He was dancing, singing, waving, in complete disregard of the efforts of musicians in the wings. The audience was howling, laughing. Some two hundred, cheering him on.

  Sadder still, I knew they were only there because they'd been paid. Not even extras got from some film company register, just anybody who wanted a free beer. Mel was seated by the door, glowering. I didn't blame him.

  As Sandy did an inept vah-vah-vah-voom, the crowd helpfully calling the drumbeats, Mel said sourly, 'You were supposed to come yesterday, Lovejoy. Money works when all else fails, it seems.'

  'I find that.'

  In the screaming crowd, I saw Olive Makins, trying to look beside herself with glee.

  There was a hullabaloo when Sandy's attire lit up with multicoloured lights. The musicians despairingly tried to keep pace. He was in raptures.

  'Has she come, then?' I asked Mel quietly.

  'Who?' He gazed at me blankly, then his brow cleared. 'No. Not today.'

  Odd, that. If Susanne Eggers wasn't financing the entire scam, then who was? The Yank consul surely couldn't, wouldn't, risk such an obvious scandal. I couldn't think of anybody else. The Countess? I didn't know anybody else so heavy. Except Mel had been momentarily puzzled when I'd assumed it was a bird, not a bloke.

  'What's this show in aid of, Mel?'

  'Sandy wants to be a chat cat. Y'know? The TV Antiques Trailshow. This will impress TV

  producers. He'd give his all for it. Has, in fact.'

  Yet more bitterness. They keep leaving each other. Last time, Mel fled to Sark, the little Channel Isle, but returned in a sulk when Sandy threatened to try to buy the island from the Dame of Sark herself. They are the shrewdest, sharpest antiques dealers in the known world. Except for Big John, I suddenly remembered with a snap of my fingers.

  Big John is an Ulsterman. The saying is Ulster for soldiers, and John epitomizes it.

  Enough nous to start a war and win. I did him a couple of favours time since, but you can't always count on his memory. He believes he's hard done by if something happens and he doesn't get a percentage. Despite this I like him, though he puts the fear of God in me. He had the clout to start a scam this size.

  'Are they here?' I asked, meaning TV producers.

  Mel definitely paled. 'Leave it out, Lovejoy.'

  For the first time since I'd known him his Cockney accent came through. I was surprised. He always cracked on he was Welsh.

  The audience was what folk these days call camp. Pink garb, feathers, T-shirted, many crew cuts, alchemic gothic studs and emblems. They didn't look the kind to tempt Antiques Trailshow producers. I said I'd wait outside as Sandy started a striptease to the audience's howls. As I turned I saw somebody else also singularly out of place. He caught my eye and glanced away, reddening.

  Timothy Giverill and his wife are your dyed-in-the-wool sober suits. Sunday church, councillors both. To cap it all, Timothy is in insurance. He has the insurance shop next to Bea Willing's Tea Shoppe on North Hill, facing that Antiques Antics that Peter Myer ran for Sandy. The shop little Polly told me the plod had taken over for surveillance. A clue?

  The Giverills too were also ectopic, and stood out like sun in a pit.

  Outside, two drivers chatted to a couple of TV technicians. Don't know why, but TV

  units always bring supernumaries. I have a theory that they need numbers for supportive psychotherapy, seeing they've no real job. The more turn up, the more convincing the charade.

  'Wotcher,' I said idly. 'A right do in there, eh?'

  'That poof goes on, dunnee?' one said. He smoked, his head clamped between earphones, wires trailing.

  'You on that Antiques Trailshow, then?' I asked, gormless. 'He's going to present it, they say.'

  One barked a laugh, lit a new fag from old. 'Him? Never. Camp's okay, but idiocy's not.'

  They cackled. I drifted, and saw Timothy Giverill following me.

  'Lovejoy?' I'd never seen anybody so worried. 'I'm glad to see you here for the meeting.

  I don't mind telling you, I'm at my wit's end.' He gazed at me with bottled eyes, his Clarke Gable tash quivering. 'Who'd have thought my world would crash this way?

  Insurance seemed so safe. And where will this Sotheby-Christie business end?'

  'Who knows, Timothy?' Not me, that's for certain. What meeting?

  He looked helpless. 'Four others are coming from the Midlands.'

