London's insurance market was born.

  Insurance wasn't new. Long before 1 AD, traders bargained on the shores of North Africa when insuring cargoes in Mediterranean galleys. But the sheer global range and intensity of London's maritime activity was beyond anyone's imagining. And nowhere was it more boisterous than in Edward Lloyd's little coffee pad. They called it assurance at first, then standards slid as the underwriters – who inked their names at the bottom (under-writing, see?) of agreements scribed in Lloyd's nook – started plain gambling.

  Besides ships, they bet who would win wars, who might survive if the Black Death returned, who'd marry and when. You could drop in Lloyd's coffee shop and insure yourself against losing at cards or the chances of rain on your new daffodil. Anything, in fact.

  Deceit flourished.

  Something had to give. A cluster of sober merchants hived themselves off. Still identifying themselves by Edward Lloyd's moniker, they became, in effect, a dedicated insurance market, the great Lloyd's of London. Its humble messengers became magnates in their own right, flourishing by part-time spying for the Empire as Napoleon did his tyrannical stuff and navies fought and fleets foundered.

  Through it all, Lloyd's loyally surged on.

  There came a real test. It made Lloyd's name a byword.

  It was horrendous, and it happened in the US of A. In 1906, San Francisco fell down. A terrible earthquake crumbled the place. People lost everything. When the dust cleared, they put in their claims. Insurance businesses everywhere wrang their hands in horror, for they'd go bust if they paid up on even a fraction for the poor San Franners. All over the globe insurance companies whined that they couldn't pay up on this claim or that claim because of the small print on their contracts .. .

  Everywhere, insurers slipped away.

  In the pit of despond, San Francisco stared poverty in the face. Ruined. Broke. It was the end.

  Then, as the dust settled, there came a sterling one-liner across the Atlantic. In old London Town a gentleman quietly swilling his morning coffee at Lloyd's messaged a few calm words. One Cuthbert Heath, a Lloyd's man of the old style if ever there was one, sent a blunt instruction across the Atlantic on the fancy new electric telegraph to hirelings in the New World. It was world-shaking and utterly memorable. From his quiet little Lloyd's box, Mr Heath commanded his reps to pay every single cent claimed by the poor unfortunates in the Great 'Quake, -whatever the small print might say. You insured with him at Lloyd's, kind sir, you were insured. Bounders might wriggle out from under, but mighty Lloyd's stood by its word. And that, said Cuthbert Heath, asking to please pass the loaf sugar, was that.

  You can imagine. Relief abounded in the Americas. The consequence? Whole empires, royalty, global conglomerates, flocked to insure with Lloyd's of London. If you weren't

  'A-One at Lloyd's' you ought not to be allowed into any respectable club and be off, you scoundrel you. Commerce at last had a trusty standard. Films were made extolling Lloyd's admirable virtues. Its motto was, of course, Fidentia. That's what Lloyd's sold.

  Confidence. If you were a Lloyd's man, you were a Name. 'Nuff said.

  The only people allowed to become Names were gentlemen of standing. History records that you had to own the equivalent of a million in modern money. Actually it was much more, because so many of the UK population in those days lived from hand to mouth.

  Then times changed. Over the years, the amount of handy cash you needed was less than a third of what you insured. It was still, however, a posh mob.

  One thing didn't alter, though. If you became a Name and insured somebody, you were in for every last cent. Down to the gold in your teeth 'and your cufflinks', as everybody jokingly used to say.

  Nobody jokes like that now, because of Hurricane Hugo.

  Remember I mentioned how the Almighty sometimes gets things cockeyed? Well, sometimes he gets things even worse.

  As the 1980s bumbled along, God decided to have a field day with Planet Earth. Maybe we were looking too complacent, whatever. Bored, God roughed the world up. He foundered a vast ocean oil tanker here, caused a horrendous oil-rig fire there, and set in train disasters to blacken every front page. One especially grim event was Hurricane Hugo. Then the San Francisco earthquake returned, did a grim lap of honour. Claims beginning as a trickle became a deluge. Thousands of millions – count the noughts –

  were claimed, claimed, and claimed. The world wanted its insurance money.

  No honourable telegraphed message this time. Why not? Was there a good – or maybe a bad – reason?

