Through the fenestrated wooden screen that shielded us from the hoi polloi I saw the head waitress at her podium. She'd made some sort of error and was laughing. A young waitress was laughing too, hand to her mouth in mock alarm, pointing to the ledger. I thought she looked a bit familiar, but not so you'd remember where you'd seen her last.
I suddenly decided on a wrong tack.
'Is Mr Verner a friend of yours, Mr Sommon?' The consul looked at Susanne. 'Yes. A business associate.'
I didn't really want to bring it up until the last person came in. It wouldn't be the brigadier. With his sabre or without.
'Only, I don't want any trouble.' I tried to look on edge.
He thumped me playfully.
'You're aboard with us now, Lovejoy. You've achieved your life's ambition! Being paid for what you like doing! There'll be no trouble from police, Lovejoy.'
Susanne was still unhappy about my jacket. Her unease had communicated itself to Petra Deighnson. I saw the latter look at my shoes. I'd rubbed the grubbier one on the back of my calf, like children do. I didn't glance down. Did it show blood?
'Have you cut yourself?' she asked.
'Somebody fell. I tried to help.' I'd wriggled to put Maud between me and a murderous maniac. Ever the hero.
'Did the antiques show go well, incidentally? I went out for a breath of fresh air while it was on. Too hot.'
'Yes.' Susanne described how well it had been received. 'They were all so good.'
She meant her actors were convincing enough to deceive the ignorant, and protect this ex-husband of hers.
'Anyhow, I'd already seen the show.' I said it like a gag, the last one-liner, smiling.
Mr Sommon hooted, choked. I had to bang his back. 'Your orders, sir?' Clear things up.
He opened his hands displaying largesse, the world his to be handed out to the deserving.
'I want three shipments a month to begin with, Lovejoy.'
'That many?' I stared, working it out. The man was off his trolley. 'Container loads?
Four or five thousand antiques a month?'
'So?' His beaming smile faded. 'Jeez, Lovejoy. You're a freaking divvy. You've only got to say whether the antiques are genuine or not. Christ. You don't have to work.' He became mottled at the thought of idle bums who didn't slog ergs to achieve the dream.
'You've only to sit down and look.'
He had no idea. Only a divvy knows how sick you feel, the utter malaise. One divvying session ruins you for days. The headaches, the eerie disorientation. It drains. I once divvied a shipment in two days, several hundred pieces of antique furniture, for a French shipper. I'd taken it on soon after their one and only French divvy died. I didn't recover for a fortnight. He was old, lived in Brittany. Nice chap, very quiet. Normal people haven't a notion.
Thinking of how poorly I'd been that time brought my headache on. My temple thumped tribal paradiddles.
'How many, then?' Petra Deighnson, straight to the gelt.
'One container load in three weeks, for me to stay sane.'
'One? That's less than a thousand!'
'Keep your voice down, darling,' Susanne said.
She reached but her hand didn't make it. He drew away, eyes challenging me to mortal combat. Me, his only salvation, note, for the ghastly financial mess his greed enticed him into.
'Christ! Susanne's actors only needed ten minutes!'
Like other crooks, he'd begun to confuse reality and myth. The actors going through their paces on stage were acting rehearsed fiction. The import of antiques through his diplomatic channels was criminal reality.
'They were pretending,' I said patiently. Abruptly I was tired, sapped to exhaustion. 'It's me alone that would divvy your illegal shipments.'
'But—'
'If you think they can do it, hire them instead.'
'What he says is true,' Susanne said quietly. 'Remember? It's on the video movie Taylor made at Saffron Fields that day.'
He seethed, glared. A thwarted politician is an ugly sight. I wondered if Congress had a televised Prime Minister's Question Time like us. It's the nearest the electorate ever get to a straight answer. It's still miles off.
'One shipment a month would be better.'
'One a fortnight, Lovejoy.' He put the flat of his hand on the coffee table so hard the crockery jumped. 'And that's that. I already have one shipment here. You start tomorrow.'
'Right.' I gave in. If I'd guessed right, we'd not get to his bloody shipment anyway.
Where were the Keystone Kops? I felt I'd done enough, got them all to speak the obvious.
'Can I have another drink, please?'
'Shandygaff, isn't it, sir?'
A waitress was already carrying a tray bearing a glass. Psychic? I looked up against the aura of my headache. I knew that face. The head waitress?
'And,' she said amiably to everyone, placing the drink in front of me, 'you are under arrest.'
Mrs Thomasina Quayle? I squinted up, dizzy now. Had her hair been that colour? And specs?
The tavern went silent. Four silent figures stood by our alcove, their bulk sending our nook into penumbral shadow. I recognized ploddites only a mother could love. They wore their arrest faces, an unsmiling satisfaction beyond ecstasy. The moment they lived for.
Petra Deighnson went white. She fumbled for her handbag, brought out a card.
'Don't bother, Petra,' Mrs Thomasina Quayle said calmly. She took the handbag. 'We'll look after this for you. Mr Dexter, please do the words.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
A plod stepped forward and intoned his gibberish. A small camera unit, videos busy at the wedding party by the tavern's entrance, had solidified into a steady focus on us. I was collared, every word got down on film.
While everybody expostulated – I'm a diplomat, I'm a SFO officer, I'm innocent, etc, etc
– I drank my gill and wondered through my migraine if I'd got any friends left. Maybe they'd spring me.
Smiling, Mrs Thomasina Quayle placed a bill in front of me. 'If you'd care to settle up, Lovejoy, we'll be going.'
The bill? For one manky shandygaff? The police laughed and laughed, telling and retelling Mrs Quayle's crack to each other. Justice always triumphs – for the richest one per cent. I'd never been included. Didn't look promising.
40
BY EVENING OF the tenth day, I still hadn't recovered my spirits. Tinker came round endlessly. I was trying another Gainsborough portrait, still unable to get her eyes. Eyes are practically everything.
'Got ter snap out of it, son. We've work on.'
'What work?'
'Antiques. Ferdinand and his Norma. They've got landed with the Yank's shipment.
Much got reclaimed by that African country. The rest, well, they don't know if it's gunge or priceless.'
'Tell them I'll divvy it for four fifths of its resale value.'
He cackled, falling about, blundering into my portrait.
The easel swayed. I grabbed it. I'd been trying out the new water-miscible oils pigments. Disturbing how good they were.
'You're learning! Here, son. Say you want Norma as well. You used to. I'll bet she'd jump—'
'Tinker, mate,' I said wearily. 'Knock it off.'
'Consul Sommon has escaped justice,' Mortimer said. He helped me to right the easel.
'You burke!' I fumed, shaken. 'Where did you spring from? Stop creeping.'
Tinker laughed and almost spilled his beer. Five new tins were lined up ready. He perched on my stool, coughing. I raised a finger to stop him. He spat into his empty can.
'Leaves tomorrow. Diplomatic privilege.' Mortimer crouched against the wall like an Australian drover, one leg outstretched. 'You must make sure he does not profit.'