  'Well, as long as something happens.' What the hell were we on about?

  He smiled tentatively. 'With you here we've a chance, especially with antiques.'

  Me the arbiter of fair play? 'Always look on the bright side, Timothy.'

  I felt sickened the way his expression cleared. 'Thank you, Lovejoy. Florence and I always liked you, despite your insurance trick on my company.'

  'Here,' I said, narked. 'That wasn't my fault.'

  'Say no more,' he said, smiling, and went back inside to Sandy's riot.

  The insurance trick was one of my lucky moments. I'd found an old lady weeping at the Norwich bus stop. She'd had her bag stolen, containing hairdressing implements with which she eked out her pension undetected by marauding taxmen. She'd hoped to get her old husband a seventieth birthday present, and look what had happened.

  'Two lads simply took it off me,' she'd sobbed.

  'Good heavens,' I said. 'Leave it to me.'

  Using the emergency number, I phoned East Anglia's finest, who told me to sod off – it was our Eastern Hundreds Crime Squad's snooker finals, when crime doesn't get a look in. So I phoned Bright Hawk Star Insurance from a phone box.

  To Timothy – our first encounter – I explained. 'Two robbers knocked on her door and simply grabbed the brooch.'

  I swore it was a genuine Edwardian bow-and-swag design (meaning all fragile loops and things) with lots of miniature rose-cut diamonds.

  'Relatively cheap, really. It could have been frightfully valuable.' I kept cool. 'Typical early twentieth century. Incidentally,' and I lowered my voice, 'I happen to know she hasn't got long to live.'

  To help, I described the imaginary brooch. Tip: Edwardian jewellery always looks slender, with lacy or bow-and-swag shape. Jewellers back then loved lots of small gemstones instead of one great rock. Remember that the style isn't the bonny later diamond cut. 'I recall it particularly because it was my great granny's.'

  'No,' the old lady put in helpfully. 'It was my father's side ...' I hissed to silence the old crab.

  Timothy started his insurer's resistance. I slipped in the casual threat that I was a by-liner for The Times. Mr Giverill promised a settlement cheque on receipt of a statement.

  I posted one off. The following month, learning who I was, he tried to get me arrested.

  I eeled out by threats of wrong publicity. Luckily, his Florence thought what I'd done was sweet. The old lady's still doing her hairdressing. That was how I encountered the Giverills.

  You get the point? My rescue of the old lady was fair. Timothy Giverill saw it as doing down Ordered Society, though much later he asked for advice about an antique swing-topped table Florence wanted to sell.

  What were they doing here, fish out of water? I wandered among the cars and motorbikes as Sandy's performance reached a tuneless crescendo. Lot of costly motors.

  Plush leather, wooden dashboards, a couple with chauffeurs who frostily wound the windows up when I approached. No limos of the sort I'd seen at the Martello tower, and none with diplomatic plates.

  Funny expression Timothy had used. What was it, Who'd have thought my world would crash this way? There was another: the Christie-Sotheby business. Had he really said that? Timothy had never done anything else except insurance, and they're all zombified.

  You never meet a happy one, like farmers. And his gripe, Insurance seemed so safe.

  They make money out of everything, don't they?

  'Time they ended, eh?' I said to one limo driver.

  'Two more hours. It'll be sodding dark.'

  He spoke in disgust. I thought, hell fire. I had to meet Quaker's Maud for a genteel snog, perhaps, or a heartrending tears-and-jam butty out in the sticks. Holy people, Henrietta for instance, think my attitude's reprehensible. But holiness doesn't know that life is basically any port in a storm, and being without a woman is a truly terrible storm.

  What can you do? I'd been deprived since Olive's feats in her motor. I thought, aha.

  A quick search of the adjacent tennis courts and I found a frayed ball in the undergrowth. I borrowed a penknife from a driver, and slit the ball into hemispheres.

  'My girlfriend's car,' I explained to his knowing grin.

  Olive Makin's motor I knew well. I shoved the half ball flat over the lock, driver's side, and let it resume its shape. Couple of goes, the lock sprung. I got in and lay down to kip on the rear seat. I thought of switching the radio on but that would have meant scraping the wires. I wanted at least one week without a split nail.

  Sleep came easily.

  21

  EVERYBODY WAKES DIFFERENTLY, don't they.

