PearlHanger 09 (7 page)

"Listen, lady," Mrs. Vernon began, but I deliberately stepped in front of her.

"My secretary will wait in the car," I said cheerfully. The bulbous cherub had gone red and was grunting. I took it and pushed gently inside the corridor. God, it was heavy.

"He's got George," the little girl pointed out.

Vaguely I wondered if infants are made of denser stuff. Maybe they don't use lead-free petrol in Lincoln and it gets in their little bones. Skillfully I hoofed the door shut in Donna's apoplectic face and just made it to the shambolic living room before collapsing under George's weight.

The mother followed wearily, not a peep out of her. She looked all in. I might have been the gasman. Her house had everything: peeling paint, begrimed walls, shredding wallpaper child-picked into lakes of bare plaster, and an antique hanging on the wall that made my chest go
boing.
With difficulty I ignored it, breathing hard. George gaped at me without affection, masticating a dummytit and grunting pinkly. Down in the forest something stirred. I was being dumped on.

"Sit down, chuck," I told the woman, undoing the babe and honestly gazing at the little girl instead of the Russian amber rosary beads hanging from a
nail
on the wall though my eyes wavered like a hunter's. "My name's Lovejoy. Where's his nappy?"

The little girl went to a cupboard for a folded nappy. She leant her elbows on my knee, watching. The mother couldn't have been more than twenty-four. She observed listlessly, hands clasped between her knees dragging her frock tight. Talk about washed out.

I explained to the little girl, "Men have no laps, see? We use chairs, but you can do it on the floor."

She nodded, swinging a foot, understanding life's de-

54 . . .

fects. Changing the cherub was like dressing a wriggling bolster. George got melodious, bawling a lusty barcarole while I got a bowl and washed his bum. Skillfully he peed a squirt into the clean nappy. "A born critic you've got here, chuck," I said to the woman. She nodded, not a smile. I salted him with talcum and propped him upright while he sang on. He nearly had half a tooth.

"There!" Difficult to keep calm with my chest chiming like a cathedral gone berserk. That luscious rosary was genuine and old.

Gedanite's a pine resin that ages into a false amber. It's usually opaque yellow and so brittle it's hell to work. But whoever had cut this rosary had been a master craftsman. Each bead was engraved with Christian symbols and the crucifix was ecstatic. "Clean as a new pin, Elsie, Elisabeth? Where's your bloke?"

"Ellen. Gone," she said, almost smiling at the monster. He was now standing, doing the infant's painful trick of marching on my thighs.

"That his rosary?"

"No. Mine," she said, shrugging. "I run a business, home hair-dressing, in the next room. It's not much. So I tried . . ."

"Selling it?" I prompted gently. My mini-Tarzan was yodeling, stamping, bellowing his tuneless song, and dribbling a length of elasticated grot that pendulated from his half-tooth. They're a puzzle. If I'd just dried him, why were we now both drenched?

"He wasn't interested."

"Where did you advertise?"

"Advertiser.
An advert's free, you see."

"He didn't sweep you off your feet?" It was a joke. She shook her head in all seriousness.

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"He was in a hurry. Nobody else came." Her eyes focused on me for the first time. "My grandma said it was special, but I suppose fashions change, don't they?" She desperately wanted something constant in the oppressive poverty-stricken world she had somehow come to inhabit.

"Too often," I lied. "Here, did you say you were a hairdresser?"

"I can't do
perms ..."

"Good heavens," I said enthusiastically. "My secretary needs her hair doing."

"She does? But the shopping . . ."

"Please. Her hair's a mess." Be firm, Lovejoy. "I'll shop for you. Has this thing been fed?"

"He eats all the time," she explained listlessly. "Marilyn knows the way."

I raised my voice to carry over the syncopating songster now churning my thighbones to powder. "Then shout her in and give me his campaign rations."

A minute later I explained my plan to Donna Vernon. "
Mrs.
E. Smith will do your hair," I said calmly.

"She'll what?"

