Paid and Loving Eyes

names. But a SAPAR hunter? Gulp.

The Mounties get their man. Sherlock Holmes wins out. In antiques scammery, the SAPAR hunter’s the one to avoid. Whispers tell how two or three of them—there’s only ten, would you believe—have actually killed thieves who proved reluctant to disgorge the booty, before politely restoring the stolen antique to its grateful legitimate owners.

Nowadays, antiques are the big—read mega-galactic—new currency. Drugs and arms sales are still joint leaders, but only just. Antique fraud is closing fast on the rails. Greed is powered by everybody—terrorists, politicians, Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue taxmen, governments, international auction houses, you, me. Most of all, though, it’s the absence of honesty. We all have eyes to love the delectable antiques they see, but they’re paid eyes. Paid but loving. And that means hired, because money cancels love. We pretend it can’t, but it does.

Since every antique worth the name’s on the hit list, the world clearly needs seekers after stolen antiques. Scotland Yard’s Fine Art and Antiques Squad is largely impotent. Oh, statistics emerge now and then, to claim that three per cent of stolen antiques get recovered, but who knows? Answer: nobody. Even I get blamed for the world’s pandemic of antiques theft, for God’s sake. That’s really scraping the barrel for the lees of logic. You want the truth? Great Britain alone has 16,000 lovely Anglican churches—and lets one get battered, robbed, pillaged, every four hours! It can’t be me alone, right? You see, crime pays. Less than twenty per cent of our police forces have art and antiques fraud squads, so what chance has holiness? (Incidentally, that “squads” is a laugh—they’re mostly one bloke each in a dusty nook; Scotland Yard’s entire mob is two.)

People place some reliance (note how carefully I worded that?) on the Art Loss Register. Others swear by LaserNet. I swear at both. You pay a fee to see if anybody’s reported as stolen that antique you want to buy. They collect records of antique thefts. Auction houses joke along with their Thesaurus system. Why joke? Well, you just try matching any ten catalogue descriptions with the objects they purport to describe, and you’ll finish up in tears of laughter, or worse. It’s hit or miss. Like the Council for the Prevention of Art Theft, they’re new and blundersome losers against impossible odds.

But SAPAR is different. For a start, it’s not listed in any antiques glossy. No list of subscribers, in no phone book. Its employees are practically ghosts. I know antique dealers who’ve been in the business quarter of a century who believe there’s no such incognito mob. If it hadn’t been for an utter fluke—making love to a SAPAR hunter’s missus on the hoof—I’d never have spotted Gerald. Having his wife along with him for cover, and giving me a lucky lift, was possibly the one mistake he’d made in his life as a hunter. I just hoped I’d shaken him off.

Three-forty in the morning, I made the lane past Almira’s country house. I drove on, collected my wits, had a prophylactic pee against a tree, put the car off the verge in the wood, and walked silently to the gate and down towards the house.

You can never return. Nobody ever can. It’s one of my infallible rules. Call in at your old school, see the playing fields where you scored that super goal… Mistake: the place is a housing estate. Visit your old church? Hopeless: it’s derelict, tramps lighting fires in the vestry. Detour through your old neighbourhood, all heartaching nostalgia? Don’t: it’s a biscuit factory. Slink, like now, through a French grove towards the holiday home of a lady you awoke night after day for yet more unbridled lust? Error cubed. Even if it’s to nick your own passport, get the hell out. Returning is wrong.

My other infallible mistake is to disregard my own rules.

The house seemed still. A high-powered motor stood on the moonlit forecourt. So good old Paulie was here, doubtless boring somebody stiff as usual. No other cars. Was Almira’s at Marc the Nark’s cottage, watched over by his pair of hounds? I stared at the place for a few minutes, dithering.

The way in, which I’d planned during my drive, was through the rear. The ground sloped up towards the road above at quite a steep angle. It was as if the house was sunk into the earth that side, leaving the front standing free. Split levels always help burglars. They’re easier to climb, which means less of a drop if you have to escape fast.

No balconies, though, except one looking south towards the lake, so it wasn’t all beer and skittles. Drainpipes, rough stone with crevices. I used the old drainpiper’s trick of filling my pockets with a variety of stones from the ground. Find a space where the mortar’s missing, you can slot a stone in to serve as a mini-foothold. I smiled as I started up. “Swarmers“, as the antiques trade calls cat burglars, are mostly slick. Some I know would have already done the job and been at the Dover crossing by now. The roof over the main bedroom was only ten feet up. But being cowardly does no harm.

Quiet, careful, I climbed. My belt I’d removed and tied round my neck for a good handhold if I came across any hooks. I must say, when I’m scared I’m quite good. I honestly think I could have made quite a decent living at burgling.

The roof astonished me by being more of a problem than the wall. Can you credit it? Up there, spread-eagled on a slope of tiles formed like a rough earthenware sea, I found myself baffled, thinking, what the hell do I do now?

Then I remembered the fanlight. It had figured largely in my daring plan. Never closed, it showed the night sky to anyone gazing obliquely up from the bed. I’d learned that. I began edging across towards the moon’s reflection that defined the window. Odd, I could smell cigarette smoke. I halted.

Was somebody kipping, or not kipping at all, in Almira’s bedroom? Having a smoke? I heard, definitely heard, a man clear his throat. A resounding yes! I was stymied.

Choice reared its aggravating head. If the bloke inside was Paul the wimp, it would hardly matter. I could simply walk in, scavenge my passport and off out of it. He was a drink of water, and I’m not. But what if I walked confidently in to find some mauler waiting for me on, say, Marimee’s orders? Did Paul smoke? Oh, Christ. I’d forgotten.

Within arm’s reach of the louvre window, and nowhere to go. Daft to slither across to silhouette my head against the moonlit sky. Bedrooms? Three others, I knew. What the hell was the bloke doing sleeping in Almira’s bed when the other guest bedrooms were all free? Surely they were?

And the light came on, blinding me. I almost yelped with fright and cringed, terrified reflexes trying to shrink me into invisibility on the roof. I could be seen by anyone in the woods above the house.

“Katta.”

Paul’s voice. Katta? Who the…? Katta? Cissie’s Continental maid. No good staying baffled. I had to risk something, or stay treed for good on Almira’s damned tiles. Two silent shifts, and I slo-o-o- owly peered over the edge. Obliquely, safer now the bedroom was brighter lit than my heavenly space, I looked down. Onto Paul and Katta.