Moonspender (16 page)

Whacked, a few paces at a time, I staggered with him to the
cottage. The worst bit was laying him on his kitchen table. All right, I know
it's not proper first aid, but I was in a worse state than he was. The only
difference was that one of us was unconscious. Some poacher.

In the light of my lamp I inspected him. His head was battered.
Not a beat of pulse, not an eddy of breath. Oh, God. I'd been handling a dead
man; I'd rescued a corpse. I was alone in a storm with a dead man. I rushed
into the rain with my lamp, one shoe missing.

"Guard him, Decibel," I bleated, and blundered up the
path to the Ruby. A split minute and I was clattering away from that horrible
dank copse toward the nearest police, Geoffrey's house at the next village
crossroads.

"Tell me again, Lovejoy." Ledger was sitting on
Boothie's wet table swigging coffee. They'd offered me none. Phyllis with her
portable was typing reproachfully by torchlight. "Are you sure it was
Booth? And his dog?"

"For God's sake, Ledger. Who took Decibel walks that time
Boothie had pneumonia?"

"A poacher? Headfirst down in his own brook?" His eyes
never left me. "Why no trail, Lovejoy?"

"Because it's raining cats and dogs. The bloody stuff runs
downhill, you burke. Look." I pointed. "The table's wet where I laid
him."

Ledger indicated the sash windows. "It's all wet, Lovejoy.
Windows and doors open. Booth left his cottage agape. Sudden rainstorm blew
rain inside. Common enough story."

I went through and looked at the back door. Ajar. I
stooped
by the kennel. Well, well.

"Then, Lovejoy, where is the corpse and its dog?"

"I don't know."

"Book him, Phyllis." Ledger rose, beckoned to the
policeman outside. Three police cars swung their nasty blue blinders
asynchronously beyond the
copse
.

"What for, Ledger?"

"Malicious misuse of police resources."

"Ledger," I said brokenly. "I won't—"

"Add resisting arrest, Phyllis. And bring our own coffee next
time." He shoved his hands in his pockets and went to the door, judging
the teeming rain.

" 'Night, Ledger," I said dismally.

He glanced back, turning up his collar to make the dash. "Not
you, Lovejoy. You're coming with us."

And I did, my Ruby puttering head-on into the rain behind the file
of impatient police cars. But you can't help wondering what kind of murderer
steals a corpse, and its loyal dog. And removes its personal dog biscuits.
Ledger was right: poachers don't fall. They have to be pushed. And maybe they
rise up and steal away.

12

Perhaps you don't know them much but a magistrate's court is a
complete waste of space. They can be pretty informal. I've known one old duffer
go on about fly-fishing till all the bobbies nodded off. Today's clown was a
veteran, clearly bored to be working when he could be out burning peasants. He
glared at me as I was led in. I'm on a right winner here, I thought, heart
doing its customary dive at the spectacle of law.

"Lovejoy, sir," a bobby announced for me, in case I
irresponsibly uttered fact.

"Why is he in such a state?"

Ledger had refused me permission to wash, my condition being part
of his evidence. Hence I was still the monster from the black lagoon.

"Germane to the case, sir," my peeler said.

"It happened on my estate, sir," I said, building
hassles in the sky. "I've not had time to change."

"Did he say on his estate?"

"
Yessir
. I'm estate manager. Manor
Farm, sir." Ledger's stricken stare hit me like a missile, but I was past
caring. "I've had trouble with a poacher, sir, and ..." Battles
between poachers and
estaters
in East Anglia are
background yawns. Nobody in his right mind lets them into court. The
growsy
old bloke erupted and sent us all scurrying for
wasting the court's time. They released me after two phone calls, so I must
have guessed right about the boundary. Boothie's cottage was on Manor Farm.

"Good one, Lovejoy." Ledger walked me to the steps. A
bright fresh morning, cold as charity. "Gainfully employed, eh? A legend
in your own lunchtime." Passing people stared at me, a symphony in gunge.