  There was somebody talking, somebody whose scent was familiar answering back. Was it a row? I was back hearing my parents rowing. I was five, and she was going to be absent when my brother and I returned from school that night, though I didn't yet know it. That wasn't right, though, because she wasn't screaming hate. And the man wasn't Dad, who never raised his voice but just took what was coming.

  When dreams go wrong, slip back into the doze and maybe when you start again things will all come right. It's what I used to do when I was little, so I tried.

  Male said in tones of iron, 'You've got any alternative, Olive dear?'

  'No, Mel.'

  'Then what are you saying? That you've discovered oil under your pseudo-Mediterranean patio? Or a hundred new Names clamouring to come aboard?'

  Silence, then sounds of a backhander. Olive yelped. A fleck of spittle fell cold on my closed eyelid. The motor rocked. Mel and Olive in the motor with me, but doing more than bickering. It had all the sounds of a lover's tiff.

  That couldn't be right, my sluggish brain went, because Mel and Sandy are ... And Olive and me had been ... Suddenly I didn't want to hear this. I wanted sleep back.

  'You'll be witness, dear.' Mel at his most vicious. 'They'll start home the minute Sandy waves them off, capeesh?'

  Silence. A sudden bounce in the motor's suspension, and Olive whimpered. Mel swung at her, three savage slaps, his voice shaking with rage.

  'You ... shall... do ... it.'

  Olive wept and cringed. My eyes opened. Mel was the beater in the passenger seat, Olive the beatee. I'd never heard him speak with such venom. The jokey waspishness of the avowed person of his proclivities, the barbed wit that amuses women so and always sounds audience-aware, made for titters. But this? Savagery.

  Outside was dark, except for slashes of yellow glim from the village hall. I didn't want to be discovered.

  'Promise, dear.' That dear was the frightener. As bad as Big John's quiet voice.

  'Yes.' Her whisper didn't please him because he sighed.

  'I can't hear it, Olive, dear.'

  'Yes, Mel. I'll do it.' She sounded so weary. 'Look. If—'

  'No, Olive. There's not a single if left. Not since Lovejoy's by-blow scuppered us all.

  Understand?'

  I thought, Mel means Mortimer. I almost got up and clobbered him but wanted more.

  'We're all in it. You too.'

  He opened the passenger's door and to my horror the interior light came on. I froze, wishing I'd had the sense to cover myself with a blanket. Except Olive never does carry a blanket in her motor, the stupid cow. See the trouble you get into, depending on women?

  'Let the Giverills drive out of the car park, then follow.'

  'What do I say when somebody asks me what I saw?' Olive sniffed.

  'Use your head, you stupid mare.'

  He slammed the door, almost perforating my eardrums. The light dowsed. I thought, God Almighty, I'd never heard Mel speak like a gangster before. A betrayed lover, sure, when Sandy was doing what Sandy gleefully calls pub rubber, or taunting Mel across crowded auction rooms when they'd disagreed on some colour scheme. We all go embarrassed and look at the floor. Mel gets bitter and sulks for days. Sometimes he storms out, even drives off to his cousin's shack near Cherbourg, yet always returns.

  The most remarkable thing was, he threatened Olive Makins! Olive, doyenne of affairs of the heart and wallet, the one woman who you'd put your money on to survive.

  Queen of cut-throat competition, she ran the local auctioneers' society, and was a hard-dealing contract agent for most. I'd heard Gimbert himself call her Mother Shark. Hard as nails, I'd seen her sack two women for simply getting tired in the Mile End central office. And Olive was a serious investor in trust funds, where you pay in monthly and bankers pretend they've made you a fortune that's always smaller than they promised.

  I've seen her throw ledgers in a high street bank.

  That was the lady currently weeping at the wheel while I hid. If I sat up, might I try pretending I'd just woken up? I'd never get away with it. Maybe I could eel out, then stroll up and beg a lift to town? Except the light would come on.

  No. Stay put. Maybe she would go to the loo? Or go and find Sandy, try to argue him out of whatever course of action he was bent on?

  I heard Sandy call, 'Byyyeee peoples! Missing you alreadeee!'

