A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair

27

THAT DAY, EVERYTHING happened, double bad. I finally remembered to phone Mercy Faldrop in her booming hamlet. She came on after a succession of kulaks had told me that The Lady (sic) would be pleased to speak.

'Lady Mercy? Lovejoy. Got anything?'

'Your listed folk don't come here, Lovejoy. Except for that engineer man Talleyton. He brings two surveyors, buys them supper and a girl each.'

My heart sank. 'Not Sir Jesson Tethroe?' I went through my list.

'No, Lovejoy. Sorry.'

Typical. Just when I wanted a dishonest MP. Now I'd have to use Gloria Dee to somehow bring him in.

'I barred that Gluck.'

'Eh?' Gluck at Mercy's after all?

'Rotten bastard, he were. Drew blood on a couple-three of my girls, into S and M.

Finishing school, him. I put the word out.'

'Dieter Gluck? You sure?' Finishing school is brothel-speak for sadism to the point of killing. Needless to say, madams don't let such a bloke over the threshold.

'Leave it aht, Lovejoy.' Meaning don't be stupid. 'He goes down Soho now. I don't handle his sort.'

'Anything else about him?'

'Rumour is he did for a working girl, Continent somewhere.'

'Keep trying, Mercy. You're a lady.'

She purred. 'Thank you, kind sir. If ever the gentleman wishes to partake of ultimate personal solace, please rest assured…' etc, etc.

Nothing from Doldrum. No news from Lydia, no messages from Mars. Tinker, Trout, Sorbo had gone silent. I felt really narked. I was slogging my heart out, and all my team had gone walkabout. So much for loyalty.

What had Gaylord Fauntleroy's old auntie said? Something about Chinese antiques being my best bet.

A street busker called Cleat - careful how you say her name - near Tower Hill always has news. Cleat's an electric chain dancer, draws tourist crowds near the Tower of London. Two bronzed stalwarts fasten her in chains, to exotic drum music. During her writhing prance, bulbs all over her flash on and off. The cliffhanger: she's to leap free of her chains before the record ends, or a great carboy of water suspended above her will uncork and drench her. Electrified as she is with bulbs and wires, she will then frazzle and die and, the stalwarts bellow threateningly, 'The Glamorous Cleat will be no more!'

When I arrived she'd just escaped, taken the collection, and was sitting having a fag with her blokes. I like Cleat. She has a cousin who can yodel.

'They were asking after you, Lovejoy,' she told me. 'You didn't turn up.'

Somebody else now? I sighed. Was I simply a walking crime?

'Billia and Dang. He's hiding in the churchyard. And Gaylord's up the Lane.'

I'd quite forgotten them. Billia had told me she needed help when I'd met her at Bermondsey. Some boxing hoods wanted Dang to throw, win, duck, or vice versa, and he'd got confused. What was Billia's tale? Dang had to repay the match fixers' lost debt.

I should have met them at the Nell of Old Drury, seven o'clock once upon a time. I eyed the huge dangling carboy over her dancing pitch, couldn't help asking.

'Is that real, love?' Only, the thought of it and electrocuting her was really unpleasant.

She split her sides. Her stalwarts roared. I reddened, said so-long, and walked off, the only duckegg in London. I put my best foot under me. Londoners don't walk much.

Tourists are the same, struggle might and main for taxis, when their destination's barely a furlong. I walked up the Minories, made it round St Botolph's church where the buses go mad, and was in Petticoat Lane in minutes.

Note, however, that Petticoat Lane isn't properly that. But if you tell your taxi driver Middlesex Street he'll say, 'D'you mean Petticoat Lane?' London's full of these hitches.

Like, Dalston Waste is famous, but isn't labelled in the maps. I got lost once, delivering a vanload of forged Wedgwood jasper cameos. Like a fool I searched the A-Z Guide, got nowhere until I asked a bright little pickpocket in Whitechapel. 'Maps,' he'd said with all the dignity of his ten years, 'is alluz wrong, mate.'

Petticoat Lane, then. At the Aldgate end, clothes barrows and jellied eel stalls crush together, awnings so dense there seems no way through. Struggle north up the narrow thoroughfare, yet more groaning barrows, with shops looking eager to step off the pavement. It's an exciting turmoil. Cutler Street Silver Market's now a grand emporium, a mini-Crystal Palace stuck out near Aldgate East station. It used to be a small dogleg going nowhere near Houndsditch, but that's evolution. Street markets start off superb grot, then go posh.

