The Sleepers of Erin (2 page)

‘Not today, Sam,’ I told him. Honestly, to this day I don’t know why I was taking this attitude, especially over a run-of-the-mill cloth job. Even priests are hard at it, flogging their own church silver on the side. Maybe it was the lingering sense of Sal’s loving, whatever. Anyway, right or wrong I decided not to let them do it.

‘You know we’ve
got
to, Clarkie,’ Sam wailed. Which should have alerted me even more.

‘You’ve got
not
to, Clarkie,’ I corrected. ‘Because I say so.’

‘Erm . . .’ He swallowed, eyed me.

I was honestly surprised, yet another warning bleep. Clarkie had seen me angry once, and I know for a fact he was very, very glad to be neutral on that occasion.

‘Clarkie,’ I warned gently, and he nodded. The bag clonked against his thigh as he picked it up and walked towards the door.

‘For Christ’s
sake
!’ Sam squawked, but he trotted obediently after Clarkie. Smiling, I shut the door gently behind us and crossed the gravel with them to where their old van was parked. They must have left it in a lay-by up the lane towards the village until Sal left.

‘Now, lads,’ I said as the engine coughed into action. ‘You two nellies leave this place alone, right?’ I shook a warning finger at them as the van began to roll. ‘I’ll count the teaspoons. Cheers, Clarkie.’

‘Cheers,’ Clarkie muttered, but I could see he was dismayed. I wouldn’t have thought a mere interruption would have him terrified as all that, but then I wasn’t thinking.

I’d actually turned away when I heard Sam yell, ‘You bastard, Lovejoy!’ Like a nerk I paused affably, and felt a searing pain swipe through my left arm above the elbow. Sam bawled, ‘Off, Clarkie!’ The van scattered gravel. Its wheels spun and the engine roared, and there I was, left standing in a country churchyard fifty million miles from anywhere, staring stupidly at my arm with my brilliant scarlet blood spurting out into the air in front of me going
shish-shish-shish
.

For one instant I was quite unconcerned, wondering mildly what had happened and casually touching my arm where the blood was spouting. There was no further pain. Then, in a horrid cold terror, I realized. Sam had flung his knife. My artery was cut –
my
fucking
artery
was
cut
and I was frigging
dying
.

I tore off my jacket, blood going everywhere, ripped off my shirt sleeve and wrapped it round in a clumsy knot and got the blood stopped. I went back inside and used a candlestick to wind the tourniquet tighter, then ran.

About three minutes later, I reeled into the church organist’s cottage in a worse state than China but alive. The old geezer had a certificate in first aid. He had a high old time, and nearly killed me enjoying himself doing complicated splints and knots until the ambulance came and took me prisoner and nurses were saying you just shut up.

The police gave me two days before I was officially charged. It was quite a ceremony. My arm was sutured, the artery repaired, thank God. The nurses were behaving abominably, as if I’d done myself an injury on purpose just to annoy them. They’d hardly said a word to me, slamming about the ward and heaving me about like a sack of nuisance.

The chap in the next bed was a misanthrope, a real prophet of doom called Smith, accused of osteoarthritis. A worse temper, and he could have slipped on to the hospital staff unnoticed. Opposite me was a cheerful little bloke with a gastric ulcer. It was old Smith told me I would be charged that morning.

‘You’re for the high jump, old son,’ he said with relish. ‘Nicking stuff from churches.’

‘That can’t be right.’ I was so confident. I was a hero. (I’d prevented a crime, right?)

‘You wait.’

‘Tell ’em the tale, Lovejoy,’ the gastric ulcer called across. ‘I’ll alibi you for fifty quid.’ He fell about at this witticism.

Sister Morrison, our ward sister, came in then to tell us to shut up. I liked her, really, a quiet if bossy Irish lass, mid-thirties, in dark blue. She brought two coppers in and stood formally aside while they did their thing.

‘Lovejoy?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re police officers,’ the older one said. ‘I’m Detective-Sergeant Ledger.’

‘Congratulations. What’s this arrest bit?’

‘Theft of church property.’

‘Please can you be a little more specific?’ I asked politely.

He smiled a wintry smile over a notebook. ‘More specifically, two chalices, two patens, one ciborium and one monstrance. All precious metals. And,’ he added with relish, ‘one brass candlestick.’

There was a protracted silence, enjoyed by some more than others. I cleared my throat.

‘Erm, wasn’t the vestry door locked?’

‘Opened by a skilled hand,’ Ledger said. ‘Yours.’

I thought, well, well. Odderer and odderer. And I thought I’d been a hero.

‘You’re a long shot, Lovejoy,’ he continued. ‘What with your record, and that paten being found in your cottage.’

