And they were off, speaking in German, French, anything but my lingo. I crammed the few remaining petits fours in my pocket to eke out life, and followed. I was right—anybody could do this, any time, anywhere. They didn’t need me. Maybe, the intriguing thought came as we descended in a lift, they were making sure I wasn’t employed by rival thieves? Now there’s a thought…
Except, I saw as we went through doors on to a long wide loading platform, there was room for no fewer than six furniture pantechnicons backed up the ramp. Simulated daylight—never quite right to look at antiques by, but next best if rigged by experts. And clerks on old-fashioned high stools at tall Dickensian teller desks, snooping on all they surveyed. A humorous touch: their pens had prominent feathers. I smiled, not fooled. Every pen and pinna would be wired for sight, sound, gunfire.
“Simultaneous, then, Lorela?”
I laughed. A team of blokes in tan overalls were unloading the vans as they went. One queue of whifflers, antiques shifters, nurtured the antiques on to auto-trolleys, forming up at the end of the loading bay. There was no sound except the grunts and murmurs of the men. No fatties, no beer guts. They looked a fit lot. Thirty? With the clerks, about that.
“Queue theory, Henry,” Lorela replied without blanching. “One line moves more expeditiously than several.” She ushered me and Monique to the head of the column. Two wall vents were already running conveyor walkways, each as wide as the lane leading to my cottage. One exit was painted yellow, one black. “Here you will select the destinations, and check that your antiques have all arrived undamaged.”
“Well planned, Lorela!” I was starting to dislike this bird. There’s such a thing as being too efficient.
“Your antiques for shipment along the yellow conveyor, storage into the black.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Where do they lead?”
“That information is classified, Henry.” She smiled, indicated the workers. Not in front of the hired help. “Personnel are not entitled to details that are inessential for their work sector. When you have finished, you shall be shown.”
“And the security?” I asked. “Can’t be too careful!”
Monique could have throttled me, which told me what I wanted to know. “That I’m sure is also classified, Henry. Hadn’t we better get on?”
When a woman says “we” like that, she means you, not her.
“Sure thang.” I called for bourbon, though I can’t stand the stuff, shouting let’s get the hell on with it, and shelled my jacket, shoving a clerk off his stool. “Hey!” I called as the vannies wheeled the first antique on to a disc-shaped area down below and stood waiting in the pool of light. “Hey, Monique! All I need here’s a green eyeshade to be calling the shots in the pool championship! Remember that time in Reno, Nevada?”
“Would Madame like to inspect our display of Japanese art upstairs?” Lorela suggested gracefully, signalling for the work to begin. “I hope Madame will not be disappointed…”
“Thank you.”
There’d be trouble after this. I could tell from the way Monique walked, slightly faster than usual, straight as a die. Women don’t walk straight as a rule, unless they’re blind with rage. Check it. Watch a woman on any pavement, she proceeds anywhere but directly forward. Women waver, men walk ahead. It drives me mad when I’m in a hurry, always get stuck behind a bird and have to duck into the roadway at peril of losing my life simply to get past. Monique walked straight. Ergo, furious. And who at? I was doing my best, for God’s sake. I mean, all this trouble just to case a storage dump was barmy. Mad military overkill.
“Okay, men,” I told the waiting crews of vannies. “Zoom on.”
“One, Monsieur.” The first pair wheeled their trolley forward into the cone of light, halted.
“Turn it round, please.”
The men stepped aside. The floor revolved slowly, the piece revolving at viewing pace. An inbuilt turntable. Screens on the ceiling announced the piece’s weight, the relative humidity, temperature, reflectances, dimensions scanned from a million angles. Equinoctial phases of the moon in Burundi too, I shouldn’t wonder. Never seen so much data, and more searchlights than the Edinburgh Tattoo. Even the floor was illuminated, like in coffee dances. Monique and Lorela had gone. I relaxed.
“Look, lads,” I announced. “I don’t want a frigging circus. Just enough light to see the items. Switch off, and for Christ’s sake stop everything spinning round.”
In silence, checking that I meant what I said, the clerks made the screens vanish to where good screens go. The lights dimmed to partially blinding.
