The Sleepers of Erin

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘All right.’ I put the best face on it I could manage and five minutes later was down their steps carrying a crossed cheque, not for as much as I had hoped, but stealers can’t be choosers.

  My luck was in that morning – or so I thought in my ignorance. The phone kiosk opposite the Ship tavern had not been vandalized, by some strange oversight. After listening to a brisk altercation between Rebecca and the operator, Lyn breathlessly managed to wrestle the receiver away from her offspring and accept reversed charges for the call. I asked if David had phoned in.

  ‘Yes, Lovejoy. I asked him, like you said.’

  ‘Were you right?’ I meant about the house purchase law.

  ‘Yes. David says the legal point of sale is the formal exchange of contracts. He says if you want to call in tonight he can explain in more detail—’

  ‘Thanks, love. That’s great. You’ve really helped me. So long.’

  ‘Lovejoy?’ That was Rebecca, penetrating the conversation by some bedroom extension. ‘Are you in prison again?’

  ‘Becky! Put that down at once!’ Lyn’s voice receded as she ran to the next room, her receiver clattering my earhole.

  ‘Shhh, love,’ I said furtively, doing my sinister act. I’m going to Ireland, but it’s a secret, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Becky whispered.

  Emerging from the kiosk I felt good about the information, but something was niggling. It was the kind of odd discomfort which comes when you remember passing a face in a crowd and only realize hours later it was a long-lost friend. Something was wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  When I’m in one of these uncertain moods I gravitate towards antiques, but first I solved the innocent little Kilfinney mystery. The town library had opened by then. It consists of a modern hexagonal brown brick monstrosity with metal-and-glass doors which function like a nutcracker. I strongly believe they are a Malthusian solution for the population problem of our cripples and geriatrics, but no analyses have yet been done to count corpses. By a whisker I made it to the safety of the foyer, dishevelled and bruised.

  ‘Hello, Marlene!’

  The girl on the desk was frantically dialling on the emergency phone. ‘Mr Scotchman! Mr Scotchman! Lovejoy’s in! He’s on the escalator!’

  I gave a royal wave down to her as I was lifted among a throng of grannies and housewives up the moving staircase. More people than just myself have hated the new library, and not only because our lunatic town council demolished thirty sixteenth-century dwelling houses and Mr Wesley’s chapel to erect it.

  ‘Guard me, Auntie!’ I said piteously to an old greyhaired lady as we cruised heavenwards. ‘They’ll want to chuck me out.’

  ‘The very idea!’ she quavered. ‘Stay close to me, young man!’

  ‘And I only want to look up my grandad’s birthday.’

  ‘They’re too bossy by far!’ her mate warbled, grasping her umbrella with grim intent.

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  At the top the thin, belligerent form of our town librarian, Scotchman, was standing. He stepped forwards, a fierce smile stencilling his lips. ‘Out, Lovejoy. Out!’

  Sad and humble, I murmured, ‘I knew it. Poor old grandad . . .’

  ‘Fiend!’ my older protectress cried, prodding the librarian aside.

  ‘Fascist!’ Her mate buffeted him against the wall with her basket and I was past, trotting into the reference section. People lifted heads and tut-tutted, but I was at the famous 1837 Lewis Topographical Ireland in a flash and looking up K in Volume II.

  There was a Kilfenny, a Kilfeighny, a Kilfinnane and Kilfinney in Limerick in 1837, so I supposed there still was. Keeping a wary eye on the main glass door, where Scotchman cruised in impotent fury and glared at me, I waved cheerfully once, then read, absorbed.

  The ashes had cooled among the ruins.

  Places look so different in daylight, don’t they, quieter and more controllable. Standing there among the weeds and tombstones I felt my old discontent return. Here, at this precise spot in the Universe, poor Joxer had died. The silent malevolence of the Heindricks’ Slav chauffeur, the almost jovial calm of Kurt’s admonition, the sexy allure of the feline Lena – on the face of it they didn’t add up to much, yet look here. Ash and charcoal. Restless, I scuffed the ashes and walked slowly along the wire mesh fence. Some white police marker tapes were still there. Lazy sods. The weeds in the corner of the Priory’s ruins stood tall, but those in the vicinity of the crime were trampled down, presumably by the firemen and the Old Bill.

