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

by Jonathan Gash

  We came on the canal all of a sudden. No path, no lock gate. Just a cold breath on my face, as you feel near waterways. Yet what could Gluck do to me? Saintly knew that Gluck and I were enemies. If anything befell me, Gluck would catch it. And he couldn't have an alibi. I began to hope.

  'Onto the bank, Lovejoy.'

  Was there a farm cottage near the second bridge? That's where we seemed to be.

  Honor came behind me. She had the frigging nerve to clutch my arm and pull herself up. Gluck shone the light at my longboat, still and silent. Somebody must have moved it, right? Hope surged. Who? Could it be Sorbo, my one remaining trusty pal? If so, how come Dieter Gluck knew it would be waiting at this exact spot? The instant the light clicked out, I glimpsed a coracle among the floating weeds, maybe ten paces off. For a frantic second I had visions of making a heroic bound for freedom, swimming underwater, hiding among the bulrushes.

  'Escape, Lovejoy?' Gluck gloated. 'I think not.' His gun clicked. Why do they do that?

  'Dive in if you like. I'd shoot you when you surfaced. Nobody would hear. Get him aboard, Honor.'

  Honor went across the gangplank first. I followed, wobbling perilously.

  'About time,' Hymie's voice said from the cabin. 'Hello, Lovejoy.'

  'Hello, Hymie,' I said, pathetically still hoping.

  'Let's do it and get the fuck ahta here,' Hymie said. 'This country's the pits for cold and damp.'

  Hope can't be trusted. 'Kill me, Hymie?' I quavered, scared stiff. 'You think that will be the end of it? Kill me, you'll be in clover? Dream on.'

  'That's enough, Lovejoy.'

  Gluck must have clubbed me, for I felt a shudder, went onto my knees. I tried to keep talking. A small door tapped its brass bolt on my temple, joining the fun.

  'You're no more Honor's brother than I am, Hymie,' I said to the deck. Torchlight flickered more madness before my eyes. 'Are you Gluck's supposed cousin, the bruiser Tinker called Kenelley? Gluck and Honor will let you kill me, then they'll top you. They'll make it look like we fought each other. Can't you see the frigging obvious?' , A movement behind told me Gluck was readying another swing. I hunched, took a stunning blow to the side of my jaw. A torch shone, blinding me.

  'Fewer shares see, Hymie?' I mumbled into the light coming from below.

  Hymie stood in the longboat's main well, between two bunks. The cabin had shelves, a little shower, an oven, stove, a fridge. These irrelevant facts my idiotic brain noted down, for use in the Great Beyond.

  'What's he saying, Honor?' Hymie asked.

  'You're next, Honor,' I added, brain functioning at last. 'Where d'you think the lovely young Moiya December is? She's busy laying down an alibi for Dieter, her boyfriend.'

  Honor kicked my side savagely. 'Do it, Dieter. Or give me the fucking gun.'

  The light stilled. A roar almost took my head off. I saw a hole appear in Hymie's left eye. Something moist sounded, like a hideous gulp. He tried to speak, quite as if starting to explain something terribly complicated. He even raised his hand, the one with the flashlight so it shone up, making a gruesome All Hallows E'en mask of his face.

  He rocked back. The light dowsed. I heard nothing, all sounds gone.

  A gnat shrilled near me in Honor's voice, 'Do Lovejoy, then let's get the fuck out.'

  'Why?' I croaked, sounding like a bassoon. 'I can be useful. I'll say, sign anything. My friends—'

  Honor shrieked at that. Gluck's mad laughter shook the boat.

  'Who particularly, Lovejoy? Name any ten. Name one!'

  I struggled to think. Gaylord? Dosh Callaghan, who'd sent me on this wildgoose chase?

  Sorbo? Like the rest of East Anglia, like London, they were all abed or swilling the last pints down their undeserving gullets while I suffered.

  Bitterly I cursed the coast, its miserable selfish swinish inhabitants—

  'Don't do that.' The quiet words took me by surprise. It seemed to come from the canal bridge, maybe twenty paces off. 'You're all under arrest.'

  Saintly? I almost cried with relief, strove to stand. I cried, 'Yes, I surrender! I—'

  'Do it, for fuck's sake!' Honor shouted. 'It's not the police! They can't do a fucking thing!'

