'Dad send you to feed the crocodiles, sonny?' one of the Aldgate circus called. Laughter.

  A woman near me tutted. 'How rude!' she exclaimed.

  I nodded sadly. 'Modern manners,' I said. She approved of my sentiments and I was glad. I'd seen her inspecting the kitchen cabinet, and Tinker Dill was on to it, with my money.

  Sharks and cut-throats, we all settled and paid rapt attention to the sale of a birdcage.

  I watched it come. Ten, twenty. At thirty-two Margaret bid for and got a pair of small Lowestoft soft-paste porcelain animal figures, a swan and a dog. I don't like them much because of the enamelling but I was glad for Margaret. Delmer got his Goody Two-Shoes and a pile of others for a few pence at thirty-eight. At forty Tinker Dill got the cabinet, though Beck had a few laughs at my expense and threatened loudly to compete in the bidding. One of the Birmingham lads wandered over curiously during the bidding to look at the cabinet, but by then Tinker had guessed right and was standing idly by, leaning against the drawer where the mote spoon was. My mote spoon now. The Brummie stared across at me carefully. I smiled benevolently back. I saw him start edging across to the others of the Brummie circus. Well, they're not all daft.

  Harry Bateman tried a few bids for a Victorian copy of an anonymous Flemish school oil and failed. Why first-class nineteenth-century artists wasted their talents making copies of tenth-rate seventeenth-century paintings I'll never know, but you couldn't say this to Harry.

  'Lot Seventy,' the auctioneer intoned.

  This was it. My jade piece, a dark lustrous green with brown flacks and one oblique growth fault, was carved in the form of an ancient Chinese cash coin. Jade is the wonder stone, matt and oily and soft to look at yet incredibly hard. It can resist shock blows time after time. (Remember that those large but thin uninteresting jade rectangles you see are most probably nothing less than temple bells, to be struck when tuning string instruments. Very desirable. A complete set is worth… well, a year's holiday. Give me first offer.) I saw Beck glance around. The bidding started. I went in quick, too quick for some. Jimmo was prominent in the early stages. Then Jonas came in, raising in double steps to the auctioneer's ecstasy. Jonas is a youngish retired officer with money, no knowledge and determination. This combination's usually at least fatal, but Jonas has survived in the business simply by refusing to give up. From an initial dislike his fellow dealers, me included, switched to neutrality and finally with reluctance to a sort of grudging acceptance. He's silver and pre-Victorian book bindings with occasional manuscripts thrown in for luck. Lily was there but left the bidding when I started up. Patrick looked peevish when she stalled - there'd be trouble over her tea and crumpets when he got her home. Four others showed early and chucked up. That left me, Jonas, a Brummie and Beck. I bid by nodding. Some people bid by waving programmes or raising eyebrows. Remember there's no need to wave and tell everybody who's bidding. Don't be afraid your bid will be missed. A creased forehead is like a flag day to an auctioneer. He gets a percentage.

  On we went, me sweating as always. I was beaten when Beck upped. Jonas must have sensed something wasn't quite right because he hung on only briefly, then folded. I saw that the Brummie bidder was the one who'd crossed to look at the kitchen cabinet.

  He finally stopped when Beck showed the first sign of wavering, clever lad. The jade was knocked down to Beck.

  Beck glanced triumphantly in my direction through the throng. I glared back. He would brag all year how he picked up this rare ancient Chinese jade coin in the face of organized local opposition.

  'He had us, Lovejoy,' Jonas said, pushing past at the break. I followed him muttering to the tea bar.

  'Hard luck, Lovejoy,' from Jimmo. 'Hell of a price.'

  'Outsider!' I heard Patrick snapping at Beck.

  'Things are getting worse every day,' I agreed.

  Janie had our teas waiting in the brawl. We had to fight our way into a corner to breathe. Tinker kept Janie a part of a bench. I kissed her.

  'Watch out, Lovejoy,' she said, smiling brightly to show eagle-eyed watchers we were only good friends. 'One of my neighbours is here.' She flashed a brilliant grimace towards a vigilant fat lady steaming past. 'I'm sorry, love,' she added, moving primly away from my hand which had accidentally alighted on her knee.

