Faces in the Pool (11 page)

When I came to, Tansy had gone to the wharf where a fishing boat was docking its catch. I put cutlery out for the evening rush. Suddenly Daniella was beside me, nobody else there. She just stood, amorphous and goggle-eyed, looking at the floor. The silence lengthened.

‘Oh, er, ta, Daniella. All done, eh?’

Nothing.

‘Er, how’s the…?’ What the heck was her dream/theory/ plan?

‘James Joyce.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘He didn’t exist, you know.’ Her eyes filled, to my alarm. ‘They want to ruin Irish town design. I just heard they won’t publish my book.’

‘Oh, aye.’ I remembered. She’d once told me this lunacy in mind-bending detail. I thought her barking. Her
magnum opus
was a mere 4,500 pages. ‘I’m sorry, love. It was really…interesting, Daniella.’

‘You believed, Lovejoy. So I’m going to help you.’

‘Oh, ta, love.’ If her reward was a copy of her giant tome, I’d wait for the film. ‘Er, are you Irish?’ Not another of the lost clans?

‘No. They conceal the proof in a secret Dublin office.’

‘And you spotted it!’ I thought, What the hell am I saying?

‘Lovejoy, Somnell House is full of armed people.’ She looked at me through bottle lenses. I recalled her droning on about James Joyce.

For a second it didn’t sink in, then I yelped. ‘
Armed
? Guns?’

‘They practise with them. Lancashire, the Fylde. They own a Blackpool hotel.’ She looked downcast. ‘Don’t get in their way, Lovejoy. They might oppose my theory.’

‘Thank you, Daniella. Don’t give up hope for…for your thing.’

‘Thank you, Lovejoy.’ She bussed me. ‘You’re a dear.’

‘Ta.’ Lasses like Daniella make you go red. She said shyly, ‘Please give my regards to Dr Castell.’ And when I looked surprised, ‘He was my Cambridge University supervisor. He didn’t believe me, either.’

‘Silly old him.’

That was it. I stayed another day. More barmy drifters ambled in. One or two had antiques. Only one mattered, a carved ivory figure of Shakespeare, Victorian but none the worse for that. It would keep Tansy’s entire colony in
fuel for the winter. I phoned the sale through Stoker Prod in Sudbury, who sells such thefts. I refused a fake Edward Hopper painting (labelled
Paris, 1899
) of a figure in a theatre. Wrong date. Good forgeries are fine, but dud fakes are truly naff. Ever since London Tate Modern held their badly run Hopper exhibition, fakes abound. It narks me. If you’re going to fake, for God’s sake fake right.

Without saying goodbye to anybody, Tansy and Daniella included, I stole away. Goodbyes are a nuisance. They can stop you running if you aren’t careful.

Isn’t money strange?

Sitting looking at the bunce Miss Farnacott gave me in Ted Moon’s derelict shop changed my mood. Money is just paper rectangles (actually cotton) yet we’ll kill for the wretched stuff. Look at the 50 million zlotniks nicked by that gang in Kent – they risked everything in that snowy February of 2006. Dreams.

We also gamble. Like Laura, lottery winner and addicted gambler. Our National Lottery is confidential. NHS records, love affairs, bank accounts, are all freely available. A woman who sleeps with the rich and famous hurtles to sell her story to the TV for gelt. People promising confidentiality
are lying.
Nothing is secret. Our vaunted ‘secret elections’ are a laugh. A bloke near my village sells personal voting records within hours of a General Election. I’m not making this up. (It isn’t me.)

The clever city of Lydia in Asia Minor invented money. Rome took hold of the notion.
Pecus
, meaning cattle, gave us ‘pecuniary’, coins being stamped with goats and whatnot. Everything has circulated as cash – shells, paper,
massive stone discs, tobacco, teeth, bags of salt, gold and silver. The goddess Juno Moneta is talked up as the pretty moon goddess who guards children and females, but Juno had a really horrid side. She married Zeus, the big banana on Olympus, without telling her parents. OK by me, but ancient chroniclers wrote her down. She had a ferocious strop on her, and hated the children Zeus fathered. Zeus was a ladies’ man and put it about. Juno became a goddess of thunder.

Women have enormous faith in it – Goddess Juno Moneta’s influence? I don’t know. Just listen, though, to studio audiences, seventy-nine per cent females, note. Not all money is spent with decency. Forty-one lavatory blocks in the European Parliament Building, Brussels, show cocaine usage. UNESCO has built a costly Japanese garden in Paris – for themselves, of course, not the likes of us taxpayers. All politicians snort in the money troughs.