  Gluck shoved me to one side with a yell. His gun thumped the night, its momentary glare blinding me. I fell into the longboat cabin, the steps scraping my chin. Two more shots made me cower. A barmy image had me kicking the starter into action, steaming away from this fusilade, but I stayed true, curled under the bulwark, whimpering promises, begging for mercy. I'd no idea how long it went on, who fired, how many shots. I felt crazed. Somebody tumbled nearby and seemed to be trying to croak a message. There came a heavy slithery splash, took a long time about it.

  Then nothing. I was scared to open my eyes. Who'd won?

  'Lovejoy?'

  Familiar? Familiar had meant lethal tonight. I opened my eyes. A dead face was inches away. I screeched, tried to kick the horrible blooded mess from me.

  'It's all right, Lovejoy.' Mortimer? 'You're safe.'

  I was still blubbering and puking. Mr. Hartson hauled me upright.

  'Pull yourself together, man,' he said with disgust. 'You're not hurt, for God's sake. I had to do it. They shot at Mortimer.'

  'Sorry.' My hands came free. I tried to be firm, stout of heart. 'I, ah, hope I distracted them enough for you.'

  'Survey the canal, please, Mr Hartson,' Mortimer said. 'Take Jasper.'

  Mr Hartson nodded and simply seemed to evaporate. Two flashlights lay on the deck.

  Mortimer held another. He was calm, decisive. Who the hell did he take after? I wondered, narked. Certainly not me. But it had been me being murdered, and I'm not at my best then. Honor wasn't to be seen. Hymie and Gluck were dead on board, the latter curled impossibly by the stern. I tried not to look. I remembered that horrid long slow splash. Honor?

  'What do we do, Mort?' I asked humbly.

  'Check the shots have produced no response.' He surveyed the boat. 'You go to the hard. Wait there until dawn. Ask everybody who arrives or passes in the morning if they've seen anybody asking for you answering to Mr Gluck's description. They'll say no.'

  I was lost. 'What if they say yes?'

  His weary sigh sounded just like mine when I'm dealing with an idiot.

  'They shall say no, Lovejoy.' Born in the north, I've never got the hang of shall and will, so took him on trust. 'Return to where you left this longboat, at the canal's end. By then, police and hullabaloo will be occurring. You act astonished, say you'd arranged to meet Gluck last night.'

  Mr Hartson materialized. I wish he'd got a bloody bell round his neck.

  'Nothing, Mortimer,' he said.

  'You were the angler!' I said, the penny dropping.

  'Angler?' they both said together.

  'Must have imagined it.' By then I'd have believed anything and anyone. Even me.

  'Look,' I said, chastened. 'Thank you. If it hadn't been—'

  'Go now, Lovejoy,' Mr Hartson said. 'Take your torch. Proceed by way of the canal.

  Goodnight.'

  'Er, goodnight,' I said formally. Like leaving a tavern instead of a bloodbath.

  Jasper scornfully watched me disembark. I could tell he still thought me pathetic. I patted him. One thing, though. I've always believed in country folk. True friends, always there when you need a helping hand. I've always loved and admired every single one. Countryside, too.

  38

  NOON NEXT DAY Kettle made a monosyllabic statement to the police. I made mine, over and over the same thing. I denied seeing anybody. I told them that I'd stood on the lonely seashore, waiting for Gluck. He never arrived.

  'Why there, Lovejoy?' the police kept asking.

  'No idea.'

  'Why the longboat? Why sail down a disused canal?'

  'Because the customer said so.' I did a routine shrug. 'I've done deals in dafter places than the seaside. And used loonier vehicles than a barge.'

  'We know that, Lovejoy,' a newish CI
D bloke called Wendlesham said politely. 'You have a rum history. But three corpses seems excessive. Especially as they're all known to you.' A shotgun was found in the canal by police divers. I'd been shown it. I'd shrugged. It was some Belgian import. I knew it would be untraceable.

  For a tenth time I went over my encounters with Wrinkle. My meeting Honor I described as a polite handshake, not a burglar's eye view of her naked seduction of Wrinkle on his workbench. I'd not seen them, I told Wendlesham piously, since I bumped into Wrinkle at Lord's, and visited his workshop at Hymie's in Spitalfields.

  Wendlesham woke up at that. The plod love sports. 'Didn't know you followed cricket, Lovejoy. Who was playing?'

  Whoops. 'Er, the West Indies, I think.' Silence. Wrong? His eyebrows met in a frown.

  'India?' I offered hopefully. Who the hell had Wrinkle been so gloomy about? 'Australia?'

  'You dozed off, I expect,' he said.

  'I was after some cricket memorabilia,' I invented, wildly trying to remember the names of some ancient cricketers. A schooldays poem surfaced. 'Er, Hornby and Barlow were batting, I think.'