  'What about?'

  'The old jade.' She reproved me under her breath, 'I'd have given you some money.

  Nobody need have noticed.'

  'Why?'

  'Then you could have got the jade instead.'

  'Oh. Thanks, love,' I said bravely. 'You get these disappointments.'

  She eyed me shrewdly. 'Didn't you want it, Lovejoy?'

  'Of course I did,' I lied evenly. 'I always want ancient Chinese jade, don't I?'

  She kept her eyes on me. 'Then why are you so pleased, Lovejoy?'

  'Oh, just life in general.'

  'Was there something wrong with it?'

  'Certainly not!' I said indignantly.

  I ought to know. It had taken me nine weeks to make, nine weeks of pure downright slavery over my old pedalled spindle. It was absolutely perfect. Authentic in every detail, except for the small point that it was a forgery.

  Now calm down, gentle reader. Can I be held responsible if some goon buys a piece of jade - it really was jade, which is mined nowadays in Burma, New Zealand and Guatemala -without examining it? And if you're still wondering why I bid for a forgery I'd made and put up for auction myself, take my tip: please feel free to read on, but don't ever go into the antiques game. My name and address I'd scratched in minute letters around the margins of the inside hole, date included. If customers don't look with a handlens, it's just tough luck, and the more fools they. I couldn't exactly put my name in neon lights on a thing the size of a dollar, could I? It would spoil the effect.

  'Lovejoy.' She had that odd look.

  'I didn't touch your knee,' I said indignantly.

  'What are you up to?'

  I was narked with Janie. Right in the middle of a chattering mob of customers in an ordinary small-town auction she starts suspecting me of being up to some trickery.

  Women can be very suspicious of fundamentally good honest motives. It's not very nice. I really do believe they have rather sinister minds. Where there's no reason to be suspicious they suddenly assume you can't be trusted. I find it very unsettling. They're the ones who're always on about trust, then they go and show they've got none themselves. It's basically a sign of poor character.

  At Lot Two-Eighty I crossed to Tinker. The crowd had thinned. In the smoke the substitute auctioneer, a hoary old veteran who wasn't letting us get away with anything, droned cynically on. We had space to pretend interest.

  Tinker made a great show of pulling out the drawer and complaining about the uselessness of the buy I'd made. The auctioneer called for quiet, please, during the bidding. I slipped the mote spoon into my pocket and relaxed.

  'Put the rest back in next week's auction, Lovejoy?' Tinker asked. This is all quite legal.

  'Yes.' I made sure we weren't overheard. 'Grumble a lot while you do.'

  I’ll try.'

  I had to stop myself from a wide grin at Tinker's crack. Barkers can out-grumble the most miserable farmer.

  Janie went to have her hair done. We eventually met at a coffee garden near the river walk, a short distance away. I'd tried to get her to come to Woody's but she wouldn't. I said I could return her the money she'd lent me. She said don't be silly.

  We talked on the way back to Gimbert's, where the auction was practically over. I caught sight of Beck and said so-long to Janie. They were in the auction yard among starting cars and people hauling various lots out of the covered part. A woman was asking how to get an enormous cupboard home. Time to haul in the net.

  'Look, Beck,' I said. He stopped bragging to his mates. 'About that jade.'

  'Want it, Lovejoy? It's for sale.' There was a roar of laughter, my expense.

  'I've a couple of things you might swap.'

  'Good stuff?'

  'Two are.'

  'What kind of stuff?'

  'Good stuff,' I said cagily.

  'Where?'

  'My place.'

  He thought a moment. Finally he trod his cigarette.

  'I'll come.'

  I got a taxi. In the ride out to the village he showed me the jade.

  'Lovely piece of work, eh?'

  I could hardly disagree. At the cottage he insisted the taxi waited.

  I had the pieces distributed around the living-room. It wouldn't do to show him the workshop.

  'This glass jug,' I told him. He reached out for it. 'I've this bowl as well.'

  'Both yours?' he asked warily. I nodded. 'Honestly? Roman or Egyptian?'

