Spend Game (6 page)

‘Thought you had me there, Nodge?’ I said affably, putting it down. I didn’t even shake. He looked at me.

‘It’s Bustelli,’ he said doggedly.

‘Not even Nymphenburg, lad.’

‘Get knotted, Lovejoy.’

‘Charming.’ I made to turn away, desperately thinking of something to say to keep the chat going, paused. ‘Oh. That other copy – parcel – gilt thing. You get rid of it?’

‘Which?’ He looked suddenly shifty.

‘You showed me it. Medham. The auction.’ I grinned, my antennae still fixed on the Bustelli porcelain.

‘Did I?’ He glanced uneasily about the room.

‘Not like you to forget, Nodge,’ I joked. In fact it’s not like any dealer to forget. I gave Margaret that look which meant we’d split the price and profit and she picked the Bustelli up casually.

‘Oh, er, yes. I sold it,’ Nodge said.

‘What’s the asking price?’ Margaret began the deal.

‘Take my tip, love,’ I told her, moving off. ‘Save your gelt. I could make you six copies by tea-time.’

‘But I like it,’ Margaret said, on cue.

‘Women,’ I gave back, shaking my head, and
nodded a farewell to Nodge. ‘Good luck with your crockery, Nodge.’ He said nothing, just watched me go.

I drifted about, wondering. During the next few minutes I occasionally glanced casually back at Nodge, to catch his eyes just averting by a millisec. He was definitely uneasy at seeing me. And reminding him of the Medham auction had made him worse. I was suddenly irritable. No antiques dealer ever forgets a deal, for heaven’s sake. Not ever. And here was Nodge trying to avoid any mention of that Medham auction. Why?’

‘Lovejoy.’ Helen appeared at my elbow. ‘Coins, now?’

‘Er, no.’

‘They’re going up. So they say.’ Her joke.

‘I wish they’d take me along with them.’ I’d been staring at a tray of coins belonging to Chris, a hopeful Saxmundham dealer.

‘I’ve hammered silvers, Lovejoy,’ he said.

‘You’re too dear, Chris.’

I was ready to begin a brief enjoyable heckle, to take my mind off worrying, when Helen said the words which changed everything and caused people to start dying all over the bloody place. And none of it was my fault, honest. Not any part of it. I’ll swear to that. Hand on my heart, if ever I find it.

‘Lovejoy,’ Helen said in my ear.

‘Your Norman mints are cheaper an London,’ I was saying cheerfully, hoping to nark Chris.

‘Lovejoy. I’ve a message.’ Helen.

‘Mine are finer,’ Chris shot back, successfully narked, to my delight.

‘
Lovejoy.
’ Helen pulled me away an inch. ‘I said I’ve a message for you.’

I let Chris off the hook a second, still smiling. ‘Who from, love?’ Helen put her lovely mouth against my ear to whisper. ‘From Leckie,’ she said.

‘Who?’ My face tightened. I felt my scalp prickle and could swear the room turned full circle.

‘I tried to give it to you last night.’

Cain Cooper saw us talking and deliberately barged us apart, his idea of fun. He’s a big puppy, all action and no sense.

‘Stop that, you two,’ he yelled. General laughter, with people looking our way and nudging and grinning. ‘Lovejoy’s at it again, folks.’

I managed a grin, with some effort. I was damned near fainting.

‘Don’t mind Cain,’ I told Helen loudly. ‘It’s time for his tablet.’ More laughs as I pulled Helen aside. Nobody more casual than Lovejoy, as Cain returned to his collection of paintings – some even genuine – and we drifted over to see Alfred Duggins, commercial as ever under his bowler.

‘I’ve some good prints, Lovejoy.’

‘Lend me one, then, Alf.’ Keeping up the wisecracks was giving me a headache. The room seemed suddenly unbearable, stifling. A message from Leckie, when Leckie’s dead?

‘Let’s get out of here, Helen.’

‘I tried to phone you all evening.’

‘I’d gone to earth.’

Jill bore down on us with her poodle outstretched like a figurehead. It licked me while she tried to interest me in some loose portabilia.

‘See you in the bar in ten minutes,’ I lied, shamming interest in the set of household gadgetry. Women used to carry them around the house in a small handbag.

‘Lovejoy, you’re an angel,’ she carolled. ‘Take good care of him, Helen. Come along, Charles.’