  In the good old days when insurers stood by the words they uttered, you could become a Name by getting yourself put forward by someone as honourable and worthy as yourself, even. Should you be accepted, you were in. You dined there, and folk clapped politely as you entered a restaurant with the chairman, and respectfully stood as you took your seat. Your lady received precedence. It must have been marvellous, a world of honour cocooned in an honourable world.

  It was all justified, in a curious way, for the Mother of Parliaments in London had, in its wisdom, decided that what was good for Lloyd's was good for the world. Mere mortals like you and me have to send in our income taxes on the dot every year, or we go to clink. Not so Lloyd's. 'Take an extra year, old chap,' said Chancellors of the Exchequer to Lloyd's. 'Better still, take two or three years, and how is Elsie's riding coming along?'

  Lloyd's even got an extra extra perk. No kidding, they were exempt a little something called Law. Lloyd's got exemption from laws in every direction, sort of immunized by Lloyd's own parliamentary act. Cushty, as we ordinary fraudsters and conmen might enviously say out here. Cushty means money for the taking. It's how some define insurance. Not me.

  In those halcyon days Lloyd's must have been heaven, a legal 'licence to print money', in the defunct jokey phrase. But some people in Lloyd's market were a new breed. They were sober professionals who'd salted away solid savings. Lloyd's had seven thousand at the start of the ipyos. In less than twenty years the 'names' almost quintupled. At first, all was rosy. Until Hugo, then Hurricane Betsy, then oil fields went wrong and ships glugged ... The worst calamity of all was yet to come.

  Asbestos struck. Actually, asbestos was trouble even before the 1950s. It wasn't until the 1970s, though, that incipient panic began. New Lloyd's investors, however, thrilled to become part of mighty Lloyd's, rolled in, signing gleefully on dotted lines. Prestige counted. Then horrendously huge claims washed in over the transom. Investors realized what they'd signed into. Many – that's many, many – faced ruin and some went down the pan. Royalty, ex-prime ministers, nobles, millionaire bankers, international celebrities bulging with cunny money, who had all jubilantly marched along in the profit carnival, now stared aghast into their mirrors of a morning wondering how they'd manage their penny cup of coffee today. Or ever again.

  Some began lawsuits – against Lloyd's, no less, telling how they'd been lured by extravagant promise. Dark allegations were made, of official reports swept under the carpet, of Lloyd's ducking and dodging behind barricades of paperwork erected by dozens of lawyers. As the Millennium homed in, newspapers everywhere carried different slants on wild stories of supposed whispers on Walton Heath golf links, of conversations punctuated with nods and winks on the private yachts of moguls. As Americans say, it hit the fan, because unlimited liability means just that. Some fought through the courts and got massive damages against Lloyd's agents. Others wearily submitted and trudged off to live in sheds on handouts.

  The media howled, thundered, yelled about cover-ups. New recruits to Lloyd's, finding to their horror that, far from sitting back and raking in the gelt, their purses and wallets were being relentlessly prised open by ever-increasing claims, began to squeal as the pain started.

  The media went ballistic and demanded answers. Exactly what did happen, folk howled, to the Cromer report of 1969? Exactly why did the Mother of Parliaments, that stickler for law, on the feast day of St Apollinaris quietly slip Lloyd's that oh-so-valuable exemption from being sued? And how come the Bank of England's own special executive, a gent of renown and probity, whom the Bank forced into Lloyd's in the 1980s, got spat out like a pip? And so on, with emotional overstatement blasting everyone for everything. Skullduggery was everywhere. And in Lloyd's.

  Well, it would have been a mere storm in a teacup –okay, pedants, coffee cup – and we could have all got on with wondering about real life instead of the City's greed. Except that investors began to dive out of the windows, metaphorically and actually. Ask around, and everybody knows somebody who'd been touched by the calamity.

  Everybody everywhere has a cousin who was a once-wealthy Lloyd's investor, or making a claim for some prolonged ailment, or who was once cheerful but now is haggardly asking questions about the losses at Lloyd's that soared from mere thousands to billions. Heaven alone knew how many lawsuits ticker-taped down onto underwriters, insurance brokers, even ordinary agents in small town offices, but it was plenty. The terrible word fraud – normally reserved for humbler folk like me – was actually spoken. Folk meant Lloyd's.