“No frigging ears in your heads?” I yelled, really getting narked at their hesitancy. I slid off my perch and walked about, pointing. Turn that off, leave that on. Honest, you’d think this lot had never seen an antique in their lives, let alone handled daily intakes of the world’s most precious antiques. I wouldn’t have got so wild, except the first was a genuine card table, William IV, of the rare kingwood so dark it was almost purple. And not stained with a single dye! Lovely fold-over pattern, plain as King Billy himself always loved furniture to be. Dealers call these “Adelaide tables’, but the Queen had nowt to do with progress except import the Christmas tree to our fair land.
“Right.” I swarmed back up, looked along the clerks similarly perched, down at the whifflers in their tan overalls. Like a Le Mans starting grid, except this was interesting and important, and motor racing never can be. “Light down to daylight candlepower. Floor still. No information.” And antiques somewhere around. Ready, steady.
Genuine. For a second I let myself bask in its warm glow, then came to. Into the yellow conveyor, right? Wasn’t that the way round? Genuine antiques for shipment, fakes into the black for storage? I had to think to make sure.
“Down the yellow chute, lads.”
The pair wheeled the card table up the ramp, and unloaded it through the yellow entrance. A man accompanied it on the conveyor, standing like a moving duck on a fairground shoot, out of sight. You couldn’t moan that lovely Lorela Chevalier was disorganized. Her —sorry, the— Repository ran like clockwork. No chinks, no loose cogs. I felt myself becoming intrigued. How was Colonel Marimee going to raid this place, get this lot out? Nearly four dozen vanloads, plus what was already here. Beyond belief for size. I felt proud to be in on a scam this big. It’d set them by the ears at the White Hart.
“Two, Monsieur.”
Marble-topped table, Dresden manufacture about 1729, give or take. Hoof feet, “Indian” masks high on the table’s knees to show trendy obsession with the cult of the Americas. Gilt gesso, very flash, beautifully preserved. Dealers would advertise it as mint. Except it was fake. Phoney, false, dud, it was still exquisitely made, by all the same old processes that the ancient craftsmen had used, in their hellish conditions…
“Eh? Oh.” Somebody had asked me what I’d muttered. I gave my glittering grin, but mirthless. “Black. Storage, please. Next.”
And the next. Next. And next. Genuine down the yellow conveyor, false down the black.
An hour or so, I called a halt for a stretch. Clearly, I was here as a double-check, that the vannies hadn’t pulled a switch somewhere along the way, right? Otherwise, anybody could have done it. Just sit there, sending our genuine antiques, the ones I’d bought in Paris or ordered Guy and Veronique to arrange bids for through the Hôtel Drouot auctions, down the yellow path, and the zillion fakes—which merely meant any others—down the black. I didn’t feel proud, perched there saying “Yellow”, and “Black” with the blokes sweating and lifting, trolleying the pieces in the viewing area.
Except it got easier when we resumed. The small items started coming sooner than I expected. But there was a mistake. It happened after I ordered a restart. The whifflers placed a plant stand, quite well made but modern and therefore dross, in the circle, and stepped away while the disc rose like an ancient cinema organ from the floor until it reached my eye-level, four feet away. Steps raked alongside so they coul
d reach up. Then they brought in a small box I didn’t recognize. By which I mean I really truly did.
It sat there, smiling, mystic, wondrous.
Dilemma-time. I’d not picked this little box out in Paris, at Monsieur Jacques Dreyfus’s auction place, at the antique shops when I’d gone ape and bought everything genuine I could see. Therefore it should be fake, right? That was Monique’s and Marimee’s infallible plan. Me to buy the genuines, the syndicate to manufacture fakes. By separating the genuine antiques from the mass of fakes, I’d earn my percentage of this superb, flawless scam pay-out time. I’d got it right, hadn’t I?
Now this box.
Onward shipment, the antiques I’d earmarked in Paris, right? All of which I’d seen, right? Therefore, I should recognize each and every single genuine antique, right? No problem.
The box looked at me. I looked at the box.
And, the Troude-Marimee-Monique scam scenario went, Lovejoy would funnel the fakes one way, and the genuine antiques, all familiar friends, the other. Okay?
The box sat there, waiting.
