit at each wheel and list the numbers, but then Joe was a meticulous engineer raised on a lifetime of Lancashire cotton-mill spindles, and he knew all about eccentricities of balance mechanisms. His relentless winning streak is the reason that the roulette wheels of the world are now perfectly balanced by gimlet-eyed serfs at half past seven every dawn. Reminiscing, I grimaced to myself. The famous Joseph had more sense than most. Eventually rumbled by the panic-stricken croupiers, the world’s only infallible – and sensible – gambler simply packed his bags with his fortune and scarpered. The trouble is, gambling isn’t like antiques. It’s guessing. Look at that con artist Charlie Wells, the original Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo. Kept on gambling, finished broke. Well, I was broke to start with.
A sparrow came to my feet full of hope, and went on its way. Not daft. It was going to where it had prospects.
Prospects!
Like being
owed
money? I remembered Jason’s promise of a genuine first edition from, where was it, that printer’s shop . . . near here. Fenner and something. I was owed! Therefore I too had prospects! At an antiquarian bookseller’s, not far from the park. Eagerly I rose and headed towards my own salvation.
The place when I found it was off the main road near Phoenix Park. I was glad about that. The nearest bus stop was quite a few hundred yards away and nobody waiting. A tatty printing shop front leading directly off the pavement, but with a grand new Rover parked outside and a smaller white Ford further along. Surprised at its dinginess, I went in. An old shop doorbell clunked above. There was a long counter and two blokes chatting away behind it. An aroma of fag smoke mingled with the bland bite of printer’s ink. Untidy rows of books threatened a few desperate shelves. Founts of type were casually racked on trays all the way along the shop interior.
‘Fenner and Storr? Antiquarian booksellers?’
‘I’m one. He’s the other. And you’ll be . . . ?’ The stockier, shabbier bloke broke off and came to lean across the counter as if it were a taproom bar. He seemed pleasant and bright. I was glad about that for his sake, because I find people like being happy, even if it’s only for a short time.
‘Lovejoy.’
‘And from the sound of you you’ll be a book dealer from over the water,’ he chirruped. ‘Now, what’s your speciality?’
‘
Paradise Lost
,’ I said. The other bloke was nattier, county set in tweeds and twill with an elegant walking cane. He met my eye, nodded affably. I nodded back. No argument with him, only with this robber trying to flannel me across his flaky-paint counter.
‘Ah. Blessed Milton, of the sweet tongue! Well, you’re in luck there, sor!’
I let him rummage among the shelves a full minute before speaking. ‘Two hundred and ten quid. Please.’
That caught him. He was in the act of turning towards me, blowing dust off a small ancient-looking volume, when the words arrived home.
‘What’s that you say?’
‘Two ten. Please.’
The penny dropped with the other bloke first. ‘Lovejoy,’ he said softly. ‘That name, Michael.’
‘You’re Lovejoy?’ Michael the robber came slowly back, trying to judge my mood. ‘East Anglia?’ At my nod his jauntiness returned. ‘Some mistake happened. You ordered
Paradise Lost
, first edition. We posted it, registered. Why, this is the very book.’ He smiled and put it down between us. ‘The parcel was returned-to-sender, wasn’t it, Johno?’
‘I returned it.’
‘It hadn’t even been opened.’
‘But it had been paid for,’ I said gently. ‘Through Jason.’
‘So now you’ve called for it in person,’ Michael crooned. His stubble glinted in the sick light. ‘And right welcome y’are—’
His voice choked off because my hand had his throat. I wedged the phoney book in his mouth and turned it till blood came.
‘You sent me a shammer. I’d paid the price you asked, for a genuine first edition.’
‘Hold your horses, Lovejoy.’ The smartish geezer called Johno was tapping me with a sword. Honest to God, a sword in this day and age. I heard the cane sheath fall. A swordstick. Michael rasped breath in as I let him go.
‘Glory be to God!’ he croaked.
‘Stand still, Lovejoy.’ Johno Storr was calm, watchful. Risking his swordstick was too much of a chance. ‘How do you know it was a shammer if you didn’t undo the parcel?’ His gaze cleared suddenly. ‘Only divvies can do that. Well, well, well. We’ve a real find here, Michael.’
I said evenly, ‘No, thanks,’ slammed off out and went for a stroll.
A few minutes later I was back and placing two bricks into position in the gutter outside the bookshop. A Rover’s a pretty wide motor so I had to measure it out with my feet. The car door wasn’t locked, which pleased me because it saved quite fifteen seconds, and I was busily wiring the starter up and revving the engine before Johno Storr and his grubbier sidekick came to see what the hell was going on. Johno lost his cool then. He came banging on the motor’s windows but I’d had the sense to lock all the doors and windows. Anyway, I was already moving, reversing across the street in the first bit of a three-point turn. Calmly I fastened the seatbelt while Johno yelled at Michael to phone the Gardai. He kept yanking at the handle my side. Michael Fenner had just gone in as I lined the big nose up with my two bricks and slipped the stick into first gear. Johno’s expression changed from fury to incredulity as he realized my intention.
He screamed. ‘Stop him! Stop him! For Christ’s sake stop—!’
The run-up was hardly thirty feet, but the motor boomed into speed across the road, and I kept my foot down. My mouth was scared dry as the wheels bounced up on to the kerb.
The shop front abruptly filled the windscreen with a resounding slam. Glass shivered. Something thumped into my chest and the car burrowed into the shop in a hurtling nose-dive.
I suppose the impact dazed me a minute or two before I recovered my senses enough to look around. Through the dust I could see the front bumper was level with the top of the counter, and Johno was yelling blue murder while trying to unwedge his mate from the far corner. He was trapped by a printing press that had been crushed across the floor as my – well, Johno’s – Rover stove the shop front in. I damned near sprained my ankle climbing out of a rear window, not realizing it would be so high off the floor. We were all three choking and spluttering in dust.
Fenner was whimpering, ‘Help, for God’s sweet sake—’
‘Two hunded and ten, please.’
Rubble and glass seemed everywhere. Like being in a war movie. A couple of faces peered in, but I was past caring. I lobbed a brick fairly gently at Johno because Michael was in no fit state for more shocks. He was ashen and bleeding a bit. For the first time Johno looked scared. ‘You’re out of your mind, Lovejoy.’
Just in case, I broke his sword by swiping it on the edge of a press guillotine. Crummy modern crap. A genuine Georgian or William IV would have laughed at such treatment. Johno panicked then and fumbled out a wodge of notes a foot thick.
‘Remember the rate of exchange.’ That made him check and shakily restart his counting, but eventually the blissful feel of money warmed my digits.
Michael Fenner was fainting away when I left. Climbing across the shambles, I picked up a small booklet of gold leaf, as a kind of Lovejoy-tax on the two rogues, though what I could do with it I had no idea, and these booklets cost surprisingly little on account of the gold’s thinness. A couple of elderly bystanders were outside admiring the unusual sight of a big Rover’s bum sticking out of a shopfront window, its wheels a clear yard off the pavement. I hadn’t realized till then how ugly cars are underneath. You’d think these car designers would at least try.