“What are you saying, Lovejoy?” she said towards the window.
“There’s been no crime.”
Which raised her, bedclothes pulled modestly over her breasts. “No crime? Of course there’s been a crime! We’ve been selling furniture and paintings to keep Tachnadray together ever since I can remember. For less and less money!”
“You’d only a limited number to start with. You’ve simply run out of originals.”
“We’ve never relied on lies, Lovejoy! That’s your trick!”
Well, she’d a right to be angry. She was the only person I’d ever met who’d passed a genuine antique as a fake. I spend my life doing the opposite.
“The point is, love,” I said along the pillow into her lovely furious eyes, “there’s no antiques worth mentioning left at Tachnadray. It’s empty. That genuine bureau you sent down was Tachnadray’s swan song.”
“How do you know, Lovejoy?” It was a whisper.
“The house feels dry, all wrong. It’s got a few sticks, and that’s it.”
“You really can tell,” she said with wonder.
“Afraid so, love.” I watched her beautiful blues well up. “The stuff left in Tachnadray isn’t worth a dealer’s petrol for the journey. You made the wrong assumption. You couldn’t understand why so little money was coming in when one or two reproduction pieces were being sent off every month. And poor old Duncan is slogging his guts out to make enough copies, fakes, repros to keep Tachnadray fed. He and Michelle were too tenderhearted to tell Elaine the truth.”
I was up and dressing, keeping an eye out for that bloody great dog. If it ever learned I’d made Shona cry I’d be a chewed heap.
“Where are you going, Lovejoy?”
“Tachnadray. Elaine’s called a gathering tomorrow. I’ve to speak the plan out.” A naked man looks grotesque, so I was glad to be covered. Shona lay there, eyes dulled, pretty.
Nakedness looks good on a woman. “I can offer a reasonable scam, Shona. Only one-off, but it’d bring in a hell of a lot of gelt. If Elaine accepts, I’ll stay and do it. If not, there’s nothing to keep me here.”
“You’d leave? Because there’s no antiques?”
“I can knock up fakes anywhere, love. It doesn’t have to be in Tachnadray.”
For a few moments I dithered. I never know what to say when leaving a woman’s bedroom. You can’t just give a sincere grin and a “Thanks, love,” can you? And women are too distrusting to believe dud promises.
“Will Ranter let me pass?”
She smiled, cold, I thought. She uttered the slow words like a thumbs-down to an arena. “This once, darling.”
I gave her a sincere grin. “Thanks, love,” I said, and left.
« ^ »
—— 17 ——
Shut your gums, Tinker,” I said into the phone, frantic lest Mac’s lorry left without me on the home run. The gabby old sod was woozier than ever. He was in the Rose at Peldon, sloshed out of his mind. The Rose is a pub by the seamarshes, always heaving-full of antique dealers.
“Eh, Lovejoy?” he bawled. The background noise was Grand National Day. “I’m liss’nin’.”
“A month from now I’m doing a paper job. A mansion.”
“Us? Paperin’ a stately home?” Tinker yelled, coughing between syllables.
The distant pub’s racket silenced as if by magic. Some lunatic talking football was instantly throttled.
“Start enrolling the dealers, Tinker. Pass their names on to Margaret.”
“Is it secret?” he howled to the universe. Jesus.
“Not any more,” I said wearily. “Tell Margaret she can chit and chop for me. And get Antioch Dodd to collect the pots. Got that?” “Pots” are lorries, from rhyming slang: pots and pans, vans. It’d be quite a convoy. Chits are IOUs and receipts, chops the stamps of approval. It meant I’d honor whatever deals Margaret decided for me. I might murder her afterwards if she guessed wrong, of course, but fair’s fair.
“Right, Lovejoy. How much do we need?”
Tachnadray was, say, sixty rooms, of which two were still respectably furnished. The rest stood bare. A sixth of the rooms would have been servants’ quarters, say about nine.
“About fifty rooms, Tinker, assorted, but I split half and half.” In its heyday half would have been bedrooms, retiring rooms, and half reception rooms, libraries, smoking rooms, and that.
“Fifty? Bloody hell. Where is it?”
“Never you mind. I’ll phone down every fourth day.”
“Wait, wait! Lovejoy! Who’s to reff the stuff?” Reff, as in referee, to gain some slight assurance of authenticity for the antiques—real or fake’d hardly matter much—as they were loaded up.
“Who’ve you got there?” I could imagine two score dealers frozen in the pub, listening breathless at this news of the biggest scam to hit East Anglia all year.
