The Vatican Rip (2 page)

Millon was chanting, ‘Fifty-five anywhere?’ when I coughed. The place stilled again. It was nothing like a Tinker special, but I did the best I could.

‘Who’ll give me fifty-five for this—?’

I coughed again, a non-cough phoney enough to gall anyone. Millon glared in my direction. ‘Sir. Please control your noise or I shall have to ask you to leave also.’

So I was a sir and Tinker was a doss-house lounger. I coughed again, looking deliberately at Millon. He reddened and for the first time noticed that the other bidders had silently begun to recede, leaving a clear space around me. I heard Alfred mutter, ‘Oh Gawd!’ The door pinged once as he slid out. Wise old bird.

Millon’s voice wavered but he gamely went on, ‘In view of the interruptions we will leave Lot Forty-One in abeyance and go on to Lot Forty-Two, which is Chippendale—’

‘No.’ That was me, trying for a normal voice but it came out like a whipcrack.

He stared. I smiled back. In that moment one of the strangers next to the big bloke started to say something but he was pulled up by a kindly friend, which saved him a lot of trouble, whoever he was. I heard another voice murmur, ‘Watch it, mate. That’s Lovejoy.’

Millon’s gaze wobbled. For confidence, he stared belligerently to where his three miffs were standing. Miffs are auctioneers’ callers who hump stuff about and make sure potential bidders get the barest glimpse of the lots next on offer. They were looking anywhere else. You have to smile. Sometimes they behave like real people.

‘What do you mean,
no
?’ Millon snapped, which only goes to show how dumb auctioneers can be.

‘I mean your “Chippendale” bureau is a fake.’

There was a babble of alarmed chatter, quickly fading. Millon practically went berserk.

‘This is outrageous! I’m putting you out this instant!
And
I’m having you sued for—’

That old familiar white heat glow came in my head. I gave up trying to be patient and found myself walking forwards, the mob parting like a bow wave. Everybody gave me their attention, especially when I told them to.

‘All of you listen,’ I said. ‘Lift his Chippendale bureau up. It’s the wrong weight for its size. Look at the right-hand drawer – you’ll find a pattern of old filled-in screw holes. It’s oak all right, but nicked from a World War One vintage bedroom cupboard. And the ageing stain’s phoney. Invert the drawers and you’ll see the paler shrinkage lines round the edges.’ I looked up at Millon, now looking considerably less assured. I added, ‘It’s not Chippendale, chum. It’s a bodged mock-up.’

An angry murmur rose from the crowd. Millon paled. I felt so happy.

Blithely I sailed on, ‘Like that old sextant.’ It had been proudly displayed in the window all week. ‘Did you tell them it isn’t really seventeenth-century, Millon?’ I explained how even with a small hand-lens you can spot modern high-rev lathe work.

Millon was going green. The ugly groundswell of muttering intensified. He bleated, ‘These allegations are quite unfounded—’

‘And that old Dutch microscope, Millon,’ I announced with jubilation. ‘You catalogued it as a mint original. The lenses are whittled-down spectacle lenses from a threepenny stall. Any optician will tell you how it’s done.’

Somebody shouted, ‘Well, Millon? What about it, eh?’ Another dealer yelled, ‘I bought that ivory, Millon—’

‘Taiwan,’ I put in before the dazed auctioneer could draw breath. ‘They simulate the grain.’ With a wax coating pitted by a kitchen cheese-shredder and a dilute solution of phosphoric acid you can give almost any plastic a detailed texture of ivory. Unscrupulous forgers of antiques can mass-produce them if you make a template, though I’ve found (er, I mean I’ve
heard
) the moulds don’t really last very long.

‘Please, gentlemen.’ The nerk tried to gavel but it only irritated everyone still more.

‘What about this miniature?’ That was the big Continental bloke. He was looking not at Millon but directly at me, which I thought odd. Nor did he seem worried at having risked his money on a load of tat. The man next to him, obviously one of his many serfs, was holding up a small filthy medallion-sized disc covered by a dirty piece of glass. Even across the angry crowd in that dingy hall I felt that luscious shudder deep inside my chest. My breathing went funny, and I shook to the chime of heavenly bells.

For me all strife momentarily ceased, and I was in Paradise. I was in the presence of a genuine sixteenth-century miniature, possibly even done by the great Hilliard himself. I groaned audibly and felt tears start in my eyes.

The big geezer laughed, a strange noise like a cat’s cough. I didn’t need to explain my jealousy because it must have showed on my face. He had made himself an absolute fortune and suddenly I hated him more than fried liver, the bastard.