  His eyes were everywhere while I busied myself getting a glass of beer. I had to steady my hands, back turned towards him, while I poured in case the glass clinked and gave away my anxiety. It's a right bloody game this. When I gave him the drink I could see he'd noticed my tiler, hung prettily on the wall. And my non-musical instrument casually placed over the fireplace.

  'You've one or two things here, Lovejoy,' he said.

  'I don't want to sell.'

  'No?' He looked shrewdly about. 'This place looks pretty bare. And where's your car?

  You used to have one.'

  'Well, I had to sell it.'

  'I see.' He sat examining the glass bowl and jug I'd made. 'Good Roman,' he pronounced. I said nothing. 'Cash adjustment, Lovejoy?'

  'No,' I said. 'One for one.'

  'No deal.'

  'Well, then,' I hesitated. 'I'm not really in the jade field any more, but…'

  'No?' He actually laughed. 'Then what are we arguing about?'

  We began dealing. It's done by mental palpation, not actual utterances. You talk all round the subject, how difficult things are, what clients want nowadays, how troublesome barkers are. We ended with Beck accepting the glass bowl and the jug, plus the painting, in exchange for the jade coin. He took the instrument as well and paid a few notes to make up the difference.

  He carried his trophies into the waiting taxi.

  'Here, Lovejoy,' he said from the window as the car turned in the lane.

  'Yes?'

  'I don't see why I should pay the driver.'

  I paid up with ill grace and watched the taxi dwindle uphill towards the chapel. He'd paid anyway. He'd be jubilant, until he found out.

  Still, I'd not been untruthful. 'That Palmer looks wrong to me, somehow,' I'd said. And I'd told him of the instrument, 'I'm not sure what you'd call it.'

  I stood in the garden tying my jade on to a string to wear round my neck under my shirt. Contact with living human skin really does restore life and glow to jade. Never leave jade untouched if you can help it. It's the only antique of •which this can be said.

  Jade is the exception which proves my no-touch rule. Even the funeral pieces from ancient China recover their life and lustre by being fondled. Love, folks, as I said, is making it. Jade tells you that.

  I totted up. I'd sell the mote spoon to Helen. That would pay Janie back and, with what I'd got extra from Beck just now, give me the fare to the Isle of Man. As for the rest, I'd just swapped one set of forgeries for another. Right?

  Yes, right. But there was a balance, the money Beck had just given for the jade at Gimbert's. He had successfully bid for it against fierce opposition. I was proud of him.

  I'd promised to ring Janie and say what I'd decided to do, but then I thought it over.

  It'd be better just me against Edward Rink.

  I went in to pack.

  Early morning and I was on the train to Liverpool.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Contents - Prev/Next

  THE TRAIN'S the easy bit.

  I like the sea. It's natural, somehow never fraudulent. From the ferry wharf I gazed down the Mersey out to sea.

  If Bexon was right, Suetonius had probably sailed from Chester. The more I thought about it the more it fitted. The Roman Second Legion had been stationed in Chester when Boadicea vented her spleen. That's known nearly for absolute certain. The wily Roman had left his harbour base firmly held in strength, the most orthodox of all military moves. He'd hardly have needed it protected this way if he'd sailed from Wales because the powerful Queen Cartimandua, as nasty a piece of work as ever trod land, was too busy ravishing successions of stalwart standard-bearers in Manchester to notice if the political weather outside changed much from day to day.

  The ferry was two-thirds full with passengers. I must have expected a few logs loosely lashed together because I gaped at this huge ocean-going boat. It had a funnel and round windows and everything. Cars were streaming aboard, even lorries.

  You can get a meal or snacks and there's a bar. The general impression's a bit grubby but a few hours is not for ever. I like wandering about on ships. It being latish September holidaymakers weren't too plentiful, only a few clusters of diehards catching the cheaper rates of early autumn. We were a mixed bunch. There were the usual tribes of businessmen discussing screws and valves over pale ales, hysterical crises over lost infants finally miraculously found again where they'd been left in the first place, and couples snogging uninterruptedly on the side decks. They're my favourite. If Janie had been with me she'd have said not to look at them, then looked herself when we'd gone past. Women do that.

