A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair l-21

by Jonathan Gash

  Nowadays the bait is more likely to be one genuine antique Russian ikon, plus the promise of thousands more. Or one genuine Impressionist painting plus promise of a hundred. Or a four-carat diamond plus the promise of et enticing cetera. The gold brick con trick is always one tempter plus a promise. Remember to say no. It's still done on stock exchanges the world over and works like a dream. I've seen the Gold Brick work brilliantly well even when executed by duds. Because of something truly terrible called greed. Sorry if it sounds like an accusation. I'm in there too.

  Once, I knew a woman, very cool professional lady, who advised banks on investments.

  Cynicism on shapely legs, Maisie was. Maisie was good. She could swap outdated yen into extinct lire and back into dollars without changing wheels. Yet this same cynical hardliner Maisie paid a barrowboy an entire month's salary on the promise of three hitherto undiscovered manuscripts by Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's pal. She didn't know the vendor, hadn't seen the manuscripts, knew nothing about Ben Jonson, had never clapped eyes on the barrowboy before, couldn't tell parchment from pawpaw. See?

  Greed, like murder, will out. Never mind those famous sayings about fame being the spur; greed's the biggest mover on earth. It's horrible.

  I've seen the coolest individuals fall for a non-existent cache of non-Sheraton furniture in a non-existent garden shed. I've seen clergymen fall for fake Dead Sea Scrolls. I've known widows in an investment club lose everything, including reputations, when buying a non-existent Caribbean island. And seen a Munich millionaire go to prison for frantically buying the six-acre greensward of a nonexistent Oxford college. Don't think you can't fall for the same con more than once. The widows' investment group I mentioned did it again two years later, buying imaginary salmon-fishing rights to a mythical river.

  The rush of emotional memories gave me a headache. I'd have killed for a cup of tea. I told Sorbo, but he's bad at hints.

  'Brick? Clocks, Lovejoy.'

  Well, I groaned out loud.

  'Everybody on earth fakes clocks, Sorbo. Boy scouts find rare Early English movements in steeple belfries. It's like furniture. Everybody's got a rotten old clock that won't go, so greed naturally enters.' Hence the honest old public pretends that some hacky Woolworth alarm clock is a priceless Carrier discovered in Grandpa's attic. It's as natural as breathing. My respect for Colette's instincts plunged.

  'She was actually taken in by an antique clock scam?'

  'To the hilt, Lovejoy. That was how Arthur died, see. It was his canal.'

  Canal? Sorbo drained the Rodney flask with a roustabout's glug, then withdrew a new bottle of Graham's vintage port from a cupboard, decanted it carefully into the fake flask.

  He spoke with love. 'Port takes time, Lovejoy.' Then switched to hate. 'If I could kill Dieter Gluck and get away with it, I'd do it.' I listened, dry as a bone, the port maturing before my eyes in the glow. 'Everybody could see it except Colette.'

  'Did nobody say?'

  He swung on me. I'd never seen him angry before. It shook me. 'You think I didn't?

  And where were her sodding friends, Lovejoy? You quick-prick hick. How often did you phone, visit, drop a postcard? She had others, fine. They were all vanishers, just like you.'

  Insults have to be swallowed. I've found that. 'How'd he do it?' Trout had more or less said the same, Dieter Gluck kills people. 'And what canal?'

  'Arthur's position seemed enviable, to Gluck. Nobility, lineage, land, plus a wife who played at being the grand Chelsea antiques dealer. A plum for the picking! Gluck had no money of his own, so he wheedled in. Became a partner by foregoing.'

  You can do this in the antiques trade. Foregoing always makes me a bit uneasy. If you want to become a partner in a small antique dealer's shop, you go through three phases. First, you work there for nothing, make yourself indispensable. The owners get to depend on your wit, help, luck even. Then you sadly but tactfully hint that you've got an excellent offer from a rival. This may not be true, but so? Avarice spurs you on.

  Phase Two comes along. The owner says, 'Hey, don't go. How about I give you a salary?' You say, 'Ta, pal. I really don't want to go because I've been so-o-o happy working with you. How about I stay, take no payment, but take the salary in equity?'

  That is, you become a junior partner, however fractionally small the increments. Phase Three, you're the cuckoo. You ditch the owner.

