'Not real?' she shrieked, as secret as Radio One.

  I hadn't a loupe with me, but did the trick of squeezing together two fingers and a thumb to magnify sight in one eye. The diamond was stuffed with brown debris. Still genuine, but hardly worth a train fare. Diamonds are graded according to purity, flaws, size, other factors. It was my chance to maybe learn a bit more about Taylor and Susanne Eggers.

  'This thing should be for industry.' I let go, and smiled my most sympathetic smile.

  'They're the ones sold at multiple stores, dwoorlink.'

  'The bastard!' she breathed. 'After all I did!'

  'I'm sure he appreciated ...'

  'For two auctioneers' boxes and a list of dealers?' She was in floods of tears. 'He said it was a priceless effing diamond that the Queen once wore ...'

  And so on. I couldn't wait to get away fast enough, now I'd found out what I wanted. I know I sound horrible, but I'd a million excuses, most of them honestly nearly almost quite good. I tried to make it easier for Olive by telling her the tale.

  'Listen, dwoorlink. What time is it?'

  She told me some ungodly hour, still wailing.

  'Look,' I said, all sudden brainwave. 'There's just time to get hold of Diamond Pease.

  He'll still be there! Quick, love! Go, go!'

  'Who? What for?'

  'He might change it for us. Into a valuable stone!' Some hopes.

  She struggled upright and switched on the ignition, enthusiasm returning.

  'Who's Diamond Pease?'

  How the hell should I know? I thought, narked. I'd just made him up.

  'Works in Hatton Garden, London's diamond district. An old pal. Might not be able to do anything, but at least we can ask, right?'

  'Right! Right!'

  We careered from the rural scene, me eager as Olive to reach civilization – that is, the town centre miles from the woods and fields I detest. As she dropped me at the war memorial I kissed her long and passionately, thanking her for a wonderful tryst. I asked to keep the pendant. She said okay. I promised I'd throttle the Yank with it if I bumped into him. Wish I'd not said that now, but what can you do?

  Olive had given me enough to be going on with.

  'See you soon,' I promised as she gunned away.

  She called something that I wish now I'd heard, but I was already limping off down the road, my leg rediscovering circulation.

  Who had the power to manipulate police, the judiciary and all the local antiques dealers including auctioneers, plus the local hoods? Nobody, that's who. Meaning no one person. But there is one mob – note the term – that has. It is mightier than the sum of its parts.

  It's called the raj.

  Some people call it the tally, the old word for counting, as if they're a benign club of elderly gents, all quill pens and ledgers.

  Wrong.

  They say the raj began when Raffles was rollicking round the Far East. Or maybe in Hong Kong or India back in the days of the Raj proper when pirates – loyal and freebooters alike – rioted over the globe trying to keep one horizon ahead of a vengeful Royal Navy. Me, I believe the raj began in the horrendous slums of Seven Dials or London's evil Arches, or St Giles Parish where starving folk had to steal for bread.

  Dealers speak of it with bated breath. I'd never met, as far as I know, anybody in the raj. There's supposed to be from nine to fourteen of the blighters. Who they are nobody knows. There was talk that Big John Sheehan was in. And that Willie Lott had tried to gain entry, and been rejected. I gulped. I was terrified of Sheehan.

  Olive was supposed to be in the know. Now, I wasn't so sure.

  The raj frightens me, like everything unknown. They're said to top, as in eliminate, three or four antique dealers each year, and to be involved with arms handlers, drug lords, and political taipans you don't mess with. They control some of the great auction houses but from without. That is to say, they charge each auction a fee to simply allow it to go ahead, especially if it's going to change, say, the price of Impressionist paintings or early New England walnut furniture or Hepplewhite items.

  I put Olive's pendant in my pocket and forgot about it.

  For peace of mind, I paused to watch the Women's Institute making cakes. They're good at it. Occasionally I help out, shifting tables, lugging chairs. They give me edibles that have been damaged in transit, and a cuppa. I sat on the grass watching and thinking. I'd seen Susanne Eggers and Consul Sommon leaving my cottage. Ex-spouses, who'd left evidence of passion.

  I reflected. Are we really the people we say we are?

