Of course, you've been practical. You made sure your watercolours were dry (use your electric hairdryer) before you took it to El Superbo Antiquery Inc. And you tested the oil paint, to make certain it doesn't smell of linseed. (You can buy quick dryers if you're obsessional about it, or use various chemicals.)
Money for jam.
The reason I tell you this is so that you'll remember how easy it is to fake, forge, copy anything at all. Because if you can make multo zlotniks with no expertise at all, imagine what a master forger can do with a lifetime's skill and devotion to technique. Or a master cabinetmaker. Or a brilliant trained potter with a laboratory bulging with specialist kilns.
Remember, and beware. Message ends.
10
DEALERS SAY ANTIQUES are a matter of life and death, but they're much more serious than that. I was becoming scared. Things were going wrong yet right. Women are supposed to get this feeling more than us. Like, a woman might wonder, is this dress trustworthy, remembering that she wore green at that disastrous party last Kissing Friday? Or, should she go out with somebody called Harold, seeing that her previous Harold spoke all evening about Aramaic translations? I knew that I'd made some calamitous mistake, but what? I'd only done as I was told.
As Tina locked up the church hall after a training session with our team, I heard a miraculous sound. It was a long rasping cough. It started as a distant rumble, reverberating so the traffic noise seemed to fade, then crashed to a shuddering crescendo that stunned us. It ended with a slurping expectoration that would have turned me nauseous, except I'd heard it before.
'Tinker?' A brilliant omen.
A heap of tat draped on one of the tombs rose. Wilhelmina screeched faintly and ducked behind Larch and Jules. It spoke.
'Wotcher, mate. Sandy and Mel're looking for you. Poncey bleeders.'
Filthy, wearing a dishevelled army greatcoat clinking with soiled medals, mittens blackened by desiccated food, enough stubble on his chin to card cotton, teeth corrugated brown crags, rheumy eyes and wheezing breath, he still was my loyal ally. I pay him in whisky, London gin, rum, and – more often – promises.
'If that horror's coming with us, Lovejoy, I'm off.' cried Tina.
'Tara then, love. Come on, troops.'
'Lovejoy!' she yelped, but I was too edgy for a bird's ire to take hold. If birds were kind now and then, maybe I'd respond. As it was, I'd things to do.
'Tinker, get us transport to Saffron Fields when I send word, okay?'
Then I heard it, the most daunting sound. By the yew trees a figure stood, waving proudly. It was Sandy, dressed as a glittering angel, frosty white wings, a dazzling magenta and cerise gossamer robe, a purple handbag and a circlet of electric lights rotating round his artificial curls while some electronic trinket played Ave Maria. The ultimate prat. My heart sank, the actors with me gaping.
'Yoohoo, Lovejoy! Come and positively adore!'
'Sorry, Sandy,' I called nervously. 'We're just off.'
'I shall tell that Yank bitch of you-hoo!' Sandy shrilled in fury.
Meaning Susanne Eggers?
Resignedly we plodded over. Several photographers were saying a little more this way, tilt your head. Sandy was loving it. 'Got my starlight eyes, sweeties?' and all that. I find him squirmily embarrassing. He thinks we all admire him. In fact we often have to say so, because he's a vicious antique dealer who'll stop at nothing to avenge a slight, real or imagined. His friend is Mel, a surly dealer who's always fuming. Mel was seated on a nearby gravestone. He looked away as we approached, fuming no doubt.
'Ooooh, Lovejoy!' Sandy held up a hand to stay the photographers while he did lipstick in a mirror. 'You've started collecting tramps! How quaint!' He eyed Wilhelmina. 'And that senile cow over there – the one with the rotting hair – has stolen a shahtoosh! It's mine. Tell her it's mine. I'll pay her.' He struck a pose. 'Recommence, darlings!'
Stepping aside, I asked, 'What's this in aid of, Mel?'
'I shan't speak to him, Lovejoy.' Mel glared. 'He's launching a children's charity, Angels On Gravestones Trust. It's obscene.'
'I can see that. How'll it get funded?'
'That's it, Lovejoy. It's a con. There is no charity. He's going to use the money for buying imported antiques.'
Sandy was posing away. I noticed banners draped on two poor-quality stone angels nearby. They read GIVE GENEROUSLY TO THE SANDY AOG TRUST!, red On white. I sighed.
'Stop him, Mel.'
'Don't you think I've tried?' Mel is even less honest than the rest of us, but a glim of morality must lurk somewhere in his DNA. 'Remember the old folks' homes?'
The reminder made me wince. Sandy once invented a charity called Sandy's Antique Dealers All Giving. He and Mel conned old people out of their antiques, with the cock-and-bull tale that they would make a fortune. He got nerks to collect the antiques, of course, so he could pretend he'd been jumped by sinister dealers from France. He always blames Continentals.
'Don't listen to Mel, Lovejoy!' Sandy carolled, arms aloft in dramatic pose. 'He's positively glowering because I might have met a Greek locksmith.'
'Oh, am I?' Mel barked, rising in fury. 'Well, Lovejoy, you just tell that absolute trollop that I have other things to do than sulk—' et cetera.
'Come on, people,' I said to my actors. I was too tired to play go-between for this exotic pair. God knows I try