  Strangely, they didn't press me on the point. A few extra repetitions, they let me go. I left, a prickly feeling between my shoulders. I couldn't believe it when I got on the train and not a plod in sight. What the hell had happened to Wrinkle?

  The New Caledonian Market was coming off the boil when I finally got there. I caught sight of myself in a dressing glass, first antique wholesaler's on the right, and said 'God Almighty!' I looked a wreck.

  'Cheap, too!' The dealer was canting to Lydia, but mistook my exclamation for admiration. Canting means to extol, prior to a sale. He mistook Lydia for gormless, which she's not, and an innocent, which she is.

  'No, love.'

  I stayed Lydia's hand. She was writing a cheque. Not a single vibe. The small porcelain-framed mirror 'dressing glass' was made to hang on a wall above a plain dressing table.

  Find a genuine one, it will buy you a three-year holiday cruise, with cash to spend at every port of call. No kidding.

  'Look, Lovejoy!' She pointed. 'It says Royal Furbil Pottery, AD 1722: She'd been crying, so I was kind. 'No, love. "Royal" as a precursor only came in about 1850.'

  "Ere, what's your game?' The dealer belligerently pushed between us. 'I'm trying to earn a living—'

  I'd had enough. 'Want me to date the rest of your stock, mate?' I offered. 'Announce fake or genuine to every buyer in Bermondsey?'

  'Smart-arse.' He watched us leave. After a moment he called, 'You're Lovejoy, are yer?'

  Then he grinned, unpleasant. 'Good luck.'

  'What is it, love? Not more bad news, surely to God.'

  People were already drifting away. All antiques markets start and end early, though they're tending towards normal shop hours as years pass. I'd be lucky to find the people I wanted. There were things to settle.

  Bravely Lydia stifled her sob. 'There's been a terrible accident. Have you heard?' I said no. She continued, 'Tinker told me, but I have no details. That nice policeman was leaving the hospital.'

  She meant Mr Saintly. 'How are they?'

  'Tinker is recovering. Poor Trout.' She took advantage of the diminishing throng to blot her eyes. 'He will be lame, Lovejoy. Still, he has survived. Not like poor Dieter.' Which made me glance at her. Sobs for mad murderer Gluck, dry eyes for a dwarf savagely mangled into additional deformity?

  I said it just to make sure. 'What terrible news.'

  'And that horrid old bag hag has reclaimed Dieter's antique shop in Chelsea and Saffron Fields. Is it fair, Lovejoy? Dieter was such a gentleman!'

  'It's okay,' I said, content now I knew who the tears really were for. Trout was right.

  Some things I had to leave Lydia out of. 'Look, love. You know Edwina Holleran? Small, bonny, deals in silver? You met her in her dad's silver place where—'

  'She showed you her skills?' Lydia completed sweetly. 'In a dark corner of the workshop? Yes, I do remember, Lovejoy.'

  ''Every silver furnace is in a dark corner,' I said, narked. 'When you anneal silver you have to judge its heat by naked eye. You can only do it in darkness, see?' I grew vehement. Women always blame me. 'I wasn't doing anything. She was showing me how to turn, spin and work over.'

  Her sorrow evaporated in new annoyance. 'And you were so thrilled, spinning and turning! How could I possibly forget dear Edwina!'

  'Stop it. You make her sound like a bloody spider. She'll be in Camden Passage tonight.

  Tell her the deal's on, okay?'

  'Very well, Lovejoy.'

  We separated by the church. Everything still felt wrong.

  The market was folding. I'm always sad, seeing the trestles stacked under tarpaulins, hearing the barrows rattle away on the stones. It's civilization ending. Even the last vans revving up make me sorrowful. Dealers were making final come-on deals, the sort that sound a brilliant bargain and never are. From a throng of thousands, maybe a couple of hundred listless refugee customers were left. Tip: these woebegone remnants who can't bear to leave are hopeless. Lovejoy's Law: Never be the first or last to buy, but sell any time.

  Not all was dross today, though, as the shadows lengthened. Mimi Welkinshaw was still trying to flog one last bargain - a pair of flatback brown-and-white pottery dogs for Victorian mantelpieces. They're ten-a-penny antiques, meaning a week's wage nowadays and ugly as sin. Every bloke with a backyard big enough turned out these King Charles's spaniels in the Black Country, no telling exactly who. A little cluster of expectant dealers goggled at Mimi's last performance. Next to her van Palace Alice was folding her awning. Beyond, Gaylord Fauntleroy loaded gunge into his motor while his one-eyed Auntie Vi sat smoking her foul pipe on their trailer steps. I could hear Hello Bates doing his familiar shout, getting only the occasional 'Sod off, Batesy.' Sir Ponsonby was popping a champagne cork, Moiya December holding the glasses. She was back on station, seeing that times - and available personnel - had changed.

