Every Last Cent

22

IT WAS A different office. I prefer uniformed plod these days. Once, I used to think they were the worst of a myriad evils. Now, I think maybe they're the least, though you've still to watch them.

'Eh?' I asked Sep Verner.

He showed his teeth. He believes it looks like smiling, but so far he hasn't learned how.

When he was in clink and I was showing him how to paint like Vincent – I told you about that – he was a quiet, withdrawn geezer on remand. We all make mistakes. I believed he was human, or at least lifelike, capable of emotion and everything. I was well wrong. He shook my hand, I remember, when I got sprung, and told me ta for helping him through. A blink of an eye, and there he was a rising star in the plod's firmament.

'This fatal accident in which you were involved, Lovejoy.'

'What accident?'

No lie to tell him my head hurt. I'd no mirror at the cottage, but knew I must look frayed at the edges. I had a bump on my noggin, though I'd bathed as usual in my tin bath and got blood and mud off.

He sat in his chair, rocking and swinging. I'm sure he copies American gangster films.

He's prognathous, teeth like that cowcatcher device that Babbage invented for the front of railway engines. I'll bet he got called names by his pals at school. Is there anything worse than the cruelty of children?

'What was that about children?' he asked sharply, his chair slamming down. He leaned forward, fingers linked. Whoops. Must have spoken my thoughts. I'm always doing that.

'Sorry,' I said. 'I'm still woozy from the accident.'

'What accident?' he asked softly.

'That's what I asked.'

He flicked open a slender file. My name. I must have started a new one, for legal goings-on instead of the usual messes.

'Last night, Lovejoy.' He stared beyond me, gave some newcomer the nod. 'You were injured. Two people were killed. An antique dealer, one Mrs Olive Makins, was injured along with three other drivers. You were an eye witness.'

'Olive Makins? I know her. Is she all right?'

'Fine. Just grazes.'

'Thank heavens,' I said piously. 'She's the auctioneers' secretary.'

'We know.' No grin now. 'Which raises the question what you were doing so late thumbing lifts on the trunk road.'

'Trying to get home, I suppose.' I furrowed my brow, trying to help him against the odds. 'I remember some event in a village hall. Was it Beccles?'

'How did you get to the main road?'

'I don't remember. All I can see is ...' I did the same patter, tyres, vehicles braking, me down the embankment.

'Then this truck driver was saying there'd been an accident. From Liverpool,' I added helpfully.

The newcomer spoke. 'You're not pulling the wool over my eyes, Lovejoy,' she said, coming round the desk. My heart sank.

Sep Verner made way as Petra Deighnson seated herself and gazed at me unsmiling.

Petra, incidentally, means rock in Latin.

Deighnson missed her vocation. She could have been human given half a chance. No, I mean it, could have been a real functioning Homo sapiens with friends and a life to lead. Don't misunderstand. She looks the part, is always well turned-out. Smart, my generation would say, suited, good legs and high heels, only one item of jewellery and that a spanker with an ultramarine – my favourite gem –at its centre. High Victorian, it's what posher antique dealers call en tremblant, meaning shivery, always on the go. It's one of the few brooches you can tell a mile off.

It had all the marks of pricey craftsmanship; not flat, but different planes of the brooch standing proud. Class. This, I knew just from looking, would be as superb when you turned it over as it looked from the front. Only one gem, set in fragile leaves made of diamonds in silver and platinum. It made my mouth drool. I'd never seen her wear any other jewellery. Blouse, neat white gloves, jacket and skirt matching, she looked you-shall-go-to-the-ball. She's known for it. I daresay the lads at the nick have a score of spiteful names for her. They say she'll go far. I don't doubt it. When first we met she was a lowly come-here-do-that. Now, she's the one they stand up for. Always wears white gloves, but not for what you think. I've actually seen her hands, and they're beautiful. No split nails for our Petra.

'Do be seated, Lovejoy.'

She has a pleasant face, lovely eyes. I couldn't imagine her doing the three-minute basic police training, Kevlar vests and guns. Petra seems remote as monarchy. Rumour puts her at Oxford reading classics, pure maths, divinity. Whatever, she's hard to fool and harder still to oppose. She looks the sort of plod that fashionable actresses are always trying to emulate in those tiresome TV mayhem-and-murder episodes. I was once being questioned when somebody rang her up and asked if she'd be willing to let some TV actress come and see her work. She'd replied, 'Don't be silly,' and rang off, continuing the questions without breaking step.