Gaylord couldn't park his caravan in this press, so I shoved my way towards St Mary Axe. There it stood among a handful of dealers. Gaylord was waxing eloquent about some dross he was trying to auction. You can tell when nobody's going to buy. I went closer. The item was a tantalus, a grand brass-and-mahogany carrying device used by butlers for several glass decanters. I reached and touched one. Slightly rough, but not a single chime.

'I'll have that, mister,' I said. 'How much?'

'More than you can afford, sir.' Gaylord's quick on the uptake. 'You don't realize its value.'

The dealers looked from me to Gaylord's antique, wondering. I heard a bloke whisper my name, saw him out of the corner of my eye make a slight chopping gesture to his mate, suggesting they'd split the cost and profits equally.

'Is it from the Duoro?' I demanded.

The ill-starred Royal Mail steamship Duoro is famous for colliding with a Spanish liner and sinking off Cape Finisterre in 1882, taking with it some seventeen souls and a fortune in diamonds and gold. The date's important for glassware. In 1890 posh decanters were rough to the feel, being wheel-engraved. The acid-polishing process only properly took off about 1890. Try it yourself. Touch a modern acid-polished decanter, it's smooth as silk. (There are fakes, so watch it.) But rough engraving means pre-1890; smooth means later. Antiques that can be dated by some reliable technique are, as dealers say, 'landmarked' and are easier to sell.

A bloke organized an ocean dive in the 1990s, and in true romantic treasure-hunting fashion pulled off a brilliant salvage. I get bitter telling this, because it wasn't me.

Spink's did the final auction, a mere twenty-eight thousand gold coins, plus artefacts and gems, bringing millions. I was not involved.

'This tantalus is unique, sir.' Gaylord pursed his lips. 'Maybe I've underestimated its value.'

'Thousand two hundred?' I said. I hadn't a groat.

'Let's have a gander, Gaylord.' One dealer stepped up.

'Excuse me, mate,' I said, narked. 'I've already offered. I can claim it. Mark owat.'

Which is our slang way of saying 'market overt'. It's supposed to have been repealed a couple of years back, this ancient law. Trouble is, street dealers never change. If street law was once thus, it is now and so ever shall be. Buy an antique in uncovered daylight in open market, it's yours for always. Never mind whether it was nicked, stolen, or got by thuggery. A sale is a sale is a sale. That was the old law, and still is among us market lovers.

'It wasn't sold,' the dealer said quickly. He appealed to the crowd. 'Was it, Ven? Was it, Sol? Two thousand five hunnert.'

'Don't get nasty, gentlemen.' Gaylord acted unhappy, and handed his fake over for a bundle of bunce.

The crowd dispersed. Gaylord went in, closed the door. I wandered off. Ten minutes later, I nigged round the far side of his caravan and slipped in. Auntie Vi had the kettle on.

'Thank you, Lovejoy. You're sweet. Are you better?'

'Not been poorly.'

Gaylord, in an even glitzier caftan, smiled. 'Grief shines from you like black light, Lovejoy. Don't feel bad about Arthur and Colette.'

'Shut your teeth, Gaylord,' I snarled. 'They weren't my responsibility.'

'You're like Grimaldi, Lovejoy,' Auntie Vi said, puffing her foul pipe.

'Eh?'

'It happened in Victorian times. Man went to his doctor. Couldn't stop crying from sorrow. His doctor couldn't find a thing wrong, told him to go and see the famous comic clown Grimaldi, toast of Victorian London, have a good laugh. The man said, "But I am Grimaldi." See, Lovejoy?'

No, I didn't see. 'You said something about duping Dieter Gluck.'

'Do the old double shift,' Auntie Vi said, rocking in her chair. 'We used it for years, until computers come in. Gaylord agrees, don't you, dear? Think Chinese.'

Chinese meant Wrinkle, as I've said.

'I've been thinking of an art gallery. Biggest profit. I'm going to visit Terence O'Shaughnessy.' Tel O'Shaughnessy is a crook at the best of times. I said this.

'Aren't we all, Lovejoy?'

'But we're the good ones.'

'Dismas and Gestas, on Calvary, were both antique dealers, son. It's a fact.' She continued, 'They still got crucified with Christ. The steal of approval!'

