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Me. The one pal Leckie had who would keep faith and help a friend in need. Who had watched him get done.
    ‘Thanks, Tinker,’ I said as normally as I could. ‘You did well.’
    ‘Keep your hair on, Lovejoy.’
    He watched me go in silence. The trouble with people who are on your side is they always know what’s best. They give me heartburn sometimes.
    I slammed the door and took no notice when Woody bawled after me. He’s always wanting to be paid.
    I left town then, and drove to Moll’s like a bat out of hell. Well, nearly twenty. But there was bile in my mouth and I’ve never had indigestion in my life.

Chapter 5
    I DIDN’T KNOW it then, but my peaceful days had ended. Looking for Leckie’s stuff was, until I drove out of town on the coast road that Sunday, a sort of innocent instinct.
    From then on it was war.
    Moll turned out to be thirtyish, fair-haired, squeaky and excitable. Plump, as any man in his right mind likes them. The odd thing was that she wanted to draw me, draw as in sketch. She was a water-colour artist, amateur without aspirations. I realized I’d vaguely heard of her but never considered her real. It’s like that with people you never expect to meet.
    ‘And you’re Lovejoy! I simply must take a sitting.’
    ‘Er –’ I’d only said hello so far.
    ‘Sit!’ she commanded, pushing me on a chair and rushing about with a lamp standard.
    ‘The cupboard . . .’
    ‘You’re exactly as I imagined! So positively . . .
lived in
!’
    ‘Look, Moll –’
    She shut me up and trotted about the room looking for shadows. It was definitely her room, flowerywallpaper and dazzling curtains, prettily decorative. In other circumstances I’d have reached for her. Paintings hung everywhere, crummy modern stuff. Sitting there like a nerk, I felt how modern her bungalow was. Not an antique in the whole place. Disgusting.
    ‘Stay absolutely motionless!’ she cried, tilting her head to see me sideways. ‘How atrociously sensual! How excruciatingly, totally sensitively . . . malign!’ I can never understand words artists use.
    ‘I’ve come about Leckie’s cupboard,’ I said doggedly.
    Her eyes instantly filled with tears. She flopped down on a sofa and wept, lamp flex trailing.
    ‘Poor, poor Leckie. And he’d called only
minutes
before!’ She pointed at the door. ‘He put a cupboard in the garage –’
    I was out of the back door and in the garage before the next breath. It stood there, ashamed and 1948 utility. Pathetic repro door handle, rusting screws. The inside was horrible and cheap.
    ‘You’re not even furniture,’ I told it critically. ‘Never mind antique.’
    A voice said, ‘No clues there, Lovejoy.’
    I turned. What the hell was Maslow doing in Moll’s garage? He’d wormed in behind me.
    ‘Get lost, Maslow. You’ve no business here.’
    ‘Oh, but he has,’ this other geezer said. A taller version of Maslow, but smiley and brisk. He looked a good footballer.
    I looked from him to Maslow, then back again. Hellfire. Different faces, but very very similar. That’s all I needed, Leckie’s trail of clues obstructed by a family full of coppers.
    ‘Are you Tom? Moll’s husband?’
    ‘That’s me.’
    ‘How do. I’m Lovejoy. I . . . I knew Leckie. I came to see his stuff.’
    ‘Come inside.’
    And Maslow even followed us in, greeting Moll casually and sitting down without being asked. Tom and him had a stronger resemblance indoors. Moll recovered fast with a flurry of greetings. She called Maslow Jim. My heart sank. Brothers.
    ‘I’ve been on duty,’ Tom explained to me. ‘You’re the friend I heard about.’
    ‘He’s the friend everybody’s heard about.’ Maslow grinned without humour. ‘What you here for, Lovejoy?’
    ‘I’m going to outline his face,’ Moll put in eagerly.
    ‘Leckie’s cupboard,’ I said. Coppers speak of being on duty. So Tom was not only Maslow’s brother. He was in the peelers with him. Two coppers and a sketching wife. What a bloody