I turned away and raised my voice over the babble. ‘Pay attention, troops. That bobbin tree catalogued as late Hanoverian is actually brand new, and imported pinewood at that.’ I could have gone into details of how fruitwood and laburnum can be simulated in these delectable household necessities of Regency days, but you can’t educate antique dealers so it’s no use bothering.

‘Please. You’re ruining—’

‘That Civil War cavalry pistol’s a fake,’ I continued, pointing. ‘A cut-down Eastern jezail with a Turkish barrel. Note the—’

I would have gone on because I was just getting into my stride, but with a howl the dam broke. A beefy gorilla in from the Smoke shouldered me out of the way. The furious dealers grabbed for Millon, the poor goon shrieking for help but of course his three miffs had vanished and he disappeared in a mound of flying limbs. I spent the next few seconds eeling my way from the pandemonium, smiling blissfully. The place was in uproar as I pinged out into the cold.

Happier now, I plodded the few snowy yards to the Ship. I could still hear the racket from the auction rooms as I pushed open the tavern door. Tinker was hunched over a pint at the bar. He started at the sight of me. ‘Look, Lovejoy. I could get old Lemuel to help instead.’

‘Shut it.’ I gave him the bent eye and he subsided into silence but still managed to drain his pint. His gnarled countenance led me to understand a refill was a matter of survival, so I paid up. It was in that split second while Tinker’s pint glass remained miraculously full that I felt the most horrid sense of foreboding. I started to slurp at my own glass in an attempt to shake it off just as a hand tapped my shoulder.

‘
Lovejoy
.’

Chris Anders was normally a taciturn geezer but now his face was puce with fury. He is domestic pre-Victorian furniture – that treacherous shifting sand of the antiques world – and late Victorian jewellery, and good at both. I quite like him but at the moment I wasn’t exactly in the mood to have my shoulder tapped. I sighed and put my glass down. It was one of those days.

‘You bastard! You shambled the whole bloody auction!’

‘Me?’ I said innocently.

‘
You
! I wanted one of the lots and you stopped me, you—’

I tried to calm him. ‘Sorry, old pal. Anyway that Chinese funereal terracotta bird shouldn’t be glazed, Chris.’ I was only trying to be reasonable, because he’s famous for coating with polyurethanes any antique that stands still long enough, the maniac. The object Chris was after shrieked authenticity. It was one of the terracotta figures from Fu Hao’s tomb, excavated at Anyang in China during the mid-1970s. Anyway, I have a soft spot for that tempestuous empress Fu Hao who lived such a stormy life. Wife of the Emperor Wu Ding, 1300
BC
or thereabouts, and not above leading his armies into battle if the need arose. A real woman.

‘I have a right—’ Chris was storming.

‘You’re thick as a brick, Chris,’ I said, honestly trying to be kind.

His eyes glazed and he grabbed me by the throat – or would have done if his rib hadn’t cracked on the stool I slammed up under his ribcage. The broken glass suddenly in my hand opened a slit down his sleeve and forearm through which blood squirted.

‘You should only
dust
terracotta figures,’ I told him as he reeled back aghast and squealing. I heard Sal the barmaid shriek. ‘And use a sable paintbrush. Okay?’

The pub was silent, except for the quiet jingle of the door behind old Alfred. The poor bloke was like a refugee today. Chris clutched at his arm as the blood refused to stop and moaned, ‘What’s Lovejoy done to me? Get an ambulance.’

‘Oh Gawd,’ Tinker muttered. ‘Scarper, Lovejoy.’

The scattered drinkers were simply looking. That is, all except one. And he was smiling, clapping his hands together gently in applause. Pigskin gloves, Londonmade. Clap-clap-clap, standing by the door. His two goons were there but simply watching.

I slid past Chris and out of the side door. Tinker’s hunched form was just shuffling round the side of the pub on to the snowy slope of East Hill. I wisely took the other direction, slushing past the small timber yard and the Saxon church into the little square where the Three Cups pub stood. I took my time, stopping in the bookshop to price an Irish leather binding, but their prices read nowadays like light years.

Alfred Duggins wasn’t in the Cups when finally I reached there. He’d probably given up. But the big stranger was waiting for me just inside the taproom.

‘Look, mate,’ I said to him. If you’re narked about the auction, say so and let’s get on with it.’

‘Drink?’ His voice was man-sized, cool and full of confidence.

‘What’s the catch?’

‘Catch?’ He gave a lopsided grin. ‘No catch. I just thought you deserved one, that’s all.’