She cackled, rocked. Homilies make me sick. I got up to leave but Gaylord shoved me down and poured me some liqueur he brews from oranges.

'Saunty sent these folders over.'

Eagerly I grabbed them from him, riffled through. There were basically four ideas, all of them terrific, almost foolproof. The question was, would any of them do? I wanted the manor back for Mortimer, and Arthur's lands including his mulberry tree.

'You need a tame Yank, Lovejoy. Gluck'll bite like a pike in a pool.'

'Where'll I get a Yank?' I said bitterly. 'He'd have to be able to act. And be trustworthy.

Maybe I simply ought to pay some Leeds tankers two grand to top Gluck. Then Mortimer's friends could club together for lawyers to sort the manor out for the lad.'

After all, Gluck had the plod on his side. I'd already been warned off by Saintly. I said tarra, swigged the hooch and made to leave.

'Good luck,' they both called.

I stepped into rain-soaked London. Outside, the crowd was diminishing. I heard Gaylord say something after me but took no notice. Where now? Well, Billia and Dang hadn't done me any harm. I dithered, but finally started west. Cleat had said 'the churchyard'.

In London this means St Paul's until specified as somewhere else.

For some reason I felt odd, looked about but saw nobody I knew. I can't stand those horrible new cobbly underfoots along London Wall, so instead walked along Leadenhall and Cornhill, emerging near the Mansion House. Normally I'd have gone nearer the River Thames - it's only a step -so I could pass the Monument, but today didn't feel like it. Everything's nostalgia in London. The fact you weren't alive when things happened centuries agone doesn't matter. Feelings get your bones. I resisted the little antiques painting shop near Bread Street and went straight ahead towards Ludgate Hill.

More temptation, because only a little way west you walk into Dr Johnson's very own house, and can sit in his very own triangular chair. Some tourists were still about, the traffic dense as ever. Even in drizzle folk were sitting on the cathedral steps. I looked.

No sign of Dang - though there wouldn't be, would there, if he was hiding. I went round the great building, thinking of the young Dr Christopher Wren, who turned his hand to architecture because his new idea called blood transfusion was too cranky - oh, sorry, I mentioned that some time since. I wondered whether to go in.

Ghosts, though. They're here in London. They're also there, and among hurrying crowds. They stand looking at you across the road. I honestly believe that our old places somehow invoke them, call them back. Yet nearby folk were playing a kind of netball. Office people were ambling, noshing butties, drinking tins of fizz. The trouble is, we know the ghosts. Here in St Paul's churchyard she's the notorious She Wolf. Actually not canine but definitely lupine and female to degree. It was the Londoners' nickname for Queen Isabella, French spouse of our Edward II. She was a leading sinner. So bad, indeed, that her Gallic team made sure that she was buried in a grey habit nicked from the Christchurch Greyfriars. A careful lot, their idea was to trick heaven's Recording Angel, whose tired eyes, accustomed only to black or white, would fail to spot the grey.

Naughty Isabella hoped to slip into paradise, sins and all. Bad luck, though, for the vigilant Angel wasn't tricked and hauled her out. In a temper, he angrily sentenced her to wander for all eternity, grieving and doomed, in St Paul's churchyard and serve her right. Your average Londoner pooh-poohs it. But the grey figure certainly scares the hell out of postmen at the nearby GPO. The way to avoid her, incidentally, is not to look.

Dart anxious glances hither and yon while visiting St Paul's, you'll see her sure as eggs.

She still lusts after men, you see, and takes a stare as an invitation, with dire consequences I won't go into if you don't mind. Women she hates, and takes a female's look as a challenge, with double-dire results.

'Lovejoy,' Dieter Gluck said. I yelped out of my reverie. He looked the business, neat, height of fashion, cool, handsome.

'Mr Gluck,' I said. No ghost, he.

'Don't whine, Lovejoy. Time to speak?'

'I'm meeting a friend,' I said. It's hard to be polite when you're working out how to knock that person off. I've often found that.

'Here?' He looked about, quite amused. A cool swine, give him that. 'Handful of tramps, busloads of visitors, a mob of office clerks? No, Lovejoy. You're planning deceit. I can smell it. And,' he said reasonably, 'I've learned a great deal. You are a thief, a scoundrel who lives off women, and a forger.'

'Here, nark it.' I could have clocked him one, except so far I'd not had much luck. He looked calm, like he had a servile bruiser handy.