Charles looked knackered. He’s one of the vannies. He trailed her back into ihe smoky oblivion while Helen and I slipped out. Jean Plunkett was still being propositioned by Big Frank from Suffolk in the foyer. We passed them just as Black Fergus arrived, complete with the luscious bird, with a thin cadaverous bloke in tow, incongruous in a bright check suit. I’d seen him before somewhere. Helen and I got out of their way by stepping aside to examine the books. They always set up a bookstall in the downstairs lobby, new collectors’ publications and suchlike. Fergus passed us like a carnival and added to the hullabaloo inside. The blonde woman now had an elderly Wedgwood cameo, her scarab earrings presumably back in the family vault. Her eyes had flicked at me, again with that same startled air, before she gave Helen a cool once-over, the typical critical hatred of any two women passing each other. Women don’t like other women. Ever noticed that? When we got outside Helen still had her lips thinned out, recovering from having given the blonde tit for tat.

We crossed the road, dicing with death among the traffic. I bought two ice creams at the entrance to Castle Park, Helen laughing and shaking her head. ‘You’re like a big kid.’

‘Here.’ I collared a spot on the low wall near the rose garden. People were milling here and there.

‘This is hardly my scene, Lovejoy.’ She examined the wall distastefully. I can’t see what’s wrong with sitting on a wall.

‘Don’t muck about, love.’ Women get me down when they go all frosty. ‘The message.’

‘Couldn’t we go into the Volunteer?’ There was a bonny breeze blowing, which always makes a woman think of firesides.

‘The message.’

She sighed, nodding and perching reluctantly on the wall beside me.

‘He gave it me just as I left the sally.’ Dealers’ slang for auction.

‘What did he say?’

‘“Give it Lovejoy,” he told me. “Nobody else, Helen.” It’s written down.’ She rummaged in her handbag while I held both ice creams. ‘Here.’

An envelope, and the words
In case
written on in pencil. I felt sick because I’d seen the words before and in the same handwriting.

‘Was he okay?’

‘A bit preoccupied.’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘I’m sorry. You look so shocked. But I did try to get you all last night, and I told Tinker –’

‘It’s all right.’ I remembered now. Tinker had said Helen wanted a word with me in the White Hart. But that was before they’d known Leckie was dead.

‘Aren’t you going to read it?’

‘Not yet.’

I made Helen describe what happened at Medham. She’d been among the last to leave Virgil’s auction warehouse, hoping to do a cash-adjusted swap with Cain Cooper. He’d got a Pembroke table and she had a Regency snuffbox. It came to nothing. Cain roared off in his Aston-Martin while Helen settled up for the two little Georgian watercolours she’d bid for. Leckie had come over and given her the letter.

‘Did you see Leckie leave?’

‘No. He just stopped to have a word with the
whizzers.’ They are the lumber men who set out the items for auction.

‘Here. You Lovejoy?’ This lad was leaning on the wall, his eyes all over Helen’s legs. He wore the clobber of the modern trainee psychopath – studded leather, wedge-heeled boots and a faint sneer between pimples.

I gave him the bent eye. ‘Yes.’

‘What a crummy name.’ He snickered. Two of his mates snickered behind him. I looked them all up and down.

‘Your gear’s out of date, lads.’ I watched the consternation show for a second before he turned sulky and cut his losses.

‘Clever, clever. Val says call.’ They melted among the people going into the Park gates. Helen gazed at me.

‘Word is, Val banished Lovejoy from her cran,’ she murmured. Despite my worries I couldn’t take my eyes off her tongue as it took the ice cream in lick by lick.

‘Word’s right.’ So now what makes Val change her mind, I wondered.

‘I’m dying to know what’s going on, Lovejoy.’

‘Me too, love.’ I gave her a peck on the cheek and dropped down. She moaned away about gallantry, reminding me to come back and lift her down. I wasted more time waiting while she brushed imaginary contamination from her skirt, though Helen even looks good doing that.

‘Here, love,’ I said. ‘Got any change? I could ring Val now.’ There’s a phone booth near the path to the High Street. She lent me some and I rushed off. I find borrowing’s cheaper.

‘Val? It’s Lovejoy.’ A pause at the other end. ‘This lad –’

‘I sent him.’ She sounded world-weary. ‘Young
Henry from next door. He’s a good boy. Going through one of these phases.’

‘What is it, love?’

‘Oh.’ She summoned nerve and rushed the words out. ‘Leckie’s cousin Moll phoned. She’s got a cupboard. Leckie dropped it off last night.’

Now Val can’t tell an escritoire from a circus tent. They are all cupboards to her. I got her to tell me Moll’s address. We then rang off, full of hesitations and politeness. It was Val’s way of making up. I find that conversations with women are crammed full of significant pauses. It’s a hell of a strain sometimes. I was shivering despite the watery sunshine, and the envelope in my pocket weighed a ton.

