Every one of her four minute tables held posies of flowers. The curtains are chintz.

  Portraits of Princess Beatrice (whoever was she?) adorned the walls. The name was spelled out in flowers over Bea's counter. Souvenirs were on sale near the fireplace, miniature busts, lace hankies 'as worn by our beloved Princess Beatrice!' and suchlike. I like Bea, who used to be in antiques but is now going straight. Princess Beatrice appeared to her in a vision.

  'Can I tempt you to subscribe to my canonization fund, Lovejoy?'

  'And help religion? My grampa'd have a fit.'

  'No, dear. For our beloved Princess Beatrice!' Bea's eyes filled. 'I've got her really close to beatification!'

  However hopeful, it's all hopeless. I felt sorry. Bea doesn't have a cat in hell's chance of getting Princess Beatrice made a saint. The process used to take a century, until Pope John Paul II started the modern sainthood epidemic. I knew – know – little about sanctity and less about princesses. Anyway, it's only women who can answer lineage questions — like who was ninth in line to the throne in 1935, and so on – on those tiresome quiz shows where you can win a million but nobody ever does.

  'Wish you luck, Bea.' I started wolfing my grub.

  She affects rustic dress, long russet skirt, smocked apron, lace mobcap, lace bertha when she has to go through to the kitchen. Bea has a pretty granddaughter aged eight dolled up in matching Victoriana who helps out during a rush (meaning when any two customers arrive simultaneously). Polly chews gum and hums Top Ten tunes. I have a lurking suspicion that Polly secretly enjoys spoiling Bea's Splendid Tea Shoppe ambience.

  'Lovejoy?' Polly came to watch, swinging her foot. 'You eat fast.'

  'Wotcher, Poll. I'm hungry, that's why.'

  'I got chewing gum in my hair again last night.'

  'You get it out okay?'

  I once showed Bea how. You warm some chocolate in a pan, rub it briskly on the gum stuck to the child's hair, and it slides off like a dream. The butterfat, see? Continental chocolate doesn't work half as well. I made a lifelong friend in Polly, who sticks chewing gum into her hair every chance she gets to win a free boost of chocolate. The chocolate trick also does for chewing gum stuck on antique carpets. (Incidentally, for gum stuck on to small firm items, like a wooden carving or picture frames, put the antique into the freezer, if it'll take it. The gum lifts off clean as a whistle. It works for your best Northampton shoes as well.)

  Polly is also my spy. No fewer than four antique shops are on North Hill near Bea's caff.

  One elderly gentleman was in, reading The Times. He wore a hearing aid, the flex dangling. Safe.

  'Spied anything, Polly?'

  'Yes. A lady came with the police.' And as my heart griped, 'They raided Sandy's shop.'

  She bent her head to spare the old colonel and whispered, 'Sandy's queer as a square frock. Did you know?'

  'Watch your language, miss! You're only eight, you little sod.'

  'Granma!' Polly rushed through the counter flap. 'Lovejoy sweared.'

  'Tell him to stop it this instant!' from Bea's voice, distant in the kitchen.

  The wretch had done it just to get me in trouble. Polly returned glowing with satisfaction and started to eat my fried bread. She cleared it almost as fast as me. It became a race. You wouldn't think a shrimp her size could engulf grub that fast.

  'When?' I asked.

  'Last night. I had to watch from upstairs because there was something bad on telly and Granma said I'd to sleep quick.' She swung listlessly in her little russet dress. 'Don't you want to know what happened?'

  'Yes, please.'

  'They took Peter Myer away. He's got nice ears. Nobody got shot.'

  'Doesn't sound much of a police raid without shooting.'

  'It wasn't bad,' said this connoisseur of crime. 'They've left some police inside. I think they're being kept in because they didn't do things right. Like detention, see?'

  'How many?'

  'They come with seven, and four come out. Four from seven leaves three.'

  'So it does.' Three police still in Antiques Antics across the road. Sandy owns it. Well, well. Spies have their uses.

  'They sent for a lot of televisions. And,' she added, 'wires and things. And long guns.

  Why've you no marmalade?'

  Long guns to Polly might well be some kind of telescopes. What Polly saw as TV sets might be CCTV consoles for closed circuitry cameras. Were they harking to me and little Polly even as we spoke?

