because a bicycle bell warns the fish away. I gave it a couple of extra rings.
Cheered by my day's good turn, I rode out onto the strood.
That's a road sticking out from the shore across a short reach of sea to an island. You can easily pass over when the sea's out but have to wade chest-deep when the tide's in. People who live on these low windswept islands have the times of the tides written out and stuck inside their car doors. Always assuming you have a car, I thought nastily.
There's a lifebelt hung on the wooden railing so you get the message. The North Sea's no pond.
This particular strood's about half a mile long. Three or four boats lay sprawled close to the roadway on the exposed mudflats among reed wisps. A couple of fishing ketches were standing out to sea in the cold light. But the boat I was heading for would never sail again. It came into view halfway across, a blue lifeboat converted for houseboat living and sensibly rammed as far as possible on the highest inlet out of the sea marshes.
Squaddie was in and cooking. I could tell from the grey smoke pouring from the iron stack. I whistled through my fingers. He likes a good warning.
'After some grub, Lovejoy?' his voice quavered from the weatherbeaten cabin. He's getting on.
'Yes. Get it ready,' I yelled back and slung my bicycle among the hawthorns.
He has a double plank with railings sloping from the old towpath to his deck. How lucky I'd called at mealtime. Frying bacon and eggs. He gives me that and some of those malt flakes and powdered milk, my usual once a week.
'Hiyer, Squaddie.'
'Hello, Lovejoy.'
An old geezer can get about a lot even if he's blind. Squaddie used to be our best antique dealer (me excepted) till his eyes gave in. A curious old chap, wise enough for more than me to use as an oracle.
'You're a day early.'
'Not brewed up yet, Squaddie? I'm gasping.'
Squaddie scratched his stubble and listened acutely to the momentary silence between us His sightless rheumy eyes could still move. It was a bit disconcerting in the small cabin, to catch a sudden flash of white sclera from a face sightless five years and more.
I slewed across the tilted floor and sat where I could see to seaward.
'You on to something, Lovejoy?'
I shrugged evasively, remembered in time he couldn't see shrugs and said I wasn't sure.
'Good or bad?'
'Neither.'
He cackled at that and mixed powdered milk.
'It's got to be one or the other,' he corrected, shuffling dextrously from galley to table and laying for me as well. 'Antiques are either lovely and real or imitation and useless.'
'It can be neither,' I said. 'It can be funny.'
'Oh. Like that, eh?'
While we started to nosh I told him about Bexon, the forgery, the lovely Nichole and her pal, Dandy Jack's accident and the diaries. You can't blame me for missing out Janie and the leading details of old Bexon's holiday trip because Squaddie still does the occasional deal. Nothing wrong with being careful.
'How does it sound?' I asked him.
'Rum. Where's the picture?'
'Dandy Jack kept it - after I'd sorted for him.'
He laughed, exposing a row of rotten old teeth.
'Typical. That Dandy.'
'Did you ever hear of Bexon?'
'Aye. Knew him.' He stirred his egg cleverly into a puddle with a bread stick. You couldn't help staring. How does a blind man know exactly where the yolk is? 'Tried to get him to copy a Wright canvas for me. Seascape. He wouldn't.'
'Money?'
'Not on your life.' Squaddie did his odd eye-rolling trick again. Maybe it eases them.
'Bexon was honest.'
'Was he off his rocker?'
'Him? A northern panel bowler?'
That said all. Panel bowlers are nerveless team players on crown bowling greens. They never gamble themselves, but they carry immense sums wagered on them by spectators at every match. You can't do that and be demented.
'When did you see him last, Squaddie?' I could have kicked myself even if it is only a figure of speech. Squaddie didn't seem to notice.
'I forget.' He scraped the waste together and handed it to me to chuck out of the cabin window. 'He was just off somewhere on holiday. Isle of Man, I think.'
'What was he?'
