'How come you were visiting him, Feel?'

  Her eyes narrowed. She made no reply while I worked it out.

  Antiques dealers are creatures of habit. They're worse than serial killers. (I wish now I'd not thought that.) They'll stalk every country auction after making one superb find. In fact, they'll sacrifice the rest of their lives in hopes of repeating a one-off success. As in the old music-hall song, where some lass danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales. Now Horse wouldn't be seen dead (sorry) with Vestry. Nor would FeelFree. In fact, their paths never crossed. They ran on different tramlines. The row was all over, believe it or not, a piece of toast. Literally. Toast.

  Some antiques are as ancient as the planet. Others are so-called 'tomorrow's antiques'.

  (Tip: avoid these at all costs. They're never, never ever, worth buying, because everything today will be antique in the future, right?) But some very mundane antiques are priceless because of their rarity.

  I get narked, because it's always others who find these genuinely desirable items, never me. Somebody finds a priceless 26,000-year-old woolly mammoth planted in the Siberian ice. It's some undeserving rambler.

  This piece of toast. It was found in the Yarnton pit near Oxford, together with a biggish flint knife, hazelnut shells, a few apple cores, some toasted cereal, bits of pottery, and a few tools. It turned out to be barley bread, like the stuff my gran used to make, but baked in 3,485 BC, give or take a radiocarbon burp. Unimportant? Yes, until you realize it's a mite older than Stonehenge, and antedates all other antique breads by a cool 2,500 years. Now, Vestry was always a scammer, never honest like me. And Horse and FeelFree are nothing but no-hope scammers working the investment club game. Vestry claimed he had some ancient toast from Yarnton, complete with authentic radiocarbon dating certificates. Worthless? Hardly; find some, it means a cool five years of affluence in Monaco, blondes and beer thrown in. Horse sensed profit. He tried to buy Vestry's archeological relics for his current antiques club scam. Vestry refused. Word was he'd been scared of drowning in the tide of litigation that always threatens to submerge Horse and FeelFree's manky clubs.

  'What I mean, Feel, is why would you two supposed Royal Doulton collectors race to the Fenlands to buy some antique barley bread?'

  'Money, Lovejoy!' she said with scorn, tears drying instantly. 'Heard of it?'

  'You shunned Vestry after that Beethoven business.'

  This is what I mean by luck. In 1817, the great Ludwig had a young English visitor called Richard Ford. In the way of geniuses, I've dashed off a string quartet for him.

  The original manuscript lay dormant in some attic, only coming to light when money called its siren summons. The whole thing was dated, and in Big B's own hand. Ecstasy!

  Sotheby's auctioned it, musicians fought to play it, and harmony soared on wings of song while the rest of us, forlorn and deprived, drooled and sobbed. Needless to say, the ancient house in Pencarrow, Cornwall, where the manuscript was found, is now the focus of many a braggart dealer's imaginings: 'I've got a Dickens manuscript from that attic in Pencarrow. The end of Edwin Drood, for the right price . . .' Vestry tried this on with everybody in the Eastern Hundreds, and got nowhere.

  'Vestry made us a special offer,' she said lamely. 'He chucked in a French pottery fake.'

  'Nobody trusted Vestry. He'd the knowledge of a gnat.' And the luck of one.

  'We did!' She tried to sound indignant. 'Horse is clever!'

  I didn't believe a word of it. Horse wouldn't know how to market Stone Age toast any more than fly. He didn't know porcelain from pork. Clever? This was the man who, unbelievable to relate, once sold a dinner service, not spotting that the gungy old chipped plates were actually copies done by Edme Samson of Paris, the immortal copier. Samson's creations often cost ten times the originals. Samson started as a faithful honest duplicator of broken pots, and ended up making brilliant fakes of Meissen, Chelsea, and Chinese famille rosé by the million. Pretty good they are, too.

  Incidentally, moulds taken from Meissen originals are almost invariably smaller than the originals (a useful tip, this) owing to shrinkage in firing, so watch out. And the base of Meissen figures of, say, 1740 to 1750-odd, is always supposed to be a flat unglazed

  'buff' hue, whereas fakes are practically white, though I've never found this much use because there are exceptions. If I have a fake porcelain anything, I offload it onto Horse and FeelFree because they know nil.

  Hence FeelFree was lying, telling me Horse and she were doing a deal with Vestry. But why?

