Lovejoy.'
'Then I'll be in the clear?'
He grinned. 'I wouldn't go quite that far, Lovejoy.'
And he walked, as in one foot before the other, out of my overgrown garden. I'd always known he was fit, if loony, yet it was truly weird to see this normal man in full possession.
'Ready?'
Taylor Eggers poked his head into the workshop. His eyes met mine. Sardonic again. I'd been right. A cuckolded husband always smarts, even at the point of vengeance.
So I drove with Tinker, very grand in Taylor's big black limo, to Ferdinand and Norma's splendid antiques farm.
My barker thought he'd gone to heaven because the motor had a minibar. He finished the spirits as we arrived. The ale he stuffed into his greatcoat pockets. Even then he was worried.
'Here, Lovejoy,' he said as Norma advanced smiling and Ferd dithered on his veranda.
'Don't get narked, son, but what if we get thirsty on the way back?'
The goods were bads. Most of the truly genuine antiques seemed to have gone.
Doubtless Lanny Langley-Willes and his friends, or maybe Consul Sommon, had taken some in personal diplomatic baggage. Civil servants are always above the laws they make for the rest of us.
'Lovejoy!' Norma was more welcoming now. 'How lovely to see you!'
'Good to see old friends!' Ferd exclaimed, clapping his hands for his maids-of-all to bring victuals for his lifelong pals here. It was all so false.
'I've not long, Ferd. Aren't you due to ship the antiques?'
'Stansted,' he said, nodding. 'A godsend, that airport. So near.'
And yet so far, I silently finished for him.
'Let's get on, then.' I declined the frosted glass with the white wine, and went into the main stores.
A few dealers were drifting among the items. Some of the furniture felt good, and the cabinets of jewellery and small porcelains emitted really convincing chimes. I hardened my heart and went through into the cool, darkened room. Norma ushered me in, placing a stool. I asked for the air conditioning to be turned off. It always gets on my nerves. I also told Ferd to keep out, just let somebody bring each antique then clear off.
Norma wanted to do it. Ferd and Tinker went to talk over old times, Tinker ready to help the girls by imbibing whatever alcohol they might supply.
'Now,' I told Norma. I was already whacked, or does that mean killed in Americese? I mean tired.
She started with a box of tribal crowns. These look absolutely home-made, almost from some infant school's dressing-up day. Gaudily coloured, supposedly a bird surmounting a tribal Yoruba crown on stalky legs. There were eleven. Genuine, looking like odd toys.
Yet archaeologists would bite the consul's hand off to get them.
And bite the consul's head off, if they paid for genuine antiques and got fakes.
'Genuine,' I said. 'Yes, genuine. Genuine,' the chimes making me shudder so much I almost slumped from the chair.
Then tribal carvings. Three stools, unbelievable, for they were thrones.
'Genuine, genuine.'
It was so consistent I began to wonder if Consul Sommon was having me on. Or was the entire shipment authentic? One or two had museum stamps on, Lagos, Accra and others. One or two came from. Kenya, Uganda, ancient Benin.
'Keep those faces and busts back, Florence.'
'Right, Lovejoy.'
She spoke with reverence, knowing she was in the presence of mysticism. On I went.
She had a girl haul the old wrappings away, made swift notes of my judgements.
'This is the last,' she said after what must have been about an hour. I felt concussed.
'Just the seven heads and the bronzes.'
'How many?'
'Eleven in all.'
The statuettes from Nok-Jos and other villages on the Jos Plateau were formidably old, maybe nineteen centuries. The Benin bronzes were practically mint, after all these hundreds of years. I hate the small drilled holes along the chin. It's where, I think, they must have tied some dress garments to make the bronze heads more awe- inspiring back in those superstitious days.
This was the moment I'd come for.
The question is, what do you do when a killer is going to get away scotage free? I had, have, no right to execute. Death penalties are wrong. Everybody knows that. Yet raping whole countries, entire civilizations, mocks honesty. It's like mocking infants. It generates war.
Consul Sommon would return home – it would be the second flight from Stansted, his crates in the plane's hold. There in New York money would pour in, diplomats being beyond law.
But if the dealers paid him fortunes and subsequently discovered they were fake, what then? He'd be ruined.