That's Petra Deighnson, vicar's daughter from Northampton. Oh, and big ranker in the Serious Fraud Office. She used to be in the local plod, but saw the light of promotion in the galaxy and jumped ship. The SFO has nicknames – Seriously Flawed Office among variants – but you dursn't utter them in dear Petra's hearing. Local dealers call it the Silly Failure Orifice. The SFO's useless, despite our Petra. It rattles sabres at robber barons like Robert Maxwell, then lets them get away scotage free while the rest of us sit seething and the tabloid newspapers thunder Why Are They Allowed? It's the little bloke who gets done, for forgetting half a groat on his tax return, or the old woman who forgets to claim her pension. They wistfully wonder how the huge-haul thieves get away with everything. The SFO alone knows, and does sweet sod all.

'Lovejoy. You witnessed an accident last night.'

'People keep saying so.'

She didn't smile, but something in her changed as if she was pondering a smile as a possible strategem for some future reincarnation.

'Won't you answer the question?' she said, quite pleasant.

'What question?'

'You watch it, Lovejoy!' Sep spat, itching to rise and belt my head in, his form of psychotherapy. Showing off before the pretty lady, more like.

'Leave him. Lovejoy's quite correct, Mr Verner. I didn't ask a question.'

He subsided, glowering. I'd made a pal.

'Sorry, missus. I've a bad head.'

'Can we offer you anything? Would you like to see a doctor?'

'I'll be okay as soon as I get back to work.'

Verner sniggered. She half turned and he quietened, staring at me with pure hatred. I wondered, not for the first time, how close he and Susanne Eggers actually were. Thick as thieves, to coin a phrase.

'If I remember anything, I'll phone in.'

'Very well.' She rose. We rose. 'I'll take you to hospital.'

'I'm not as bad as that, missus,' I said in alarm.

'To visit your friends.' I gaped at her as she wafted past. 'The Giverills. Do come.'

We drove to the new hospital in Gosbecks in a superb saloon that must have cost us taxpayers a mint. She had the grace not to charge me a penny fare. I was almost fainting from relief. Timothy and Florence were safe! All along I'd assumed that Olive Makins had been there to bear witness to their murders in a rigged road accident. I felt so grateful, to everybody – God, police, the ambulance, the AA, oddly to Sandy and Mel.

La Petra seemed to know the hospital corridors, leading the way with clicking heels. I wondered if, once folk rose to some requisite rank in official bureaux, they were trained to walk like a fieldmarshal. Patients and nurses melted before us at the Intensive Care Unit.

I'm scared of these places. The doctors look into you, obviously working out where the next needle must be drilled in, and nurses look like they're weighing how heavy you'd be to lift onto a bedpan. It's demoralizing when you're just a visitor.

The place was all glass cubicles, like some crazy computer game where a little figure has to make it through a castle dungeon and gets hoodwinked by hidden assassins. I was told to wait. A doctor came, looking at the floor while he spoke to Ms Deighnson.

She held a small transmitter thing. The doctor shook his head, shrugged, finally nodded. She beckoned.

'Go in, Lovejoy. He wants you.'

'Who? Is it Timothy Giverill?'

She didn't quite shove me, but I felt propelled. Somebody gave me a green hat and a mask – what the hell for? Was I to operate? A green gown enveloped me, the arms gorilla length, the tapes trailing on the lino.

'Sit there, please.'

I obeyed, stricken. Timothy – was that him, for Christ's sake? – was in a floppy transparent tent. Gasses hissed. Screens blipped green lines and spikes. I felt ill. I could hardly look. The nurse, garbed the same as me, warned me with a glare, but of what exactly? I didn't want to be here.

'Lovejoy?' A whispering gnat.

'It's me, Timothy. You okay?' Then I could have kicked myself. What was he supposed to say? Of course he wasn't frigging okay. He was smashed to blazes, his face swathed in bandages, plasters keeping tubes in place and see-through muzzles on his mouth. It was obscene.

'How is Florence?'

'She's fine, wack,' I said hoarsely, thinking well, nobody's told me different.

'Lovejoy? It's not her fault. It's mine, you see, old chap.'

'Don't worry, Timothy. You're going to be fine.'

'I asked for you.' A long pause. I looked to see if I could take his hand, maybe save his weakening breath by letting him signal by squeezing fingers. I'd seen a film where folk communicated like that, when one of them was poorly.

'Lovejoy? I trusted the contracts.'

His unsmashed eye caught me. I nodded agreement.

'Well, you would,' I said feebly. Contracts?

'I went in thinking it would be so splendid, being a Name.'

'That's natural, Timothy.'

'It would have gone all right. Hugo started it all.'

He seemed suddenly desperate, tried to move, failed and sank back. He searched, found me as I moved my head to be in slightly better light. Bloody wards are all lit by the Prince of Darkness. I'd have glared at the nurse but didn't want Timothy to waste his energy.

'Lovejoy. I didn't really do anything wrong, did I?'

He sounded pathetic. I shook my head emphatically.

'Course you didn't, mate. Not you.'

There was no reply for so long that the nurse began to tell me to clear off. As she gestured, Timothy spoke almost with his usual clarity, quite as if in the middle of a normal conversation.

