The Vatican Rip (3 page)

He heard me out and shook his head. ‘Nothing that simple. You see, Lovejoy, somebody else has got my antique. And I want you to get it back.’ His voice chilled me, and I’m not easily chilled.

He’d said ‘get’. Not buy, not bid, not collect. Get. As in rob?

‘Why can’t you, erm, get it, Mr Arcellano?’

‘Because it’s risky. I might get caught.’

I thought, bloody hell. It’s a rip. The bastard actually wants
me
to do a rip. Not him, note, because it’s frigging risky. I rose, full of bitterness. It had all been too good to be true. Back to the cold snow and a quick rape over Ann’s lace in the village. Maybe there was a slender chance of fitting in a quick hot nosh, though other times I’d called round I’d had to nick what I could from her fridge while she went to the loo.

‘Sod off, mate.’

‘Sit down, Lovejoy.’ His face lifted. His smile was there again. I’d never seen such an unhappy smile. ‘You just risked gaol for that old man—’

‘Tinker’s my barker,’ I said. My chest felt tight. I was in some sort of scrap and losing fast. I’m responsible for him.’

‘And Margaret?’

How the hell did he know about Margaret Dainty? She and I have been close friends a long time. She’s not young, yet despite her limp she has that elusive style some older women carry like blossom. I glanced around. Arcellano’s two serfs were now sitting at a table by the door.

I subsided slowly. ‘What is this?’

He blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘Do the job and no harm comes to any of your friends – or you. You’ll not cry when you hear the fee.’

I swallowed. ‘To nick an antique?’

He looked pained. ‘Not
steal
, Lovejoy. I did say I already own it. Think of it as returning it to me, its rightful owner.’

‘Who has it?’ I said.

‘The Pope,’ he said.

‘The
who?
’ I said.

‘You heard.’

‘Fucking hell,’ I said. ‘You’re asking
me
to . . . ?’

‘Another drink?’ he said. He was still smiling.

I’ve always found that youth’s no deterrent to age. The ultimate proof was the Pinnacle Peak Language Academy, a big, modern but old-looking house on the outskirts of town. Arcellano had instructed me to report there, making all heads turn by snapping his fingers that snowy January day in the pub and passing me the card one of his goons whisked over. The card read
Specialists in Modern European Languages
.

‘You’re going to school, Lovejoy,’ he’d said. ‘To learn Italian.’

‘I’m hell as like.’ I’d hated school.

‘You register tomorrow.’

This was beginning to look too organized for my liking. ‘Can’t I just buy a phrase-book?’

‘Not for this job.’ He rose then, a gentle picture of threatening behaviour but still smiling. ‘Your wages will be delivered every Friday.’

‘Oh.’ I cheered up. These language schools are all the same – a convenience for foreign students to get a visa and for our own students to go on the scive. Simply register, attend the first couple of lessons to show willing, then it’s off to the boozer with a part-time job on the side for extras. I thought what a nice simple bloke this bloke was. And a charming nature. ‘Right,’ I said, keeping the card and carefully not yelping with delight as Arcellano and his grovellers made to depart. Money for jam at last. He paused.

‘One thing, Lovejoy. About your wage.’

‘Oh, that.’ I tried to sound only casually interested, but was pleased he’d remembered the details, like how much.

‘It depends on how you do.’

‘Eh?’

His blank smile was beginning to get me down. ‘Good progress, you get good money. Little progress, little money.’

I thought, what bloody cheek. ‘Then you can stuff your schooling.’

‘And no attendance,’ he said quietly, ‘no Lovejoy.
Arrivederci
.’

I watched the unpleasant bastard go. Thoughts of Margaret, Tinker, Jane and the rest rose within me and stayed. Antiques is a rough game. Antiques plus Arcellano was unthinkable. I thought for an hour before leaving the pub.

There was no doubt left in me. Some failures were just not worth having. Back to school for Lovejoy.

I have to tell you this next bit because it’s where I met Maria. And she became more of the rip than ever I wanted, and in a way I hate to remember even yet.

The next morning was bright with that dazzling winter brilliance you get living near the cold North Sea. To the east the sea-marshes glistened, trees standing in spectacular white silhouette against the blue. Even the thought of schooling didn’t put me down. I’d wangled my unlearned way through childhood. A day or two more would be peanuts. And maybe they included dinner.