  'Did you tell the police this, love?'

  'Should I? We just popped over. He was our friend. We found him hanging there. It was horrible.'

  She burst into sobs, hands over her face, peeping between her fingers to see how I was taking her falsehoods.

  'God rest him,' I said, sick now.

  'Leave her alone, you brute.' The same vicious old bat advancing threateningly across the square made me get up with ill grace.

  'Sorry, love,' I said loudly to the crone. 'She's an alcoholic junkie. Spare a copper for her junkie friends. She's not had a drink for almost an hour.'

  I fled the contumely.

  11

  I BELIEVE THAT women love a scrap. For what reason? Nobody knows. I used to know this placid woman. Placid, that is, until one day something went wrong at work, heralding a terrible fight next morning. 'Sorry, love,' I sympathized. Eyes shining, best dress on, she swung joyously from my cottage that Monday dawn, the songs of angels on her lips. And that evening arrived home blissfully replete. She'd had the ghastliest fight. Somebody else had got her comeuppance and retreated in tears. See? They love it.

  It's the same with my understanding of people – lack of it, I mean. Some folk don't accept the obvious. 'Oh, it's raining!' this bird Nia once exclaimed, halting at the door. 'I said it would,' I pointed out. She rounded on me. 'Oh, you!' she spat, furious. 'Weather isn't my fault,' I told her, because it isn't. No good. She blamed me because she got wet.

  Which brings me to Quaker, seeing I was in trouble and didn't know why.

  First, I called at a shop in Long Wyre Street and got a small silver cup. Cost me the earth. Engraving was extra. I also bought – my next four days' meals – a silver trophy depicting a kite, the sort you fly on windy days with a string. I caught the bus, and eventually reached Quaker's house by the Quay, where the theatre is.

  'Quaker? You in?' I knocked.

  He is always in, seeing he's in a wheelchair and won't go out.

  'That you, Lovejoy?'

  I entered diffidently, hoping Maud wasn't home. She was, and came all a-bustle. She bakes cakes for church bazaars, orphanages, supports starving donkeys. Her father's a bitter brigadier, retired from lack of wars. (You'll see why in a sec.)

  'Wotcher, Quake. Thought I'd bring your award, seeing you were too damned idle to collect it yourself.'

  'Lovejoy! What a treat!' Maud engulfed me, flour leaving her mark on me like an exotic printing device. 'It's been so long! Cake and tea any moment!'

  Here came Quaker, trundling in his wheelchair. Specky, stout, wheezing, he shoves the wheels. He's only thirty-one. Won't see a doctor, won't accept that he can't walk, run, jump, swim, sing, dance, fly, or any of the above.

  'You just caught me, mate,' he said, his face rapturous. 'I was just off out. I'm in the sculling finals!'

  'Don't miss the start because of me, Quake,' I called, but he'd pumped himself quickly into his room.

  'Lovejoy,' Maud murmured.

  'Shhh,' I said. Do lame folk hear better, or is that blindness? I needed Quaker's help, couldn't risk wives' whispers, though I like Maud.

  'I'm going shopping at two, Lovejoy. Meet me in the Corn Market.'

  'I'm in trouble, love. Quaker can help me.'

  'Help me, Lovejoy,' she whispered huskily.

  Quaker rolled back into view. I sprang away, hoping he wouldn't notice Maud's new flour imprint on me.

  'They'll wait half an hour,' he said happily. 'Just give us time for a chat.'

  'Who's your opponent this time, Quake?'

  His face clouded. 'A bloke called Matterheim. Dolomite champion. He's in the Olympics.'

  'Christ, Quake,' I breathed, anxious. 'You'll have your work cut out.'

  He spun with extraordinary dexterity. 'He's odds on favourite.'

  Into his room we went, Maud dashing to the kitchen to bring sustenance.

  Not everybody gets to see Quaker's private room. It's vast, a specially extended part of his bungalow. You can see rowing boats on the Stour, canoes and things, sculling past this long picture window. Big as any classroom. At the far end, a glass wall. Seated in the conservatory through there, in the adjoining bungalow, sat the brigadier, Maud's dad, looking at me with sardonic eyes. I'm not quite sure what sardonic means, but if any geezer on earth's sardonic it's Brigadier Hedge. He acknowledged me with a nod, which from him is like a tournament. He wants his beloved daughter Maud to leave Quaker and get a life. She says no because Quaker needs her. Brig says Quaker's off his trolley, she should cut her losses. She says no. Joining the dots in the argument can wear you out. It sends me mental.

