Every Last Cent

18

SUSANNE EGGERS DIDN'T deign to drive. Her husband Taylor drove us in a motor so plush I almost nodded off. We went to the River Deben estuary, a favourite site for lovers. Not today, though.

There's a seaside hamlet near one of the large boating centres. Nearly a marina, it has an old Martello tower. These squat edifices were built to resist Tyrant Bonaparte. Now, they're little museums or trendy caffs. This one I already knew. All candles, purple chintz and gothic silver, with waitresses dressed like young witches waiting for the Black Sabbath. Purple lipstick, kohl eyeliner, chalk-white features and niello jewellery. It isn't exactly teatime at Frinton-on-Sea. I once had a long smileship with a bird who used to take two hours doing her face like this. Daft, when she was gorgeous to start with. Forty-three years of age was Bliss, shapely plump, yet a born worrier. We used to come out to this very place and spend summer evenings watching the boats while I'd tell her about antique scams I'd done.

'Stop that smirking, Lovejoy.'

'Sorry.' I hadn't known I was.

Her bloke dashed round and opened the door. The only time I did that for Bliss I fell flat on my face and she rolled in the aisles.

'I said stop smirking. You look Neanderthal.'

'Sorry, sorry.' Do women know when you're thinking of a different bird? It makes them ratty.

We alighted. The foreshore was coolish and breezy. A delivery van was parked by the side entrance, a youth in overalls unloading crates. Two cheapo motors in the little car park. And, three-four furlongs off amid tussocky grass and dunes, a large dark motor.

Nobody in it. Nobody fishing on the breakwater. So why was it here?

Inside, the place hadn't started serving. A senior man was sitting at the far end, last table. I felt odd. It was Consul Sommon, the bloke who'd made serious smiles in my cottage with Mrs Eggers that cold frosty night. The mighty American. I glanced anxiously at Taylor Eggers, but he simply went to stand by the entrance. We serfs are prone to do that, attend humbly on our betters while they live life.

The gent signalled us to approach. I'd seen his face in newspaper photographs, so I was sure. The waitresses were laying tables. A musician was tinkering with those black sound boxes that deafen you, cables everywhere.

'This is he,' Susanne said.

He? How come I was he? I felt his eyes peel my features away. His gaze roamed my skull, ferreting out hidden allegiances. A politician to be scared of.

'Hello, sir.' I didn't fawn or grovel, but showed I was that way inclined.

'How?' the man growled.

Close to, he had large jowls, baggy eyes, impeccable attire, and modern cufflinks that would see off our national debt. Definitely the same man from that cold night. I almost asked how what?

'I tested him with some others,' Susanne said. 'He got every antique wrong. The others got every one correct, on his signals.'

The man almost smiled. She sat, shivered in a sudden draught as the delivery man opened the door.

'Clever.' He fixed me. 'Why?'

He meant why did I try to fiddle the results. This meeting was already hard work and I'd only just arrived. When all else fails, try truth.

'I was scared.'

'What of?' He froze the place with a wintry smile. 'One little lady?'

'I was out of my depth, sir.' Too many sirs spoil the broth. I saw his contempt. He knew I was buttering him and he wasn't having any.

'Your suspicions were what, exactly?'

'Posh is trouble.' No sir this time. Take that, you arrogant diplomat.

He didn't like my mention of trouble. 'What trouble?'

'I've no money. You need it to deal in high antiques.'

He didn't quite glance at Mrs Eggers. At last a clue.

A waitress emerged carrying a tray. She set it down. I stared at the porcelain as she distributed it. I felt queer, my chest bonging and my hands clammy. I'd never seen so much wealth come out for coffee. One plate was the rarest. I'd never seen one before in any open market. It was a rare early Meissen, meaning from New Year's Day of 1710

and the few years following. Tip: they're the first really honest European (non-Chinese, I should say) hard-paste porcelain, and are a grubby white, sometimes an even grottier fawnish hue. They're priceless. It was so genuine I almost cried out.

'What?' The man was interested, watching me.

'I feel a bit odd. I don't like driving. Twisty roads,' I explained, pretending.

The waitress returned bringing a coffee pot, cream and milk jugs, sugar and whatnot.

All costly modern gunge. I almost apologized out loud to the three genuine antique pieces, them keeping such crappy company.

'Tell.' A man of few syllables.

'Tell what?'

He reached out and hit me. Actually gave me a swipe with his clenched fist so I flew off my chair. Susanne gave a loud cackle. My only thought was for the porcelain. Slowly I clambered back. We serfs know our place.

'Which are they? And no trifling.'

It was the shell game. Find the pea under the walnut shells and you win. I shook my head.

'Sorry, mate. I've had enough of your games.'

I got up, glanced at the heartbreaking loveliness of the three porcelains, and strode from the place. At least I started to. His voice halted me.

'Do I break it?' he called.

