Every Last Cent

40

BY EVENING OF the tenth day, I still hadn't recovered my spirits. Tinker came round endlessly. I was trying another Gainsborough portrait, still unable to get her eyes. Eyes are practically everything.

'Got ter snap out of it, son. We've work on.'

'What work?'

'Antiques. Ferdinand and his Norma. They've got landed with the Yank's shipment.

Much got reclaimed by that African country. The rest, well, they don't know if it's gunge or priceless.'

'Tell them I'll divvy it for four fifths of its resale value.'

He cackled, falling about, blundering into my portrait.

The easel swayed. I grabbed it. I'd been trying out the new water-miscible oils pigments. Disturbing how good they were.

'You're learning! Here, son. Say you want Norma as well. You used to. I'll bet she'd jump—'

'Tinker, mate,' I said wearily. 'Knock it off.'

'Consul Sommon has escaped justice,' Mortimer said. He helped me to right the easel.

'You burke!' I fumed, shaken. 'Where did you spring from? Stop creeping.'

Tinker laughed and almost spilled his beer. Five new tins were lined up ready. He perched on my stool, coughing. I raised a finger to stop him. He spat into his empty can.

'Leaves tomorrow. Diplomatic privilege.' Mortimer crouched against the wall like an Australian drover, one leg outstretched. 'You must make sure he does not profit.'

More orders? I sighed. 'The brigadier sent you to tell me this?'

'No. The brigadier will be exonerated from the death of Mr Sep Verner, but is a declared bankrupt. He and Mrs Alicia Domander now live together at the Garrison Riding Stables.'

'Do they now.' So much for love's loyalty. Sourly, I guessed that Alicia had been trying to warn me before that mad show.

'And Maud is well. Quaker is waiting outside, Lovejoy. I came to warn you.'

'Warn? Frighten me to death more like, stupid little sod.'

'Consul Sommon will escape all penalties of the law, Lovejoy.' Mortimer sometimes sounds seventy years old. 'He caused your friend Bernicka's demise. And poor Mr Vestry, using Vestry's sister Susanne Eggers as his contact.'

'And Timothy Giverill? Sandy caused that. I was listening in the car.'

'You didn't listen closely enough.' Mortimer spoke like to a child. I was narked. I mean, who was the father here, him or me? I caught myself guiltily. Nobody suspected that, except everybody.

'Wotcher mean?'

'Accidentally, I overheard Mrs Thomasina Quayle discussing the issues with her staff,'

Mortimer said with disarming candour. Accidentally? He'd probably hung from the eaves like a bloody bat, I'd bet.

'Which are?'

'The antiques the consul claimed from the imported consignment are already bonded for shipment to New York. He already has dealers bidding for them on the Internet. He will make a fortune.'

'Where are my portraits?'

Mortimer looked at Tinker, at the floor.

'Tell him, lad,' Tinker said.

'Lady Hypatia's portraits all have my mother's face, Lovejoy. It's she you keep painting.'

I said, 'I guessed. But—'

'Consul Sommon used to ... see her on visits. He never came to the manor. He wanted them because he thought he could find her again. She's the reason Susanne Eggers divorced him. And why Mrs Eggers insisted on leasing Saffron Fields, and wanted the portraits herself, to destroy.'

Poor Susanne Eggers, loving a twerp like him. Poor Sommon, still loving Colette Goldhorn. Poor all of us, always wanting something we haven't got.

'And he'll make a fortune, Lovejoy,' Tinker said, reproachful.

I thought a bit. 'Will he?'

'Mortimer's right, son. The bastard did for Vestry, Bernicka. Don't seem right, Lovejoy.'

'And Timothy Giverill,' Mortimer added quietly. 'Who was going to expose the illegal arrangement the Lloyd's syndicate had made with London auctioneers via Mr Langley-Willes. Sandy didn't know it would mean Mr Giverill's death. He thought Sep Verner would cause a minor traffic infringement, a warning. Instead . . .' I already knew instead.

'See, Lovejoy,' Quaker said, entering slowly. I stared. He wasn't in his wheelchair.

