Three more pit stops for Guy to toot his flute and we were across the Swiss border. I felt bright, optimistic. After all, here was lovely Switzerland. Never having seen it, still I knew it was clean, pristine, beautiful, orderly, utterly correct and safe and lawabiding. Veronique seemed to last out on only one kite flight. Except a vein in her left arm was now swollen and bruised. At the border, Guy produced three passports, one mine. They weren’t inspected, and we drove on through. I was so excited I nodded off.
“Lovejoy? Wake up.”
We’d arrived, quite dark. I stumbled out, bleary. The hotel seemed plain, almost oppressively compact. Stern warnings abounded in umpteen languages on every wall about baths, water, payment, lights, payment, doors, keys, payment. I didn’t read any, but climbed the stairs—stairs were free —thinking that whatever Monique Delebarre’s syndicate was spending, little of it went on lodging. Or was this doss-house strategically placed?
The microscopic room was dingier even than my cottage. One bulb flogged itself, leaking a paltry candlepower that barely made the walls. The place was freezing. I sprawled on the bed and thought of money.
Now I’m not against the stuff, though I know I do go on. It’s really crazy how prices dominate. The UK tries to keep track by teams which examine 130,000 shop-shelf items in 200 towns, compiling the Retail Price Index, but it’s all codswallop. Just as comparing antique prices. It’s a hard fact that a lovely épergne, a decorative table centrepiece, weighing a colossal 478 ounces 10 pennyweights, was auctioned in 1928 for 12 shillings sixpence an ounce, which equals 63 pence as this ink dries. Date 1755, by that brilliant master silversmith Edward Wakelin, no less. And in its original case, that collectors today would kill for. So where’s the sense in comparison? Answer: no sense at all.
The only honest matching is by time. And I knew no forgers, no artisans, who could or would devote time to making furniture exactly as they used to back in the eighteenth century. Except me. Yet Monique Delebarre and Troude and all seemed to have tapped an endless vein of superbs, by the load, by the ware-house.
Even though I’d no pyjamas I decided it was bedtime. Guy and Veronique were rioting and whooping in the next room.
For a while I lay looking at neon on-offs making shadowed patterns on the walls and ceiling. Antiques crept about my mind. Antiques that were laborious, time-consuming the way all creativity is. Like upholstery, tapestry, polishing furniture in a cruel endless method that only the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ever managed. And, I’d bet, paper filigree, and papier mâché, that took many, many poorly paid hands. I think I dozed, and came to with somebody knocking surreptitiously on the door. I was there in a flash, opening it slowly, lifting as I turned the handle so it couldn’t squeak.
Veronique.
My face couldn’t have given me away, not in the semi-darkness of the street glow. She came in and stood leaning against the wall by the doorjamb. I was broken, thinking it would be my home team, Lysette and Gobbie.
“We off somewhere?” For all I knew we might have to steal into the night. It seemed the sort of military thing Colonel Marimee would get up to.
“In a manner of speaking, Lovejoy.” She closed the door.
Then I noticed she had a swish jewel-blue silk nightdress on, to the floor. She shelled the cardigan she’d tied round her shoulders, letting it fall. “Guy’s asleep, sort of,” she said quietly. “Will an hour do? For somebody so deprived?”
My throat swallowed. My question was answered. Guy’s bright episodes were sixty minutes, between doses.
“For what?”
She sighed, pulled me to the bed, pushed me gently down. “You’re hardly the Don Juan they threatened us about, Lovejoy.” She propped herself up on one elbow, and smiled down at me. She was hard put not to laugh her head off. “I come into your bed in the night stripped, shall we say, for action. Does my presence give you any kind of clue as to why?”
They threatened us about you, Lovejoy, when we crossed to murder Baff. And silk is the rarest, most labour-intensive textile. Get enough supply, and you could make enough fake antiques to retire on, if you’d a zillion obedient hands…
“Get that off,” I said thickly, clawing her nightdress while she hushed me and tried to do it tidily faster than I could rip.
