'Thousand two hundred?' I said. I hadn't a groat.
'Let's have a gander, Gaylord.' One dealer stepped up.
'Excuse me, mate,' I said, narked. 'I've already offered. I can claim it. Mark owat.'
Which is our slang way of saying 'market overt'. It's supposed to have been repealed a couple of years back, this ancient law. Trouble is, street dealers never change. If street law was once thus, it is now and so ever shall be. Buy an antique in uncovered daylight in open market, it's yours for always. Never mind whether it was nicked, stolen, or got by thuggery. A sale is a sale is a sale. That was the old law, and still is among us market lovers.
'It wasn't sold,' the dealer said quickly. He appealed to the crowd. 'Was it, Ven? Was it, Sol? Two thousand five hunnert.'
'Don't get nasty, gentlemen.' Gaylord acted unhappy, and handed his fake over for a bundle of bunce.
The crowd dispersed. Gaylord went in, closed the door. I wandered off. Ten minutes later, I nigged round the far side of his caravan and slipped in. Auntie Vi had the kettle on.
'Thank you, Lovejoy. You're sweet. Are you better?'
'Not been poorly.'
Gaylord, in an even glitzier caftan, smiled. 'Grief shines from you like black light, Lovejoy. Don't feel bad about Arthur and Colette.'
'Shut your teeth, Gaylord,' I snarled. 'They weren't my responsibility.'
'You're like Grimaldi, Lovejoy,' Auntie Vi said, puffing her foul pipe.
'Eh?'
'It happened in Victorian times. Man went to his doctor. Couldn't stop crying from sorrow. His doctor couldn't find a thing wrong, told him to go and see the famous comic clown Grimaldi, toast of Victorian London, have a good laugh. The man said, 'But I am Grimaldi.' See, Lovejoy?'
No, I didn't see. 'You said something about duping Dieter Gluck.'
'Do the old double shift,' Auntie Vi said, rocking in her chair. 'We used it for years, until computers come in. Gaylord agrees, don't you, dear? Think Chinese.'
Chinese meant Wrinkle, as I've said.
'I've been thinking of an art gallery. Biggest profit. I'm going to visit Terence O'Shaughnessy.' Tel O'Shaughnessy is a crook at the best of times. I said this.
'Aren't we all, Lovejoy?'
'But we're the good ones.'
'Dismas and Gestas, on Calvary, were both antique dealers, son. It's a fact.' She continued, 'They still got crucified with Christ. The steal of approval!'
She cackled, rocked. Homilies make me sick. I got up to leave but Gaylord shoved me down and poured me some liqueur he brews from oranges.
'Saunty sent these folders over.'
Eagerly I grabbed them from him, riffled through. There were basically four ideas, all of them terrific, almost foolproof. The question was, would any of them do? I wanted the manor back for Mortimer, and Arthur's lands including his mulberry tree.
'You need a tame Yank, Lovejoy. Gluck'll bite like a pike in a pool.'
'Where'll I get a Yank?' I said bitterly. 'He'd have to be able to act. And be trustworthy.
Maybe I simply ought to pay some Leeds tankers two grand to top Gluck. Then Mortimer's friends could club together for lawyers to sort the manor out for the lad.'
After all, Gluck had the plod on his side. I'd already been warned off by Saintly. I said tarra, swigged the hooch and made to leave.
'Good luck,' they both called.
I stepped into rain-soaked London. Outside, the crowd was diminishing. I heard Gaylord say something after me but took no notice. Where now? Well, Billia and Dang hadn't done me any harm. I dithered, but finally started west. Cleat had said 'the churchyard'.
In London this means St Paul's until specified as somewhere else.
For some reason I felt odd, looked about but saw nobody I knew. I can't stand those horrible new cobbly underfoots along London Wall, so instead walked along Leadenhall and Cornhill, emerging near the Mansion House. Normally I'd have gone nearer the River Thames - it's only a step -so I could pass the Monument, but today didn't feel like it. Everything's nostalgia in London. The fact you weren't alive when things happened centuries agone doesn't matter. Feelings get your bones. I resisted the little antiques painting shop near Bread Street and went straight ahead towards Ludgate Hill.
More temptation, because only a little way west you walk into Dr Johnson's very own house, and can sit in his very own triangular chair. Some tourists were still about, the traffic dense as ever. Even in drizzle folk were sitting on the cathedral steps. I looked.
No sign of Dang - though there wouldn't be, would there, if he was hiding. I went round the great building, thinking of the young Dr Christopher Wren, who turned his hand to architecture because his new idea called blood transfusion was too cranky - oh, sorry, I mentioned that some time since. I wondered whether to go in.
Ghosts, though. They're here in London. They're also there, and among hurrying crowds. They stand looking at you across the road. I honestly believe that our old places somehow invoke them, call them back. Yet nearby folk were playing a kind of netball. Office people were ambling, noshing butties, drinking tins of fizz. The trouble is, we know the ghosts. Here in St Paul's churchyard she's the notorious She Wolf. Actually not canine but definitely lupine and female to degree. It was the Londoners' nickname for Queen Isabella, French spouse of our Edward II. She was a leading sinner. So bad, indeed, that her Gallic team made sure that she was buried in a grey habit nicked from the Christchurch Greyfriars. A careful lot, their idea was to trick heaven's
