Every Last Cent

10

DEALERS SAY ANTIQUES are a matter of life and death, but they're much more serious than that. I was becoming scared. Things were going wrong yet right. Women are supposed to get this feeling more than us. Like, a woman might wonder, is this dress trustworthy, remembering that she wore green at that disastrous party last Kissing Friday? Or, should she go out with somebody called Harold, seeing that her previous Harold spoke all evening about Aramaic translations? I knew that I'd made some calamitous mistake, but what? I'd only done as I was told.

As Tina locked up the church hall after a training session with our team, I heard a miraculous sound. It was a long rasping cough. It started as a distant rumble, reverberating so the traffic noise seemed to fade, then crashed to a shuddering crescendo that stunned us. It ended with a slurping expectoration that would have turned me nauseous, except I'd heard it before.

'Tinker?' A brilliant omen.

A heap of tat draped on one of the tombs rose. Wilhelmina screeched faintly and ducked behind Larch and Jules. It spoke.

'Wotcher, mate. Sandy and Mel're looking for you. Poncey bleeders.'

Filthy, wearing a dishevelled army greatcoat clinking with soiled medals, mittens blackened by desiccated food, enough stubble on his chin to card cotton, teeth corrugated brown crags, rheumy eyes and wheezing breath, he still was my loyal ally. I pay him in whisky, London gin, rum, and – more often – promises.

'If that horror's coming with us, Lovejoy, I'm off.' cried Tina.

'Tara then, love. Come on, troops.'

'Lovejoy!' she yelped, but I was too edgy for a bird's ire to take hold. If birds were kind now and then, maybe I'd respond. As it was, I'd things to do.

'Tinker, get us transport to Saffron Fields when I send word, okay?'

Then I heard it, the most daunting sound. By the yew trees a figure stood, waving proudly. It was Sandy, dressed as a glittering angel, frosty white wings, a dazzling magenta and cerise gossamer robe, a purple handbag and a circlet of electric lights rotating round his artificial curls while some electronic trinket played Ave Maria. The ultimate prat. My heart sank, the actors with me gaping.

'Yoohoo, Lovejoy! Come and positively adore!'

'Sorry, Sandy,' I called nervously. 'We're just off.'

'I shall tell that Yank bitch of you-hoo!' Sandy shrilled in fury.

Meaning Susanne Eggers?

Resignedly we plodded over. Several photographers were saying a little more this way, tilt your head. Sandy was loving it. 'Got my starlight eyes, sweeties?' and all that. I find him squirmily embarrassing. He thinks we all admire him. In fact we often have to say so, because he's a vicious antique dealer who'll stop at nothing to avenge a slight, real or imagined. His friend is Mel, a surly dealer who's always fuming. Mel was seated on a nearby gravestone. He looked away as we approached, fuming no doubt.

'Ooooh, Lovejoy!' Sandy held up a hand to stay the photographers while he did lipstick in a mirror. 'You've started collecting tramps! How quaint!' He eyed Wilhelmina. 'And that senile cow over there – the one with the rotting hair – has stolen a shahtoosh! It's mine. Tell her it's mine. I'll pay her.' He struck a pose. 'Recommence, darlings!'

Stepping aside, I asked, 'What's this in aid of, Mel?'

'I shan't speak to him, Lovejoy.' Mel glared. 'He's launching a children's charity, Angels On Gravestones Trust. It's obscene.'

'I can see that. How'll it get funded?'

'That's it, Lovejoy. It's a con. There is no charity. He's going to use the money for buying imported antiques.'

Sandy was posing away. I noticed banners draped on two poor-quality stone angels nearby. They read GIVE GENEROUSLY TO THE SANDY AOG TRUST!, red On white. I sighed.

'Stop him, Mel.'

'Don't you think I've tried?' Mel is even less honest than the rest of us, but a glim of morality must lurk somewhere in his DNA. 'Remember the old folks' homes?'

