The Sleepers of Erin (7 page)

After a silence, ‘Please,’ landed across my shoulder like a cross.

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Cheers, Joxer.’

I was to remember what happened next for a long, long time.

Suddenly Joxer said, ‘Lovejoy. Can’t you watch a minute with me?’ He’d gone quite pale, as if realizing something horrible.

‘No,’ I told him. I was in enough trouble, and he’d done me no favours. His expression was abruptly that of a man looking at the end of the world.

‘Cheers, boyo,’ Joxer said. His voice was fatalistic but quite level.

If I were not so thick I’d have expected trouble of the very worst kind. But I
am
so thick. So cheerfully I walked with Kurak up to the street, waved to Marcia among Jimmy Day’s acting crowd, and was driven off in grand style.

That’s how wars begin, by not thinking. My kind, that is.

The Heindricks’ house was even more imposing than their motors. It stood overlooking the Blackwater estuary. The gardens had that scrubbed look which only a battalion of dedicated gardeners can give, and the drawing room where we sat had that radiance which unlimited wealth imparts.

‘You travel in four days, Lovejoy.’ Kurt could have been one of his own antiques, he was that polished. He was clearly monarch of all he surveyed, and possibly of everything else as well. Standing before his log fire and issuing directives, he caused a weary sinking feeling in my belly. All my life these bloody people have been giving me orders with complete disregard of the consequences – for me.

‘Will I?’ I said sourly.

‘You will.’ He smiled with benevolence. ‘Mrs Heindrick will meet you at the destination.’

His missus clapped her hands – and I do mean actually clapped them, as they once did for slaves. Instantly a rather surly bird appeared with a tray of those small cakes. She had already done one circuit but I’d had all the savouries. I was still famished and tried to be casual reaching for the fresh plate. God knows who invented manners. Whoever it was had never felt hunger, that’s for sure. It’s desperately hard taking less than you want in other people’s posh mansion houses – and everybody, honest and dishonest, knows that’s the truth.

‘The terms will be excellent, Lovejoy,’ Lena said. She had spotted my glance at the retreating bird’s shape, which is typical of women’s sly behaviour, but I was only interested because I’d never seen another slave before. Mrs Heindrick’s lips thinned with displeasure. She must have detected the same kind of lust when I glanced at the oil painting, but she wasn’t as narked at that. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It’s—’

‘A copy.’ I wasn’t really glad, but it was one in their eye. The pair of them exchanged significant looks.

‘But laboratory tests show it to be an original early eighteenth-century oil of a seafarer, Lovejoy.’ That from connoisseur Kurt, whose untold wealth had always gained perfect grovelling agreement to any banal utterance he chose to make. Until now.

‘Oh, John Tradescant was a seafarer all right.’ I rose, touched the oil’s surface reverently and found myself smiling as the warmth vibrated in my fingers. ‘And it’s old. But a famous building off Trafalgar Square’ll be very cross if you go about telling fibs, mate.
They’ve
got the original.’

‘John who?’

I was enjoying myself. ‘Tradescant only sailed about to nick seeds, bulbs, plants, anything that grew. His dad was as bad. He even raided the Mediterranean pirates to get a bush or two. Between them they introduced a load of stuff – apricots, Persian lilac, Michaelmas daisies, the larch. They did Russia, the American colonies, North Africa. Tradescant’s collection became the Ashmolean at Oxford.’ The old copyist had got Tradescant’s wryly wicked smile just right, but the date of 1612 was a shade earlyish.

‘A
copy
?’ Lena Heindrick spat out a vulgar curse, which made me blink.

‘Don’t knock copyists. Turner himself started out as one.’ It’s a daft joke we play on ourselves, really. Find a genuine flower painting by Palice and it’s not worth a fiftieth of the price of a Turner copy. ‘Copy and original are linked by greed, Mrs Heindrick.’

‘Don’t be so bitter, Lovejoy.’ She was smiling again and the thought crossed my mind that she had only been goading me. ‘Let’s get back to that subject, then, shall we? Money.’

‘A good daily rate, all expenses paid, and a share of the profits.’

I weakened at the thought of money – which meant antiques and food, in that order. ‘Four days? Why so soon? You said I could get better first.’

‘Because if you stay here you will be in even more trouble.’ Kurt exposed his pearly teeth. I just couldn’t imagine him ever growing stubble. The hair follicles just wouldn’t dare.