"I'll be gone an hour. I'm furthering your interests." While Donna Vernon did her nut I swept out, humping George and dragging Marilyn. We slung the rickety pushchair into the car boot and took off for Lincoln's busy center.

"Your neck's wet. It's our George's spit," Marilyn pointed out.

"I noticed." I was knee-deep in it.

"Why've we stolen grandma's beads, Lovejoy?"

There was a momentary silence while I reversed into the car park. The eagle-eyed little pest must have spotted

56

me. While loading us up I'd torn a piece of my jacket lining away to wrap it in, with secret skill.

"We haven't exactly nicked them," I explained. "Mummy couldn't sell them. So we're going to, see?"

"Mummy says nobody'll buy them beads, Lovejoy."

See how even miniature women focus on gelt? "Mummys are usually wrong," I pronounced. The heresy worked. She gave an awed gasp. It was in a temporary lull that we disembarked.

George's push-chair was so warped it looked semi- melted, something painted by Dali. Marilyn did his straps while I transferred the "Disabled" sticker from a nearby car to ours. Nothing wrong with this little deception. Other deceivers were thronging into the precinct: the saloon racers with phony I'm-allowed stickers, the council clerks' Daimlers with exemption pennants, off-duty policemen whose blackmail is subtler than most. Law's enough to make a cat laugh.

We set off. The damned push-chair had a wonky wheel. What with that, my irritating wet collar, George's incessant crooning, and Marilyn telling other shoppers we'd stolen grandma's beads, I was in a state by the time we'd done the shopping. When I finally crack it won't be from World War Three. It'll be queuing at the checkout where the till girl runs out of change and all your goods come funneling at you too fast into your wheelie and the queue's exasperated because you're holding everybody up and you've paid nearly a quid for one measly ragged lettuce. I nearly went mental that morning, but little Marilyn was great. She caught our stuff like an Australian fielder and rebuilt the pyramidal display of dog-food tins that George had shambled by removing the keystone can as we

... 57

hurtled past, so I was a knackered wreck when we finally hit the street and found a miraculously unvandalized telephone. Margaret Dainty was in and phoned me back within five minutes with the addresses I wanted.

"What's that noise, Lovejoy?" Margaret wanted to know as I scribbled them down.

"Do me a favor and phone Michaela French. She seems nearest to where I am." We were by the lovely house locals call the Cardinal's Hat—though Cardinal Wolsey didn't need his hat for long—so it would mean a plod up Hun- gate, Michaelgate and beyond. "Tell her I'll be round."

"Watch her, Lovejoy. I see her at the antique fairs. A cool customer. Hates paying a price. What
is
that wailing?"

"A singing baby," I said irritably.

"Did you say a singing . . ?"

Michaela French's antique shop was disturbingly much posher than I'd hoped. It stood in a small tangle of medieval streets on a hell of a slope. I loved the vibes, even exhausted as I was from shoving George's inert mass uphill. Lincoln's somehow managed to defend itself against architects. Pleased at the sight of the castle and the rich feeling from the ancient stones, I resolved to be especially charming to Michaela French while I sold her my—well, grandma's—genuine Russian rosary.

"You're in charge of George, Marilyn," I said, threatening fire and slaughter if she moved an inch and warning that I'd be watching through the shop window.

"Are you going to leave us?" Marilyn asked.

Children are a right nuisance. I looked at her. "No," I said. "I've changed my mind." Anyway I'd only have been on tenterhooks, wondering if I'd remembered to put the brake on the bloody push-chair. "Come on."

Michaela French was as trendy as her name. She was

58 .. .

showing a wide-banded ring to a nice elderly couple. They were impressed. So was I, but in a different way. Nearly thirty, slender, dark, shapely, dressed with that costly beige sloppiness you only see where they own the next door's freehold and have coffee and cake brought in for elevenses. She was at the orgasm point of making a sale.

