The Rich And The Profane (28 page)

‘Dwoorlink!’ I cried, advancing, old times.

She swept past. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lovejoy. Where is it?’

That’s what I mean. Florida was class. I know my place is humility, but why the reminder? She stopped, looking about. Three porters, three suitcases each. Probably staying all of two days.

‘The scam? I’ll show you, love.’ I stutter when I’m edgy, worse when I’m flummoxed.

‘Florida means the limo, idiot.’

A massive bloke was standing by her. Slim of waist, muscly, an inverted pear of aggro. Tarzan in trendy King’s Road leather, long blond hair, tanned from alligator wrestling in some tropic. He looked a giant sixteen. Florida and him? I’d thought it was Florida and me.

‘It’s there.’ I pointed to Gussy’s wheels.

Tarzan stared at Florida. ‘You were right. This worm’s pathetic.’ He turned to me, amid clusters of tourists. ‘Get decent wheels, idiot. Pronto.’

He buffeted me so my head spun. I reeled. I don’t mind these tough duffs, but feel narked when they decide they’re Godzilla and us amoebas. I grinned, stored it up. I’m good at hate, but tend to forget why I’m seething.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, humbly. ‘Will they do for the whilst?’

We drove, him clipping my ear when I hesitated at intersections. I kept silent. Every one was a chit I’d cash in later, to his profound regret. They named a hotel I’d never heard of. To Dook, as she called him, my ignorance of its whereabouts proved I was an imbecile. Florida didn’t deign to speak. I drove them to the Roi de Normandie, unloaded their luggage.

‘This is the sister hotel,’ I lied. ‘Yours, sir, is in, er, superclass, through main reception.’

I promised to call later, take her and her primate to dinner. Florida ignored me, swept inside holding her gilded youth’s hand. They left their suitcases in a heap. So did I. I’d assumed Florida, my mark one gambler, would be a superb ally. Wrong again. I drove off.

Thirty minutes later I knocked on the Carrieres’ door, and asked to see Dove. They took me through.

‘Lucky you caught me in,’ Dove said cheerily.

Like a fool I found myself agreeing before I got the quip. I laughed shamefacedly. Joe was sculpting in the garden. Dove was painting in watercolours, using her pulleys, a brush in her teeth.

Meg seated me, brewed up. We talked of this and that. I asked could I crate some things up in their shed. They said why not. I got Dove laughing fit to burst, describing Florida’s arrival and her bronzed stalwart.

‘Dook,’ I said when Dove asked. ‘Honest. He’s called Dook.’

‘Don’t be upset, Lovejoy,’ Dove narked me by saying. ‘She’ll see sense.’

‘Upset?’ I laughed so merrily that I hurt my ribs. ‘You seriously think ... ? Good grief!’ I went on about Florida’s ugliness for some time, saying if I was
that
hard up I’d be really down, but I wasn’t so I wasn’t.

‘So she’s very pretty?’

‘She’s married, heaven’s sake!’ I told them. They were all listening by now, nodding. ‘She has a terrible temper. She likes horses. Can you imagine?’

‘No, no,’ they went.

It makes you narked, when people misunderstand. Me and Florida? Give me a break. I’d have said it outright, but Americanisms sound daft when I try them. Conversation faltered.

Joe took me to his shed. It stood behind his workshop, where he was trying to model a Lalique piece in that new porous fast-drying clay - a boon to forgers, incidentally. Made in Swindon, but costs the earth. He had plenty of spare wood. I backed the motor in, said I could manage on my own, ta very much. They went about their business, so didn’t see what I was bringing in, and I didn’t say. Fourteen canvases don’t take much space, even in frames. Two small flat crates, wood and fibreboard, that anybody could lift, three by four by two. Done.

‘They’re only garments and pottery,’ I told them, Dove looking really excited, when they called me in for tea after I’d sat alone a while in the shed thinking things out. ‘No peeping. No nipping out to the woodshed,’ I threatened Dove grimly, ‘in the candle hours, you. Understand?’

‘It’s very thrilling, Lovejoy. Are we in a dangerous adventure?’

‘Yes. You’re accomplices. And,’ I said when she exclaimed in delight, ‘I’ve never had such duckeggs helping in a crime before.’

The word sent them quiet. ‘Crime?’Joe looked at Meg.

These glances between spouses get on my wick sometimes. Warning, alarmed, encouraging, they exclude the rest of us. Maybe that’s why they do them? I think they should keep their private glances to themselves.

‘You’ve gone all serious, Lovejoy,’ Dove said. Her brush was a No. 4 hog brisde, floating suspended above her. I removed it, wiped the tip on a rag dipped in turpentine. ‘I’m glad it’s us, Dad. Honestly. I like Lovejoy.’

