Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

  Paid and Loving Eyes

  ( Lovejoy - 16 )

  Jonathan Gash

  Paid and Loving Eyes

  Jonathan Gash

  LOVEJOY

  An STM digital back-up edition 1.0

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  Contents

  |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|

  |13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|

  |24|25|26|27|28|29|30|31|32|33|34|

  ALSO BY JONATHAN GASH

  The Lies of Fair Ladies

  The Great California Game

  The Very Last Gambado

  Jade Woman

  Moonspender

  The Tartan Sell

  Pearlhanger

  Firefly Gadroon

  The Gondola Scam

  The Vatican Rip

  Spend Game

  The Grail Tree

  Gold from Gemini

  The Judas Pair

  The Sleepers of Erin

  PAID AND LOVING EYES. Copyright © 1993 by Jonathan Gash. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gash, Jonathan.

  Paid and loving eyes /Jonathan Gash.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-09361-6

  1. Lovejoy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Antique dealers—England—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6057.A728P3 1993

  823'.914—dc20 93-10340

  CIP

  First Edition: July 1993

  To

  The ancient Chinese god Wei D'to,

  protector of honest books from harm,

  this honest book is humbly dedicated.

  —Love joy

  For

  Susan, and children everywhere

  “What none can prove a forgery may be true;

  What none but bad men wish exploded, must.”

  —William Cowper (1731-1800)

  CHAPTER ONE

  ^ »

  The lovers were making the van sway. I had to get out, from seasickness. The night was perishing cold. Donk found me sheltering under trees in the drizzling dark. He’s the antiques trade’s only profit-making messenger, has a rotten old motorbike.

  “Lovejoy? Your pot’s tonight. Nine o’clock in the harbour barn.” My heart fell and rose. Armageddon time, and me minding a pair of illicit fornicators in a furniture van.

  “Sure, Donk?” I looked at the van as it reached orgasm. Just my luck. First paying job for a fortnight, and paradise—antiques—spoils the money. No, that’s not right. It’s gelt that does for antiques, not the other way round.

  “Josh said hurry. That’ll be a tenner, Lovejoy.” Donk’s messages are all ten quid, payable on delivery. I climbed up into my passionate van’s cabin and fired the ignition.

  “I’ll owe you,” I called as he yelled after me. People don’t understand. Antiques are urgent. Anyway, the lovers inside wouldn’t notice that their trysting-place was barrelling through the rainy night at sixty. Passion is mostly oblivion. I’m an antique dealer, the only real one left. I know passion, and passion knows me.

  There’s a wharf in town. Not much of a harbour, but its access to the sea is well used these two thousand years. Four furlongs of paving overlooking an estuary, two cranes, a few warehouses. Ships come from the Continent—two thousand tons, max. They bring fertilizer, we send grain. The system, and the cargoes, are unchanged since before Caesar landed. I drove slowly into the barnyard, and parked by the railings. Five posh motors, I saw. The gang was all here.

  The orange cabin light had buzzed on miles ago, querying the journey. My lovers must now be replete, ready for off to their separate homes. I sighed, reluctantly pressed the release. Just when you wanted ardour prolonged, lust lets you down. I’d wanted them to orgy on so I could referee the battle of the pots in the barn.

  “Where are we?” the woman was asking as they stepped down, looking about.

  The man said, “I felt us moving.” I should hope so. They came at me together, under the shelter of the loading bay. I’d not seene either of them before. Secrecy’s the hallmark of Gaunt’s Tryste Service.

  “Driver!” the bloke snapped, tapping my chest. I hate that. “What’s the meaning of this? We… boarded at a countryside lay-by. And you put us down… in a harbour? Where are our limousines?”

