The Sleepers of Erin (9 page)

To my astonishment I woke with my robin tapping like hell on the window, greedy little swine. I’d slept into daylight, which was just as well. I was in a hurry.

Four days’ start on the Heindricks.

* * *

Just a word here about antiques, because nowadays there’s more villainy over antiques than oil, sex, and foreign currency put together. And antiques are my only skill.

There’s the legit kind – honestly made way back in history (or 50-plus years ago, if you choose to believe the recent British Customs and Excise ruling) and honestly bought and sold, with dated receipts and all. Then there’s the phoney, usually a forgery made with ignorance and clumsiness and instantly detectable at a range of miles in a London peasouper. Then there’s the ‘tom’, which once meant newly nicked jewellery of any kind but now means anything precious but stolen. Naturally, we lowlifes use the term to include antiques because antiques are the most common items of burglary nowadays. Which brings me round to the subject of
your
own valuables, and the noble art of stealing. If you own anything old, learn this next bit by heart.

Once upon a time, valuables were stolen by stealth. Skilled burglars did Murph-the-Surf scams à la Topkapi. You know the scene: teams of ex-service SAS types dangled from ropes or did the hang-glider bit between skyscrapers. You remember the screaming newspaper headlines and the Hollywood films that followed. Well, all that excitement was great while it lasted – thrills, spills, and the sequels of the Great Train Robbery meant good news copy, became a real industry, in fact. Not any more. Things are different now. Times are modern. Above all, times are
new
. And the newest thing of all nowadays isn’t bad manners, idle teenagers, or hysterical marching on Parliament. The newest thing now is theft, plain old simple stealing, by sleight of hand. And you don’t use a team or a league or a twilight army. You do it on your tod, on your little own. And usually you get away scot-free.

Think back over the latest rips. Notice anything special? They were casual and quiet. No, the main feature of modern robbery is it’s a walk-in. In other words, the thief is legit and law-abiding
until the rip’s pulled
. Don’t believe me? Then you just keep an eye on the papers for a month or so (preferably July or August, peak months for nicking antiques). The famous Van Dyck portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria wasn’t ripped from Nostell Priory by helicopter squads with flamethrowers and gas bombs. Somebody paid a quid admission fee, cool as you please, and sussed the place out first. And he had time to nick nine other paintings and four precious miniatures as well.

You’ll notice something else while you’re thinking about it. Antiques aren’t merely ripped from private mansions. I mean, I sometimes think I’m the only bloke on earth who hasn’t nicked Rembrandt’s 1632 portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III from the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. (It’s small and painted on wood rather than canvas, so that helps.) It gets lifted regular as clockwork, and the last two times were walk-ins through the guarded entrance in broad daylight. One bloke simply popped the Rembrandt in a plastic shopping bag and pedalled off on his bloody bicycle. I ask you.

See what I mean? No banzai-parachute-grenade-Jaguar-jet-to-Morocco jobs nowadays. Museums and art galleries expect those. It’s the ‘oncer’, as antique dealers call it, the legitimate art-lover who strolls in, and strolls out. And anybody can stroll, right? The big question stuck in my mind. Now that it’s easy as all that, what the hell did they need a divvie for? And Kurak crisped old Joxer for being too chatty about their little enterprise, so it wasn’t a simple walk-in. And it wasn’t going to be any easy cloth job, either.

Sunshine slammed into the cottage as soon as I pulled the curtain back. I’m not keen on a lot of fine weather, though birds seem to brighten up in it. Needless to say, my horde of garden scroungers were glaring in at me. Shakily I diced a grotty piece of cheddar and went outside to sprinkle it on the decorative little half-completed wall near the back door. I’ll finish it when I get a minute. The blue tits have to manage with nuts in a net string on the apple tree but the robin’s daft on cheese. Ten minutes later I had made myself more or less presentable and was entering Lyn’s little garden down the lane carrying my egg wheel. The back door was open.

Am I allowed?’

‘Lovejoy!’ She was at the table with her twins. They let out a shriek and hurrayed me into the kitchen. They were having breakfast, so I’d guessed right. ‘Come and sit
down
! Just
look
at you, with your arm all
bandaged
! We heard such
awful
things about you, in the paper and everything!’ Lyn gave me a quick buss, and the girls sploshed milky lips on my cheek. Lyn and me had been quite close before she went and married a decent, reliable wage-earner. Which only goes to show you can’t really depend on women. It was honestly coincidence which brought Lyn and her family into the same lane as me. Honestly.

