Spend Game by Jonathan Gash Page A

hopefully. If it rained all day the stuff wouldn’t dry before tomorrow evening at the latest, with luck. A reprieve from ironing.
    Things seemed to be looking up for Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. A reprieve from ironing, and now safely absolved from chasing after Leckie’s killers, and therefore immune from risk. I whistled happily as I locked the cottage. I’d celebrate by having nosh in Woody’s café, and persuade Erica to let me pay in promises.
    My crate made it proudly into town with only onethrombosis, and that was on the railway slope, which I don’t count. I parked boldly in the town solicitors’ yard because it was pouring.
    The antiques Arcade is a glass-roofed alley between two sets of rickety shops. One end is open to wind and weather. The other’s full of Woody’s obnoxious caff. There’s a dozen leaning tables and scattered chairs. Woody spends his life cooking nosh and losing half-smoked fags in the grease. His idea of nourishment’s to start off with carbohydrate and protein and simply add congealed fat.
    I entered, coughing and spluttering at the first smoggy breath of airborne cholesterol, and signalling for tea. It’s the only thing not fried. To my surprise, Tinker Dill was absent. That’s very odd because, had I been able to see through the solid air between me and Woody’s wall clock, it would have confirmed that it wasn’t yet opening time for the nation’s taverns.
    ‘Over here, Lovejoy.’
    ‘How do, Sven.’ I crossed and sat opposite him.
    A few other dealers were in, already stoking up for the day’s knavery. I gave them my electioneering wave to indicate affluence and ease. Antiques dealers can detect poverty in a colleague quick as light, and everybody knows how contagious poverty is.
    ‘And a pasty, Woody,’ I yelled, to show them all.
    ‘I got a stool, Lovejoy,’ Sven said, grinning. ‘Been waiting for you.’
    ‘Date?’
    ‘About 1720, maybe earlier.’
    ‘Great,’ I said evenly. The chances of Sven actually flashing a genuine stool that age are remote. ‘Sitting on it?’ I joked.
    He made my heart turn over by saying, ‘Yes,’ andpulled this stool out from under himself. Lucky I wasn’t halfway through my pasty or I’d have choked. Eyes swivelled as the others gazed across like a suspicious herd at grass.
    It had everything, a luscious stool weighing heavy in the hand. I stood it reverently on Woody’s plastic table.
    ‘Do you mind, Lovejoy?’ The waitress stood tapping her foot. ‘Take that dirty little stool off our table.’
    I gave her one of my special stares and took the tea from her in case of war. ‘Not be a minute, Erica.’
    ‘It’s an important deal,’ Sven boasted to her, ever the born optimist.
    ‘Money, Lovejoy.’ Erica tried to keep her voice down, but Sam Denton and his partner Jean overheard and chuckled. I tried not to go red. ‘Woody
says
,’ Erica told me desperately.
    ‘Okay, love.’ I made a show of delving in my pocket. ‘What price do you put on it, Sven?’ That was a distraction. While everybody hung on Sven’s lunatic guess I pressed Erica’s hand, giving her a mute glance of appeal. She knew I was broke again, and gave me a tight-lipped glare, but you could tell she’d square it with Woody again somehow. She slammed the pasty down and stalked off. I thought of yelling to keep the change, but decided better of it, and concentrated on the stool.
    An ancient stool’s practically always worth its weight in gold. A chair isn’t, because stools are much rarer. Oh, they weren’t once, but whereas chairs tended to be carefully preserved stools were just chucked on the fire. People simply replaced them. It’s a modern trick to take a genuine eighteenth-century chair and cut it down to make a stool. The trouble was that mybell was silent. My antennae didn’t give a single quiver. If Sven’s stool was original and genuine I’d have been ringing like a cathedral at Christmas. As it was, not a single chime. My heart sank. I