Every Last Cent

24

IT WAS NEXT day. The antiques shop in Harwich was set back between a natty tailor's and a fishing place. I didn't know the proprietress, only that she wasn't the expert she thought she was. I'd seen her miss a small occasional table that would have kept her a year, maybe more, but she was too proud to kneel and check underneath.

'It was glass,' I told Alicia as we readied to do the first robbery. She would shoulder, I'd be safely elsewhere.

'A glass topped table?'

'No. The entire table. Osier of Birmingham made glass furniture, right down to the pedestal. Not a splinter of wood in sight. Some loon had painted it a hideous green, wanting it to look like wrought iron. I got it home and stripped the paint off.'

'Christ, that sounds ugly.'

Osier's glass furniture factory kept going from Trafalgar times, but failed in the 1920s.

Oddly, they sold best in Calcutta and Hong Kong, God knows why. Too little sun in England, and the perennial brightness in the Eastern Empire, might explain it. Victorian ladies loved them in their conservatories, where light could pick up the gleams. Folk chuck them out these days, thinking it's a neffie modern fashion. Wrong. It's a stylish art gone from us. If you see one, buy it. Collectors and fashioneers are starting to cotton on.

'Ann Fosstitch, as ever was.'

The woman entered the shop, her great saloon motor illegally parked. Soon after, another woman scurried away, and La Fosstitch appeared in the window arranging her wares.

'What do you want me to uncle, Lovejoy?'

Uncle to mean nick, from Uncle Dick, nick. Hence, steal. Alicia's Cockney rhyming slang shows through when she's keyed up. Peshy woke, yawned, and stretched, ready for action.

'Anything good. I can't decoy for you, so take care, love.'

She left, walking the dog on its string. It bounced along like a ball of fur. I'm told that breeders can change their shapes. If so, they've let the Almighty down. Peshy was a travesty. What on earth could a dog like that do? Hunting was out. Guarding somebody's castle was not on. Pulling some sledge was a ludicrous thought. I think people with fancy dogs are odd.

They vanished into the shop, Alicia carefully picking Peshy up and pausing in the entrance beforehand, presumably asking if the shopkeeper had any objections to a mongrel. A traffic warden knocked on the window. I opened it.

'Will you be parked here long, sir?'

'Only a minute,' I said, affecting boredom, though my heart was racing. 'My wife just wanted to do a bit of shopping in that tailor's.'

He smiled in sympathy. 'Then five minutes, sir.'

He strolled off. I was dreading Tinker's arrival. With his mighty cough and tatty appearance we'd get arrested on sight, hanging about this busy port. The water looked particularly cold today, the ferries hustling, cars streaming past to the Continental terminals. I'd chosen well. I didn't like La Fosstitch. She'd once complained about a children's playground.

Ten minutes, me getting anxious, Alicia emerged and walked. It was only a few yards to the corner. I drove quickly off, parked near a shopping mall. Alicia opened the door and slid in.

'Lovejoy,' she exclaimed as I pulled out into the traffic. 'What an absolute cow! What a mare!'

I was pleased, my judgement confirmed. 'Get anything?' Alicia simply held her hand over the back seat where Peshy was wagging and yapping, noisy little sod. It nuzzled in its frothy fur and dropped a little plastic packet into her hand. I almost shunted a big Ford up ahead in astonishment.

'Who's a clever little Peshy-Weshy!' she cooed, fondling the mutt. It gave a few self-congratulatory yaps. 'Are they any good, Lovejoy?'

There was a lucky parking space near the turn-off to the wharfs. I took the earrings out. Our first theft. They were chalcedony, almost classical William IV in style. This means light-looking, drop-stone earrings, one gem with fancy detailed settings.

Chalcedony's a lovely stone, though people turn their noses up at it nowadays because it's only quartz and not diamond, but so what if it's beautiful? If chalcedony's got a

'typical' colour it's a cloudy bluish white, virtually impossible to shine a narrow light through. 'Lovely. You did well. Brilliant.'

She was pleased. 'You're working with the best here, Lovejoy.'

'Could you put them away, love? The back of my neck's gone funny.'

'Oh, has it!' she suddenly asked, eyes hard. 'Wait.' Her lips set in a thin line. She said quietly, 'Peshy.'

Silence from the back seat. I turned. Peshy was staring out at the cars.

