The Judas Pair

by Jonathan Gash

The town was jumping. I felt on top of the world without knowing why. A bad memory of something evil having happened recently was suppressed successfully in a wave of sun and crowds. No dull weather, kids well-behaved, trees waggling and people smiling, you know how pleasant things can look sometimes. And the little arcade was thronged. Margaret waved from her diminutive glass-fronted shop, Dandy with his incredible luck was swilling down the profits. Harry Bateman was there with a good, really good, model compound steam engine of brass and deep red copper, Robert Atkinson about 1864 or thereabouts, and shouting the odds about part-exchange for a John Nash painting, modern of course, all those greens and lavender watercolour shades. It would be close.

  Several real collectors had turned up in the cafe and sat about saying their antiques were honest. We were all in brilliant humour, exchanging stories and gossip. Such a cheerful scene, everybody entering into the act and taking risks in deals. It was one of those marvellous times.

  I told you I’m a believer in the gifts people have, and luck. Luck is partly made by oneself. Go out feeling lucky, make yourself behave lucky and you will probably become lucky. Let yourself slip into the opposite frame of mind and you’ll lose your shirt.

  There’d been two flint collectors and one flint dealer in Jim’s papers, and both collectors were in my files. The dealer Froude, a pal of Harry’s, wasn’t bad, just cheap and useless, so I could forget him. The collectors were different mettle. One, a retired major called Lister, was a knowledgeable Rutland man who ran a smallholding in that delectable county. He knew what he was about. The second spelled even more trouble, had an enviable record in my card system as a dedicated and lucky collector given to sudden spurts of buying often without relevance to the seasonal state of the market. Brian Watson was by all accounts one of those quietly spoken northerners who seem quite untypical of the usual image people have of cheerful, noisy extroverts laughing and singing round pints in telly serials. I had almost all Watson’s purchases documented but though I’d never actually met him at sales I’d heard he was hesitant, not given to confidences but gravitating with a true collector’s instinct towards the quality stuff. A good collector, Watson, who’d spend what seemed about two years’ salary in an hour then vanish for up to a year back to his native Walkden. Also on Jim’s list were Harry, Adrian and Jane together, Margaret, good old Dandy Jack, Muriel’s Holy Joe Lagrange, Brad, Dick from the boatyard and Tinker Dill, among the dross. And Muriel.

  Now, of all these people, Brian Watson was significant because he already had one of the pairs of Durs duellers, and so was Major Lister of Rutland because he’d been making offers to Watson for them ever since Eve dressed. The field was getting pretty big, but I was cock-a-hoop. The pace was quickening. And as I talked in the arcade I smiled to myself at my secret. At the finishing post lay my beautiful unpaid-for Mortimers – loaded. I left the café and wandered through the arcade.

  Tinker Dill was at my elbow full of news. We pretended to examine a phoney Persian astrolabe. It was described by Harry Bateman as ‘medieval’ and priced accordingly. My sneer must have been practically audible. Don’t overestimate their value, incidentally – eighteenth-century Continental ones are usually more pricey, though they’re all in vogue, and certain firms in Italy make excellent copies.

  ‘You’re getting busy, aren’t you, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Whatever can you mean?’ I was all innocent.

  ‘Bending Jim like that.’ He enjoyed the thought of Jim’s injuries almost as much as a sale.

  ‘I’m quite unrepentant.’ I put the astrolabe down, feeling it unclean, and took Tinker back into the nosh bar where we could talk.

  I told him of my developing interest, in Watson and Lister.

  He whistled. ‘They’re First Division, Lovejoy.’

  ‘And Froude.’

  ‘He’s rubbish.’

  ‘I have this about the Field sale.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Over tea, I showed him Jim’s lists.

  He slurped in his cup. ‘They’re nicked!’

  ‘On loan. Jim’s good-hearted.’ I let him recover. ‘Heard anything special about any of those names?’

  He flipped slowly through the lot, shaking his head each time. ‘Except the two big ones – that sale was a right load of heave-ho.’

  ‘You buy anything, Tinker?’

  It hurt him. ‘You know me, Lovejoy. Antiques aren’t my business.’