‘Shut it, you,’ I told Dove gruffly. ‘Where’s your twin dish? Separate dirty and clean, you trollop.’

‘Can’t manage.’

‘Should be able to make you one.’ I inspected her pulleys. Her mirrors seemed important.

‘What crime, exactly?’ from Joe. Meg didn’t mind half as much. I could tell. Women usually don’t.

‘Somebody died.’ I could have explained how Gesso’d gone missing, the evidence. I could even have said how I was starting to blame myself, but I’d have sounded as if I was to blame, and I wasn’t having that. I eventually found the fudge formula. ‘I want to bring a crime to light, that’s all.’

‘The Scarlet Pimpernel!’ Dove squealed. ‘Robin Hood!’

Joe was already throwing up logistical earthworks, a frigging pest. ‘Why not simply tell the police? And why come to Guernsey to do it?’

‘Because the murderers are here!’ Dove shrieked. ‘We must stake their place out!’

‘Ta, love.’ There’s a point where help becomes hindrance. ‘Not a word. I haven’t been here, OK? And if you’re asked, I brought nothing.’

‘We should swear an oath!’ Dove was saying when I left. Meg was full of merriment, Dove had never been so animated, Joe doubtful. Women are easier to con. They have such faith.

Twenty minutes later, returning Gussy’s motor, I was arrested. Two tourists looked on, aghast. I tried to look casual about being apprehended, but fooled nobody.

Jonno Rant was at the police station. I was interrogated to within an inch of the truth. I admitted everything, most sincerely.

‘I am Lovejoy, not Jonno Rant. I live in East Anglia.’ Grouville was as succinct a bobby as ever I’d met, if I’ve got the right word. He registered facts by writing one-liners, each no more than three syllables. I’d have hated to meet him on that TV word game. Stout, but he moved smooth. Like, he went for a file, and didn’t seem to have to go through the motions of having to stand up. Tennis player? I tried, from curiosity, to read his scrawl upside down, see how he managed to encapsulate my tale so fast.

‘That is correct,’ Jonno Rant said, still amused. ‘I’m me. He isn’t.’

Even I could have jotted that down in three.

‘Your purpose in this deception, Lovejoy?’

‘Support for charity, Mr Grouville.’ Trying it for size. ‘Purpose,’ Grouville reminded me. ‘I said
purpose.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ Hadn’t I just told him? ‘I want to support Prior Metivier’s holy establishment in Suffolk. I have no means of my own. I had the idea of running a show in some holiday centre. I know nothing about music hall promotions, so I nicked - borrowed - a list of performers—’ ‘From Bamie Woodfall,’ Jonno said with scorn. I perked up. Scorn’s useful when it’s other peoples’.

‘And rang some of them to come here,’ I said hopefully. ‘That’s it.’

‘Why Guernsey?’

‘The best holiday centre on earth.’ Get stuffed, Jersey. ‘There’d be more support, seeing Prior Metivier is from here.’

‘Why Mr Rant?’ Grouville announced each question like a proposition from Euclid: construct equilateral triangles using a set square and compass.

‘He’s famous. He’s popular. Everybody knows his name. His musicals are done everywhere.’

‘Mr Rant doesn’t write musicals.’ Grouville wrote only two words this time on his rotten old paper. For my marvellous explanation? Stingy swine.

‘Promotions and that,’ I said lamely. Got three.

‘Mr Rant?’ Grouville prompted, wanting Jonno to demand the death penalty.

The impressario looked unkempt. Maybe from the flight? These pop stars are real scruffs. I’ve not seen one that couldn’t do with a good tidying up. I felt like lending him a comb, if Fd got one. He was in green leather, a long fringed coat. He wore sun specs with vertical-strip lenses. His head looked a bisected arthropod, a real extra-terrest. ‘Why Barnie Woodfall, Lovejoy?’

I explained how Fd come across the audition, and how the odd couple had reacted. I had to keep searching for his face beyond those glasses. ‘The auditions frightened me.’

‘Samantha Costell.’ Jonno nodded. Anger plus scorn now? Bad news can be quite good, and anger even better. I perked up some more. ‘Why did you choose these artists, Lovejoy?’

‘Random, from the list I conned from that Samantha bird. Except for Maureen. I knew her once.’Jonno thumbed a list Grouville passed him. ‘I phoned the other night from Mrs Vidamour’s, told her to make the arrangements.’ I cleared my throat. Honesty time. ‘I’ve also taken on a local gentleman called James Ozanne, to—’

‘Ozanne’s activities are what claimed our attention.’ Grouvillespeak, do an isosceles triangle without a set square. ‘He is next door.’

‘Please tell him sorry. Jimmy’s a nice bloke.’

‘You impersonated for financial gain,’ Grouville said. ‘You deceived airlines, ferry services, hoteliers, landladies and other residents here.’

