Some things I can explain. Like, when Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, hunted with the Wynnstay Hunt (think Chester / Flint / Denbeighshire) in the 1880s, she had herself stitched into chamois leather knickers. Reason: vicious brambles locally.

  Some things, I can't explain. Like, why is Russia's Great October Revolution called that, when it occurred in November? Did the Gregorian Calendar have something to do with it? Dunno. Or, how come the vast Wedgwood porcelain conglomerate forgot to renew its own name / title recently, and redfacedly have to make a deal with some eleven-year-old to buy its own name back? Or why all women don't realize that they can possess any man on earth, whatever their own age, shape, status. There are other inexplicables: Scotland has banned mystic William Blake's exquisite poem 'Jerusalem'.

  Sociologists, people who've never heard of a smile, have banned the children's game of Musical Chairs because it might be competitive (like life isn't). To most questions, I hold up my hand and say I don't know.

  Antiques are different. And fakes are very very different. It's because of money. Don't read on unless you are prepared to consider a little bit of sin, okay?

  Now, we're all greedy. I do mean all of us.

  Let's say you happen to be a housewife – that honourable position now hated by every talk-show host in the known world. 'Housewife' was once a name for an eminently praiseworthy, all-knowing mainstay of society, pillar of common sense. Nowadays, though, girls spit the word with unequalled venom in bus queues. 'What, be a frigging housewife?' they snarl. Or they whine, 'Listen to my mum, you'd think everybody has to keep clean and do homework . . .' Parents please fill in the dots. You know the feeling.

  Back to greed. Let's say you're a lady whose daily round is well established. You've done the housework, seen the infants to school, had your snack (tomato soup for the hips, one sinful slice of bread, and tea without sugar). What now? Time on your hands, because soon George will be home, et mundane cetera, okay?

  Your eyes light on a TV film. An old black-and-whitey, maybe Brief Encounter or some flashy 1950s thing where everybody has spacious motor cars and smokes themselves to death, the actresses gorgeously dressed, diamonds sparkling in every scene.

  You watch, smiling. And you think how marvellous it would be just to have one day of that kind of life. Romance? Maybe. Affluent wealth? Oh, yes, very desirable. And you scan your own lot. Not with any kind of animosity. Because George is reliable, does his stint at that hellish factory. And the family, thank God, is healthy. No, nothing sinister.

  But something starts whispering. It's gremlin-shaped, green. It is Envy. It talks quietly, as you flip through pictures of models who've earned a king's ransom just for dressing to the nines and standing still while society photographers take snaps for the centrefold.

  It whispers of jealousy.

  It says things like, 'Just look at her! In her baronial hall, gem-studded elegance and Vervainoo clothes! Never done a day's work in her life! She was always the idlest at school...'

  Your envy grows.

  In fairness, you reply to your gremlin, 'I'll bet her life isn't all cakes and lovers! I'll bet there are snags!' And (desperately making it up) 'Isn't she the one who had that terrible divorce in Monte Carlo only last month?' etc, etc.

  Whoever wins – the Envy gremlin, or you – the greed seed is sown. You start to wonder what it would be like to suddenly shazam into a lottery win. Or find a precious antique in the flea market! (See where we're heading?) All are genuine possibilities. But what exactly are the odds? Phone them, and ask.

  They'll tell you that the big lottery is fourteen million to one, minimum. TV quizzes are a hundred thousand to one. Better, your little green Envy whispers, to make money from nothing, and keep that gelt coming! Impossible, eh?

  No. Antiques can do it. How on earth?

  Forgery is the answer.

  Back to our housewife, now listening avidly to her gremlin. Get some regular money, to spend as she likes! That's all very well, but she has a problem: she has no expertise in jewellery, porcelain, silverware. She couldn't knock up a Sheraton tallboy if she tried a million years.

  Here's how she (no, you!) can do it. Today, buy a cheap set of oil paints or watercolours, cost a few pence. Take out a library book on Lowry's paintings. Copy any single one of his small 'Little Girl' pictures. Do it in watercolours, oils, and do it quickly.

  Never mind accuracy. Frame it. Pay a few quid to some printer to print a label of the Stone Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, stick the label on the back and date your painting (call it 'Little Girl in a Mini-Skirt') 1964 or so. I promise that you'll sell it, however badly you've copied the original, for a week's average wage. Trust me – or, rather, trust the greed that's making you do this.