  Door-to-door limo service is included in the price with Gazza Gaunt’s luxury fornication pantechnicon. You get a well-stocked bar, an opulently furnished interior, and cosy privacy wherein to wreak your savage sexual desires on your lover’s willing body. (Lover, like batteries, not included.) Then you primly return home to your husband/wife/children worn out saying you’ve had a hard day at work/college/committee. It costs a mint, though folk keep coming back for more. Well, a woman wants first a lover, then a husband, then a lover. It’s love’s roundabout. Guess who confessed that her nature was ‘too passionate’, her desires ‘violent’? Queen Victoria, that’s who. Gazza, the shrewd operator who runs the waggons, says four-fifths of his customers are regulars.

  “Lovejoy?” somebody called from the barn doorway. “Fight’s on. Josh says come now.”

  “Get me your head office!” The bloke was outraged. He was a stout glary sort, with the familiar non-face of a TV politico. “I’m supposed to be at a sales conference in Nottingham.” Well, lies stay cheap.

  “Look. I’ll bell you taxis,” I offered desperately. Two bulky goons loomed in the light. Silhouettes threaten, don’t they?

  “Lovejoy,” one goon intoned, quiet with menace. “Life or death, lad.”

  “Coming,” I cried, shuffling anxiously on the spot. Threats make me do that. “Look, mister. I promise—”

  “Fight?” the woman asked. “What fight?”

  There was relish in her mellifluous, husky words. I recognized the response. Women love conflict more than men. In the oblique light of the loading yard she looked stark somehow, black and white yet languid with the serenity of the well used. Lovely. Money’s easier to spot on a woman. They like it to show more. Smallish, slender, intense, voluptuous. I loved her.

  “Diana.” Her bloke was furious because of my prolonged stare at the bird. “You can’t surely —”

  “What is life or death?” She actually licked her lips.

  “Counting, Lovejoy.” The goons were moving down the loading bay. Diana glanced at me, at them, her excitement growing and showing. God, but women interrupt your thoughts.

  I swallowed, looking from him to her. You can’t help wondering how they made love. I mean, her on her side, her back, hands and knees, with him…? “You can wait in the van. I have to go.”

  “Can we watch, Lovejoy?” She was thrilled.

  “They’ll wait inside,” I told the heavies, passing them the van keys to prove I was obeying. The goons shrugged as brains failed to raise the game. I went up the wooden steps, the man behind me expostulating every pace.

  “What’s the contest?” Diana asked, eyes alight.

  “Between two pots, love.” I added sardonically as she exclaimed in disappointment: ‘The prize is everything.“

  “You said life or death, Lovejoy. Whose?”

  “Always mine, love,” I said, and went into the light where the contest was to be fought.

  “Wait—” the woman was saying behind me. I heeled the door shut in her face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  « ^ »

  God knows how ga
mblers do it, but they fill any place with smoke. It’s beyond belief. I can’t see the point of smoking, which only proves I too was once an addict of the stuff. Fear beats craving in the craven, hey?

  The barn is ancient, oak beams and wattle and daub. Hereabouts such buildings can’t be altered—unless bribes bend law. Josh Sparrow, the barn’s owner, is a fierce upholder of preservation laws. They’ve given him a rich living. He competed with avaricious builders to buy this bit of the waterfront years ago—then announced it was to be East Anglia’s Folk Epicentre. Conservationists rejoiced. They even gave him some award for Caring Commitment. Since then, the barn’s been used solely for illegal activities, gambling, meetings between factions of villains, general mayhem. Josh gets really narked when Pennine pipers and Lithuanian dancers want to hire it. I keep telling him to change its name, but he likes the classy sound.

  “About frigging time, Lovejoy!” said our paragon of epicentric culture.

  He’s always got a half-smoked fag dangling from one side of his mouth and goes about half blinded by his own smoke. Josh is forty, twitchy, always smells of fruit gums, plasters his hair down with some oily stuff. It must come free because he’s a stingy sod.

  “Been driving for Gazza. They’re outside.”

  He tutted through his smokescreen, this devout Episcopalian who deplores sin. He owns twenty-five per cent of Gaunt’s Tryste Service. The holy quarter, I suppose.

