Spend Game (7 page)

By now the mountain was making incessant noises. It sounded like a distant orchestra tuning up. Cymbals crashed and instruments ravaged scales. Once the rock actually screamed, a real living scream which chilled my spine. Even Leckie looked down the tunnel as that terrible scream echoed and echoed. ‘My word,’ he murmured. ‘Do you think it knows what we’re up to?’ I was pouring sweat. My fingers were too slippery to be any use. Leckie did it all, occasionally sussing out the surrounding hillsides with a rapid glance. As I scooped the instruments into my pack I dropped the pliers. They hurtled into the void below. For the life of me I couldn’t take my horrified eyes off them – until Leckie pulled my arm and jerked me back.

‘Off you go, Lovejoy,’ he said amicably, as if nothing had happened. ‘All set. Oh’. He pulled out a sealed envelope. ‘Could you hold this for me?’

I stuffed it into my battledress.

‘Er, am I not supposed to stay?’ It took three swallows to get the words out. It’s the hardest sentence I’ve ever said in my life.

‘Not just now, Lovejoy.’ He nodded towards the far side of the bridge. ‘Scoot over there. We might need a third go and you’ll have to do it.’

There’d be no chance of a third go. We both knew that. I nodded anyway and crossed over, drenched with sweat, trying to walk like Leckie, but all the wrong muscles kept going tight. The blast came as I crouched beside the bridge’s five splayed holding struts where our first rifleman was lying beside a small overgrown outcrop of rock.

You could see nothing over there except dust. The narrow-gauge railway lines ran into a haze of suspended dust where the tunnel mouth had been. Leckie’s end of the bridge was obscured by a brownish cloud. Rocks tumbled and crashed in the gorge below. The bridge was switching from side to side like a twitched rope under the impact of the blast. To my horror I found myself running and stumbling along between the iron rails across the bridge towards the tunnel, several times having to scramble upright from catching my boots on the sleepers. I must have had some daft idea about seeing what had happened to Leckie, maybe helping him back. Small rocks spattered about me as I ran. It couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds. As I reached the cloud, Leckie came hurtling out of the dust at me, choking and spluttering as he came. His white eyes peered from his blackened face.

‘Get back, Lovejoy!’ he yelled, floundering towards me. ‘Get back.
The bridge is going!
’

I dithered for a split second, abruptly realized
where I was and the lunatic thing I was doing, and tore back the way I had just come, wondering what the hell I was playing at. Leckie was on the safe mountainside nearly as quickly as I was.

‘Come on, you two,’ he said, waving us. ‘Run.’ The rifleman was off like a Derby starter, scrabbling up the hillside ahead of me. Leckie brought up the rear. We made the ridge, where the radio man waited with the other pair, having done his stuff. I halted and looked back then. The bridge hadn’t gone after all but the tunnel was filled solid and part of the mountain face to one side of it had been stripped clean away in a miniature landslide.

‘Settle down, chaps,’ Leckie told us, hardly out of breath. ‘Let’s wait a bit and see what happens. Fag?’ He offered them round, and we stretched out on the ridge, watching.

It was an hour later that the bridge wobbled and tottered finally into the gorge. It hit the bottom with hardly a sound. I went quietly off into the undergrowth and was spectacularly sick at the senseless risk I’d taken, running back over the bridge just to get Leckie like that. Sometimes I think I’m off my stupid head.

It was on the trek back that Leckie reminded me. ‘One thing, Lovejoy,’ he said casually over his shoulder. ‘Got that envelope?’

‘Eh? Oh, here.’ I found it and passed it forward. We were moving in single file.

‘Good of you, Lovejoy. Coming back like that, I mean.’ He gave me a grin, turning on the narrow track. I can see him now, doing it, as I write. ‘Always good to meet a chap who’ll keep faith.’

I mumbled something. We got to our base about eight o’clock one morning four days after, only Leckie
always called time something hundred hours. And Leckie never mentioned the tunnel or the envelope again. That was the last real soldiering I did, and if I have any say at all it’s the last I’ll ever do. The reason I’ve told you all this is that, as I’d passed Leckie his envelope back, I’d noticed the two words scribbled on the front of it. They were
In Case,
same as on the scribble Helen had given me.

I didn’t need to be told in case of what.

‘Lovejoy.’ Tinker Dill was sitting opposite me, already halfway through a revolting mound of egg and chips. ‘Why you saying nuffink?’

‘Eh? Oh, wotcher, Tinker.’ I put the note away. ‘Sorry. Miles away.’