  Sign it Lowry, of course – many of his signatures are all but indecipherable. Don't worry. You're legally allowed. The Law, God bless it, says so.

  One last thing. The dealer.

  He'll be mistrustful. He'll say, 'This doesn't look genuine ...' You'll lie that it's been in your attic for quite a while, and you agree that it can't be genuine, because your brother swapped a pair of old boots for it years ago. And so on.

  The dealer will sigh (they all do a great sigh) and say, 'Look, love. I can't buy it as genuine Lowry. Tell you what I'll do. I'll buy it as a replica, okay?'

  What do you do? You take the money and scarper. You needn't ever go back. You've been honest (well, almost) and so has he (well, almost). All's well. You have money in your purse! You get home in time to start your next Lowry lookalike.

  Of course, you've been practical. You made sure your watercolours were dry (use your electric hairdryer) before you took it to El Superbo Antiquery Inc. And you tested the oil paint, to make certain it doesn't smell of linseed. (You can buy quick dryers if you're obsessional about it, or use various chemicals.)

  Money for jam.

  The reason I tell you this is so that you'll remember how easy it is to fake, forge, copy anything at all. Because if you can make multo zlotniks with no expertise at all, imagine what a master forger can do with a lifetime's skill and devotion to technique. Or a master cabinetmaker. Or a brilliant trained potter with a laboratory bulging with specialist kilns.

  Remember, and beware. Message ends.

  10

  DEALERS SAY ANTIQUES are a matter of life and death, but they're much more serious than that. I was becoming scared. Things were going wrong yet right. Women are supposed to get this feeling more than us. Like, a woman might wonder, is this dress trustworthy, remembering that she wore green at that disastrous party last Kissing Friday? Or, should she go out with somebody called Harold, seeing that her previous Harold spoke all evening about Aramaic translations? I knew that I'd made some calamitous mistake, but what? I'd only done as I was told.

  As Tina locked up the church hall after a training session with our team, I heard a miraculous sound. It was a long rasping cough. It started as a distant rumble, reverberating so the traffic noise seemed to fade, then crashed to a shuddering crescendo that stunned us. It ended with a slurping expectoration that would have turned me nauseous, except I'd heard it before.

  'Tinker?' A brilliant omen.

  A heap of tat draped on one of the tombs rose. Wilhelmina screeched faintly and ducked behind Larch and Jules. It spoke.

  'Wotcher, mate. Sandy and Mel're looking for you. Poncey bleeders.'

  Filthy, wearing a dishevelled army greatcoat clinking with soiled medals, mittens blackened by desiccated food, enough stubble on his chin to card cotton, teeth corrugated brown crags, rheumy eyes and wheezing breath, he still was my loyal ally. I pay him in whisky, London gin, rum, and – more often – promises.

  'If that horror's coming with us, Lovejoy, I'm off.' cried Tina.

  'Tara then, love. Come on, troops.'

  'Lovejoy!' she yelped, but I was too edgy for a bird's ire to take hold. If birds were kind now and then, maybe I'd respond. As it was, I'd things to do.

  'Tinker, get us transport to Saffron Fields when I send word, okay?'

  Then I heard it, the most daunting sound. By the yew trees a figure stood, waving proudly. It was Sandy, dressed as a glittering angel, frosty white wings, a dazzling magenta and cerise gossamer robe, a purple handbag and a circlet of electric lights rotating round his artificial curls while some electronic trinket played Ave Maria. The ultimate prat. My heart sank, the actors with me gaping.

  'Yoohoo, Lovejoy! Come and positively adore!'

  'Sorry, Sandy,' I called nervously. 'We're just off.'

  'I shall tell that Yank bitch of you-hoo!' Sandy shrilled in fury.

  Meaning Susanne Eggers?

  Resignedly we plodded over. Several photographers were saying a little more this way, tilt your head. Sandy was loving it. 'Got my starlight eyes, sweeties?' and all that. I find him squirmily embarrassing. He thinks we all admire him. In fact we often have to say so, because he's a vicious antique dealer who'll stop at nothing to avenge a slight, real or imagined. His friend is Mel, a surly dealer who's always fuming. Mel was seated on a nearby gravestone. He looked away as we approached, fuming no doubt.