'Peshy?' No response. What was going on? The dog kept its back to us, gazing out. Her voice cracked like a gunshot. 'Peshy!'

'Christ, Alicia. You made me ...'

The Bichon slowly looked round. I wouldn't have believed that a dog could look, well, hangdog, but this managed it. Head down, eyes avoiding Alicia's, it nuzzled into its fur and brought out another sachet. Caught red-muzzled.

It waited, maybe hoping things hadn't quite gone horribly wrong, but Alicia wriggled her fingers, palm cupped. The dog looked at her hand, the plastic jewellery envelope in its mouth.

'Give! Hand it over.'

'You keep making me jump.'

'He's got to learn, Lovejoy.'

The dog surrendered. Alicia slapped its nose and gave it a right telling off, lecturing the miniature hound on obedience, trust, fairness, honesty, and Doing Right By Your Mistress. Much of it was in incomprehensible dog-speak, 'Does he want his toysie-woysies in his beddie-weddie ...' etc, etc, but Peshy looked thrashed.

'Sorry about that, Lovejoy. He keeps some things back. I've to watch him.'

'The dog's a kleppie?' A blowsy shoplifter and a kleptomaniac dog. My antiques sweep round the Eastern Hundreds was looking dodgy. I blotted the plastic. If we got stopped, I didn't want my fingerprints on the stolen goods, only Alicia's. Fair's fair. So far I'd skated inside the law.

'He's mumsy-wumsy's little helper, isn't he?' she crooned, patting him. 'All is forgiven, isn't he, Uncle Lovejoy?'

Uncle Lovejoy could have strangled the bloody animal, because if we got apprehended an animal's collar is the first place the plod would look.

Peshy had stolen well, though. It was a mourning brooch, Victorian, with MEMORIAM in gold gothic lettering, unusually in white enamel, and a white agate cabochon embossing the centre. The reverse was hollowed, the locket containing a wisp of fair hair.

'It's wrong, isn't it, Lovejoy?' she said, leaning heavily across to examine it with me.

'Shouldn't it be black, mourning jewellery?'

'Somebody young, unmarried, happen a babby, sometimes got white stones. They're rarer and more valuable.' Purple and even dark blue brooches became acceptable as the Victorians' obsession with mourning reached its height and craftsmen turned their skill to ever more varied displays of grief.

This robbery mingled two emotions in me. Respect for Peshy's unerring eye was one, but it was submerged in pity for the sorrow at the brooch. For an instant I felt almost choked. Poor Timothy Giverill. Poor Vestry found hanging. Poor who next?

'Where to, Lovejoy?'

'We'll do an auctioneer's. There's Balance and Knorr's place by the open market, isn't there?'

'Their whiffler used to be a plod, Lovejoy,' she warned.

'If he's on duty, come out.'

We agreed. It was getting on for noon, always a good time to do a shoulder in auction rooms because security blokes' fancies lightly turn to the nearest boozer's pies and pints. It was viewing day, saving us the awkward drive to Dovercourt.

She got her midget wolfhound and went in, Peshy all excited at thoughts of more thievery. I stayed out of sight. She emerged after half an hour, some young bloke opening the door for her and handing her a free catalogue. Getting anything free from an auctioneer's the equivalent of a peerage. I admired her. She swept off down the pavement. On a good day, when she's on song, feeling particularly bright and well dressed, Alicia can charm the birds off the trees. Other women don't like her much, because she looks a bit blowzy and showy.

I remember Nell, a bird from Bristol. I used her for repairing Art Deco ceramics, until she went ape with a Mauritian singer. Nell went for Alicia because she wore colours that clashed, as women say. Nell's tiny shape was dwarfed by Alicia's ample figure. She said caustically, 'Alicia, dear, don't you know the old saying about colours? Orange and yellow make folk bellow. And blue and green must never be seenl' Alicia swept past Nell like a ship in full sail saying loudly, 'What crap dwarfs talk!' They never spoke again.

Personally, I think Nell was wrong, because Alicia always wears tons of makeup, like a woman should, and dresses really colourfully. Sometimes she wears every colour you can imagine, all together. That's real style. I can't for the life of me think why women hate her. My only worry was that people tended to remember her more than most.

We met up by the shopping mall and I drove to a tavern on the north road. She did her lipstick from a handbag that I could have dossed in. The car's interior filled with scent and powder clouds. She asked how she looked.