'You see, old fruit, it's the promise, isn't it? Like the man said after the earthquake.

Every last cent. Wasn't that his phrase?'

'Yes,' I said, baffled. 'That's it, Timothy.'

Into the silence I said eventually, because he'd gone abnormally still, 'Some bloke, eh?'

Then in the clearest voice he said, 'You'll look after my Florence, Lovejoy.'

A statement, not a question.

'Until you're up and about, mate, course I will.'

Silence. The monitors blipped industriously. I rose, ahemed.

'I'd best be off, Timothy. Florence, er, sends her love. She'll be in to see you about, er, nineish, if that's okay?'

The nurse glared. The monitors bleeped. I left, saying so-long. Hugo?

Downstairs as we headed for the main concourse Petra spoke to one of the doctors.

Mrs Giverill was on life support. They spoke for hell of a time. He looked a frazzled ten-year-old. I saw his name on his white coat and remembered it.

By the time he'd finished and Petra Deighnson looked round for me I was among the parents in the paediatric queue, crouching down and chatting with a titch bent on unscrewing his toys. We mangled two, to the little lad's mother's amused tut-tutting. I heard the doctor's bleep go and he hurried off. Sickened, I eeled out, went down past the mortuary where nobody ever checks the exits, and opened the wooden door into St Mary's Lane. I hurried through the back doubles, thinking straight and fast for the first time. What I'd learned was dire, grievous, horrid.

All previous plans – if I'd had any – had to go. I phoned from a public phone box by the multi-storey car park behind the hospital. I had to dash back into antiques, where I could make / break some rules of my own and let everybody else's go hang. I needed a lot of small, neat thefts of exemplary accuracy. It wouldn't matter whose antiques got nicked, as long as they finished up in my sack. When your own skill runs out, hire the very very best. The greatest thief in the Eastern Hundreds was downing her pink gins in the Welcome Sailor. I got her on the phone.

'Alicia? I need help, love.'

'Who gives a toss, dear?' she purred.

'Money does.'

'Money?' She sharpened her mental claws. I could hear them honing on her stony heart, swish swish.

'Multo bunce, doowerlink. Some of it's for you.'

'For little me, dwahling?' She giggled. 'What do I have to do?'

Pubs have ears, so I said, 'Come out of the side door and walk down to the war memorial. I'll want you to do an antiques sweep, like we said. I know that some of your pals use that new shoulder – whatsername, Confetta from Manchester – but I want proven class like you, Alicia.'

She made a sharp intake of breath. I heard it. Now I knew that she had a rival

'shoulder' (read thief) she'd be less inclined to blow the gaff. That was the best persuasion to secrecy I could manage, over the phone.

'See you in twenty minutes. Take note who's in the pubs you pass, okay?'

'For you, anything!' she cooed, and rang off.

The one thing that proves irresistible to any skilled artisan is asking them to display their expertise to an admiring throng. Even if that throng is only me, it still attracts the skilled thief. Nobody could steal like Alicia.

Like I say, an expert. She was there on time. She was carrying her little dog Peshy. She held it up for me to kiss. I turned aside.

'Oh, pwease say hello to daahling Peshy, Lovejoy!' she trilled. It growled. I gave it a half-hearted pat. It snapped. Normally animals love me, spotting a pushover, but this canine must have thought I was muscling into its ample niche.

'I hope Peshy's on form, love.' I was in enough trouble without a bad-tempered mongrel the size and shape of a cheap brooch.

'Of course!' she warbled, clasping the animal to her bosom. 'He's a pure bred. And he's a Bichon Frise, Lovejoy, not an it. He helps mumsy-wumsy to borrow such lovely shinies from those nasty greedy dealers, doesn't he?'

Keeping a weather eye out for Petra Deighnson and her plod squad, I walked Alicia to her husband's motor and told her the name of a farmhouse near Norwich.

'It's where we're going for a few days, love,' I explained. 'If you can nick as I want, then we're partners. If you get caught, that's your lookout. Agreed?'

'Caught!' She said the word like I'd mentioned some distant asteroid. 'I've not been caught since before you were born, Lovejoy.'

'Then don't start now, eh?'

'You'll be delighted with my performance, Lovejoy.' She fondled her dog, gazing into its eyes. 'Won't he, my little woofie?'

'We're going to assault a number of auctioneers and antique shops, Alicia. We'll raid the whole of Suffolk and Norfolk, et al. I've allocated a fortnight.'

Her eyes closed in rapture. She said huskily, 'And you'll pay? Lovejoy, bless you from the bottom of my heart. You've just promised paradise!'

She chuckled all the way to my village. I like Alicia, always have, but being with her makes me sigh. Times were getting rough when the one person you could trust was an arch thief. Mind you, the Lord found that. Am I right or am I right?