  All round Quaker's walls are shelves covered with trophies, cups, bowls, vases, silverware, gold chalices. All sham. There's hardly an inch of wall that isn't stuck with plaques, shields, crests, ornaments that Quaker has not won hang-gliding, sprinting, shooting, swimming, high-diving. There are Olympic medals from the 1985 Mogadishu Winter Olympics for downhill slaloms and ski jumping. Quaker led our triumphant assault on Russian dominance of the downhill cycling races in the 1989 Honolulu Olympics. He collared the trophy for architectural Millennium designs. In fact, it's increasingly difficult to think up a new frigging sport or championship every blinking time I come.

  He's done none of it. He's a dreamer whose dreams mean more to him than reality.

  Hence my pathetic purchase of my kite trophy. Best I could do in such a rush.

  'What is it, Lovejoy?' Quaker asked, spinning to face me.

  Behind him, the brigadier rolled his eyes. I looked away. I always feel embarrassed at this stage.

  'I feel a fraud, Quake,' I said. 'I've never ever won a thing.'

  'No, no. It's okay.' Shining eyes on my parcel.

  I unwrapped it, stood there like a duckegg with my glittering phoney cup and the silver kite model.

  'It's your award, Quake. Eastern Hundreds Kite-flying Champion. They asked me to accept it for you at the National Awards Centre.'

  He smacked his forehead.

  'God, I clean forgot! Thanks, pal. You got me out of a real mess!'

  I donated the award. He received it, eyes moist.

  'Sorry, Lovejoy. It's just that I remember how Bushido looked after the match. Japan always held the title until I beat him in the playoffs.'

  He sniffed a bit. I welled up myself. It's not often you meet a dynamic champ who is decently sympathetic about the chap he's defeated.

  'Was Bushido there?' he asked sadly.

  'Yes,' I invented. Well, I'd invented the championship, so I'd a right to invent who turned up. 'He looked pretty down. Said he'd give you a run for your money, next world championships.'

  'You know, Lovejoy,' he said seriously, fondling his cup and the trophy, 'I admire that.

  Taking defeat on the chin.'

  'So do I,' I said fervently. I know defeat.

  The brigadier couldn't hear behind the glass wall, but guessed the conversation. His headshake was graphic.

  Maud entered at a sprint with a tray of edibles, thank God, all her own making. She was defloured, so to speak, in a clean pinafore and gave a smiling wave to her dad who nodded and returned to his newspaper. We settled down facing the river. Folk walk along the riverbank footpath into town. They pretend not to look in Maud's window, sometimes. They must wonder at Quaker's array of trophies and guess which sporting over-achiever lives there.

  'How marvellous of you to bring Quaker's new award, Lovejoy!'

  'No bother, love.'

  Maud's grub is legendary. She cooks from Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery for the homeless of Suffolk. It's a wonder they don't all die from clogged arteries because it's heavy suety stuff. Or maybe that's the Council's plan? Some charity buys the raw ingredients for her. I like Maud. She and I started making smiles soon after Quaker took to his wheelchair, but I got worried. Anyhow by then I'd met Georgina from Stoke.

  There you go.

  The whole point of this is that Quaker doesn't even do sports that he can do. Doesn't shoot, no Paralympics, doesn't sketch or study ornithology. He just accepts awards.

  It's all myth.

  In fact, even The Day Quaker's Legs Got Crushed In That Accident is also a fable, invented for reasons nobody knows. There is no paraplegia. Quaker is as fit as a flea.

  He could jump up and ramble his riverbank with the best of them.

  We all deceive ourselves. Which raises the question of his missus.

  This is Maud: thirty-six, palish hair, blue of eye, shapely if a bit dumpy. Nice legs, and what the county set call 'good bones', though I should think that all bones are pretty decent things to have around. Features pleasant, smile animated and alert. A bright compassionate woman is Maud Quaker.

  She knows Quaker's a fraud, and told me about him when we were resting after having tired ourselves.

  'Quaker's not to be blamed, Lovejoy,' she explained along the pillow. We were in my cottage, my chair propping the door because the lock needed mending.

  'Why not?' I'd asked, mystified. 'He's a total con.'

