Spend Game Read Free Page B

the bar mirrors. I like Helen, long of leg and stylish of manner, shapely of fag-holder and quick of mind. She saw my eyes and nodded a quizzical smile. She does English porcelain mostly, and does it well with profit. Her eyebrows said, Come over here a minute, Lovejoy, but I was busy and frightened.
    ‘She was here,’ Tinker growled. ‘She’s asking for you.’
    ‘Aren’t they all?’ I looked round some more. ‘Jean?’ Jean Plunkett’s a middle-aged woman who suddenly metamorphosed from a mild housewife into an aggressive dealer about four years back. Continental silver and tooth and nail. Big Frank from Suffolk’s been after her for a while now, seeing her as a potential third spouse to add to his bigamous affairs which litter the surrounding countryside. He was busy now, plying her with clever alcoholic combinations. Both Jean and he were smiling happily. He’d bought a copy of aRavenscroft glass at the auction – unusual, because he’s mostly silver and furniture.
    ‘Her and Frank reached the pub before me,’ Tinker said jealously. I said to keep calm, we’d buy a helicopter.
    We seemed to have the usual crowd, in fact. A score of dealers and barkers, with a couple of tough-looking vanmen to do the lumber in case any dealer infarcted at the thought of having to do any lifting.
    ‘The vannies, Tinker?’ I suggested. He grinned a no.
    ‘They came straight here – with Jill.’
    Worn out with the worry over Leckie as I was, I just had to smile. Jill was talking slagware to Brad, a real mismatch if ever there was one. Brad hasn’t thought of anything except Regency flintlocks since he learned to read and write, and Jill couldn’t tell one from a ballistic missile. She’d been at Medham and bought a good pair of blue saltboats in that odd opaque slag glass which you either hate or crave. Early Victorian furnace workers were allowed to skim off the metalled surface ‘slag’ at the end of the working day. They used to make what they called ‘foreigners’, little pieces of art to sell or give. The artistry is often pretty cumbersome and really rather crude, but sometimes varies between the merely natty and the exquisite. It was the only perk glassworkers got in those days besides silicosis. Jill has an eye for such knackery, especially when prices are blasting off as they are at present. She also has an eye for the male of the species. In fact, she’s known for it. I’ve never seen her on her own in ten years, nor with the same bloke twice. She carries a poodle the size of a midget mouse, the focus for many a ribald jest.
    ‘She’s buying,’ Tinker said in a gush of foetid breath from the side of his mouth, still grinning. He nudgedme, cackling. ‘They’ve got some shovelling to do later.’ One of the vanmen was tickling the poodle’s chin. A lot of meaningful eyeballing was going on. I could see Brad was rapidly getting cheesed off. Soon the vannies would have Jill all to themselves, lucky lads.
    Good old Tinker, I thought sardonically, still sorting through the crowd. Alfred Duggins was in from down the coast. He’s a benign little chap underneath a bowler. Never animated, never interrupts, just incubates thoughts behind his split lenses and sucks on the rim of a quart tankard. He’ll do prints and hammered coinage up to the Civil War. He gave me a nod and pulled a comical face at the clock. A laugh. For some reason we haven’t yet fathomed he hates going home.
    A huddle near the fire caught my attention, gin drinkers all. Two were strangers to me. The man looked a contented sort who had to be a Londoner.
    ‘Was Happiness at Medham?’ I asked Tinker, carefully looking away from the extravagant bloke.
    ‘Yeah. You must be blind, Lovejoy.’
    ‘I didn’t mean her. I meant him.’ The blonde woman had been noticeable in the auction all right. She’d sat on one of the chairs crossing her legs till we were half out of our minds. The auctioneer had even started stuttering and losing