Gold By Gemini

This particular strood's about half a mile long. Three or four boats lay sprawled close to the roadway on the exposed mudflats among reed wisps. A couple of fishing ketches were standing out to sea in the cold light. But the boat I was heading for would never sail again. It came into view halfway across, a blue lifeboat converted for houseboat living and sensibly rammed as far as possible on the highest inlet out of the sea marshes.

Squaddie was in and cooking. I could tell from the grey smoke pouring from the iron stack. I whistled through my fingers. He likes a good warning.

'After some grub, Lovejoy?' his voice quavered from the weatherbeaten cabin. He's getting on.

'Yes. Get it ready,' I yelled back and slung my bicycle among the hawthorns.

He has a double plank with railings sloping from the old towpath to his deck. How lucky I'd called at mealtime. Frying bacon and eggs. He gives me that and some of those malt flakes and powdered milk, my usual once a week.

'Hiyer, Squaddie.'

'Hello, Lovejoy.'

An old geezer can get about a lot even if he's blind. Squaddie used to be our best antique dealer (me excepted) till his eyes gave in. A curious old chap, wise enough for more than me to use as an oracle.

'You're a day early.'

'Not brewed up yet, Squaddie? I'm gasping.'

Squaddie scratched his stubble and listened acutely to the momentary silence between us His sightless rheumy eyes could still move. It was a bit disconcerting in the small cabin, to catch a sudden flash of white sclera from a face sightless five years and more.

I slewed across the tilted floor and sat where I could see to seaward.

'You on to something, Lovejoy?'

I shrugged evasively, remembered in time he couldn't see shrugs and said I wasn't sure.

'Good or bad?'

'Neither.'

He cackled at that and mixed powdered milk.

'It's got to be one or the other,' he corrected, shuffling dextrously from galley to table and laying for me as well. 'Antiques are either lovely and real or imitation and useless.'

'It can be neither,' I said. 'It can be funny.'

'Oh. Like that, eh?'

While we started to nosh I told him about Bexon, the forgery, the lovely Nichole and her pal, Dandy Jack's accident and the diaries. You can't blame me for missing out Janie and the leading details of old Bexon's holiday trip because Squaddie still does the occasional deal. Nothing wrong with being careful.

'How does it sound?' I asked him.

'Rum. Where's the picture?'

'Dandy Jack kept it - after I'd sorted for him.'

He laughed, exposing a row of rotten old teeth.

'Typical. That Dandy.'

'Did you ever hear of Bexon?'

'Aye. Knew him.' He stirred his egg cleverly into a puddle with a bread stick. You couldn't help staring. How does a blind man know exactly where the yolk is? 'Tried to get him to copy a Wright canvas for me. Seascape. He wouldn't.'

'Money?'

'Not on your life.' Squaddie did his odd eye-rolling trick again. Maybe it eases them.

'Bexon was honest.'

'Was he off his rocker?'

'Him? A northern panel bowler?'

That said all. Panel bowlers are nerveless team players on crown bowling greens. They never gamble themselves, but they carry immense sums wagered on them by spectators at every match. You can't do that and be demented.

'When did you see him last, Squaddie?' I could have kicked myself even if it is only a figure of speech. Squaddie didn't seem to notice.

'I forget.' He scraped the waste together and handed it to me to chuck out of the cabin window. 'He was just off somewhere on holiday. Isle of Man, I think.'

'What was he?'

'Trade? Engineer, draughtsman and all that. Local firm.'

'Go on digs?' We suffer a lot from epidemics of amateur archaeologists hereabouts. And professional ones who are much, much worse.

'He wasn't one for hunting Camelot at weekends, if that's what you mean, Lovejoy.' He was laughing as he poured, thick and tarry. Lovely. 'Nieces wouldn't let him. Real firebrands, they are.'

I caught myself thinking, Maybe that explains why Bexon found his hoard on the Isle of Man and not locally. Almost as if I was actually coming to believe his little diaries were a perfectly true record. You have to watch yourself in this game. Persuasion's all very well for others.

