'Famous museums throughout Africa are forced to display replicas of their own stuff.'
The shandy came. I gulped it with what I hoped was decent slowness. La Deighnson ordered me another, adding her lemonade-in-first speech. 'It's unstoppable.'
Susanne Eggers was inspecting my jacket. I'd dropped it as I'd sat, casual man of the world that I was. She paled.
'Is that blood?'
'An accident at the fireworks.' They relaxed. 'You were saying, sir?'
'The US is against exploitation of Third World heritage.' He looked about for possible voters and placed his own drink carefully on the table. A portentous speech was coming on. 'We have a constant, definite, and determined policy of international cooperation ...'
and so on.
Petra Deighnson was a Name in Lloyd's. Nothing illegal there. I already knew that Susanne Eggers was the consul's former missus. They were still together. That too was allowed. Also, politicians transgress in ways that only Sun Kings and medieval popes were once able to. They also got away with murder.
Consul Sommon, a giant Name, had insurer's debts that were darkening his sky. Party politics deplore poverty. The only way for a man with political ambition was to get money. How lucky, I thought as his rhetoric bumbled on, that his position as an eminent diplomat provided him with the means to extort wealth. Contacts in embassies, favours for diplomats, his illicit antiques would bring a fortune. And it would be the very best sort of money, the untraceable sort.
Through the fenestrated wooden screen that shielded us from the hoi polloi I saw the head waitress at her podium. She'd made some sort of error and was laughing. A young waitress was laughing too, hand to her mouth in mock alarm, pointing to the ledger. I thought she looked a bit familiar, but not so you'd remember where you'd seen her last.
I suddenly decided on a wrong tack.
'Is Mr Verner a friend of yours, Mr Sommon?' The consul looked at Susanne. 'Yes. A business associate.'
I didn't really want to bring it up until the last person came in. It wouldn't be the brigadier. With his sabre or without.
'Only, I don't want any trouble.' I tried to look on edge.
He thumped me playfully.
'You're aboard with us now, Lovejoy. You've achieved your life's ambition! Being paid for what you like doing! There'll be no trouble from police, Lovejoy.'
Susanne was still unhappy about my jacket. Her unease had communicated itself to Petra Deighnson. I saw the latter look at my shoes. I'd rubbed the grubbier one on the back of my calf, like children do. I didn't glance down. Did it show blood?
'Have you cut yourself?' she asked.
'Somebody fell. I tried to help.' I'd wriggled to put Maud between me and a murderous maniac. Ever the hero.
'Did the antiques show go well, incidentally? I went out for a breath of fresh air while it was on. Too hot.'
'Yes.' Susanne described how well it had been received. 'They were all so good.'
She meant her actors were convincing enough to deceive the ignorant, and protect this ex-husband of hers.
'Anyhow, I'd already seen the show.' I said it like a gag, the last one-liner, smiling.
Mr Sommon hooted, choked. I had to bang his back. 'Your orders, sir?' Clear things up.
He opened his hands displaying largesse, the world his to be handed out to the deserving.
'I want three shipments a month to begin with, Lovejoy.'
'That many?' I stared, working it out. The man was off his trolley. 'Container loads?
Four or five thousand antiques a month?'
'So?' His beaming smile faded. 'Jeez, Lovejoy. You're a freaking divvy. You've only got to say whether the antiques are genuine or not. Christ. You don't have to work.' He became mottled at the thought of idle bums who didn't slog ergs to achieve the dream.
'You've only to sit down and look.'
He had no idea. Only a divvy knows how sick you feel, the utter malaise. One divvying session ruins you for days. The headaches, the eerie disorientation. It drains. I once divvied a shipment in two days, several hundred pieces of antique furniture, for a French shipper. I'd taken it on soon after their one and only French divvy died. I didn't recover for a fortnight. He was old, lived in Brittany. Nice chap, very quiet. Normal people haven't a notion.
Thinking of how poorly I'd been that time brought my headache on. My temple thumped tribal paradiddles.
'How many, then?' Petra Deighnson, straight to the gelt.
'One container load in three weeks, for me to stay sane.'
'One? That's less than a thousand!'
'Keep your voice down, darling,' Susanne said.
She reached but her hand didn't make it. He drew away, eyes challenging me to mortal combat. Me, his only salvation, note, for the ghastly financial mess his greed enticed him into.
'Christ! Susanne's actors only needed ten minutes!'