I halted. Mr Eggers, arms folded, sadly shook his head. You're a fool, his expression said. Just go along with it. There's no other way for the likes of us kulaks. Back at the table, the consul was holding up the modern Doulton sugar bowl.

'Why ask me?' I said, always the idiot.

He dropped it, ground his heel into the fragments. It was a pity, because Royal Doulton's classy, though the poor bowl was only made a fortnight gone.

The plate he lifted next, though, made my heart stop. The Meissen.

'How about this, chum?' He made a prolonged insult of the appellation, the way American gangsters do sometimes on film, like they sometimes say toodle-oo. I felt like clobbering him back, but for an old geezer he'd fairly swung his weight, and that big motor out on the dunes told me he never travelled alone.

It took me two attempts to say, 'What about it?'

And he dropped it. Smash it went, on the marble floor. I looked at the fragments. I'd not even had the time to gasp, let alone dive to save it. Pieces were everywhere. To gather them up would be a waste of time. Nobody would want a relic, as we call such desperate repairs, however valuable it had once been. In a split second it had gone from a perfect Meissen genuine hard-paste porcelain to nothing. Murder.

'Look at his face!' Susanne Eggers shrieked, rolling in the aisles.

The murderer grinned, exhibiting massively even white teeth. What is it about American politicians? They all have superb incisors and canines. Darwinian selection, I shouldn't wonder.

'Sit,' he said. I obeyed.

Susanne patted my arm. She found all this hilarious. 'Don't take on, Lovejoy. Just do as you're told and we'll get along.'

'Pick them out,' the killer commanded. 'And say what.'

For a second I sat and thought. He wanted confirmation. Yet it was weird. If he'd wanted to be sure of the Meissen plate, he could have called in any expert and got a million certificates of authenticity. But he hadn't. Therefore I was somehow vital. His cause, shared so intensely by Susanne Eggers, must be pretty desperate. It wasn't just romantic love between this fetching lady and him, passion on the sly. Despite his cool he was desperate behind his tombstone teeth and natty attire. I wondered if he was one of the antiques raj. Would they let a politician in, though? Except nowadays they might take anybody. After all, they accepted that Continental, Prince Whatsisname so they'll accept any crook. Or so people say. (I've got to add that, to prevent more law suits.) And the antiques raj didn't do their own clobbering. You'd never see their fist coming.

It was now a question of saving the other two porcelains from this maniac. I cleared my throat.

Search among your pots and pans. Wander through the village boot fairs. You might get lucky.

Continental porcelain is all the rage. The saying is: You can sell any antique in its own sector, but you can sell antique porcelain anywhere anytime. It's true. It means that you'll have no real difficulty selling paintings to a collector of paintings, jewellery to a collector of jewellery and so on, but that everybody falls for porcelain. Forgers know this, incidentally, so pay heed here.

The humble punter who drops in at some auction hoping to find a dazzling antique Continental dinner service going for a song has little chance. Remember a few tips, however, and you might narrow those odds.

Leave aside English wares. Leave aside Japanese and Chinese. Think of Continentals, as I was having to do for this lunatic. And remember these snippets: There are three biggies. (Correction: there's two whales and one tiddler.) If a dealer makes a mistake and passes up one of these mainstreamers, he might as well give up, because he'll be a laughing stock.

First and most splendidly, there's Meissen. Its story's pretty horrible, but if I tell it quick it'll help to fix it in the mind.

Once upon a time, all European porcelain was duff stuff. Compared to Chinese, it was crud. Why? Because it was soft paste, that's why. Oriental porcelain was hard paste.

Simple as that. The Continentals and the English kept trying to copy the Chinese. Year after endless year, they failed.

Enter a clever youth called Johann F. Bottger, alchemist of Prussia. He was obsessed with changing base metal into gold. The King of Prussia, Frederick the First, was a greedy swine. He heard about Bottger. Cunning, he decided to hire young Bottger, which he did by simply locking the alchemist up. The trick of turning dross into gold would make King Fred the one true world power. That's politicians for you.

Young John Bottger got out and fled sharpish. The poor deluded bloke hurtled to Saxony, where Augustus the Strong offered him sanctuary. The young alchemist believed him! And simply finished up in a different dungeon. King Augustus was another greedy swine, you see, and thought, tomorrow the whole world will be mine when Bottger pulls off the gold trick.

The enslaved John F. Bottger laboured away in clink. No gold, but he discovered how to make hard-paste porcelain. The world of European ceramics was born. Meissen china made Augustus the Strong a fortune. (Poor Bottger died young, of course, from hardship and booze, the way genuises do.)

At first, Dresden and Meissen were interchangeable names in England, seeing there's only a dozen miles between the two places, both in Saxony anyway. In January 1710

the factory started up. The first pieces look like they're trying hard to be pure white but never quite make it. They're unbelievably rare. But that doesn't mean they're not out there waiting for you. A faint fawnish hue is said to be most typical.