The reminder made me wince. Sandy once invented a charity called Sandy's Antique Dealers All Giving. He and Mel conned old people out of their antiques, with the cock-and-bull tale that they would make a fortune. He got nerks to collect the antiques, of course, so he could pretend he'd been jumped by sinister dealers from France. He always blames Continentals.

'Don't listen to Mel, Lovejoy!' Sandy carolled, arms aloft in dramatic pose. 'He's positively glowering because I might have met a Greek locksmith.'

'Oh, am I?' Mel barked, rising in fury. 'Well, Lovejoy, you just tell that absolute trollop that I have other things to do than sulk—' et cetera.

'Come on, people,' I said to my actors. I was too tired to play go-between for this exotic pair. God knows I try to keep friends with everybody, but some are just too much. 'See you, Sandy. Tara, Mel.'

'Come and see us, Lovejoy,' Sandy trilled. 'We'll sell you your ghost painting.'

That froze me in mid-flight. The actors bumped into me like dominoes.

He smiled, wafting his robe to and fro as photographers clicked away. 'We'll only charge you a hundred per cent commission.'

'Mel?' He had the grace to look sheepish. 'What ghost picture?'

'You did several, Lovejoy. This one was Vestry's. Sandy pre-empted it at the box sale last week.'

'Deal,' I croaked, making my exit. The lich-gate leads into the High Street, traffic and supermarkets, pedestrians thronging. I almost walked under a bus but Tinker hauled me back in time.

'Tinker, get us to Saffron Fields manor by three o'clock.'

'Right, son. It'll be Jacko's coal lorry. Here, Lovejoy.' He sprayed the concourse with a cough that momentarily stalled the vehicles. 'We in trouble?'

'Vestry.' I drew him aside for secrecy. My actors stood, gazing back at Sandy glittering in the churchyard. 'What was it exactly?'

'Vestry hanged hisself in his barn, didn't he? Month since, down the Broads. FeelFree and Horse found him.'

'Find out what you can, Tinker, okay?' I smiled at the team. They didn't look much.

'Don't you remember?' his foghorn voice gravelled out. Half the High Street heard Tinker's whisper. He thinks that by leaning at an angle – nothing new – he becomes the soul of confidentiality. 'Vestry hung hisself while you wus framing that neff portrait. He wanted it reframed.'

'Thanks, Tinker.' I could hardly see for the migraine thumping my sight sideways. 'Keep it secret, okay? You lot, see you later. Remember – be convincing.'

They chorused eagerness. My scheme was becoming as secret as the Opening of Parliament. I tottered off to find FeelFree Halsey. She and her bloke Horse claim to be Royal Doulton specialists who know when the world's going to end. For voyantes, they weren't very accurate the afternoon they found Vestry's cooling body at his private finale. They're also friends of Aspirin and Paul the birdman's wife Jenny. It was getting complicated. I could have throttled Mortimer for getting me into this.

First, though, a word about collectors, and how stupendous dreams come true.

Collectors are wonderful people. That's all they do, collect. They'll rob, plunder, sell their grandma, abandon the most prestigious job on earth, just to collect matchboxes, old wheels, pins, pieces of rocketry, coloured buttons, inkstands and – honest, no kidding – bits of tripe and olive pips. They might end up threadbare, living in cardboard boxes on the Embankment, yet become the proud possessors of hidden stores of toy telescopes or a thousand metal keys. For me, they are barmy yet beautiful.

Some manage to keep their jobs. Others go to the dogs while dreaming that one day –

soon – the world will come a-thronging to worship their unbeatable collection of Victorian hats, limestone baptism fonts, or bronze camels. I like collectors, partly because they keep me alive by buying bits of junk that no sane person would look at twice.

Sometimes, though, collectors come a cropper. Like Vestry, requiescat in pace. I tried to think. He was a collector-dealer of gruesome old medical instruments.

I found Horse preaching in the shopping precinct. Feel-Free was at the nearby open-air caff. She's gorgeous and voluptuous, just the sort I should win. It's no hopes, though, because she's hooked on Horse, a tiny desiccated clerk, all bulbous forehead and specs, but who has the undoubted appeal of being our only Existence Guru. An ex-convent girl, FeelFree reasons that she'll be able to square it with the Almighty in the nick of time. Her plan is theologically suspect, but what isn't?