  We're a rotten species. Yet every so often something restores your faith, makes you think we're not so bad after all. Like the great Cash Dispenser Bonanza. True story, incidentally:

  It happened just before the Millennium celebrations. A bloke rushed into a pub calling,

  'Free money! Free money!'

  Folk thought, hello, old George has been at the ale again, and continued chatting, drinking.

  Except it was true.

  Across the dark street, nine o'clock at night, a bank's cash machine inexplicably started giving out twice what you asked for, and debiting your account with half. The crowd flowed across the road to examine this curious phenomenon. Jubilation!

  Within seconds an orderly queue formed. One bloke even took charge, calling out,

  'Three goes only, please. Then return to the back of the queue. Keep in line. Please don't obstruct the pavement...' And would you believe, a police motor cruised by. The bobby asked was everything in order. 'Yes, thanks, constable,' the line replied, party hats at rakish angles, blowing razzers and laughing merrily. 'Happy New Year,' the bobbies said, driving off. The revellers replied, 'Thanks, lads, and the same to you!'

  There was no riot. No shoving, no weapons, just people taking their turn with lots of,

  'No, please go ahead, mate. I've already had a go,' and all that. There, in rain-sodden northern England, order ruled until the machine gasped out its last note, when the crowd returned to their wassailing.

  Okay, people in effect robbed the bank. But the point is valid: people's good manners withstood the severest test of all, which is unbridled greed gratified free of charge.

  Hearing of the incident warmed the cockles of my heart.

  When you are feeling down, though, your sourest convictions are sometimes confirmed.

  Like Rita. She's a legend in the Eastern Hundreds. Rita was a restless lady. I knew her distantly. She was alluring, evidently very rich. I'd have loved her given half a chance.

  She got through four husbands, accumulating investments. The trouble was, every penny was in her baby granddaughter's name.

  Came the day when the world's watch collectors were stunned by the announcement that a Supercomplication was on sale. Rita snapped into action, announced that she was going to buy it for her baby granddaughter. We talked of nothing else for weeks.

  Antique dealers even applauded her as she swanned round. Rita was going for the Big One!

  The Supercomplication?

  Back in 1933, a firm called Patek Philippe in Switzerland made watches. Nothing new.

  Two American watch collectors were rivals. Henry Graves ran a bank, Mr Packard –that one – made cars. Being American, they were multimillionaires. Obligingly the Swiss watchmakers set to, turning out ever more intricate and complicated watches to please the two friends. Until 1933, when the Henry Graves Supercomplication hit the road. It was almost impossibly refined: handcrafted, gold, nearly a thousand parts, it eclipsed all timepieces. It even gauged the wind, tides, moons. Clearly the last word. The rival Yanks called time, as it were.

  This brilliant instrument was Rita's focus. She would buy the 1933 Patek Supercomplication for her baby granddaughter, who would be set up for life! Everybody loved Rita's devotion! The baby's trust funds were mobilized. Came the day when Rita embarked for the exciting Sotheby's sale amid an adoring crowd. I went to see her off on the London train, calling 'Good luck, love!' like the rest of the duckeggs. Jessica from Trinity Street's Antiques Nookery lit candles for Rita's success in Lion Walk church.

  Rita reached London with her sack of money.

  And kept going. And vanished.

  That was the last anybody saw of Rita or the money. She never bid at the auction. She now lives with swarthy youths in Marbella, or on some Greek island, or Bali.

  Rumours vary. Jessica angrily sticks pins in a Rita doll every Lady Day. I organized a whip-round for her granddaughter, who is six now. Her parents run a garden centre out on the Ipswich road, struggling to make ends meet.

  The lesson is that we're a rotten species.

  Antiques make crooks of us all. Is it the notion of something for nothing? My erstwhile lady Maya, who sells antique cosmetic potions in the Arcade, says it's the terror of thinking that some worthless trinket – maybe an ordinary dress ring discovered on pantomime fripperies, or that ugly brooch from Auntie Mabel's bequest – will suddenly turn out to be a priceless heirloom. We argue about this. She says it's the risk of nearly having chucked out Grampa's valuable old rocking chair, or given Auntie Edith's dull old clip-on to some jumble sale, that makes everybody desperate. Calamity breathtakingly avoided, and the relief that cascade of money finally brings, is the cause of the joys and murders. 'It's like sexual love,' Maya says repeatedly. 'Bliss, ecstasy, triumph, disaster.'

