Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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Not that?” I heard myself exclaim, swiftly returning to ingratiate, “Quite, er, splendid!”

The famous Paris auction centre is a mess. Imagine Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams, the rest, together in one new building like a corny copy of a provincial bank. It tried to emulate the nearby bourgeois facades. I beamed falsely at Veronique and Guy.

“It’s marvellous,” Guy bragged as we approached. “Space for four hundred cars, every-hour parking.” He would think of motor cars.

“We need antique auctions,” I reminded. I didn’t want Colonel Marimee getting on at me. “I did my bit yesterday.”

“You bastard, Lovejoy. We did all the work!”

“Oh, aye.” I went all laconic. “So why’d you need me?”

He growled, his sign of wanting to land me one.

“I’ll show Lovejoy round,“ Veronique swiftly told Guy. “You see Dreyfus. Fifteen minutes.”

I watched Guy shoot into the building. I didn’t like him to be so zingy, behaving like he had stars round his head, and asked, “He okay, love?”

“He’s fine.” She halted so I bumped into her. “No more questions like that, Lovejoy. Today we begin.”

Like what? I asked myself, narked. All right, maybe I’d sounded full of mistrust about his crazy stare and dynamite style. I’d only been trying to help, in a caring sort of way.

“Thank God. Where are they?”

We entered the place. She spoke offhand to three blokes who accosted us, beckoned me with a tilt of her head. I felt a sneaky pride in being with somebody so lovely.

“For a start, Lovejoy, this is the Hôtel Drouot.” I nodded I’d heard of the great focus for Paris’s auctioneers. Not a hotel at all. “Rebuilt in 1980. Sixteen salerooms, each with storage space, three selling floors from central foyers. Temperature—controlled storage, bond areas…”

“Great.” Only sixteen? Did that explain the grumbles of international dealers? Mind you, I’m prejudiced. There’s nothing wrong with auctioneers that retirement wouldn’t cure.

“This way.”

Just think of the wasted corridor-miles humanity’s logged over the centuries! If it wasn’t for flaming corridors we’d have colonized the universe yonks ago. As it is, we’re all still plodding down boring corridors, trying to reach our respective launch pads.

Dreyfus was a small pleasant bloke, so respectably dressed he had me notching my own markers of suavity—curling lapel, slanted tie, shirt without a top button, grubby shoes. We greeted each other warmly. He had a partitioned office. No antiques in the inner sanctum. The sofa table by the wall was a dud. Or maybe not so dud? Its luscious surface patina felt right, but the table seriously wrong. It was brilliantly done, looked exactly right. The four feet with their castors gave an authentic bong. But the resonance of it mixed with that terrible fraudulent surface made me nauseous. I looked away.

“Jacques Dreyfus,” he said, twinkling, “and no relation! Beautiful, isn’t it?” He’d be quite at home in any language. “It will be catalogued soon.”

As a fake, I hoped. The old trick. Its base, castors and all, were nicked from a genuine cheval mirror —“swing dressers”, dealers call them. In Regency days they’d had to make them strong, to take heavy glass. Cheval mirrors are not so valuable, even now, so forgers marry the support to the best flat heartwood. Presto! Your “genuine 1825 sofa table”—and we challenge anybody to do any tests they like. Your usual patter is, “No, take your sample for chemical analysis from the feet, please—the tabletop is irreparable, you see…” The tests prove exactly right for 1820, and you have your certificate of authenticity. Then you buy some old wood, fake up some feet with castors for the cheval mirror, and sell that as completely genuine. Only now your patter goes, ”No, take your sample for chemical analysis from the ebony-inlaid top, please. The base is irreparable…”

“The system,” Veronique said. Impatient women aren’t new, but there was a new edge to her voice. Social-philosophy time? I’d hated the bit I’d already received.

“Our auction system in France endures,” Jacques said cheerily,“ despite all attempts. We operate a monopoly, though the Common Market lawyers wring their hands in Brussels.”

“I’m ashamed of my ignorance,” I put in. I moved from the chair to sit on a low couch, trying to get away from the distress of that ghastly hybrid.

“The Compagnie de Commissaires-Priseurs de Paris has controlled auctions since the eighteenth century, Lovejoy.” He rippled his fingers like a pianist gathering pace. “The auction firms—études— can have offices wherever they like, but must rent a saleroom in the Hôtel Drouot for a sale.”

“Must?” That would account for the gripes of the non-French antiques traders. “Il faut?”

Jacques chuckled at my pronunciation. I began to like him. I was doing my best in a mad mix of French and English.