  Deaths began. Newspapers headlined that the suicide toll was to be laid squarely at the financial calamity's door. Some said ten deaths, twenty, then thirty. The Serious Fraud Office, an outfit that does Sweet Fanny Adams, will of course get nowhere as it peeps timidly round those solid double doors. Like those intrepid parliamentary teams that started investigating with drumrolls and fanfares – then finished up harrumphing into their gin and tonics before strolling out to the next round of golf. And Lloyd's?

  Shrinking, shrinking. Me, I worried about who was in for a penny or a pound. And who was in for every last cent. All very well to mull over commercial problems on some gigantic global scale, but not when you're worried about some lady you once painted.

  28

  WE HAD A good day in Bristol –meaning that Peshy nicked a jeautiful series of emeralds from a collector's job lot. I really wanted to see how the little dog did it. A Bichon Frise's ruff looks quite artificial though it's natural froth, and has nowhere else to hide anything. It can't bite its own collar off, for instance. So how did it manage to conceal whatever it picked up? See the problem? And how on earth could it lift things from a tray of gem-stones it couldn't even see? BF is a midget, can't reach a table. And how, once the stuff was in its jaws, did the damned wolfhound . . .?

  Anyhow, good day for us in Bristol, but a loser for Merrimale Effend & Co, Ltd (Est.

  1631 AD), Antique Auctioneers of that fair city. We won several watches, two small paintings, a set of earrings, and three pieces of Royal Doulton. I was disappointed she'd not stolen a collection of stickpins, Edwardian and late Victorian, that would have sold for a fortune, but you can't steal everything. (Well, actually you can, as I'll explain later.)

  Job done, I left Alicia and Peshy resting and drove to East Anglia. I found Mel by three o'clock.

  He was at the Fair Hair and Frolic in St Edmundsbury, Market Street. Or, rather, he was sitting beneath the market cross in a sulk while amused shoppers listened to the wails coming from inside.

  'Listen, Mel,' I said, sitting beside him. 'Give me my ghost painting, and we'll do a deal, okay?'

  What deal, I'd no idea. Worse, I realized uneasily that I'd called it my ghost painting. I'd no notion of what ghost. This is how you get talked into things.

  'Just listen to that riot, Lovejoy.'

  'Sandy having his hair done?'

  Perm time was always Waterloo, girls resigning in tears and things thrown. I'd even seen the plod called to the Hair Poo in Short Wyre Street, with sirens wahwahing and uniformed officers piling out like Fred Karno's army. Once Sandy got going over his forelocks it was war. I can't understand this hair business with women. I suppose I include Sandy.

  Mel wept. I looked away. They always nark me, him sobbing white-faced while Sandy hollers 'For ever, you hear me, world?' I think they're not grown up. Yet Mel and Sandy drive the cruellest antiques bargains. Twice I've seen this unlikely pair drive friendly dealers to destitution, Sandy cooing, 'Oh, the joys of usury in springtime!' and so on.

  Even Mel's teary episode here on the steps couldn't be taken at face value.

  From inside the hairdresser's I heard a shrill howling. Something sploshed white gunge all over the window. I looked at the market clock. Soon he'd go nuclear. This is Phase Three. At least two assistants would be sacked, Sandy hurling coiffure implements after them. The growing pavement audience chatted contentedly, waiting for Sandy's big finish. Ten minutes at a guess.

  'I'm seriously thinking of leaving him, Lovejoy. Wouldn't you?'

  'Like a shot,' I said mechanically, quickly amending as his eyes went cold, 'Er, I mean I can't really understand your torment.'

  'You people can't, Lovejoy,' he said with bitterness. 'Unless you're deeply sensitive like us, aware of the soul's funda ...' et claptrap cetera.

  Bored stiff, I saw Shell across the road looking in the window of that oh-so-posh antique silverware place that charges twenty per cent on credit card. Watch out for this, incidentally. It's called the mitt trick and is the worst kind of fraud, meaning a legal one.

  You don't find out you've been ripped off until you check your credit card. If you complain, you get reproach but no refund. They just give you the old patter, 'But, modom, you never asked about extra charges! So you agreed!'