'Stupendous, love.' How else? I could tell she'd struck oil because I felt giddy like a cold was coming on.

'I hope you like it, Lovejoy.'

'Silver.'

Three little silvers were hauled from Alicia's cleavage while Peshy looked on, possibly working out how on earth he could compete with that. One was a disappointment, being a modern silver pepperpot, but two were lovely.

When tea – best drink in the world – became cheaper as imports flooded in, it became unnecessary to lock tea caddies, as they used to until later Victorian times (ungrateful servants nicked the precious commodity, you see). This was an important step, because ladies used the caddy's silver lid for measuring out the tea leaves. Getting it exactly right was an indication of a lady's skill. Still is. So tea-caddy spoons came in. There are leagues of caddy-spoon collectors all over the world. Rare examples are almost fought over.

Sadly, here's one of my grievous laws: where collectors thrive, forgers follow. The most evil trick is when a forger (sometimes a skilled silversmith, so watch out) nicks the silver case from some genuine old watch. By beating it out into a bowl shape, it can simulate a caddy spoon complete with a genuine silver hallmark! Add a crescent of silver to its edge, and there you have an antique jockey-cap caddy spoon. Impress a contour, and you have a vine-leaf or a commemorative map of some island just added to the Empire.

The giveaway is that the hallmarks are all clustered in the reshaped bowl, whereas they aren't on the really genuine antique. One of Alicia's pieces was like that.

'Still, never mind.' I showed her. 'People'll be taken in.'

The other was a winner. It was a pair of grape scissors, the most useless implement ever made since Neanderthal man dressed. They never quite cut, which for scissors is a bit of a handicap. You'll never find any equally useless antique so costly, though. They often have rings for the lady's finger and thumb at the end of elaborately chased handles, its useless blinking blades pivoting on a fancy screw. Victorians tried inserting a sliver of steel into the hopeless blades, but even those never work, not even on a grape. Like I say, they're stupid. I can't imagine why ancient craftsmen went to the trouble of making the damned things. Until you ask the price, when all of a sudden your admiration for these exquisite antiques leaps a-bounding from the breast, because the cost of a genuine pair – silver plate, parcel gilt, silver – stuns you.

These were hallmarked for Birmingham in the 1840s. They were 'clean' as dealers say, meaning nearly mint. They were still warm from being inside Alicia's blouse.

'Love, you deserve plus for these. Well done.'

It was a superb beginning to the sweep. Okay, I knew Alicia was trying to impress, but she'd excelled.

'Thank you, Lovejoy.' Even Peshy looked smug.

We went to the restaurant.

'One thing, Lovejoy.' She gave me a look. 'You stayed in your own room last night.'

'Er ...' I reddened.

'I expected you to come in. A nightcap, possibly explain why we're roaming the Hundreds like this. And why you picked me.'

I said lamely, 'I got a bit weary, thinking things.'

'You lying swine. You're never weary.'

'Look, love.' I decided to come clean. 'Don't get mad. It's just... It's your wolfhound.'

From politeness I didn't mention Peshy's name.

'Peshy?' she said, astonished. 'What's wrong with Peshy?'

'Nothing, nowt, course not!' I shrugged apology. 'Only, you don't, well, sleep with him in bed, do you?'

She laughed, her whole form shaking with merriment.

'Lovejoy, you're ridiculous! You mean you lay awake next door because you thought—?

You stupid man. Of course not! Peshy has his own bed. It's my big leather case. It unfolds into a splendid snuggly-wuggly .. .' She turned to include the mongrel in the conversation, which thereon became meaningless.

I sighed with relief, got out of the motor and walked inside. She could make her own arrangements for the dog. She followed, insisting on a special steak cooked just so for Peshy. He dined in a children's high chair. I asked not to face him. Alicia said I was being stupid. I finished before she did and went to collect Tinker, agreeing to return in about two hours to carry on westward. I phoned Norma and Ferd in the meantime, to ask if they had heard anything about Timothy.

Norma was in tears telling me the bad news. I said how sad, and rang off. I phoned the hospital, asking for the doctor by name, pretending to be a doctor from Suffolk.

Florence was still in intensive care, the doctor said.

'What are the prospects of recovery?'

He reeled off a string of numbers with a load of terms I couldn't comprehend. Finally he asked, 'Who is this, please? Did you say...?'

