The Tartan Ringers

by Jonathan Gash

  Late that same night Michelle came across me in the conservatory.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘A real cliffhanger.’ I held out the book. ‘Dame Wiggins and Her Seven Wonderful Cats. I like Kate Greenaway. Can’t help wondering if she had an affair with George Weatherby. Co-authors and all that.’ She sat opposite me, composed, hands clasped.

  ‘Yonks ago—’ she used the slang self-consciously – ‘I’d have said you looked ridiculous sitting in that old bath chair. Now it seems so natural, you reading an old book by candlelight when there are comfortable chairs, new books, electric light, television.’

  ‘It’s pleasanter, love.’

  ‘Is it always like that?’ She meant divvying.

  ‘Not long back I divvied a few things for a fairground. Took it in my stride. This was a bit of a marathon.’

  ‘And payment, Lovejoy?’ First time she’d used my name.

  ‘Money? You fixed the percentage.’ I shrugged. ‘It never sticks to my fingers. A woman I knew says it’s because deep down I hate the stuff. Pay me in Roman denarii, love.’

  She showed no inclination to go. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I said, ‘You must be very proud of Elaine. Sad that James Wheeler didn’t live to see how she turned out.’

  Women who delay a reply are usually opting for truth. It’s unnerving, like all rarities. Michelle’s face was pale when finally it lifted.

  ‘I suspected you’d guessed, Lovejoy.’ She looked away for the crunch. ‘He took his . . . wife to the Continent. I went as a companion.’

  ‘Because you were pregnant with Elaine.’ Good planning. ‘The wife condoned everything?’

  ‘Of course.’ She was faintly surprised at my astonishment. ‘The importance of a clan heir overrode everything. Duncan didn’t know. He stayed to help Robert run Tachnadray.’

  ‘All these dark secrets put you in my power,’ I threatened. ‘Now I’ll exploit you rotten.’

  She smiled at that, really smiled. ‘Anyone else, yes. But not you, Lovejoy.’

  She rose, hesitated as if seeking something, then bent over and put her warm dry mouth to mine.

  ‘Thank you, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Don’t say thanks yet, love,’ I said sadly. ‘Unless you know what’s coming.’

  Her eyes, so close to mine, showed doubt an instant before her woman’s resolve abolished it. She decided I meant gain.

  ‘Duncan won’t expect me for an hour,’ she said evenly. Her perfume was light and fresh. New to me, irritatingly. It’s one of my vanities that I can guess scents. ‘I was on my way to leave this list in your room.’

  ‘See you there, then,’ I said, just as evenly as her.

  ‘Don’t be too long, Lovejoy.’ Her voice was a murmur.

  I watched her recede from sight in the gold glow, then returned for a quick minute to Dame Wiggins. One of the Wonderful Cats would land in the gunge if it didn’t watch out. Like Dutchie and Dobson. Except they’d only two lives between them. A cat’s got nine. Right?

  Chapter 27

  ONE OF THE worst feelings in the world must be when you throw a party and nobody comes. I mean, that Bible character who dragged in the halt, lame and blind has my entire sympathy. I began to get cold feet, though all portents were for go. Letters were still arriving. We’d had three calls from Mr Ruthven, banker, ecstatic because nearly fifty firms or unknowns had transferred sums to the Caithness National out of the blue. Pastor Ruthven, notable non-assassin, blessed our enterprise. The phone was constantly trilling, bloody nuisance. Mrs Moncreiffe had her hair done.

  Outside was like Highland Games day. Yellow ribbons on metal hooks fenced the tracks all the way from the bridge over Dubneath Water to Tachnadray. Robert and his men, now a staunch six, had put night-glitters on the ribbons, good thinking, and had laboriously mowed a spare field. Five hundred cars and eight coaches, he said. A man was sacked for blabbing in the MacNeishes’ pub; drummed out of the Brownies, lost his badge, and got mysteriously convicted and clinked for a week’s remand by magistrate Angus McGunn.

  A trailer arrived from Thurso carrying a kind of collapsible canvas cloister. Mrs Buchan blew up, learning that Trembler was making inquiries among Inverness caterers, but I quashed her campaign when one caterer undertook to run a grub-and-tea tent and give us a flat fee. I agreed the same for a bar, plus a percentage. The catalogues were fetching in six times the printing costs. Hamish, maniacal by now, was doing a colour catalogue of fifty-one pages with a ‘research index’, meaning notes, by Mr Cheviot Yale, auctioneer and fellow of this and that. The coloured versions were for sale at the door, at astronomic cost to the buyer. Trembler prophesied they’d sell all right. A firm from Inverness brought a score of portable loos for an extortionate fee. They looked space age, there on the grass, white and clinical. The local St John Ambulance undertook to send a couple of medical aid people, in case.

