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 gamblers 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
“?” 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.