'Wotcher, Feel. Having coffee, I see.' I swallowed, desperate for some. She moved her biscuits away and sipped with gentility. She knows me. I peered into an abandoned cup but somebody had drained it, stingy swine. They'd taken the sugar.

Horse was standing in our precinct's fountain, thundering – well, piping – away to a crowd of two old ladies who listened approvingly to his intentions to inflict his hang-the-swine morality on a liberal country. FeelFree's eyes glistened.

'Isn't he wonderful, Lovejoy?'

Well, no. But I was starving and Maggie the waitress was questing for orders. A noisy family on the next table asked for egg and chips with sponge pudding for afters, not a thought for hungry folk near by. My belly rumbled as they whaled in.

'When does the world end, Feel? Soon, is it?' Asking for the latest bulletin on Planet Earth's chances always cheers her.

'No news this week.'

Thank God for that. 'Sad about Vestry, eh, love?' The tact of an axe.

Horse was working himself up to a shrill denunciation of Satan, who this week was making us all hard-hearted materialists. This, note, from a dealer who establishes, then defrauds, antiques clubs. (Get the clue, from Rio?) The clubs invariably go bust, leaving his members destitute and him in clover, with (as such clubs always claim when they mysteriously go bankrupt) 'unexplained financial losses'.

What happens is that Horse starts up an antiques collectors' club, then exhibits the antiques he's bought with members' subscriptions. The members are delighted at the porcelains, Georgian silver, Regency household items, Portuguese colonial ivories, whatever, and chip in more investment gelt. (Greed, see?) Horse sends round an urgent circular, and guess what? A rich American tourist has asked to buy the club's antiques! Quick, quick! He sails on Tuesday...

Who can resist? The club hastily agrees, yes, sell for God's sake, don't let him/her get away . .. The club's antiques are sold. Then, horror of horrors, the cheque bounces!

The club is broke. And who's the saddest and brokest of them all? Why, none other than the Hon Sec, for didn't he lose more than anyone?

In fact, no, he didn't, for there never was any rich American tourist. There was only some crooked pal (read FeelFree) who drives the antiques north and sells them on that motorway service station beyond Hawkshead. It's Horse's (and every other crook's) favourite venue.

That's Horse's scam. He's worked it four times so far. FeelFree is named from her patter: 'Feel free to cheat me,' she says with a glamorous smile. 'Offer me half the price. I'll starve ...' and draws her clothes tightly round her voluptuous form, and lands another bargain. She does Horse's driving, sees the trips north as her rightful (not righteous) holiday entitlement. I'm being cynical, saying that all antiques investment clubs end in tears. I don't mean it. I only mean the vast majority. Except I've only ever heard of one honest one. Not two. One.

'Vestry?' Religion lapsed as she swivelled her exquisite eyes on me. I almost fell into their limpid blue. Women make you forget what you're up to, don't they? 'Please don't mention him, Lovejoy. It was ghastly.'

To my alarm her eyes filled. She wept genuine tears.

'Ignore him, love,' a passing crone gave out. 'They're not worth it and I've been wed these forty-six years,' et dronesome cetera, daft old bat.

'How come you were visiting him, Feel?'

Her eyes narrowed. She made no reply while I worked it out.

Antiques dealers are creatures of habit. They're worse than serial killers. (I wish now I'd not thought that.) They'll stalk every country auction after making one superb find. In fact, they'll sacrifice the rest of their lives in hopes of repeating a one-off success. As in the old music-hall song, where some lass danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales. Now Horse wouldn't be seen dead (sorry) with Vestry. Nor would FeelFree. In fact, their paths never crossed. They ran on different tramlines. The row was all over, believe it or not, a piece of toast. Literally. Toast.

Some antiques are as ancient as the planet. Others are so-called 'tomorrow's antiques'.

(Tip: avoid these at all costs. They're never, never ever, worth buying, because everything today will be antique in the future, right?) But some very mundane antiques are priceless because of their rarity.