  Of the half-dozen people here, I saw I could ignore seventeen straight off. They were the brawn, the retinues, recruited duck-eggs with less than one neurone apiece. I hate them. Why do these ham-and-blam brigades line walls everywhere from the UN to the White Hart tavern nowadays? The world’s getting like mediaeval frigging Florence, I’ve-more-assassins-than-you. Two birds, fifteen blokes, the usual ratio since equal rights dripped into the well water with the fluoride. They’ve all seen Ronald Colman films and dress early United Artists. I was cold, chilled, wet, hungry.

  Three cheap chairs were arranged in a row in the middle of the barn floor under a cone of yellow light. The gelt sat there, idly contemplating the infinite, certainly not speaking.

  Josh didn’t count. The two protagonists standing to one side twitching nervously didn’t count. I went forward into the light and stood before the trio. Grovelling’s served me pretty well on the whole. I quelled my sense of degradation. Shame’s no big spender, so doesn’t count either.

  “Evening, John. Sorry I’m late.”

  Big John Sheehan’s an Ulsterman. He actually should have counted several, but morphologically notches only uno. That is to say, he sits in a casual attitude of unsmiling threat. He clears his throat, you shut up until you’re sure it’s not the prelude to a sentence. His sentences, however you define the word, compel attention.

  “?” his expression asked.

  I explained about the Tryste job. He examined my face for perfidy, nodded okay after a heart-stopping moment.

  “Josh gets docked half-crown in the pound,” he pronounced in that soft Belfast accent I like. Half-croyn in the poynd. “Sloppy, Josh.”

  Sweating slightly—well, muchly— from relief, I said hello to the other two gelties sitting alongside him. Strangers. During politenesses I worked out what forgetting to remind me about tonight’s battle would cost Josh. Big John lives in pre-decimal money because he hates confidence tricks, unless they’re his. Two shillings and sixpence out of every quid was an eighth. Of all Josh Sparrow’s income for the month! Christ. For me, that would have been zilch. But for me it would have been a different punishment.

  “Evening. I’m Lovejoy,” I said humbly.

  “Good evening,” one said. “Jan. To assess the antiques.”

  Elegant, suave, twenty press-ups at dawn, cholesterol-watcher. Tanned and immaculate. Had a gold-headed walking stick. Fake Edwardian, so not all that good an antiques assessor. Cosmetics stained his fizzog. Well, takes all sorts.

  “Get on with it,” the other growled.

  Rotund, heavy breather, thick features veined with thin purple lines. His teeth would be mostly gold, if ever he laughed. His cigarette slummed beside John’s cigar and Jan the Assessor’s slim panatella. But I bet No-Name could do as many press-ups as anybody else. And weighed heavier. He wore an overcoat that could buy three weeks in Gazza Gaunt’s sexy conveyances, bird included.

  “Right, right,” I fawned swiftly. The two contestants came nervously forward. Their big moment.

  “Who’s first?” Big John asked. And when nobody spoke decided, “Home team.”

  “No,” the bulky geltster gravelled out. “The Yank first.”

  I didn’t start to shake, but came close. Six suits leaned away from the wall. Big John’s line did likewise. The two gangs looked at each other with that serenity hoods wear before war starts. We all froze, except for trembles.

  Big John nodded. “Right, Corse.”

  The world relaxed, thankful it could orbit safely until next time.

  Josh Sparrow dragged on a couple of floodlights, falling over wires and needing three goes to get the plugs right while his serfs carried a small japanned table in. I couldn’t help staring at Corse. I was thunderstruck. I’d never seen Big John countermanded before. And he’d backed down. It was like learning that God picks his nose. Feet of clay, or something.

  “Lovejoy.” Josh was telling me things, and I wasn’t paying attention.

  “Eh? Oh, aye. Ready.” I stepped out of the limelight.