  'Ooooh, Lovejoy!' Sandy held up a hand to stay the photographers while he did lipstick in a mirror. 'You've started collecting tramps! How quaint!' He eyed Wilhelmina. 'And that senile cow over there – the one with the rotting hair – has stolen a shahtoosh! It's mine. Tell her it's mine. I'll pay her.' He struck a pose. 'Recommence, darlings!'

  Stepping aside, I asked, 'What's this in aid of, Mel?'

  'I shan't speak to him, Lovejoy.' Mel glared. 'He's launching a children's charity, Angels On Gravestones Trust. It's obscene.'

  'I can see that. How'll it get funded?'

  'That's it, Lovejoy. It's a con. There is no charity. He's going to use the money for buying imported antiques.'

  Sandy was posing away. I noticed banners draped on two poor-quality stone angels nearby. They read GIVE GENEROUSLY TO THE SANDY AOG TRUST!, red On white. I sighed.

  'Stop him, Mel.'

  'Don't you think I've tried?' Mel is even less honest than the rest of us, but a glim of morality must lurk somewhere in his DNA. 'Remember the old folks' homes?'

  The reminder made me wince. Sandy once invented a charity called Sandy's Antique Dealers All Giving. He and Mel conned old people out of their antiques, with the cock-and-bull tale that they would make a fortune. He got nerks to collect the antiques, of course, so he could pretend he'd been jumped by sinister dealers from France. He always blames Continentals.

  'Don't listen to Mel, Lovejoy!' Sandy carolled, arms aloft in dramatic pose. 'He's positively glowering because I might have met a Greek locksmith.'

  'Oh, am I?' Mel barked, rising in fury. 'Well, Lovejoy, you just tell that absolute trollop that I have other things to do than sulk—' et cetera.

  'Come on, people,' I said to my actors. I was too tired to play go-between for this exotic pair. God knows I try to keep friends with everybody, but some are just too much. 'See you, Sandy. Tara, Mel.'

  'Come and see us, Lovejoy,' Sandy trilled. 'We'll sell you your ghost painting.'

  That froze me in mid-flight. The actors bumped into me like dominoes.

  He smiled, wafting his robe to and fro as photographers clicked away. 'We'll only charge you a hundred per cent commission.'

  'Mel?' He had the grace to look sheepish. 'What ghost picture?'

  'You did several, Lovejoy. This one was Vestry's. Sandy pre-empted it at the box sale last week.'

  'Deal,' I croaked, making my exit. The lich-gate leads into the High Street, traffic and supermarkets, pedestrians thronging. I almost walked under a bus but Tinker hauled me back in time.

  'Tinker, get us to Saffron Fields manor by three o'clock.'

  'Right, son. It'll be Jacko's coal lorry. Here, Lovejoy.' He sprayed the concourse with a cough that momentarily stalled the vehicles. 'We in trouble?'

  'Vestry.' I drew him aside for secrecy. My actors stood, gazing back at Sandy glittering in the churchyard. 'What was it exactly?'

  'Vestry hanged hisself in his barn, didn't he? Month since, down the Broads. FeelFree and Horse found him.'

  'Find out what you can, Tinker, okay?' I smiled at the team. They didn't look much.

  'Don't you remember?' his foghorn voice gravelled out. Half the High Street heard Tinker's whisper. He thinks that by leaning at an angle – nothing new – he becomes the soul of confidentiality. 'Vestry hung hisself while you wus framing that neff portrait. He wanted it reframed.'

  'Thanks, Tinker.' I could hardly see for the migraine thumping my sight sideways. 'Keep it secret, okay? You lot, see you later. Remember – be convincing.'

  They chorused eagerness. My scheme was becoming as secret as the Opening of Parliament. I tottered off to find FeelFree Halsey. She and her bloke Horse claim to be Royal Doulton specialists who know when the world's going to end. For voyantes, they weren't very accurate the afternoon they found Vestry's cooling body at his private finale. They're also friends of Aspirin and Paul the birdman's wife Jenny. It was getting complicated. I could have throttled Mortimer for getting me into this.

  First, though, a word about collectors, and how stupendous dreams come true.