“Il, as you perceive, faut, Lovejoy. We are also forbidden to prepare our own sale catalogues. Those are formed up, descriptions of the antiques and all, by a corps of experts certified by our Government.”

“Is there a guarantee?” I asked without thinking. Then I had to struggle so as not to see Veronique tense at my question. I’d have to be even more circumspect. I’ve the brains of an egg.

“Thirty years.”

“The expert cataloguer is more important than the étude, then?”

“That is often the case.” Jacques Dreyfus smiled with guarded apology at Veronique, who was busy pretending she was bored. “The money is the other, Lovejoy. The Compagnie holds half the sale money until the year’s end.”

“And dishes it out when it wants?” I was aghast. “Don’t the big boyos mind? They’re subsidizing the small fry, right?”

He shrugged that Gallic shrug. “The smaller études don’t have to catalogue each sale.” He looked at Veronique in exasperation, smiley still. “It’s the way things are.”

“No more, Jacques,” Veronique said. Guy came zooming in. “We must show Lovejoy your collection.”

I brightened. “Antiques? All as good as your sofa table, Jacques?”

His smile was quite brave, in the circumstances. I had a vague idea he’d sussed me out, but wasn’t sure. “I believe exactly!” He wanted to show me a saleroom. I asked for a loo first, please, and received directions.

There, I was violently sick, retching and leaning gasping against the tiled wall until I could retch no more. I put my forehead against the cold surface a few minutes. Afterwards I rinsed my face in cold water and emerged pretending a kind of I’m-casually-interested-looking-about. Veronique and Jacques Dreyfus were waiting in the foyer. Guy had streaked off somewhere.

“Are you all right, Lovejoy?” Jacques asked. “You’re white.”

“Fine, thanks.” My head was splitting. I grinned like a goon, having remembered where it was I’d been sick like this before, and why. “Have we far to go?”

“With you along, Lovejoy,” Veronique said through thinned lips, “ the answer’s yes.”

Me and Jacques chuckled merrily. In my case—and maybe his? —it wasn’t much of a chuckle. But I thought hard of having got my letter off, overloaded with stamps from a tobacconist, and managed something near a jovial croak.

We drove in Dreyfus’s motor, a more trundlesome job than Guy’s zoomster. I kept sane, and more importantly in a non-puke state, by exclaiming at the Parisian landmarks—the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe, the bigger-than-expected Sacré Coeur—then a double through tangled streets to finish up in an unprepossessing district within sound of trains. It looked the sort of district Paris shouldn’t have, grotty, down at heel, soiled.

“This it, Veronique?” I let my surprise show. I was getting fed up with being careful all the bloody time. It’s always me gets the headaches.

“Yes, Lovejoy. This is it.” She spoke French with vituperation. I looked about as Jacques parked the motor.

Some darkish children played, stood about. The filthy street wore debris like medals for indignity. The house fronts were frayed, no real paint. The doors looked battered. A couple of windows were patched with cardboard. The aroma of exotic cooking filled the air. It made me hungry as hell, but I had a sour feeling that more sickness lay just around the corner.

“This way, Lovejoy.”

It might have been a church hall, some sort of meeting place, that we found after a few hundred yards. Down steps, with a reinforced door to shut the world of staring children out. Two bulky blokes stood in bulky-bloke attitudes, suited for funerals. They knew Veronique, accepted me without a glance, but listened to Jacques. Paymaster?

We went through an arched doorway. Guy was jangling away, talking non-stop to Colonel Marimee, gesticulating, joking, a riot. The place was crammed with furniture, much covered in sheets. Note that small point: hardly any paintings, ceramics, and no display cases filled with antique jewellery.

The Colonel gave a terse instruction to Guy and stood watching us approach. We signalled our arrival with various degrees of subservience, all except Veronique, who perched provocatively on a polished surface. I swallowed. Montaigne said that however high the throne, we all still sit on our tails.

“Inspect these items and report, Lovejoy,” Marimee commanded. “You have thirty minutes.”

“Oui, mon commandant.”

He meant me. I avoided spewing on his brilliant shoes, and walked down the first line of furniture. The pieces were of a muchness. The larger of the two hulks preceded me unasked, flicking away the dust covers as I went. Jacques Dreyfus followed.

French furniture caught fashions from its neighbours. People say that, yet it’s a bit unfair, because France started a number of styles of her own. It’s always said that France filched Italian joinery in the Renaissance, Flemish marquetry in the seventeenth century, English mahogany styles in the eighteenth and so on. True, but don’t forget France’s flair. You have to see the originals—not this load of gunge I was being shown. In skill, France’s antique furniture is a front runner.