  I grinned in great good humour. ‘Neither of these bought anything? Try to remember, Tinker.’ He would. It’s like being a football fan. Just as they can recall incidents from games seen twenty years past, so we can tick off auctions as if they’d been yesterday. You might wonder why I didn’t just look at the purchasers’ names on the invoices.

  Well. Invoices, however complete, never tell it all. I wish I had time to tell you what goes on in an auction. For every ten lots sold by the auctioneer, another ten are sold among dealers. We buy a lot from the auctioneer sometimes, and even before he’s moved on we’ve sold it to a fellow-dealer. All the time it goes on. ‘Ringing’ you already know about I’m sure, where dealers get together and do not bid for a choice item, say a lovely French commode. When it goes to Dealer A for a paltry sum – i.e. when it’s been successfully ‘ringed’ – he’ll collect his cronies and they’ll auction it again privately in a pub nearby, only on this occasion Dealer A’s the auctioneer and his mates are the congregation, so to speak.

  You’ll probably think this – is against the law. Correct, it is. And you may be feeling all smug thinking it is rightly so because whoever’s selling her old auntie’s precious French antique is being diddled out of the fair auction she’s entitled to. Well, I for one disagree – nobody actually stops the public from bidding, do they? It comes back again to greed, your greed. And why? Answer: you want that valuable commode for a couple of quid, and not a penny more. If you were really honest you’d bid honestly for it. But you won’t. How do I know? Because you never do. You go stamping out of auctions grumbling at the price fetched by whatever it was you were after and failed to get. So don’t blame the dealer – he’s willing to risk his every penny for a bit of gain while you want medieval Florentine silver caskets for the price of a bus ride. You ring items by your greed. We do it by arrangement. Why your hideous but dead obvious greed should be quite legal and our honesty illegal beats me.

  ‘That Bible pistol,’ Tinker remembered. ‘Not too bad – I did drop a note in at your cottage, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I passed it up.’

  ‘Watson bought it.’

  ‘In his usual style?’

  Tinker’s eyes glowed with religious fervour. ‘You bet.’ He rolled a damp fag and struggled to set it afire. ‘It was in one of his buying sprees. You know him, quiet and hurrying. I reckon he should have been a cop. Busy, busy, busy.’ I wrote a mental tick against Watson’s name. He’d attended six auctions that week, and the date matched no fewer than eight postal purchases, all after a ten-month gap. Phenomenal.

  ‘Major Lister buy, did he?’

  ‘Yes, a set of masonic jewels for some museum.’

  I knew about those and the Stevens silk prints he’d bought as well.

  ‘All in all,’ I asked, ‘a quiet, busy little auction with more than the average mixture of good stuff?’

  ‘Sure. And not a bad word uttered,’ Tinker said, puffing triumphantly.

  I let his little quip pass impatiently. ‘Is that list of people complete? Think.’

  He thought. ‘As ever was.’ He shrugged. ‘The odd housewife, perhaps.’

  ‘Thanks, Tinker. Anything else?’

  He told me of the Edwardian postcards from Clacton, the Regency furniture at Bishop’s Stortford, that crummy load of silver being unloaded up in the Smoke, and the Admiralty autograph letters being put on offer in Sussex. I knew them all but slipped him a note.

  ‘You got them Mortimers, then,’ he said as we parted.

  ‘A hundred quid,’ I replied modestly. He was still laughing at
the joke as I left to see Margaret’s collection of English lace christening gowns.

  ‘Sorry about everything, Lovejoy.’ She pecked my face and brewed up. There were a couple of customers hanging around, one after pottery, one after forgeries. (Don’t laugh – collectors of forgeries will walk past a genuine Leonardo cartoon to go crazy over a forged Braque squiggle.) As they drifted out, she hooked her CLOSED notice on the door.

  ‘I’ve had a drink, Margaret, thanks.’

  ‘I saw you.’

  ‘Tinker reporting in,’ I explained, looking round. Her lace christening gowns were beautiful but I always sneeze looking them over. ‘I can never understand why these things are so cheap. A few quid for such work, years of it in each one.’

  She smiled. ‘Keep plugging that attitude. Genuine?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ I said. ‘Any forger who does something so intricate deserves every groat he gets.’ I felt them. ‘Yes, all good.’

  ‘I thought you’d been neglecting me till I heard, Lovejoy.’ She brought tea over despite my refusal.

