Default? Sanction? He meant mistaking my—no, his—assistants. I nodded, received a grateful glance from Troude. Monique came with Guy and Veronique. We reached a conservatory facing a walled yard with roses and trellised arches.
“Nice.” I broke the ice. “If only it’d stay still.”
Troude smiled. No laughs now, tension in the air. Maybe they too were to be sanctioned for letting me escape?
“Why did you return, Lovejoy?”
“Ah.” Why? I’d got clean away, then come back to find my pursuers. I should have thought this one out, quick. “I’d no passport. I owed it to the memory…” I caught myself, cleared my throat. Start again. ”I promised somebody I’d help.”
Marimee nodded, one curt sharp depression of the chin to signify approval. For him that was a flag day.
“It is safe to speak here,” he said. He stood facing, legs apart, back to the window. “Here we plan the robbery. Here we decide the fate of the valuables. Here we allocate duties.”
“Here we will say what you’re up to?” I put in. Troude did an appealing look, the sort he was now starting to nark me with.
“Silence!” Monique said. It cracked like a whip, shutting me up. What fascinated me was it also clammed Marimee.
She walked to face us. I noticed Marimee made way for her, and it wasn’t politeness. She boss, him corporal.
“The brigandage is already decided,” she said. Bland’s the nearest I can come to, for her attitude. Nobody could possibly dispute the number of the Number 7 bus, her tone informed us. “The
“Here?” I asked again, thinking of those statues and the rotating gardens. “Only, isn’t it a simple export job?”
“That silver story was a lie to get you here, Lovejoy.”
Cool. It had worked. I was undeniably here.
“You have objections?” Like asking if I had a coat somewhere.
“Yes. Ignorance, mainly. What do we nick, and where from?” Note that I didn’t ask why. “And who’s in the way?”
“Details,” Monique said, with a smile like an ice floe. “Others see to details, Lovejoy.”
And she walked off. Veronique stepped aside, proving to be in the way, taut, her hatred glinting like distant spears. Not all friends, then, amid this much laughter.
Leaving us. “There will be three stages,” Marimee clipped out. “Stage Three the robbery. Stage Two rehearsal. That is all.”
“Eh?” I was blank. “Two from three leaves one. You missed out Stage One.”
Marimee’s moustache lifted in what might have been incipient mirth. “That is you, Lovejoy. You buy.”
“Buy what?”
“Antiques.” He made me sound thick.
The others were looking. Troude was trying to elbow me gently from the conservatory.
“What with? From where? What sort?” I got mad, yelled, “I’ve no frigging money!”
Marimee paused, eyed me with utter disgust. “Imbecilic peasant,” he said scathingly, and strutted grandly on his way.
“Come, Lovejoy,” Troude said gently. “Let’s go.”
“Where to, for Christ’s sake?” I was so dispirited. I wanted to go home.
He patted my shoulder. “You’re the antiques divvy, Lovejoy. Wherever you say, but mostly Paris. Guy, Veronique.”
On the way out I saw Katta, demurely waiting on in black waitress garb beneath an awning. I looked her way, waved once. She smiled. I swallowed, thinking of her luscious wet mouth in action, managed to smile back. Paulie and Almira were talking near the orchestra. Pity Cissie wasn’t here too, I thought without a single pang. This was the sort of do she always enjoyed, as long as she had somebody to ballock for doing the wrong thing In Company, a terrible crime in her book. Maybe she was here? In spirit, some people might say. Not me.
Jervis looked away when I passed quite near him. As we left the eating-drinking-laughing cheeriness, I glanced back to see if Katta was just watching Paul or actually doing something. And saw the house from a new angle. It stayed in my mind. I’ve a good memory for pictures. I’d seen it before, or some place very like it. And it wasn’t any country mansion, not then. It was heap big business, the sort a low-grader like me would never even get within a mile of. In some advert? Yes, sort of definitely.
Until then, I’d not known what to believe. I mean, soon I’ve got to tell you about international antiques robbers, and I will. But so far I’d been thinking along the lines of, well, those dozens of St Augustine’s sermons, AD 400 or thereabouts, discovered in the Mainz public library. Priceless, easy to nick, pass them off at any customs border post as boring old committee minutes, and make a mint. Especially apt, since that French historian uncovered them on that dusty German shelving in 1991. Something like that. Now, though? Now I knew it was no bundle of ancient “crackle”, as parchments are known in the trade.
“Shall I drive, Guy?” I said. “Race you to the scam, eh?”
“
“Only joking.” Which meant Switzerland, of course. I’d been too dim to work it out. We were going to do the