A tulipwood cabinet stopped me. Supposed to be 1775, it sported four plaques of Sèvres porcelain set into the panels. Small, but a fortune at any auction, if you believed it. I bent down to the plaques. Plants, spring flowers. Carnations, three tulips, lilac, with that lovely apple-green border Méreaud loved. He was the highest paid of Sèvres porcelain decorators, though of course he’d died two hundred or more years before these fake plaques were done. I knelt to look closer. The carnations were exactly right botanically. The tulips, being easier, also were. The lilac was wrong. I’ve a tree growing in my own unkempt garden, and have tried to imitate Méreaud and his equally skilled pal Lève often enough to know. Somebody had copied as best they could from an imperfect picture of the real thing.

That sickness made me giddy as I rose. I stumbled, fell on a nearby table. I withdrew my hand with an involuntary cry. I’d checked my fall mechanically, touched its surface. It burned me like a chimney from hell.

“Pardon, Lovejoy,” Dreyfus said, helping to steady me. I apologized profusely, saying it was too long since breakfast. Colonel Marimee curled his lip at my offshore weakness. I went with pretence of care, pausing now and then as if thoughtful, but the nausea was almost snaking me.

“Very good, mon commandant,” I said to Marimee. Almost all of it was sickening. I still wasn’t sure how much of the antiques game he understood. Nor did I know how much he was supposed to know. I could hardly see.

“Adequate? Yes or no?” he demanded.

“Adequate, mon commandant.”

“Bien.” And left, terse nods all round. There was no relaxation of the atmosphere.

“What about transport?” I asked Veronique. “I mean, do we have to arrange it, or will they call for it?”

“Who?” she asked back.

“Well.” I was thinking while I was still on my feet, holding the sickness at bay. “You said we can’t auction it here. Hasn’t it got to go to the Hôtel Drouot to be sold?”

“Stupid,” she snapped, as I’d hoped she would. “We aren’t selling. We’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to… afford it. And it’s a fraction only.”

She was going to say buy, then didn’t. My throat cleared itself as I tried to stop it saying, “Is it all furniture? What else we got?” Don’t say tapestry, upholstery.

“Wall tapestries, mainly,” Veronique said, starting us off out of the storehouse. “And of course upholsteries. People say they’re more expensive than the furniture itself. True?”

“Always has been, love. Got papper mash stuff?” Don’t say yes.

“Sure,” she said. “Thirty papier mâché pieces. Right, Jacques?”

“Good,” I said, meaning bad, bad, bad. They’d have paper filigree too, the bastards. I nodded a nod as good as the Commandant’s, then got driven back to the hotel, where I bade them a smiling so long, and with the relief of the afflicted was spectacularly and constantly sick in the minuscule bathroom. The image of those dark staring children watching us in that shabby street, with their blistered hands and old-young faces and blunted expressions was in my mind. Dr Johnson’s crack came at me: “Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish.” I thought, please help me. Come soon, pals. You can’t leave me to do this alone. My insides were empty, except for this feeling of murder. I saw only the lavatory bowl for half an hour.

The day was waning—all Paris seemed on the wane just then—when I left the hotel. I wandered brimming with nausea into the little square, sat on the seat beneath the tree, looked at the cobbles, put my head back hoping for cool. Clammy head, wet hands. The air felt heavy, muggy, too close to breathe. Somebody sat on the seat. I felt it nudge.

“Where the hell’ve you been?” I said, not bothering to open my eyes. “I said come straight away. East Anglia’s only forty minutes, for Christ’s sake.” But I’d not heard a wheelchair.

“I had to see to Jan first,” she said, which would spring anybody’s lids. Lysette, no less. “He needs special care.”

“You’re no use,” I said. This is typical. First time in my life I’ve ever asked anybody for help, and they send me an ignorant tart. “Jan give any message?” The least he could do.

“Yes. He said to rely on me, Lovejoy.”

“Get lost, love.” I’d a splitting headache. I made to leave. What she said stopped me.

“I would have waited at your hotel, except for your company.”

What did she know? “How much do you know, love?”

She was smaller than I thought, pale, composed. I felt a strong urge to tell her to clear off, but bonny women make you lose your gommon.

“Jan was hired to advise on antiques. There’s heavy buying in East Anglia, France, all over.” She hesitated. “He made mistakes. You can’t be right all the time, can you?”

Well, yes. “A divvy can. Antiques are easy, love. It’s people queer the pitch every time.” She was trying not to tell me Jan started defrauding the rollers, Big John included.

“You’re hateful! I can see what you’re thinking, Lovejoy! My brother could no more cheat —”

“Who?” My headache belted me across the eyes.

