'Why ask me, Sep?'
'This American woman's well connected. She's the ex of the American consul. He's called Sommon, official residence in Norwich.'
Yet Mr Sommon still frolics with his ex-wife, aka Mrs Susanne Eggers, currently leasing Saffron Fields with her new husband, the benign portrait-hunting Taylor Eggers?
'Find the portrait, Lovejoy. It could mean big gelt.' He must have noticed my mistrust, so added the robber baron's time-honoured incentive. 'You'd be doing me a big favour, Lovejoy. Fiddle it for me, I'd see you right.'
Unlikely. Hoods help police, sure, but police only help themselves.
'Okay,' I said, with what sincere honesty I could. 'You'll keep it fair, eh?'
'Honest,' he said, and let me go.
An hour later I traced Mrs Alicia Dormander. She was having tea by the fountain. She'd already sold her thefts, to my disappointment. She stood me tea and a wad. A real lady.
I honestly like her. The cosmetics on her face are always so thick that her face cracks when she smiles. Rouge, mascara, lipstick, foundation, it becomes a mass of craquelure, like an Old Master. You have to admire class.
'Look, love,' I said. 'Let me see your next lot before you sell it, okay? I'm running on empty.'
'How many times must I tell you, Lovejoy? There's only one deal — do a countrywide sweep with me. We'd clean up.'
'Whatcher mean, love?'
Her dog had its own plate and bowl on the table. It smirked.
'You suss out the viewings.' She smiled. Her mask crizzled. 'Tell me which antiques are genuine. Me and Peshy do the rest. Fifty fifty.'
'Lend us a few zlotniks, eh? I saw you coming out of Gimbert's.'
'The money's for Peshy's grooming session, isn't it, Peshy-Weshy?'
She clasped the smug little wart to her cleavage. I watched with envy.
'Okay,' I said, broken. I come second to a dog the size of a hamster. 'It's a deal. I'll say when, and where, right?'
'Travel expenses as we go, Lovejoy?'
I was so dejected I even agreed to that.
Rio Dauntless can lie his way into history books. He's famous. He's a bloke with squid eyes, hunched from stooping as he collects money for good causes. He adopts shabby gentility.
'Dress up, or too grubby,' he once warned me in all seriousness, 'they'll give you snot all. They think you're either rich or Fagin, see? Get it just right, and you'll have to open a bank account.'
He was a composer once, trained at Oxford's famed school of music. Except he wasn't, because he's been everywhere, done everything, and done none. Rio Dauntless was born a liar.
'Don't say liar, Lovejoy,' he rebuked me once. 'Say fibber. The difference is criminality.
A fib's innocent, like you, like me. A liar is a criminal.'
'Like you, like me?' I'd asked. He only shrugged.
I found him collecting in the station caff. It's self-service. There he was, going from table to table, holding an official-looking collecting tin. He has a plastic identity-tag on a blue ribbon. He's quite small, looks dour yet quite spruce. I listened to his spiel.
'Good day. Please forgive the intrusion. I'm collecting for flowers, to mark the road accident last year on the northbound carriageway of the trunk road intersection. I want to lay a wreath. Poor girl. I'm only asking for your smallest coin. Just one. It was at the flyover, a foreign pantechnicon. If you do not wish to contribute, God bless you.'
It's at this point that Rio smiles and sadly moves away – only to be called back. People force coins into his tin. He demurs, then graciously gives way. Women usually take him at his word, one coin, but blokes are extra generous, because all small-car family men hate lorries. Astonishingly, they remember the tragic accident, even though it never happened. There simply is no trunk road intersection. Nor a flyover, no northbound carriageway. Rio says people like a fable.
'Excuse me, sir,' he asked me, grovelling up. 'Please forgive the intrusion. I'm collecting
... Oh, Christ. It's you, Lovejoy.'
'I heard about the tragedy,' I said loudly, not to let him down. 'Here you are, my man.'
I dropped a non-existent farthing in his tin. One good myth deserves another. I left then, to sit by the gaming machines. He emerged and joined me.
'Odd how many remember non-existent accidents. They get worked up. The women ask what flowers I'll get. It's hard keeping track. I told one old dear Altsromeria. She said get carnations, symbol of peace. Whatcher want, Lovejoy?'
'Who's these Yanks at Saffron Fields, then?'
'Her?' He gave a laugh, except his laughs only sound, never show. That's because he's in character. 'She's a psychic. Does tarot cards, the future.'
'What's she up to? Wants me to—'
'Get some actors? I heard. She was wed to that American consul Sommon from Anchor Key in Norwich. Her current husband is—'
'Got all that, Rio. She's after some portrait.'
