rarity is cast actually like a lion, its bottom towards the bobbin.) You can't miss it, yet folk still chuck them out. I heard of one old lady who actually paid a dealer to take hers away.
Dandy Jack, down the Arcade.
'Good day, Lovejoy.'
'Wotcher, Marjorie. Trade good?'
'Slow, Lovejoy.' She appraised me in silence as cars arrived. A bloke hefted out a bundle of hedge cuttings. She smiled at him as he drove off, her investment in an unknowable future. 'It's time you and Alanna got back together, Lovejoy. She's at Eastern Hundreds TV down Pelhams Lane.'
'Chance'd be a fine thing, Marjorie.'
'For somebody who reckons he's clever you're stupid, Lovejoy. Tell her you were only trying to make her jealous.'
I tried to work out what she was on about. Women, lacking any legal or social accountability, are basically greed machines fuelled by whim, yet they do have a certain para-logic that occasionally works, though you can't use it yourself without a detailed instruction manual.
After a few minutes I asked, 'Jealous of what?'
'She was seeing a Cambridgeshire bobby. I didn't approve, Lovejoy.'
'Alanna was?' I seethed with indignation. 'Seeing somebody else? The rotten two-timing bitch.'
'You were sleeping with her mother, Lovejoy,' Marjorie said. That old reason trick again.
It shows how underhand women can be.
'I'll try,' I said, giving in after sulking a bit. I badly needed Alanna's help. 'Ta, Marjorie.'
'Here.' She passed me a note. 'Have something to eat, for God's sake. And don't be such a bloody fool. I won't bite if you call in.'
Accepting a loan on a rubbish dump doesn't seem quite so humiliating as anywhere else, does it? I trudged off, leaving the stylish Marjorie standing there, queen of her domain.
The shoddy Eastern Hundreds TV studios are in a side street near Trinity Square. I waited in the anteroom among tatty magazines and soiled plastic cups. Occasional girls and bearded wonders strolled in, went through by tapping in some code on a panel.
They looked hung over, arrivals from a shop-soiled protest march. I said hello to one or two and was ignored. They were marauders acting out a corporate conspiracy against TV viewers. Some called out vigorous greetings into the squawk box, of the tally-ho sort that foxes know so well. My Auntie Agnes wouldn't have let any of them across her threshold. She'd have given them all a good scrubbing.
Alanna angrily emerged after an hour. She must have seen me on the closed circuit and finally lost patience.
'What do you want?'
Nobody about, nobody to overhear.
I blurted, 'Whyn't you tell me Vestry was murdered, Alanna?' And thought, what did I just say? I stared, aghast at my exhumed suspicion, gaping inwardly as much as out at her radiant gold hair, because she recoiled in shock, eyes wide.
Quickly she glanced about, closed the panel behind her. She slowly sat. I tried to adjust, get things back to normal.
'This place always pongs of armpit.' I didn't manage a smile, just worked those levator muscles without reassurance. It was a wonder she didn't run.
'Why didn't I what, Lovejoy?'
People in broadcasting are of two sorts. One is the wireball, as they call those blokes who trail flexes and wear earphones to shut the world out. The other is the scripwit, some nerk who sits before the camera's red eye, tries to sound original and look as if they're not being screamed at down headphones by some frantic producer exasperated at their stupidity. There's no other sort. Alanna was a scripwit, couldn't speak to camera without the idiot board. The only thing gets her going unprompted is finding some penniless git in bed with her mum, but whose fault was that? Marjorie had nicked my antique cased fan, after all.
'Vestry. Remember him?' In for a penny. 'You guessed there was something wrong, didn't you?'
She occasionally does work – I use the term loosely –for the News Come Nine team.
She harbours hopes of becoming a national TV figure, like miracles happen. By instinct I went for her ambition's jugular.
'I knew it,' I said with bitterness. 'You were too smart to be taken in.' Soulfully I raised my eyes. 'I had suspicions all along, but thought I was the only one to realize it must have been murder.'
'Murder!' she breathed, the light of promotion in her eyes.
'Just as you suspected, Alanna,' I repeated, narked that she wasn't moving as fast as I hoped. 'You were clever, keeping your suspicions to yourself. Why didn't you tell me?'
'Well, I, ahm, you see—'
'I know, Alanna.' I turned aside, irritated that I couldn't see her reflection in some handy mirror, see how I was doing. I tried for a hurt kind of anger, the sort of thing women themselves act so brilliantly, but couldn't quite make it. Instead, I tried words, always a poor third to silence and passion. 'I know why. It was because you'd sussed me out, wasn't it?'
'Was it?' she said, quite lost.
Give me strength, I thought in temper. Do I have to do all the blinking work? I waxed lyrical to egg her on.
'Of course.' I uttered it coldly, deeply hurt by forsaken love. 'You always did see straight through me, Alanna.
