In the reflection of the chrome coffee urn - the girls ducked behind it, sensing trouble -
I saw that Bern bloke, carrying me to the door like a rabbit.
'Komm!' he barked to Colette. Obediently she shuffled after, bag a-dangle.
Out in the narrow street he shook me, saying loudly, 'Thief! Not steal from old lady, ya?'
I managed, 'I were just trying to flog the old biddy an antique—'
Across the thoroughfare I glimpsed Gluck's face. He was smiling from the window of an enormous Bentley, a pretty blonde beside him also enjoying the show. Moiya December, also not rushing to my aid. Bern flung me off the pavement bellowing guttural accusations of thievery. I scrabbled upright. A passing gent and his missus tutted. Bouncers from a night club hovered angrily.
'Should be flogged,' said the gent. 'Get a job like any decent—' etc.
'Thief!' Bern boomed. 'Stop thief!'
Is anything more of a stimulus, to an innocent? I eeled off down Peter Street, dodged into Ingestre Place, back down Lexington Street like a whippet, and in seconds was strolling, oh so casual, into the bright illumination of Regent Street, struggling to make my gasps look normal breathing. I went south, behind the Royal Academy.
Plenty of evening crowds still about, taxis, buses, youngsters lounging round Eros, gay old London Toon on the go. I was still hurting from my first encounter with Dieter and Bern. Sulks were coming on, really sorry for myself. No doubt about it, I was in a worse state than China - or are you not allowed to think that any more? I went into a tavern and sat. Flymo, rotten swine, must have bubbled me to Dieter Gluck. I owed Flymo for that.
Who, I wondered, in her right mind exchanges wealth, antiques business, her home, her possessions, in order to become a London dosser? I had no doubts any longer. She was the scavenger I'd seen humping stacks of old vinyl records in Bermondsey.
Everybody else must have known it was Colette except me.
Some lads sat nearby, joking, smoking their heads off, eyeing the girls on the bar stools. From their chat they were theatre scene shifters. I used to do that in the Albury.
'It's too frigging little,' one was saying. 'Like a sewing box, innit?'
His mate argued. 'It's only bones and ash.'
'Rotten sodding play,' another groused. 'Here, is this best bitter or what?'
Bones and ash? They were talking of a reliquary. I said, 'Bones and ash?'
'Eh? Yeh, mate. No wonder the takings are down. They've this little tin box—'
They argued on, not really caring either way. I left then, walked down through Pall Mall and Trafalgar Square to Charing Cross, and sat on the Embankment looking across the Thames. The drizzle had mercifully stopped. I needed Tinker to get going, but he'd be beavering away, bar to taproom, indefatigably doing my bidding looking for Floggell.
Reliquary? Somewhere was reviving Murder in the Cathedral, trying to cash in on the publicity about Thomas a Becket. I could feel the fibrillation of the Tube trains under my feet. Well, I'd cash in on publicity too if I owned a theatre.
Which made me strive to remember.
Thomas a Becket was an unpleasant man. Fraud, traitor, greedy moneygrabber, friend to embezzlers, he gets my vote for being eminently non-holy, though I should talk. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury, slaughtered in his own cathedral by four knights soon after Christmas in 1170.
When he'd, er, died, Thomas's relics were put into what's properly called a chasse. This is sort of a fancy little chest, with embossed figures in gold relief, the richly coloured enamels pointing up the importance of the relics therein. Was all this decoration, back in the Middle Ages, a waste of time and money? Not on your life, because saintly relics were highly marketable. People scrapped, bribed, forged, all in the name of holiness, filthy lucre being behind it all. I often joke that filthy lucre isn't as filthy as all that, but it definitely rules. The tourist trade - back then called pilgrimage - depended on your monastery having more saintly relics than rival abbeys in the next county. Shops, inns, roads, merchants, cities, whole towns even, all thrived where holy saints led.
I'm not being cynical, just wondering if I'd found the answer to Gluck.
The St Thomas chasse was thought to have been commissioned originally - I'm talking centuries - for Peterborough Abbey. It wandered hither and yon, then surfaced in St Neots. Finally the 1980s dawned and the British Railway Pension group collared it. It wasn't holiness that switched ownership. It was money. Genuine saints in superb genuine twelfth-century caskets don't come cheap. They change hands for millions. The thought of selling some saint's bones is sordid, gruesome and horrid. But it's what we do, because we're rotten.
Cut to now. The chasse notched over four million at auction. Hypocrisy instantly hit the fan. People who'd never been to church for yonks went ape. Politicians pontificated about heritage. Patriotism was invoked. Newspapers hinted darkly at subversion. The kindly Canadian who'd successfully bid at Sotheby's graciously withdrew, and the National Heritage Memorial Fund smoothly snaffled the copper-and-gilt chasse with St Thomas a Becket inside, so that it could be ignored for ever in the Victoria and Albert museum. No, honest, I'm truly not a cynic. But where are the other forty-one chasses?
For, in those darksome troubled days eight centuries agone, forty-two such chasses were made. So let me ask this: Did you see one last Sunday at Evensong? Think hard, like they did in Hereford Cathedral - where they found a similar chasse in their crypt.
Can Hereford be blamed, if their thoughts lightly turn to 4,180,000 zlotniks, as they seal their new discovery in their Mappa Mundi museum? Politics, as ever, comes to the rescue for as long as it suits. Then people eventually forget, and think oh well, what the hell, sell it and who cares anyway.
Rumour claimed there were nine similar St Thomas reliquaries elsewhere on our unholy old island.
Now, nine's a lot.
I remembered what I'd written on the card in Colette's - okay, Dieter's - office at Lovely Colette Antiques. Some quip about Sorbo being back on the vodka. Sorbo is Arthur Goldhorn's engraver, lives in Streatham Hill. I had the fare. The 159 bus goes right by his door. It was getting late, but I'd come this far with only slight injuries. I had to have something to tell my team when we assembled tomorrow. I was sure they'd turn up with scores of