“My brother. Jan’s the gentlest, kindest, most honest…” Et sisterly cetera.

Wrong again. How was I to know? I’d honestly seen Lysette as Jan Fotheringay’s bird. My shimmering vision tried to focus on her anew, without listening to her defensive dross. Jan had pulled the old Nelson, as the trade says. You are supposed to approve a multitude of fakes and genuine antiques—that is, decide if they’re good enough to pass most scrutineers, like I’d just done—but he’d then condemned a few beautiful pieces as dross. Secretly, of course, he’d snaffled them, and made a fortune. The problem? It was the rollers’ fortune, not his.

“Where’s it heading, Lysette? Am I right, Switzerland?”

“Yes. I don’t know when.”

That didn’t matter. The square seemed clear of familiars still, but for one. I almost got better with relief.

“Look, Lysette. Good of you to come and all, but you’re no use. I wanted Jan. He could tell me the backers, whose scam it is. You can’t.”

“I can, Lovejoy. Some, anyway.” She named the ones I expected: Jervis, Almira Galloway, Monique Delebarre, Corse, Big John (she didn’t call him that) Sheehan, and Paulie of course. And took my breath away by adding, Jan told me Mr Anstruther was frightened, but his wife drove him. She’s Monsieur Troude’s woman, you see, and got her husband’s firm to invest everything.”

Cissie and Troude? My headache had only been teasing until now. Across the square, Gobbie spat with laconic skill.

“Got a car, love?”

“I can easily hire one. You want me to help, Lovejoy?”

“Please,” I said, nearly broken. “Get one, and follow. We leave tomorrow, if I’ve guessed right. You’ll have a travelling companion. An old bloke I know.”

Lysette smiled, suddenly bright and beautiful. “I’ll be there ahead of you, Lovejoy. If I’ve guessed right.”

We made a detailed plan. She left, me watching her edible form move across the cobbles out of the square. I gave her a few minutes, then went to where my real helper sat, thank God.

“Wotcher, Gobbie.”

“Hello, son.” He hawked up phlegm, rheumy old eyes watering. “Who’s the bint?”

“On our side. You’ll be travelling with her.” I launched into money, surreptitiously gave him what I had to cover expenses. He’d told his daughter he was going to a regimental reunion, a laugh. I had to ask him, though. “You sure you want in, Gobbie? It’s okay if you duck out. I’ll manage.”

“Like hell you will, son,” Gobbie said, grinning. “You’ll squirrel off and hide. I know you. You’re a cowardly sod.” I had to laugh. A gappy geriatric grin and a brilliantly beautiful smile, both within a few minutes. Plus a home truth. And allies! Things were looking up.

“It’ll be rough, Gobbie.” I paused. What had he said at the boot sale? “Bring old times back—they were dangerous, remember.”

His smile was as beautiful in its way as Lysette’s. “Them’s the times I wants, Lovejoy. One more, worth anything.”

“Remember you said that,” I warned him. I’m glad now I said that, too. “Here, Gobbie,” I said on impulse. “Want to brighten your day? Well, night? See a giggle?”

“A robbery? Here?” He was surprised.

“It’ll be about two in the morning,” I warned. He fell about at that, guessing what it would be. And he was right.

Well, he would be right, with his million years of experience. He got a motor car, as I’d asked, and we sat there in the darkness looking out at the street. Gone two o’clock, and so far nothing. Odd how some people, especially older ones like Gobbie, seem at home wherever they are. I would have sworn the motor was his own, so familiar did he seem with—

“Watch, son.”

His quiet voice woke me faster than a yell. I’d seen nothing, but then my instinct’s for survival. Gobbie’s seemed entirely outside himself. Maybe it’s because I’ve so much guilt, that unsleeping guardian of morality.

“Where?”

“Nothing yet.”

Nothing wrong with dropping off, but then I was tired. Old folks seem to nap like babies, in and out of sleep any old time.

“Glad I don’t own a Range Rover, or a big Nissan.” They get nicked for robberies like the one we’d come to see.

“There goes one.” A Citroen, innocuous and plain, drove sedately down the night road, clearly somebody late back from the theatre. “The scout,” Gobbie explained, sussing my wonder at his certainty, “otherwise he’d have slowed a bit just before the traffic lights. Everybody does, unless he’s trying to look casual.”

See what I mean? Only a veteran would think of that.

Mall-mashers, ramraiders, are a particularly English variant of the smash-and-grab. It’s a dark-hour job, though of course you can change the batting order, like the most famous one, the 1990 Asprey ramraid that proved the landmark of its type. (They backed a truck through Asprey’s window with wonderful precision—just off Piccadilly, would you believe—to snatch diamonds from the stove-in window.) It’s a Newcastle-upon-Tyne speciality, averaging one major ramraid a day now, many of them hitting the same retail shops and malls time after time. They’re exciting to watch.