  The estate had never seen days like it, not since the laird’s spending sprees. Mrs Buchan’s kitchen was going non-stop. Duncan finished his last piece, a pedestal case. This is the 1820 notion of a filing cabinet, with five hinged leather-covered cardboard boxes in a tier. It sounds rubbish but with its lockable mahogany frame it looked grand. I explained how to age it with dilute bleach and a warm stove. Duncan’s products, a round dozen by now, would go into the auction as extra lots on the addendum.

  It felt like a holiday. Trembler went off south for a well-earned, er, rest after ordering two of his exotic ladies from a Soho number. Tinker was paralytic, but messily filling out in the kitchen. It was there I roused him while Mrs Buchan’s merry minions were screaming laughing over laundry in the adjoining wash house. He came to blearily, hand crooked for a glass.

  ‘Noisy bleeders,’ he groused while I poured. Mrs Buchan’s latest offering was like tar. He slurped, shook the foundations with a cough, focused. ‘Yeah, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Dutchie and Dobson.’ I waited for his cortex to reassemble in the alcohol fog. ‘Dutchie back from the Continent?’

  ‘Never.’ He hawked, spat into the fire.

  ‘You sure? Our local dealers say you can set your clock by Dutchie’s reappearances.’

  ‘Not this time, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Tinker. I reckon Dobson did that driver, and Tipper Noone. Watch out for Dutchie and Dobson.’

  ‘Fine chance, Lovejoy,’ he croaked witheringly. ‘Them bastards are too lurky.’

  They’d both be here. I already knew that. The only question remaining was their attitude towards me. I was pretty confident Dutchie wouldn’t – maybe couldn’t – harm me. But that cunning silent knife-carrier Dobson . . . I hunched up and sipped Tinker’s ale for warmth. What’s the expression, an angel walking over your grave? I thought, some angel.

  View Day’s always a let down, with added tension, same as any rehearsal. Everybody was keyed up. Trembler returned looking like nothing on earth but steadying as the day wore on. Tinker spent the morning ‘seein’ the bar’s put proper’, meaning sponging ale. Michelle checked the numbers, and fought Trembler over sticky labels on the oil paintings. I kept out of it. Robert and Duncan drilled the retainers twice. No hitches.

  They came. First a group of three cars, hesitantly following the signs. They’d driven from Eastbourne. Then a minibus from George MacNeish’s tavern with the six overnighters we already knew about. Duncan’s men had erected signs everywhere. Nobody had an excuse for ‘accidentally’ getting themselves lost. Our people were on station in doorways, corridors and one on each of the seven staircases. Five hawk-eyed men simply stood on the grass staring at the big house, Hector with Tessie and Joey spelling them in sequence every twenty minutes. One thing was plain to even the casual viewer: security was Tachnadray’s thing.

  Our viewing was timed from 11 a.m. to 4 in the afternoon. The trickle was a steady flow by noon. By 1 it was a crowd. Two o’clock and the nosh tent was crammed, the bar tent actually bulging at the seams. A coach arrived. The car park was half full, and filling. But throughout I kept a
low profile. From the west wing’s upstairs corridors I could see the main doorway. I had a pile of sandwiches against starvation and a trannie against boredom in case Dutchie and Dobson didn’t show. I sat on the window ledge watching.

  There was only one way for them to enter the house, and that was up the balustraded steps. And one way out, the same. As people arrived, I counted with one of those electronic counters. Like watching an ants’ nest in high summer. I recognized many, smiling or scowling as I remembered their individual propensities.

  Lonely business. Twice Michelle sent a breathless girl – we had two of these runners, not really enough – with some query, quite mundane. It occurred to me that maybe Michelle was checking on me, rather than proving she was on the ball. Once Tinker came coughing up, carrying me a pint of ale. At least, he nearly did. The beer slopped so much on the stairs he didn’t think it worthwhile to finish the ascent, so he drank it and called up that he’d go back and get me another. ‘Another?’ I yelled down. ‘I haven’t had the bloody first yet.’ He clumped off, muttering. That’s friends for you. I mean, I thought from my perch by the leaded window, Michelle was really too attractive, but cuckolding Duncan, whom I liked, hadn’t been my fault. She’d realized how good and sincere I am deep down. That’s what did it. Finer qualities always go over big with women . . .

