Every Last Cent

26

THE MOTEL WAS grottier than I'd expected. She'd booked in her name, Mrs Alicia Domander, which worried me a bit because I didn't want anybody trekking after us who shouldn't be doing any such thing. The usual trick in the antiques trade is to give a hyphenated name. London antiques auctioneers – and I do mean those in Bond Street

– do it, whenever they illegally pretend to sell an antique that nobody wants. They say,

'Sold to Barnshaugh-Smythies,' or some such, which tells their staff that the bidder doesn't really exist.

The restaurant had almost finished serving supper as I bowled in. I was famished.

Grumpily they agreed to dish me up some grot. Alicia joined me, saying nothing until I started to slow down. Then she spoke, full of reproach.

'You look like death warmed up, Lovejoy.'

'Had a poor day, love.'

'You think I didn't?'

'They don't give you enough spuds in these places.'

I had to fill up on gravy and bread. I felt I'd not eaten for a week. Peshy glared, supercilious because he'd been slogging away thieving while I'd been whooping it up on the Riviera.

'You haven't even asked what I lifted, Lovejoy.'

'What'd you shoulder, love?'

'A Sheffield plate jug. A fake Lalique glass. An assortment of jewellery, and the ugliest porcelain figures you ever saw.' She stared at me as I wiped the plate with my bread. I started straight away on the pudding, a thick treacle sponge and knobbly custard you could have skated on. Her eyes slowly filled.

'You didn't even phone the room to make sure I was safe, did you, Lovejoy?' No answer. 'How do you think I felt? I came swanning out of the auction rooms loaded with stuff, and you weren't there.'

There was no tea. In dud motels you only get your coffee when you've eaten your greens all up, like school dinners.

She stayed bitter. 'You don't care, Lovejoy. Peshy and me could have been collared and you wouldn't have cared.' She blotted her eyes. Peshy licked her tears. Ingrate.

I couldn't tell her. Anyway, it's women's game to get you saying sorry. Look at TV

soaps, or have I said that?

'You did well, love. It sounds good shoulder. Can I see it?'

She told me the room number and asked me for her car keys. I handed them over. I saw a couple of geezers give each other a grin as she wafted past. That narked me.

Okay, Alicia doesn't exactly look a picture of purity, but did they? Fine, people say Alicia doesn't dress clever and joke at her frothy chintzy stuff. But she was here being my friend when others weren't. I'd suddenly had enough. I rose and crossed to their table, stood looking.

'You okay, lads?' I could hardly see for rage.

'Yeah. What's it to you?'

'Detective Sergeant Henriques, City Met Div, CID.' I was making it up. If they turned out to be plod, that was my hard luck. I was past caring. 'Which one of you's the thief?'

'Eh?' They stared. One started to rise. I kicked his heels and he sat with a thump. 'We nicked nothing.'

'Car keys.' I wiggled my fingers, palm up. 'The Lincoln. Hand them over.' I didn't know what a Lincoln was. I'd heard of a motor by that name talked of on the radio driving back from Bernicka's.

'We come in an Alfa Romeo.' They said it almost together, Flash Harrys the pair of them. One pulled out his ignition keys and showed them.

'Okay.' I nodded slowly. 'Okay.'

I left, them shouting sneery comments after me, but careful like I really might have been a ploddite out for trouble.

In the gloaming I smashed the headlights of the only Alfa Romeo, a bright electric green job. For quiet, I did it through a piece of old tyre – there's always a chunk lying about in car parks; wagoneers change their burst tyres, too lazy to shift the rubbish.

Then I did the tyres by sticking a matchstick into each nipple. The posh vehicle squealed gently as it settled.

Up in the room Alicia was weeping, surrounded by her wares. I couldn't take any more glares from Peshy, so I felt round underneath his collar and pulled out a horseshoe brooch, gold and pearl, Victorian of 1884. The dog looked chastened. I started to get mad with the damned kleptomaniac mutt, but Alicia decided to ballock him herself, though not so's you'd notice, going, 'Oooh, who's a naughty little Peshy-Weshy then?'

and so on.

While she sent for his caviar and steak I had a bath, and emerged feeling definite vibes from the stolen goods she'd arranged on the coffee table for me to look at. An impressive haul.

One thing here: I don't see that me and Alicia were doing much wrong, not really. We were only lifting from auctioneers, and they're in the trade more for sleight-of-hand reasons than anything else. I think of them as estate agents, realtors, and insurance agents, who share the same warped morality. So they must take the consequences when Alicia and her slick-pawed pooch drift in for a gander at the antiques – genuine or otherwise – that they're trying to exploit. We understand fairness. They don't.

Trying to give her a convincing smile, I sat on the couch.

'Not bad, Alicia.'

God knows how she'd managed to nick the Sheffield plate coffee jug. I didn't ask, though every shoplifter I've ever known will talk about techniques till the cows come home. They're the only thieves that will. Incidentally, most are female. They do it better, and play the sympathy ploy with more assurance than blokes.

'I felt under the rim, Lovejoy,' she said anxiously. 'No ledge that I could flick with my fingernail.'

'Don't worry, love. There's not many ledges on a thing this shape.'

You have to feel sorry for Sheffield plate. I do. It was always seen as a second-rate cheap substitute for real silverware, even back in the 1740s when it started. Yet the minute an even cheaper lookalike came in – it was electroplating – the hard-hearted public instantly switched their affections and lovely, clever Sheffield plate vanished like snow off a duck. It's so sad. Everybody forgot it quick as blink, though it's now regarded as a genuine antique. I think the inventor Thomas Bolsover was a hero, even if he was only a Sheffield cutler. People made (and still make) the calamitous mistake of polishing his plate so much that the silver layer gets worn away to the copper beneath.