  'What went wrong, Lovejoy?' some lass said, strolling past.

  'Eh?' I halted. It was Billia.

  She stopped, furtive. A barrow dealer boxing up his fake kakeimon vases hopefully started a harangue. I drew her on.

  'I thought I wasn't supposed to know you, Lovejoy!' she said.

  I was at least as thunderstruck as she was. Why wasn't she in gaol? Okay, so I didn't need the phoney robbery at Dulwich Picture Gallery any longer, Gluck being dead. But at least my plans should be working somewhere, however phoney. She was only a red herring, for God's sake. Even plans I'd assumed tightly knitted were unravelling.

  'Why,' I began, then halted. I could hardly expect an answer to why aren't you arrested with your bloke Dang, when I'd betrayed her dud burglary attempt to the police. 'Why did you say that, Billia?'

  We drew in the shadow of trestle stacks for further incoherence.

  'Me and Dang did everything you said, Lovejoy. Nobody came.'

  'Great.' I thought quickly. 'It's been postponed to tonight. I'll be doing it with you.'

  She looked full of doubt, untrusting cow. I'd sweated my socks off for this woman, risked my life among maniacs, and she hadn't the loyalty to catch the Dulwich bus?

  People are rotten. 'Honest, Lovejoy?'

  'Of course honest,' I said, narked.

  'And you'll have the money to get Dang off?'

  'Hand on my heart, Billia.' A bonny lass, but what a blinking pest. I got rid of her by pretending I was being beckoned by an important illegal importer. 'He's a pal of that Caravaggio conspiracy geezer,' I lied quickly. 'Sotheby's and all that. Don't be late tonight, love.'

  And escaped into the dwindling market. Nothing sadder than a folding street market or a fading day. I know one forger, English watercolours, who can only work at teatime in autumn as the light dwindles. I've never yet seen him smile. It must be his soul. This attractive woman stopped me, said hello.

  'Is that you?' I asked. Is there a dafter question? Nobody can say no, can they?

  'C
olette, Lovejoy.' Her smile was radiant. She was dressed to kill. Hair done, teeth a-dazzle, clothes guinea-an-inch. 'You approve?'

  Bags under her eyes, though. A facial and new earrings can't hide heartbreak. Yet hadn't her Mortimer been saved from death? And herself from poverty? And, small point, by me? That's a woman for you.

  'Beautiful, love.' She'd probably dressed up for me. It was her sign that we were going to resume where we'd left off. I warmed to her. 'You look good enough to eat.

  Congrats.'

  'Yes.' Bravely she forced a smile. 'When we signed everything over to Dieter there was a legal who-goes-last clause.' Her lovely lip trembled. 'I now realize that Dieter, poor lamb, intended to make sure he alone was left. He was driven to it, of course. He'd been awfully deprived as a child.'

  'Him and Honor,' I said, cruelly, but wanting to know.

  'That bitch is well dead,' Colette said with venom. 'Dieter was easily led. Handsome men with ambition, falling into the hands of some evil old crone like her,' et unbelievable cetera.

  A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair? Maybe - plus a fearsome power of self-delusion.

  'Moiya December's consoling herself, I see.'

  The pretty lass was sprawled on the bonnet of Sir Ponsonby's motor, eating cherries in what can only be called an erotic manner while the world held its breath.

  'She's another whore,' Colette said.

  'Look, love. Sign Saffron Fields over to Mortimer before the day's out,' I begged. 'I'd hate for things to go askew at this stage.'

  'It's already done,' she said. 'Through Arthur's old lawyer.'

  Relief swept over me. 'Deo gratias. Love, you seen Sorbo?'

  'He was here,' she said. A ripple of laughs made me look. Mimi had sold her gruesome dogs. She was taking the money, walking across for a last word with Auntie Vi. 'Keep in touch, Lovejoy.'

  Not for me after all. Forlorn hope. Colette was already moving on. I mean, Dieter Gluck was a crazed killer, yet he'd had Lydia, Colette, Honor, Moiya all panting after him. Is life fair? I wandered to the three remaining stalls still on the go, when Sorbo touched my arm. He still wore his ancient frock coat, was fat as a duck.