  'Good idea. Miss, could I please have some marmalade?' I asked. Such is our game.

  'Yes, sir.' She fetched it by climbing onto a stool. We resumed our meal. She has three sugars in one cup, hardly room for the tea.

  'The police motors followed a horrible American woman. I hated her teeth. She came in for some Gentleman's Relish yesterday and said Granma charged too much. She has terrible hair.'

  'Where is Peter now, love?'

  'He's poorly. He went in an ambulance. My kitten went in one once for its ears. They grew pus and one nearly fell off.' I stopped eating. 'Gangrene,' said this little angel. 'It rots cats' heads.'

  I left soon after, smiling and waving to Polly at the door and shouting ta to Bea. I didn't even glance at Peter's double-fronted antiques shop, nor did I look at the other three on the steep slope. It leads down to the old North Gate of Roman times, long since crumbled and now encrusted with terraced houses and small shops. Quite pleasant old pubs by the river. But why had Peter been done over, and the police called, to lurk behind the curtains? Almost as if they expected somebody to come burgling.

  Which raised the question what did he have that somebody needed so badly, that the police also were interested in?

  I was halfway through the shopping precinct when a motor drew up alongside me and a lady's voice told me to get in. I obeyed, because that's what I do.

  'Your money, Lovejoy. And for your divvies.'

  'Ta.'

  She still hadn't learned to smile. I decided I wouldn't, either. Take that, oh wicked one.

  I didn't count the gelt, just said to drop me anywhere.

  'Stay.' She wasn't driving. Her husband Taylor was at the wheel. He did enough beaming for the pair of them, like it was his part of an understood bargain. 'You'll work for me. It'll take one week. You get a share of the take.'

  'None of the others any good?'

  'I've rerun the home movie, Lovejoy. The sofa table, the earthenware coin box, the marble faun, the pewter. Taylor had three cameras. It took him quite a while to spot your signs. Any noise – cough, clearing your throat – was a warning to say false, right?

  Silence was approval.'

  'What gave us away?' I asked hoarsely. Besides Tina's betrayal, I thought.

  'The silence of the rest. They stood looking from you to the antiques, learning what was good and what bad.'

  'Who blemished the marble?'

  'That old thing? Me, of course. Don't worry, Lovejoy. There's much, much more at stake than those bits and pieces.'

  'When?'

  'Soon. Out.'

  Out? 'Oh, right.' I stood on the pavement, worrying whether to say thank you or not.

  The motor revved, shrank into the middle distance.

  For a while I looked down North Hill. Sandy and Mel actually owned Antique Antics.

  They lease it to Peter Myer for a peppercorn rent. Don't ask for reasons. Now, I thought as I went for the bus, Peter Myer and Sandy might be colluding with the plod, or Peter was under arrest. But what was worth setting up a police surveillance unit for? The plod never stir far from the TVs in their social clubs, unless forced. Besides Bea's teashop the only thing directly opposite was an insurance agency – 'Registered Speciality at Lloyd's of London!' – belonging to Timothy Giverell. I vaguely knew him, and his wife Florence.

  Dull as you'd ever get.

  Then I thought oh what the hell, and decided to call on the Countess. Then the forger.

  Then I'd do the burglary. Keep things in order. My mind was getting so cluttered I was starting to lose the plot. Actors say that a lot.

  16

  THE COUNTESS is the antique dealer to top all dealers.

  Life must be so easy for women. I mean, if they've to meet some bloke, they simply get glitzed up knowing they'll be in supercontrol. Whatever happens. Whoever the bloke might be. Women rule.

  But for the man it's so-o-o-o different. If he's to meet some woman he's on edge, worried sick. What'll she think? Will she cost more than the few pence he possesses?

  What'll he talk about, for God's sake? Will she see that he's a wimp who doesn't pump iron? That he hasn't a degree in astrophysics? That he once had trouble with his credit card, hasn't got a Rolls Royce? What has he got to offer?

  There's a reason for this.

  It's beauty.

  Beauty is power, total and immutable power. And every woman has her own beauty.

  Old, young, fat, thin, lame or wick as a flea, spectacled or with the limpid eyes of Cleopatra, she's on the box seat and the man is a mere supplicant down there in the splashy mud begging a lift.