‘Lovejoy,’ Gastric Ulcer cracked, ‘our alibi deal’s off.’

‘You’ve had it, son,’ Smith prophesied. A nurse hissed at him to shut up.

Sister Morrison was looking at me. ‘Are you all right, Lovejoy?’

‘Mmmmh?’ I’d been thinking. ‘Oh, yes, ta.’

The Old Bill was in his element. ‘You will be brought to trial—’

‘Sure, sure. Look,’ I said, because you can’t help worrying about small things. ‘Don’t mind my asking, but
what
paten in my cottage?’

‘The one in your cistern.’

‘We had a search warrant,’ the assistant peeler said with pride.

‘Well done,’ I said absently. ‘And the rest of the stuff?’

‘Only you know the answer to that, Lovejoy.’

‘It’s disgraceful!’ Sister Morrison snapped. ‘A grown man robbing an unprotected church!’

I ignored her and spoke directly to the Old Bill. ‘What’s your theory, Ledger? That I sliced my arm, ran home in daylight carrying a load of church silver, buried the loot, carefully put one piece in the cistern – the first place you lot would look – then caught the bus back to get a candlestick for a tourniquet? Something like that?’

‘Accomplice,’ Ledger said.

‘I trust antiques, not people.’

‘True, Lovejoy.’ He was really enjoying himself, better than a birthday. ‘The trouble is, what were you doing in a lonely church if you weren’t robbing it?’

Smiling, I drew breath to answer, then said nothing. I’d been there to make surreptitious love with Sal. Sister Morrison was looking again. ‘There is that, Ledger,’ I said at last.

They went about eleven o’clock. I’d no idea there was so much paperwork to getting arrested. Nothing but forms. Last time they’d only had handcuffs.

‘See you in court, Lovejoy,’ Ledger said from the door.

‘It’s a date,’ I called cheerily back, trying to be pleasant. At least they hadn’t told me to shut up.

Sister Morrison was oddly terse, silencing my two companions and drawing my bed screens when I said I was tired. She sent some atrocious nosh along at noon but otherwise saw to it that I was left alone apart from one frantic episode in the early afternoon when a gang of nurses invaded my sanctuary, hoovered me and reemed me out, then flung me back gasping like a flounder while they went to punish old Smith in the same way.

All that day I thought hard. My mind was still a bit soggy from the anaesthetic but it began firing on the odd cylinder at last. What had seemed an innocent – well, nearly innocent – dust-up with Clarkie and his tame knife-throwing goon Sam was now disturbingly complicated. Worse, it had become two separate problems. First, I was under arrest for theft. That bit I could understand. But the second bit was crammed full of evil vibes I hated even more.

To start with, Clarkie normally wouldn’t get in my way at any price. And Sam Veston, for all his bravado with his pet knife, usually walked very carefully round me, after a slight disagreement he and I had had in an auction room two years ago when I’d cracked a few of his ribs. Yet Clarkie had actually hesitated, foolhardy youth, when I’d told him to scarper. And Sam had dared to do me untold harm. The point is that normally neither of them would have dared anything of the kind. I remembered that look of despair on Sam’s face, and his plaintive cry, ‘We’ve
got
to, Clarkie!’ Why? Antique dealers don’t
have
to do anything, except survive.

Of course I’d have to crease Clarkie and Sam when I got sprung from hospital, human nature being what it is. An antique dealer of zero resources just can’t afford to be knocked about without at least grumbling a little. Weakness is all very admirable – in others. Nothing teaches you this like the antiques trade. But somebody – somebody ‘skilled’, Ledger had told me – had opened the vestry door and presumably cracked the safe in there, ferried off the church plate, entered my cottage, popped a paten in the cistern, then bubbled me to the Old Bill. Again, why? But most of all, what was
I
doing in all this mess?

At four o’clock I thought, right. When the rest of the ward were watching the match on telly I got Sister Morrison to let me use the trolley phone in the anteroom. She sent a nurse to wheel me down. I knew the number well enough. Naturally with my luck it was good old Geoffrey who picked up the receiver.

‘Horsham Furniture here,’ I said briskly. ‘Could I speak to Mrs Dayson, please?’

‘I’ll get her.’

A door closed, then Sal came on, puzzled but guarded. ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Listen, love—’

‘Don’t you “love” me!’ she blazed. Obviously good old Geoffrey was now elsewhere. ‘Where have you been, Lovejoy? If you’ve been with that bitch again, I’ll—’

‘That bitch’ was Helen, an antique dealer I’m, er, friendly with – or any other woman Sal cares to think of in the same context. There wasn’t time for one of Sal’s special one-way discussions so I broke in and told her I was in hospital. The beeps went twice until she came down through the superstrata.

