'That filthy place gives me fleas, Lovejoy.'

  It gives me a living. Or rather,' I added bitterly, 'it should do.'

  'Let me, Lovejoy.' A pause while hedges and fields swished by. 'Give you a living,' she added.

  I turned to watch her drive. The Lagonda didn't even purr. Janie's beautiful, twenty-six, wealthy in her own right. Her husband's wealthy too. He often goes abroad to mend companies sick of the palsy. Crackpot. They have a mansion in Little Hawkham, the next village to the one I'd just been working. Great Hawkham has two houses more, hence the adjective.

  'I'm good value,' she said, smiling. 'Worth a quid or two. Good legs. Teeth my own.

  Socially trained, convent-educated. I could buy an antiques auction firm for you to play with. Think, Lovejoy. And take your hand off my knee when I'm driving.'

  'And your husband?'

  'Who?' She gave me a 1920 stare, trying to make me laugh. They only do that when they're serious. 'Spell it.'

  'Look, love,' I said wearily. 'Am I loyal?' You can't muck about. You have to tell them outright.

  'No.'

  'Kind?'

  'Never.'

  'Considerate?'

  'Hopeless.'

  I went down the list of virtues getting a denial every time.

  'Then what's the use?'

  'You're worth it, Lovejoy,' she said after a think. 'You understand what love is. If only you weren't an escapist.'

  'Flight has a long tradition of success,' I got back.

  She wouldn't let go, though. 'Besides,' she said, 'something's always happening around you.'

  'I wish it bloody well was,' I groused.

  Now I wish I hadn't said that. Not that I'm superstitious, but you can't be sure, can you?

  CHAPTER III

  Contents - Prev/Next

  JANIE DROPPED ME at the corner post office among prams and shoppers. I told her twenty minutes. Woody's Bar tries to hide itself in an alley between a pub and a jeweller's but gives itself away by gushing out steamy blue fumes swamping the pavement. Wise pedestrians cross over. The alley's partly covered, and is known as the Arcade to locals. It looks like a beginner's cardboard cut-out Camelot joined together wrong. Bloody town council planners. The beauty is that it's crammed with antique dealers' shops.

  I pushed into Woody's Bar and peered through the opaque air. There he was. Tinker Dill, my barker, among the crammed tables. He was lashing into one of Woody's specials and hastily trying to sober up before the pubs got under way again. It's not a pretty sight. A dozen other dealers were about, wolfing mounds of chips, sausages and mashed triffid greasily concealed under slithering mounds of ketchup. I tell you this trade needs nerve.

  'Tea, Woody,' I called into the blue haze towards the back. He'd be there, smoking ash into some poor soul's charring haddock.

  'Hello, Lovejoy,' a few voices called. I waved, a picture of the successful antique dealer.

  Cheerful adversity is vaguely entertaining, but even friends steer clear of doom.

  I sat and watched Tinker Dill eat. All this yap about civilization really is utter cock.

  Civilization isn't art, religion and all that. It's two things: paving and cutlery. Without paving everything's jungle. Without cutlery eating's a clumsy dissection which ends by stuffing pieces of dead animals and plants between your jaws. Tinker does it without a net.

  'Tinker.'

  No reply.

  'Tinker,' I tried again, louder. Not a sign. 'Money,' I said softly. The place stilled with utter reverence. I watched Tinker begin to respond to therapy.

  I've known him years but it's still gruesome. Bloodshot eyes swivelled as if searching for the next planet. Stubble, corrugated black teeth, skeletal limbs shuffled into human shape. He's thin as a lath. His lazaroid knuckles are always concealed under ketchup-stained woollen mittens, his frame lost somewhere in an overcoat straight from the Crimea. At the magic word even Woody's clattering pans had silenced. Tinker's brain fidgeted painfully into action. His eyes focused, two raw balls wobbling in gin-soaked aspic. He saw me.

  'Hello, Lovejoy.'

  'Did you pin the scrambler?' I asked.

  'Yeh.' He was coming round.

  'Settle later, okay?'

  'Yeh.' (Translation: Tinker Dill reports he has successfully found a Georgian hurdy-gurdy for me, complete with animated French figurines. He would get it, and I'd pay him enough commission to get sloshed out of his mind again. To continue:)

  'Great,' I praised.