'Don't take offense, Lovejoy. I'm one also. I have a proposition.'

'You got me done over, arrested, and clobbered by your tame ape.' I still ached from my beating in Soho.

'Do not speak ill of the dead, please,' said this killer. 'Consecrated ground. It's time we joined forces, Lovejoy.' He lit a cigarette from a silver case. 'What is this famous scam of yours?' He smiled. 'So secret, so uniquely aimed at my destruction?'

From the corner of my eye I saw Billia start towards me, Dang with her. They were coming down the broad expanse of steps. I passed my hand in front of my forehead to signal them away. Dang hesitated, thank God. I turned.

'Who said I've got a scam brewing?'

He said, pleasant, 'All London's street markets. Now, how much will it cost? What's the profit? And what odds on success?'

I keep a special headache for times like these. It screeched into my temple and exploded, ruining my vision and thought processes. Kindly, Dieter Gluck took me by the elbow and walked me down to the London Hospital Tavern on Ludgate Hill. It stands almost midway between Blackfriars Bridge - where the Vatican these days murders its troublesome bankers and hangs their bodies from the girders over the Thames - and the Old Bailey, where the Vatican's hired assassins are never tried.

This particular murderer sat opposite me in the tap room and brought me a drink.

Smiling pleasantly, he toasted me.

'To partnership,' he said. 28

FOR A TIME, I sat on the facade facing the buses chugging towards the Bank, motors, office girls darting between deaths shrieking, folk smiling, a bobby telling them off. To my right, tourists noshed their pizza slices, swigging from cans and littering culture. I had an overdue think.

Sit still a minute, London descends like dew, steeping the soul in feelings you didn't know you had. Things flow in your brain. Like a fool I actually turned to look, but there was no smoke in the sky.

It happened here, the Great Fire that began in Pudding Lane. The street's still there, a spit downstream of London Bridge. I'd just walked past. From the Monument, you can look down into its narrow thoroughfare. History books don't tell you of the stark terror.

It takes a coward like me, scared from an encounter with Dieter Gluck, to feel fright.

And to see there in front of me the people whose spirits still scream and run. I honestly believe that horror more than any other human emotion lurks all about us, in stones, in the air, in the ground that once bubbled and buckled from the heat. In the Great Fire bells melted, Ludgate Hill to my right running with molten metal as buildings heat-cracked into rubble.

'You all right, mate?' a passing window cleaner asked. He had squeegees sticking out of his overalls.

'Aye, ta, mate,' I managed to say. 'Bit dizzy for a sec.'

That terrible Sunday, second of August in 1666, the real outbreak occurred. A daft preacher - is there any other? -afterwards proved what caused it. 'It couldn't have been caused by London's blasphemy,' he boomed, 'or the Great Fire would have begun in Billingsgate.' Nor lewdness and roistering, for then it would have started in Drury Lane.

Nor lying and untruth (nice touch, this) or God would have torched the law courts of Westminster Hall. No, gluttony did it - for didn't the Great Fire start in Pudding Lane, and finally end at Pie Corner? Oddly, hardly anybody died. The old London Gazette's death count was exactly nil. Even the stern Bills of Mortality notched only six. God must have had a weak throwing arm that week. Divine calamities usually rock the averages.

Our behaviour, back then, was like now. We did what we do. Greed, as I keep saying, like murder, will out. Samuel Pepys tells it in all its grue. The only difference is that the avarice of rich politicians was just that bit more obvious. Alderman Starling, of incredible wealth, gave a measly penny to the thirty labourers who saved his priceless possessions from the flames. Sir Richard Brown was just as stingy, when workmen rescued his chest stuffed with enough money to buy several streets.

Pandemonium reigned as the Great Fire engulfed the city. In all human crucibles, rumour rules. Invasions, political plots, the whole kaleidoscope of mayhem, unloosed panic-stricken mobs. Blackened thousands staggered to Moor Fields and Tower Hill. As the conflagration leapt about with sparks on the wind, the black smoke shadowed riders as far away as Oxford. The phrases are all the same.

You can't get away from the image of Old St Paul's standing like some huge warship upon a flaming ocean as the terrible sun set.

