Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

  It took an hour to shake Guy, then another to get rid of Veronique. We’d reached two of Hobbema’s landscapes when he finally cracked. He’d been twitching some time when he took Veronique to one side and muttered through his sniffles. She let him go, came back to me with questions in her eyes. I took her arm and kept up my dreadful heartiness, yapping non-stop. She’d wondered if my enthusiasm had been a pretence, a ploy to get her alone. I was repellently obsessional, dragging her round the adjacent gardens to see the Henry Moores and Bourdelles.

  “I’m not into Magritte and Ernst, that lot,” I told her, pulling her along. “We’ll leave the new extension, eh? Let’s go up to the first floor. There’s a Hans Fries, Adoration of the Magi. Have you seen it? Only, you just guess how many times the bloody thing’s been varnished, and with what sort. Try! I’ll give you three goes, but here’s a clue: it isn’t copal varnish. Know why? Because if you stand about four feet away, then look away and quickly look back, you’ll see a kind of shimmer—”

  She broke, to my relief. “I’d better go and see how Guy is, Lovejoy,” she said. “Meet us at the hotel, supper tonight. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I cried, giving her a ton of disappointment, riskily saying what if we get sudden orders, where on earth should I find them?

  “Today’s free, Lovejoy,” she said. “There’s one job for you tomorrow, then you’re done.”

  Done? my mind screamed as I grinned so long. Done for?

  Cunningly, and I thought with skilled casualness, I mooched about to see her actually leave. Then I did a series of pretended quick looks in case she doubled back, or one of Marimee’s goons was lurking somewhere in the art gallery. No sign. An hour later I walked openly to the main station, where Gobbie would be waiting, and Lysette Fotheringay. Return to normality.

  Me and Gobbie were in the station when Lysette arrived. We were so cunning —in Information looking at these tiresome diagrams of railway networks—and simply walked away giving no sign. We went to a nosh bar —expensive, in Zurich—and apologized to each other for having to share a table. That legitimized our speaking together, my daft idea a kid could have seen through. Pathetic.

  “Keep your voices down,” I warned them. Foreign languages carry; indigenous speech doesn’t. It’s always true. “Say as little as possible. Good coffee.”

  “Made proper Swiss style,” Lysette said with pride. “Through filter papers, none of your French stewing process.”

  I sighed. Two minutes, and already we were into national rivalry.

  “Look, love. Cut that out, okay? I know we’re in the most perfect, orderly, tidy, stable country in the world —”

  Her face changed. “You think so?”

  “That’s what they say, love.” Her sudden ferocity made me uneasy, and I’d had enough of being that. “It’s going to be our main ally. Steady police force, trustworthy citizens. The slightest anomaly must stand out like a torch in a tomb—”

  “Mr Veriker, would you excuse us, please?” Lysette said to Gobbie. I stared at him. His name was Gobbie, for heaven’s sake. Everybody knew that. Well, well. Who’d think Gobbie’d go and grow a surname? Him, of all people. “It seems that Lovejoy’s even stupider than we both could possibly imagine.”

  “Watch your frigging gob, Lysette.” I was getting narked. Nowt but birds with hobnailed tongues since I’d left home.

  “Come, Lovejoy. Perhaps, Mr Veriker, you’d like to meet us here in an hour?”

  We left. I trailed after, sheepish but madder. It would be obvious now to anybody that we knew each other. She went down into a shopping precinct underneath the railway station. It was posh, with splendid boutiques, auto-bank windows, luscious grub, imported knitwear, a veritable Bond Street of superb design. Really Swiss, I thought.

  “Your arm, Lovejoy.”

  “You sure?” I was still furious. Fair’s fair, right? I hadn’t asked to come just to help her and her frigging pansified brother…

  “Change?” An apparition said it in three languages, holding out his hand. Maybe four, five. I wouldn’t know.

  “Er, aye.” I gave him some. He looked derelict, almost in rags, and filthy.

  “Change?” Two more drifted at me from nowhere, hands out. Lysette yanked me aside and we moved on among the people.

  They seemed mostly youngsters, huddled in mounds. One or two sprawled. Most sat at a crouch.

  “You encourage them to mug you, Lovejoy,” Lysette said, keeping us walking. “It’s a real danger. They sleep here or in doorways up above. I know it happens in all cities—and in lovely neat Zurich.” She sounded bitter.