‘I’m not in any trouble.’

‘Oh, but you are. Detective-Sergeant Ledger’s phone call to your . . . consort Janet this morning was quite explicit.’

The mansion was plushily furnished with a skilled admix of antiques old and new. I couldn’t help feeling sad, having been at the original auction some years ago. The old East Anglian manorial family had sat there in pained dignity while us dealers and auctioneers had robbed and fiddled them blind. Here’s a free lesson: promise me you’ll never, never,
never
sell up by means of an in-house on-site auction. This or any other doorstep selling is ruinously wrong. You might as well just throw the stuff outside to the rag-and-bone man. At least he’ll give you an honest donkey stone for it. A shoal of antique dealers and auctioneers won’t.

‘More blackmail?’

‘Yes.’ He smiled and decanted sherry – the Kurts of this world do not simply pour – while Lena pressed the cakes on me. She was watching me nosh with a kind of appalled awe, but it was all right for her. Women don’t get hungry, only peckish. ‘It has become a matter of urgency. If you will go about throwing people off footbridges and talking to the careless Joxer . . .’

‘Have you had me followed?’ There was even a peacock on the lawn, radiantly displaying its fan. Lena Heindrick saw me looking and smiled.

‘Of course.’

‘Okay. Where do I go?’

‘You’ll find out when you arrive.’

‘Why can’t whatever’s there be fetched here for me to suss out?’

‘Why do you suppose it’s only
one
thing, Lovejoy?’

‘Mrs Heindrick hinted,’ I said, wondering if that was true.

‘Very lax of us all, my dear,’ Kurt said without admonition. ‘But especially Joxer.’

Lena shrugged, an attractive business. She had dressed for the interview in a neat black dress with only a late Georgian alexandrite brooch for ornamentation. Plain matching belts go in and out of fashion, but she wore one, the right touch of disdain towards those birds who need to conform to prevailing styles. I could have eaten her. Kurt was as clinical as ever, stencilled in a Savile Row jacket and city trousers. It was as Joxer said. Clearly she was in control, Kurt the mere business end of the team.

‘You will be given your ticket and an allowance on the journey, Lovejoy.’ Kurt came near to cracking a joke by adding, ‘Performing our task will keep you out of mischief, no?’

‘Only possibly, Kurt,’ Lena smiled.

Kurt chuckled at that, his flabby jowl undulating. I watched, fascinated. Why didn’t his starched collar sever his jugular? But I got the joke. ‘Only possibly’ meant a rip, a scam, a lift, something illegal anyway.
And I knew it was in Kilfinney
, wherever that was. My one concealed trump card.

Then Lena shook me by catching my hand as I reached the
n
th time for the proffered plate. It had one cake left, but that was Lena’s fault. Posh cakes are only little and don’t fill you.

She said, ‘One thing, Lovejoy. Sister Morrison?’

‘You mean outpatients?’ It was a good thought. That sombre-eyed lass would go berserk if I failed to make the appointment.

‘No. Your relationship with her.’

‘Nothing I can do about that. It wasn’t my fault she ballocked me most of the time. Why?’

She smiled then and let me reach the grub. ‘Only that she has called twice at your cottage.’

‘She did?’ I said blankly. ‘Probably to confirm my clinic appointment, something like that.’

Kurt interposed, on cue. ‘The fewer encumbrances the better, Lovejoy, while you’re working for us.’

I stood then but kept my temper out of respect for the delectable antiques all around. Nobody tells me who can call at my cottage and who not.

‘Who says I’m working for you?’

Kurt chuckled. Lena looked me up and down with amused insolence. ‘Me,’ she said softly. ‘Kurak will call for you at midnight, four days from now.’

‘Not me, mate,’ I told her, and left.

They saw me crunch down the avenued drive. Kurt must have given some signal because Kurak stayed leaning against the Rolls and watched me go.

I got a lift from a school football bus, coming back from a match. They’d lost six-nil. If I’d half the sense I was born with I’d have recognized the omen, but not this numbskull. Within seconds of being dropped on North Hill I was in the Marquis of Granby pub phoning the hospital to bleep Sister Morrison and claiming it was an emergency.

Sister Morrison was not keen on coming off duty straight into a pub so we met by the post office. She came driving up in grand style, and I darted across the pavement once I was sure she was the woman at the wheel. The town’s traffic always builds up a little in the early evening but she coped calmly. All that surgical training, I supposed. She didn’t even tut as the rain started again before we made the road out to my village.