"Ha
ha
," I said dutifully.
"My crate's in the pound."

Companionably he ordered the gate nerk to release my Ruby, me
distrusting all this camaraderie. Police, like criminals, are determinants of
social disorder. Their uniqueness lies in the fact that they apply the law by
unswerving guesswork, whereas criminals follow form. Hence, Ledger's happiness
was in inverse proportion to mine.

"You know our number, don't you? Ring any time." He
grinned. "You see, Lovejoy, my lords and masters will go berserk if you
get topped, after today's hilarious court proceedings. See my
predicament?"

I hesitated. "You did believe me about Tom Booth?"

He laughed, genuinely laughed. "Only for public consumption,
Lovejoy. Good luck."

Off he went, chuckling. I didn't like it. I mean, subtlety and
peelers don't mix. Ledger being master of the single entendre. Yet he falls
about at being foiled?

This clearly called for a visit to the convalescent home. The Ruby
whined into complaining life and carried me there in thirty minutes flat, only
two rests for breath. The exhilaration of speed. I felt like an astronaut.

The convalescence unit's at a crossroads outside the comer of
Manor Farm's sprawling estate, with a good view of Constable country, rivers
and such. It's lonely, but all right on a cold October day with white clouds
racing to make the coast before the fenlands squeezed them into dry extinction.

The elderly stooping chief, Dr. Pryor, looked in sore need of a
bit of convalescence himself, tired and gaunt.

"Before you say anything, doc, I lied to your nurse." I
gave it half a second. "I'm not ill. I'm not a moaning relative. And I'm
not a Health Service administrator whining about your colossal
expenditure."

He sat back, not knowing quite what to think. "Our
expenditure's not colossal."

"You're right, doc." When I grovel I go all the way.

He was smiling. "Reporter?"

"No. I boned up on the gallant defense you made in the local
newspaper." Lize's photocopies. "So you'd show me round on
trust."

He scanned me and nodded, scoring me harmless. "You must be
on our side. NHS administrators can't read. Come on."

A rehabilitation unit's no picnic. Traction, splints, walking
frames, it's all there. Ropes dangle. Pools steam. White-coated troglodytes
have poor sickly people breathing desperately into piston machines. Fluorescent
screens blip traces. Wires, flex, plugs, cables everywhere. Doc Pryor got in,
"Lucky you've come when we've tidied," but I stayed close by him in
case a machine grabbed me. There was the all-pervading NHS pong of cooking.

The old doctor noticed I was hanging back, squeamish.

"I see," he said laconically, and after that showed me
only corridors, day rooms, the bleep system.

"Why's everybody happy, doc?" I asked. I'd counted
several definite smiles. A young bloke wobbling ecstatically along in a frame
thing even panted a cheery greeting.

"They're getting better." Pryor's tone announced that
they'd improve or else.

A peculiar metronomic chanting lapped my ear. I asked what it was.
He swung open a door on a little girl about eleven, hair in bunches,
syllabizing words to a metronome's beat. "So - the - horse -
cant
-
ered
-home - to - its -
sta
-
ble
- " Another smile
and a thumbs-up sign.

We went on, me keeping an eye out for the comer turret room I
wanted so badly to see, where the fire had been.

"Little Christine has a terrible stutter. Old-fashioned
remedies do work sometimes."

"Stutter?" I halted.

He was pleased at my interest. "Yes. They start on the
metronome. Then graduate to this." He showed me a little watch-shaped
cylinder. "Orchestra conductors hold them." He pressed it into my
palm. It tapped gently, a
minimetronome
. As we
ascended the staircase I asked if it would work for a grown woman.

"Depends on the type of stutter," he was saying.
"We use several different methods. But that one's usually worth a try. The
trouble is stutterers think it's a cross they're simply born with. Society's
unforgiving, no compassion. ..."

I liked this irascible old man, flapping ahead in his grubby white
coat, throwing out his accusations. We ascended stairs to the turret room.