Even so, genuine Sheffield plate is fairly easy to tell. Alicia meant that if you trail your fingernail under the rims and you feel your nail catch on an edge, then you've found where one sheet of silver-sandwiched copper joins another. There's no such edge in crummy old electroplating. I don't like electroplate, because it's simply 'German silver'

or some other miserable alloy that has been lobbed into an electroplating tub. People talk of it like it's artistic, but it's only them trying to sell you junk. It's usually a stamp-cast thing that's been coated thinly with silver by being hung between two electrodes.

Big deal. Real Sheffield plate has the mellow, milkier sterling look instead of the harsh pure silver coat of electroplating.

Love the real thing. It does no harm.

'Brilliant, love. Ten out of ten.'

The porcelains were simply forgeries of old German wares. One was so neatly faked that I almost filled up, remembering Consul Sommon who'd smashed the Meissen to teach me a lesson. He'd succeeded. I wasn't sure, but I blamed him for Bernicka's death.

'What's the matter, Lovejoy?'

'Nothing. Shut up.'

Still, they were decent fakes, and you can always sell good forged porcelain. I told her this, though she was disappointed. She was still looking at me, suspecting emotion, when she ought to have been listening and learning. My main worry was, why exactly hadn't she used a phoney name when registering us tonight? Almost like she was deliberately leaving a trail.

'You said this was dud. It's real Lalique, Alicia.'

She stared at the glass pot. 'Is it?' And smiled. 'I'm better than I thought! I thought he never used blue.'

'No. It was that horrible raspberry red he loathed.'

The moulded glass vase didn't look much, but its thin collar and graded opalescence were class. I think Laliques are seriously over-priced, but whatever opens collectors'

wallets . ..

Unbelievably, she'd got two copies of Vogue, that magazine everybody now raves about, depicting 1920s women. I like Art Deco things. The Art Nouveau turn-of-the-1900 look I find a bit macabre.

'Alicia, you're brilliant.'

Well, being only 1927 and so not antique to me, the two magazines meant nothing.

Collectors would go berserk, though, and pay through the nose.

'Really?' Her eyes widened. 'I thought you'd get cross. I could have lifted two prints instead, but wanted to read the fashions.'

'You did right. Genuine prints are only worth a fifth of the magazine.' Another antique oddity. 'Anybody can fake them. You stencil them in goache, make a decent living. That girl Vestra does them down Brightlingsea.'

'Bitch,' Alicia said, without irony. 'Sorry about the porcelain, Lovejoy. I thought you'd say they were real Frankenthal figures.'

'No. Their hands are too accurate. Genuine figures have bigger hands than they should, and the bases are wavy, not level like these.' I turned one over, a huntsman, hound and dead deer. I winced. 'These that you nicked are soft paste. See where it looks sandy instead of smooth, where the porcelain is left raw and unglazed?'

'Thank you, Lovejoy. One thing.'

'What?' I asked, uneasy. She had that distressed look. I waited. She gathered herself, bridling.

'I feel I have to tell you this,' she said finally. 'I don't resent many things, Lovejoy. But I really must rebuke you about your choice of words.'

'Eh?' I was frankly done for. My friends were dropping like flies, and here she was yakking about what, exactly?

'You continually say nick, steal, thieve.' Her lips set in a thin line. 'I find the terms singularly distasteful. I am a shoulder expert, not a thief or a robber. I also know that Peshy resents your tone. He is highly sensitive to nuances ...'

I'd lost two, if not three, of my pals, was on the run from God-knows-what, and she lectures me on the finer feelings of a kleptomaniac midget canine?

My mind shut down. I was worn out. It wasn't the right time to tell her about my – well, Bernicka's – day, in case we got nicked before posting the goods off to little Henry's mum Eleanor. So I apologized profoundly to her and, can you believe, her mongrel. We saw that he had enough raw meat to feed a zoo, then went to bed. We made smiles, me utterly done for but desperate not to lose the chance of love. You can never tell where your next passion's coming from.

During the night she spoke, knowing I'd be awake because I often mostly usually nearly always am.

'I know I'm not much, Lovejoy,' she said quietly. 'You only brought me along to do the job. I'm not deceiving myself. I know it isn't because you're head over heels, me older than I say ...' etc, etc.

She went on, running herself down. I dozed a bit while she rabbited on. Why women deplore themselves like this I don't know, but they do. She catalogued her defects –

overweight, fingers too thick, low-quality ears. Finally I managed to open my eyes and rouse, the monster from the Black Lagoon.

'Shut up, you silly cow,' I told her drowsily. 'You're just right. Can't you tell? You're the only bird I can depend on.'

I felt her turn in the darkness. 'Am I?' she asked in amazement. (See? Astonished that somebody liked her. Beats me.)

'Silly mare,' I said. 'You miss the point. You're the one I'm in bed with. It's a clue.' I can't honestly work out what women are on about. It's a flaw in their character.

Next morning I was up early. Sure enough, there was an envelope under the door.

Good old indefatigable Thomasina Quayle (Mrs), asked if she might prevail on my good offices to appraise her of my movements 'for the convenience of all those concerned'.

Quickly I hid the letter before Peshy nicked it.

We had breakfast in our room, though room service always embarrasses me. Then Alicia went and booked us out. I eeled out of the rear of the building to the trunk road.

She picked me up at the crossroads. This was in case those two blokes were looking for me. We were in Kings Lynn by noon. We posted off the goods to Eleanor.

The central library was open. I made Alicia promise not to nick – sorry, to shoulder –

anything from the mall and left her and Peshy window shopping while I went to the reference library and looked up everything I could lay hands on about Hugo.

At last I knew where I was.