She bustled about to get coffee, all pretty and pastel colours and yapping platitudes like they do. It was quite a hero’s welcome. I was quite moved. It could easily have been the sailor’s elbow even though I sometimes babysat for Lyn and David.

Little Rebecca asked, ‘Did you have your dinner in prison, Lovejoy?’

‘Shush, Becky!’ Lyn reddened and said could I stay for breakfast because it was only eight o’clock and she was just going to do some for herself.

‘Er, thanks, love.’

Alison, Rebecca’s twin, was painstakingly dipping egg soldiers. She confided to me in a whisper, ‘We haven’t to say you’re in prison, Lovejoy. Not to
anyone
.’

‘Shush, Lally!’

‘It’s true!’ Alison retorted. ‘Daddy said!’

Rebecca joined in. ‘We’ve to tell everybody you’re staying at your Auntie Lydia’s.’

‘Just listen to the pair of you little sillies!’ Lyn’s face was scarlet with embarrassment. She skated toast on to a plate for me but avoided my eye. I hadn’t realized everybody down our lane knew about Lydia, my one-time learner assistant. She was not quite my auntie. Which accounted for Lyn’s moods lately. Hey ho.

Alison had five egged soldiers now. With the deliberate actions of a child deciding to feed someone else, she directed one into my mouth, frowning with concentration. Rebecca was undeterred.

‘Daddy said—’

‘Becky! Eat your breakfast!’

‘Daddy said you didn’t really steal the church’s kettle,’ Becky explained.

Allies in unexpected quarters always warm your heart. I smiled at the kettle bit. ‘Tell him ta.’

‘Daddy said
you’d
not have got caught, Lovejoy.’

‘Becky! One more word out of you!’ Lyn cracked an egg on the edge of the pan. Women do that great. I’ve tried it but the shell always clings tight at the rim and the egg slides on to the floor.

Alison took up the refrain. ‘Mummy said—’

‘Both of you! Not another word!’ Lyn dithered furiously between the stove and the table, threatening with a spoon. ‘Absolute silence until you get down, or no playschool! Do you hear?’

The twins’ faces turned mutinous but it must have been some threat because they went quiet. On my last baby-sitting visit they hadn’t been speaking, some ferocious dispute over who had the right to move Lally’s pot pig from its place on the windowsill. Lally had on her hooped red hairband, only plastic or something. I resolved to try to find her an antique one of woven glass – blue and white plaited, soft and pliable as silk. They are expensive, but one might turn up as a ‘balancer’, as we call the small antiques thrown in to make up a price. The shape of Lally’s hairband made me think of something vitally important, but it escaped my consciousness as Lyn asked, not looking, how I was managing.

While she got the grub I told her all about my arrest, but omitted the Heindricks’ part in my release. I made it out to have been a mistake. Naturally I said nothing about Sal, or Joxer for that matter.

‘Lyn, love. Selling houses.’ Her husband David is a chartered surveyor.

‘Lovejoy! You’re not thinking of—?’

‘ ’Course not. It’s, er, this house somebody’s selling in Sudbury. A dealer I’m friendly with might put a deposit down.’

Lyn smiled and tipped the fat over the edges of the eggs. She’d stir it all into a mess soon, knowing I can’t stand looking into those reproachful orange egg eyes on the plate. ‘And we thought Lovejoy came to see us, didn’t we?’ she said almost playfully to the twins.

‘I did, love. If somebody puts a deposit down on a house, but doesn’t sign anything, is it a legal sale?’

She looked doubtful and began to stir the yolks in. ‘I don’t believe it is. Not till the written contract is exchanged. I’ll ask David.’

I thought for a minute. ‘Could you?’

‘He won’t mind. He’ll phone me about ten o’clock.’

‘Lyn, love, I’ll be away a day or two. Can you do my wheel?’ I’d put it on the kitchen floor.

‘That old thing? What is it?’

I explained. It is only a wooden wheel suspended on a crank. You lodge fresh eggs in holes in the rim. ‘Give it a quarter turn dawn and dusk, and the eggs don’t go bad. Victorian.’

‘Oh, Victorian,’ she said, voicing an age’s criticism.

‘You’re jealous. Just because the Victorians invented everything and conquered the world on foot—’

‘You need a fridge to store eggs.’

‘Whatever you say.’ Women are like this.

‘We’ll turn your wheel, Lovejoy.’ Lally and Rebecca chorused. They were so keen to get started I knew my eggs would be spin-dried as soon as my back was turned.