"Last and not most, here's Gerald, idle good-for-nothing.
Tyrant of the turret room, bleep boss."

Gerald was a youngish bloke at a switchboard bank, earphones,
mouthpiece. Metal flaps leapt from the old-fashioned console every time a green
light buzzed. The room was a mess of ripped plaster. Its floorboards were
exposed, stained, a few scorched by recent mayhem. Lize's newspaper had spoken
the truth, an innovation. Plywood wall panels were partly burned away showing
grubby tiles beneath. My spirits soared. Tile pictures. You get patches of
decorative tile work in old hospital units like these. They're rare and
valuable, so look before you ruin. Jesse Carter became the archetype when he
started his Poole Pottery in 1873. A good stretch—say 300, of 15 tile
pictures—will net you a blond, a world cruise, and still leave you enough to
buy a new car. Many of these lovely old tile pictures are secret—like the four
dozen incredible panels of nursery rhymes in the Royal Victoria Infirmary,
Newcastle. Don't tell anyone. I came back to earth in the
semiwrecked
room.

"Wanted on three, doctor. Mrs. Hampson's son again."

Pryor grimaced. "Tell him to go to hell."

"Doctor Pryor says go to hell, Mr. Hampson," Gerald
intoned.

The turret room was just that, a small room dominating the comer
of the building. Like many of these National Health Service places, it had been
an old family house once, its exterior displaying lovely ornamental brickwork.
It set me thinking. The turret room commanded a view of Pittsbury Wood, the
adjacent fields, the distant sea line, a gleam of estuary, an eave of Dogpits
Farm, the stables at Manor Farm. I caught a glimpse of a tribe of red-coated
hunters on brown smudges with white
waggly
dots
shoaling ahead of them. Major Bentham's pack was out, the maniacs. Just before
I opened my big mouth to ask about the view I spotted Gerald's cupped hand
moving across the console. He was having to feel for the flap, not look at the
green-light signal. Blind.

"This was where they did the damage, eh?"

"More newspaper talk?" Pryor smiled, looking about.
"Yes. Three weeks gone. Smashed the windows. A fire, a night raid."

"Reasons?"

"Who knows?" he said despairingly. "The times we
live in, I daresay. There's no money for repairs, so it'll have to come
down."

"Hang on."

This place had once been a lovely old family house. Real people
had talked and loved here for generations. It deserved better than being
bulldozed, even if it was wilting under attack.

"Doc." I held out a coin. "Sell me a brick."

"Beg pardon?" Pryor was puzzled, but Gerald was smiling.

"Tell Lovejoy yes, doctor." Before I could reply the
blind man added, "I heard you, once, at a lecture about antiques. People
told me about you."

I'd heard that the blind are unerring at voices.

"Very well." Pryor took the money warily.

"Right. Now sell me a tile." I thought of explaining how
the Tile Society's burgeoned, but said nothing.

He was guarded. "You mean these?" He nodded at the
exposed grubbiness.

"Aye. Now, doc. Sell me the lot?"

He cleaned his spectacles agitatedly. "They're not mine to
sell, Lovejoy. They belong to the Health Service."

"Who will rubble them, and move your unit into a box."

"I don't understand, Lovejoy."

"Shut your cloth ears, Gerald," I said, "this is
high finance." So, while Gerald—who'd long since got the point—chuckled
and worked the phones, and I wondered how a clever old coot like Dr. Pryor
could be so blinking dim, I explained in monosyllables the most routine of
modem robberies.

"It's called the wall game," I said. "Get it? A
building is, say, eighteenth century. By law it's sacrosanct. But builders want
to cram pillboxes on the land for profit. So they secretly weaken the
structure. The building becomes unsafe. In the interests of public safety, the
council hires a builder—usually a most sincere friend—to destroy the lovely
house, and everybody's happy, no?"

"But that's dishonest," Dr. Pryor said, frowning.

My headaches usually come on when honesty raises its head. You can
only keep going. "The dishonesty is that the kingdom has lost a priceless
treasure."