The Gondola Scam Read Online Free Page A

my
dust. She usually brings a vacuum cleaner and blizzards through the cottage
till I'm demented.
    "'Night, love."
    She clung shivering for a minute to show the cold night breeze
that she knew it was out there, then ran with a squeal of hatred into the pitch
dark. She leaves her grand coupe on my gravel path so customers won't spot her
car parked in some leafy layby and go prattling gossip.
    "Go in, darling!" she cried back. "You'll catch
your death!"
    "Right, love." I didn't move. It was quite mild, really,
but I've noticed women talk themselves into a shiver. Connie's headlights
washed over my garden, shrinking it and fetching the trees comfortably closer.
They struck a gleam off something beyond the hedge. I wondered idly what it
was. Maybe I'd have a look when I could get round to it.
    Connie revved, ambitiously stirring the gears and frightening my
garden voles by showering the countryside with flying gravel as she backed and
veered. I counted her turns. Three, four, five, six. The horn pipped a
triumphant pip and she was off, her rear reds flickering as she zoomed past the
hawthorns. That was good, I thought approvingly. She usually takes seven goes
to negotiate the gateway.
    Nothing can gleam in our lane except glow-worms and a parked car. I
felt daft just standing there so I walked out. No engines roared, no yobbos
bawled.
    "Good evening, Lovejoy. Caterina Norman." The blond bird
showed faintly in the greenish dashboard illumination. "Your phone is
disconnected."
    "Er, a slight misunderstanding about the bill."
    "You're to come with me," she said, dead cool.
"Tomorrow. My grandfather wants to speak to you."
    That's all I wanted, another bird giving me orders. "I'm busy
tomorrow."
    "Surely you can stop . . . work for a moment or two."
Her tone was dry. She'd obviously seen more than she wanted when Connie
departed. "It's not far."
    "Well, look. Can't we leave it?" I was knackered. What
with the whole day in the auction aggro, the failure with Mr. Malleson, and
Connie, I needed a restful day reading about beautiful antiques.
    "He's an antique collector, Lovejoy. And he has a task for you."
    That did it. Maybe Granddad was a potential buyer. Never mind that
I hadn't a single antique in the place. Potential money's only heading one way,
right? And that word: "task." Not "job," not "some
work." Task. There's something indelibly medieval about it, isn't there?
Beowulf and the Arthurian knights did tasks. Profitable things, tasks—or so I
thought.
    3
    Next morning I was up as usual about seven, frying tomatoes. The
robin came ficking along the hedge to the wall where it plays hell till I shut
it up with diced cheese. Blue tits were tapping the side window, and the
sparrows and blackbirds were all in round my feet. A right lorry load of
chiselers. And soon the bloody hedgehog would be awake and come snuffling its
saucer for pobs, greedy little swine. How Snow White kept so bloody cheerful
with this menagerie I'll never know. I tell you I’m the easiest touch in East
Anglia.
    It wasn't raining for once, so I took my breakfast—it's only bread
and dip really—out and sat on a low wall I've nearly finished. I set my trannie
to a trillion decibels to frighten off scrounging wildlife, but the robin only
came and nonchalantly cleaned its feet on it with such pointed indifference
that I had to share the brown bread.
    The robin cackled angrily and flew off, though I'd been stuffing
it with grub. Somebody must be coming. Sure enough. Tinker came shuffling up
the path, muttering and grumbling.
    "Morning, Tinker. Get a ride on Jacko's wagon?"
    "Aye, thieving old bleeder. Charged me a quid."
    Jacko's a senile villager who runs a van (summer) and a horse
wagon (winter) between our village and the nearby town. The van's an elderly
reject from the town market. The wagon's a superannuated coal cart pulled by
Terence. Jacko sings to entertain his passengers, which is one way of lessening
the load.
    'You didn't pay him?" I asked,