  That's my Law of Gender in a nutshell. It's the reason that a woman – any woman –

  can have any man any time, any place. She wants some rich, handsome polyglot devil?

  He's hers for the taking.

  Not so the other way round. No man can get a woman without inordinate luck, astronomical wealth, stunning teeth, immense physique, the patience of a saint, the morals of a crook, the charm of the devil, the brains of Newton, total fame, global influence, and perennial youth. And if he does succeed? It's temporary. She'll depart on a whim –and women have whims like grass grows worms.

  (Sorry if this seems cynical, but I've studied these conclusions a lifetime. And I've tried, I've tried.)

  It follows that a man can never escape a woman who sets her cap. He's trapped.

  Permanent. A man can't leave until she gets rid. Until that day – and it will come, whatever poets and drink and optimism might say – you're in thrall to her for life. No good moaning, because it's natural. A bloke has to make the best of it.

  The only thing we've got going for us is that women don't believe this.

  For some reason, they think beauty is in expensive lotions, the designer label, costly garments and the breathtaking charges of fashionable hairdressers. Why they're hooked on trendy colours, silly styles or daft shoes I honestly don't know. They believe the myth that these cunning devices are necessary. Wrong, wrong. If they went out uncombed and shoddy, women would have exactly the same success rate, and that is total, hundred per cent. Failure rate: nil, zero. If they once tried it, they'd end the entire fashion industry in an afternoon.

  To summarize: any woman can get any man. A man can't leave a woman unless she says get lost.

  On the hour-long bus journey out of town, I reconsidered these inflexible laws. And alighted, ready for the Countess.

  Some folk have the knack of resuming conversations exactly where they left off months, maybe years, before. I'd last seen her on Braggot Sunday, the old mid-Lent day when you give ladies a present of honey-brewed spiced ale. We were pretty close, until a horrid moment when she'd had two of her whifflers drive me from her door by the simple technique of pointing a digit. No reason, no logic. And God knows I'd slogged to gain her a fortune in antiques. Okay, so I'd reportedly been seen in the motor car belonging to Hepsibah Smith, our church's choir mistress, on the Coggeshall bypass, but was that my fault? Women aren't fair. When I please one woman, the rest get narked. What is it with them?

  When the fatal sly note-of-hand was dropped in front of the Countess by some kind friend she'd opened it, read slowly, then raised her eyes. With a snap of her imperial fingers she'd had me bundled out into the path of a farm tractor. At the time the Countess had been reminiscing about Russian nobility over Lipton's tea. She had been one of them in a former incarnation. Now, she was phoney like the rest of us, becoming somewhat bloated (like the rest of us) and indolent and guessy (LTROU).

  You'll have got my drift. In life, female stands for everything that matters, whereas in antiques wealth means everything. Now think of a dealer who is a titled lady and has untold wealth: that's the Countess. We'd been close once, or have I already said that? I think I've gone on about her a shade too long to convince me that I didn't care any longer.

  Countesses don't have simple antique shops. They own Antiques Emporianas and Antiqueries A La Modes. This joint had a workshop making Special Customizations (read fakes) at the rear, and others on her two balconies that did varnishing and assembly work. Porcelains were being fired outside. Metalwork was done in a forge with two small foundries tacked on to the side of her building. It was more a small industrial town.

  In the centre seated on a regal chaise-longue under a tester embroidered with gold reclined the Countess. She always feasts on grapes, fruits you never know the names of, and is wafted and cooled – if not warmed – by two youths dressed as blackamoors straight from some Manet painting.

  The place was crammed with antique furniture. Most of it was fake, though I felt the vibrations of several authentic pieces. On the balconies I could see the silhouettes of her artisans labouring at lathes and workbenches, hear boots crunching wood shavings.

  The scent of varnish was pure aroma, stirring my heart as much as the woman I had come to see.

  'Lovejoy,' she said, bored. 'Out.'

  'Out,' a nerk the size of Wolverhampton repeated, chucking me into the road. A motor screeched. The driver got out, badly disturbed, and asked if I was all right. I told him yes, ta. He drove off shaking his head.