  Collectors are wonderful people. That's all they do, collect. They'll rob, plunder, sell their grandma, abandon the most prestigious job on earth, just to collect matchboxes, old wheels, pins, pieces of rocketry, coloured buttons, inkstands and – honest, no kidding – bits of tripe and olive pips. They might end up threadbare, living in cardboard boxes on the Embankment, yet become the proud possessors of hidden stores of toy telescopes or a thousand metal keys. For me, they are barmy yet beautiful.

  Some manage to keep their jobs. Others go to the dogs while dreaming that one day –

  soon – the world will come a-thronging to worship their unbeatable collection of Victorian hats, limestone baptism fonts, or bronze camels. I like collectors, partly because they keep me alive by buying bits of junk that no sane person would look at twice.

  Sometimes, though, collectors come a cropper. Like Vestry, requiescat in pace. I tried to think. He was a collector-dealer of gruesome old medical instruments.

  I found Horse preaching in the shopping precinct. Feel-Free was at the nearby open-air caff. She's gorgeous and voluptuous, just the sort I should win. It's no hopes, though, because she's hooked on Horse, a tiny desiccated clerk, all bulbous forehead and specs, but who has the undoubted appeal of being our only Existence Guru. An ex-convent girl, FeelFree reasons that she'll be able to square it with the Almighty in the nick of time. Her plan is theologically suspect, but what isn't?

  'Wotcher, Feel. Having coffee, I see.' I swallowed, desperate for some. She moved her biscuits away and sipped with gentility. She knows me. I peered into an abandoned cup but somebody had drained it, stingy swine. They'd taken the sugar.

  Horse was standing in our precinct's fountain, thundering – well, piping – away to a crowd of two old ladies who listened approvingly to his intentions to inflict his hang-the-swine morality on a liberal country. FeelFree's eyes glistened.

  'Isn't he wonderful, Lovejoy?'

  Well, no. But I was starving and Maggie the waitress was questing for orders. A noisy family on the next table asked for egg and chips with sponge pudding for afters, not a thought for hungry folk near by. My belly rumbled as they whaled in.

  'When does the world end, Feel? Soon, is it?' Asking for the latest bulletin on Planet Earth's chances always cheers her.

  'No news this week.'

  Thank God for that. 'Sad about Vestry, eh, love?' The tact of an axe.

  Horse was working himself up to a shrill denunciation of Satan, who this week was making us all hard-hearted materialists. This, note, from a dealer who establishes, then defrauds, antiques clubs. (Get the clue, from Rio?) The clubs invariably go bust, leaving his members destitute and him in clover, with (as such clubs always claim when they mysteriously go bankrupt) 'unexplained financial losses'.

  What happens is that Horse starts up an antiques collectors' club, then exhibits the antiques he's bought with members' subscriptions. The members are delighted at the porcelains, Georgian silver, Regency household items, Portuguese colonial ivories, whatever, and chip in more investment gelt. (Greed, see?) Horse sends round an urgent circular, and guess what? A rich American tourist has asked to buy the club's antiques! Quick, quick! He sails on Tuesday...

  Who can resist? The club hastily agrees, yes, sell for God's sake, don't let him/her get away . .. The club's antiques are sold. Then, horror of horrors, the cheque bounces!

  The club is broke. And who's the saddest and brokest of them all? Why, none other than the Hon Sec, for didn't he lose more than anyone?

  In fact, no, he didn't, for there never was any rich American tourist. There was only some crooked pal (read FeelFree) who drives the antiques north and sells them on that motorway service station beyond Hawkshead. It's Horse's (and every other crook's) favourite venue.

  That's Horse's scam. He's worked it four times so far. FeelFree is named from her patter: 'Feel free to cheat me,' she says with a glamorous smile. 'Offer me half the price. I'll starve ...' and draws her clothes tightly round her voluptuous form, and lands another bargain. She does Horse's driving, sees the trips north as her rightful (not righteous) holiday entitlement. I'm being cynical, saying that all antiques investment clubs end in tears. I don't mean it. I only mean the vast majority. Except I've only ever heard of one honest one. Not two. One.

  'Vestry?' Religion lapsed as she swivelled her exquisite eyes on me. I almost fell into their limpid blue. Women make you forget what you're up to, don't they? 'Please don't mention him, Lovejoy. It was ghastly.'

  To my alarm her eyes filled. She wept genuine tears.

  'Ignore him, love,' a passing crone gave out. 'They're not worth it and I've been wed these forty-six years,' et dronesome cetera, daft old bat.