Now, I had my orders so firm I’d no doubts about what would happen if I disobeyed. Look at poor Baff. Look at poor old Leon. Look at Jan. I didn’t want it to be look at poor Lovejoy. The rule was, make no changes. Monique said so. Guy and Veronique had been terrified out of their drug-sozzled wits when I’d bent them ever so slightly. The rule? Genuine antiques, ship; the fakes, storage.
The box smiled.
Genuine, pristine, beautiful, antique—and I’d never seen it before. It ought to be fake, so chuted down the black conveyor. Except it was genuine. So down the yellow. Except I’d never clapped eyes on it. So down the black. Except I recognised it. So yellow.
The box beamed. I smiled back. Watcher, Jamie, my mind went. “Monsieur?” a puzzled vannie said.
“Sorry, mate. Un moment, please.”
A snuffbox, the colour of old tea, decorated with a simple engraved leaf. Not much to look at, maybe, but the genius that made it was one of the most lovely souls who ever lived. Yonks ago, it was the fashion to go and visit this crippled lad—legs paralysed as a child —in Laurencekirk. He had a great circular bed, and thereon he was stuck, for life. It had shelves, lathes, tool racks, a workbench, all within reach. There, this game youth made these boxes, plus others for tobacco, tea, needles, wools. He even made furniture, and unbelievably cased some clocks, worked in metal and engraved glass. His dander up, he stormed on making violins, flutes, even nautical instruments. A veritable ball of fire, was little crippled lame game James Sandy of Laurencekirk on his circular bed.
Even better, children used to bring him birds’ eggs from the surrounding countryside—it’s between Montrose and Stonehaven in what I, and others who also haven’t yet lost their wits, still call Kincardine. Spectacularly, James Sandy used to hatch these eggs with the warmth of his body, then feed the fledglings and release them to the wild. Can you think of a more beautiful life? Especially considering how oppressed his dauntless spirit must have been?
“Monsieur?”
“Sorry, pardon, entschuldigan—er, I’ve a cold coming. Un malade.” I coughed, came to.
Jamie Sandy invented an invisible wooden hinge held by a small transfixing brass pin. Practically airtight, it was highly prized, since your pricey spice or costly snuff never lost its flavour. Eventually, their manufacture centred on Mauchline in Ayr under the Smith brothers during the Napoleonic Wars. Whole societies of collectors now fight over napkin rings, pipes, ring trees, walking sticks, all Mauchline ware in sycamore. But the real gems are these originals, made plain by little James Sandy in Laurencekirk. Okay, so they were only copies of touristy trinkets filched from Spa in Belgium. And okay, so it was a deliberate act of head-hunting when Lord Gardenston enticed a Spa souvenir-carver from the Low Countries to show the Laurencekirk locals how. But what’s wrong with that? It produced one of the loveliest geniuses in that age of geniuses. It’d even be worth going to boring old Heaven one day, just to meet James Sandy.
This wasn’t one of your machine-mades. Nor one of the Mauchline ware sycamores with their nicotine-coloured varnished transfer-prints of Skegness. This was exquisite, by the original hand of an immortal. I looked away, uncomfortable. My duty was to stick to Monique’s rule: fail to recognize an item, label it a fake and chute it down the black conveyor to storage.
And call James Sandy’s work fake? Bloody cheek.
“Yellow,” I heard myself say calmly. Yellow for genuine, authentic, superb. Hang the cost. I could argue the genius’s case any day of the week, even with Monique Delebarre and Colonel Marimee, Philippe Troude. And sighed as the bloke nodded and made for the ramp carrying Sandy’s wondrous skill. Once a fool, as they say.
“Next, Monsieurs,” my voice went through a great calm. And so signalled the death of somebody I knew, somebody I shouldn’t have killed at all, among the rest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
« ^ »
We were given a splendid tour. That is, we were finally shown our own stuff in situ.
“Vibration-proof,” Lorela Chevalier said, spinning in a doorway. “Double reinforced glass, triple-access doors, tacky mats against quartz dust.”
“Thermal control a particular reliability?” I asked.
