A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair

19

FOR THE LIFE of me I couldn't remember what Sorbo had told me about his dealings with Gluck. Was it how Sorbo had been done out of his mother's ambers and intaglios, that had set me off thinking about Thomas Jenkins and the Great Castellani? Something about Sorbo not being paid for 'the half he'd delivered, slaved for nigh on a year'.

Tired as I was, shoulder hurting from not killing birds, I got the connecting train from Sudbury. I was worried about Sorbo. Something I should have said, done, thought of, rankled. So I fled the darkening countryside and hours later I arrived in London's bright lights, caught the 133 bus. I was sweating, nauseous, not hungry. Bad signs.

The trouble with London is it can look stuporous yet be in a ferment. Tranquil surface, seething below. Streatham Hill in the lamp hours is streets with trees, closed shops, a few restaurants still at it, the train station kiosk just closing. I hurried. Sorbo doesn't believe in phones.

As I puffed up the quiet avenue, I tried to talk myself out of fear. I get into these horrors, telling myself I should have done this or that. Usually it's silly imagination. My Gran used to tell me, 'Always have clean on underneath, in case you get run over.' As if it would prevent accidents, placate some God of the Unclean. Imagination is dafter than motive.

The house looked the same in the gloaming. I halted, wheezing. Steps, a faint light through the vestibule. I almost fell over the dustbin, knocked. Silence.

And felt for the bell. I tried the handle, shouted 'Sorbo!' through the letterbox flap.

More silence. I could see the light in his room.

Til try the back, Sorbo!' I shouted, then stumbled my way round the side. A group of people went laughing up the road. I was unseen, the tall London plane trees dappling the street lighting.

These houses were built for manufacturers drawn into late Victorian London. They always seem taller than they need be. It's because they have cellars, a basement where housemaids lived. I proved this by falling down the cellar steps and hurting my good shoulder. Lovejoy, cat burglar to the gentry.

The cellar door was barred. Wearily I climbed up into the indefinable garden, couldn't see a damned thing. Brambles caught my face. I hunched against them, felt along the house wall. Duck down, you can see silhouettes against sky glow. I made the back steps. That door was also locked. Maddening to see the faint light inside. I did my knock, shouted who I was. Nil.

It's then that my anxiety began to fade. I'm weak as water. I sat on the steps and talked myself out of worrying. I'd dashed to London to make sure Sorbo was safe, enroll him into my anti-Gluck platoon, and found the house quiet. Sorbo was probably boozing in some local pub. I'd wasted all that anxiety. Why wasn't he on the phone like everybody else except me? Sorbo'd thoughtlessly got me frantic for nothing.

Nothing for it, but to resume where I'd left off, visit the carder man. A carder is a land of private clerk who keeps records of antiques sales, thefts, transactions, rumours, anything and everything to do with antiques. For instance, you'd go to the carder man to buy from him details of major mother-of-pearl Edwardian brooches recently sold, stolen, in museums, plus the addresses and charges of the best fakers and forgers of mother-of-pearl antiques. You pay for his 'card' on the subject, hence the name.

Nowadays it's computers, but he's still called a carder man.

Sighing, I rose. Maybe with luck I could get Saunty to put me up. It was getting late. I felt my way down the steps, and fell over something bulky. I went headlong. I swore, scuffed my hand on the ground, damned near broke a bone. Just what I needed.

Getting upright, I touched it, this obstacle. I put my hand on a face.

For a second I actually felt about. Stubble, a nose, an eyeball half covered. I withdrew, the penny still not dropping. Then I screamed, didn't scream, stifled my noise, recoiled falling over some chance thing, a brick maybe, hands to my face in horror gasping and going 'Oooh, oooh,' and holding my hands away in the black night because they'd actually felt somebody's dead face and it was horror and my hands were sticky.

I ran. It didn't have the decency to rain so I could get clean. I dashed blindly out, making a hell of a clatter as I ran slap into the dustbin and brought myself down, slamming my cheek bone against the wall, reeling towards the avenue. I heard my throat moaning but couldn't stop. I was violently sick near Sorbo's front wall. It saved me. I had the sense to stay huddled down shivering and retching while a crowd of late-nighters walked by yelling football threats to another group across the road. A trannie blared pop music from a passing car. A bus trundled past twisting shadows. I wanted to throw my hands away.

Sorbo. I wished I'd got Lydia. She'd have a flashlight and know what to do. She'd go back and inspect the corpse, make sure. Typical of her, selfish cow, never in the right place. What if it wasn't dead, though? I should be helping it, stopping arteries, doing that respiration stuff I didn't know how to do. Maybe it wasn't even human? Could it have been only a dead dog? A sleeping dog? But dogs instantly bounce awake at the prospect of my company. Except Jasper, who knew a wimp when he saw one.

It'd been a human face. My pathetic mind whimpered, still hoping, do dogs have stubble? I should have sprinted for help, but didn't move. The road went quiet. I crouched, a worm in sheep's clothing. Gradually I became cold. My teeth chattered.

After midnight, when any chance of helping Sorbo had surely gone, I rose, peered for last revellers or snogging car couples, and walked stiffly out. I did a really pathetic thing. I dialled 999 from the phone box near the corner, said to send an ambulance to a man who'd fallen down the steps of his house. Frightened, in the booth's light I saw why my hands were sticky. I cleaned them with spit and newspaper I got from a litter bin.

The 133 bus took me to Liverpool Street. I made the last train out of London into dank East Anglia, where only birds got exterminated. And innocents, like Arthur.

For all Dosh's promise of money, I was strapped. Next morning, I decided to call on Icky, and got a lift from the station. He's one of the few antiques merchants who really knows the business. He lives with this songstress who's one day going to take over the Royal Opera House with her rendition of Tosca, Lucia de Lammermoor, et endless cetera, and win fame and fortune. She's bonny, winsome, sells plants in the Garden Centre, but has a voice like a foghorn. Two furlongs off, I knew they were home.