Miss Farnacott shelled out this wadge without a quibble. For revenge? Poor choice, though a bereaved daughter might want heads to roll. I once knew a lady who harboured hatred. We were dining in the George, when Michael, the manager, stopped at our table. He said, ‘How is Hannah?’ And explained, ‘The crash?’ The following ensued:

Marianna (my food provider, pro tem): ‘Crash? Hannah?’

Michael (hostelry owner): ‘Haven’t you heard? She has terrible facial injuries. Scarred for life. My chef, Jem, saw it happen.’

Marianna (sweeter): ‘Will she live?’

Michael: ‘Yes, thank goodness. Sorry.’ (He meant bringing bad news.)

Marianna: ‘
Please
don’t apologise, darling. How fabulous!’

Michael (not getting it): ‘We were all so relieved.’

Marianna (brightly): ‘Yes! Champagne, darling!’

Michael (still not getting it): ‘Yes, m’lady. That’s exactly the attitude! Celebrate Hannah’s survival!’

As he wafted on, I said, ‘You bitch, Marianna. You’re
glad
.’

Marianna (fluttering yard-long eyelashes): ‘You’re so innocent, darling, you’re positively refreshing!’

And she drank the whole bottle. I couldn’t touch a drop. Their dispute arose when Hannah, Marianna’s bosom friend, said she didn’t think Marianna’s dress should have had sleeves
quite
that shape. The war began. Is vendetta rational? I don’t think so. Marianna was furious I didn’t join in her glee. Marianna eventually bribed estate agents, so Hannah lost heavily selling her bungalow. The bribes cost Marianna a mint. She thought it worth every penny.

Money, I thought, deciding to find Quemoy at the Dog & Duck, is supposed to have its own emotions. Wrong. My law is:
Money feels nothing
. That’s another rule I wish I’d remembered, when life got harder and my troubles worse.

It was the following day.

The Dog & Duck had no sign of Quemoy. I got a pasty and a swig in the taproom, earning nods of recognition. I didn’t ask for him. Rumour in East Anglia acts like pheromones to the Great White.

Fifteen minutes later, he slid onto the next stool, then noticed me with a theatrical start.

‘Goodness gracious,’ he declared, rep theatre on a bad day. ‘If it isn’t Lovejoy!’

‘Wotcher.’ Yet more dated talk.

‘You have a sufficiency of imbibation?’

Did he mean a drink? The uncomfortable thought came that maybe he too was one of these disgruntled tribes.

‘Busy?’

‘Indeed I am, Lovejoy. Keeping the old mitts in, what?’

‘Oh, right.’ I asked if he would suss out another location.

‘You’re sure there will be no comeback?’ He smiled.

Maybe I was agreeing too often with too many people. When they come from the Nationalist Kuomintang islands, and have criminal connections… Still, his English was hell of a sight better than mine. Why quibble?

‘Have you the address?’

The babble in the Dog & Duck is always at max decibels. We couldn’t be overheard.

‘Somnell House. Is it in the Fylde?’

His face did not change. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘How soon? And how much?’

Quemoy is a creature of habit, and normally only asks the fee. His ‘
How soon?’
surprised me – he’d never asked before. We talked, he agreed. He said expansively, ‘Hey, Lovejoy, what are friends for?’

We were such good friends. Or even spiffing chums. He promised me the Somnell House data in two days’ time, collect from the Dog & Duck. Usually he took three hours – another warning bell. I kept up a light banter and got him laughing like a drain. I left at seven o’clock for the town bus. I needed to find Daniella from Mehala Bay, to
interrogate her anew about Dr Castell, then about Somnell House, Lancashire.

The bus was on time, so not all omens were quarky. Now I’d finally got started I felt content. Bollocking Mortimer could wait.

Somebody sat beside me, silent until the bus turned at Leavenheath.

‘You found Quemoy, Lovejoy?’

‘Nosey little sod. Why ask if you already know?’

‘Language, please, in public.’

‘Here,’ I said, narked, ‘why do you pay no bus fare?’

Mortimer looked surprised. ‘The bus company operates through my manor, Lovejoy. The driver is embarrassed when I offer to pay.’

‘Then why do they charge me, you chiselling sod?’

‘Because you are irrelevant, Lovejoy.’

He remained mute. Once in town, I headed for the Minories, an ancient house full of paintings where genteel vegetarian suppers are served by parish ladies. He came along, and eyed the wadge I flourished.