Sound advice went begging, and greed rose to make matters hell of a sight worse. The best plan came from 'some stout seamen' who, knowing fire, early on wanted to blow up a few streets and save the entire city. London's wealthy plutocrats refused. So it was that Sunday vanished in an inferno. Then Monday, the fire enveloping dozens of churches and their parishes. 'Avaricious men, aldermen, would not permit,' mourned Evelyn, 'because their own houses must have been of the first…' It's these memories that plague me. Would I have been any better? No.

Finally, catastrophe shoved selfishness out of the picture. The seamen's pleas were finally accepted. Charles II rowed up in his royal barge and ended all arguments, himself seeing to the demolition of houses rimming the Tower's moats. Meanwhile, London's goldsmiths did themselves a power of good by rushing their goods into the Tower. They didn't lift another finger, of course. Booksellers crammed their combustible stacks of books into St Faith's, which happened to be underneath Old St Paul's, so adding fuel to the bonfire. The world blazed, even the air seeming cleft asunder.

History doesn't tell much. It never does. Only in odd corners do stories make sense. A schoolboy called Will Taswell painstakingly wrote his horrendous account that very Thursday. He'd trudged east among huge mounds of burning ruins. 'I endeavoured to reach St Paul's,' he quilled into his notebook. 'The ground so hot as almost to scorch my shoes.' The very air was afire. Faint, he had to rest in Fleet Street. Struggling on, the lad reached about where I'd run into Gluck. He saw the melted bells of the cathedral, molten rivulets running down Ludgate. Plodding through the furnace, he saw the fire engines burning, the firemen leaping to escape erratic outbreaks. Childlike, young Taswell picked up a cooling piece of bell metal to take home to show his friends, and gasping for breath made his way home. Of them all, who would I be? The King, struggling to force scatterbrain politicians to act? Or one of the riffraff, dragging my belongings north among the refugees streaming along the City Road? Certainly not one of the brave jolly jack tars straddling roofs in the flames with their kegs of gunpowder.

Maybe one of the rich aldermen, disdainfully pressing farthings into the hands of stalwarts who saved an ill-gotten fortune?

'You, Lovejoy?' Billia said. 'You'd be the little lad scribbling it down.'

How long had she been there? I asked, 'How long've you been there?'

'Since folk started looking at you talking to yourself.'

The window cleaner was sitting further along. He looked pretty muscular for a window cleaner. He gave me a worried nod. Dang?

'Wotcher, Lovejoy,' Dang said.

'We kept out of your way while Gluck was batting your ear, Lovejoy. Safer.' Billia looks all appetite.

'You know him?' I was surprised.

'He's one of the betting syndicate that's after my bloke. He's got backers. They've tried everything from cornering antiques to fixing boxing.'

Desperater and desperater.

'He's sussed me, Billia,' I admitted. 'Just told me he knew my darkest plans in detail.'

'Hell fire, Lovejoy. He's probably watching us now.'

'Hang on, love.' This was important. If Billia and Dang were running scared from Gluck, then this odd couple might well be my best allies. What proof had I that Sorbo and Trout were honest? When suspicion begins, you're alone. Paranoia becomes forward planning. I could trust Lydia, Tinker too. Gluck might well be taping us. 'See you where we said before, okay?' 'In the—?'

'That's it, love,' I said quickly. 'Don't be late.' Billia's eyes darted about. She flagged a taxi. I offed on Shank's pony, following little William Taswell's route of centuries before.

Fleet Street, passing the little court leading to Dr Johnson's house. The Strand, right into Aldwych, breathing the air like nectar. My old stamping ground, Drury Lane.

Thence into Covent Garden, where Pepys had dallied with loose lasses, where Boswell took his sinful pleasure and afterwards had to wash his hot willy in the Serpentine.

Gluck had exuded charm in the pub. You have to hand it to killers. They put a smile on your face as they pull the rug from under and slide you to perdition.

'We must deal, Lovejoy,' he'd said. I was frankly scared. He took my folder, leafed through it. 'Choice of four, I see.'

'The Louvre is best of them,' I said. One thing, at the first sign of opposition, I chuck the towel in.

'The Louvre's Jew loot? And the Musee d'Orsay?' he said, approving. 'Hasn't it been done?'

'Stolen wartime loot always has, Mr Gluck. That's the point.'

'Thomas Harrington's clocks.' He frowned at that, read carefully, shook his head. 'I'm clock mad, but Greenwich has too many guards, Lovejoy.'