Look for the crossed-swords mark. It doesn't prove Meissen, but it's one clue. Some pieces, like the (genuine!) over-decorated 'Snowball type' flowery bottle-shaped vases, look ghastly and foolish though they still cost a king's ransom. Still, Meissen rules Continental hard-paste porcelain, whether or not pieces have the crossed-swords mark, with or without the dot, star, or pommel. In the figurines, I always look at the stripes on the maiden's skirt, which you've got to be a real cracker to fake right. Tip: a numbering system was brought in about 1763. The numbers were incised, like when you write on wet clay with a toothpick, so an overly neat stamped number suggests forgery.

Then there was the piece this killer American hadn't yet smashed to smithereens. It was a Sevres plate. These French pieces were soft paste, but so what? Their gilding is superb, and the enamel looks somehow about to sink into the glaze. The two crossed-letter L marks look like they're trying to make a bell shape. That's all, but they're beautiful. The flower decorations are unequalled.

Those are the two whales. The single tiddler is Vienna. Good stuff, to be sure, and worth a fortune now, but still a minnow in comparison to the two giants.

Odd how rascals and rogues abound in the story of porcelain. They thrived, especially in Vienna, where in 1717 folk began to hear of the wonderful events in Meissen. By bribery, Vienna procured a Meissen worker to nick all the manufacturing secrets. (Didn't pay him, of course.) The outcome was Vienna hard-paste porcelain and multo bad feeling. There are supposed to be lots of clues to its authenticity – the greenish tint to the thin glaze, the perspective of the painting and so on. Here's my only tip, unless you're an expert: every single feature of early Vienna porcelain looks copied from some other style. The square handles are phoney Oriental; the rims are Japanese ideas; the masked feet are copied from silverware of the period. It's a giveaway.

Beware, for the tiddler costs a fortune too.

'So it isn't all vibes,' the killer said in his best senatorial voice. 'It's knowledge as well?'

'No. It's the chimes.' I was torn between the Vienna piece and the Sevres. The French porcelain is always higher regarded in London's auction rooms, because the decoration is bonnier. They sat there amid the modern garbage – I meant us, not just the crockery. 'What bits you pick up – dates, names, tricks to tell other dealers – are just gilt on the gingerbread.'

'What dealers?' He barked the question so loudly I jumped.

'Whatever dealers will stump up for a meal.'

He ran his eyes over me slowly, like I was for sale. My frayed cuffs, my battered shoes worn down to the welts, my shredding collar.

'Broke, huh?' He seemed pleased. He shot Susanne a glance of approval. She almost purred. 'I'm glad he's a bum, Suse.'

'I've had a bad streak lately.' Pathetic to sound so defensive. Maybe when I got as fat as him I'd feel the same scorn for the impoverished. Until then I'd no choice.

'How about a retainer, Lovejoy? To divvy.'

Money, now? I must have looked astonished because he barked a laugh, a seal coughing offshore in a salmon glut.

'Suse, you picked a moron here.' He fixed me, finger pointing. 'Listen up, Lovejoy.

When the Antwerp High Council gets flak from do-gooders who whine that crooked African politicians are selling blood diamonds to finance some peanut war, you think it ends there? Hell, no. Somebody like me picks up the tab when the diamond market goes through De Beers' floor.

'And if Sotheby's and Christie's come unglued, everybody turns to me. When smuggled

"economic migrants" die in container lorries, or some ship gets impounded –you think the owners just smile and pay up? Shit, no. They turn to the insurers with their hands out. You know what they want? They want money. Every fucker insures against their own sins. The Church against their own perverts, inept footballers against losing.

Tobacco manufacturers insure themselves against the Feds in Raleigh, North Carolina, detecting their own tax-evading smuggling rackets. You with me at last?'

I surrendered and said resignedly, 'What do you want me to divvy? Where?'

He lit a cigar, though smoking wasn't allowed in the restaurant. Taylor Eggers beckoned me. I left. No tea, no grub, though it was all served ready for a hungry bloke like, say, me. No money either. Taylor still beamed. A cuckolded husband always smarts, even at the point of murderous revenge. Don't try telling me different. Taylor, however, smilingly walked me along the promenade to a stall. There we dined on pasties and hot spuds and tea thick enough to plough. He paid, thank God.

'D'you know where I'm to do the divvying, mate?' I asked him.

'Don't know what they're on about, Lovejoy.'

'Whose are those antiques?' I meant the Sevres and the Vienna piece. No good asking about the Meissen, requiescat in pace.

'Mine.'

I stared. He spoke in tones of faint regret. Not heartbroken, note. Merely a bit of hard luck, losing that priceless plate.

'My only three genuine antiques,' he said, like easy come, easy go.

'He's the consul, isn't he?'

'Don't, Lovejoy.' He stared out to sea. 'Hear no evil, speak no evil. Just go along.

There's no other way. The powers are too great.'

'Right,' I said. Then, 'Can I have some more tea?'