next year wins everybody else's antiques?
You see the risk? It's not only that you might buy, say, a Chippendale chair that turns out to be worthless. The real risk is that you might buy with consistent brilliance, store up a magnificent stock of lovely antiques, and then lose out on the New Year's Eve valuation. You can fiddle a bit, but that's difficult because usually these panels can inspect each other's purchases as they go through the year. Tex's panel won two years running, with my help. I resigned because I got fed up. He tried bribing me, but I wanted a change. I hadn't seen him for a full year.
By the time he'd finished his grunting and hurling in the ring, I was outside reading in the caff. He joined me.
'Still a creature of habit, eh?' I said. He always has a bite after a bout.
'Let me, Lovejoy.' He paid for my nosh. I nodded ta. Never refuse a free calorie. 'Glad you came, actually. We've had an offer from two experts.'
'To help your panel?'
'Yes. A couple, Horse and FeelFree. They brought us some convincing testimonials.'
'Don't, Tex.' I looked for the tomato sauce but two all-in wrestlers on a neighbouring table had snaffled it so I smiled weakly and did without. 'They'll default. I've just saved you a fortune. Stick with Albina.' The publican's wife I told you about.
'We need expertise, Lovejoy.' He frowned. 'I think we're going to miss out this year.
I've heard our opposition are doing superb buying. Got massive funds from somewhere, more than we could ever match.'
Tex's panel is a miscellaneous lot. There's a teacher, a road builder, two botanists trying to reforest Wiltshire, a doctor, a lady who breeds cats and is in love with a zookeeper. Antiques makes friends of all.
'Maybe I could help, Tex.' I went for gold. 'How about robbery?'
He looked his astonishment. 'I've never done anything like that.'
'No, Tex.' Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head on a brick wall. 'You needn't do it, see? I'll do it. You just add the antiques to your stash in the pub cellar, okay?'
'Will anybody know?'
'No,' I said brokenly to Dan Dare. 'That's the idea of robbery.'
'Are they all genuine?'
Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. I sighed. 'They're mixed. Like,' I said sharply, 'the assortment you usually buy.'
'Okay,' he said doubtfully, this great hulk of a bloke who routinely lobbed opponents hither and yon. 'If you're sure it'll be all right.'
'Just let Albina know they're coming.'
That was that. I left Reckless Ralph to his plate of egg and chips and drove to meet Alicia and Peshy. I'm sick of rescuing people. Except sometimes I don't manage to rescue some people at all.
The hospital told me Florence Giverill was up and able to walk haltingly with some sort of frame. I said fine.
Almost in a state of exaltation, we ran the sweep day after day. It became a marathon.
We switched from Ross-on-Wye (where Alicia did magnificently, stealing Victorian jewellery) to Stourbridge (cameos, Chelsea enamels), then Stratford-upon-Avon (miniature paintings, antique gloves) to Birmingham (gems, mother-of-pearl) and back across the country to Sheffield and up to Leeds. Me and Alicia became quite a staid couple. Even the wolfhound didn't seem to mind my calling him Wolfhound any more.
We started to run out of money because of the hotels, so I had to sell one or two antiques that Alicia and Peshy nicked (sorry, shouldered).
The trouble was, we were not alone. Every morning, under the door there was that cream envelope with the round sloping handwriting of Mrs Thomasina Quayle. And the tone of her brief messages became at first tart ('Lovejoy, this will have to stop ...'), then finally resigned ('Very well, Lovejoy. However, you must take the consequences
...').
The news from the hospital about Florence became even better, though more difficult to obtain. I ran out of relatives to pretend to be – quavery father, sad uncle, boozy brother – and finished up relying on Alicia to do the daily phone calls. Florence had made it to Rehabilitation by the time I reckoned we'd got enough antiques. I told Alicia we were done.
'Done?' She looked stricken, then composed herself. 'As in ended?'
'That's right, love. We send off the loot, then it's home time. We've made the Wanted pages, in the Antiques Trade Gazette!.
She looked truly downcast. Even Peshy seemed a mite saddened. I could see why, because after every theft I used to give him a special treat. They were little bone-shaped things that made him pong like a stoat. He loved them.
Actually, I got queasy when Alicia tried showing me in the pet shop where to buy them, so she had to bring the treats in for me. I always made a fuss of the little sod even, in fact, when he hadn't nicked anything special at all. Once, he only fetched a shoelace, a particularly lean day, but I called him a hero and gave him two of the little stinking bone-things. He went into raptures.
Next morning, after a particularly hectic night of farewells, I lifted the envelope from the mat and pocketed it as usual without letting Alicia see. After breakfast, I told her to meet Tex at his wrestling show in Lincoln.
'Introduce yourself, love,' I said. 'Stick with him all evening, even after he leaves the tournament. He'll need an alibi until midnight, okay?'