  Not far away an engine fired, small motor by the sound of it. It slowly rose in pitch. I heard the motor falter as it took to the highway. Hardly Fangio driving, more your staid middle-of-the-road elderly bloke who'd wax the bonnet to a gleam every Sunday after church ... A horrible thought took hold and I almost sat up, but Olive turned her ignition and moved off, tyres crunching. As the car tilted and picked up speed, I heard Sandy give a shrill scream of laughter.

  Well, in for a penny. At least I'd find out what promise Olive had made and who else was involved.

  The motor hummed, trying to lull me to sleep. I made myself stay awake. Easy, because the mention of Mortimer – it was Mortimer he'd meant, wasn't it? – had scared me badly. I felt clammy, this time not because of antiques. Maybe Olive secretly realized I was in her car and, sly cow, was chortling away, bent on exposing me at some horrible moment.

  Except she had other things on her mind. She started crying again as she turned onto the main arterial road, sniffing and coughing. I heard her handbag click open. Getting a hanky? The last time she'd made that same click, I thought guiltily, was to find something else in her handbag when we were making smiles. I began to hear lorries and heavy wagons overtaking. Olive was not driving fast, so the car she was presumably following was trundling along the same.

  Once or twice I heard an HGV irritably sound its horn as it thundered by, its airwave shoving Olive's light car slightly. She was driving slower than usual, following a slow motor. I wanted to risk a quick glance, but Olive might see my head in her driving mirror.

  We'd been going fifteen minutes, I thought, when she spoke quietly.

  'I see.'

  She slowed. No sudden braking, just let the car lose impetus. I felt her motor nudged aside as something larger and heavier created an overtaking wash of air. A light swamped the car. The larger vehicle swished past.

  'Oh, oh,' Olive moaned, and braked. A grinding sound filled the night.

  There's nothing worse than the sudden squeal of car tyres. It always makes me tense up. Stupid. A scream of twisting metal took maybe a second, perhaps two. A fantastic screeching noise, endlessly drawn out, horns going, lights and shadows swirling in the car's interior – I could only really see the ceiling material from my position on the back seat. I was thrown forward.

  Olive cried out, 'No, no, no . . .'

  She braked a second time, harder, her tyres making a long sound as if they were tearing the ground. My back almost broke as something slammed into Olive's rear bumper. My head jerked, and I thought, Christ, I'm going to get killed, we've had it. We jerked forward, abruptly seemed to crunch against something massively inert, and spun round, halting almost nose down. Her headlights dowsed. People started shouting, car horns going everywhere. Her engine raced futilely. Olive was keening, 'No, no, no.'

  For a long time I stayed put. I might have broken bones, my neck fractured at some vital spot. What if the car doors locked by some slick anti-theft mechanism so I couldn't get out? I heard somebody shout, 'There's somebody down there!' And another man call, 'I'll go down. Looks like a woman.'

  'Is there anybody else?' a man yelled.

  'Never mind that,' a bloke boomed in a deep bass. 'Give us a lift here.'

  A cry for ambulances rose. Horns blared in a cacophony. The sound of engines was deafening. I worked out that Olive's car must be in a ditch beside the trunk road.

  Olive, still whimpering, opened her door and climbed out. I heard her shoes slither on the sloping bank. Bracken crackled as she blundered. I felt myself for injuries. I should have helped her, but who was in a worse state, her or me? Survival of the fittest. She had a job to do. Now that events of the night had dictated their own grim logic, I guessed that Mel had simply instructed her to be a biased witness to a rigged accident.

  It had all the hallmarks. I felt sick.

  The door on which my head rested was down. Olive had climbed to get out. Therefore I had to go upwards. I had a sudden terror of explosion. I could smell petrol, and without worrying about broken bones I frantically scrabbled round, never mind who saw me, reeled the window down and heaved myself through into undergrowth.

  Hawthorn bushes and sloes always go for my eyes. I was in a right state by the time I reached the road.

  An ambulance was slowly trying to get through the array of wagons, pantechnicons, cars and vans crammed along the carriageway. An AA man's van was in the thick of it, having somehow come via the ditch. He was trying to get the traffic moving, signalling with lights, his reflective yellow jacket gleaming. Men were struggling with two motors that were concertinaed against trees. I couldn't see Olive. People were stooping over forms lying on the ground. I couldn't see, dazzled by the kaleidoscopic lights and the flashing ambers of security vehicles pressing in.