I get narked, because it's always others who find these genuinely desirable items, never me. Somebody finds a priceless 26,000-year-old woolly mammoth planted in the Siberian ice. It's some undeserving rambler.

This piece of toast. It was found in the Yarnton pit near Oxford, together with a biggish flint knife, hazelnut shells, a few apple cores, some toasted cereal, bits of pottery, and a few tools. It turned out to be barley bread, like the stuff my gran used to make, but baked in 3,485 BC, give or take a radiocarbon burp. Unimportant? Yes, until you realize it's a mite older than Stonehenge, and antedates all other antique breads by a cool 2,500 years. Now, Vestry was always a scammer, never honest like me. And Horse and FeelFree are nothing but no-hope scammers working the investment club game. Vestry claimed he had some ancient toast from Yarnton, complete with authentic radiocarbon dating certificates. Worthless? Hardly; find some, it means a cool five years of affluence in Monaco, blondes and beer thrown in. Horse sensed profit. He tried to buy Vestry's archeological relics for his current antiques club scam. Vestry refused. Word was he'd been scared of drowning in the tide of litigation that always threatens to submerge Horse and FeelFree's manky clubs.

'What I mean, Feel, is why would you two supposed Royal Doulton collectors race to the Fenlands to buy some antique barley bread?'

'Money, Lovejoy!' she said with scorn, tears drying instantly. 'Heard of it?'

'You shunned Vestry after that Beethoven business.'

This is what I mean by luck. In 1817, the great Ludwig had a young English visitor called Richard Ford. In the way of geniuses, I've dashed off a string quartet for him.

The original manuscript lay dormant in some attic, only coming to light when money called its siren summons. The whole thing was dated, and in Big B's own hand. Ecstasy!

Sotheby's auctioned it, musicians fought to play it, and harmony soared on wings of song while the rest of us, forlorn and deprived, drooled and sobbed. Needless to say, the ancient house in Pencarrow, Cornwall, where the manuscript was found, is now the focus of many a braggart dealer's imaginings: 'I've got a Dickens manuscript from that attic in Pencarrow. The end of Edwin Drood, for the right price . . .' Vestry tried this on with everybody in the Eastern Hundreds, and got nowhere.

'Vestry made us a special offer,' she said lamely. 'He chucked in a French pottery fake.'

'Nobody trusted Vestry. He'd the knowledge of a gnat.' And the luck of one.

'We did!' She tried to sound indignant. 'Horse is clever!'

I didn't believe a word of it. Horse wouldn't know how to market Stone Age toast any more than fly. He didn't know porcelain from pork. Clever? This was the man who, unbelievable to relate, once sold a dinner service, not spotting that the gungy old chipped plates were actually copies done by Edme Samson of Paris, the immortal copier. Samson's creations often cost ten times the originals. Samson started as a faithful honest duplicator of broken pots, and ended up making brilliant fakes of Meissen, Chelsea, and Chinese famille rosé by the million. Pretty good they are, too.

Incidentally, moulds taken from Meissen originals are almost invariably smaller than the originals (a useful tip, this) owing to shrinkage in firing, so watch out. And the base of Meissen figures of, say, 1740 to 1750-odd, is always supposed to be a flat unglazed

'buff' hue, whereas fakes are practically white, though I've never found this much use because there are exceptions. If I have a fake porcelain anything, I offload it onto Horse and FeelFree because they know nil.

Hence FeelFree was lying, telling me Horse and she were doing a deal with Vestry. But why?

'Did you tell the police this, love?'

'Should I? We just popped over. He was our friend. We found him hanging there. It was horrible.'

She burst into sobs, hands over her face, peeping between her fingers to see how I was taking her falsehoods.

'God rest him,' I said, sick now.

'Leave her alone, you brute.' The same vicious old bat advancing threateningly across the square made me get up with ill grace.

'Sorry, love,' I said loudly to the crone. 'She's an alcoholic junkie. Spare a copper for her junkie friends. She's not had a drink for almost an hour.'

I fled the contumely.