That should do it. I rang off. They'd know it was me. That system of tapping in a number to find the number of the person who's just rung is a godsend in some circumstances, but highly dangerous in others. This was either, maybe both.

Tinker was in the pub when I got there, happy waiting and almost kaylied from booze. I got a jar and took it across. He'd gone back to smoking his old pipe. Eight empty glasses were on the table. He must have been waiting half an hour at least.

'Wotcher, Tinker. All right?'

'Fine, son. Did that fat old bint nick some good stuff?'

Cruel description of Alicia Domander – plump she might be, but age never comes into it.

'I think so. Had anything to eat?'

'Thought I'd let my thirst go down.'

'You'd best have a bite before we go on.'

I made him eat a couple of pasties, and had one myself for luck. I handed him the yield, wrapped in bubble plastic.

'Buy a couple of postage boxes from the post office and get them to Eleanor's house, in my lane in the village.'

Eleanor is nothing to do with antiques. She just has Henry, a little baby I mind while she's out. She knew to keep unexplained parcels in her garage until I returned. It would be the first of many. I badly needed as many as I could get, and the more famous the thefts we did the better.

'Did you find out who Hugo is?'

He belched. The tavern shuddered. People all about stopped talking, wondering what spaceship had just effected re-entry.

'There's a bloke called Hugo mends old Lancaster engines down Romford. He's nearly ninety, not done a hand's turn for a decade. Nobody else.'

'Keep trying. Be in that tavern where Tandy's knock-out ring meets in Acle, you know the one. Eight o'clock tonight. I'll phone you, tell you what to do.' I gave him another two notes.

'How many more you going to do today, then?'

'Eight or nine, maybe double figures, give or take.' I hoped our thefts would make the Antiques Trade Gazette by the following week. Things were looking better, except for absent friends.

By afternoon I was worn out. Planning ahead always does this. I had a splitting headache, and the Bichon Frise –what a name for a species; sounds like a fried egg –

was getting on my nerves. Alicia Domander's good cheer and pride in her artistry was unfailing. I warmed to her. You can't help admiring a real pro. We really got going.

We did three antique shops in Ipswich and one auctioneer place. Then I said to cut across country to Norwich, while I dozed in the rear seat and Peshy sat upright grandly staring out of the windscreen from the front passenger seat. All he needed was goggles to be Biggies.

In Norwich Alicia knocked off a few items from those posh antique shops near Norwich Cathedral. She even got a painting out of the Black Horse Gallery in Wensum Street, and two small silvers at the adjacent place. All genuine, too, which goes to show that the real stuff isn't only in Sotheby's and Christie's. That thought worried me because it called something to mind, except I was too tired to remember exactly what. I shelved the moment and dozed.

That night we stayed on the outskirts of Norwich. I phoned Tinker in his Acle bar, got another definite negative to my Hugo question, and told him to go to Cambridge, see him in St John's Chapel at noon tomorrow.

'There's somebody come here asking if you're booked in, Lovejoy,' he gravelled out in an attempted whisper. 'Some bird. I said you were in Southwold. That all right?'

'Good, Tinker,' I told him. 'You did well. Keep going, okay?'

'Right. Tara, son.'

That night Alicia came into my room, leaving her midget mongrel asleep in her room.

We made smiles, me with relief and she with joy in her ample heart. It would have been a peaceful start to next morning, except there was an envelope under the door before the girl brought morning tea at seven o'clock.

There was a note:

Dear Lovejoy,

Please confirm soonest to me your next precise location. I regard your default on our contractual arrangements a serious breach of trust, and do hope this transgression is not repeated.

Yours sincerely,

Thomasina Quayle (Mrs)

Alicia stirred and groaned, looked at the bedside alarm clock.

'Christ Almighty, Lovejoy. It can't be day.'

'Up, love. Lots to do.'

She whimpered. 'Lovejoy, I didn't even know there was a seven o'clock in the morning.

I thought it only came in the evening.'

'Stop it, Alicia. Think of Peshy.'

'He'll be fine. He doesn't get up until nine even when he's working. And he doesn't really wake up properly until after his elevenses and his walk.'

So much for an early start. I went back to bed, burrowed in beside her. And that was that until nine. I didn't tell her about the warning note. We'd have to move faster, dog or no dog. How the hell had Thomasina Quayle traced me that fast?