  The American advanced. She was dressed casually but clever, if you follow. Frocks can look almost exactly the same, cheap or rich. But some slight difference instantly tells you that one is a shop-bought end-of-sale good-riddancer, and the other classy and extortionate. This was the latter.

  “Phoebe Colonna,” she announced, cool as you please.

  She faced the three, standing for all the world like a girl about to recite. Small, hands folded. The pool of light made an arena of the flagged floor. No other lights, just the single shaded bulb above. The japanned table gleamed. I could make out the pale shirts and collars of the nerks around the arena. A mini-circus.

  “Before I begin,” she preached, “I particularly want to thank you gentlemen for the opportunity of presenting my work here in East Anglia. You will observe that I have paid particular attention to the composition of the glass incorporated—”

  “Get on with it,” Corse growled. His catch-phrase.

  Phoebe gamely kept up her prattle as she hurriedly beckoned a serf forward. He carried a covered object.

  “—questions of design integral to the complexities of rationale, creativity-wise…” Et mind-bending cetera. I bet she’d slogged, postdoctoralwise, to be that slick in balderdash.

  I watched her reach out, still lecturing away, and gently lift the cover as floodlights splashed on…

  Only on the Portland Vase.

  “Lovejoy?” Josh timidly interrupted her to warn me, stay where I was, but by then I was already across and staring down at the object. Lovely, truly bliss. I started smiling. Time hung about for a minute or several.

  “Can I?” I asked.

  Phoebe checked with the three by a quick glance. Josh tutted, coughed away a smoke spume. I lifted it from its stand. Flat disc base, not the knobbed amphora type. Beautiful work. She made to point, guessing I was some sort of referee.

  “See where I effected the cameo relief carving—my own patented blowing process—of the white outer layer?” She was so proud of her work. I could have eaten her.

  “Thank you, Phoebe,” I said. My eyes had filled for some reason. Eyes are stupid.

  She was moved. “You appreciate beauty, Lovejoy.”

  Her vase was covered, I retreated, Phoebe smiled out of the way, and on came Steve Yelbard. He was a real artisan, decisive, no cackle, just put his piece down, lifted the cover and stood aside.

  Thin, in overalls, scuffed boots, pencil behind his ear, he looked ready to make another ten soon as somebody got a furnace started. Another Portland Vase. Fake, of
course. Which is the truth word for a copy, look-alike, reproduction, simulant.

  I didn’t need to go over to it. Excellent work. Interestingly, his was the full amphora type, base dropping to a rounded point in its stand.

  Now the Portland Vase is famous. Everybody knows it, and its story. Any Roman cased glass —layers made separately then heat-fused—is beautiful. The most gorgeous of all is the Portland. Cobalt-blue translucency, it looks solid black unless you try to shine a light through. Opaque white glass figures adorn it—Peleus and Thetis, a tree, a cupid, some sort of sea dragon, you know the sort of thing; all those deities whose names you can never get the hang of. That’s about it, really, except that there’s only one. The British Museum has it. And here we were with two. Isn’t life grand?

  Corse the charm-school graduate grunted, “Shift. Let’s look.”

  I stood aside. Steve Yelbard waited, talking technology with Phoebe. His eyes never left her Portland. She talked attractively and laughed merry laughs. The three rollers stalked round, looking at the two glass pieces. They hadn’t a clue. A roller is a big investor in antiques. Any old, or even new, antique will do as long as it’s worth a lot. They’re nerks on the whole, but usually dangerous. I cleared my throat. Nobody stopped talking. Steve was the only one who looked at me.

  “I saw your exhibition in St Edmundsbury, Steve. Not bad.”

  He brightened. “My prototype?” He grimaced. Real glass-makers always apologize, knowing nowt is perfect.

  “Two prototypes,” I reminded him. “One’s base was disced, like Phoebe’s. You decided against it?”

  “I believe the original was in a true Greek amphora shape. The point removed and later replaced with a disc. Lovely, but twelve centimetres —”

  “Twelve point one.” I nodded. “And a different blue.”