  Dobson walked from the covered way. He paused to scan the still kilted figures of Duncan’s five watchers. Undecided, he strolled round the east wing. I smiled. Sure enough, he returned. Hamish’s big cousin Charles, No. 17, was posted there with his shepherd’s crook and his noisy eight-year-old son. Dobson moved more purposefully, round the west wing. I waited while the viewers, now a teeming throng, poured about. And back he came, now surly and fuming. It was Hector’s sister’s lad Andy on that corner with his border collie. Dobson turned, shook his head slowly. No go, he was telling somebody.

  My blood chilled. An overcoated man, bulky and still, was standing among the crowd. He raised his hand to his hat, and five – five, for Christ’s sake; there’s only one of me – others joined him. They came and ascended the steps with Dobson’s lanky morose figure striding behind. I swallowed. Well, I tried to. These were hard nuts, Continentals from the Hook. Ferrymen, as Tinker calls them. Pros, the heavies with which our gentle occupation abounds.

  They left after two hours, into the nosh tent. At 4 Duncan’s bell started ringing. At 4.30 the last cars left, carrying the caterers. A lady dealer, one of the Brighton familiars, was winkled out of the loos by a dog. Five o’clock and Duncan’s men raised an arm, Robert’s numbers each holding a plaid flag from the windows. Michelle came out and signalled jubilantly up to me, smiling all over her face. I opened the window and yelled to stand down, everybody. One or two applauded, all delighted. Trembler had one small item missing, a fake Stuart drinking glass. Cheap at the price, but Trembler went mad. Tinker complained the beer tent hadn’t allowed the statutory twelve minutes’ drinking-up period, and went to fill the aching void with Mrs Buchan’s brew. Other people haven’t his bad chest. Elaine was thrilled and joined us all in the kitchen for a celebration.

  ‘A perfect View Day!’ she exclaimed, congratulating Trembler in the hubbub. ‘Absolutely right!’

  Nearly, I thought, as the retainers talked, grinning in the flush of success. Almost nearly. But I grinned yes, wasn’t it great, well done. All there was left to do now was leave my promised panic message on Antioch Dodd’s answerphone and wait for the dawn to bring Dobson’s vicious army and the holocaust.

  Chapter 28

  AUCTION DAY.

  The Great Hall at Tachnadray was crowded. Seats were in rows, 300. Dealers, collectors, and even other auctioneers, plus a few stray human beings were cramming in. The talk was deafening. Michelle was lovely though pale on her podium with little Mrs Moncreiffe in place behind her neat blocks of forms. To the auctioneer’s far left two solemn lasses waited at telephones. Retainers were stationed at the exit and by each window down the length of the hall. Trembler’s two shop-soiled whizzers had arrived overnight. With the eidetic memory of their kind, they hastened once round the entire stock, then went to the beer tent to take on fuel, bored. I entered as Trembler checked the time, made for his podium. He looked great, really presentable posh.

  ‘Morning, Lovejoy,’ somebody said.

  ‘Morning, Jodie.’

  ‘How did a scruff like you get a commission like this?’

  She was smiling as she jibed. Jodie Blane’s a bottle-blonde who does business with those clandestine dealers who’re forever in and out of Newcastle. She’s genuine watercolours and Regency silver. She says.

  ‘Me? Influential friend of the family.’

  We laughed. I said I thought I’d just seen Dutchie. She said no, that I must be mistaken because she’d heard Dutchie was in Brussels. I asked from whom, and sure enough she replied Dobson. Surprise, surprise. Elaine wheeled in, emitting the ephemeral radiance of the love child and smiling up at Trembler. Oho, I thought, moving on in the press. Trembler gavelled, and we were off. His two whizzers appeared from nowhere, one in each aisle.

  ‘Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Tachnadray. Please refer to the conditions of sale. No buyer’s premium—’ a few ironic handclaps met his wintriest smile – ‘but otherwise Sotheby’s rules apply. Note that the auctioneers deny responsibility . . .’ Jeers and catcalls, some laughter. In the buzz Trembler summarized all the other escape clauses, making sure we could get away with murder, and went straight in. It’d be a long sale. He begged for haste in the bidding.