I got a lift into town on a horse-drawn wagon, since there had again been snow during the night and all the modern mechanical wonder-gadgets were frozen under drifts. At such times East Anglia’s one useful vehicle is Jacko’s cart. He is a smelly, cheerful old devil, much addicted to light opera, who runs a ramshackle removal van in summer and Terence in winter. Terence is his gigantic shire horse, ancient as a church and about twice as big, and he pulls this wooden farmyard cart which Jacko, a born comedian, rigs up with nailed planks he calls passenger seats.

‘Is it true you’re going to school, Lovejoy?’ Jacko called as I climbed up. He was falling about at the notion.

‘Shut it, Jacko.’ I hate the way word gets round our village.

But he choked with laughter all the way down to the brook and across the water-splash where the town road begins. I had to grin weakly and put up with him because he lets me on for nothing. It was a lot kinder than it sounds – I still owe him for six journeys from last winter when the black ice had blocked us in for three days.

Jacko put us all down at the Albert tavern, from where we could walk up the slushy hill into town. I ploshed my way out to the Pinnacle Peak Language Academy, my chirpiness dwindling with every wet step.

The lowering sky to the south-west was leaden, promising yet more snow. The wind was rising, the air dank and chill. I was hungry as hell, perishing cold and imprisoned in a trap of utter misery by that lunatic Arcellano. My antiques trade would vanish. My life was a wreck.

So I went to school – and met Maria.

From then on things went downhill.

The so-called Academy was heaving. I’d never seen so many shapes and sizes and ages. Somehow a motley mob of people had battled their way to this emporium of learning and were noisily finding acquaintances among the press. There were kids, geriatrics, housewives, workmen, and elegant ladies obviously bolting from boredom. The Pinnacle Peak’s idea of welcome was a handshake in the form of grievous bodily harm from a bluff language instructor called Hardy (‘everybody calls me Jingo’), a sermon full of veiled threats from a geriatric grammarian headmistress, Miss McKim, and a gentle reproof from old Fotheringay. He was heartbroken because I’d never done classics at Balliol. I sympathized, because so was I.

Jingo Hardy enrolled me in a dusty side room. I nearly fainted at the fees printed on the form. One week’s worth would have kept me six months.

He boomed a laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Lovejoy. Yours have been paid. Ten weeks of special instruction.’

He told me to wait in the hall so I sat on one of the radiator pipes and watched Jingo Hardy, in the thick of things, inform a small disorderly bunch that they were intellectuals about to tackle Russian literature. With poisonous cheerfulness he bullied them off into a side room, leaving only a moderately-sized horde milling blindly to and fro.

What with the warmth and the comfort I must have nodded off or something because the next thing I knew I was being criticized and prodded with a shoe, which proved I was awake again. The hallway was empty. This woman’s voice was saying sharply, ‘And what do you think
you
are doing?’

‘Waiting.’

I blinked up at her. She was one of the loveliest women I had ever seen. Dark, slender, bright and stylish with a warm tweed-and-cardigan look. Pearl stud earrings. I fell for her. She toed me again. The crowd had vanished. A faint hum arose from the rooms all about, school now in session.

‘You’re a tramp, aren’t you?’

‘Not yet.’ I said. The irony was lost on her.

‘Please leave, or I shall call the police.’

I said, ‘Lady. Prod me again with your toe and I’ll break it.
Off
.’

She withdrew a yard. ‘Why have you no socks on?’

‘Drying.’ I got them off the radiator and felt. Still damp, but I started to put them on. All I could do now was tell Arcellano I’d tried and they’d threatened to have me run in.

‘And shoes?’

‘Give me a sec.’ I’d sloped them on the pipe, heels down, in an attempt to dry the cardboard which covered the holes.

She was watching. ‘Do you have far to go?’

You can’t help staring at some people. There ought to be Oscars or something for hypocrisy. Today’s message from this luscious bird: piss off or I’ll call the police, and have a pleasant journey strolling through the blizzard. People amaze me.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. Well. Where’s your overcoat?’

‘Still at my tailor’s.’

She flushed then and developed the injured look of a woman wanting some man to take up this particularly cumbersome crucifix. I didn’t help by spinning out my dressing process. She stood her ground, though.