  Liverpool began to slide away. I looked everywhere on the ferry for my watcher. Twice I went round the lower decks, strolling among the cars and pretending boredom. No sign. He wasn't on board. I must admit I was rather put out. You eventually feel quite proud, being shadowed. After all, not everybody gets trailed, if that's the right word.

  Maybe he'd been laid off. I already knew that good old Edward was of an economic turn of mind. That meant Rink would be flying first class, of course. I just hoped he'd have sense enough to leave Nichole behind. If there was going to be any rough stuff I didn't want her involved.

  Seagulls cawed and squawked for nothing. They went and sat floating in our wake a lot. Somebody once told me they can actually drink seawater. They have this gland for handling the sodium or something. We had over a hundred following us out of the Mersey estuary into the open sea. You'd think they'd get tired because they've only got to find their way home again.

  Ships are noisy, not just the people but the engines, the sea, the floor, the walls as well. Even the funnels make a racket. Somebody always seems to be ringing bells in the downstairs rooms. I went up into the air though the wind was cutting. A sheepdog came and sat near me by the railings.

  'Are you lost?' I asked it. It smiled like they do and edged closer to lean on my leg. We looked at the sea rushing past below us. 'If you're lost, mate, there's not much hope for the rest of us, is there?'

  It said nothing back. I bent down and peered. It had nodded off, probably fed up. I knew how it felt. Me without antiques, the dog without a single sheep. I pulled it away from the railings for safety and hauled it next to me on a wooden seat. When you lift dogs up they seem to have so many ribs.

  'Some bloody watchdog you are,' I told it. 'What if we were sheep?'

  I nodded off too. It's the sea air.

  Ships docking unsettle me. I'm not scared but they seem to head towards the walls so fast. Then the whole thing shakes for all it's worth and stops. Some men threw ropes from our front end. Two chaps on land pulled them round a big iron peg set in the stone road, a queer business. Some others did the same at the back end. We all marched up a flat ladder thing and crocodiled up the stone steps to the town of Douglas,' Isle of Man.

  'Do you all live on that thing?' I asked the uniformed chap who was seeing us off.

  He seemed surprised. 'Where else?' he said.

  It's a rum world.

  I humped my case along a glass cloister affair and crossed over to the taxis. I spent a few minutes describing Bexon's abode, carefully using the same descriptive terms in Bexon's diary. One taxi-driver nodded finally and took my case.

  'Only one place that can be,' he announced. 'Groundle Glen.' I was pleased. Bexon had used that name, though somewhat ambiguously.

  The main Douglas beach is rimmed by a wide promenade and a curved road. Houses, shops and hotels gathered parallel for a dense mile or so. Then the hillside begins, suddenly rising to high green fells.

  'What's a railway line on the main road for?' I asked him as the north road started to lift out of Douglas town. It had been on my mind.

  'For that.' He was laughing.

  A tiny train, engine and all, was chugging uphill on our left, beside us on the road. One carriage carried the sign Groundle Glen.

  Ask a silly question.

  About a mile out the road ran above a small bay cleft in the rock. A cluster of newly built bungalows shone in the late sun. Ships hung about on the sea.

  'This is it.'

  We turned right down a sharp incline towards the sea. There were maybe thirty or forty dwellings ribbed on the hillside, mainly greys and browns. New flower-beds surmounted bank walls by the winding road.

  'Do they have an office?'

  'It's only one of the bungalows. A lassie sees to you, Betty Springer.'

  The taxi-driver carried my suitcase to my door. I was becoming edgy with all this courtesy. He praised the view and I tried to do the same, but all you could see was the green hillside and woods on the opposite side of the valley and the blue sea rustling the shingle below. A stream in its autumn spate ran below. There was a bridge leading to the trees.

  'Don't you like the view?' my driver asked happily as I paid him off. I strained to see the town we'd left down by the harbour but couldn't. It was hidden by the projecting hillside. Bloody countryside everywhere again.

  'Lovely,' I said.

  The girl came to see I got the gas working all right as I explored the bungalow.

  'The end bungalow's a shop too,' she told me. 'Papers and groceries. Nothing out of the ordinary, but useful.'

  'Great.'

  'Are you a friend of the other gentleman?' she asked merrily, putting on the kettle. She showed me how to drop the ironing-board, clearly a born optimist.