The Sleepers of Erin
The Lovejoy series
The Judas Pair
Gold from Gemini
The Grail Tree
Spend Game
The Vatican Rip
Firefly Gadroon
The Sleepers of Erin
The Gondola Scam
Pearlhanger
The Tartan Ringers
Moonspender
Jade Woman
The Very Last Gambado
The Great California Game
The Lies of Fair Ladies
Paid and Loving Eyes
The Sin Within Her Smile
The Grace in Older Women
The Possessions of a Lady
The Rich and the Profane
A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair
Every Last Cent
Ten Word Game
Faces in the Pool
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
First published in the UK by Collins (The Crime Club), 1983
This edition published by C&R Crime,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013
Copyright © Jonathan Gash, 1983
The right of Jonathan Gash to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47210-293-5 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-47210-295-9 (ebook)
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Cover illustration: Peter Mac; Cover design:
www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk
A story for Freda and hers, for Susan, Glen,
Babs, and Yvonne,
who wanted such a start.
This book is dedicated as a humble offering to the memory of the ancient Chinese god T’ai Sui, who afflicts with poverty and pestilence all those who do not dedicate humble offerings to his memory.
Lovejoy
Everybody wants them.
You want them. I want them. Everybody. The poor in the gutter, famous actresses, millionaires on yachts, robbers clinging to drainpipes, dreamers, hookers, killers. Everybody.
And what are they, these things?
They are exquisite. Beautiful. Breathtaking, crammed with soul and love. They also happen to be inflation-proof. They resist monetary devaluation and wars, plagues, famines, holocausts and the Great Crash.
They’re antiques.
The trouble is, there’s blood on most. I should know, because I’m an antique dealer. Yes, your actual quiet, friendly, placid bloke who sells you old pots and paintings and things in perfect tranquillity.
This story starts where I’m bleeding to death.
Hospitals always stink of ether, though they say it’s not used much now. Like in most places, nothing ever really changes. The ceilings whizzing past overhead looked cracked and unpainted, the bulbs and fluorescents grubby, not a lampshade in sight. All those big lagged pipes still there. The swing doors in Emergency had been replaced by flexible flaps since last time, but they came together with an appalling crash just the same. Hospitals kill me. The nurses had the same massive watches pinned to their bosoms, to put your eye out when they lean over you. I tried telling the prettiest one it was only an accident, honest, and not to call the police.
‘You shut up,’ she said crossly. ‘I’ve had quite enough from you in the ambulance. There’s blood everywhere. It’ll take hours clearing up.’
A detached voice said, ‘Is this the injured tramp?’
‘Bloody cheek,’ I croaked.
‘You shut up,’ the nurse said again.
‘How did it happen?’ that detached voice demanded
I said, ‘I fell.’
‘You shut up,’ the nurse said.
A house doctor looking like a knackered teenager said bitterly, ‘The bastard’s O rhesus negative.’
Five faces glared hate down at me, as if blood groups are anybody’s fault. An older voice, just as tired, said anyway it would have to be the operating theatre and to call out the anaesthetist. ‘Take him into Number Three. Another plasma, and do a rapid crossmatch.’
It sounded horrible. ‘Look,’ I said upwards, trying to be helpful. ‘Don’t go to a lot of trouble—’
They all said together, ‘You shut up.’ Manners no different, either.
I woke up some time during the night feeling sick. Somebody had a tin thing under my chin. A fob watch donged my eyeball. Skilled hands mangled my damaged arm so I almost screamed with the pain. A light seared into my skull. Torture’s gentler.
‘Yes, he’s conscious,’ a bird’s voice said.
A pleasant-looking bloke was standing patiently by when finally I came to. He tiptoed solicitously forwards. ‘Lovejoy?’ The kindest voice I’d heard yet.
‘Mmmmh?’
He smiled, full of compassion. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he said. That brought a wash of memory. It made me groan.
‘You shut up,’ the nurse said.
Fingringhoe Church is out on the sea-marshes. Miles from anywhere. In fact, it’s even miles from Fingringhoe, which only goes to prove something or other.
I’d been in this lonely church, kipping on one of the rear pews after Sal had gone home, and thinking myself alone. A voice woke me, echoing.
‘It’s okay!’ it said. ‘All clear.’
Clarkie’s voice was instantly recognizable. Sensibly, I kept still so I made no noise. Clarkie always was stupid, hadn’t the sense to suss the church casually as if he were just admiring the stained-glass windows. I lay on the pew, tired out after Sal but amused at listening to Clarkie’s ponderous footfalls in the aisle. He’s subtle as a salvo.
‘Fasten that bleeding door, Sam.’