We chatted then about antiques in general. He asked after friends, Jimmo, the elegant Patrick, Jenny and Harry Bateman, Big Frank. We talked of prices and who were today's rascals (plenty) and who weren't (very few).

'How's Algernon?' he finally asked me, chuckling evilly. Well he might.

'Bloody horrible.'

'He'll improve, Lovejoy.'

I forgot to tell you Algernon is Squaddie's nephew.

'He won't. Green as the proverbial with the brains of a rocking-horse.'

'He's your bread and butter for the moment, Lovejoy.' It was Squaddie who'd foisted him on to me as soon as I went bust, to make him the world's greatest antique dealer for a few quid a month. Your actual Cro-Magnon. I'd never have taken a trainee in a million years if Squaddie hadn't taken the liberty. It's called friendship. I visit Squaddie weekly to report our complete lack of progress.

'What's he on?'

'Glass. Musical instruments. He doesn't know the difference.'

'You cruel devil, Lovejoy. He'll learn.' That's what blood does for you. You can't spot your own duds.

'He's a right lemon. Should be out earning his keep like a growing lad, van-driving.'

'One day he'll surprise you.'

'Only surprise?' I growled. 'He frightens the frigging daylights out of me.'

'Not need the money any more, Lovejoy?' Squaddie cackled slyly.

I swallowed. 'I'll keep on with him,' I conceded at last. He passed my notes over. I earn every farthing.

'He's got the gift,' Squaddie said determinedly. 'He'll be a divvie like you.'

I sighed heavily and thanked him for the nosh. Before I left I arranged to skip tomorrow's visit. 'Unless,' I added cruelly as a parting salvo, 'Algernon's skills mushroom overnight.'

'They will,' he promised. 'Anyway, good luck with the Roman stuff, Lovejoy.'

'Cheers, Squaddie.' I paused on the gangplank, thinking hard. 'Did you say Roman?' I called back. No answer. I called louder. 'Who said anything about Roman stuff?'

'Didn't you?' he quavered from the cabin. He'd already started washing up.

'Not a word.'

'You mentioned digging, archaeology, Lovejoy. That's Roman.'

'So it is,' I said. Well, it is, isn't it?

But I'd said nothing to young Algernon at the cottage. Nothing could have got back to Squaddie through him. Maybe it was an inspired guess. There are such things, aren't there? We said our farewells all over again, ever so polite.

I got my bicycle. My picture of Bexon was building up: a highly skilled painter, known among a select few old friends in the antiques trade. A good quiet family man. Cool under stress. And honest with it, to boot. Still, I thought, pedalling down the marshes to the strood again in the cutting east wind, nobody's perfect. I started ringing my bicycle bell to warn the fish those two anglers were still bent on murder. The artist waved, grinning. The anglers didn't. Perhaps they thought me unsporting.

I pedalled off the strood on to the mainland. The only difference between cycling and being in Janie's Lagonda is that she's not there to keep saying take your hand off my knee.

Now I had money. Not much, but any at all is more than twice nothing. The trouble is people have to see money, or they start jumping to all sorts of conclusions. This trade's very funny. Reputations matter.

The White Hart was fairly full, everybody talking all at once as usual. I paused for a second, rapturously inhaling the boozeladen smoke and gazing round. Jenny and Harry were huddled close, uptight. I'd heard Jenny was seeing some wealthy bloke on the sly.

Maybe Harry had tumbled, or maybe they'd bounced a deal wrong. Well, antiques occasionally caused difficulties, I snickered to myself. Tinker Dill was there, holding forth against the bar to a cluster of other grubby barkers. I still wonder who'd bought that round. Helen was resting, long of leg and full of curves, on a stool like women with good legs do and gave me a half-smile and a nod. She's always exhaling smoke. She even smokes in bed. (Er, I mean, I suppose she probably does.) Margaret was in, too. I waved. Big Frank wasn't in yet. Patrick was showing off to anyone who cared. Lily gave me a wave. She'd been to a silver sale in Lavenham that day.