‘Listen, love,’ I said urgently when she was coherent. ‘This is important. Did anybody see you leaving the church?’

‘No, darling. Oh God. What have they been doing to you?’

‘What about Geoffrey? Did he . . . ?’

‘No. He was in court,’ she said impatiently. ‘Oh, darling—’

‘Eh?’

‘He sits on the bench. Stay there. I’m on my way.’ I thought, now she tells me. That was all I needed, Sal’s old man the local magistrate. I’d be lucky not to get shot.

I rang round three pubs before I got Tinker at the Queen’s Head.

‘That you, Lovejoy?’ he croaked blearily into the phone against the taproom noise. ‘Where the bleedin’ hell you bin? Everybody’s goin’ daft lookin’ for you. I’ve got one of them carved wooden geezers carrying two ducks waitin’ up Sudbury way—’

‘Jesus.’ The moan came out involuntarily. There had been rumours for months about a German limewood figure. They’re worth a fortune, if you can lay hands on them. Tinker’s my barker, the best sniffer-out of antiques in the business. Now he finds it.

‘I can’t hold her for ever, Lovejoy,’ Tinker gravelled out. I heard somebody shout across the bar if that was Lovejoy on the blower. ‘Yes,’ Tinker bawled back. ‘Here, Lovejoy. I’ve found a Yankee Windsor chair, I reckon, but funny wood—’

‘Shut it, Tinker. Listen. Get over to the County Hospital, Charrington Ward –
no
!’ I almost shouted the command to stop his repeating the instruction all over the pub. ‘Say nothing. Just drink up and get over here. But one thing. Find out where Clarkie and Sam Veston have disappeared to. I’m going to dust them over on the quiet.’

‘Right, Lovejoy.’ He gave a gulp. ‘Where’ll you be?’

‘Waiting,’ I said sourly and rang off.

It was when I was reaching up to ring the bell to be wheeled back to bed when I noticed there was an open wall hatch ajar nearby. Through the gap I could see Sister Morrison’s head bent over the day’s reports in the ward office. Quickly I wondered if she could hear. Not touching the bell, I said carefully, almost in an undertone. ‘Sister, please.’

‘Yes?’ She didn’t look up.

‘I’m ready to go back now.’

‘I’ll take you.’ She got up and walked round to come for me. She must have heard every word.

Her face was ice. Great, I thought bitterly. Now I was not only a church plunderer, but a self-confessed adulterer and a murderous revenge-seeker as well. Win friends the easy way, I always say.

The rest of that day was not too good so I won’t dwell on it. Sal came in, lovely and perfumed and dressed to the nines, frantic with worry and demanding to know every detail. She wept a bit like they do, and told the staff nurse that no expense was to be spared. ‘Thank you,’ Sal got frostily back, ‘but Lovejoy is being paid for out of our taxes.’ Surreptitiously she gave me a handful of notes in case I needed to send out for anything. The trouble was she became distinctly cool when I said what had happened.

‘Police?’ she gasped faintly. ‘You mean, really? In actual court?’

‘Yes, love. Somebody must have planted a piece at my cottage to bubble me.’

Sal said, ‘Oh, darling,’ but it wasn’t her usual voice, full of possessiveness and humour. It sounded ominously like the sailor’s elbow. ‘Not . . . not in the
news
papers?’

‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her cheerfully. ‘I’ll sort it out—’

She fingered her red amber beads, Chinese nineteenth century. I’d got them for her fairly cheap in a local antiques auction before Sac Freres dragged them off to their Bond Street lair.

Sal is beautiful, really stylish. I was so proud of her there in the ward with the nurses enviously eyeing her gear and Sister Morrison going thin-lipped at the sight of such glamour. I mean, after all Sal was
my
visitor. The only good thing to have happened to me for ages. To my dismay Sal suddenly discovered she had to be going. She kissed me, full of courage about it but clearly taking to the hills. She said she would phone morning and evening, that final psychotherapy of a departing lover putting the boot in. I watched her go, saw her pause and wave from the door before the flaps swung to. Over and out.

In contrast Tinker’s appearance can only be called earthy. He stood there, peering hesitantly into the ward. Imagine an unshaven, clog-shod old stick of a bloke approximately attired in an old army greatcoat, holed mittens and a soiled cloth cap, looking every inch a right scruff. Now double it, add an evil stench and you have Tinker Dill. Sister Morrison was instantly hovering on guard against mobile filth. I could tell that plagues and other epidemics had sprung to mind. I admit he’s no oil painting but I still wasn’t having anybody taking the mickey, so when Gastric Ulcer opposite exclaimed, ‘Gawd almighty!’ I smiled one of my specials and clicked an imaginary pistol gently at him, which perforated his next witticism. He looked away.