  'We all deceive ourselves. You. Me. My dad. Government. Why only blame Quaker?'

  'Because he sponges on you,' I said, offended.

  'So do you, Lovejoy.'

  She pointed out that she paid for my food. She lent me her motor. She kept on about it until I got narked.

  'At least I do a job,' I said heatedly.

  'So does Quaker,' she'd said to my surprise. 'And he doesn't just scrounge off women and faint when he looks at silly old antiques.'

  'What job?' I challenged. 'The idle bugger just sits in his wheelchair making up imaginary bloody trophies while I'm slogging in muck and bullets.'

  I don't usually get narked, especially with blokes who've thought up a good scam. I too am an idleback. People who live in glass houses and all that.

  It was then that she started to speak about Quaker really for the first time. Reluctantly, both of us naked as a grape, she told me in whispers. Afterwards she seemed scared, and swore me to secrecy. I promised, hand on her heart. And kept silent for ever and ever. Until now.

  'Quaker's the conduit for the raj,' she'd said.

  'Eh?'

  My mind wearily chugged its synapses into action. Nerve ends groped. Electrons flickered.

  'He can't be,' I got out. In fact, I almost laughed.

  'He is, Lovejoy,' she said firmly, blue eyes looking at me that day in my divan bed. 'So take back what you said about him.'

  'Quaker? He's the raj's brainpiece?'

  Then I did it, made her mad. I really did laugh, rolling in the aisles at the thought that Quaker, that deluded bloke who lived a total sham, actually was the pivot for a – no, the – biggest club of investors in antiques.

  I'd heard of women's devotion to dud blokes, of course. In fact I'd had plenty myself, but that was no fault of mine.

  'Quaker?' I rolled in the aisles. 'He wouldn't know what the raj is.'

  'No?' she spat. 'There are nine of them. Quaker knows. Who do you think he's seeing now, while you pleasure his wife?' She spoke with bitterness. 'And how come a foolish woman like me puts up with a neurotic like Quaker? Do you think I'd stay with him a minute, if he was only what he seems?'

  'Stop it, love,' I said, wiping my eyes. 'You don't have to convince me. I like Quaker.

  And you know I worship you.' I propped myself up on an elbow, looking down. 'I take it back, doowerlink.'

  She gazed up at me, took a deep breath as she reached some decision.

  'You want convincing, Lovejoy? Then listen: the raj decides which antiques to buy. And who can steal which antiques. And who's allowed to get away with it. Who can rob museums and who can't. Big John Sheehan's one.'

  My smile faded. Women don't know these things as a rule. She must have read some article in one of those antiques glossies that get names, dates, and antiques wrong.

  'Bet you Quaker's never even heard of the raj.'

  'No? Ask me, Lovejoy.' She waited. I stared. She was deadly serious. 'That trio of motor car dealers who stole those two Constable oil sketches? They tried to sell them last New Year in a hotel. They were caught, weren't they?'

  I turned my head to align with her face, see directly into her. She looked sincere. But birds defending their blokes always are.

  'Ask me about any antiques crime, Lovejoy. Including your theft from that place by the Minories.'

  'Here, nark it.' I did my best indignation, but it didn't wash. Her triumphant gaze saw she'd hurt me. 'Nobody knows I did that!'

  'You stole a sixteenth-century linenfold-patterned jointed chest. It was Thursday night.

  Tinker your oppo didn't bring the motor on time, so you had to leave the chest in the monastery garden until Colin Service went for it.'

  Suddenly I wasn't laughing. Nobody knew about Colin. He's an ambulance driver, uses the health authority's wagons to collect stolen antiques.

  'You're guessing,' I said feebly.

  'Am I? Then I won't know that you complained to your dipper about the way the muntin to the left of the chest's lock had been damaged. You swore blind you didn't do it. You whined that Colin must have done it, collecting the chest from the herb garden before the rush hour.'

  I think I paled. If I didn't, I should have. A dipper's a contact man, the one who checks up after you've done a job. He decides if you've obeyed right, so that you get paid.

  Antiques are stolen to order nowadays. The raj tells the dipper. The dipper tells you.

  You do the steal, and that is that. A muntin is the straight vertical piece of wood between panels in a joinery chest front. Before that came in, in ancient times, everything was made of plain planking. That's why so few of the old pre-Elizabethan boarded chests survive. I gaped, partly because I didn't know that Maud knew a single antiques term.