‘I’ll do it, Lovejoy,’ Lyn corrected, glaring them down. ‘Where are you going? Somewhere nice?’

‘Maybe,’ I said, swallowing a sudden twinge of apprehension.

Then Becky said in her penetrating whisper, ‘Don’t be frightened, Lovejoy.’

‘Frightened? Of what? Who’s frightened?’ I demanded coldly, but that shook me. Kids say some bloody wrong things at odd times when they should shut up.

‘I told you to be quiet, miss,’ Lyn said, placing my food and looking at me carefully now.

‘Yes. Eat your breakfast,’ I added sternly.

The twins said together, watching, ‘You eat yours.’ So I did.

Then I went to sell my cottage shakily and a bit scared, because I wasn’t sure if they’d try to kill me here first or wait till I reached Ireland.

Patrick had only just risen when I arrived on East Hill. By a curious blunder, our village bus had arrived on time so I was in town by nine-thirty and waiting for Lily to come to the door. The antiques shop had started out as Lily’s, but it is Patrick’s now, for obvious reasons. I often wonder if Lily’s husband will ever ask for his deeds. Lily came to the door and let me in. She looks an absolute wreck in daylight. I closed the door and followed her down the narrow hallway into her living room. Someone screamed. It was Patrick, all dramatic on the couch with his eyes padded.

‘Morning, Patrick.’

‘Lovejoy,’ he moaned. ‘I might have known. You thundering great
clumsy
, you. You deliberately
slammed
that door.’

Lily tugged anxiously at my arm. ‘Shhh, Lovejoy. He’s got one of his heads.’

But I was in too much of a hurry for suchlike gunge and said, ‘That’s a rotten dressing-gown, Patrick. Can’t you afford better?’

He sat bolt upright, glaring and spitting venom. ‘Vermilion and sepia are natural
partners
, you cretin!’

‘It’s the scarlet belt, Patrick. Doesn’t go.’

He rose and rushed apprehensively to a full-length wall mirror and paraded a minute, tying and untying his belt. ‘Oh, Lovejoy, don’t you think so? Are you sure?’

He looked ridiculous, but you daren’t tell him so outright. ‘It’s a problem,’ I murmured, my stock phrase when I haven’t a clue.

Patrick rounded on Lily. ‘Why didn’t you say, silly cow!’ he shrilled.

‘Well, dear, you were so certain . . .’

I cut in. ‘You want my cottage, Patrick?’

‘
What?
’

He’d been after buying it for years. ‘You want to make an offer? I’m trying to raise some gelt to build up my stock.’

‘You’re going to sell, Lovejoy?’ Lily breathed. ‘Oh, Patrick, darling—’

‘Shut up, silly cow,’ he commanded. ‘How much, Lovejoy?’

‘Well, I’m having it valued today. Naturally I’d want at least the market value . . .’

His eyes narrowed for business. ‘You’ll give me an option?’

Innocently I shrugged, smiling. ‘I don’t mind much. Just thought I’d drop round and let you know because—’

‘
Please
, Lovejoy,’ Lily exclaimed. ‘Patrick’s always loved that spot.’

‘Well . . .’ I dithered, really quite convincing.

‘
Please
. We’ll put down a deposit, to be first.’

‘Look, Lily, it’s not even been listed for sale—’

‘Then we’ll be at the head of the queue, decide terms later.’ She rummaged in her handbag and fetched out a lovely thick virgin cheque-book. It was beautiful. ‘It need only be a token sum.’ That sounded horrible. I needed more than token sums.

‘I’m not sure . . . .’

‘Let’s see,’ she mused, finding a pen. ‘The usual deposit’s, say, ten per cent of the purchase price, so let’s say half of that?’

‘No.’ Patrick was gauging me warily. As I said before, he’s a shrewder nut than he makes out, the pest. ‘Point five per cent’s ample.’

‘All right.’ I put the best face on it I could manage and five minutes later was down their steps carrying a crossed cheque, not for as much as I had hoped, but stealers can’t be choosers.

My luck was in that morning – or so I thought in my ignorance. The phone kiosk opposite the Ship tavern had not been vandalized, by some strange oversight. After listening to a brisk altercation between Rebecca and the operator, Lyn breathlessly managed to wrestle the receiver away from her offspring and accept reversed charges for the call. I asked if David had phoned in.

‘Yes, Lovejoy. I asked him, like you said.’

‘Were you right?’ I meant about the house purchase law.

‘Yes. David says the legal point of sale is the formal exchange of contracts. He says if you want to call in tonight he can explain in more detail—’