'Tourists are protective colour, Mr Gluck.'

He smiled. 'Seriously, Lovejoy. Which were you going for?'

'The Rotherham porcelain museum.' I filled in when his silence prompted me. 'It's priceless. And the area's politically dicey, so the government would rejoice when I saved it from being robbed. And you'd take the bait, hoping for a knighthood.'

That gave him a laugh, tanned features setting off his superb white incisors. How come some people have everything?

'You read me accurately, Lovejoy.' He grew wistful. 'Being a foreigner, my dream is of nobility.'

'Why?' I was curious. 'Most honours are sham. Invent one for yourself. Nobody cares.'

His eyes gleamed. 'I came from foreign slums, Lovejoy. This would be my accolade.' He eyed me. I'd not touched the drink. 'Reluctant, are we? Is it because you shagged - is that your slang word - Colette?' He leant forward. I was suddenly relieved. He had terrible breath, at last a drawback. 'Did you hope for her estate yourself? To take over from that buffoon of a husband?'

He suddenly emitted an inane cackle that set heads turning all about the taproom.

'I like this fourth effort best, Lovejoy. The shipment thing. Of what?'

I did my most convincing shrug. 'Any indigenous antiques. Good ones. Dulwich Picture Gallery's the one I have in mind.'

'Dulwich?' His eyes narrowed suspiciously, the way I wish I could do. 'Isn't it impregnable now?'

'Not really,' I lied. 'Plus it has a trump card. The Ace.' I smiled, with humility and cowardice in there. 'It can't afford insurance.'

He gaped. 'Can't…?'

'So many priceless Old Masters. Get it, Mr Gluck? A thief—'

'Could dictate his own terms!' I'd never seen such fervour. He couldn't keep still.

'To the Minister for Arts, National Heritage. Think of the nation's gratitude when somebody returned them to a grateful country!'

Well, I swear he almost choked. 'Lovejoy, that's beautiful! I'd be the white knight!

Adored! Worshipped!' He shook my hand against my will. Uneasily I imagined rumours getting back to friends. 'Then do it, Lovejoy. I am your partner. Tell me when it's set up, not before.' He rose, elegant, in charge.

'Hang on,' I bleated. 'What's the deal?'

'You pull the robbery. Then you offer them to me. I buy them back, saving the nation's honour. Of course, no money will change hands, because I have none. But I will pretend I paid a fortune to the robbers.'

I croaked, 'What robbers? Who? What about me?'

'You do the best you can to escape the consequences, Lovejoy.' He smiled as Sir Ponsonby and his luscious Moiya came to join him. She looked even more glorious. Sir P. had the grace to look embarrassed. 'Highly placed politicians will recommend me! It's foolproof, and it's not yet even taken place!'

He left, laughing. Moiya December swung every cell of her anatomy, drawing eyes. Sir P. mouthed a faint regret to me, and stumbled in their wake. They embarked in a waiting Rolls. So much for leading righteousness's charge against evil. I was now my enemy's serf.

The four best scams - that I'd paid to have planned out for me - were now known to Gluck. He would win. I'd lose, and Mortimer would go down with me.

Smouldering, I knew that I'd been careless. I needed a last-minute plan Gluck couldn't even guess at. 29

LONDON HAS EVERYTHING. That doesn't mean it's yours for the taking. But it's there, it's there.

Terence O'Shaughnessy's claim to being Irish is that he once drank a pint of their black stout. In Germany. Nonetheless, he talks a good nationality, as they say. His workshop's off Drury Lane, a stone's throw from a myriad theatres. I found the building, went over the wall, saw a light in his basement. He's janitor of this night school - creative writing, leaping in leotards to music, self-identity through inner plasms.

'Tel?' I went into his one room with care, remembering when I'd barged in on Wrinkle and what he'd been up to. Tel didn't even look round. He has this giant St Bernard dog, slavering and droopy, called Plato. 'Wotcher, Plato.'

'Top o' the morning, Lovejoy.'

Oirish brogue still. Once, he'd been a big-spending Yemeni oil baron, but came unstuck when the police pointed out that he wasn't anything of the kind. He's the only bloke I know really born in a suitcase. His grandma delivered him. I've met her, heard the story a hundred times. The telly was on, racing at Newmarket.

'Don't give me your County Galway, Tel.'