‘Please tell me what transpired, Lovejoy.’

‘Harken unto my words,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t been sarcastic because he went red and one of the ladies tut-tutted at my rudeness. ‘Sorry.’ More apologies. I told him everything, including Miss Farnacott’s donation. I offered to let him count it. Politely he declined.

‘What with that Ellen Jaynor stalking me, you, Lydia, Laura, Sandy, Tasker, that incompetent Hennell, an impending marriage, and Miss Farnacott talking tickety-boo Edwardian threats, I’ll be finished before I start on those forgotten white tribes.’

‘Ah,’ Mortimer said. He didn’t even glance up, yet one of the serving ladies sprinted across. ‘Do you have cane sugar, please?’ he asked.

‘Silly me!’ the lady gushed. ‘I’ll forget my head next.’ And sprinted for some.

‘Thank you.’ He gave her a shy smile. She simpered and went to brag of her triumph to her mates.

I asked wearily, ‘What does “Ah” mean this time?’

‘Dad was one, Lovejoy. Of the forgotten white tribes.’

That shut me up. Now, Arthur Goldhorn wasn’t forgotten or lost at all. I knew where he’d lived, where he was buried. And where Arthur’s missus lived in riotous profligacy among gilded youths. In short, I knew everything about Arthur.

‘Dad was born here, in Saffron Fields. Grannie was a Baster. They formed the republic in what is now Namibia. Recognised by the League of Nations. Grannie left all kinds of mementoes. I have them.’

‘Antiques?’

‘Not for you, Lovejoy. Dad guarded them. Even when you…’

‘Look,’ I said, narked. ‘Don’t bring that up. Some murderers die by accident. It isn’t always me.’

‘If you say so,’ he said politely. ‘Which is the reason you must serve Mrs Ellen Jaynor loyally. She is a Burgher of Ceylon.’

My brain felt it was floating free in a neap tide. ‘Whose side are we on? Knowing might help me to survive.’

‘We must find Ted Moon. Which is why you must go to the Formula One in Sunderland before going to Lincoln Cathedral.’

‘Sunderland? Lincoln?’ Not Derby?

‘Ask any motor persons for Mr Gentry.’

‘What do I want from Gentry?’ I felt ill.

‘A proper explanation, Lovejoy. Please ask that precise query.’

‘Right.’ This, note, was me taking orders from my sprog, whose feathers were still damp. ‘Then what?’

‘Lincoln. It’s their flower show.’

‘Do I nick some daisies?’

‘Please leave tonight. I shall inform Miss Lydia. You do not have time to go back to Mehala Bay.’

‘Very well.’ (This, note, was me taking…etc.)

‘Travel alone, please. You have sufficient finance, I see.’

‘Very well.’ I went to pay. When I turned, he’d left. I asked the counter lady which way he’d gone.

‘Sarcasm,’ she told me frostily, ‘is the lowest form of wit.’

One day I must find out who said that first and what the hell it means. I went home via the bus and looked up how to get to Sunderland. Somnell House could wait. But this time I took a precaution. Time I put me first.

I phoned the Welcome Sailor on East Hill, and told Tinker to go to Mehala Bay.

‘In secret and fast.’

‘Where are you going, Lovejoy?’ asked the loyal old soak.

‘Me? Motor racing in Sunderland.’

‘Christ Almighty.’ His cough sounded like a distant avalanche. I held the phone away from my ear against contagion.

‘Then we’re flower arranging in Lincoln Cathedral. Bring Tansy.’

‘Lovejoy,’ he whimpered, ‘I’ve no gelt. Where’ll I get the train fare? I’ve not had a beer for—’

Try to help people, you get exploited. I put the phone down and went for some grub. I had a long journey.

The Formula One in Sunderland was about as secret as UN corruption. I was dazzled on the platform by posters.

‘Is that today, mate?’ I asked a geezer in an anorak. He was admiring a huge motor racing advert.

‘No,’ he said wistfully. ‘Practising. At Blaydon Fields. I’ve to go to work.’ And as I went to the ticket barrier, he added, ‘Sunderland deserves its own motor circuit.’

I agreed. ‘The council should do something.’

The Fields turned out to be mayhem, throngs ogling pieces of metal, and cars that looked like they were melting. All this, to drive cars in a circle? I get depressed by mankind’s idiocy. There’s a group in Mexico who, at a cost of millions, will race 1,500 miles above Planet Earth. These X-racers will zoom round and round in the Bright Blue Yonder, boring us all witless. Why?

