'Eh?' Gluck at Mercy's after all?
'Rotten bastard, he were. Drew blood on a couple-three of my girls, into S and M.
Finishing school, him. I put the word out.'
'Dieter Gluck? You sure?' Finishing school is brothel-speak for sadism to the point of killing. Needless to say, madams don't let such a bloke over the threshold.
'Leave it aht, Lovejoy.' Meaning don't be stupid. 'He goes down Soho now. I don't handle his sort.'
'Anything else about him?'
'Rumour is he did for a working girl, Continent somewhere.'
'Keep trying, Mercy. You're a lady.'
She purred. 'Thank you, kind sir. If ever the gentleman wishes to partake of ultimate personal solace, please rest assured…' etc, etc.
Nothing from Doldrum. No news from Lydia, no messages from Mars. Tinker, Trout, Sorbo had gone silent. I felt really narked. I was slogging my heart out, and all my team had gone walkabout. So much for loyalty.
What had Gaylord Fauntleroy's old auntie said? Something about Chinese antiques being my best bet.
A street busker called Cleat - careful how you say her name - near Tower Hill always has news. Cleat's an electric chain dancer, draws tourist crowds near the Tower of London. Two bronzed stalwarts fasten her in chains, to exotic drum music. During her writhing prance, bulbs all over her flash on and off. The cliffhanger: she's to leap free of her chains before the record ends, or a great carboy of water suspended above her will uncork and drench her. Electrified as she is with bulbs and wires, she will then frazzle and die and, the stalwarts bellow threateningly, 'The Glamorous Cleat will be no more!'
When I arrived she'd just escaped, taken the collection, and was sitting having a fag with her blokes. I like Cleat. She has a cousin who can yodel.
'They were asking after you, Lovejoy,' she told me. 'You didn't turn up.'
Somebody else now? I sighed. Was I simply a walking crime?
'Billia and Dang. He's hiding in the churchyard. And Gaylord's up the Lane.'
I'd quite forgotten them. Billia had told me she needed help when I'd met her at Bermondsey. Some boxing hoods wanted Dang to throw, win, duck, or vice versa, and he'd got confused. What was Billia's tale? Dang had to repay the match fixers' lost debt.
I should have met them at the Nell of Old Drury, seven o'clock once upon a time. I eyed the huge dangling carboy over her dancing pitch, couldn't help asking.
'Is that real, love?' Only, the thought of it and electrocuting her was really unpleasant.
She split her sides. Her stalwarts roared. I reddened, said so-long, and walked off, the only duckegg in London. I put my best foot under me. Londoners don't walk much.
Tourists are the same, struggle might and main for taxis, when their destination's barely a furlong. I walked up the Minories, made it round St Botolph's church where the buses go mad, and was in Petticoat Lane in minutes.
Note, however, that Petticoat Lane isn't properly that. But if you tell your taxi driver Middlesex Street he'll say, 'D'you mean Petticoat Lane?' London's full of these hitches.
Like, Dalston Waste is famous, but isn't labelled in the maps. I got lost once, delivering a vanload of forged Wedgwood jasper cameos. Like a fool I searched the A-Z Guide, got nowhere until I asked a bright little pickpocket in Whitechapel. 'Maps,' he'd said with all the dignity of his ten years, 'is alluz wrong, mate.'
Petticoat Lane, then. At the Aldgate end, clothes barrows and jellied eel stalls crush together, awnings so dense there seems no way through. Struggle north up the narrow thoroughfare, yet more groaning barrows, with shops looking eager to step off the pavement. It's an exciting turmoil. Cutler Street Silver Market's now a grand emporium, a mini-Crystal Palace stuck out near Aldgate East station. It used to be a small dogleg going nowhere near Houndsditch, but that's evolution. Street markets start off superb grot, then go posh.
Gaylord couldn't park his caravan in this press, so I shoved my way towards St Mary Axe. There it stood among a handful of dealers. Gaylord was waxing eloquent about some dross he was trying to auction. You can tell when nobody's going to buy. I went closer. The item was a tantalus, a grand brass-and-mahogany carrying device used by butlers for several glass decanters. I reached and touched one. Slightly rough, but not a single chime.
'I'll have that, mister,' I said. 'How much?'
'More than you can afford, sir.' Gaylord's quick on the uptake. 'You don't realize its value.'
The dealers looked from me to Gaylord's antique, wondering. I heard a bloke whisper my name, saw him out of the corner of my eye make a slight chopping gesture to his mate, suggesting they'd split the cost and profits equally.
'Is it from the Duoro?' I demanded.
The ill-starred Royal Mail steamship Duoro is famous for colliding with a Spanish liner and sinking off Cape Finisterre in 1882, taking with it some seventeen souls and a fortune in diamonds and gold. The date's important for glassware. In 1890 posh decanters were rough to the feel, being wheel-engraved. The acid-polishing process only properly took off about 1890. Try it yourself. Touch a modern acid-polished decanter, it's smooth as silk. (There are fakes, so watch it.) But rough engraving means pre-1890; smooth means later. Antiques that can be dated by some reliable technique are, as dealers say, 'landmarked' and are easier to sell.
A bloke organized an ocean dive in the 1990s, and in true romantic treasure-hunting fashion pulled off a brilliant salvage. I get bitter telling this, because it wasn't me.
Spink's did the final auction, a mere twenty-eight thousand gold coins, plus artefacts and gems, bringing millions. I was not involved.
'This tantalus is unique, sir.' Gaylord pursed his lips. 'Maybe I've underestimated its value.'