  ‘Lot One. De Wint: “Dovecot, Derbyshire”, watercolour.’

  ‘Showing here, sir!’ cried a whizzer.

  ‘Who’ll start me off? Two hundred?’ Trembler intoned, then in surprise responded to a nod from the furthest telephone girl. All phoney. Last Sunday he’d drilled her till she cried. He feigned a bid beyond me, also off the wall, and finally knocked the painting down to the telephone girl. She called the buyer’s name: ‘Gallery Four, sir.’ The fourth private gallery registered incognito with the auction. It indicated big secretive buying interests. The audience’s faces hardened, and settled down for blast-off. The phoney telephone wires dangled out of sight below the girls’ desks, of course. It didn’t matter, because the De Wint watercolour was also dud. Elaine had done it, under my guidance. But it had keyed the audience up to a spending mentality. Trembler’s a real artist. I stepped into the corridor.

  ‘Hector. All the men in position?’

  ‘Aye. Why?’

  The dogs panted, grinning up at me. ‘One bloke yesterday tried sussing out the two wings. Ever seen him before?’

  Hector tried to grin. ‘No, Lovejoy. Should I have?’

  ‘No. Any extra men we can use?’

  ‘No variation,’ he said. ‘Your own rules, mon.’ So no extra man guarding the cottage.

  I bit my lip anxiously. ‘Watch out for the blighter. Tall, thin. Looks sour.’

  ‘Aye, I mind him. Dinna fash.’ He laughed, thinking I believed him about Dobson.

  Apologetically I grinned and left, hands in pockets and pausing for a last look at one of my favourites, a Joe Knibb bracket clock. Simple rectangular, 1720, and worth a fortune. ‘Tara, darlin,’ I said to its lovely face, and walked out just as I was. Tinker was in the beer tent as I’d instructed. I didn’t glance his way, nor he mine. At the corner of the east wing Andy waited with his energetic collie. Why are dogs never still?

  ‘Going well in there, is it?’ he asked. Great how the retainers had committed themselves.

  ‘Aye, Andy. Don’t let yon dog nod off.’ And I strolled on past, through the unkempt garden. Under a crumpled greenhouse’s door stone lay the two-pound hammer and cold chisel. Heavy, but Joseph was probably bolted in and I’d need something for the door.

  Then I trotted away from Tachnadray. I’d miss it.

  Distances contract during daytime. I’ve often noticed that. Maybe it’s because you know where you’re putting your feet. I had the se
nse to follow Dubneath Water from the bridge, moving on the stones and eventually climbing up where I’d been baulked by Ranter. The guard was standing on the skyline a half mile off, facing the house in a patriarchal pose. From there he could see the cars and all the activity. No dog, thank God.

  Somewhat muckily I climbed out of the watercourse and moved left, getting the cottage between us before I made a direct move towards it. The main door was on the side facing the distant guard, as was that unlatched shutter. The rear door my side was virtually rusted in place. Using the chisel, I levered off the bolt, and did the old lock with my belt buckle. A push on the Suffolk latch, and I was in. Must, rust, dust. Just to make sure, I peered into the two downstairs rooms, a parlour and a kitchen. Unused for years. Grime was trodden shiny on the middle of the stairs. A trannie played pop music above my head. I went up, a bit scared – well, not really scared as such. More worried. Maybe I’d got it wrong.

  But I hadn’t. Joseph was sitting in the upstairs room with that shutter ajar. They hadn’t even allowed the poor bugger a light, perhaps in case he signalled. He stood, jaw dropping and stared at me in the doorway with my hammer and chisel. One hand was manacled to the wall, a long chain, and his ankles were chained to a granite cube. He could move, but he’d be noticed in company.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said faintly, his face drained.

  ‘Wotcher, Dutchie.’

  ‘I didn’t kill the driver. Honest, Lovejoy. Please.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, silly berk.’ I tested the wall chain. With that broken I could at least get him away.

  ‘Lovejoy . . .’ His voice broke. ‘Is there a chance?’

  ‘Let’s make one,’ I said, and started on the damned thing.

  I was past caring by now. He had a towel which I used to muffle the blows. The cold chisel through the wall link with me banging the two-pounder on it in great sideways swings. When the wall insert did go it nearly took my eye out, whizzing past my forehead and pitting the wall opposite.