  Tinker crumpled a grin. The tension all about eased and noise began again. Woody's giant waitress Lisa loomed in the fog with my tea like the Bismark through its last smokescreen.

  'How's Lovejoy?' She ruffled my thatch.

  'Poor. Lonely.' Disbelieving snickers rose from nearby tables. 'No money, but good company.' She surged away, smiling.

  'You're always after crumpet, Lovejoy,' Tinker criticized piously. He goes to chapel, but I hear the wine's free.

  I waited while he shovelled his huge meal away like a smelter frantically raising steam.

  All around muttered deals were being made, messages muttered through mouthfuls of grease and tea just too weak to plough. The door tinkled. A tourist peered briefly in and reeled away at the sight of huddled, feeding, smoking, belching humanity still stinking of last night's booze.

  To me Woody's permanent fry-up is like a church - holy, something to venerate.

  Blasphemy? Come down one day and see for yourself. There'll be a Woody's in your town, full of antique collectors and dealers. If you stick it for more than two days you'll be hooked for life on antiques because there's no mistaking that sense of religious devotion. Antiques are everything, even the reason for living. Nothing else exists. It's the feeling that makes crusades. I know because I have it, have for years. Dealers are dealers down to the marrow and out to the skin again, no variation or treachery. And more money passes across Woody's unwashed grease-smeared tables in one week than our town councillors fiddle in a whole year, and that's enough to refloat the franc.

  Woody's is beautiful.

  'Better, Tinker?'

  'Yeh.' Tinker finished elegantly as ever, settling like a tattered combine harvester coming to rest. He wiped his mouth on a stained mitten and emitted three rhythmic belches. I got Lisa to bring him a pint of tea. He lit a cigarette, in paradise. Hangover gone, smoking, tea in hand, having survived Woody's breakfast, the auction coming up tomorrow, pulling oft a find and almost sober enough to start getting stoned again. To business.

  'Bexon,' I began. 'Old bloke, died. Some stuff got into Gimbert's auction last week.'

  'What was it?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Hang on.'

  He slurped from his cup to fuel up for cerebral activity. His eyes hazed. I swear his brain becomes audible. He took a deep drag of carcinogens. Blast off.

  'Bexon. An old geezer? Great Hawkham?' he remembered finally. I nodded. 'Only rubbish.'

  'No paintings?'

  'None. Rough old furniture, ordinary modern junk. Couple of carpets.'

  'Find out about Bexon, Tinker.' My heart was in my boots.

  'Is it urgent, Lovejoy?'

  'You just don't know.' I gave him one of my stares and he nodded. It's his job to be concerned about whatever I'm concerned about. It's more than his job - it's his life.

  Barkers are scouts for antique dealers, the foragers, the pilot fishes questing ahead of the predatory shark… er, sorry, that last analogy's unfortunate. Skirmishers, perhaps.

  'And try for an antique embroidery frame, Tinker.' A few quid from Lennie wouldn't come amiss.

  'Very hard, Lovejoy.'

  'Nothing from the robbery up for sale?' I asked helplessly, really scraping the barrel.

  Yobbos had hit our Castle museum a couple of weeks before, nicked some ancient British-Roman gold coins and used most of them in slot machines for cigarettes. This is akin to using a Kakeimon bowl for afters or clicking a La Chaumette flintlock from curiosity. The intellects our local lads have. Hopeless. If you stood them outside St.

  Paul's Cathedral they'd see nothing but a big stone bubble. I'm not being cruel. Most can't tell a gold-mounted glass Vachette snuffbox from a box of aspirins. I mean it. The only gold-and-glass snuffbox ever discovered in our town made by that brilliant Napoleonic goldsmith was being used for aspirins at some old dear's bedside. Two years ago a marine barometer made with delicacy and love by Andre-Charles Boule of Louis XIV fame was cheerfully nailed in place to span a gap in a shelf in a local farm cottage.

  You just have no idea. East Anglia drives you mad sometimes. It's paradise to a good, honest dealer like me, but I thank heavens da Vinci wasn't local. His silly old scribbles would have been used for wallpaper in a flash.

  'No.'

  'Any news of the coins?' He shook his head.

  About three of the tiny - but oh, so precious - gold coins were still missing, according to the papers. Of course, I was only interested because I wanted to see them returned to their rightful community ownership in the museum for future generations to enjoy.

