Spend Game Read Online Free Page A

in town. Her husband has this trout farm to the north of Suffolk.Why he sees so little of her nobody knows. Madge is what we call a ‘tea-timer’ in the antiques game – she’ll take up with a knowledgeable bloke, using any means in her power, until she has assimilated most of his expertise. Then she’ll ditch him for a different interest and never again give him the time of day. It’s a very novel and worthwhile form of apprenticeship. So I’ve heard, that is. She currently had Jackson in tow, a rather sad thin elderly man who wears a waistcoat and makes models. He used to do a thriving business in militaria and engineering prototypes, including buying and selling the original designs – now a very profitable line I urge you to buy into as fast as you can. Then he threw himself into Madge’s promotions, scattering all caution to the winds. He moved in with her for a spell and the inevitable happened. He was rumoured not to have done a deal in months, at least not on his own account. Madge has thrived.
    ‘They friends?’
    ‘With Sven? No.’ Tinker looked about for some-where to spit but I held up a warning finger just in time. I’d rather him gag than pollute the rest of us. ‘I heard Madge introduce him to Blackie at the auction.’
    ‘When did they come?’
    ‘Oh, ten minutes before you.’ He lit one of his home-made fags and coughed. The taproom paused respectfully. One of Tinker’s specials takes a full ten seconds and starts a mile down the road. He subsided. Conversation picked up again.
    ‘What car?’
    ‘A bleeding great Humber.’
    ‘They know Leckie?’
    ‘Dunno.’ Tinker nudged me. ‘What’s it all about, Lovejoy? You and Leckie had a dust-up over Val?’
    Sometimes people amaze me. I stared at Tinker till he grew uncomfortable.
    ‘Well,’ he said, all defensive, ‘she’s got Leckie going because of you and Janie. Everybody knew that.’
    Janie and I had our last holocaust three weeks before all this. She stormed back to her husband in her expensive solid-state Lagonda in a livid temper for reasons no longer clear to me. She was always storming somewhere. We’d been together a long time on and off. Very critical of a man, Janie was. She’d found out about Magdalene staying at my cottage for a few days. Wouldn’t believe she was only helping me to redecorate. Now how had Tinker Dill spotted the Val-Leckie affair when it had taken a killing to push it into my thick skull?
    Suddenly I had a headache. It had been a hard day and tomorrow wouldn’t be any easier. There didn’t seem to be any clues here, I thought in my stupidity and ignorance. This was all too much to sort out just now. I cast a final glance round and saw Margaret, a cool middle-aged woman who has a neat corner in the town’s antiques arcade. I mouthed a request for a lift home. She nodded, smiling to her companion, a tall thin priestly-looking character I’d never seen before, and started to fight her way to the door. I gave the keys to Tinker.
    ‘I don’t feel so good, Tinker. Drive my crate back to the cottage, there’s a pal.’
    Outside, the night air was like a cold flannel on my face. Margaret came limping out – some childhood injury that, curiously, makes her fortyish roundness more intriguing. She told me I was white as a sheet. In her motor I lay back and closed my eyes as we moved off and the pub noise receded.
    ‘You look terrible, Lovejoy.’
    ‘I’ve got a bad head.’
    ‘I’ll make you a hot drink.’ She drove us out of the pub yard into the narrow lane between the hedgerows. ‘Come back with me?’
    ‘Yes, please,’ I said, astonishing myself, but I couldn’t face the Old Bill calling on everybody at all hours asking when we’d last seen Leckie.
    ‘Good heavens!’ Margaret cried suddenly. ‘Whatever’s Patrick doing?’
    Patrick’s paintings and early Victoriana. He was hanging from his car on the other side of the road, flashing his lights and waving his handbag at us to slow down.