She darted me a hesitant smile, tried to make it genuine. “Of course, Henry. Barometric pressure…” She started a routine prattle, from the Repository catalogue. I could have said most of it with her. Tonto Macllvenny, our specialist blammer—destructive break-in artist who does over antique dealers’ shops throughout East Anglia, but who charges travel expenses from our village —always carries a copy. It’s a joke in the Arcade for the dealers to chorus bits from it when Tonto’s done over some rival the night previous.
“Walls specially constructed to provide an—”
—effective barrier against any attempted intrusion, whether direct or by undermining, my memory trolled along. God, I could even remember where the catalogue’s punctuation went wrong.
“—thus proving the most reliable storage system available.” Lorela got desperately brighter, sensing something amiss. “These are coupled with a special security staff selected after—”
What would con artists do without the word “special”? Not quite so well, that’s what.
We endured the tour. We saw our genuine antiques being marked Shipment! To be Notified!, through milky glass panelling, in a split-level storage compartment, the grimmest half-acre of protection I’d ever seen. I tried to look impressed. We peered through the thickest wobble glass on earth at where our superb fakes were being shrouded, ticketed, arranged, coded.
“Why’s the storage separate from the others?” I asked, innocent. We’d come down a mile of corridors.
“The vehicles, Henry,” Lorela answered, having recovered from that twinge of doubt. “It saves on moving shipment articles twice. Though,” she quickly added,“ the Repository is fully insured at Lloyd’s against any kind of…”
And so to bed. We were offered nosh, which Monique declined, maddening me. It’s all right for them, but no sympathy for a hungry bloke who needs regular stoking.
“No, thank you, Miss Chevalier,” Monique said. “Henry has other duties today.”
A cat can look at a king, they say. Ballocks, I thought morosely, following Monique meekly out to our Rolls. Monique’d vaporize me if I so much as mentioned lust, love, sex, desire, passion… Passion? I watched her, more than the entourage who assembled to wave us off. Passion? Monique must be moved by something akin to it, to go to all this trouble. I made my merci-beaucoups and waved absent goodbyes to Lorela.
“How long’d it take you, Monique, setting it up?”
“Two long years, Lovejoy.” She settled back into the plush upholstery, practically purring. Replete? “Your infantile behaviour in there almost wrecked it.” She turned lazy eyes on me. “For a moment I wondered what you were up to.”
“Eh?” I gaped. “I was helping, for Christ’s sake! Y
ou women. I got all sorts of stuff out of her. You’d never have noticed the infra-reds, heat-activateds, periodic blips —”
She smiled, eclipsing the sun’s reflected dazzle from the lake. I swallowed, had to look away. “You did quite well, I suppose.”
But it wouldn’t have mattered if you hadn’t done a damned thing, Lovejoy. That’s what she was saying. Once I’d divided the wheat from the chaff, my usefulness had ended. For good. The security of the entire Repository was somehow irrelevant. But why? Colonel Marimee and his merry men were going to raid it, steal everything I’d just sorted through. As if divining my worry, she asked, “Can you remember the security detail, Lovejoy?”
I erupted. “What the hell d’you think I was winkling them out of her for, silly cow?”
She laughed, and the sun followed its reflection into shade. No wonder poor Philippe Troude was hooked on her for life. But what’s the use of living in an orchard if you can only admire the apples, never taste? Except blokes are funny. They’ll starve in a prison of their own making rather than walk away to freedom. We have a bloke in our village plays a euphonium, the same musical phrase over and over, hour after hour. People say he’s loony, but he’s not. I asked him why didn’t he learn something else, whereon he instantly played me the loveliest solo I’d ever heard. The phrase he keeps playing—still does—is one he wronged in a band concert ten, twelve years ago. Came in half a bar late. His silver band lost the championship. Ever since, he’s played alone in his cottage, sadly getting it perfect, year after punishing year. He explained it all, anxiously bringing out the tattered music, showing me why his calamitous mistake wasn’t really his fault. I said why not forget it, and simply join a new band. He looked at me like I was an idiot. See what I mean? Like Troude, languishing in Monique’s disinterest instead of reaching out for Jodie Danglass who was crazy for him, or Diana, who was crazy for him. Or Almira W.W.C.F.H. Or Cissie, W. et eponymous cetera.
“Here, Monique. Why don’t you let Troude off the hook?”
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