“Here it comes, son. Wake up.”

“Which way?” I was asking blearily when it happened.

Two vehicles drove up, glided to a stop in the centre of the road. One reversed gently into position, then accelerated with a roar and simply drove into the antique-shop front. Glass sprayed everywhere, clattering and tinkling around. One or two shards even rattled musically on our roof. While I was watching, astonished and thrilled, the other was already hurtling into the next window. Neither had lights on. They reversed out, tyres crunching glass. Four hooded blokes dived from the motors and leapt through the openings. Each carried a baseball bat. It was a hell of a mess. I moaned at the thought of the antiques within, but what could I do? I’d warned the one girl I’d fallen for, Claire Whatnot.

The motors pulled to wait against the kerb, engines running.

“They got walkie-talkies, son,” Gobbie said quietly. “See?”

Well, no I didn’t. A couple of small vans came round the corner, dousing their headlights as they settled nearby. Two men to a van, I saw. Admirable organization. They ran the scroll gates up. No lights inside save a red direction node borrowed from some theatre stage.

“Christ!” I almost shrieked. Somebody opened our car door. A mask peered in, our courtesy bulb lighting to show his red eyes.

“Just watching, mate,” Gobbie said quickly. “Good luck.”

“Fuck luck,” the hooded bruiser said. He held a club the size of a tree in his hands. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Gobbie. Lovejoy. Your tyres okay? Don’t pull a spud.”

I thought. I don’t believe Gobbie. Why didn’t the stupid old sod simply gun our engine and scarper? Instead he makes introductions, pulls the ramraider’s leg. Spud’s the latest slang for a ballsup, after the catastrophe (or success, whichever way you look at it) of Continental raiders who’d tried to emulate our Geordie rammers in Amsterdam. Hoods nicked twenty Dutch Impressionists worth untold zillions from the Van Gogh—including Vincent’s own The Potato Eaters, hence “spud”. The loot sat meekly in the getaway motor which had a flat tyre. I could hear the blokes shouting, things smashing in the antique shops. God knows what heirlooms they were destroying.

“I heard of you bastards,” the bruiser said. “Clear off when we do, right?”

“Different direction,” Gobbie said amiably.

The bloke disappeared, putting our car door to quite gently. The pandemonium along the parade of antique shops was increasing. The lads were rushing out small antiques. The first wave would snatch tom —jewellery, precious items such as miniatures, handies that could be scooped up. Then furniture, paintings. But only the ones that had been earmarked.

“Why’d he cuss us, Gobbie?” I asked, narked.

“He knows our scam, son. He doesn’t like it.”

“He what?” A visiting ramraider team knows our scam?

“There they go.”

The first van slammed itself shut. The blokes piled in. It roared away, the Range Rover tearing after. The second slammed, the Nissan barreling round to leave the way it had come. The main van raced off, and that was that.

We drove away, taking the first left. I wondered if they’d battered through into the next-door place, which was Claire’s, or whether they’d had orders not to.

“Gobbie,” I said, thinking hard as he dropped me off in the night near the square. “He knew? Really knew?”

“Mmmh. You can always tell.” He paused, I paused, everybody paused. “Son? Is your scam going to finish up with them antiques they just nicked?”

“Eh?” I’d not thought of that. “You mean, they were pinching them for us?” I’d nearly said Troude and Marimee.

“A thought, son. They were older blokes than usual, see? Them touring Geordies are all of seventeen, eighteen as a rule.”

The hooded raider had seemed thickset, maybe forty or so. Gobbie was right. Ramraiding’s a youth’s game. So why was an older bloke pulling a stroke like that?

“Like”, Gobbie continued, gently nursing me into thinking, “ that lot of gorms last month as raided the Metro Centre. Did the wrong stuff, remember? Too young to know the difference between tom and tat. Did a beautiful rammer, got clean away, and found they’d nicked a display of imitation jewellery.”

Yes, I’d heard. It was desperately worrying. Too many variables all of a sudden.

“Any ideas, Gobbie?” I asked. How pathetic. Me supposed to be the leader of this private little side scam, and here I was asking a wrinkly for advice. I disgust me sometimes. I’d have dozed through the whole thing if it hadn’t been for him, too. “Forget it,” I said, and walked away.

“Night, son. See you there.” I swear the old sod was grinning. I was narked. One day I’ll get the upper hand, then people’d better watch out, that’s all.