  “Only here, though?” I asked. I knew that in India the railway stations are great social concourses.

  She did not laugh, gave me a look of scorn. “You think you have drug problems, Lovejoy? Nothing like ours. The diseases that accompany it offer the proof.”

  “In Switzerland?” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.

  “Yes, here. The capital.” She drew me to the escalator and we made the open air.

  “A few homeless in a whole nation…” I faltered.

  “How much evidence do you want, Lovejoy? The report from the parliamentary commission which investigated our Ministry of Justice? It found that secret police gangs had records of thirteen per cent of the entire Swiss population on file.” She gave a wintry smile. “So many Swiss subversives!”

  “Your Swiss police?” My plans took another tumble.

  “Of course,” she said sweetly, “the files vanished when the commission report became, shall we say, famous!” She guided me along the pavement. “Possibly because the secret army we call P26 might have to be unmasked further.”

  Either she was off her nut or my plans were even wronger. She hailed a taxi, still talking.

  “Economy? All Europe’s ills we Swiss have in abundance. Rising unemployment, inflation, poverty, falling home ownership…”

  I won’t tell you the rest, if that’s all right. I’m not scared of such talk, but there’s too much going wrong everywhere, and it shouldn’t. A bird I once knew used to say mine was the typical ostrich mentality, but it’s not. I just don’t want to hear bad things, that’s all. What’s wrong with that? I didn’t look at what she pointed out on that taxi ride, struggled to deafen myself, shut her horrible words out. Lysette went for reprimand.

  “It’s no good trying not to listen, Lovejoy,” she was telling me as we finally came back. “Those people in the Platzspitz were mainliners, druggies, pushers, narcos. Needle Park, that place I showed you. It’s an open drugs mart, free needles on the State in hopes of lowering the AIDS rate. The suppliers make a billion francs a year…”

  “Alma-Tad,” my mind sang, “oh, what a cad…”

  “We have Zahfraulein, tooth ladies,” she was waxing. I tried putting my hands over my ears. She leaned closer, spoke more directly. The taxi driver must have thought us insane. “Spot checks on children’s teeth—so they can start out really healthy derelicts…”

  Do women never shut up? “Oh, I wandered today to the hill, Maggie,” my cortex warbled. Thank God, we were back near the Limmatplatz and its massive Migros supermarket with the orange M.

  “The Migros?” She’d glimpsed my relieved recognition, rotten cow. “Our famous store, all things to all men!” She scathed on. “We Swiss are so docile! It is 1984. Twenty-five per cent of us shop there daily…” We stopped at a traffic light, and I got out for air and freedom, leaving her to it.

  She caught me up, no getting rid of her. I’d dithered, lost for direction. She took my arm. “Switzerland has more drug OD deaths in six months than—”

  “Love.” I stopped, broken. “Please. I can’t… I just, well can’t. Don’t you see? For Christ’s sake.”

  “You have social and political responsibility, Lovejoy —” She sounded like Colonel Marimee, in her own mad way.

  “Lysette. Let’s part, eh? You your way, me mine. Bugger everybody.”

  “Community obligations—”

&n
bsp; “Aren’t, love. They drive me insane. I can’t take it. I can only escape. It’s all I ever do.”

  “He’s right, miss,” Gobbie intruded, thank God. How the hell had he got here? “Lovejoy’s a scrounger, has to travel light or not at all. He’s a weak reed, wet lettuce, broken straw.”

  “Here, Gobbie.” Narked, I straightened from my supplication posture. There’s a limit. I’m not that bad. A lady pedestrian spoke sharply to us. We’d been blocking the pavement.

  “Lovejoy must be educated, Mr Veriker,” from good old sterling standard Lysette. I could have welted her one. Sociologically minded people once took over ancient Babylon, and we all know what happened then.

  “No, Lysette. Educators everywhere ploughed that one.” I reached out and wrung her hand. “This is it. Fare thee well, lass. Cheers, Gobbie.”

  He came with me. I was only half surprised. They’d seemed like a going concern, somehow, and him four times her age.

  “You were right, son,” he said consolingly. “She’s too wrapped up in do-goodery. Time for a jar?”