"That reflection deep inside the gemstone," she was pontificating as we trundled in, "is proof of a true moonstone. It's known as chatoyancy—yes?" Her hand froze in midair, the ring shining in the anglepoise lamp she'd arranged to conceal the fraud. She eyed George and Marilyn and me, in that order.

"I'll wait." My endearing grin didn't work.

"I don't buy in from the street," she said to me, smiling apology at the couple.

"Very wise," I said affably.

Clearly I was expected to go. I waited. George bellowed another verse and broke wind with spectacular shrillness. Marilyn swung a leg and gazed with dispassion at Michaela French, who now wanted scalps.

"Could you please leave?" she said sharply. She laughed gaily at the customers. "Some people don't realize we're rather above the usual run of antique businesses."

We could try somewhere else. I got the door open as she resumed her spiel: "It is early Venetian, of course. These Jewish marriage rings often have a canopy; the simpler ones are true sixteenth century. The others are imitation."

"Have we to go?" Marilyn asked.

Marilyn had a peculiarly flat way of stating questions that was starting to nark me. In fact her questions weren't really questions at all. They were assertions, and they all said the same thing:
It's always too good to be true.
She only

came up to my knee. Practically still a sprog, and a pessimist. The whole world suddenly went red. I thought, bugger this for a lark.

Michaela French nattered on, having dismissed the riffraff. "The bride wore the ring for
life ..."

"No, chuck," I said loudly to Marilyn. "Let's stay, eh?"

I hauled us over to a recovered chaise longue. La French did her freeze. I mouthed a smiling "I'll wait" to her and sat me and Marilyn. George boomed a bellyful of melody into a hostile universe.

"I'm so sorry. One moment, please."

Michaela French dabbed at a digital phone and muttered discreetly into it, clattered it home. The peelers were coming. Heyho.

"She's told on us," Marilyn whispered.

"Then we'll tell on her." I said it loud enough to hear down in Mint Lane.

"They were always Venetian," Michaela French angrily resumed. Her breathing had gone funny. "And gold . . ."

"Fakes," I announced innocently, "are common, Marilyn. See that picture frame? The one marked 'genuine'? They build it up using mashed parchment in whiting powder and glovers' leather scraps boiled into jelly. They spread the gesso lovely and level, maybe nine or ten coats. Phony."

There was silence all around. George parped and whistled. God knows what his mother fed him. He sounded like a sink constantly emptying.

"They put vermilion in the gilding." I spoke over George's bagpipe belly. "Look at it sideways and you'll see where the old crevices have been done with modern gilding. Old frame-makers only did that where their agate bur-

60 .. .

burnisher
tool couldn't touch. Part of that frame's not genuine at all."

Marilyn nodded, sucking her thumbs. I made my hands into birds that hovered and dived to throttle George while Marilyn blotted his chin with his bib. He fell about at the bird game, cackling as Michaela French, white and murderous, spoke determinedly on: "The Jewish marriage ring invariably has a light
feel ..."

"Similor's lightweight, love," I told Marilyn. "Cheap old alloy. French bloke called Renty invented it:
similar
to
or,
gold. Get it?"
I chuckled, eyeing the ceiling reminiscently.
"You can't teach the French anything about forging jewelry. They're great. Do a hell of a trade faking 'specials'—like continental Jewish rings. Of course," I went on conversationally, "good forgery's cheap. They used any old stuff for gemstones. Grotty bits of waste quartz, for instance. Like the nice lady's got there."

A man outside was looking at the shop. Even without the uniformed bobby with him he spelled the Old Bill.

"These rings are very rare items," Michaela French rasped furiously to her now apprehensive customers.

"You see, Marilyn," I coursed on, "it gives a chatoyancy reflection.
But so do plenty of other stones. Fakers always use it, copying tourmaline, chrysoberyl, moon
stone ..."

George squawked irritably so I resumed the bird game as the peelers came in. The tourists sidestepped, smiling anxious smiles, out of the door.

The plainclothesman stood, cleared his throat, rocked on his heels. Why
do
they do that? "Good morning, lady. You reported a disturbance?"

"Yes. This man here . . ."

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