The Judas Pair

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 onto 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 toward 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 jail thoughtfully provided by the taxpayers? 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 duelers. It's the talk of the trade. Half of them already think you're balmy.' 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 toward 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 marvelous, 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?'