  You're in. You've made it, name on the notepaper. Foregoing.

  'His expertise was automata, clockworks, all those?'

  'Has a good knowledge, give him that.' Sorbo hated admitting this. He took a long pull at the port, set it down, eyes watering. The fumes wafted across.

  'Genuine?' I'm always scared some enemy's going to turn out a divvy like me.

  'He pulled off one or two successes. Astrolabes, navigationals, spheres, microscopes. I got the feeling it was all breading, but who can prove that?'

  'Breading is what anglers do. They chuck bread balls onto a river so the fish will congregate. It means putting an enticing antique into somebody's path. This way, they're inveigled into making offers for other items you've got. Many dealers bread at a loss, to increase a buyer's trust.

  'And Colette thought—'

  'The sun shone out of the bloke?' Sorbo completed for me. 'Yes. Then he put the gold brick in. It needed a guarantee, see?'

  It was like a bad dream. I was aghast. 'Didn't Arthur say no?'

  'You know - knew - Arthur, Lovejoy. He went along, put up the shop and his manor as guarantee when Colette said.'

  'And didn't think to ask me?' I almost shouted it.

  He said nothing. Then, 'You never answer letters, Lovejoy. Your phone's always on the blink, or you're in trouble somewhere. I told Arthur to send for you. He just smiled and said, "First catch your hare, Sorbo." Like Mrs Beeton's recipe.'

  'It wasn't Mrs Beeton. It was Mrs Hannah Glasse.' Dr John Hill's pen-name was Mrs Hannah Glasse - he being embarrassed, you see, at writing the brilliant Cook's Oracle cookery book. Born in 1716, he first wrote that most famed phrase Take your hare when it is cased… Which became scatched, then catch. Arthur knew this. He often talked in local dialect, and 'scatch' is an old East Anglian word meaning to skin. In fact, we'd once had a mock argument about the authorship of this very saying. My eyes watered. I wondered if it was a message, from Arthur to an absent friend. Me, say.

  Because Arthur had been well and truly skinned.

  'Arthur had a canal, Lovejoy. He wanted to link it with the sea estuary. Always on about it.' Sorbo showed guilt at having been bored stiff by Arthur.

  'Like the Ribble, wasn't it?'

  Sorbo sniffed, maudlin. 'Make a new lock gate from Saffron Fields canal into the estuary, you'd be able to sail a longboat barge from the North Sea up the heart of the country to the Lake District.'

  'These schemes are always resurfacing, now that leisure is big money.'

  'I think Colette just wanted to give Arthur the money to build his canal's sea gate.

  Repay Arthur for all the lovers she'd had over the years.'

  He swigged, belched. I sat in the gloaming, sick at heart.

  'Know what, Lovejoy? I think it's women. Take your average bloke. He sees a luscious bird, old or young, fancies her.'

  Sorbo was blaming me for it all. He was right. If I'd stood by Arthur, this wouldn't have happened.

  Sorbo went on, 'The bloke either makes love to the bird if he's lucky, or fails. Either way, he lives with it. But women are different. A woman gets the bit between her teeth about a man, something weird happens. She throws everything to the winds. Morality, money, propriety, common sense. Goes crazy.'

  I rose and took the Rodney flask from his hand. Unbelievably light, from its synthetic composition. Sorbo had invented quite a fake. I bent to stare into his eyes.

  'Sorbo. Gluck's scheme was to rob who of what?'

  'Them, Lovejoy. The Clockmakers' Company.'

  It couldn't be done. People had tried, and nobody had done it yet. I'd ev
en thought of it myself - not really in true life, but when you're just drifting off to sleep and pleasant thoughts entice. I pulled myself together.

  'It would need multo gelt, Lovejoy. Colette made Arthur put up the Chelsea business and the manor, guarantee Gluck a loan.'

  'Some loan,' I said bitterly. 'A fortune.'

  'Had to be big, see, because Gluck reckoned he'd found a new - I mean antique -

  Harrison wooder.'

  I swayed away and sat. I still held Sorbo's Rodney and took a long draught, choked a bit. The Harrison wooder would do for a gold brick all right,

  'Why didn't Gluck go through with it, once he'd got the money?'

  Sorbo retrieved the flask with an air of injury, took a swig to show who was boss round here.

