talked in local dialect, and 'scatch' is an old East Anglian word meaning to skin. In fact, we'd once had a mock argument about the authorship of this very saying. My eyes watered. I wondered if it was a message, from Arthur to an absent friend. Me, say.
Because Arthur had been well and truly skinned.
'Arthur had a canal, Lovejoy. He wanted to link it with the sea estuary. Always on about it.' Sorbo showed guilt at having been bored stiff by Arthur.
'Like the Ribble, wasn't it?'
Sorbo sniffed, maudlin. 'Make a new lock gate from Saffron Fields canal into the estuary, you'd be able to sail a longboat barge from the North Sea up the heart of the country to the Lake District.'
'These schemes are always resurfacing, now that leisure is big money.'
'I think Colette just wanted to give Arthur the money to build his canal's sea gate.
Repay Arthur for all the lovers she'd had over the years.'
He swigged, belched. I sat in the gloaming, sick at heart.
'Know what, Lovejoy? I think it's women. Take your average bloke. He sees a luscious bird, old or young, fancies her.'
Sorbo was blaming me for it all. He was right. If I'd stood by Arthur, this wouldn't have happened.
Sorbo went on, 'The bloke either makes love to the bird if he's lucky, or fails. Either way, he lives with it. But women are different. A woman gets the bit between her teeth about a man, something weird happens. She throws everything to the winds. Morality, money, propriety, common sense. Goes crazy.'
I rose and took the Rodney flask from his hand. Unbelievably light, from its synthetic composition. Sorbo had invented quite a fake. I bent to stare into his eyes.
'Sorbo. Gluck's scheme was to rob who of what?'
'Them, Lovejoy. The Clockmakers' Company.'
It couldn't be done. People had tried, and nobody had done it yet. I'd even thought of it myself - not really in true life, but when you're just drifting off to sleep and pleasant thoughts entice. I pulled myself together.
'It would need multo gelt, Lovejoy. Colette made Arthur put up the Chelsea business and the manor, guarantee Gluck a loan.'
'Some loan,' I said bitterly. 'A fortune.'
'Had to be big, see, because Gluck reckoned he'd found a new - I mean antique -
Harrison wooder.'
I swayed away and sat. I still held Sorbo's Rodney and took a long draught, choked a bit. The Harrison wooder would do for a gold brick all right,
'Why didn't Gluck go through with it, once he'd got the money?'
Sorbo retrieved the flask with an air of injury, took a swig to show who was boss round here.
'He found something about the manor. Cheeky bastard went to inspect it, like it was his. Spoke to Arthur. Arthur always did have a weak ticker. Died in hospital that evening. Heart attack.'
'Where was Trout in all this?'
'That little bugger? Gluck gave him the push for lowering the tone of the place. When Arthur passed away Gluck brought in this Bern goon instead of me. Bern's supposed to be an antiques restorer. I got dundied without a bean.' Dundied, made redundant. 'I make do now with — '
'Aye, aye,' I said testily. I didn't want a list of Sorbo's odd jobs. 'You go to Arthur's funeral?'
'No. I was plastered for a fortnight. Anyway, it was out in some forest.'
Where some lad had sung a song for Arthur. There'd been four at the burial in the glade. And somebody had watched me when I'd visited there.
'Arthur died exactly when everything he owned passed legally to Gluck. Convenient, eh?'
'Colette was stunned. Gluck threw her out. All London was talking about it. She can't give antiques up, Lovejoy. Like you, like me, like everybody else with the bug. So she's a scrubber.'
For a long time I sat watching the shadows leap across the workbench, stretch and vanish among his instruments. I cleared my throat.
'Sorbo. We outnumber Gluck.'
'I'm not deaf.'
He took up a small wood-shaper chisel and started to hone it on an oilstone. Seeing other fakers use an instrument always narks me, no matter how skilled they are. We forgers always reckon we can do everything better than anybody else. Robbery, even.
'There's Trout, Tinker, me, you, and my apprentice Lydia. There's only two of him.
Anybody else?'
'To do what?'
Words don't come easy. I didn't want to say kill exactly, because killing's wrong. And punish sounds like school, hands out and this hurts me more than it'll hurt you, the executioner's usual lies.
'To restore the balance,' I said eventually.
He said, 'Sounds fair. What do we do?'