Back on Earth, I pretended interest among these deranged saddos.

‘Trouble?’ I asked one lot.

‘You wouldn’t chuckle,’ a bloke said morosely. He wore an orange overall hung about with spanners, his four
assistants all equally unmerry. ‘The practice cancelled.’

Motors stood on asphalt surfaces in the paddock. There simply was no circuit, but I went along in the cause of solidarity. Sundry pantechnicons loomed, cables strewn everywhere.

‘It’s the weather. The suppliers are late.’

‘Terrible.’ I kept up a litany of sympathy.

They talked gloomily of engines, when not one engine looked fit to go.

‘Anybody seen Gentry?’

They were impressed. ‘Do you know Gentry? Manager’s tent.’

Gentry was among effete snobbery in a marquee, being served with canapés and cocktails. He broke off and came towards me.

‘Ah, he’s here!’ I felt riff-raff among the nobs.

‘What am I here for, Gent?’ I kept my voice down.

‘To advise, Lovejoy.’ He was really pleased to see me. ‘About the profit you’ll win us ex-pats.’

Suddenly I felt weary. Everybody expected me to haul money in over the transoms when I’d no net. Ellen Jaynor, Laura, Donna da Silfa and her lost Faces, Dr Castell and Penny, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Pete wanted his travelling fairground saved, and now I was responsible for dud engines littering Sunderland. It was too much.

‘Is that all, Gentry? I resign. Ta-ra.’

He grasped my arm. ‘Shouldn’t do that, Lovejoy, old chap. Not good for your health. Think of Paltry.’

What
was that? ‘Eh?’

‘Paltry put his foot in it. D’you recognise anybody here? He overheard a chat, and put the wad on us.’

‘Put the wad on’ means to blackmail. ‘You?’ I
couldn’t believe it. ‘You did Paltry?’

He sighed. ‘Joint decision.’

Everybody was talking world championships. One man stood out. I’d last seen him giving testimony to a baffled plod near Paltry’s body. A bloke next to him had the frigging nerve to give me a wink. Dressed to the nines, London tweeds, a gold watch that could have settled the National Debt. He was the straw man. I’d told Liza, the local reporter, to find out where he was from. She’d drawn a blank. Now here he was, among the racing elite.

‘It was me put Penny Castell on to you for that mask thing her husband wanted from Eastwold College.’ Gentry chuckled. ‘Good value, is Penny. You’ll have already found that out, eh, Lovejoy?’

What was worth killing a sad transvestite and old Smethie for? Couldn’t these loony expatriates simply sell their fucking antiques and head for the hills?

‘I still want out.’

‘Don’t even think of it, Lovejoy. Tomorrow you cross the Pennines to complete the job. We all go together.’ He rubbed his fingers, meaning money.

‘No deal.’ I tried to speak like an aggressive Yank out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. It came out a bleat.

‘I’d hate to have you erased, Lovejoy.’

‘Is that a threat?’

He smiled in surprise. ‘Why, yes.’

The witness raised his glass as I left the marquee and Gentry rejoined him. They had a good laugh. I heard them across the paddock.

Only an ill wind blows
nobody
some good. People say that. I got a lift back to the railway station – red-brick arches, so similar to that in my home town, probably the same Victorian builders – and caught the train to Derby. I could reach Somnell House later, without more murderers telling me what I had to do.

Like Penny, I always decide sex on my own. It’s not true, but I felt good thinking it. I prayed Fionuella would still be in Derby.

Many towns vanish without telling me. It happened to Derby. Familiar shops were now kebab fast-fooders, a library a rush-nosher, an outfitter’s a tat shop. The one good thing about Derby was Fionuella, a let’s-pretend ‘Irish’ madam whose Genuine Antiques Emporium fronted her working house.

She never closes. The special house was her main income. Her girls specialised in sex machines. Its income was massive. Fionuella pays taxes based on phoney accounts.

I knocked and was admitted on the buzzer. She was at her desk among a load of dud antiques. Dud, except for one drab little cup that shone like a beacon.

She didn’t even look up from her ledger. For a second I wondered if it was a pose, as if she had been expecting me. But how could she?

‘Fifty an hour, sor,’ she intoned. ‘Sure to God indeed.’ Lustrous black hair and London Blue eyes, and as Oirish as Lucrezia Borgia.

‘That much?’ I said.

She penned numbers. Double-entry system, exactly as the city of Florence invented in the Middle Ages. A creature of habit, Fionuella.

‘All night is two hundred, sor, beggorah.’