Without thinking, I said, ‘Well, ta,’ and we pushed in to the fug.

Arcellano was instantly at home in the Three Cups, exactly as he’d been at home in Seddon’s crummy auction rooms, and just as he had seemed in the spit-and-sawdust Ship. While he ordered at the bar I glanced at him. This bloke was a hard nut and no mistake.

Jason and the delectable Jane were just settling down in one snug corner, which failed to cheer me. I glimpsed Big Frank over among a huddle of barkers, all of whom glowered my way. Nobody waved. I guessed my popularity was lower than ever because of spoiling the auction.

‘Here, sir.’ The stranger passed me my pint. I crossed to the fireplace to dry my shoes. I noticed we were out of earshot of the others. A careful geezer too.

‘My name’s Lovejoy, Mr Arcellano,’ I told him. Oddly, my name caused no screech of merriment. It always had before.

He said slowly, ‘You know my name?’

‘You bought at Seddon’s, remember.’ That was the name he had given Millon. Too late now to wonder if he’d made the name up. ‘You a collector?’

He shrugged my question off and cautiously he tasted the beer before drinking properly. ‘You’re pretty definite about antiques, Lovejoy. Other dealers aren’t.’

‘Most dealers are like Chris, can’t tell an antique from a plastic duck.’

‘You’re famous hereabouts.’ He smiled as he spoke but with no warmth. I began to see why his tame goons did as they were told. ‘Lots of people gave me your name.’

I didn’t like the sound of that and said, all innocence, ‘Me? Oh, you know how people are.’

‘Yes, I know.’ He said it with utter conviction. ‘And people say if there’s an antique to be got, Lovejoy’s the man to get it.’

‘Do they indeed?’

‘Sure do. In fact,’ he added, ‘they seem to talk pretty guarded when I asked about you.’

I didn’t like the sound of that, either. In fact, I wasn’t at all sure I liked the man, but he seemed like a customer with money and I was sick of living on fried tomatoes and what I could scrounge from bored housewives when I was forced to go on the knocker. Things had been really terrible lately. So I smiled affably. ‘Take no notice.’

‘Oh, but I have, Lovejoy. You’re hired.’

‘I am?’

He smiled at the irritation in my voice. ‘For lots and lots of money.’

The dull world exploded in a blaze of gold fireworks. The muted mutter of the taproom soared into heavenly cadences. The entire universe was once again a magnificent carousel of dazzling lights and brilliant music. I was suddenly aware of how pleasant a bloke he actually was. I cleared my throat and squeaked, ‘Have another, Mr Arcellano?’

I reeled back to the bar and gave Jean a weak grin. She’s the barmaid, sometimes cooperative. ‘Trust me, love. Stick it on the slate. I’ve a deal on. Pay you back tonight.’

She drew the pints and slid them over, holding my stare. ‘I’ll hold you to that, Lovejoy. I finish at eleven.’

‘You’re wonderful, Jean. I’ll come, love.’

She smiled mischievously. ‘I might hold you to
that
, too, Lovejoy.’

The big man was lighting a cigarette when I rejoined him. I’d never seen so much gold in my life. There were rings, the lighter, watch, tiepin and collar clips, teeth. He didn’t offer me a smoke. So I was already one more minion. I’m no smoker, anyway, but the message was there.

‘Hired for what?’

‘To get me an antique.’

He probably meant for me to bid for him in an auction. ‘You want it valued?’

‘I already know what it’s worth. And where it is. I just need it collecting. You see, I own it.’

My brow cleared. A simple vannie’s removal job. Well, in my state I wasn’t proud. ‘That’s easy.’ For some reason I’d been getting anxious.

‘It isn’t, Lovejoy.’ That horrid smile was worrying me. The more I saw of it the less I liked it. ‘But I saw the way you broke the auctioneer’s arm—’

That got me mad, because people have no right to go suspecting things people don’t want suspected. ‘I did no such thing!’

‘You did,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ve used the same trick myself. Pretend to help somebody in a brawl and put their elbow backwards over the edge of a desk. It never fails.’ His face was expressionless now. I noticed his eyes were always on the go, flicking glances here and there as we talked. My brow cleared and I thought, oh Christ. What have I got into?

He continued, ‘And that dealer in the pub. Big and tough. But you sorted him out. Never seen anybody move so fast in my life. You’re the man I’ve been looking for.’

‘To do a vannie’s job?’ He looked puzzled till I explained. Vannies are the humpers of our trade, mere shifters. A right mob of brainless old boozers they are too.