  'He found something about the manor. Cheeky bastard went to inspect it, like it was his. Spoke to Arthur. Arthur always did have a weak ticker. Died in hospital that evening. Heart attack.'

  'Where was Trout in all this?'

  'That little bugger? Gluck gave him the push for lowering the tone of the place. When Arthur passed away Gluck brought in this Bern goon instead of me. Bern's supposed to be an antiques restorer. I got dundied without a bean.' Dundied, made redundant. 'I make do now with — '

  'Aye, aye,' I said testily. I didn't want a list of Sorbo's odd jobs. 'You go to Arthur's funeral?'

  'No. I was plastered for a fortnight. Anyway, it was out in some forest.'

  Where some lad had sung a song for Arthur. There'd been four at the burial in the glade. And somebody had watched me when I'd visited there.

  'Arthur died exactly when everything he owned passed legally to Gluck. Convenient, eh?'

  'Colette was stunned. Gluck threw her out. All London was talking about it. She can't give antiques up, Lovejoy. Like you, like me, like everybody else with the bug. So she's a scrubber.'

  For a long time I sat watching the shadows leap across the workbench, stretch and vanish among his instruments. I cleared my throat.

  'Sorbo. We outnumber Gluck.'

  'I'm not deaf.'

  He took up a small wood-shaper chisel and started to hone it on an oilstone. Seeing other fakers use an instrument always narks me, no matter how skilled they are. We forgers always reckon we can do everything better than anybody else. Robbery, even.

  'There's Trout, Tinker, me, you, and my apprentice Lydia. There's only two of him.

  Anybody else?'

  'To do what?'

  Words don't come easy. I didn't want to say kill exactly, because killing's wrong. And punish sounds like school, hands out and this hurts me more than it'll hurt you, the executioner's usual lies.

  'To restore the balance,' I said eventually.

  He said, 'Sounds fair. What do we do?'

  I said, 'We do Gluck's robbery for him. Or a better one.'

  'Robberies that good can't be done, Lovejoy.'

  'Then,' I said evenly, 'somebody'll get caught, won't they?'

  That night I kipped in Waterloo Station, light of heart, thinking what a wonderful place London was. Dick Whittington had found that, and he'd made Lord Mayor, boss of the City of London itself, of all the ancient prerogatives and immense wealth. London truly is a magical place, for somebody with ambition.

  Breakfast in the station buffet cost me the earth. London's a lousy rotten dump.

  15

  THE GUN SHOOT. I managed to reach Caprice by telephonic sorcery and demanded why I wasn't being wined and dined around about the county, dwaahling. She swore inelegantly at having had to make her own toast this cruel dawn.

  'I've got you in tomorrow's shoot, Lovejoy,' she told me between bursts of invective.

  She went to a posh finishing school, so can swear like a longshoreman. 'Clovis will kit you out. Don't you dare be freaking late or I'll see you never breathe East Anglian air again. Clovis is mad on punctuality. Eight o'clock for pre-shoot breakfast. The awards night's a full fig affair, remember.'

  The rest of her prattle didn't matter, relating as it did to celebrities, Who Would Be On Our Table, and last night's terrible deeds backstage. I'd no intention of going to her crummy do. Dieter Gluck had found some murder-worthy link among London's street markets, antiques, and the dark brooding countryside of East Anglia. I was tracking him.

  On to Portobello Road, every hunter's favourite.

  The Portobello runs so close and parallel to its next street that you wonder why they bothered to make two. Kensington Park Road, the B415, does a decent job of zooming from Notting Hill Gate, where there's a Tube, nearly to Ladbroke Grove, where there's another Tube if you're worn out. You can't possibly get exhausted, because the length of Portobello Road is bliss, aka antiques. Some are rum, and the folk are rummer still.

  Westbourne Park Road completes the T. What with three Tube stations, one at every extremity, and the buses plying through, it's a wonder that you meet people who've never been there. I looked at the grandly named Westway - the weary old A40 trying to pretend it's a real motorway. The place was all on the go. Incidentally, be prepared for a plod of several hours. Stalls extend all the way to the flyover, usurping practically every nook to Golborne Road and beyond. By the time this ink's dry the market might well have spread to Birmingham (joke) or vanished (j).

