'Take Dang, Tinker. I'll go over the details with Billia.'
'Right, Lovejoy. Come on, mate.'
Dang left, looking back. The juggler bowed to applause, was replaced by a robot dancer. His pretty girl went round with her hat for nobbins. The crowd instantly thinned, stingy as all crowds at free street shows.
'Now, love,' I said quietly. 'Here's what. Ten o'clock tonight you and Dang walk down College Road, Dulwich. The art gallery's well signposted.'
And so on. I made her repeat the plan over and over. Count the windows, sketch the exits. Look for burglar alarms. She asked pertinent questions until she started to get on my nerves and I had to speak sharply. I mean, it isn't as though you can trust a woman, is it? Ten minutes, I chucked some coins into the robot dancer's cap, and told Billia to tell Tinker I'd changed my mind and gone instead to find Sturffie in Bermondsey. I made her repeat that, too. If she and Dang didn't get arrested tonight it wouldn't be for want of trying. No harm in making sure when you want friends to get something really wrong.
I like plenty of people. I've already said how my Gran warned me against pretty women
- 'A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair'. Well, aye, but take Billia. Truly bonny, for all her daftness about Dang. And you couldn't beat Lydia (no pun) because despite her primness she was everything a bloke could crave. I've only to walk her into the Antiques Arcade for the lads to set up a communal groan that really narks Giselle who runs the coffee stall. Likeability works with blokes, too, but different. Like, Tinker's a mate. He'd go to gaol for me (he has) and I for him (I haven't; pressure of time). And I've already said how I owe Sturffie, who saved me from a mangling. You just have to like folk.
Sturffie I eventually found sorting through some stuff outside the antiques place, top of Bond Street. His van's distinctive when it's his. At other times, Sturffie changes its signs, logos, and colour so often you're never sure. Without a word I climbed into the van and started helping. He seemed pleased to see me.
'Lovejoy! Tell me if any of this is genuine.'
'It's all dross, except one piece. On your own?' A policeman put his head in and told Sturffie he'd got ten minutes to move on.
'Right, mate. Ta.' Sturffie stared at his wares. 'Which is it?'
'That.' An ordinary chair, looking like some suburbanite's idea of an imitation throne. I couldn't help smiling. Like meeting an old friend unexpectedly.
'You sure?' He stepped over to it, curious. 'Isn't it chipboard? It's still got the bar code on it. I only took this off the dealer's hands to make up a price.'
'It's so square it has to be wrong, Sturffie. Look at it.' Some DIY enthusiast had tried to make a wooden upright armchair. The back had three panels, the middle one slender, knobbly and darkly overpainted. The two lateral panels were modern chipboard. The seat was all wood, too, but its dark triangular centre had been squared off by the addition of chipboard edges. I looked below. The original back stretcher had been sawn off and replaced by a modern broom handle. The whole chair had then been varnished nearly black. It was an execution. The antiques trade is a vale of tears littered with murder. Is it any wonder I hate people?
'You all right, Lovejoy? Sit yerself, mate.' I slumped on a chest optimistically marked
'Early Georgian'. I felt the familiar strangeness.
'It is chipboard, Sturffie, but built onto a caqueteuse.' When I try to talk a French word, it comes out a mockery. Unintentional. We all do it. Like most dealers, I can only say cack-tooze, rhyme with hack-booze.
'I thought cacktoozes were Scotch, Lovejoy.' No wonder Sturffie was mystified. He'd bought a chipboard modern 'filler', as dealers call worthless pieces bought for the sake of bodying out their wares, and seen me, the only true divvy he'd ever known, go queer over it. In the sixteenth century, Scotland started copying French styles of chair. The caqueteuse is called from a French word meaning, they say, to chatter. Triangular seat, narrow panelled back, widening arms, it's made for ladies to sit and gossip. Somebody had tried to improve a truly antique chair, pre-dating the Armada, by nailing pieces of chipboard onto it. It was just lucky the maniac hadn't had enough carpentry skill to improve it to extinction. I shivered at the thought, my teeth rattling like dead bones.
'Here, Lovejoy. Come and have a cuppa.'
He fastened the van. We got in and drove out and along Piccadilly, round Trafalgar Square and managed to stop in Charing Cross Road. Sturffie put a note saying Urgent Medical Deliveries in his window, and we walked to St Martin-in-the-Fields, the one place we'd not be snooped on. We got some nosh in their crypt caff, the one that has art exhibitions done by talented prisoners.
'How much?' Sturffie asked. 'Thousand? Two?'
'Sell it as it is,' I said, wincing at the thought of Sturffie getting out an electric sander to start a crazy restoration. 'The Society of Antiquaries has one chair, but English, 1585.
Don't trade it for less than a house.' He gaped. I nodded, let him pay for the grub. Why do they always have African students serving in these places nowadays? 'Do me a favour, Sturffie?'
'You want commission?' he asked, shrewd.
'No, mate. I want a door opened, and alarms switched off.'
'Christ, Lovejoy,' he said, frowning. 'That's impossible.' His face broke in a cracking grin.
'My joke. Who're we robbing?'
'Nobody,' I said. 'Open a door for me some time tonight, just so I can walk round for ten minutes.'
He was even more mystified. 'Easiest fortune I've ever made! You're a real pal, Lovejoy.' For a second he looked crestfallen. 'Listen, mate. I've something to tell you.'
'What, Sturffie?' I asked, innocently, knowing.
'It's about some gemstones. Padpas. You come asking in Bermondsey.'
'Aye. Dosh Callaghan's paying me to—'
'It were me, mate.' He looked so sad I felt sorry for him. I didn't interrupt. Confession's good for the soul. 'Dosh
