Paid and Loving Eyes

recognized a money man trying to wriggle out of spending.

“Non, Monsieur Tremp,” Marimee said in a muted voice. It shut us all up, groans and all. Except me.

To my alarm, I heard me say, “Mon commandant. I take it the items were all correctly bonded in Liechtenstein?”

“Oui, Lovejoy,” Monique Delebarre said evenly. But not before Marimee had hesitated. Him, whose first and last dither had been which breast when working up to his first suck. “Thank you. That will be all,” Monique intoned.

We filed out of the stuffy little room, me asking Veronique if that was it. I’d felt claustrophobic in there.

The Cayman Islands, and little Liechtenstein, let you lob into bond any antique for seven measly days—then you can legally bring it out and legally sell it to anyone. (That’s legally, got it?) In fact, you may even have sold it while it palely loitered. Our East Anglian antiques robbers love Liechtenstein because that one brief week gives us—sorry again; I meant them— time to forge a new provenance history, no more than a brief receipt, however sketchy, for the stolen antiques. Though nowadays everybody likes point-of-sale transfer, like in some Dutch or Belgian places that pay on the nail for any nicked Old Master, so making the sale legit. Zurich’s bond currently is five years.

“What else is required, Lovejoy?” Veronique was smiling. “How do you say, cold feet?”

“Cold feet, warm heart.” The best reply I could give. “I thought we were going to get our orders, details and all that.”

“We have them, Lovejoy. The meeting confirms that all is on course.”

“For when?”

“For the time of execution. You heard the Commandant.” She smiled. Guy the burke was still chatting, prancing. Folk all around him were amused, in spite of the bad news about the kitty being upped. My belly warned me with an incapacitating gripe that execution has more than one meaning.

The hoods at the exits detained us until Marimee and his three clones left the security room. I was sick of all this cloak-and-dagger malarkey. I mean, why didn’t Marimee just whisper his damned orders to us in the street? But pillocks like him feed on this sort of gunge.

They let us go in dribs and drabs, me and my couple last. Guy tried prattling to Marimee, but he ignored him except for one terse command I couldn’t hear. It didn’t quite bring Guy down through the Heaviside layer, but forced him into fawning agreement.

“Can I see the exhibition?” I asked Veronique. My plan was to bore Guy, literally, to vanishing point. “Is it true the Kunsthaus has a Rembrandt? There are four galleries I want to. go to. The Swiss National, the Landesmuseum, is a must, eh? It has workshops three centuries old from the Zurich arsenal! And I’m dying to see the Rietberg Museum.” Poisonously cheery, I knew my tactic would work, at least on Guy. Once I got rid of him, losing Veronique would be that much easier. “Is it true its collection of Chinese art was got from East Berlin in a swap for Lenin’s tea strainer? Then there’s that other place called the Buhrle Foundation. And St Oswald’s…” I smiled an apology. Their eyes were already glazing. “After all, one of ours, in a strange land, eh? I’ll light a candle for him—if Swiss Lutherans are into ritual!” I chuckled into their shocked faces in the great foyer. “Which first?”

It took an hour to shake Guy, then another to get rid of Veronique. We’d reached two of Hobbema’s landscapes when he finally cracked. He’d been twitching some time when he took Veronique to one side and muttered through his sniffles. She let him go, came back to me with questions in her eyes. I took her arm and kept up my dreadful heartiness, yapping non-stop. She’d wondered if my enthusiasm had been a pretence, a ploy to get her alone. I was repellently obsessional, dragging her round the adjacent gardens to see the Henry Moores and Bourdelles.

“I’m not into Magritte and Ernst, that lot,” I told her, pulling her along. “We’ll leave the new extension, eh? Let’s go up to the first floor. There’s a Hans Fries, Adoration of the Magi. Have you seen it? Only, you just guess how many times the bloody thing’s been varnished, and with what sort. Try! I’ll give you three goes, but here’s a clue: it isn’t copal varnish. Know why? Because if you stand about four feet away, then look away and quickly look back, you’ll see a kind of shimmer—”

She broke, to my relief. “I’d better go and see how Guy is, Lovejoy,” she said. “Meet us at the hotel, supper tonight. Okay?”

“Okay,” I cried, giving her a ton of disappointment, riskily saying what if we get sudden orders, where on earth should I find them?

“Today’s free, Lovejoy,” she said. “There’s one job for you tomorrow, then you’re done.”

Done? my mind screamed as I grinned so long. Done for?

Cunningly, and I thought with skilled casualness, I mooched about to see her actually leave. Then I did a series of pretended quick looks in case she doubled back, or one of Marimee’s goons was lurking somewhere in the art gallery. No sign. An hour later I walked openly to the main station, where Gobbie would be waiting, and Lysette Fotheringay. Return to normality.

Me and Gobbie were in the station when Lysette arrived. We were so cunning —in Information looking at these tiresome diagrams of railway networks—and simply walked away giving no sign. We went to a nosh bar — expensive, in Zurich—and apologized to each other for having to share a table. That legitimized our speaking together, my daft idea a kid could have seen through. Pathetic.

“Keep your voices down,” I warned them. Foreign languages carry; indigenous speech doesn’t. It’s always true. “Say as little as possible. Good coffee.”

“Made proper Swiss style,” Lysette said with pride. “Through filter papers, none of your French stewing process.”

I sighed. Two minutes, and already we were into national rivalry.

“Look, love. Cut that out, okay? I know we’re in the most perfect, orderly, tidy, stable country in the world —”

Her face changed. “You think so?”

“That’s what they say, love.” Her sudden ferocity made me uneasy, and I’d had enough of being that. “It’s going to be our main ally. Steady police force, trustworthy citizens. The slightest anomaly must stand out like a