‘Can I choose the girl? I’ll have you, Fee.’

She’d got contact lenses. Her face lit and she engulfed me in her cleavage.

‘Lovejoy!’ Her accent was gone. She’s as Cockney as the Bells of Bow. ‘You really want a girl? I’ve new Balkan grumble. I’ve got a city councillor coming at eight.’ She smiled elfishly. ‘Going to apologise, Lovejoy?’

Two years before, I’d divvied a collection of Davenport glass. John Davenport’s porcelain was long out of favour, but he did one thing that beams through all history. August 1806, with the nation barely recovered from the death of naval hero Nelson, this potter patented a new way of engraving glass. It’s simply a picture scraped in a coating of ground-glass paste stained with Aleppo-gall ink, and the glass fired at low heat after wiping the paste away. A kid can do it. Or any careful forger.

Fionuella had seduced a high clergyman (think a Church of England bishop, and you’re there) out of his Davenport glassware collection. I’d travelled to Derby, divvied it for her as authentic, and she sold it for a gillion, buying a boutique which she changed into a brothel. She promised me a few groats, and never paid. Narked, I’d stayed away, until now. I looked about for Davenport pieces.

‘I’m waiting, you bastard.’

Had she got the right end of the stick?
She
had defrauded
me
. When I’m desperate, my true character shows through.

‘Sorry, Fee.’

She re-engulfed me in that crevasse. A fake mystic topaz
brooch added insult to injury by pricking my cheek. It didn’t half hurt.

‘Then I forgive you, Lovejoy.’
She
forgave
me
?

‘Ta, love.’ I came up for oxygen. She uses enough cosmetics to camouflage a frigate.

‘Look, Lovejoy.’ Demure now, changeable as the seasons. ‘I’ll let you in to number 18. I have the top flat.’

‘You live in the er…?’

She smiled modestly. ‘The girls don’t have the skill, ignorant cunts. No fucking sense. I have to drill them on the bloody sex robots. One girl almost lost it on the Montreal Machine. Christ Almighty, all she had to do was stand in it. She went mad. No control. Even Sandy laughed at their antics.’

Sex robotics are the rage. You can hire every known automated – indeed automatic – device. And they aren’t all in houses of ill repute. Retail shops sell them.

‘Right, love. Finish your accounts. Can I look round?’

‘You and antiques, Lovejoy!’

She bent over the ledger. She doesn’t use computer accounting. I wandered as she grappled with the two sets of books. One was for VAT, the other falling a logarithm short of the Inland Revenue’s expectations.

The antique that drew me stood on a 1930s pottery sheep. The cup looked for all the world like a small pewter dish. I licked my finger and tasted the inside. My mouth turned bitter. Unmistakable.

‘Got anything good, love?’ I said, flannelling.

‘Shush, Lovejoy. Nearly finished.’

The slate-grey cup slotted neatly into its case. Unseen, I slipped my belt through the handle, so my jacket covered
the little thing. Hands in pockets, I wandered, then told Fee I’d drift round to number 18 – you never use the word ‘brothel’ in the trade.

‘OK if I have a drink there first, Fee?’

‘Sure, Lovejoy. Tell them you’re my dick for tonight and not to charge you. I price drinks worse than terrible.’

‘Thanks, Fee.’

‘Love you indeed sor,’ she said mechanically.

Carefully seguing from her shop so as not to reveal my cased cup, I left. It was worth half her premises, and maybe more with provenance.

In a small hotel I told reception girl my car was stolen. Cash settled her anxiety. Alone in my room, I examined the cup. Fee should have had it valued.

Back in the harsh sailing days crews lived atrocious lives. Sea battles, foul weather, invading practically everywhere on earth, and they endured maggoty ship’s rations. Captains did somewhat better. Rum was the source of cheap calories. Naturally, constipation was the enemy.

The antimony cup was born.

Captains bought cups made of antimony. Antimony pills were purgative. Drink a swig of wine from an antimony cup, and constipation ended. This cup was antimony, the fitted leather case genuine 1750. A ship’s captain’s purgative cup enabled a skipper to last out long voyages. The cup could be used again and again.

An antique like this would buy a house in the right hands. Or, I thought with a wry smile, the wrong. I reckoned Fionuella owed me, and I held a fortune in the antimony cup. Maybe I could pass it off as Nelson’s own?

Fionuella had kept my share of her patent Davenport collection of glassware, so I was simply evening things up. I had no qualms. Comforted by this morality, I went round to number 18.