  Maybe she's right. I dunno.

  Vestry was the last antique dealer to die in odd circumstances. Rio Dauntless had reminded me.

  8

  SHE is PRETTIER than most, but gets me mad. She's always apologizing for being fifty-three, then fifty-four, and so on as the clock ticks. I shouted hello, looked round the door, and saw that she'd really got on. The horse was now head height, ugly as sin and all out of proportion. She sculpts it, dawn to dusk.

  'You wish me happy birthday, Lovejoy,' she flared at me from behind the great statue's shoulder, 'and I'll strangle you.'

  Bernicka (she made the name up; she was plain Glory once) is a sculptress, and loves Leonardo da Vinci.

  'Never entered my mind, Bernicka.' I'd forgotten her birthday, was why. 'Looks good.'

  It looked horrible. Who'd want that damned great thing? Terracotta clay, made of any old junk that solidifies, Bernicka slaps it on seemingly at random. I was amazed that it even looked vaguely equestrian. She does it in her husband's garage to rile him.

  'You're gorgeous, Bernicka.' True, but women sense you're up to something.

  She came round the statue, glaring. Coated in reddish dust, quite small, long hair, neat as a grape. She's solaced me several times, mainly to do her bloke down. She hates Jeb because he's not Leonardo da Vinci. He hates her for loving Leonardo.

  'What d'you want, Lovejoy?'

  'Nothing!' I beamed my sincerest. 'How did my portrait turn out?'

  Last month I'd drawn her making her lover's horse statue. I drew her in sanguine – a kind of ancient reddish pastel I make myself with gum tragacanth. It was superb. I'd had to use skimmed milk because oxides are swine to shape into proper finger-long rods for sketching. Little Sarah and Charlotte from down the lane, eight and six respectively, shape them for me. They're so neat. I'm not. It's galling to see infants fashion Conté pastels ten times better than I can.

  'It's there.'

  Against the far wall, among Jeb's derelict motors and bits of engines, was my framed portrait of Bernicka. I'd got her lovely eyes exactly. I'd done her (I mean painted) in that earthy brown-red the Old Masters loved. Nothing wrong with monochrome, incidentally, though it's currently unfashionable. The real trouble is that you fall for a woman when you paint her portrait. It's impossible not to. You have to gaze at her features, drink her into your mind. Peer into a deep pool, you fall in. Above my sketch was a photocopied drawing of Leonardo da Vinci, Bernicka's adored lover. That's why she's always going to mediums, psychics, spiritualists. She sends Leonardo messages.

  He fails to reply.

  'Oooh.' She moaned with unrequited lust at Leonardo. She always does that.

  'Still got the languishes for him?'

  It's no wonder Jeb gave up. They sleep apart. She has a ton of love implements in her bedroom. All are devices with which a lovelorn lady might achieve solitary arousal. I once pointed out that Leonardo da Vinci has been dead for centuries, requiescat in pace. She says I'm too stupid to understand.

  The horse is Leonardo's uncompleted, ill-fated monstrosity Il Cavallo. I hate the damned thing. He planned it in Milan after 1493, but only got to the model stage.

  Everybody thought it okay, except the French armies strolled in to depose Leonardo's boss, Duke Ludovico. Shamefully, the French soldiery shot it full of arrows –short of target practice, you see. Milan's got a modern bronze replica of this giant horse, because making Leonardo's dreams come true is a money-making industry. Magazines these days are full of his never-were bridges, and buildings he built only in sketched fancy.

  Next to my portrait hung several bowie knives. I eyed them uneasily.

  'Knives,' she said. 'Some Yank bitch in Grand Rapids has made a crappy copy of Il Cavallo. I'll stab her when I get the chance.'

  She means it.

  'You do know that Leonardo's nag was going to be over three times taller than a man?'

  Way over twenty feet, in fact.

  Her eyes misted. 'Yes. But I am unworthy of my master.'

  Bernicka always was off her trolley. 'Don't run yourself down. Love's strong stuff.'

  'No, Lovejoy.' Genuine tears made clean wadis down her umber-dusted cheeks. 'If my love were perfect, it would bring my darling Leonardo back.'