Eleanora was clearly audible across the shires, trilling up and down scales.

'Wotcher, Icky.'

He was really pleased to see me. 'Lovejoy! Just brewed up.'

Icky's workshop is a little caravan parked in his garden. Mounds of paperwork, a computer, eight phones, wires everywhere. Just finding Icky was a miracle of detection, because Eleanora brings discards from the plant shop. Her artistic soul forbids throwing living herbage out. Consequently the back garden's like a rain forest. It was how I met her, actually, buying a Tan Faah plant for a lady. We'd got talking, then it was, 'Oh, my gentleman's in antiques! You must come round!' and so on.

'I won't say it, Icky.'

'Thank goodness, Lovejoy.'

Everybody who hacks their way through Eleanora's greenery jokes, 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume?' It gets on Icky's nerves. He lives on tenterhooks anyway, because of his con. Every - that's every single - antique dealer has a pet con trick, so watch out.

'Where are you this week, Icky?'

'Westmoreland.' He grinned his wicked grin. 'Called Cumbria now.'

'Got many takers?' I watched admiringly.

'Fourteen, so far.'

He scribbled on, opening envelopes, spiking cheques, entering credit card numbers. In the world of antiques, easiest is best.

Icky advertises in posh magazines: 'Antiques Course! Starting soon!! Correspond or attend!! Apply now!! Antique experts give Personal Tuition!!' He varies the lies, of course, and his address is anywhere in the kingdom. Internet and computer advertising's made his thievery that much simpler. His only risk is dropping some obvious clanger, like using the same phoney address twice. Naturally, his courses never take place.

I winced as Eleanora gave the universe a particularly horrendous arpeggio. He smiled in sympathy.

'Sorry, Lovejoy. She'll be across any sec to sell you tickets for next week's concert.'

Best hurry, then. 'Listen, Icky. You ever been involved with Dosh Callaghan?' He shook his head. 'Arthur Goldhorn? Colette? Bermondsey? Portobello Road? Camden Passage?'

No, no, no.

'My job's private and confidential, Lovejoy.' He spoke with pride.

'I can see that, Icky. Dieter Gluck?'

'No. He got Saffron Fields, didn't he? Big antiques man. My only brush with anyone from that area was some young lad applying to do my antiques course.' Icky waxed indignant. 'Cheeky young sod asked for credit. He was connected with the Goldhorns.

Arthur went spare. I got blistered. No, Lovejoy. I steer clear of the trade.'

'Seeing your courses never happen, Icky, that's fair.'

My remark narked him. 'Listen here, Lovejoy. Where else can ordinary people get an insider's view of the antiques trade? I'm their only source. Think of it like that.'

The song of the trickster has always been the same: What marvels I offer! Like all con artists, Icky believed his own myth. Everything Icky runs is fantasy - except for the money you applicants pay in.

'I'm honest, Lovejoy,' he complained, getting out a bottle of madeira with two paper cups. 'If folk demand why the course hasn't happened and want their money back, I always send it by return of post - less a ten per cent booking fee.'

'How many do?' I was interested in spite of myself.

'Half,' he said, grinning. 'The others forget, wonder what's gone on. By then my phoney address has moved to another parish. Sometimes,' he spoke with admiration, 'I wonder if I'm legit.'

'Tell me what scams are around, Icky. I need one.'

He grimaced at his stale madeira. 'Get a carder man for that. I'd try Saunty. You know him?'

'Aye,' I said, reluctant. Saunty, our best carder man, cohabits with a bird Yamta in a perennial state of frolicsome nudity. I didn't have time for an orgy.

'Don't settle for second best, Lovejoy,' Icky said piously, straight out of his adverts.

'Give him my regards.'

'Cheers, Icky. Ta for the hooch.' I left most of the drink.

Eleanora caught me by leaping out of her shrubbery as I made my way through the jungle. She's buxom when you get close. Her arms are the floppy sort, wobbling under her armpits.

'Lovejoy! Daraleeng!' She affects a pseudo accent, to show she's a true artiste. 'Coyme!

I sink yust por yoh!'

'Er, ta, El. I'm in a hurry.'

She linked my arm. 'You like my drrress, no?'

It seemed all metal, centurion-style slabs of tin, her bodice a cylinder of shiny bronze.

Her helmet was some Britannia thing.

'Very pretty, El. Is it for your songs?'

'You'll come, Lovejoy?' She warbled a snatch of falsetto gunge. I nodded, to support the arts. 'Icky told you about Arthur's boy wanting to be apprenticed?'

That stopped me. Apprenticed? Icky'd only said a course. 'Er, no.'

'I stopped it straight away! On your behalf.' She beat her breast meaningfully, bending metal. ' "Desist!" I cry. "Lovejoy is Colette's lower!" I tell heem. "Lovejoy kill people!'"

She stabbed herself with a pretend knife and crooned some scatty song to die with.

This was a bit much. The plod also jump to conclusions, like that Saintly.

'Then Arthur die. Colette loses all.' She came to for an instant, gave me a mischievous glance. 'She lost you too, hey, Lovejoy?' We were at the house now. She clasped me.

'Mek me sweet music, Lovejoy. I did you a favour.'

She plonked her mouth on mine. It was a struggle, but I wriggled free seconds short of asphyxiation. I got away by promising to see her at the concert, hoping nobody had seen me snogging goodbye to a tin lady. It had to be Saunty the carder man, then. But one thing niggled. Why didn't Icky tell me he'd almost taken Arthur's lad on as an apprentice? Something wrong somewhere, but what can you do?