  Over towards the church hall which the dramatic society uses there is a minuscule cobbled road leading to the town’s main street. They used to fetch the horsedrawn hearses there at funerals. No car-tyre tracks traceable that way, and the street road that ran along the churchyard’s top slope was free to anybody.

  I walked hack to Joxer’s ashed workshed. The little redbrick factory on the other side of the tall wire mesh was functioning busily. Its nearside wall was smudged with black. Its narrow strip windows held only opaque glass, so no hope of finding some vigilant night watchman garrulous with clues. Yet what was I doing hanging about here when I should be hitting the road to Limerick?

  There’s nothing quite so messy as a drenched fire. Black ash clung to my shoes and crept stickily on to my socks. My trouser edges were damp and flecked, and the uneven rubble made me wobble uncertainly. This odd restlessness, as if Joxer himself had returned to warn, had me jiggling nervously on the same corrugated iron where Ledger had uttered his ridiculous threats. I stepped off and the same bent piece of iron lifted out of the ash just as it had last night. It felt rough when I picked it up, not even warm. Maybe seven inches or so, it had been spindle-shaped, but now it was twisted along its length and curved into a crescent. Or, I wondered with quick interest, had old Joxer actually cast it in that shape? Holding it up, I turned for better light – and saw Sinead Morrison not ten feet away, standing watching me.

  She was lovely, a picture. The sun fell through the great arches of the fawn-red ruins and pooled the grass into green brilliance. Sinead was above me on the slope, a broad arrow of sunlight colouring her pale face and hair. The whole composition was breathtaking. I wanted to love her then, because she was lovable in her long swingback coat.

  ‘Loot, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Eh? Oh.’ I dropped Joxer’s old iron in the ash and climbed the slope. ‘Look, love. Sorry about your Joxer.’

  ‘Sorrow, Lovejoy?’ Her pale eyes blazed into me. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word.’

  ‘Eh? Look, love, I did try—’

  Her relentless voice was quiet but still shut me up. ‘Last night in the tavern you realized that there’d be a chance of some loot, so you said nothing when that lady brought the news of the fire. Your evil brain just filed the information away, so you could come picking over the ashes like the carrion crow you are – even though Joe’s hardly cold.’

  I listened, aghast. ‘No, love. Look, I honestly—’

  ‘Honestly?’ She stepped away to laser me with those radiant eyes. ‘You, Lovejoy? Honest? I really fell for your flannelling at the hospital.’

  This couldn’t be happening, not to me. Not from her. ‘But you don’t understand—’

  ‘Correct, Lovejoy. I don’t understand you at all. But everybody else does. The point is, they’re right about you and I was wrong.’

  She left then, walking with grace along the slope’s contour between two lichen-covered stones, her coat moving softly and her lifting heels shining among the grasses. It nearly broke my heart. I tried to call after her and couldn’t.

  It’s really lucky for me that I’m used to bad luck, or I would have been too cut up to do anything at all the rest of that day. Anyhow, with my record I’m used to heartbreak, so within an hour I’d been to the bank and talked them into letting the cheque through. Ten minutes later I’d found Tinker. He was waiting forlornly for opening time on the step of the Three Cups near the old Saxon church. I gave him a coupl
e of notes and told him to get some tins of ale and meet me outside the Castle.

  I went then to a travel agent’s in Cross Wyre Street and booked a ticket to Ireland.

  Chapter 11

  Janet’s car is a blue Morris, fairly easy to spot even in the usual tangle near our market. Tinker had cleared the contents of his tins by the time she came. She saw me, aloofly driving past and drumming her fingers on the steering-wheel, mad at something. I sighed at this hint of more trouble and gave Tinker one last reminder.

  ‘Anybody asking after buying my cottage, you send them to Lyn and David’s, okay? Down the lane.’

  His rheumy eyes looked up quizzically from the bench. ‘Here, Lovejoy. We really clearing out?’

  ‘Are we hell, silly fool.’ I ticked off on my fingers. ‘Antiques: Liz over at Dragonsdale has a late Regency ostrich fan. Get her to hold it for me.’

  ‘Christ,’ he moaned. ‘She’ll want the Crown Jewels, Lovejoy. Where’ll we get that kind of gelt?’