  'Well, there is that,' I said weakly. Agree with everything, I might get what I'd come for.

  'Your nag is really, er, nice.'

  It wasn't. It was a mound of clay in a rural garage. Trouble is, Bernicka has no idea of art. She's tried her hand at everything. Her enthusiasms go in rushes. Last June it was encaustic Roman painting. July she was a dancer, with the co-ordination of a yak.

  September she took up the cello, tone deaf naturally.

  Some women have this fatal attraction. Mary Queen of Scots had it, they say, so that even villeins kneeling in fear of their lives would lust after her. Lord Nelson's Emma Hamilton, despite her eternally filthy unwashed hair, had it. Nell Gwynne, King Charles's gorgeous Cockney orange seller of Covent Garden, had it. And Bernicka. Other women hate Bernicka. Can't for the life of me see why. Us blokes adore her. The thing is, even after you've made serious smiles with Bernicka you're just as susceptible as if you never had, if you follow. A man's vulnerable to all women, of course, which is the reason that any woman can have any man any time she chooses, though women don't realize this.

  With Bernicka, popes and saints would come a-flocking if she simply beckoned. Where was I? Lying that her pot nag was really nice.

  'Will Leonardo approve, Lovejoy?' she asked wistfully, gazing up at her hideous blob.

  'I'm sure he would, will, er...' I gave up on tense. 'Does,' I concluded firmly. 'Look, love.

  Will you seduce a bloke for me?'

  'How dare you!' etc, etc.

  Twenty minutes later we finished a cup of tea on her couch and she was agreeing yes, certainly. By then she'd dusted herself off and was arguing her fee.

  'Get me anything of Leonardo's,' she decided. 'From his very own fingers.' She moaned at the thought of his fingers.

  'Impossible,' I said sadly. It was going as I'd planned. 'The few Leonardo items in our rusty old kingdom all belong to famous people.'

  Daintily she blotted a tear. 'I know that, Lovejoy.'

  'Bernicka!' I cried, doing my aggrieved horror act. 'You can't mean ...'

  'That you rescue my darling's precious creation from some undeserving owner? Of course I do!'

  That's women and morality. Love is the Open sesame! that rolls aside all ethics. To some birds, love is no more than a code word; say it and you're in, physically replete and thankful it worked. To other women, it's the solemn pronouncement of serious lifelong commitment. To Bernicka, it was run-leap-splash into the hot spring of life, as long as she could convince herself that da Vinci was in there somewhere. I don't understand it.

  I asked, fingers crossed, 'You can't seriously mean Lord Orpen's parchment drawing of Leonardo's horse?'

  'Does he have a Leonardo drawing? Yes, him then.'

  'That's unfair, Bernicka!' I cried angrily. 'I might get caught!'

  'Do it, darling, or I won't seduce anybody for you.' She caught my hand and pulled me down. 'Please.'

  What can you say? Broad daylight, the parlour doors wide open, curtains not drawn, we made rapturous agreement. I awoke an hour later. She'd gone back to slapping clay onto her sculpture. I finished her biscuits and tottered off to catch the bus, shouting a so-long into the garage. I'd reached town before I realized she hadn't even asked the seducee's name. I phoned from the Zodiac Tea Rooms, trying to speak quietly so the elderly ladies sipping their Earl Grey wouldn't eavesdrop.

  'Wotcher, Bernicka. I called to say ta for, er, tea and that.' Then I told her the Yank at Mortimer's manor. 'That's the, ah, beneficiary. Understand? You've been there to read tea leaves, I think. Taylor Eggers, your psychic's husband.'

  She paused a bit too long. I felt a twinge of worry as she asked, 'Exactly why am I doing this, Lovejoy?'

  'While you're, ah, resting, you can ask him what the hell he and his missus are up to.

  Ta, love. You're great. Darling? I just want you to know that I've never felt such deep emotion ...' I listened. 'Hello? Hello?'

  She'd gone. Leonardo's contemporary Vascari once said the maestro's every action 'was divine'. Evidently my passion hadn't matched up. Still, I should care. I felt marvellous.

  I'd received the ultimate gift from the lovely Bernicka, and my plan was one step nearer completion. I smiled weakly at the eavesdropping tea drinkers and made my way out amid the murderous traffic, where a bloke could feel safe.