O'Shaughnessy's room is always a shambles. Old clothes strewn everywhere, plastic bin bags, newspapers, half-eaten grub, soiled plates there since I'd seen him a year since.

He wore a singlet, braces dangling, the same smeared slippers, belly protruberant, stained trousers. He'd improved. Usually he's a mess.

'Can't offer yer any ale, Lovejoy. I'm thirsty meself.'

He had a row of brown ale tins ready for action. A heap of empties had accumulated nearby in a kind of metallic snowfall. As he spoke he lobbed a new empty. It landed on the pile, which slid a bit. He popped a replacement with a sigh of repletion.

'It's okay, Tel.' Plato came and drenched me with saliva. I patted his head, but distantly. Stroke him once or twice, you get enough hairs to knit another dog.

Terence O'Shaughnessy is a knowledgeable bloke. Living as he does in London's Drury Lane heartland, he makes money selling information indiscriminately. This was my reason.

'Can I ask, Tel, or are you busy?'

He phones bookmakers with last-minute losers. Plato snuffled, demanding another pat.

I responded, finished up covered with hair.

'Ten minutes before the off, Lovejoy. What is it?'

'Dulwich Picture Gallery,' I said without preamble.

His several bellies quivered delight. He opened a tin of ale for Plato, who lapped it down. His tongue's like a sponge mat.

'Self-service theft, that place used to be, Lovejoy.' Tel guffawed. 'Any day of the week.

Not now, though.'

'Sell me the security, Tel, and potholes?'

'Sure. Cost you half a long, Lovejoy. Half a grand to the blokes.'

Translation: fifty zlotniks to Tel, five hundred to the security sussers. These are ruffians who don't actually ruff. They just know who'll be on duty, if the electronics surveillance people have flu, where you should arrange a van to break down, a robber's essentials.

Potholes are flaws in standing security procedures. Some naughty security firms actually incorporate flaws, to be sold to would-be crooks on request. It's modern double-think.

'That's blinking dear, Tel,' I groused.

'Art theft's gone up. Dulwich's been done too frigging often. They learned the hard way.

Now, the place only looks easy. If I was you, I'd try somewhere else.' He gave a booming laugh, sweaty mounds shaking. 'They can't afford the insurance. Said so on telly, last time somebody lifted their recycled Rembrandt.'

True. I was relieved Tel knew about it. Dealers joke that their Rembrandt was stolen so often in the old days it went in and out like a fiddler's elbow. I wanted him to be sure to remember this conversation.

'What'll you charge to keep shtum, Tel?' I asked, trying to look threatening. I can't do it, but try. 'I don't want all London coming to watch, if I try to nick Dulwich's Old Masters.'

'Another.' Meaning fifty zlotniks more.

We haggled. I stroked Plato. Like Mortimer's dog Jasper, it knew I wasn't up to much, so watched the horses line up on TV. I agreed Tel's fees. Interestingly, they weren't all that exorbitant, proving that Tel knew Dulwich was the hardest place on earth to burgle. I knew that anyway. As long as he told the world that Lovejoy was going to give it a go, it would be money well spent. He would give me details of Dulwich Picture Gallery's security arrangements with supposed potholes.

I said so-long to Plato. Leaving, I hoped whoever Dieter Gluck had trailing me could take a decent photo, and that my stalker was good enough.

Two phone calls later, I started my plan.

Luckily, the day turned out brilliant. It was like a St Thomas's summer down at Henley when I got there. I told the steward on the gate I was a guest of Sir Jesson Tethroe, MP, and Mrs Gloria Dee. With disdain, I was given a blazer and an anonymous tie, and made to wait.

I honestly wonder if women have some inbuilt radar that tells them how our weather will be. She looked dazzling in green taffeta, hair filling out with sun, complexion marvellous. Sir Jesson harrrumphed, eyed me, gave my attire a reluctant nod. He mellowed when Mrs Dee greeted me kindly.

'Call me Jesson, Lovejoy,' he said, like awarding me a discount.

He wrung my hand, clearly chairman of the board. I stared with admiration. He wore a boater, very Henley-on-Thames, and a smart blazer that talked down to scruffy me. If I were him, though, I'd have got a new tie. It had faded to a vague grey. People all around nodded or fawned, according to station. Waiters hung in hopes. Alluring ladies smiled at Sir Jesson.

We were on a kind of tatty wooden jetty. I suppose class is as class does. I caught Gloria Dee's amused smile.

