Lorela Chevalier was smart as ever, really beautiful. She greeted me in the foyer of the theme-park hotel as if we were old friends. I’d made it a condition that everybody else stayed away.
“Welcome,” she said, a beautiful slim volume between two attendants. They weren’t the same blokes, but wore unresponsiveness like every armed squaddie. Why do weapons confer laziness on eyes, droops on hands, sloth on shoes? Somebody ought to research that. “How do I call you?”
“Wotcher, Lorela. Lovejoy.”
Her eyes widened a little, settled into understanding. “I’ve heard the name. That explains… Won’t you come in?”
“No, ta.” Somebody was hang-gliding in the distance beyond the picture windows. You could see a couple of horses trotting, a small whiskey with coloured fringes being driven on a hand rein by a beginner, a liveried groom trotting longside. A lake shone through trees. A moneyed holiday location; this was no Bognor, “Just show me.”
“Lovejoy,” she said ruminatively, leading the way to a lift. The two vigilantes came too. We descended without a starting judder. “East Anglia? Poor. Unattached. No premises.” She turned her lovely eyes to add, “Divvy? Like Leon Cabannes?”
“Like Leon Cabbanes
She looked at me still. The lift door opened. A small train thing on a kind of rail set in the floor. She didn’t move.
“Yes. Very unfortunate, Lovejoy. The old gentleman was coming on to our staff the same week he passed away.” No wonder Troude and Monique ordered old Leon topped.
The train thing had no driver. I stared at it, queasy. I’d already been brave once today. Twice was snapping your fingers at Fate. “We get in that? How far is it?”
“It’s programmed,” she said smoothly. “It can’t go wrong.”
“Like your hiring schemes?”
She stepped in, arranged herself, nodded to three blokes standing about in gold jackets. I sat beside her warily. We started off, just me and her. Smoothest ride ever, down a cement tunnel. She had no controls.
“Tell me, Lovejoy. Was that dead man anyone to do with you? There was a crashed car down a ravine with a body—”
I clouted her, really belted her, grabbed the handrail in front of me to stop my hands throttling. She sat still. The little train was three coaches long, enough room for two bums a coach, six in all. No goons with us. A few moments, then she found some tools and started blotting her face to the accompaniment of that faint rattle their handbags always make.
We glided through two intersections, same speed, slowed, then through a vaulted arch. Steel doors rolled away for us. We alighted in a huge arched place. Hangar? On pallets, furniture in covered and even transparent seals. A fork-lifter whirred across an aisle about eight yards away. Music played softly, Vivaldi’s
“No, nothing, Jim,” she assured somebody who’d stepped forward with a grunt to start extermination of the visiting maniac. “It’s fine, really.” She swivelled brightly. “This way, Lovejoy! We arrange things here simply—”
I held up a finger. It was blooded. “Shtum, love.” My knuckle was unfortunately bloodstained, her cheekbone bruised to hell, though luckily I’d missed her eye. I walked away among the stored furniture.
It took three-quarters of an hour to check a good enough sample. Her blokes unwrapped the pieces I chose in the coded area. They hated me every second. Without her restraint they’d have marmalized me. Marimee’s stuff seemed all there, every single fake.
“The genuines?” I asked finally. Odd that the beautiful fakes didn’t make me feel sick any more.
“I’m unsure,” she said, determinedly bright. “I think they’re here somewhere…”
“Don’t frig me about, love. They’re not.”
She nodded slowly, appraising me, lips pursed. “I knew you were a divvy, Lovejoy, when, ah, when you—”
When I what? Painfully I thought back, an all-time first. The penny eventually dropped. “When I directed the Jamie Sandy antique with the other genuines?”
“We always place one of our own, to mark a large deposit. Banks do the same, I’m told, using gold-bullion markers. Radioisotope labelling has become routine, even for political documents. The other group are… at another of our storage facilities.”
I stood hunched, hands in pockets. It felt cold down here. No snow, no cold winds, no mountainside, no pines plopping snowfalls in earthbound gulps, nothing to melt on your eyes and set your eyes running.
“Get rid,” I muttered to the floor.
Some deep bickering, then her men drifted. You could feel their anger. I waited until I’d heard doors whirr and thump. I looked at her. Her cheekbone was prominent, blueish. I almost exclaimed aloud, asked who’d done that. Me.
“They’ll be at you, love. Unless.”
“Unless?” She was composed, thinking away, lovely eyes on me. She had sense, this one. Ready for an agreement.
“Unless you say nothing at all to the authorities. And you can go on as before.”
“Which is how, Lovejoy?” She smiled because she was making me speak frankly when I didn’t want to. Women have a nerve.
“You accept antiques at the Repository, show customers how secure your Swiss fortress is. Then secretly van them elsewhere, simply transfer the antiques to secret locations. Like this, under a holiday theme park. Good cover,