  That is horribly true nowadays. You can buy a new car with less money. Still. ‘And Margaret Dainty’s got a collection of antique barbering instruments, combs, scissors, razors. Tell her I’ve a buyer—’

  ‘Have we?’

  Sometimes Tinker’s thick. ‘No. Try to find one before I get back. I should only be a day or two. And tell Big Frank from Suffolk I need a couple of George IV period stitch samplers, framed, dated and named if possible.’

  ‘But we’ve a half-share in that pair of samplers Leggy Baldock’s trying to sell.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said patiently, inwardly pleading God-give-me-strength. Tinker never learns. ‘But Big Frank doesn’t know that. So he’ll go to Leggy’s stall next Saturday and—’

  Tinker’s gnarled old face lit up. ‘Hey, Lovejoy! That’s great! But what happens when Big Frank buys them and fetches them to us?’

  ‘We tell him we’ve already done the deal elsewhere, see?’ Janet tooted her horn impatiently.

  ‘He’ll do his nut. Here. What you going to Limerick for, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Holiday,’ I said laconically. ‘Ta-ra.’

  ‘Go safe, mate.’

  My train was at four, so I had time to invite Janet in for a cup of tea, as women euphemistically call it. I was glad about her willingness, because although she’s quite a bit older than me I find more gratification in older women, and anyway they’re better. It isn’t just staying power, it’s having more style or something. When she left at one o’clock to get some shopping done I had a sleep and was packing my small – actually my one-and-only – cardboard suitcase by two, and feeling fine. I remembered to put a three-foot length of hosepipe conspicuously in the centre of my garden. Cats think it’s a snake and go elsewhere, so I’d find no dead birds about when I got back. Lyn and the twins would scatter bird cheese morning and afternoon for me.

  There turned out to be only one snag when it came time to catch the train, and it was Jason at the station. I’d made Janet go, after borrowing some change for the phone, because I hate these farewells. I waved her off, then rang Helen, and Margaret Dainty, and Liz at Dragonsdale. Finally, thinking I was laying a false trail, I dialled Patricia Harvest, a money-mad investor who with her husband Pete ran a fruit farm down the Goldhanger estuary. Patricia’s one of those rich women who dress like a scrapyard. She’s always crying poverty, but then so do her three gardeners. I asked her what museum exhibitions were on at the moment. She can afford the posh antiques journals where they’re advertised.

  ‘Nobody else would know, not like you, Pat.’ I awarded myself ten points on the creep chart for grovelling.

  ‘Patricia,’ she corrected mechanically. ‘Where? National museums? Oh, Turner watercolours in the Brit Muzz – they’re doing that sublime bit. Then there’s Manchester . . .’ She prattled on, visions of tax-free capital obviously warming her marble heart.

  ‘And Dublin?’

  ‘Yes. The Derrynaflan finds, with early exhibits from Armagh. And the Dublin Antiques Fair’s on next week.’ Her voice broke momentarily under the stress of listing so much wealth owned by somebody else. ‘Ooooh, Lovejoy,’ she moaned. ‘Are you doing a sweep? Take me, and I’ll see you right, darling. Please.’ The thought made her frantic.

  Weakness struck, but I remembered that lives were at stake – mainly mine. So I lied, ‘See you in Dublin, sweetheart. That big hotel, the poshest one, right in the centre near that park.’ I was smiling, because in any city there’s always a big posh hotel in the centre near a park. ‘I’ll divvie for you. Next week, okay? You can pay me – in kind.’

  Her voice went husky. ‘You will, darling? I’ll be there. You’ll not regret it.’ She’s always trying to get me to divvie for her, and has heap big methods of persuasion.

  Cheerfully I put the phone down and damned near scalped myself emerging from the idiotically-designed perspex hood – to realize a thin spread of waiting travellers had listened to every word. Of course they were carefully pretending, in the very best English manner, to be preoccupied with books and the middle distance. Even that crook in the ticket office was all agog. That would not have mattered much, but Jason mattered very much indeed after the warning Sinead had given me about him the other night.

  He was buying a paper so very casually from the girl on the box stall. The local mental hospital sets it up to give the patients pin money. People mostly give more money than the newspapers cost. Like I say, folk are a rum lot. No good trying to work their motives out.