  I left Mel skryking and hurried across. 'What's good, Shell?'

  She didn't turn, smiled at my reflection.

  'Hello, Lovejoy. I heard you were on your way to see Sandy about your portrait thing.

  Is it really that good? Everybody's after it.'

  Shell's nice. She isn't what you'd call pretty, lives in a houseboat with a bloke who composes chants for you to chant for ever more to other chanters. He even operates after-sales, new chants for old, should your first prove a disappointment. Believe it or not, he's cut a disc of chants, mostly the word 'Aw' in C natural. I like Shell. Maybe I'd like her bloke too if I knew what the hell he chanted.

  'How's Chanter?' I asked politely.

  'He's great,' she said happily. 'Oh, I know you think he's a waste, Lovejoy. But if chanting was the worst the world got up to—'

  'It wouldn't be in such a bloody mess,' I capped for her, smiling. 'What's all this about my painting, Shell?'

  She tore her eyes away from the turmoil's reflection and turned to look. She was astonished.

  'Are you telling me you really don't know?'

  'Honest.'

  'Sure you want to know, Lovejoy? Come dine with me, and I'll tell all.'

  We settled into a nosh bar facing the market cross. She sips Earl Grey tea, and insists everybody else drinks the same because she hates calories. Joules might as well not have bothered in his Salford cellar, so we must all whoop it up on stained water. I always associate Shell with me trying to stop my belly rumbling. She even moves the tomato sauce out of your reach.

  'No, Lovejoy,' she said severely, ballocking a waitress for depositing a welcoming bap.

  'Calories define disease.'

  'Food isn't all bad, Shell,' I pleaded, mouth watering, as some swine near by loudly ordered the entire menu fried to a sludge in delectable grease. 'Doctors say grub improves physique. Please?'

  She lasered away the hovering girl, and quietly got down to business.

  'I've got one of your ghost paintings, Lovejoy. The one that cow bought off you for a session in Manchester. Remember her?'

  'Flintshire? That publicist?'

  'That's her. You carried the can for her divorce.' Shell's voice became a hoar frost. I swear her breath thickened the air. 'I found it in a job lot three months back.'

  What happened to Morwen wasn't my fault. On a holiday romp this Flintshire lady hired me to divvy a collection of jewellery, supposedly in antique settings. They were expensive gems set in real gold and platinum, but only modern rehashes. I told her.

  She went ballistic. In an agony of embarrassment, the jeweller sold her all sixteen at knockdown prices. She was thrilled because her manfriend was an avid gemstone collector. He was ecstatic because there were two morganites, one in an AMORE ring (the initial letters of the precious stones spell out that word, amethyst, morganite, opal, ruby, emerald). The language of gems was once as recognizable as a salvo to Edwardians, but is now mostly forgotten except by collectors. Look out for morganite, incidentally. Rare, named after some American banker, it's a faintly pinkish stone that sometimes looks almost colourless. It's a close cousin of emerald and aquamarine. Pink jewels are hell to distinguish, so if you don't know how to measure a stone's density (a good, near-certain marker) take along somebody who does. Morganites are lovely, always seem to be step-cut, and are often quite a size. Buy them, even if the setting's rubbish. You'll never regret it.

  The trouble was that Morwen's husband (and I don't mean her manfriend) found them in her suitcase. Dearest Morwen claimed that a sex-mad antique dealer had given them to her, lusting after her flesh. Her dotingly thick hubby charged across the kingdom to brain me in a fit of Flintshire spleen. Luckily Big Frank from Suffolk, our champion serial spouse, was on hand – we were arranging his umpteenth wedding. He held the irate Taff at arm's length while explaining that every hotelier knew Morwen very, very well.

  Hubby collapsed into self-pitying woe and was never seen again.

  Months later I was cited in Morwen's divorce. She got handsome alimony, alleging cruel marital inattention, and visited me on her next honeymoon. She still hadn't paid me. I'm always too embarrassed to remind defaulters who welsh – sorry – but Tinker bawled across Head Street to her that she was a chiselling bleeder. Quickly she bought a forgery I'd just finished. Her manfriend paid me on the spot. She went on to become publicity chief at some Camden Town publishers and has got fat as a blimp.