'Henley is superb, Lovejoy, is it not?' she said. I got the irony.

'Best place on earth,' Sir Jesson bellowed. 'The royals,' he intoned, stooping to confide in a stentorian boom, 'don't come here much. Obsessed with horses. Ascot people common as dung, what? And Wimbtedon's for ball-fiddlin' poofters, beggin' ya pardon, what?'

'Er,' I said, lost.

'Standards, Lovejoy!' he thundered, ordering drinks with nothing more than a finger twiddle. Waiters sprinted. 'Princess Grace of Monte Carlo - y'know her? Second Division crown, o'course, not top notch. Her pa got excluded from Henley, what?'

'Why, Jesson?' Gloria Dee asked, sweet with innocence. She'd obviously heard the tale a thousand times.

'General Rules, Rule One brackets e,' he foghorned across the Thames. 'Manual labourer. Blighter was a common bricklayer, some place called Philadelphia. Actually wanted to scull at Henley. Can ya believe it?'

'Good heavens,' I said politely. The waiter deposited the drinks, glared at my clothing.

Gentlemen milled and strolled in white flannels, coloured socks. Ladies called loudly for

'Pimm's, daaahling!' and complained about the shampahs. Striped blazers - you never see so many buttons as on Henley cuffs - and heavy-duty grins, flowered hats and swirly dresses.

'Leander,' Gloria whispered as Jesson rose to greet a gaudy mob. Salmon pink seemed to be their colour. I'd never heard such brash laughter. 'Very up, Leander.'

For a second we were on our own. Sir Jesson was saying, 'Like wagering for Dartmouth, what?' and folk were chortling. It was another world.

'Ta for letting me come, love,' I said quietly. 'Would you do a robbery?'

She leant away, to look better, her smile draining.

'I'll accept the danger and suffer the consequences. It could save a young lad's life. And rescue somebody else.'

'A robbery?' she asked faintly. 'You mean steal?'

'No, love. Theft is mild, like pickpocketing. Robbery is violent.'

Fingering her pearls, she repeated the word, her gaze off the scale. 'Violent as in…?'

'As in damage, love. I need you, Gloria.' For a second I waited. 'I'll try to keep you out of any problems.'

A gust of haw-haws made all speech impossible before she could respond.

'You're vital, Gloria. Without you, a lad'll probably die at the hands of a proven murderer.'

'Why am I essential?' She knew I meant Mortimer. 'My antiques?'

I inclined my head indicating Jesson Tethroe and his adherents.

'They're in reserve. You know high society.' I had a hard time getting the rest out. 'And I like you.'

Sir Jesson returned, plonked himself down. 'Problem,' he said grimly. 'Some bounder's woman came with a dress above her knees, what? Trouble is, now ladies are actually allowed to row!'

I gasped. 'Honestly?' I'd landed in some time warp.

'Good God, man, we'll be having commercial sponsors giving us money next!' He became apoplectic at the thought. 'Folk who want scruffy standards should go to scruffy places - like Wimbledon, or the Derby.'

'Lovejoy has a scheme he wants to discuss, Jesson.'

His eyes narrowed, he swilled his drink. I hadn't touched my glass.

'I'm afraid it concerns money, Jesson,' I confessed, reluctant. 'Rather sordid, I'm afraid.

Commercial. Nothing to do with rowing, sculls, Henley.'

'Above board, though, is it?'

'Hundred per cent,' I said, avoiding Gloria's eye. 'It's just that the commercial side is somewhat traditionalist. They only wish to do business with gentry.' I shrugged. 'My firm isn't well connected. If only we had a gentleman in high public esteem.'

The rest can go unspoken, if that's all right. An ingrate's lot is not a happy one. I toadied, hinted, all for the very best motives of decency and patriotism. Forty minutes later, he agreed.

As I said goodbye, I arranged to meet Gloria next day and start the game. Sir Jesson we left by the river talking to pals.

'Buy him a new tie if we succeed,' I joked.

'Lovejoy.' She was laughing inside. I could tell. 'The mark of distinction here is an old tie with its blue faded to grey. Eton.'

'Just joking,' I lied lamely.

She looked worried. 'Will it be as horrid as you said, Lovejoy?'

'Worse, luv.' I bussed her and left.

They caught me at the gate and made me give the blazer and tie back. No class, some people. To arms.