‘Did I get you in trouble, Sister?’

‘I was just coming off duty anyway.’

It had been an awkward phone conversation nevertheless, with me stuttering that I was only phoning to check my next appointment and her saying it was all right and she would explain the details while giving me a lift. I looked at her as she drove, profile in repose and coat collar turned up to catch the tendrils of hair as they came out beneath her knitted hat.

‘Sorry I wasn’t in, erm, when you called.’

‘That’s all right. I only called on the off chance.’

That couldn’t be true. She must have got my address from the records and actually asked the way to my cottage once she reached the village. We have no real road signs, and numbers are unknown. Some off chance.

She was making me nervous. I’m not used to serenity, never having experienced that condition myself.

‘Which part of Ireland are you from, Sister?’

‘Sinead.’ Only she almost pronounced it Shinneighed.

‘Where’s that?’

She fell about laughing, with momentary difficulty controlling the wheel. ‘Stupid man. It’s my name. I mean stop calling me Sister. You’re not in hospital any more.’

‘Gaelic?’

‘Ten out of ten.’

‘I’ve always wanted to visit Dublin. A booksellerprinter there owes me.’

‘Don’t go scrapping till your arm’s mended.’

There’s nothing you can do when a woman’s got the upper hand, especially when that woman has washed your bum twice a day lately. I fell silent. Sisters clearly had more ways of shutting you up than mere nurses. She must have felt concerned because she resumed, ‘In the west of Ireland we have traditional names. It’s only recently easterners have moved into the market.’

She shot a glance at me and changed up for the long pull on the hill above the brook which marks our town boundary. Beam lights of an oncoming car lit her face and brought my reflection into the windscreen. Our reflected gazes met.

‘Erm, we’ll go to the White Hart, if that’s okay.’

‘Me in my old coat?’

Nursing staff aren’t allowed in public houses wearing uniform. I knew that. Sinead had on a navy blue topcoat. I can’t see these things matter much, but women find disadvantage in practically anything.

‘Bear right at the fork.’ My cottage had been abused enough lately by visitors. Anyway, as we ran together through the rain into the tavern porch I thought she looked bonny.

The pub crowd naturally gave her a cautious scan when we pushed in, all except Patrick who let out a shrill whoop and trilled a roguish yoohoo. The usual weird mixture of dealers and barkers were busily slurping booze, pretending the antiques game was going just perfect. Tinker saw us and reeled across, ponging to high heaven and filthy as ever, greeting Sister Morrison with such familiarity everybody stared. He showed every sign of joining us till I gave him the bent eye and a quid.

‘I thought we wuz broke, Lovejoy,’ the stupid old soak croaked.

‘Er, my reserve.’

‘Mr Dill.’ Sinead had her handbag open as we crammed into the nook furthest from the fire. ‘Lovejoy can’t carry the glasses. His arm. Would you please oblige?’

Tinker scarpered to the bar with her money while I tried to recover my poise, and still I went red. The hubbub battered our ears. Sister Morrison saw me sussing out the crowded, smoke-filled bar and leaned forwards, her eyes glowing with interest.

‘Who are they all? Everybody knows you.’

A faint scent wafted the smoke aside for an instant. ‘Well. Yon, er, eccentric bloke with the silver gloves and red bolero’s Patrick. He’s a dealer, not as daft as he pretends.’

‘And his lady-friend?’

‘Lily. She’s married, but loves Patrick. She deals in William IV furniture, when Patrick leaves her the odd farthing for herself.’

That set me off chatting about them all. The elegant Helen, raising her eyebrows at the sight of me bringing in a class bird. Old bowler-hatted Alfred, the Regency prints and mezzotint man, battling with his moustache to get to his pint (‘His wife’s too fierce for him ever to go home,’ I explained). Brad the cheerful extrovert flintlock weapon specialist. Big Frank from Suffolk, currently halfway through his second pint, his fifth wife and the latest Sotheby’s silver catalogue. Poor Denny Havershall, desperately trying to sell a Cotman forgery to the morose Wilkie from Witham – hard going, because Wilkie had faked it in the first place. And Denny’s wife Beth had just produced her second little girl last week. Then there was the blonde Marion (mostly Roman pottery and early Islam ware) suggesting to the wealthier Jason from East Hill that they make a go of a partnership. Tarantulas make similar arrangements.