“Coffee, Lovejoy?”
I hesitated. “Well, ta, but I was hoping to sleep my head.”
Joan’s gray stare did not waver. “There’s room for that.” She rose and opened her door.
“Well, actually, Joan,” I began, but she’d already gone inside, so there was nothing else for it. It’s churlish to refuse an offer that’s kindly meant, isn’t it? My old gran used to say that. “Well, if you’re sure…” No answer again, so I stepped inside saying, “Just a cup, then.”
All that month we zigzagged up the country, moving from industrial towns to moorland markets. It was a slog. One heaven-sent pitch was six whole days long, the rest only three or four. The distances were less tiring than striking and pitching, because once you’re on the road, that’s it.
As fairs go, I learned, we were quite a respectable size. Some deal which Sidoli had pulled off meant we stuck to the eastern slice of the country except for parts of Lancashire and bits of the north. I did well and started sending stuff down to auction houses in the south. Of course I used the long-distance night hauliers in the road caffs, mentioning Antioch’s name. Some items I sold locally practically the next day, sometimes in the same town. One I sold to a town museum. It was only a dented lid off an enamel needle case, but the curators went mad when they saw it: a Louis XVI piece showing a sacrificing nymph. They immediately identified it as Degault from its en grisaille appearance (just think gray). It had chimed at me from inside a leather-covered snuffbox—some Victorian goon had ruined a valuable antique needle case to make a dud. I ask you. God knows what they’d done with the case’s body, but there’s a fortune going begging near Preston if anybody’s interested.
By the third stop, tenth day or so, the profit was trickling in. Antique dealers live in a kind of monetary paraworld, always owing or being owed by others. It became nothing unusual for a dealer to wander in, ask around for me, and then shell out a bundle of notes in payment for some item a colleague had received in the south a couple of nights earlier. Often they’d take away one of my items just purchased from the never-ending queue of punters. I always took a quick sale, following the old maxim: First profit’s best, so go for it.
Halfway through the month, the income became a stream, and Sidoli offered me a regular pitch. And more. His percentage was the standard fee from stallholders plus a tenth of the take. For this he did bookings, the pitches, argued shut-out arrangements with other fairmasters, dealt with the local councils, and hotly denied liability when people blamed us for anything. Or, indeed, everything. He brought three old silent geezers in dark crumpled suits who only tippled the wine and listened, and his two menacing nephews.
We talked all one long cold night in Joan’s caravan, them smoking cigars in my face and poisoning me with cheap red wine. His two nephews bent metal pipes in the background, nodding encouragingly. But I declined. I had a job on, I explained. This made everybody frown, which terrified me into useful lies.
“It’s a matter of honor, you see.”
“Ah,” said Sidoli, interested. “You kill someone, no?”
“No,” I explained. “I’ve certain obligations…”
“Ah.” He beamed at this and to my alarm signaled for another bottle. He was desperately inquisitive but I tried to seem noble and uptight and he went all understanding. “But after you have shot this pig and all his brothers, and his father—
assuming he had one…?” The nephews chuckled, lightheartedly bent more pipes.
“After,” I promised, “it’ll be different.”
“Excellent!” He poured more wine. “Lovejoy, I have heard of your police record. Very formidable.”
“Er, that’s all lies.”
“Certo,” Sidoli agreed politely. “Police. The Law. Judges. All are complete liars. Now.”
He leaned forward. It was the Joseph Wright lamplit scene straight out of the Tate Gallery. “My fair will pitch the Edinburgh Festival.”
I looked at him blankly. “Are we allowed?” Francie’d told me the arrangement: Our fair stopped short and our rival Bissolotti did the Festival.
“Ah,” Sidoli said, doing that slow shrugging chairbound wriggle Mediterranean folk manage to perfection. “Well, yes. I did promise. But, Lovejoy, it’s a question of money.”
This sounded like more bad news. “Er, Mr. Sidoli. Won’t the other mob be, er, furious?”
He spread his hands in pious expiation. “Is it my fault if Bissolotti lacks Christian charity?”
“No,” his nephews said. In the pause the three mute mourners shook their heads. We were absolved.
“Er, well, no,” I concurred obediently. “But—”
“No buts, Lovejoy.” He patted my hand. “I misjudged you. I thought you a man of no honesty, a man only interested in those pots. Woman’s things. Now”—he smiled proudly—“I hear you are a multiple killer, who fooled even Scotland Yard. You slew a lorry driver. With your own hands in an ocean you drown an enemy. It is an honor to have so great a murderer, when we fight Bissolotti. His people are animals.”
Some lunatic scientist once proved that headaches are actually useful. He should share mine.
“Eliminate Bissolotti,” a nephew prophesied.
“More wine, Lovejoy?” Sidoli invited. “I say nothing about you in Joan’s caravan.” He smiled fondly. “And call me Sid.” Cow-all meey Seed.
“Thanks, Seed,” I said. Out of the frigging frying pan into Armageddon. Headache time.
« ^ »
—— 9 ——
Better explain Sidoli’s crack about Joan before going on. Joan was the most reserved bird I’ve ever met. Even for a sensitive bloke like me she was a puzzle: thirty-two or so, smallish, hair permanently fading from mousy, face unremarkable in daylight, and eyes that lovely gray. She’d be what other women call plain, except the first night I saw her by candlelight, and then I knew. Her beauty hit me like a physical blow.