  ‘No matter now.’ I took the Victorian Derby cup as a mark of friendship because her tea’s notorious. ‘All over.’

  She sat facing. People outside in the arcade must have thought we were a set of large bookends for sale.

  ‘Give, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ve one thing you’ve not got, darling,’ she said in a way I didn’t like. ‘Patience. What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m going to find the bastard. And I’m going to finish him.’

  ‘You can’t, Lovejoy.’ God help me, she was crying. There she sat, sipping her rotten tea with tears rolling on to her cheeks. ‘It’ll be the end of you, too.’

  ‘Cheap at the price, love.’

  ‘Leave it to the police.’

  ‘They’re quite content with matters as they are.’ My bitterness began to show. ‘It’s much more dramatic to rush about with sirens wailing than slogging quietly after the chap on foot.’

  ‘They know what to do –’

  ‘But they don’t do it.’ I pulled away as she reached a hand towards me. ‘I’ve no grouse with anybody, love. I just want help.’

  Two people staring in turned quickly away at the sight of our tense faces.

  ‘Supposing you do find him – why not just turn him in?’

  I had to laugh, almost. ‘And endure months or years of questions while he wheedles his way out?’

  ‘But that’s what law is for,’ she cried.

  ‘I don’t want law, nor justice,’ I said. ‘From me, he’ll get his just deserts, like in the books. I want what’s fair.’

  ‘Please, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Please, Lovejoy,’ I mimicked in savage falsetto. ‘You’re asking me to let him off with seven years in a cushy gaol thoughtfully provided by the ratepayers? No. I’m going to spread his head on the nearest wall and giggle when it splashes.’

  She flapped her hands on her lap. ‘We used to be so . . .’

  ‘Things have changed.’

  ‘You’ll get yourself killed. Whoever it is must have heard you’re spreading word about fancy Durs duellers. It’s the talk of the trade. Half of them already think you’re off your head.’ Good news.

  ‘There’s one person who knows I’m serious, love.’ I was actually grinning. ‘I’m going to needle and nudge till he has to come for me.’ I rose and replaced her cup safely.

  ‘All right, Lovejoy.’ She was resigned. ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘Spread the word yourself. Tell people. Make promises. Invent. Tell people how strange I’ve become.’ I kissed her forehead. ‘And your tea’s still lousy.’

  I phoned George Field from the kiosk. He agreed to send an advert to the trade journal whose address I gave him:

  REWARD

  A substantial reward will be paid by the undermentioned for information leading to the specific location (not necessarily the successful purchase) of the Durs flintlock weapons known to the antique trade as the Judas Pair.

  I thought, let’s all come clean. He gasped at the sum mentioned but agreed when I said I’d waive any costs. I insisted he put his name and address to the notice, not mine because he was in all day and I wasn’t.

  I called in at the cottage and then drove to see Major Lister, happy as a pig in muck. By the weekend the murderer would know I was raising stink and getting close, and he’d start sweating. Don’t believe that revenge isn’t sweet. It’s beautiful, pure unflawed pleasure. He was losing sleep already because I had the little Durs gadget. I slept the sleep of the just. My revenge had begun.

  Major Lister turned out to be a fussy disappointment, a stocky, balding, talkative, twinkly chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly. His vast house was full of miscellaneous children. Everybody there, including three women who seemed to be permanent residents, was smiling.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re Lovejoy,’ were his first words to me. ‘Come and see my fuchsias.’ He drew me away from the front door towards a greenhouse, calling back into the house, ‘We’ll have rum and ginger with the fuchsias.’

  ‘I like your system,’ I said. The nearest child, a toddler licking a dopey hedgehog clean in the hallway, cried out the rum message hardly missing a lick. The cry was taken up like on the Alps throughout the house until it faded into silence. A moment later a return cry approached and the hedgehog aficionado shouted after us, ‘Rum on its way, Dad.’

  ‘They like the system, not I.’ He twinkled again and began talking to his plants, saying hello and so on. A right nutter here, I thought. He chattered to each plant, nodding away and generally giving out encouragement.

  Well, it’s not really my scene, a load of sticks in dirt in pots. He evidently thought they were marvellous, but there wasn’t an antique anything from one end of the greenhouse to the other that I could see. A waste of time. His sticks had different names.

