anxious.
Almira hesitated, but didn’t want a row on a pub forecourt. “Half-past five, Lovejoy. Shall I tell Claudine?” She tutted at my uncomprehending stare. “About her cottage in France, Lovejoy.”
“The sooner the better, dwoorlink!” Like hell, I thought.
I hurried inside, paused long enough in the taproom to hear Almira’s great motor start and pull out, relaxed and went to the off-licence bit, tapped on the hatch. There was hardly anybody in the bar, all unfamiliar faces.
“Wotch, Tone.”
Tony grinned through his window. “Mummy ballocked you, Lovejoy?” So Peggy’d blabbed. He gave me a glass like an undine, his cruddy special welcome. To me most drinks are unfathomable.
“Who’s making Justine wipe her own bum? And why can’t she pee on the tortoise?” I’m her godfather. Much good it does either of us. I’ve to drink Tony Crookham’s poisonous liqueurs and Justine gets oppressed.
He fell about, sobered. “Good to see you, Lovejoy. Hear about Baff?” Tone was always quick on the uptake. It was the real reason I’d stopped by.
“Whatever was Baff thinking of, taking a part-time job? He wasn’t so badly off as all that. I saw his missus.”
“Hasn’t everyone?” Which gave me food for thought.
“Who especially, Tone?” I’d asked the question outright like an idiot before the penny dropped. Tony was uncomfortable, leaning back to check along the bars for ears.
“Word is Baff did the breakdowner on some foreigner’s place.” I almost said it with him. “On the outskirts of Mentle Marina.”
“How did you hear, Tone?” The one question no publican ever wants to answer, or have friends ask.
“Sherry mentioned something about it,” he said, all on edge, speaking quieter still, looking round. “Only in passing.”
Well, well. Still, we godfathers are responsible only for the morals of our goddaughters, not of their parents. “Course, Tone,” I said, and took my leave.
Nothing to do with me, I told myself as I cranked my Ruby and leapt in while the engine still cared. Tony’s wife Georgina’s a lovely Irish redhead, tall and slender with the air and breeding of the aristocrat. And she’s sexually superb. I meant to say I think she looks as if she probably is.
So somebody in Troude’s syndicate had had Baff murdered. A rum world.
Chugging out and on the town road, I wondered about people. Look at Tony and Georgina. Nice people, known them for years. I’d stayed in their tavern during a spell of homelessness, and we’d stayed friends. Yet Tony slopes off from Georgina, who’d make any bloke’s breathing go funny, to Sherry, a bird of great sexpertise but minimal other attributes. A frosty old lady I know once told me her mother preached, “It’s for the man to try,/ And the woman to deny.” Well, more marriages founder on that reef than any other. Maybe Georgina was busy denying, so Tony sailed elsewhere? You never know what goes on between a bird and her bonny, do you. I clattered the Ruby to Gazza’s garage. I’d never thought of his shag wagons as a form of marital breakdown service before.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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Everything’s luck. Who you end up loving, finding that priceless Old Master painting, getting away with murder. And you get no help. I mean, set up infallible rules to guide you in life, and you’re still as baffled. There’s a group of nations called G7—they do things with international money. They met in England a bit since. Would you believe, a Japanese collector paid a fortune for the blinking crappy modern chairs they sat on? I understand less and less as time goes by. They could have bought some antique chairs for half the price.
It’s my own fault. I’m a mine of pointless fact. Like, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s wedding cake was nine feet four and a half inches tall (can’t help you into centimetres if you’re a decimal nut). Also, Equatorial Guinea hasn’t a single cinema, tough on local film buffs. Furthermore, Engels, Marx friend-of-all-mankind’s sidekick, wanted “ethnic trash” exterminated—he included Basques, Scots Highlanders, South Slavs, anybody he called “backward”. Aristotle was first translated into English in 1620… See? Mind like a ragbag, all contents useless—except, when some bit’s oddly not.
There’s one old dear in our village says we all know what’s coming, that we prepare for it the whole of our lives. I tell her she’s a daft old coot. She says I’m unwilling to believe the obvious, which is ridiculous because my mind’s always crystal clear. It’s just that occasional flukes sometimes make you think, good gracious, how lucky I knew that odd scrap about Mrs Hannah Glasse’s cookery book being worth well over a hundred times more than its look-alike contemporary pirated edition! Or when you’ve just looked up the measurements of a loo table—nothing to do with lavatories; for the Georgian game of lanterloo—only to land on one the very next day. The trouble is, sometimes you discover which bit’s the important one in the most unpleasant way, or when it’s too late.
Sandy was all over the front page, I saw from the evening edition. I was in Gazza Gaunt’s yard, having some grotty machine coffee, when I caught sight of the headline in Mercy Mallock’s paper. I asked for a look.
“Sandy’s invented a new political party, Lovejoy,” she said. I read, gave it back. “Europe Time, it’s called.”
“What’s up?” she wasn’t smiling.
“My bloke’s left me, Lovejoy.”
“Barmy sod.”
Mercy Mallock’s the only woman driver Gazza employs, presumably on the grounds that blokes are macho tough and can defend his clients should the need arise. It’s a laugh. I’m off like a hare at the first hint of trouble—to call on somebody like Mercy, truth to tell. She used to be some notable’s bodyguard, believe it or not. Her hobbies are kendo, karate, all those martial arts that sound like food additives and consist of kicking people in white