  Nothing was further from my mind than hoping they'd turn up by chance so a poor vigilant dealer like me could snaffle them and gloat over those delicious precious ancient gold discs positively glinting with… er, sorry. I get carried away.

  'Hang on, Lovejoy.'

  I paused in the act of rising to go. Tinker was quite literally steaming. The pong was indescribable, stale beer and no washing, but he's the best barker in the business. I respect his legwork if nothing else. And he stays loyal, even with things this bad. I let him fester a moment more, looking about.

  Helen was in, a surprise. She should have been viewing for tomorrow's auction this late in the day. One of our careful dealers, Helen is, tall, reserved, hooked on fairings, oriental art and African ethnology. I'd been a friend of Helen's when she arrived four years before, without ever having felt close to her - mentally, that is. Self-made and self preserved. She usually eats yoghurts and crusts in her sterile home near our ruined abbey, St John's. Odd to see her in Woody's grime.

  'Slumming?' I called over cheerily to pass the time. She turned cool blue eyes on me, breathing cigarette smoke with effect like they can.

  'Yes,' she said evenly and went back to stirring coffee amid a chorus of chuckles.

  Lovejoy silenced.

  'Lovejoy ' Tinker Dill was back from outer space. 'What sort of stuff did you want from Bexon?'

  'Paintings.'

  He thought and his face cleared.

  'Dandy Jack.'

  'He picked up something of Bexon's?' I kept my voice down. Friends may be friends, but dealers are listeners.

  'Yeh. A little drawing and some dross.'

  'Where is he?' Dandy's shop was across the main street.

  'On a pick-up.'

  Just my luck. Dandy was given to these sudden magpie jaunts around the country. He always returned loaded with crud, but occasionally fetched the odd desirable home.

  'Back tomorrow,' Tinker added.

  'On to something, Lovejoy?' Beck's voice, next table. Beck's a florrid flabby predator from Cornwall. We call his sort of dealers trawlies, perhaps after trawler-fishing. They go wherever tourists flock, usually one step ahead of the main drove. You make your precarious living as a trawlie by guessing the tourists' mood. For example, if you can guess that this year's east coast visitors will go berserk over pottery souvenirs, plastic gnomes or fancy hats you can make a fortune. If you guess wrong you don't. A rough game. Beck fancies himself as an antiques trawlie. I don't like him, mainly because he doesn't care what he handles - or how. He always seems to be sneering. A criminal in search of a crime. We've had a few brushes in the past.

  'Is that you, Beck, old pal?' I asked delightedly into the fumes of Woody's frying cholesterol.

  'Who's Bexon?' he growled across at us.

  'Naughty old eavesdropping Big-Ears,' I said playfully. Not that I was feeling particularly chirpy, but happiness gets his sort down.

  'Chop the deal with me, Lovejoy?' To chop is to share. There's nothing more offensive than a trawlie trying to wheedle.

  'Perhaps on another occasion,' I declined politely. I could see he was getting mad. The dealers around us were beginning to take an interest in our light social banter. You know the way friends do.

  'Make it soon,' he said. 'I hear you're bust.'

  'Tell the Chancellor,' I got back. 'Maybe he'll cut my tax.'

  'Put that in your begging-bowl.' He flicked a penny on to our table as he rose to go.

  There was general hilarity at my expense.

  'Thanks, Beck.' I put it in my jacket pocket. 'You can give me the rest later.' A few laughs on my side.

  We all watched him go. Local dealers don't care for trawlies. They tend to arrive in a

  'circus', as we call it, a small group viciously bent on rapid and extortionate profit.

  They're galling enough to make you mix metaphors. Take my tip: never buy antiques from a travelling dealer. And if there are two or more dealers on the hoof together, then especially don't.

  'Watch Beck, Lovejoy,' Tinker warned in an undertone. 'A right lad. His circus'll be around all month.'

  'Find me Dandy Jack, Tinker.'

  'Right.' He wheezed stale beer fumes at me.

  I rose, giddy. A few other dealers emitted the odd parting jeer. I waved to my public and slid out. I was well into the Arcade before I realized I'd forgotten to pay Lisa for my tea. Tut-tut. Still, you can't think of everything.