‘Sauce.’

I passed him the sauce. He cascaded it over his grub. It’s not a lovely sight. I wish he’d take his filthy mittens off while he eats. I’d wish the same about his tatty greatcoat and his greasy cap, but God knows what sights lurk underneath. He tore a chunk off a bread roll, one of Woody’s special cobbles, and slopped it through his tea. A bit never made it. It plopped into the sauce, but Tinker just scooped it up with his stained fingers and rammed it into his mouth.

‘I found out where Leckie’s stuff is, Lovejoy,’ he said.

‘So have I.’

You can see the door of the King George from Woody’s. I watched idly through the window. Fergus, the blonde and their thin pal were emerging, chatting and obviously in a festive mood, He must have done a good deal. I guessed Cain Cooper’s paintings.

‘Here, Tinker. That thin bloke.’

‘Him? Jake Pelman. Clacton. Silver and Continental porcelain.’ He ate noisily on. ‘Just gone partners with Nodge, word is.’

I’d not heard that before.

‘Any reason?’

Tinker shrugged. ‘Why not?’ I realized that Pelman was the bloke I’d seen chatting to Margaret in the White Hart the night before.

A sudden thought struck me. ‘One thing. How did you know Leckie left his stuff at his cousin Moll’s?’ I hadn’t even known he’d got a cousin living locally.

He grinned, all brown crags and gaps. ‘I didn’t because it’s not there.’ He cackled away, nodding at this fresh evidence of my dependence on his ferreting skills. ‘It’s still at Medham.’

‘Eh?
’ But Val said it was at this cousin’s. What the hell?

‘Medham.’ He wiped his stubbly chin on his sleeve and belched. ‘He never took it. Left at the sally. Virgil’s.’

‘But . . .’

Tinker eyed me pityingly. ‘You’re losing your touch, Lovejoy. Leckie got an old three-ply post-war piece. Gave that whizzer Wilkinson a quid for it, all of a sudden, and dashed off with it on his car. But the stuff he’d bid for in the auction’s still there.’

I gaped. A decoy. Leckie knew they were waiting outside for him to leave. So he’d done the best his gentlemanly soul would allow – message to me via Helen, a decoy piece of grotty furniture strapped to his car to his cousin Moll’s, and then coming to find me. Me. The one pal Leckie had who would keep faith and help a friend in need. Who had watched him get done.

‘Thanks, Tinker,’ I said as normally as I could. ‘You did well.’

‘Keep your hair on, Lovejoy.’

He watched me go in silence. The trouble with people who are on your side is they always know what’s best. They give me heartburn sometimes.

I slammed the door and took no notice when Woody bawled after me. He’s always wanting to be paid.

I left town then, and drove to Moll’s like a bat out of hell. Well, nearly twenty. But there was bile in my mouth and I’ve never had indigestion in my life.

I
DIDN’T KNOW
it then, but my peaceful days had ended. Looking for Leckie’s stuff was, until I drove out of town on the coast road that Sunday, a sort of innocent instinct.

From then on it was war.

Moll turned out to be thirtyish, fair-haired, squeaky and excitable. Plump, as any man in his right mind likes them. The odd thing was that she wanted to draw me, draw as in sketch. She was a water-colour artist, amateur without aspirations. I realized I’d vaguely heard of her but never considered her real. It’s like that with people you never expect to meet.

‘And you’re Lovejoy! I simply must take a sitting.’

‘Er –’ I’d only said hello so far.

‘Sit!’ she commanded, pushing me on a chair and rushing about with a lamp standard.

‘The cupboard . . .’

‘You’re exactly as I imagined! So positively . . .
lived in
!’

‘Look, Moll –’

She shut me up and trotted about the room looking for shadows. It was definitely her room, flowery
wallpaper and dazzling curtains, prettily decorative. In other circumstances I’d have reached for her. Paintings hung everywhere, crummy modern stuff. Sitting there like a nerk, I felt how modern her bungalow was. Not an antique in the whole place. Disgusting.

‘Stay absolutely motionless!’ she cried, tilting her head to see me sideways. ‘How atrociously sensual! How excruciatingly, totally sensitively . . . malign!’ I can never understand words artists use.

‘I’ve come about Leckie’s cupboard,’ I said doggedly.

Her eyes instantly filled with tears. She flopped down on a sofa and wept, lamp flex trailing.