Pride creeps into mind-spaces it shouldn’t, I always find. Shame does too, but lasts longer. The trouble is, there’s no way to resist, delay. Women have everything, which is why they get the rest. You can’t stop them. Veronique got me, and I’m ashamed to say now that she was scintillating, wondrous. What’s worse, I had a perverse relish, almost a sadistic glee, knowing that her bloke next door, stoned out of his skull, was the one who’d murdered a mate of mine. And maybe helped to do over Jan Fortheringay? I’d have to work that one out. I behaved even worse than usual.
At the last second I felt her hand fumble and cap my mouth in hope of silence. Women, practical as ever. It wasn’t the end, and, shame to say, I was glad. I harvest shame while I’ve got the chance. Pathetic.
She left after the full hour. When she’d gone I think I hardly slept, wondering about bedbugs in this dive, but finding that antiques marched back in.
There would be others Veronique hadn’t mentioned and I hadn’t asked about. Like paper filigree, which the Yanks call “quilling”, the most painstaking antique of all. Ten years ago, you could get a tiny paper-filigree doll’s house for a month’s wage. Now? Oh, say enough to buy a real-life family house, garden, throw in a new standard model Ford, and you’re about right for price. Inflation, the slump of Black Monday, recession—the antiques made of tiny scraps of paper trounced them all. And their prices soar yet, to this very day. Go to see it done, if there’s ever a demonstration in your village hall.
In the 1790s, Georgian ladies invented this pastime. They’d take slivers of paper so small that your breath blows them away if you’re not careful. Me being all clumsy thumbs, I’ve tried faking these objects and they drive you mad. You roll the paper tightly, then colour it (before or after) and stick a minute slice down to a hardwood surface. Make patterns. Surprisingly durable, you can then fashion tea caddies, boxes, even toys, tiny pieces of furniture, whatever.
There are quilling guilds everywhere now, who preach it as one of the most ancient of arts in ancient Crete. Then it was a religious craft, purely decorative, for shrines and churches, only they used vellum. I’ve seen some on alabaster, to hang in a window so the quilling picture showed in silhouette—translucent alabaster was once used in place of glass, like in some Italian churches. The best quilling examples I’ve seen are nursery toys like minuscule kitchens, with every small utensil made of these small rolls, twists, cones, cylinders. And entire dolls’ houses, rooms fully furnished. “Quilling“, I suppose, because North American ladies used quills of birds and porcupines, though there’s a row about the word as always. Inventive ladies used miniature rolls of wax, hair, leather even, and decorated their purses, pouches, even their husband’s tobacciana.
Maybe you don’t think it’s a very manly pursuit, hunting filigree quilling antiques? Let me cure you: take a look in your local museum—they’ll have one or two pieces if they’re any good—just to get the idea. Then try it. Make a square inch of paper filigree. Go on, I dare you. Know what? You’ll give up in ten minutes. If you’re like me, you’ll get so mad you’ll slam the whole load of paper shreds against the wall and storm out sulking to the tavern until you’ve cooled down.
No. Filigree takes application, skill, endlessly detailed work. Or loads of money, boredom, leisuretime. Or something much, much worse. I sweated, with fear.
As I lay there, hands behind my head and staring at the ceiling, I couldn’t help listening to any sounds that might come from the next room. A few mutters, a single shrill scream of dementia from Guy, silence. No chance of sleeping any more tonight. I knew it.
When I next opened my eyes it was breakfast o’clock, the traffic was howling and daylight was pouring in. Shame hadn’t really don
e with me yet. It pointed out that I’d awakened refreshed, you cad Lovejoy. I decided I was now willing to give my newly planned role a go. My jack-the-lad manner seemed to be working with Veronique, and anything that works with women is a must. What’s a lifetime’s liberal humanism between friends? I’d become the hard-liner, under Veronique’s tender loving care.
So to Zurich, in clean, pristine, sterile, hand-rinsed, orderly Switzerland. To rob the biggest repository of saleable untraceable antiques in the world. The easy bit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
« ^ »
The meeting was billed, quaintly, as Promotion of Exemplary New Arts. I wanted to walk there, but Guy, sniffling and having to blow his nose every minute, objected and we did a murderous dash-stop-dash roar through the traffic. Zurich was lovely, fresh and splendid after the sickness of worrisome lovely Paris. It actually felt seaside, with the Limmit River running down to the broad sunshiny lake, the Zurichsee. We went down the Bahnhofstrasse—I was thrilled to notice the main railway station, because that’s where me and Lysette and Gobbie were to meet. Guy dumped us off near the Rennweg. A sign up and left indicated the tree-dotted mound.