The church door boomed to, sending echoes round the interior. He must have his partner Sam Veston with him, a no-hope knife man if ever there was one. Talk about antique dealers. They say they’re experts on pre-Victorian domestic furniture, which is hilarious. They’re thick.
‘What we do first, Clarkie?’ Sam sounded nervous.
‘Silver. There’ll be a safe in here somewhere.’
They were somewhere down the church now. I sat up quietly to watch Clarkie and Sam set to work on the vestry door.
Sam asked, ‘Whose was that frigging great Bentley?’
‘Dunno. Some bird doing the church flowers.’
‘She took long enough,’ Sam grumbled.
I smiled. That would have been Sal, leaving for home. Clarkie and Sam must have waited in the hedgerows while Sal and I made love on the back pew. I’d come earlier on foot so they’d assumed Sal was alone. Incidentally, don’t go thinking that loving in church is the height of blasphemy. It’s God’s full-time occupation. Anyway, Sal has an influential husband who would see me off if we were rumbled.
This infamous pair were interesting. I’d never seen anybody (else, that is) carrying out a robbery in person before. Clarkie had tried the vestry door and was standing to one side while Sam rummaged in the lock with a spider – that’s an improvised key made of bent wires. You shape it as you go. Very much trial-and-error, but that’s all you can expect from antique dealers these days. Now, if Sam had taken the trouble to learn how a splendid three-centuries-old lock was constructed, or had the slightest inkling of the beautiful workmanship which had gone into it when the ancient locksmith crafted it . . . I sighed. Antique dealers haven’t a clue. Pathetic. God knows why, but dealers always want to prove that ignorance really is bliss. It honestly beats me. I could have turned that lock without breaking my stride. Clarkie is a minor antique dealer who ‘specializes’ in everything. He hangs hopefully on the coat-tails of any dealer rumoured to have a cerebral cortex, and picks up the odd trade swap now and then. Thick as a plank, the biggest deal he’d ever done was a quarter share in a piece of Derby, that costly John Milton figure holding a scroll. (You’ll still occasionally come across Derby pieces in junk shops, but not as often as you used to.) I saw it, a luscious gold-touched white about 1776 or so. It was genuine, but that was entirely miscalculation on Clarkie’s part. He is your actual average antique dealer, which is to say an incompetent, acerebral buffoon whose idea of research is somewhere to the left of guesswork. That deal was a year ago and I knew Clarkie was now on his uppers, though I had never known him do a church over before. It was an interesting sidelight on my colleagues, and I observed their progress with delighted fascination.
‘What about a hammer and chisel, Clarkie?’ Sam asked.
‘Right. Smash the bloody thing.’
I wasn’t having that. ‘You dare,’ I said.
They yelped. Clarkie dropped his bag of tools with a crash. Sam had sprinted halfway to the door before they realized it was only me and screeched to a stop.
‘It’s Lovejoy,’ Clarkie gasped.
‘Christ.’ Sam was grey-faced from fright. ‘I thought it was the Old Bill.’
‘You silly sod, Lovejoy.’ Clarkie mopped his face. ‘Made me come over queer. What you doing here?’
I scoffed, ‘I wouldn’t pay you in marbles, Clarkie.’
‘We’re just . . . just doing a lift,’ Clarkie said apologetically. Sam looked from Clarkie to me and began to edge towards the church door. That was in case I ran out yelling for the peelers.
‘And you’re not going to stop us,’ Sam added. He pulled out his knife and held it loosely at waist height, a really sinister threat calculated to strike terror into the most savage nun. You have to laugh. No wonder antique dealers have a bad name.
‘Piss off, Sam,’ I said, getting up and walking past him to join Clarkie, my footsteps echoing from the stone-flagged flooring. I noticed the church was not as bright now. The daylight was seeping from the sky and the hard sun shadows were ashed into a sad grey.
Clarkie backed off as I approached. ‘Now, Lovejoy, mate,’ he began nervously. ‘This scam’s nothing to do with you.’
‘You’re right.’ I toed his bag of tools. It clanked like a shunting yard. They must have brought every tool they owned. ‘And it’s nothing to do with you, either.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean get lost, Clarkie.’ I grinned. ‘I’ll count to ten and you hide, eh?’
Sam spoke up. ‘It’s only a cloth job, for Chrissakes.’ I should have listened to the despair in his voice and saved myself an operation, but maybe I was too clapped out. Anyway, I didn’t. ‘Cloth job’ means robbing a church, an enterprise with a very respectable history if you think about it. Nowadays it’s so common it’s almost routine. There’s hardly an antique dealer in England who bothers to ask any more where you got that old chalice or ciborium. Auctioneers are twice as bad, having no reputation to lose.