I sat in Woody’s nosh bar, remembering.

The letter was brief, a few words on a crumpled invoice, the sort of paper that accumulates in pockets in spite of good intentions to clear it out. Leckie’s hand had scrawled on it hastily:

Lovejoy, Take care. The side walls are even worse this time, older but of course they couldn’t be as deep. No running, though. Keep faith, Leckie.

I struggled not to understand, but I knew right enough what he was referring to. I sat staring sightlessly over my tea out at the crowded pavements. The whole lot vanished. I was in a hot, sweaty, hilly land and frightened out of my skin.

Leckie had been an explosives man in the army. Though I was a gunner – so they told me – I was put on a job with him and four other soldiers.

A railway ran perilously high across this plateau, over two gorges, on spindly trellis bridges made of bamboo. Even to think of it now gives me heartburn. We climbed on to the ridge among the vegetation. It had taken us four days to reach. From there we could see the first gorge and the rickety bridge swooping into the tunnel opposite. We saw a hoop of distant light in the blackness where the railway emerged from the hill on the far side. I’d never been so scared in all my life, but Leckie just gave one glance at the scene and stood up, not even using his field-glasses. ‘Should be all right, chaps,’ he said, and strolled down.

That was Leckie all over. With my scalp prickling I stumbled after him. The corporal carrying the radio transmitter was immediately behind, the three yokels to the rear making more bloody racket than a football match. At least I was always quiet in the jungle, more from terror than training. I never did find out how Leckie’s sixth sense worked. Other times he’d give the same quick glance, then signal for us to lay low. I’d never even see the sniper till our riflemen got going. This time he was right again, of course. He strolled across the creaking bridge into the tunnel, while I tried not to look down at the river gorge a trillion miles below.

‘We blow the tunnel, chaps,’ Leckie informed us as if announcing a rather dull menu. We hadn’t known till then.

This we tried to do, only the side walls had some concealed internal buttresses made of concrete. We only saw them after our first small explosive charge revealed them among the settling dust. It was a clear mistake, probably unavoidable, but Leckie felt bad about it, especially as he knew we were all petrified.
The echoes were still reverberating round the chasm, and the bridge behind us was creaking like an old floorboard.

‘Sorry about that, chaps.’ Leckie was casual as ever, always casual. ‘It needs a second go.’

We looked at each other. Leckie was amused.

‘My turn,’ he said apologetically. ‘Sorry, but I insist.’

It should have been me, but I could hardly stand upright from fright. I’d have run like hell except they’d have shot me for desertion.

That’s when the tunnel began its noises. Our first explosion must have weakened the mountain’s innards. Have you ever been
under
a mountain, especially one that has half a mind to crumple? It complains, whines, groans, even hums and hisses, full of noises. I’d heard one old geezer from our street talk about it when I was a kid. He’d got out of the Pretoria pit disaster as a young miner. Luckily his dad, also a miner, had told him how to listen to the rock on his first day and he’d made it back to the surface. ‘The sound of the rock’s breathing changed,’ this geezer explained to me years later. I’d always thought him daft. Until our first explosion the tunnel had seemed empty, quiet. Now it crackled and twanged as the mountain above shifted uneasily. The lads began to back off, but Leckie only struck a match to light a cigarette. His sudden action made me jump a mile.

‘Er, isn’t it going to cave in, er, anyway?’ I croaked, my voice an octave higher than normal.

‘Possibly.’ Leckie smiled. ‘But possibly is also possibly not.’

We got his point. If the tunnel didn’t crumple, a few of their side’s diehards could clear the debris and shore it up in a few hours. Risky, but simple.

‘What about blowing the bridge instead?’ I suggested helpfully. Leckie laughed and wagged a finger.

‘That’s a different game, Lovejoy.’ He was telling me our orders were the tunnel, so the tunnel it had to be.

He sent two of the lads, both riflemen, back to the ridge to hold it for us. The corporal was to wait just below them and to radio independently as soon as the tunnel blew. The spare rifleman was to stay on the safe end of the bridge, watching with Leckie’s glasses, to report back should things go awry. I helped Leckie. He wouldn’t let me come into the tunnel while he laid the charge up.

‘Some other time, perhaps,’ he joked, smiling. I’d tried to smile confidently back, but my teeth chattered and he finally had to untangle the wires for me. Thank Christ the other lads hadn’t seen my hands shake.