  “Well, as long as I’d one ally I’d give it a go. I’ve been alone in scams often enough. We settled on the nearest thing we could find to a pub. It was the glossiest dearest pub I’d ever seen. We found a quiet corner, away from some blokes with feathers in their hats talking of some shooting club. The thinnest glass of ale I’ve ever had served. Gobbie tutted, grinned.

  “They’d get scragged serving this in my local,” he said. I chuckled obediently, working out how to tell him. “Pity you and her didn’t get on, Lovejoy,” he said. “Now, son. Where do I come in? She won’t give up on you, mark my words.”

  “I know, Gobbie. Let’s try survival, eh?”

  “If you say, Lovejoy.” He grinned, loving every minute of it when things were going wrong, like now. He must have been the greatest antiques runner on earth when younger. I hoped he was still. He was all I’d got. Maybe I should have gone for Mercy Mallock after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  « ^ »

  That evening I had supper with Guy and Veronique. I’d been dreading it. We had incomprehensible but superb grub, a wine that didn’t give you heartburn, and talk that did. Guy was at his most manic, once having to be fetched down from standing on his chair to give the restaurant a song. Veronique was practised in handling him. Twice during the meal he had to dash out to stoke up on some gunja or other. In the latter of his absences Veronique unbent, spoke freer than she ever had.

  “You can see how Guy has outlived his usefulness, Lovejoy. Do you blame me?”

  My throat cleared for action. I wish I could think fast near women. “Well, no.” He was getting on my nerves too, though you never know what goes on between a bird and her bloke.

  “You and I will make a killing, Lovejoy,” she urged softly. “Me: languages, knowing the dealers, the art thefts, the Continent’s customs everywhere. You, a divvy.”

  “I’ve not a bean, love.” The waiters fetched some pudding thing that started to dissolve before my eyes. I started on it frantically before its calories vanished altogether. She offered me hers, but only after she’d had the icing surround, selfish bitch. That’s no way to start a love partnership.

  “I have beans,” she said, smiling. “Plus, we’ll have a small fortune after the share-out.”

  That old thing, I thought sardonically, but tried to look gullible. “To do what?”

  “Your job tomorrow’s to go with Monique Delebarre, Lovejoy. To the Repository. It’ll be simple for you. You’ll be told to separately consign the antiques and fakes.”

  Now that she’d actually said the word, my heart swelled. Only temporary, but my most reliable symptom of impending terror. It’s not uncommon with me, I find. And it always seems to happen when some woman starts projecting her expectations. I wish I wasn’t a prat, and had resolve, will-power, determination, things to help life on its merry way.

  “Maybe in the next reincarnation,” I said, of her offer.

  “No, Lovejoy. This.” She held my gaze quite levelly even though I could hear Guy on his way back, working the tables like a demented politician. “You have no choice. I’ve already arranged it with the principal backers.”

  A slave? Well, I’d had my careers. “If I say no?”

  “You can’t, Lovejoy. And won’t want to.” She made some signal to Guy, quite openly. He saw it, promptly seated himself at a small party and instantly had them in fits, ordering wines and clapping his hands at the waiters. “It’s antiques that I’m offering.” She smiled at her plate, up at me. “And the bliss you need. I’m the one for you, Lovejoy.”

  “Antiques?” More grub, this time small dainty sweetmeats laid out round the rim of an oval dish thing.

  “Why do you think the syndicate chose furniture, Lovejoy?” I listened with a carefully arranged expression of unenlightenment. “Think what’s happened to paintings, art, and you’ll be able to work it out for yourself.”

  Bloody cheek, I thought. I drew breath to tell her so. “Can I have yours?”

  She pushed her grub across without breaking step. “Art theft is done to order. Thieves pierce any gallery, museum—and simply select items like catalogue shopping. Think of the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston—Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, how many millions of dollars? And Vermeer’s The Concert. They didn’t steal cheapos.”

  True, what she was saying. Even when museums are supposed to be burglar-proof they still get done. And it’s all preselection nowadays, like the ramraiders me and Gobbie’d seen. The robbers know what they’ve come for.

  “We’d be the best pair on the circuit, Lovejoy. You to browse, pinpoint the genuine masterpieces in the galleries, me to organize the thefts. It’s my special gift.” Her eyes went dreamy, a lovely sight. Repletion was in the air between us, and so far today we’d not touched each other.