'Somebody has to make sure that Consul Sommon catches it. Like,' he continued, looking round for somewhere to sit, finally opting to stand, 'like his schemes to sell fast to any dealer, crooked or otherwise. They're bidding high sums. I checked.'

'After murdering your friend Bernicka,' Tinker said. More reproach. He felt such deep sorrow that he had to open another two tins of ale.

'And Vestry,' Quaker reminded me. Everybody was reminding me, telling me I had to do something. Always me.

We all thought a bit, some more deeply than others. I couldn't help gaping at Quaker.

I'd never seen him stand.

'Why aren't you dead in the bulrushes, Quake?'

'Sep Verner came ostensibly to wheel me to the Quay. He shoved me into the river.

Thought I'd drown. Then went to blame my death on you. I kept quiet, gurgled and splashed a bit.' Quaker smiled sheepishly. 'I'm no athlete. I was climbing out when Tinker happened by. Sep was crazy for Maud, always was.'

'Good old brigadier. He came armed. Ready to kill.' I can't manage reproach as well as other folk. Maybe they have the best target, in me.

'He says that. The plod thought his actions completely justified, protecting his daughter from attack by a deranged police officer.'

'The plod saw sense?' The world spun.

'That'll be the party line, Lovejoy. Right.' Quaker rubbed his hands, paused before leaving. 'Will you do it, then?'

'Do what?' As if I didn't know.

'One last job. Divvy the consul's antiques shipment.'

We all paused. I thought hard. The one thing that would make Consul Sommon pay any penalty at all would be ...

'Are they at Ferd's? I've no motor.'

'I'll send my new driver.' Quaker smiled. 'My assistant can be trusted. He turned Queen's Evidence. Go now, Lovejoy.'

'Then I'll be in the clear?'

He grinned. 'I wouldn't go quite that far, Lovejoy.'

And he walked, as in one foot before the other, out of my overgrown garden. I'd always known he was fit, if loony, yet it was truly weird to see this normal man in full possession.

'Ready?'

Taylor Eggers poked his head into the workshop. His eyes met mine. Sardonic again. I'd been right. A cuckolded husband always smarts, even at the point of vengeance.

So I drove with Tinker, very grand in Taylor's big black limo, to Ferdinand and Norma's splendid antiques farm.

My barker thought he'd gone to heaven because the motor had a minibar. He finished the spirits as we arrived. The ale he stuffed into his greatcoat pockets. Even then he was worried.

'Here, Lovejoy,' he said as Norma advanced smiling and Ferd dithered on his veranda.

'Don't get narked, son, but what if we get thirsty on the way back?'

The goods were bads. Most of the truly genuine antiques seemed to have gone.

Doubtless Lanny Langley-Willes and his friends, or maybe Consul Sommon, had taken some in personal diplomatic baggage. Civil servants are always above the laws they make for the rest of us.

'Lovejoy!' Norma was more welcoming now. 'How lovely to see you!'

'Good to see old friends!' Ferd exclaimed, clapping his hands for his maids-of-all to bring victuals for his lifelong pals here. It was all so false.

'I've not long, Ferd. Aren't you due to ship the antiques?'

'Stansted,' he said, nodding. 'A godsend, that airport. So near.'

And yet so far, I silently finished for him.

'Let's get on, then.' I declined the frosted glass with the white wine, and went into the main stores.

A few dealers were drifting among the items. Some of the furniture felt good, and the cabinets of jewellery and small porcelains emitted really convincing chimes. I hardened my heart and went through into the cool, darkened room. Norma ushered me in, placing a stool. I asked for the air conditioning to be turned off. It always gets on my nerves. I also told Ferd to keep out, just let somebody bring each antique then clear off.

Norma wanted to do it. Ferd and Tinker went to talk over old times, Tinker ready to help the girls by imbibing whatever alcohol they might supply.

'Now,' I told Norma. I was already whacked, or does that mean killed in Americese? I mean tired.

She started with a box of tribal crowns. These look absolutely home-made, almost from some infant school's dressing-up day. Gaudily coloured, supposedly a bird surmounting a tribal Yoruba crown on stalky legs. There were eleven. Genuine, looking like odd toys.

Yet archaeologists would bite the consul's hand off to get them.