‘Poor, poor Leckie. And he’d called only
minutes
before!’ She pointed at the door. ‘He put a cupboard in the garage –’

I was out of the back door and in the garage before the next breath. It stood there, ashamed and 1948 utility. Pathetic repro door handle, rusting screws. The inside was horrible and cheap.

‘You’re not even furniture,’ I told it critically. ‘Never mind antique.’

A voice said, ‘No clues there, Lovejoy.’

I turned. What the hell was Maslow doing in Moll’s garage? He’d wormed in behind me.

‘Get lost, Maslow. You’ve no business here.’

‘Oh, but he has,’ this other geezer said. A taller version of Maslow, but smiley and brisk. He looked a good footballer.

I looked from him to Maslow, then back again. Hellfire. Different faces, but very very similar. That’s all I needed, Leckie’s trail of clues obstructed by a family full of coppers.

‘Are you Tom? Moll’s husband?’

‘That’s me.’

‘How do. I’m Lovejoy. I . . . I knew Leckie. I came to see his stuff.’

‘Come inside.’

And Maslow even followed us in, greeting Moll casually and sitting down without being asked. Tom and him had a stronger resemblance indoors. Moll recovered fast with a flurry of greetings. She called Maslow Jim. My heart sank. Brothers.

‘I’ve been on duty,’ Tom explained to me. ‘You’re the friend I heard about.’

‘He’s the friend everybody’s heard about.’ Maslow grinned without humour. ‘What you here for, Lovejoy?’

‘I’m going to outline his face,’ Moll put in eagerly.

‘Leckie’s cupboard,’ I said. Coppers speak of being on duty. So Tom was not only Maslow’s brother. He was in the peelers with him. Two coppers and a sketching wife. What a bloody family.

‘Typical.’ Maslow went colder still. ‘Trying to make a bob or two, and Leckie not even stiff.’

I kept my temper. One day I’ll rupture Maslow. He knows it, too. Still, it does no harm to mislead the Old Bill. On principle I let it go.

‘Maybe,’ I said, cool. Moll’s eyes filled.

‘And I thought you were Leckie’s
friend.
How
could
you?’

‘His sort’s always the same, Moll.’

‘If that’s all Leckie brought . . .’ I said, rising. It’s times like this I wish I’d a hat to fumble with.

Nobody saw me off. I now knew why Maslow had gone to the loop road in person. Leckie was vaguely related through his brother’s wife. Not that it made any difference to me, or to Leckie any more.

I took the south road into town. It was time I went home and did a few things. The Medham auction
warehouse would be shut on Sundays, or I’d have gone straight over there and searched for the escritoire. It’s a miracle I didn’t run anybody over, weaving my preoccupied way through the strolling families on the riverside that links with the village road. All I could think of was Leckie, suddenly aware he was being watched in an emptying warehouse by the bad lads, and with no friends around save Helen, desperately passing her a note and then trying to reach me for help. He’d even tried leaving a dud cupboard at his cousin’s as a decoy, probably hoping against hope that her stolid husband Tom the copper was home.

I slammed the gears up and down on the Bercolta road, making some afternoon drivers honk at me, but I didn’t care. Leckie was too much of a gentleman to protect himself with women, say by cadging a lift with Helen or staying at Moll’s. I’d have sheltered screaming behind the nearest woman quick as a flash. That was typical. Leckie couldn’t be a mean bastard if he’d tried.

‘But Lovejoy’s one already,’ I said aloud, full of resolve.

The shadows were already lengthening when my crate gasped clanking into my garden. Sue was in the cottage porch, posting me a message by the looks of things. I cut the engine and shrugged. My crusade would have to wait till tomorrow. I waved to Sue. We went towards one another, smiling. Anyway, I excused myself, Sunday’s a day of rest for everybody, even the two killers.

Sometimes I just make one mistake after another.

I knew there was something wrong the minute I clattered into the warehouse yard the next day. Virgil’s is one of these ancient auctioneers which litter East
Anglia. As the rest of the world evolves, they stay immutable. They may behave all modern and efficient, even to the extent of having computers around the place, but in reality they are Queen Anne, and no nonsense about change.

For a start they have their own night guard. He hadn’t done much good last night, judging from the sober faces of the four people standing near the double doors. Nodge was there, funnily enough. My crate fitted neatly between a furniture van and a police car. For the only time in recorded history the bobby wasn’t Maslow. Wilkinson, the auctioneer’s chief whizzer, gave me a wave. He’s one of these long, loping men who can’t stop their arms from dangling about. Tinker says whizzers have telescopic arms for taking bribes faster.