  ‘Same as birds, eh?’ I said, getting to the point. ‘Identical, but each one’s supposed to be distinct, is that the idea?’

  ‘I see you’re no gardener.’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘What do you grow?’

  ‘Grass, trees and bushes.’

  ‘What sorts?’

  ‘Oh, green,’ I told him. ‘Leaves and all that.’

  ‘Yes,’ he twinkled as a little girl entered carrying two glasses of rum yellowed by ginger. ‘Yes, you’re Lovejoy all right.’

  ‘Seen me at auctions, I expect, eh?’

  ‘No. Heard about your famous Braithwaite car.’

  ‘Braithwaite?’

  He saw the shock in my eyes and sat me on a trestle. The little girl wanted to stay and sat on the trestle with me.

  ‘Herbert Braithwaite, maker of experimental petrol engines early this century. Some ohv cycles. Yours must be the only one extant. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No. Well, almost.’

  ‘Drink up, lad.’ He settled himself and let me get breath. ‘Now, Lovejoy, what’s all this word about a pair of Durs guns?’

  I told him part of the story but omitted Sheik’s death and the turnkey.

  ‘And you came here, why?’

  ‘You were at the Field sale.’

  ‘And Watson got the Bible pistol. Yes, I recollect.’ He took the little girl on his lap and gave her a sip of his rum. ‘Fierce man is Watson. One of those collectors you can’t avoid.’

  ‘The Field sale,’ I persisted.

  ‘Nothing very special for me, I’m afraid. Naturally,’ he added candidly, ‘if you’re trying me for size as a suspect, ask yourself if I would dare risk this orphanage.’

  ‘Orphanage?’ It hadn’t struck me.

  ‘I don’t breed quite this effectively,’ he chided, laughing so much the little girl laughed too, and finally so did I.

  ‘You saw Watson there?’

  ‘Certainly. He’ll be not far from here now, if indeed he’s on one of his whirlwind buying sprees.’

  My heart caught. I put the glass down. ‘Near here?’


  ‘Why, yes. Aren’t you on your way there too? The Medway showrooms at Maltan Lees. It’s about eleven miles –’

  I left as politely and casually as I could. Nice chap, Major Lister. I mentally filed him away as I moved towards the village of Maltan Lees:

  Major Lister (retd): collector flck dllrs; orphanage; plants; clean hedgehogs.

  Then I remembered I’d not finished my rum. Never mind, that little girl could have it when she’d finished his.

  Four o’clock, Maltan Lees, and the auctioneer in the plywood hall gasping for his tea. I had no difficulty finding the place, from the cars nearby. They were slogging through the remaining lots with fifty to go. The end of an auction is always the best, excitement coming with value. By then, the main mob of bidders has gone and only the dealers and die-hard collectors are left to ogle the valuables. Medway’s seemed to have sold miscellaneous furniture including bicycles, mangles, a piano and household sundries, leaving a few carpets, some pottery, a collection of books and some paintings, one of which, a genuine Fielding watercolour, gave me a chime or two.

  I milled about near the back peering at odd bits of junk. The auctioneer, a florid glassy sort, was trying unsuccessfully to increase bids by ‘accidentally’ jumping increments, a common trick you shouldn’t let them get away with at a charity shout. Among this load of cynics he didn’t stand a chance. Twice he was stopped and fetched back, miserably compelled to start again and once having to withdraw an item, to my amusement. Another trick they have is inventing a nonexistent bidder, nodding as if they’ve been signalled a bid then looking keenly to where the genuine bidder’s bravely soldiering away. Of course, they can only get away with it if the bidder’s really involved, all worked up. Therefore, in an auction keep calm, keep looking, keep listening and, above all, keep as still as you can. You don’t want anybody else knowing who’s bidding, do you? If you can do it with a flick of an eyebrow, use just that. Don’t worry, the chap on the podium’ll see you – a single muscle twitch is like a flag day when money’s involved. Where was I?

  You’ve only to stay mum and patterns emerge in a crowd. The old firms were there, Jane, Adrian, Brad, Harry and Dandy Jack, and some collectors I knew – Reverend Lagrange, the Mrs Ellison from the antique shop where I’d bought the coin tokens while returning from the bird sanctuary, Dick Barton among others.