'Good heavens,' I said. 'Leave it to me.'
Using the emergency number, I phoned East Anglia's finest, who told me to sod off – it was our Eastern Hundreds Crime Squad's snooker finals, when crime doesn't get a look in. So I phoned Bright Hawk Star Insurance from a phone box.
To Timothy – our first encounter – I explained. 'Two robbers knocked on her door and simply grabbed the brooch.'
I swore it was a genuine Edwardian bow-and-swag design (meaning all fragile loops and things) with lots of miniature rose-cut diamonds.
'Relatively cheap, really. It could have been frightfully valuable.' I kept cool. 'Typical early twentieth century. Incidentally,' and I lowered my voice, 'I happen to know she hasn't got long to live.'
To help, I described the imaginary brooch. Tip: Edwardian jewellery always looks slender, with lacy or bow- and-swag shape. Jewellers back then loved lots of small gemstones instead of one great rock. Remember that the style isn't the bonny later diamond cut. 'I recall it particularly because it was my great granny's.'
'No,' the old lady put in helpfully. 'It was my father's side ...' I hissed to silence the old crab.
Timothy started his insurer's resistance. I slipped in the casual threat that I was a by-liner for The Times. Mr Giverill promised a settlement cheque on receipt of a statement.
I posted one off. The following month, learning who I was, he tried to get me arrested.
I eeled out by threats of wrong publicity. Luckily, his Florence thought what I'd done was sweet. The old lady's still doing her hairdressing. That was how I encountered the Giverills.
You get the point? My rescue of the old lady was fair. Timothy Giverill saw it as doing down Ordered Society, though much later he asked for advice about an antique swing-topped table Florence wanted to sell.
What were they doing here, fish out of water? I wandered among the cars and motorbikes as Sandy's performance reached a tuneless crescendo. Lot of costly motors.
Plush leather, wooden dashboards, a couple with chauffeurs who frostily wound the windows up when I approached. No limos of the sort I'd seen at the Martello tower, and none with diplomatic plates.
Funny expression Timothy had used. What was it, Who'd have thought my world would crash this way? There was another: the Christie-Sotheby business. Had he really said that? Timothy had never done anything else except insurance, and they're all zombified.
You never meet a happy one, like farmers. And his gripe, Insurance seemed so safe.
They make money out of everything, don't they?
'Time they ended, eh?' I said to one limo driver.
'Two more hours. It'll be sodding dark.'
He spoke in disgust. I thought, hell fire. I had to meet Quaker's Maud for a genteel snog, perhaps, or a heartrending tears-and-jam butty out in the sticks. Holy people, Henrietta for instance, think my attitude's reprehensible. But holiness doesn't know that life is basically any port in a storm, and being without a woman is a truly terrible storm.
What can you do? I'd been deprived since Olive's feats in her motor. I thought, aha.
A quick search of the adjacent tennis courts and I found a frayed ball in the undergrowth. I borrowed a penknife from a driver, and slit the ball into hemispheres.
'My girlfriend's car,' I explained to his knowing grin.
Olive Makin's motor I knew well. I shoved the half ball flat over the lock, driver's side, and let it resume its shape. Couple of goes, the lock sprung. I got in and lay down to kip on the rear seat. I thought of switching the radio on but that would have meant scraping the wires. I wanted at least one week without a split nail.
Sleep came easily.
21
EVERYBODY WAKES DIFFERENTLY, don't they.
There was somebody talking, somebody whose scent was familiar answering back. Was it a row? I was back hearing my parents rowing. I was five, and she was going to be absent when my brother and I returned from school that night, though I didn't yet know it. That wasn't right, though, because she wasn't screaming hate. And the man wasn't Dad, who never raised his voice but just took what was coming.
When dreams go wrong, slip back into the doze and maybe when you start again things will all come right. It's what I used to do when I was little, so I tried.
Male said in tones of iron, 'You've got any alternative, Olive dear?'
'No, Mel.'
'Then what are you saying? That you've discovered oil under your pseudo-Mediterranean patio? Or a hundred new Names clamouring to come aboard?'
Silence, then sounds of a backhander. Olive yelped. A fleck of spittle fell cold on my closed eyelid. The motor rocked. Mel and Olive in the motor with me, but doing more than bickering. It had all the sounds of a lover's tiff.
That couldn't be right, my sluggish brain went, because Mel and Sandy are ... And Olive and me had been ... Suddenly I didn't want to hear this. I wanted sleep back.
'You'll be witness, dear.' Mel at his most vicious. 'They'll start home the minute Sandy waves them off, capeesh?'
Silence. A sudden bounce in the motor's suspension, and Olive whimpered. Mel swung at her, three savage