  Jason saw me with a theatrical start of astonishment and took in my battered cardboard case.

  ‘Hello, Lovejoy. Off on holiday?’

  ‘No. Taking stuff up to Maggs on the Belly.’ Even as I spoke I knew I’d made a mistake. It was too early in the week to be making deliveries to the Portobello Road antique market. And he could phone Maggs to check.

  ‘Big dealer, eh?’ He grinned, all even teeth and perfumed talc. ‘Think you could wait a day or two and take a couple of things for me?’

  ‘Due in today. There’s this painting . . .’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded wisely. ‘I understand. Nothing I can say to persuade you to postpone your journey, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Not really.’ I grinned but without much conviction. What with Jason in his cavalry twills and his armyofficer efficiency, the Heindricks and their murderous driver, and trouble with Ledger and his merrie men, I was really in the gunge now.

  ‘You wouldn’t be crossing to Ireland?’

  ‘That Paradise Lost you got me to buy? No, Jason. Forgotten all about that.’ That was the bookseller-printer I’d told Sinead about, who owed me.

  ‘A natural mistake, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Sure it was. See you, Jason.’

  He said evenly, ‘Soon, eh?’

  Recognizing me, the ticket collector did not hold out his hand for my ticket, having once had his thumb clipped with his own clipper by a certain antique dealer to whom he had shown ferocious rudeness. I paused. He recoiled into his red booth, wincing at the memory, hands behind his back.

  ‘Go straight through,’ he said in a shaky falsetto.

  ‘Go straight through . . . ?’ I prompted.

  ‘Go straight through . . . sir.’

  The train was on time. Janet had made me some cheese and tomato butties, which lasted me almost till the station was out of sight. All I could think of was Pat Harvest, with annoyance. The British Museum Turner exhibition ‘doing the sublime bit’, indeed. That innocent exhibition of watercolours had suddenly informed everybody how important some ideas are – and promptly sent the price of first editions of Edmund Burke’s book on the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful soaring five hundred per cent in three days among dealers and provincial antiquarians. A mint copy cost a few bob in 1757. It makes you sick.

  Still, a few things stay the same in this murderous antiques game. Dear Patricia’s idea of the sublime and the beautiful hadn’t changed since she was born. Money. And at least I’d tried to lay a false trail by repeating those
different locations to anyone who cared to listen. Like Jason.

  * * *

  On the plane they gave us those plastic dinners. I always get confused by so many little pots and get fed up halfway through. The hostess was bonny but their uniforms look so sterile they put me off. I dozed, worried about the mess I was in.

  My mind goes funny when I’m sleeping yet not sleeping. Joxer had done some quiet jobs for the Heindricks, so quiet indeed he had been compelled to work in the night hours. Night, when there would be none of Marcia’s amateur actors rehearsing on the greensward among the Priory ruins. Which meant stuff could be carried into Joxer’s workshed and worked on without the chance of some stray actor witnessing Joxer’s secret labours. I knew that Jimmy Day and Marcia and some of the others used Joxer’s little loo, and occasionally persuaded him to brew up for them on his bunsen burner. He was usually pretty tolerant and pleased with company, though dramatics folk can’t talk about anything else except drama.

  As the plane banked, Joxer’s last words came to me: Can’t you watch a minute with me? Whether people ask for you to watch a minute or an hour with them, the answer’s always no from goons the likes of me. Aren’t people pathetic, I thought in my miserably fitful doze. And whatever I found in Kilfinney there’d be hell to pay when I zoomed home – Patrick would go berserk about being tricked out of my cottage, Lily would be demented about the money, the Heindricks would be decidedly upset when they found out I’d scarpered, and Kurak at having murdered Joxer for possibly nothing. But Jason was thick as thieves with Lena Heindrick, so Sinead said, and the bastard might have sussed me out at the station when I phoned Patricia Harvest. And Ledger distrusted everybody. I groaned inwardly, remembering I’d signed his bloody form the other night. Had its typescript included a promise not to leave the area without letting him know? What a mess.

  The trouble is, I always feel like a chicken in a Western – under the pony’s hooves, desperately at risk from stray bullets, unpaid, and never getting the girl. It’s not much of a part.

  The air hostess was shaking me then.