  As I emerged, Janie signalled at me from near the post office, tapping her watch helplessly. Duty obviously called. I must have been longer than I thought. Through the traffic I signalled okay, I'd stay. I'd phone later. She signalled back not before seven. I signalled eight, then, I watched her go, and crossed back to the Arcade. Now I'd drawn a blank over Bexon, poverty weighed me down. I meant to go but you can't avoid just looking at antiques, can you? Especially not in the Arcade. Patrick yoo-hooed me over to his place before I'd gone a few windows. I forced my way across the stream of people. He always embarrasses me. Not because he's, well, odd, but because he shows off and everybody stares.

  'Just the little mannikin I've prayed for!' he screeched, false eyelashes and fingers all aflutter. 'Lovejoy! Come here this very instant!' Heads were turning and people gaped at the apparition posturing in his shop doorway. 'This way, Lovejoy, dearie!' he trilled. I was a yard away by then.

  'Shut your row, Patrick.' I entered the shop's dusk. 'And must you wear a blue frock?'

  'Ultramarine, you great buffoon!' he snapped. 'Everybody pay attention!' He did a pivot and pointed at me in tableau. 'Lovejoy's in one of his moods.' The trouble is I always go red and shuffle. I can only think of cutting remarks on the way home.

  'Don't mind Patrick, Lovejoy.' I might have known Lily would be there. I don't have time to tell you everything that goes on, but Lily (married) loves and desires Patrick (single and bent). Lily insists - in the long tradition of women hooked on sacrificial martyrdom -

  that she's just the bird to straighten Patrick. As if that's not enough, both are antique dealers. You see the problem. 'He tried to get a museum expert over,' Lily explained,

  'but he's gone to Norfolk.' She spoke as if Norfolk's in Ursa Major. Our locals are very clannish.

  'This way, Dear Heart!' Patrick sailed to the rear followed by the adoring Lily. Three or four customers hastily got out of the way of someone so obviously and flamboyantly an expert as Patrick. I trailed along. 'Regardez!'

  It was a stoneware bottle. A large fish swam lazily in brushed iron design under the celadon glaze. I reached out reverently, chest tight and breath dry. My mind was clanging with greed and love as I turned the little table round to see better.

  'Pick it up, Lovejoy,' Patrick offered.

  'Shut up.'

  'Oh!' he snapped petulantly. 'Isn't he absolutely vulgar.'

  I sat and let the beauty wash from the brilliant work of art into the shop. The master had coated the bottle's body with a luscious white slip. It was lovely, a lovely miracle.

  The ninth-century Korean pots are very different - those imprinted with hundreds of those tiny whorled designs in vertical rows tend to get me down a bit. This was from a much later period.

  'It's genuine, Patrick,' I said brokenly. 'Superb.'

  'You perfect dear, Lovejoy!' he whooped ecstatically.

  'Korean, about latish fifteenth century.'

  Excited, he dragged me away and showed me a few other items - a phoney Meissen, a modern Hong Kong copy of a Persian-influenced Russian silver gilt tea and coffee service, supposedly 1840 (it's surprising, but modern eastern copies always give themselves away by too rigid a design) and suchlike. We had a final row about a William and Mary commemorative plate. He was furious, wanting everything he showed me to be genuine now.

  'It's a genuine blue-and-yellow, Lovejoy!' he protested.

  'I'm sure it is, Lovejoy.' That from the anxious Lily, unbiased as ever.

  'It's modern,' I said. I touched it. Not a single beat of life in the poor thing. 'They always get the weight and colours wrong. The yellow should be mustard. The blue should be very blue.' The dazzling loveliness of that Korean bottle was making me irritable. I added, 'You know, Patrick. Blue. Like your frock.'

  He wailed into tears at that. I left, feeling poorer than ever and a swine. For all I knew ultramarine might have been his colour.

  Still two hours to wait for a bus home. And still all blank. I strolled towards the Castle museum. It was time I saw what sort of antique coins had been stolen, in case.

  The town museum is in the Castle. Its curator's a small tidy man called Popplewell. I got to him by telling a succession of uniformed opponents I wanted to make a donation to the museum. One even tried to charge me admission, the cheek of it. People take my breath away sometimes.

  'Donation?' I told Popplewell, puzzled at the mistake. 'I'm afraid one of your assistants got it wrong. I said nothing about any donation. I'm here about the robbery.'

  'Ah,' he said dismally. 'Insurance?'

  Now, to digress one split second. Insurance and I - and I strongly urge this to include you as well - do not mix. As far as antiques are concerned, forget insurance.