Callaghan got me to swap some padpas - you know them odd-coloured sapphires? - for cheap tsavorites.'
Acting time. I did a theatrical gape, almost choked myself on goulash. 'It was you, Sturffie?'
'Dosh simply wanted a reason to send you to the Smoke, Lovejoy. He insisted on that Moiya tart pretending she was Sir Ponsonby's bird. I heard them laughing about it in the pub.'
'Why, Sturffie?' I'd have been a star if I'd gone on the stage. I'm really good.
'Dunno. They had a brief along, some tart with long hair.'
'Really?' I said, acting baffled. 'Ta, Sturffie. I don't feel so bad now I know.'
'You're okay about it, Lovejoy?' he asked, worried. 'I don't know why Dosh wanted you sniffing round the London street markets, though.'
'Forget it. Life's just one big mystery. Look, Sturffie, about tonight. Will it be you, or some mate?'
'Me,' he said, indignant. 'Unless it's something special?'
Remembering what I could, I described Hymie's security.
'It'll only take me twenty minutes, Lovejoy. Is it far?'
'No. Ten o'clock tonight okay?' Pub time is vital, this being when alibis grow on trees.
After that, we started general talk over deals done and not done, the antique lore that makes life worth living. The one worry still nagging away was whether Dieter Gluck knew Sturffie. I calmed, laughing at Sturffie's tales.
An hour later I waved him off, having given him a gillion warnings about his caqueteuse chair, what to say, how to offer it for sale. Then I phoned Dieter Gluck on his mobile.
'It's tonight,' I said without preamble. 'I'll show you the stuff. You'll need an antiques expert with you.'
'Where? I'll drive there. In my saloon.'
'Be by your mobile phone at nine. It's London local.' I rang off without waiting. He'd be there. 33
NOBODY WANTS WORRY. Even if there's no such things as spectres, memories create them where none existed. Since I'd never been sure where imagination begins and memory ends, I'm always half in, half out, of incipient fright.
Tonight I unnerved myself for nothing. I mean, Spitalfields on an average London night is hardly a spooky nook. I waited on edge, wondering what I'd missed. Gluck on his way, fine. Hymie I'd phoned earlier, told him of three Japanese radio and gramophone buyers, eager to collect Columbia Grafanola machines and early Edison Amerolas, waiting, money in hand, in one of four Kensington hotels. I'd looked these names up in the public library, Charing Cross Road. 'They'll be there between nine and ten tonight,' I told him. 'Take a credit-card witness.' Whatever that was. I wanted to make sure Honor was with him. Breathless, Hymie asked me to spell the names. I rang off. Spell Japanese names? People nark me. Tell a penny lie, they want linguistics.
I'd told Gluck to be at Aldgate in a taxi. Had I forgotten anything? No.
Yet I was jumpy. Like I'd reminisced before, this area was Jack the Ripper's haunt. A thousand enthusiasts have written definitive volumes on the killer who'd called himself
'Saucy Jack'. Books prove this or that, everybody a suspect. Sometimes it seems there's nobody left in Old London who hasn't been accused of being him. Only I know the really real solution: Jack the Ripper was a mortician worker at The London Hospital, down the road from here. Somebody touched my shoulder. I screeched and leapt a mile.
'Christ!' I was bathed in sweat, feeling like a rag.
'What's up?' Sturffie stared at me in the gloaming. 'Gawd, Lovejoy, you're in a frigging state. You should see a doctor.'
'I'm fine, Sturffie. Just thinking.'
Theft by breaking and entering is one of the only two enterprises you should do in silence. I simply walked to the rear of Hymie's premises and gave Sturffie the nod. A hall light showed in the workshop corridor, a giveaway. Who stays in with only a hall light on? Nobody.
'My van's round the corner, Lovejoy.' He gave me the keys. 'It's cleaned and empty. No windows.' He meant no clues.
In less than ten minutes, he had the alarms sussed and the locks fiddled. I told him ta, to come back in an hour to set it all to rights again. He shrugged and left. I went inside, checked for the absence of Jack the Ripper, closed the back door and drove Sturffie's van through Commercial Street to Aldgate. I made absolutely certain that I didn't think of Martha Turner, dreadfully murdered and mangled by J the R - thirty slashes - as I drove past the site of George Yard Buildings. Nor did I gulp as I doglegged past Mitre Square (Catherine Beddowes, one of Saucy Jack's bloodiest, on a terrible Sunday).
It went like clockwork. I saw Gluck and two - two? -others in a saloon car waiting by the great glass emporium of the Cutler Street Silver building. I parked close, flashed my beam. Gluck and a portly gent stepped out with Moiya December, setting some lads heading down Whitechapel whistling. She looked glorious in the night lamps. 'In the back, gents,' I said. 'Not you, miss. Sorry.' Gluck tried it on, but I wasn't having him seeing where we were going. I insisted. They boarded, nervously sitting on the van floor. I locked the rear doors, and waited to see Moiya go back to the posh saloon and sit glowering. I drove off, twisting down unnecessary detours for quite twenty minutes.
Accidentally I found myself in Hanbury Street (Annie Chapman, whom J the R bizarrely laid out with brass rings and copper coins) and accelerated so quickly that Gluck and his stout gent shouted in anger. Lovejoy stayed cool, I'm pleased to report. I revved into Hymie's narrow yard, checked the gate was closed, and let them out. Gluck was furious. 'Is that your best driving?' 'Is this behaviour essential?' the gent asked. No names, no pack drill, they say. I'd already had a good look. No street names were visible from here. Okay, they'd find Hymie's place in a couple of days if they really tried, and could then talk to Hymie and Honor all they wished. Wrinkle too. By then I'd be over the hills and far away. 'Any ferreting, all deals are off, okay? Inside.' They went in.
I wouldn't let them switch on the lights. Sturffie had thoughtfully dowsed the hall lamp.
I shone a pencil torch ahead. Nothing like compulsory darkness to enforce dependence.