‘One thing, love.’ I stood and stamped my cardboard inners flat. ‘Swap that painting to the other wall.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

I stepped across and lifted the watercolour down.
Never
over a radiator.
Never
in a centrally heated hallway if you can help it.
Never
facing what sun we get. And
never
where people smoke.’

The little watercolour sketch was a Thomas Robins, the sort of thing he did before doing the proper Dutch fishing-boat scene. He liked storms in harbours. I’m not all that old, but I can remember the time four years ago when his best paintings could be got for an average monthly wage.

‘Take your hands off our property—’

She came at me so I cuffed her and yelled, ‘You could have made me drop it, you silly bitch! Look.’ I dragged her near to the modern photorepro of ‘The Stag at Bay’ which I’d just taken down. ‘
That
,’ I explained into her stunned eyes, ‘will stand anything.
This
original watercolour is vulnerable.’ I spelled the word to give her cortex time to adjust to the learning process. ‘So we put your repro picture anywhere, see? It’ll not warp, change or fade in the sun. On the other hand, love, original paintings by Thomas Sewell Robins need care.’ I spelled that too, mounted the watercolour, then walked to the door.

‘You hit me.’ She was still preoccupied with being annoyed.

‘I’ll come back next week, love, to check you’ve not swapped the pictures back. And I’ll accept no crappy excuses about your painting being school property.’ I wagged a finger to emphasize the threat. ‘A genuine antique is everybody’s, no matter who owns it. Remember, now.’

She suddenly said, ‘You’re Lovejoy.’

‘True,’ I said, opening the door to the kinder world of winter. ‘And goodbye.’

She suddenly became a supplicant. The abrupt transformation was really weird. ‘Please. Don’t go.’ She even tried a winning smile. I’d never see a quicker – or more desperate – conversion. ‘I’m – I’m your special instruction counsellor assignment.’

‘You’re my what?’ Nowadays everything sounds like the UN.

She gave in and used language. ‘Teacher. Please come back in.’

I hesitated between the blizzard and the deep blue sea. Normally I’d have stormed out in a temper, though I’m usually very mild. The reason I didn’t was the sheer desperation in her eyes. Somehow I’d annoyed her at first, but now there she was full of frantic appeasement. I could have sworn she was afraid. Maybe she needed the money or lived in terror of mighty Miss McKim.

‘Can I dry my shoes on your radiator?’

‘If you wish.’

‘And socks?’ I added shrewdly.

‘Of course.’ She moved past me and pushed the door to.

‘And I’m not in trouble for, erm, telling you about the pictures?’

‘You mean hitting me,’ she said evenly. ‘No.’

It seemed there was no way out. Time for a truce. ‘All right.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it, which was odder still. She extended a hand. ‘I’m Maria Peck.’

We went all Regency. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance. Lovejoy.’

She didn’t look local, not with those lustrous Italianate features and that complexion, but Peck is unshakably East Anglian and I commented on it while we shook.

‘So I’m told,’ she said, and added sweetly, ‘Nothing like as unusual as Lovejoy, is it?’

Smarting, I thought, okay. Truce, not submission.

‘This way, please.’

I followed her lissom form. Whatever lissom means, it’s the right word.

Most women have an inherent grace, don’t they, with awareness sort of built in. Well, the ultimate was Maria. I swear I was demented for her by the time we reached the classroom, though her attitude seemed to be one of instant aloofness once she’d got me to stay.

But why the terror when I was making my sullen exit? Last time I’d been at school they were glad to get rid of me. Fool that I was, I shelved the little mystery and forgot it.

Late Friday of that week it happened. I was in my cottage frying some pieces of apple. It’s supposed to be a countryman’s delicacy, but was proving a failure. For a start you need oil for the pan, and I’d got none. Then you need a good stove, and the bastards had cut my electricity off in the midweek. The methylated spirit lamp, which I use for wax modelling, was going full blast – an erg an hour – and the sliced apples were barely warm.

The knock on the door surprised me. My cottage is fairly remote, on the outskirts of a small village. The lane leading to it is narrow and long and goes hardly anywhere else. The daylight had faded an hour since. I cheered up as I went into the little hallway. My first week’s wages were due for having attended that punk language school. Apart from having the opportunity to gape at the delectable Maria it had been a real drag, so I deserved every penny.