“Have we time to climb up?” I asked Veronique. God, but she dazzled this morning. You can understand the ancient Celts giving up the ghost when tribes of great golden people like her hove in. “Only, it’s the ancient settlement of Zurich. We could see the whole place!”
“No.” She paused, as near as she’d ever come to a hesitation. “Lovejoy. What do you think of Guy?”
“For a psychotic murderous junkie he’s okay.” I gauged her The traffic passed down to the Quaibrucke, that lovely waterside. “Why?”
“When this is over, Guy and I will finish.” She looked away “You are not spoken for, Lovejoy.”
More evidence that she’d accompanied her killer druggie to Mentle Marina, otherwise how did she know I wasn’t heavily involved back in merry East Anglia?
“You mean…?” She couldn’t mean pair up. Not with me. I’m a shoddy scruff. She was glorious, rich, attractive.
“You are an animal,” she admitted candidly. “With an animal’s innocence. It is what I need.”
Why, the silly cow? I’d not even got a motor, nor money, unless this job paid. Odd, but I noticed that the motors reaching the traffic lights switched their engines off and sat in tidy silence until the lights changed. Fantastic, something I’d never seen before. What did they do it for? Save petrol? If I did that to my old Ruby it’d block the traffic for miles, never get anywhere, needing cranking up at every amber-red.
“And do what?”
“Live, Lovejoy.” She nodded at the city. “Grand, no? Wealthy, no? I want everything, every experience. Guy must go.”
Women have the finality of their convictions, know goodbye when they see it. In fact, that little skill of theirs has caused me a lot of trouble. But the way she spoke sent a shiver down me. It was almost as if—
“Let’s go, folkses!” from Guy, practically dancing between us. The district was mostly banking, exclusive and affluent. That Exemplary New Arts notice was a laugh. I avoided Veronique’s meaningful side glance, but in the end couldn’t resist giving her one. Contact lenses show an oblique rim, only just, round the edge of the iris, don’t they? You catch it, if the angle’s just so. And coloured contact lenses show it most. I was the only one not in disguise.
The place was a plush room within a hall, a kind of enclosed box inside a larger assembly space. Exhibition? It reminded me of those set-ups railway modelling societies use to create atmosphere for their titchy displays. I’d also seen one used for war games, nearer the mark.
“You come with us, Lovejoy,” Veronique said. Guy was chatting, waving, slapping backs, reaching for swift handshakes. Around the hall, two beefy blokes at each exit, hands folded. Three were in uniform, talking intently into gadgets. Once you got in, there’d be no way out. Nor could anybody outside get close enough to listen. The box occupied the precise centre of the vast hall. Mausoleum? You get the idea, that degree of welcome.
“Morning, Lovejoy.” Troude, a handshake. Lovely Monique, aloof. No sign of Almira, no Paulie, no Jervis Galloway, MP. “I want to thank you for the work you’ve done for us. Selecting the antiques we needed to buy at the Paris auctions, your Paris sweep, checking the suitability of the, ah, reproductions. You have earned a bonus.”
“Good morning, Monsieur Troude. Thank you.”
We did that no-after-you-please in the one doorway and entered the darkened box. The door closed behind us with a thud. Colonel Marimee was on a dais, hands behind his back, facing the dozen or so folk already in. All were standing. Monique was beside him. It was lit with a single strip light. Battery operated, I saw with surprise. Couldn’t they afford one from the mains? But a wandering flex breaches a wall, and this was—
“Soundproof, Lovejoy.” Philippe Troude was next to me, smiling. I’d been ogling. “Swiss security, that they do so well. Banks, you see.”
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” the Commandant rasped in French. This was his scene, everybody listening while he delivered battle plans. Monique translated sotto voce into English for the uneducated, mainly me I suppose.
The pair I’d met at that weird mansion-house garden party were standing nearby. I smiled a hello. They nodded back, tense. I felt my belly gripe. If they were worried sick, I ought to have at least a panic or two. Sweat sprang all over me.