  “Did you design this scam?” The words were out before I could think.

  “This?” She almost laughed, but derision was dominant. “This, Lovejoy? Do you know how long it has taken? Two years! Setting up factories in Marseilles, Birmingham and Bradford, Berlin, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Naples. Ptah!” She almost spat. “That’s your precious this, Lovejoy!”

  Anywhere with a load of cheap immigrant labour. They’d be terrified out of their wits they’d be hoofed back to their home countries. People galore to work their lives away finishing off fakes with the same terrible effort our craftsmen had used two and three hundred years ago.

  “But if it works, love…” I needled, for more. I could have killed her. I wish I’d not thought that now. Honest.

  “An ox works, Lovejoy,” she said with that quiet intensity. “A new Jaguar works swifter. I was against this scam from the start. I told them we must rob, instead of creating fakes.”

  “Robbery’s good,” I conceded, to goad her angry reminiscences further still. “In East Anglia we finish a deal within forty-eight hours of doing a lift. I did one once—I mean, I knew somebody who did it—where we shipped the Constable painting in two hours flat, money in hand.” Money for Big John Sheehan, not for me, I was too aggrieved to say.

  “Of course it’s good! It’s beautiful!” She almost climbed over the table in her vehemence. She poured me more wine. I drank it for the sake of appearances. “And churches, galleries, museums—how often do they take stock, do inventories of what they have? Once every thirty years! That’s survey-proved! Have you ever seen a private gallery with security worth a damn?”

  More truths ripped from her tongue. I know because I was watching it closely. Banks go berserk if a penny is missing. Officers are cashiered for losing a regimental penny. The Exchequer burns the midnight oil over farthings. The Stock Exchange works dividends out to nine decimal places. But she was right. Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral once learnt of a priceless sketch missing from its archives only when somebody overheard an American tourist saying he’d seen it in Washington.

  “And thieves everywhere are incompete
nt!” She coursed on while I asked her for some more of that vanishing pudding. Well, you can cook too light, I find. “Look at your London mob, over that Brueghel. Can you imagine?”

  Well, yes. The lads had tried selling their stolen Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery to the Courtauld. The trouble was, it actually belonged to the Courtauld Institute in the first place. But the cracks they came out with in court gave everybody a laugh, some less bitter than others. The ramraider had abused me and Gobbie: “I heard of you bastards. Nobody’s softer-hearted than a crook, and that’s a fact. A scam that depended on working immigrants till they drop endears itself to nobody. Except possibly the Moniques and Colonel Marimees of this world. And, dare I say, to the Cissies. And Guys? Veroniques? Almiras? Subject peoples have always been used thus, time immemorial.

  It explained why Jan Fotheringay got done. And maybe Baff. And, possibly, the great Leon too. Unwilling to go along with the business once they learned of the cruelty involved? Jan, in on it until he sickened of the whole thing—probably never having known enough of the horrendous manufacturing processes. Baff coming across it by accident when doing one of his breakdowners on Philippe Troude’s country residence. His mica Appearances spy-master’s kit was proof of that. It all fitted. And Leon because he’d sickened of it, seeing the holocaust by attrition first hand…

  “… fuck, Lovejoy.”

  Brought me back. “Eh?”

  “I was saying”, she repeated calmly, signalling to Guy, who started a deliriously jokesy farewell from his newfound life-longers, “that we must celebrate our partnership in the oldest way. In fact I insist, Lovejoy.” Her mouth shaped itself on her lipstick. I stared transfixed as she screwed the red lipstick from its sheath, my throat sphinctering on a spoonful. I hate symbolism. It’s never the real thing.

  “What about Guy?” I croaked eventually.

  “Yesterday’s news, Lovejoy.” She continued sweetly as Guy arrived breathlessly, “Guy. I was just telling Lovejoy…” She smiled knowingly into me while I frantically tried to shut her up. “… how here in Zurich our newspapers help antiques robbers. No sooner does a theft hit the headlines than adverts appear saying things like Desperately Seeking Gainsborough, or Come Home Spitweg All is Forgiven. It’s the Swiss way of making a blunt offer for the stolen masterwork. In Munich too, of course.”