‘Excuse me, please.’ Rant didn’t speak for a bit, stood staring at me. ‘Might I have a word?’

They made me stand outside. The disconsolate figure of Jimmy Ozanne was sitting in the corridor. I waved, called, ‘Sorry, Jimmy.’

‘Chin up, old chap,’ he said. ‘Ah, not Jonno Rant any longer, what?’

‘No. It’s Lovejoy.’ I kept looking among passing Plod-dites for the blokes who’d done me over, didn’t see them.

Jonno was signing something when they called me back in. I stood before Grouville’s desk. The paper with its terse scribbles was gone. Grouville looked at me five full minutes in silence, I swear.

‘Lovejoy. Visitors assume that this Bailiwick is the responsibility of our Duke Sovereign - that is, our monarch. Or Parliament, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Bailiwick, the States of Deliberation, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.’ He went on in this vein. I switched off. I wish I’d a quid for every time I’ve heard the speech.

Silence descended. It fired question marks about my head.

My usual answer was called for. ‘And everybody’s wrong?’

‘Indeed. Because Guernsey is down to ...’ Again the ???? salvo.

‘You?’

‘Correct. As far as you are concerned, Lovejoy, I am the ultimate deterrent. Mr Rant has, out of a spirit of generosity, elected to employ you in the capacity in which you deceived and defrauded. Do not ask me why. I disapprove. Not, I hasten to add, of Mr Rant’s welcome presence here, or of his musical talents. But of you. You are warned. Pay your debts. Stay within the strictures of Mr Rant’s employment, and you will not incur my displeasure. Move outside them one iota, I shall lose my temper. You will be very, very sorry. Clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’ How the hell did this windbag precis everybody else’s words to half a blot, and take hours saying watch it?

‘Good day to you.’

Murmuring thanks to Grouville and any deity who might be tuned in up there, I left. In the corridor, Jonno Rant was making notes in a pocket book while Jimmy Ozanne was saying, ‘Willco. Roger. Pip pip’ and the like.

Jonno, my good pal Jonno, rattled through details of bookings, hitches, standbys. Jimmy was delighted. Here was a decision man, not a bumbler like me.

‘Right. Any questions, Jimmy?’ Jonno asked.

‘Authorized changes to pattern?’ Jimmy said, terse. Caught it from Grouville, likely enough.

‘Individual switches, you deal with. Pattern changes, refer to me.’

‘Roger!’Jimmy darted me a smile and strode off to some waiting battalion.

Jonno Rant turned to me. He’d started off a few inches taller. Now he seemed up in the stratosphere.

‘Which leaves you, Lovejoy.’ He wondered how much to tell me, then said, ‘You know what? I remember you welling up, when we first met at the point-to-point. You wept, staring at a couple of old biscuit tins.’ I said nothing. I don’t like people who remember things. He gestured the silence out of the way, forget it. ‘Frankly, you did me a good turn.’

‘Eh? Oh, any time I can ...’ My weak blather petered out.

‘Cut it. You brought to light a showbiz rip-off. Bamie seduced Samantha away.’ I tried to look intelligent. ‘She stole my lists of artists, the lot. I wasn’t aware of it until you happened by. I’d have lost a mint.’

He seemed to expect some comment. I said, ‘How can a producer lose money? Don’t you just sit back while they send you cheques?’

He heaved a sigh. ‘No wonder you get in messes, Lovejoy. You’re an imbecile. Here’s what will happen. I’m taking over your
- my
- production. In exchange for my not prosecuting, tell me everything. And tell it now.’

‘Jonno,’ I said earnestly. ‘Honest. Sincerely, I’m hiding nothing. I swear on ...’ He took his specs off and put them away. We stood there. ‘Right,’ I said weakly. ‘Place to sit, is there?’

We went to the harbour nosh bar where I’d lusted after the waitress, and I told him about my notion. He laughed at it. I was pleased. He looked so much more pleasant when he laughed, and I felt a lot safer.

By mid-afternoon, I was on the good ship
Jocina.
Jonno had gone to Splendid Sejour. Maybe he’d meet Dook and Florida. I wondered if he already knew Dook. If he did, I hoped he’d heed my warning and keep his mouth shut. I didn’t want things to go wrong. And what on earth was an iota?

t’s not a “boat” as such,’ the bloke said who kindly ferried me out to the
Jocina
in .a cockleshell. ‘A “boat”, in strictly nautical terms, is a submarine.’

He, in strictly nautical terms, was a Jolly Jack tar, tanned to leather. In East Anglia, where estuaries and seas intrude, I’ve learnt to avoid sailors like the plague. They’re like midwives, can talk of nothing but. I could have said, ‘Er, doesn’t some Old English Chronicle of 891
ad
mention “boats” ... ?’