The Colonel spoke. “The event will be perfect. All has gone well.”
At Marimee’s barks people looked at each other in relief. Satisfaction ruled. The audience was affluent, smooth, the women elegant. Dressing had cost a fortune. I expected a series of tactical maps to drop from the ceiling, red arrows sweeping around blue ones, but it was only the Colonel, in his element.
“There are two additional steps.” Marimee stared us all down. Drums should have begun, music pounding to a martial crescendo. “First is financial. Another fourteen per cent is required from each syndicate member. Cash. Investment return will be commensurate. Immediate effect.”
A faint groan rose. I found myself groaning along, like a nerk. I hate that military phrase, as does anyone who’s seen a reluctant soldier. This must be my doing, buying up Paris.
“Mein Herr,” some stout bespectacled put in. I noticed calculators were surreptitiously in action
“No questions!” Marimee barked. “The second step is accomplishment of the objective. Execution will be total effectivity.”
A cluster of three men, almost Marimee look-alikes except less showy, nearly smiled. The executors, if that was the word?
“That is all.”
“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte, Herr Colonel,” the unhappy stout banker type said. I recognized a money man trying to wriggle out of spending.
“Non, Monsieur Tremp,” Marimee said in a muted voice. It shut us all up, groans and all. Except me.
To my alarm, I heard me say, “Mon commandant. I take it the items were all correctly bonded in Liechtenstein?”
“Oui, Lovejoy,” Monique Delebarre said evenly. But not before Marimee had hesitated. Him, whose first and last dither had been which breast when working up to his first suck. “Thank you. That will be all,” Monique intoned.
We filed out of the stuffy little room, me asking Veronique if that was it. I’d felt claustrophobic in there.
The Cayman Islands, and little Liechtenstein, let you lob into bond any antique for seven measly days—then you can legally bring it out and legally sell it to anyone. (That’s legally, got it?) In fact, you may even have sold it while it palely loitered. Our East Anglian antiques robbers love Liechtenstein because that one brief week gives us—sorry again; I meant them— time to forge a new provenance history, no more than a brief receipt, however sketchy, for the stolen antiques. Though nowadays everybody likes point-of-sale transfer, like in some Dutch or Belgian places that pay on the nail for any nicked Old Master, so making the sale legit. Zurich’s bond currently is five y
ears.
“What else is required, Lovejoy?” Veronique was smiling. “How do you say, cold feet?”
“Cold feet, warm heart.” The best reply I could give. “I thought we were going to get our orders, details and all that.”
“We have them, Lovejoy. The meeting confirms that all is on course.”
“For when?”
“For the time of execution. You heard the Commandant.” She smiled. Guy the burke was still chatting, prancing. Folk all around him were amused, in spite of the bad news about the kitty being upped. My belly warned me with an incapacitating gripe that execution has more than one meaning.
The hoods at the exits detained us until Marimee and his three clones left the security room. I was sick of all this cloak-and-dagger malarkey. I mean, why didn’t Marimee just whisper his damned orders to us in the street? But pillocks like him feed on this sort of gunge.
They let us go in dribs and drabs, me and my couple last. Guy tried prattling to Marimee, but he ignored him except for one terse command I couldn’t hear. It didn’t quite bring Guy down through the Heaviside layer, but forced him into fawning agreement.
“Can I see the exhibition?” I asked Veronique. My plan was to bore Guy, literally, to vanishing point. “Is it true the Kunsthaus has a Rembrandt? There are four galleries I want to. go to. The Swiss National, the Landesmuseum, is a must, eh? It has workshops three centuries old from the Zurich arsenal! And I’m dying to see the Rietberg Museum.” Poisonously cheery, I knew my tactic would work, at least on Guy. Once I got rid of him, losing Veronique would be that much easier. “Is it true its collection of Chinese art was got from East Berlin in a swap for Lenin’s tea strainer? Then there’s that other place called the Bührle Foundation. And St Oswald’s…” I smiled an apology. Their eyes were already glazing. “After all, one of ours, in a strange land, eh? I’ll light a candle for him—if Swiss Lutherans are into ritual!” I chuckled into their shocked faces in the great foyer. “Which first?”
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