  It wasn't easy deciding who to chat up first. I chose Deeloriss - her spelling; she started out Dolores. She did prison time once for stalking a Dieppe dealer who'd sold her a fake 1795 cabinet. She got arrested at Dover for stabbing him. Deeloriss would understand hatred, if anybody would.

  The market's usually thronged at weekends. Once, it was only Saturdays, under the Westway flyover. Now, though, there's so much money screaming for an antique to protect its cold soul from nasty old inflation that antiques stretch through the week.

  Deeloriss looks so charitable, not at all like a knifer. Wears only black and white, with hair to match. I've even seen her with her cheeks done in chequerboard harlequin squares, putting the fear of God in me. Today she was demure, regretfully shaking her head winsomely at a foreign robed gent. I saw her wrap something. He paid, pressed her hand meaningfully, and went.

  'Wotcher, Deel. Good girl, pull it off?'

  'Wotcher, Lovejoy.' She gazed after the man laconically. 'I'd have had to pull more than a deal off with some of these customers. It's getting more like a slave auction every day.'

  'How's Pierre?' Pierre was her Dieppe knifee, so to speak. They married when she got out of clink and he got out of hospital.

  'Swine took off with some Scotch bitch.' She smiled beatifically at customers who paused, interested in her corner cupboards. They moved on. Her smile vanished.

  'What happened to the fake cabinet, Deel?' I ahemed, casual. 'It was pretty well made, I heard.'

  'You made it, you bastard,' she said. I gulped, backed away a step. 'Those feet were swept out lovely. You must have used tons of heartwood.'

  'Er, aye, love.' The so-called French foot, on furniture made in the fifteen years astride 1800, is bonny to carve. It's best faked with the outward swoop brought straight from the bottom corner of the cabinet. Okay, so housewives won't thank you when they keep tripping up over each elegant projection, but is that too big a price for loveliness? Until now, I'd assumed Deeloriss hadn't known it was one of my creations. 'I'll buy it back, eh?'

  'The swine took it with him.' She patted a passing child on the head. Its parents smiled, I smiled, Deeloriss smiled. We were nauseating.

  'Pity.' I wanted something to defraud Gluck with. 'Seen Colette?'

  'Poor mare.'

  Deeloriss lit a cigarette in an Edwardian amber-and-ivory fagholder. It's a recurring thought of mine that women might - only might, note - feel a little frisson of delight when some calamity overtakes a lady friend. Deel seemed less than heartbroken at Colette's misfortune.

  'I thought I glimpsed her in Bermondsey. It was only some bag lady.'

  'Don't tart about, Lovejoy. You know what's happened.'

  'Sorry.' I pretended to be shamefaced,
her shrewdness catching me out. 'I just don't know who to ask.'

  She flicked ash with a woman's sharp grace. 'Serves the snooty bitch right. Stuck-up mare, her and her ancient tide. Well, she got her come-uppance with that Gluck. Out on her ear, not two coppers to rub together.'

  'Why is she still his doormat?'

  That made her smile. 'When a woman goes overboard for a man, Lovejoy, she's got to keep on. To walk away admits that everybody else was right and she wrong.'

  'It mystifies me.' I fiddled with a steel-soled panel plane. Just a carpenter's bench tool made of gunmetal. They are worth a new car, these Norris 50 series implements, especially when you see a variant style - a differently sited screw adjustment or suchlike. Two blokes at Needham Market made the prices soar, sharing toolmakers'

  history with collectors everywhere. Deeloriss took it back, put it on her stand.

  'You can't afford it, Lovejoy.'

  'Women often say that they've been stupid. It's their thing.'

  'You might have something there, Lovejoy. Most women would have given up after all this time. Maybe it's her Arthur, and she's grief-hugging?'

  'Deel, love.' I hesitated. 'Heard of any decent scams?'

  She eyed me. 'Astronomy forgeries have hit the barrows lately. Ever since that new Ophiuchus zodiac came in. Somebody out your way worked a scam before the news broke, don't know how. He used two elderly ladies. Going?'

  'Er, ta, Deel, got to be off. Ta-ra.'

  She called something after me, smiling, but I didn't pause. The new zodiac scam had been mine. The Ophiuchus constellation hadn't then smashed the headlines, giving everybody who watches their star signs a fright if they're born between 30 November and 17 December. My getting there first had been pure luck. If luck was a talent, I needed it now.