And bite the consul's head off, if they paid for genuine antiques and got fakes.

'Genuine,' I said. 'Yes, genuine. Genuine,' the chimes making me shudder so much I almost slumped from the chair.

Then tribal carvings. Three stools, unbelievable, for they were thrones.

'Genuine, genuine.'

It was so consistent I began to wonder if Consul Sommon was having me on. Or was the entire shipment authentic? One or two had museum stamps on, Lagos, Accra and others. One or two came from. Kenya, Uganda, ancient Benin.

'Keep those faces and busts back, Florence.'

'Right, Lovejoy.'

She spoke with reverence, knowing she was in the presence of mysticism. On I went.

She had a girl haul the old wrappings away, made swift notes of my judgements.

'This is the last,' she said after what must have been about an hour. I felt concussed.

'Just the seven heads and the bronzes.'

'How many?'

'Eleven in all.'

The statuettes from Nok-Jos and other villages on the Jos Plateau were formidably old, maybe nineteen centuries. The Benin bronzes were practically mint, after all these hundreds of years. I hate the small drilled holes along the chin. It's where, I think, they must have tied some dress garments to make the bronze heads more awe-inspiring back in those superstitious days.

This was the moment I'd come for.

The question is, what do you do when a killer is going to get away scotage free? I had, have, no right to execute. Death penalties are wrong. Everybody knows that. Yet raping whole countries, entire civilizations, mocks honesty. It's like mocking infants. It generates war.

Consul Sommon would return home – it would be the second flight from Stansted, his crates in the plane's hold. There in New York money would pour in, diplomats being beyond law.

But if the dealers paid him fortunes and subsequently discovered they were fake, what then? He'd be ruined. Maybe even worse?

'These last ones are fake,' I said. My voice shook.

'Fake?' She looked at them. At me.

'Fake,' I said firmly.

Her face paled. She tried to speak.

'But, Lovejoy. Mr Sommon has been accepting bids on the Internet. And some of them are from ...'

She gulped. I too felt like gulping. I could guess who the serious bids were from, money laundering being what it is.

'Well, you did want me to help out,' I prompted.

'Lovejoy.' She sidled up to me. I mentally apologized to the authentic genuine statuettes.

'Yes?'

'Look, darling.' She bit her lip, tried again. 'Is there any way you could, say, provide us with the same number of genuine statuettes? I know you have contacts. Only,' she added, tears running down her cheeks, 'only, me and Ferd have come so far. We couldn't possibly go back to scrimping, living hand to mouth. Please?'

'You said I was no more use.' Well, I couldn't make it too easy or she'd suspect. Also, I was narked.

'Darling. You'll always be essential to me. You know that.'

'Right, love. I'll do it. Tell the airline your shipment will be delayed. I'll get you the genuine ones in three days.'

'Can't you do it sooner?'

'Sooner?' I cried, meaning every word. 'Casting Benin bronzes that quick? And terracottas like these? Honest to God!'

'Sorry, darling. I do understand.'

'I'll get rid of this dross for you, love. Possession of fakes will land you in it.'

'Oh, thank you, darling. Will I see you soon?'

That was it. Tinker loaded the eleven artefacts up in Taylor's limousine, and we drove them away to Eleanor's garage. As soon as Taylor Eggers had gone, we shifted them on wheelbarrows in the darkness. I ordered a load of common reproduction Benin heads and Nok-Jos terracotta figures from Sanko Deane Pitt's sheds in Southend. He always has a reasonable stock of fakes, though his Old Masters are truly rubbish since his girl from the Guildhall eloped with that Geordie heavy goods driver. I got Shammer – he of the many voices – to place the buy.

He asked, 'Who's the buyer?'

'Consul Wald Sommon,' I said.

'Do I give a phoney name?'

'No,' I said. 'Just as it sounds. And pay cash on the nail. Have them delivered to Stansted Airport for export to New York, okay?'

You can be slothful with genuine antiques, but fakes demand precision. Ferdinand and Norma, I said blithely, would know the address.

God help Consul Sommon. Well, I reasoned in a sad moment late that night, he shouldn't go round killing people.