  This made me think. I rummaged in a nearby dustbin for a newspaper, and borrowed a passing postman's ballpoint. On the paper I wrote, 'BANKRUPT YET?' and propped it against the window.

  The hulk let me in. I walked towards the Countess, not genuflecting in spite of the impulse. She was lovely. Okay, plump and florid, hair piled up into a Carolean landscape and features a thick mask of cosmetics. I could see where the layers began. I'd never seen so much blue caked round a woman's eyes since I'd met Dame Barbara Cartland, God rest her. Lipstick thickened her mouth to a tubular pout. Earrings spread over her shoulders like epaulettes. She wore a dozen necklaces of heavy gold links, each with assorted pendants. Her toes shone with scarlet varnish and diamond rings. Lovely to see a real woman making the best of herself. I'd never seen anything so beautiful. I felt a pang. I had lost all that pulchritude.

  'Russia, in the days of the Soviets,' the Countess said, resuming where she'd left off yonks since, 'nationalized reindeer. Can you imagine the barbarity? And guess, Lovejoy.

  Which country has the most American one-hundred dollar bills?'

  'Russia?'

  'Who else? More than America. When Russia needed a bank to launder several billions of dollars, how long did it take those Cossack ruffians to find crooks with sufficient expertise? Guess.' And when I shook my head, 'One hour! What a stupendous, horrifying country!'

  'Indeed, Countess.' Me, dyed-in-the-wool humility.

  'Come and sit down, dear boy.'

  This is how teachers speak before they clobber you, hitting you hurts me more than it hurts you. I advanced gingerly and perched on a low stool waiting to be scurri-lously treated. The hulk stood by, a landslide in search of a victim. She made a sign. He receded, to be a thundercloud darkening the yard window.

  'Countess. I accept that I was to blame, and acknowledge that your dismissal of me was perfectly just. I apologize.'

  I'd worked out this tactic from TV. Half the soaps thrive on blokes apologizing to birds.

  In fact there's no other plot on telly. What's the average number of 'Sorry-sorry' lines per thirty-minute soap? Four. Count them. TV scripters have one maxim: never mind logic, go for the grovel. The ratings will soar.

  She smiled. 'You are correct. I do not accept, Lovejoy.'

  I rose. 'Well, Countess. I'll leave. Thanks for the ... er.'

  I'd already turned, when something really strange happened. She said, 'Stay. Sit.' I obeyed, which wasn't the oddity. It was that she'd changed her mind. Countesses don't.

  'Do you see the painting?' she asked.

  'Where?'

  There in the corner was a portrait. It was at an angle in the top corner, exactly where people who can afford electricity and air conditioning site their gadgets. And like Russians anciently placed their icons of saints or the tsar. No vibes, so not a genuine antique. It was in shadow.

  'Who is she?'

  'Is not a woman a remarkable thing, Lovejoy?' the Countess mused. She sipped at a glass of white wine, offered me none. 'So exquisite, so fatal! She was Princess Zanaida.

  Of course, her husband Prince Volkonsky was an animal. She only married him to hush up her affaire with Tsar Alexander, with Goethe, Pushkin, Rossini, Donizetti, others. Do I believe she took the pope as her lover? No!'

  She screamed the denial so loudly I jumped.

  'I don't either, Countess,' I said quickly. Princess who?

  'Do you know why I know she was pure, Lovejoy?'

  Pure? If she said so. 'Enlighten me, please, Countess.'

  'Because she only fornicated with honest men! If that sordid pianist Liszt had wooed her, she would have had him beheaded. Why? Because he stole every composition he called his own.'

  Well, everybody knows that Liszt was a thief. Hear a tune, he'd 'compose' it himself next day, like a certain modern English composer I could mention. She glared at me. I hurriedly smiled to prove I wasn't Liszt.

  'Anyway,' she said with scorn, 'Franz Liszt was Hungarian. Can you get lower?'

  She snapped her fingers and a youth appeared with a silver basket of sweets and chocolates. She selected one, inserted it into her mouth, and accepted a fresh glass.

  The youth retired.

  'You admired the silver basket,' she said with satisfaction.

  'No, Countess.' To her withering glare I said candidly, 'Its handles had been clumsily removed. Your silversmith –is it still Yosh? He's losing his touch – hasn't concealed the marks very well. They catch the light.'